Water Commission - Regular Meeting

Good afternoon. We are live and recording. Myrna, are you on there? Myrna? Hello? Yes? Is

it I think it's Myrna or Marina? Marina Pulled out to explain why nobody answered to that one. Marina, are you alive?

Yes. We are live and recording.

Okay. Great. Great. I just wanted to make sure we'll get started here in one minute. Okay. So I'm going to go ahead and kick off the start of our meeting here for the Water Commission, February 23. We have a lot of commissioners here. I think a few others will be coming in. We have, I know, one online for sure, Roger. And so I think we'll be good there. And so I thought, what the heck? Let's get going. This we all get all wound up and intense about the subject run. So I'm going to share one quick little ditty with you here, and that was in Denver. I don't know if you saw the guy that fell off the 18th Floor, the bar.

The police determined he wasn't a bouncer. So Oh. Sorry there. Pretty bad. But anyhow, here we go. Mirna, if you would please, everybody online, please introduce yourselves, please. Marina, do we have anybody online?

Yeah. Jim Morris is online today. Great.

Roger, you

got Roger Hudson. Yep. I'm right here.

Roger Hudson.

Okay. Anybody else? So let's do roll call around the room. Let's start. Trish?

Bernhardt, present.

Sean Tanner, present.

Evan Hila, present. Clark Hammelman, present.

Jack Culbert, present.

Don Langley present.

James Eklund present.

There it is.

James Eklund present.

Harold Smithel's present.

Missing anybody? I think we're all squared away. Think we're only waiting for Mickey. So we have, it looks like everybody's in attendance. That's really great. Okay. So we're looking at the agenda. First thing we need, I will say I was not at the last meeting. I apologize for missing it. So I will abstain from commenting on this. But the minutes for January 26, anybody has any changes? Harold?

Yes, I have a correction. And I talked to staff, they're very helpful with this. But apparently, since the microphone wasn't turned on, was garbled, which is my fault, I apologize. But James seconded, it's who's with me. The motion was that we did not release the let's see the motion was here it is.

Apologize. That I'd like the minister to read it. Defer initiation of focus group activities until receipt of updates reflecting today's feedback and approval of a plan by the Water Commission before going up for public comment. So we would see a final draft before it goes out. That's what we talked about. We thought we might have some of that feedback for February, but that's not happening. It's not here. So I would blend the minutes to read if the group's memories like mine to defer initiation of focus group activities until receipt of updates reflecting today's feedback and approval of a plan by the Water Commission to be open for public discussion.

Go ahead, James.

As a second this is James Ecklund. As a seconder of that motion, my recollection is consistent with that.

Okay. So anybody else have any comments on that? Yes, sir.

Just a question, and that is maybe a legal question. And that is, do we have the authority to make that determination or to is that a motion that requires this activity not to take place, or is it a recommendation to the board that this activity not take place? I I don't know what our authority is.

Okay. So let's separate what we're doing right now. First off, this is just the minutes, and he's saying there was a correction to his minutes. That the minutes of the question that he asked or the motion that was made was different than the motion that he does showing up in the minutes. Okay. That's number one. Number two, it is a topic we're gonna have to discuss today, and that is public input. So we're gonna have to have that discussion today at at one point or another. So right now, what we're actually talking about is a correction of the minutes. And, I'm not being here. I have no way to know one way or the other, and I didn't go ahead.

I I think my question still applies to the minutes because the minutes show a motion that we made

Correct.

For them to defer action. And my question is, do we have authority to make that kind of a motion? Or was the motion we made a motion to recommend that the board defer action? I'm just

There was no part of a recommendation to the board. It was the commission. At least that was the motion. I'm just I'm not debating the issue, Clark, because you raised a good question. Right. But, no, it was until this commission sees a a report to go out recommending it not go out. That that's basically it. Now the board can override us and say, no. It's our report. We'll do when we wanna do it. But, that's they've gotta give us that direction to the board.

Well, since we've opened this can of worms and here we are, I guess it's time to pick this up and just pick it up as part of this discussion. So, I was not here, and it sounds like we even have another commissioner that is kind of, wait a minute. What was this motion? And if you're saying the motion that's on the minutes is incorrect, then we're gonna have to have a discussion to get this corrected as to make sure the rest of the commission's on board as to what we're gonna do in this particular area. I will just sound this off.

I think waiting until we have a completed plan and delivering it to the public as a completed plan is a slap in the face because I really do think that without doesn't give them the impression that we're listening. It doesn't give them the impression we're taking input prior to the development of a final product. It doesn't take in that we're gonna incorporate anything that they have to give us. And I really have a concern that if we go down that road and say, no. We're gonna wait until we get all the data and make a recommendation to the board before the public's had an opportunity to input, then why haven't? You might as well just do it at the public hearing with the commissioners. Yes, sir.

Meeting. We made a lot of corrections to the

Right.

Report. This is not to fore forestall public comment. It's that we're confident that we have a completed report before it goes out. That's all. Because at the last meeting,

we spent a

lot of time going through the different sections, correcting different items, and there was serious problems with the accuracy on the on the tables that were there. Right. So this was only that we get a the motion was simply that we get enough material that we think it's ready to go out for public opinion, not that it's a final report.

Okay. So

It was never that this is final report, just that it was correct enough to go out for public opinion. That's all.

Okay. Sean? Sean Tondor. That's 100% correct, what Harold laid out. I think it's allowing the commission to see all the additions or changes or edits before we send it out to the public because actually the inverse Okay. If we send it out to the public and it's inaccurate or it's not what the commission wants, then we're wasting a lot of time of the publics to comment on a document that's not accurate. Okay? So that that's it was only just to get the document in a clean, happy place from the commission to then take out to the public.

Okay. So it's

not a presupposing anything that the public will add

to it. So it's not the final No. Document. It's just a version that appears to be much cleaner and comfortable with and then to go out to the public and say, now it's time to get public input. Is that what you're saying from that standpoint? Correct. Okay. I do think we still have to talk about this topic of public input because we're getting down the roadways, and we still haven't had any. And I just don't wanna find us in a position that people think that this is just being railroaded. I mean, I really don't wanna get down to that point. Clark, does that answer your question?

No. My I guess my question's a little bit a little bit different, and that is whether we have the authority to direct direct the activity that our consultant undertakes or whether we are recommending to the board that they direct that action. I I'm just confused as to whether what our authority here is. And I guess that's the legal question. Whether we have authority to even make a motion like that or whether we our authority are the motion or whether the motion should read that we recommend that the board do do not go out until I'm just I'm just confused as to what our level of authority here is.

Okay. So the step

back we're making a motion, is it a recommendation, or is it a fact that we're directing the consultant not to do that?

So the scope one thing I would say, then I'm going to ask Lauren's, question in a minute. But there's one thing for us to keep in mind is what is the scope of our duties in this case? We had a scope. That scope was approved by the board. That gives us the authority to do the things we want to get done. So if the actions we take are within that scope, then we have the in line authority to move forward in that manner. Okay? Now if we go outside that scope, then we're gonna have to ask for, I think, a correction, a deviation. So So let me ask Lauren if I can. Lauren, would you comment on that question?

This is Lauren Pulver with staff. I might ask Chris in terms of how best to handle the minutes, but any change to Jack's point to the scope does have to be approved by the Board of County Commissioners because it's their contract. The scope currently does outline that there will be one more review draft created by consultants, and that's in the April, May time frame. And that the scope outlines that that next review draft will include feedback from the Board of County Commissioners, the Water Commission, focus groups, and public. And that will be used to produce that second review draft.

So not having time for focus group feedback to be incorporated into this next review draft that will come before you does deviate from that scope of it.

Would that help, or we could create spaghetti?

Just so yeah. I understand. So our motion that was made last month says not to have focus group activities until the this commission receives updates that reflect the discussion that we had a month ago. We have not received those updates yet.

No. Okay. So is that correct?

That that's correct. We have we we provided feedback Right. That before it goes out, our feedback should be considered. Now the consultant can say, no. You're wrong. We're gonna leave the way it is. But before it goes out to the public, our feedback should be at least considered. You know, for example, one of the one of the strong motions was before we say some some concerns about language about how accurate some of the information is in terms of the ability to forecast, some things like that. We gave quite a bit of advice on that. We all agreed to it.

And so it seems before it goes out, at least what we've provided the consultant should be incorporated, plus inaccuracies of the the tables on what water is where and that type of thing. This is just one more dry clean before it goes out.

Right. And and a month ago when we met, one of the things I requested in an update was that there'd be a separate chapter that addresses the stealth providers of water. And so does that mean that until that chapter is in there, that you can't have the focus group meetings? I I'm just trying to understand the process.

Right. No. I get it. I totally get it. Lauren, I'm not sure on that last part on that question. So, I think we have to create a, and I'll make sure we get back to the correction on that agenda item here in a minute, Harold. So I think since we're going to address that, my concern is so the April, May, we have to have this information to the commissioners is what you're saying. Okay? So we have to, within that time frame, have an opportunity to have public input. Am I correct?

The concern the commission had, if I'm correct, is that some of the data did not seem to, match up or be current or something or whatever, at least to that level. And there were some recommendations of changes that should be made, I'm assuming. Okay. Like you said, wasn't here. I apologize. Do we know if those changes have been made incorporated yet, sir?

Not yet.

Not yet. And they're working on that, I'm assuming? Okay. And about when that might appear?

We're it'd probably be in the April time frame, and so we we're working toward that. But we, in the meantime, would like to have some focus group meetings, initial focus group meetings. We might have to have more than one with those focus groups. But that's where we're working right now is toward a revised draft.

Okay. So the question becomes, where do we run into the conflict on timing if we have enough information? So I think what we can do if we can't list after we get today's data, can we take this up at the end of the meeting? Are we good with that? So I'll ask for an agenda change to be have that item added here in a minute.

Okay. So then we'll go from there. So let's step back then to where we started this conversation, and there was a motion to, edit the minutes according to Harold's, verbiage of what he said the question was. That motion then, I know James conclude that it was what Harold said, and so did Sean. So what we're gonna need is a, real quick at this point, I think it's smart to do that, would be to get an approval of the minutes with the technical changes that Harold has submitted.

So all those in favor of changing the minutes to reflect the issues that Harold brought up, say, aye. Aye. All those opposed, please say nay. Any opposed? Okay.

So it does pass. As I said, I would abstain from that. And then we are definitely gonna have to pick this up at the end. So before we go to the next part, because the next part is the comment section, I would like to actually, which I we normally don't, but we do have the prerogative to do it, is change the agenda to add to the end of this agenda prior to, and we'll add it at the member discussion level to further discuss public input timeframe. So, can I get a motion

to do that, please? Second.

Okay. All those in favor, please say, any input on that question? I'm sorry. All those in favor, please say, aye. Aye. Opposed, nay? Nay? Nope. Okay. Any abstentions? Okay. I think we're going to do, if you could please add that to make sure we don't miss having that discussion. Cause I'll forget between now and then. So anyhow. So with that in mind, let's move on into the next item on our agenda, which is the referral items for possible consideration.

And those then items, as you know, this is a no comment area. We're not going to go through the group. But if you've got something to share with the board that you've identified, we really need to do that. So rather than take these separately, we'd like to take them as one whole item. And Tricia, would you please bring forth the first item?

Sure. Tricia Bernhardt. In regards to the Jam Ranch rezone, that's the one I wanna discuss. It is my understanding the way I read that that they are planning to create a new water district using groundwater for this development of 35 homes on 87 acres. I'm opposed to creating another water district when in fact this land is adjacent to Castle Pines.

Seems to me if they want to develop this, they should be finding a way to reinvigorate with Castle Pines and tap into their system. Seems like the wrong thing to allow developments on groundwater and creating new districts in this county.

Great. Thank you. Any other input? Will staff please make a note that I think it's a valid comment? I would echo the same thing. Okay.

I would agree.

Yep.

Harold? Haven't this commission being consistent when we looked at districts next next two existing districts districts to avoid new well based districts.

Harold, I can't hear you. We can't hear you.

Pardon? Can't hear you. Oh. I'm sorry. Didn't haven't we been through this once before that the commission has been consistent that rather than creating new districts on wells, if they're adjacent to an existing district, they should connect. I think that's been I think we've been quite consistent on that.

I've seen a recent change. Because we can't say you can't, but what we can do is make a recommendation to the That's correct. Say that they shouldn't. That was the recommendation. Okay.

Anything else? I think that is that. Okay. So we have no further comments on the other four applications. I think we're good to go there. Now we need a presentation, I believe, from the Colorado State Demographer's Office. Is that correct? Ma'am, how are you? If you would please introduce yourself and give us a long resume of your outstanding qualifications. Good

afternoon. My name is Nancy Gideon, and I'm with the Colorado State Demography Office. But as I know you, Commissioner Hilbert referred to, I have 14 experience at Douglas County Government. And I have been in this room before many times and I'm so pleased to be back. This is my first time in six years that I've been here.

But I wanna say that I learned so much from Douglas County, both on land use, on water use, but also demographics. So today, I will be discussing the population forecast that the state demography office has for Douglas County. And I can just start off by saying all projections are wrong. Because if I really knew exactly how many people there would be in the county at any given time, I would be using those skills to gamble and to run the stock market and things like that. But we come up with the best possible information based on past trends, current trends, and what we think is going to happen.

So overall, in the state of Colorado, we know that we are still growing, but just much more slowly than we have in the past. And a lot of this has to do with some very simple things like there are fewer babies being born and there are more deaths, which is totally natural because we are aging. So that is resulting in slower population growth, still positive, just slower. Net migration though, people moving in minus those moving out has historically been the larger component of change in the state. And that has driven Colorado's growth over the past decades.

And finally, we're becoming increasingly more diverse in terms of racial and ethnic makeup. Colorado fits into the state and the state fits into the nation and the nation fits in into the globe. We're looking at human trends in a way. And one thing we do look at is fertility rates. One thing we know though, is that throughout the entire planet, fertility rates are dropping.

On this map of the globe, those countries shaded in purple have lower than replacement rate, while those in shades of blue have higher. You've probably heard news reports about China, South Korea, some European countries where they have more deaths than births. And currently, The United States is in that category as well. So this is having large changes in the overall composition by age of the global population. And mostly we see this in the 65 and over population.

This chart is going from 1995 to 2095, a one hundred year period, where we expect to see large increases in the older adult population, the 65 and over. While the child population, people ages zero to 19 years old, will be relatively steady and slightly declining. That leaves the population twenty to sixty four, which is typically considered the prime working age population to be plateauing and then slightly declining. So when we look at the total age structure of planet Earth, we are definitely seeing some changes. And those changes are anticipated for The United States as well, where we have an increasing share of the population 65 and over, a plateauing or slightly declining child population, and the prime working age twenty to sixty four years old, still growing somewhat, but plateauing as well.

So for Colorado, how do we compare to The United States as a whole? Well, general, we have been growing faster than The United States as a whole. On this chart from 1990 to the forecast year of 2060, we see Colorado in the blue line has had higher annual population percent change than The United States as a whole, except for a small period in around 2020, where The United States as a whole had a slightly higher. But going forward from 2025 through 2060, we do anticipate Colorado to continue growing faster than The United States. But by the year 2060, The United States is forecast to have 0% change in its total population, while Colorado's expected a 0.4% increase.

Now population will change four zero ks.

So we don't miss this at this point, but that change is new births only, replacement rate only, not in and out.

For The United States as a whole, it would be international migration and then births and deaths. For Colorado, it would be domestic migration and births and deaths.

Migration is included?

Yes, definitely. Yes. So on this chart, we are seeing those components of change for the state as a whole. The blue bars are indicating that net migration and the gray is natural increase. Now here we're going back to 1970 and then there's a dashed vertical line for 2024. Those are estimates. Those have happened. That is reality. And we see that natural increase, births minus deaths, has been relatively steady, but has some ups and downs. When we look at net migration on the other hand, it's far larger and it's far more variable.

The late 1980s, for example, was the only time during this previous fifty year time period where more people left the State of Colorado than moved into it. But that set us up for the 1990s, which was a very high period of net migration. There was a small decrease in the early 2000s, but mostly from 2005 through 2015, we had very stable net migration to the state. But 2020, 2021, the pandemic years, we saw both declines in natural increase, those gray bars, but also the blue lines of net migration. The recent years have seen, so 2023, 2024, some more increases in net net migration.

But going forward, we are anticipating that natural increase to be a smaller share of annual population change, and we will actually expect to get to natural decrease more deaths than births in the year 2047 for the state as a whole. But right now, the forecast is showing steady levels of net migration to the state. Of course, this is based on past data and it's based on our modeling. Closer look at natural change, births and deaths, shows two separate trends in a way. We'll start with deaths.

Deaths have been increasing and that's totally natural and exactly what we would expect because our population is aging. We're looking at absolute numbers, we're not looking at rates of mortality. Mortality rates have not increased or anything like this. We're just seeing that as Colorado has aged, we have more deaths, which is totally natural. And so that absolute number has been increasing and did have a sharp uptick in 2020 and 'twenty one due to the pandemic.

Births, on the other hand, statewide have been variable. We tend to see increases, then a bit of a plateau, another increase. But 2007 was the year of peak births in the state of Colorado. And all those children are now young adults as they all turned 18 in 2025. Since 2007, we've still had over 60,000 babies born in the state each year.

It's just been less than what we saw in 2007. Going forward, we're anticipating those number of births to be relatively stable at about sixty three thousand, sixty four thousand, sixty five thousand a year, but deaths will continue to increase as we age. Net migration is that other large component of change. And typically, most of the net migration to Colorado has been domestic, meaning people moving from other states. So people can leave Colorado to other states, but also enter Colorado from other states in The United States.

We also do have international migration, which is typically when someone comes from another country and comes to Colorado say first, they would be registered as an international migrant to Colorado. If an international migrant first went to New York, or Texas, or California, then later moved to Colorado, they would still be foreign born, but they would be considered a domestic move. But the point of this chart is to show that in the past three or four years, the trend has almost reversed itself. Whereas domestic migration to the state was relatively high and was almost 80% of the total migration, whereas international migrants was about 20%. In recent years, in 2022, 'twenty three and 'twenty four, that has reversed.

However, we do not forecast that that would continue. So population projections do get changed every year. Every year, we reevaluate our inputs, we reevaluate the forecast, and we do make changes. In fact, between the data we put out in 2023, which we refer to as Vintage '23 and the data we put out just last November for Vintage '24, we do have some considerable differences. Here we're looking solely at the component of net migration.

And the major revision that was made over that one year period was that we are reducing the amount of net migration that we're forecasting in the short term. So from 2025 through about 2035, we cut back on the amount of net migration we were expecting to the state as a whole based on continuing data we get every year from the Census Bureau. So you may have noticed changes from vintage '23 to '24. And in a moment, we'll see what that looked like for Douglas County. But in the short term, for a ten year time period, for all the counties in this state, we are looking at population increase, but it definitely varies by place in the state.

This map is all 64 counties of the state, and it's showing in red, orange and yellow hues those counties that are going to have population increases from twenty twenty four to 2,034. And those in shades of blue will have population decreases. Those in shades of blue tend to be in the Southern part of the state, on the Eastern Plains, in the Far Northwest corner of the state. Those counties also tend to be rural. They tend to be much smaller to begin with.

And the large increase tends to be on the Front Range Counties. So Douglas County is in there, along with El Paso, but also Arapahoe, Adams, Weld County in the North. So we have seen the majority of the growth occurring on the Front Range Counties, which in our definition does include Larimer and Weld to the North, all the way down basically I-twenty 5 through Metro Denver, but also Colorado Springs and Pueblo are part of the Front Range by this definition. So that's the state overview. So let's look at Douglas County.

The current vintage 2024 population forecast for Douglas County is expecting a 2,060 population of about 583,000 people. Our current estimate as of 2024 for the county is at about 394,000 people. So we are expecting continued growth through from 2025 through 2060. But I mentioned that there was a big revision in the forecasts between what we put out for 2023 and what we put out for 2024. And in the majority of the counties in the state, that revision resulted in a decrease.

However, for Douglas County, it resulted in an increase. We found some improved data, and we realized we had missed out on some net migration and various things by age. So we actually increased the forecast for Douglas County compared to what we put out again in 2023 compared to 2024. And this chart is showing that difference. So we do make, as I mentioned, revisions every single year.

And statewide, when we look at the projections we put out every year for the state of Colorado, every year we have actually lowered the total forecasted population for the state as a whole. And we did so again between 'twenty three and 'twenty four. However, because every county is different and we are looking at different inputs for every county, we did notice that we recalculated and Douglas County's population forecast was raised slightly compared to what we published in 2023. Our forecast methodology is sort of a top down way to do this. So when we're looking at how we are coming up with a population estimate for Douglas County, we are looking at very big picture things.

We start actually with an economic forecast. This is how the State Demography Office has been doing population forecasts, the future looking for all the counties in the state and the state as a whole for several decades. We actually start with an economic forecast. We look at the number of jobs that would be forecasted to be in the state in 2030, 2040, 2050, and so on. Then we look at how many people we have.

We put in the births and deaths and the net migration, but we look at age. We look at labor force participation rate by age. Age. And we come up with, well, how many workers could there possibly be in Colorado in a given year, future year, compared to how many jobs we expect there to be in the state. And if those match up, then we would just expect births and deaths to continue.

If they don't match up, if we have more jobs than people to fill those jobs, it's in those years that we would expect more net migration to the state. If we have more people than jobs, jobs, then perhaps we would expect out migration, people leaving the state to find work elsewhere. This model has held up very well for the past two decades. And we do see correlation in the history of Colorado between time periods when Colorado has had many new jobs, so either expansions of businesses, new industries, and also when Colorado's unemployment rate is lower than some of our neighboring states, we also tend to see more people moving to the state to fill jobs during those two time periods. Again, this pattern has held up quite well for us over the past few decades, where when there's strong economic opportunity in the state of Colorado, we attract people from other places, both domestically, so from other states in the country, but also sometimes internationally.

You may have noticed I did not say anything about zoning, land use, anything like that. And that is how we do our numbers, knowing, though, that many local jurisdictions may do their own forecasts and may have their own data on land use. What is sort of perhaps the carrying capacity of the land? How many housing units could we possibly build? That's a different way than how we do it.

But we welcome both. We think both are necessary for coming up with valuable future looking plans for a place. So let's look further into Douglas County. When it comes to this annual rate of change, like the past, we do expect Douglas County to consider growing faster than the state as a whole. By the year 2060, we expect Douglas County to be growing which is slightly higher than the statewide of 0.4%.

When we look at these components of change, the births and deaths and the net migration, we do see that Douglas County in the past, around the 1990s, saw large amounts of net migration. And from having worked here, I do happen to know that that's when Highlands Ranch was growing very fast and certain parts of Castle Rock and Parker. So there was a lot of housing being built and there was a lot of net migration. Now, when we talk about domestic migration at the county level, this is not only people moving from other states directly to Douglas County, but it can also be people moving from Arapahoe County to Douglas County, or the Western Slope, or other parts of the state, other parts of Metro Denver to Douglas County. So these in migrants that we saw in the 1990s, that was very high, is a combination of some international, some from other states, but probably a large portion were other Coloradans moving to Douglas County.

Going forward, well, actually let's talk about the most recent past. Douglas County has for the past three or four years continued to be one of the faster growing counties in the state. That given the pandemic and the decrease in births we saw, the increase in deaths and the slowdown in migration that we saw in 2020 and 2021 and 2022, Douglas County continued to be one of the fastest growing counties in the state. Typically, Weld County up north is also one of those faster growing. And so we do not see a slowdown in that migration in these most recent years from 2020 to 2025.

However, the gray bars, that natural increase, births minus deaths, we see a peak in natural increase around the early 2000s, perhaps 2007. But it has been lowering, still positive, Still more babies being born than people passing away. And there's still population change in Douglas County due to natural increase. It's just been slowing, a little bit less every year. And the one thing, again, from my time here in Douglas County is that I know that the share of the population that's 65 and over has also been rapidly increasing in Douglas County.

And Douglas County's age distribution has shifted dramatically as we have had more older adults. But going forward, we are still expecting net migration, be it domestic, be it from other parts of the state of Colorado, to Douglas County to be the biggest driver of population growth. We have fertility rates for all the different counties in the state. And currently, Douglas County's fertility rate is still a bit higher than I was going say the nation but higher than Colorado as a whole. Douglas County is in the blue line and Colorado as a whole is in the gray line.

Fertility trends, though, have been changing dramatically, both nationwide, but especially in Colorado. And since the early 2000s, have seen a rather dramatic decrease in fertility rates. And here we're not talking about just the absolute numbers of babies being born, but the rate of fertility. So how many babies per couple? And we are statewide, but also in Douglas County, well below replacement rate of two.

Now, we're talking about water, I have also often had the question of does age make a difference when we're looking at water use or water consumption? Because in many of our presentations, we emphasize the importance of knowing a community's age distribution. Knowing how many children you have, how many older adults, how many working age people is very important for understanding many characteristics of a community. But I've often wondered, does it matter when it comes to water? That's a question for another time.

But we have included information on age. This is, in particular, looking at net migration by age. We can actually tell of those people moving in and out what age they are. The blue line on this chart is for the state of Colorado. And to orient ourselves to the chart, across the bottom we have age groups. So we have babies on the left, zero to four year olds, and 75 to 79, and 80 and over on the right. So we have the whole spectrum of age. Colorado, in that blue line, typically tends to attract people who are young adults, 25 to 35 years old. So that can be from other states in the country. That can be internationally.

But Colorado historically, over the past three or four decades, attracts young adults, often working And that kind of also correlates nicely with this idea that when Colorado's economy is doing well and when we have more jobs, we are attracting people to fill those jobs who are typically between the ages of 25 and 35. Douglas County, on the other hand, attracts very different ages by population. We'll start with the big peak at about thirty to thirty four, and then thirty five to thirty nine. Douglas County attracts slightly older young adults, perhaps people who have gotten their first job. Maybe they've settled down and are getting married and having children.

Because Douglas County also attracts children. So we see that historically, and in this case we're looking specifically between 2010 and 2020, Douglas County tends to attract families. We see out migration of 20 year olds. And that kind of fits what we would think. That because Douglas County doesn't have as many higher educational opportunities, doesn't have a college or university, we do see young adults leave.

But then, perhaps once they're more established, they come back. Maybe not the same young adults, but that we see this increase in the 35 to 39 year olds and 40 and over. So we have this data by age. This is simply net migration, the people moving in and out. The other comment I wanted to make about net migration.

I mentioned earlier that in the most recent years, 2022 through 2024, we saw this flip in migration to the state of Colorado, where instead of predominantly being domestic, people moving from other states, there was an increase in international. However, the data shows that's not the case for Douglas County. On this chart, the blue lines are showing the amount of net migration that was domestic, and the gold bars is the share that is international. And there has been an increase in international migration to Douglas County in recent years. But unlike the state as a whole, it hasn't flipped completely in the ratios that Douglas is still seeing that domestic migration.

So we talk a little bit more about age. We already saw a little bit about who Colorado tends to attract, and it's those 25 to 35 year olds. Here we have a chart that's very similar, where we have every single year of age across the bottom axis. So again, babies on the left and elders on the right. Colorado has more people aged 30 or 31 than any other single year of age.

Colorado is still relatively young. Our peak person, so to speak, is in their 30s. We see that slowdown in births when we look at those younger age groups. We see a little bit of an uptick around the 18 year olds, which in 2024 would be those people born around the year 2007. But every age group behind them is a little bit smaller. Again, does this matter so much for water? Not sure. But a school district definitely wants to know this. Here again, we're looking at the state as a whole. And on the next slide, we can see a variety of counties.

Douglas County is in the upper left. And like we saw with the net migration, we do see those similar patterns here, where Douglas County actually has more people who are about the ages of 18 and has more people who are in their early 50s. So sort of that family component. But here too, we see that drop off in the number of children. So from the 18 year olds, but every year behind them, there are fewer children.

We see that trough when it comes to the 20 year olds. But if we were to compare this chart for Douglas County to one from ten years ago, the biggest change would be in the older adults. Douglas County is now experiencing far more people in that 65 and over age group. For comparison, we have Jefferson County on the bottom left, Weld County on the upper right, And Weld County is distinctive because Weld County has not quite seen a slowdown in the number of births. And so its child age population is relatively steady or level across the different ages.

Jefferson County is older than Douglas County. And you can see that peak in, actually, when we look at the 60 and over age group. Jefferson County also does have a higher share of people in their 30s and 40s. The next slide is comparing Douglas County's age to Colorado as a whole. Again, the five year age groups across the bottom.

Colorado is now in the red line and Douglas County is in the dark blue line. Again, these shares of population by age. We see that lower share of 20 year olds, the higher share of teenagers, and then that higher share of 49 50 year old people. But for the total population of Douglas County compared to the total population of Colorado, Douglas County is still younger when it comes to our 65 and over population. Current data from the State Demography Office for 2024 shows that statewide, about 16.5% of the population is 65 and over, whereas in Douglas County it's about 15%.

So of course, as I mentioned, every forecast is wrong to some degree. But we put together the best data we have available at the time we get it. So there are risks to the forecast. One thing we are finding is Colorado's competitiveness with other states. We have seen in the past when our unemployment rate is lower than other states, that we tend to attract people.

But there's other factors at play. Housing affordability, cost of living, things like that. There's many other factors at the federal level that we can't control that may impact population change. And jobs as well. Automation and AI might change the relationship between people and their jobs and the geography. So this is sort of our caveat page. And that concludes the presentation.

Anybody have any questions? Harold?

The number's right. So Douglas County, with your forecast, looking at about, oh, a a 50% increase in residents.

Compared to what they have today?

Yes. Yes. So by the time what was the end date on that? I forgot the chart.

2060.

So by 2060, we will add 50% to what is here today?

Based on the current forecast, yes.

Thank you.

I just I ran the quick math on that, Harold. It's about 5,000 a year, a little over, so FYI. Yeah. Jim, do you have any question, James? Maybe. Maybe.

Thank you for that presentation. Very well done. We relied a lot on the information from the demographer's office when we were doing the state water plan. What you guys gave us there and I know these are deterministic models, not probabilistic models, so there's no confidence interval. It's if we wanted what we used was a low, medium, and high scenario based dataset that you you guys provided us.

And I'm thinking that given the work we're doing here, that could be helpful. I don't know if you've got that for, the county level. But if if you did, that would be something that I think would be helpful for our work.

Yes. That typically, we have only put out one number and refrained from doing the high, medium and low scenario. But we can talk about it and we can get more input from local communities to get a sense of what they're doing. But also, yes, we have actually our forecast demographer who puts together these data has looked at different scenarios. Some having to with fertility rates, some having to do with migration, and has come up with different ways of looking at the future based on sort of that. What if this happens? What if that happens? Currently, though, we just publish one number.

Anybody else? Nancy, thank you so very much. That actually was very important. I think it's something that we'll refer to in our heads at least as we move forward here with this. Okay?

Yes. Great.

Thank you very, very much.

Thank you.

Alright. You take care. Thank you.

Dawn? Yeah. Is it okay to share her data with us?

It looks like she's shaking her head. Yes.

Yes, for sure. That everything that we produce is public. And I actually sent Lauren a PDF version of the presentation so that you can see all the data. We'll just have

Lauren posted on the site then. All right. Thank you. Alright. Moving on to the next item on our agenda is the, the draft work plan agenda. As you have seen on the website, we have an agenda from force Forsgren here that I think they want to follow, which is great. So if you can, let me turn it over at this point in time. Go right ahead, sir.

Thank you, sir. Hi. Will Koger with Forsgren Associates. Last time we met with you, we had a workshop where we went through four chapters, and thank you for your input on on those chapters. Today, we have two more chapters to review with you. First one is chapter five, projected water demands. And this this builds nicely on what we just heard from the state demographer's office because we did use their information for the projections that we've included here. And then we'll also talk about Chapter eight, which is projected demands versus supplies. So those are the two we're going to focus on today. So in Chapter five, you'll see that, we've got the current population distribution by communities.

And it's been suggested that we pull out Highlands Ranch from the unincorporated portion there so that we can identify that since that's a very large unincorporated area and a kind of special case. And then we showed population projections using the 2019 comprehensive plan for Douglas County and also compare that to the state demographer's office projections for that were issued in 2025. And there's a Figure five-one that shows how those chart out. And so the SDO population projections were higher than those of the comprehensive plan, and so we chose to use the higher number so that we're more conservative with respect to looking at future supplies to meet those demands. And then we we also compared the, the projections that we received from the water providers and estimated the number of people from those projections in terms of supply or the demands that they've got projected.

And we in Table 5.5, we compared those demands calculated using the SDO projections, compared those to the demands using the water provider projections. So I'll tee that up. And, we've got information in there too about the customer demand types and those kinds of things. But this is, probably a good point at which to build on for your comments.

These are the slide. I'm just curious.

I do not. No. Okay.

Does everybody have a copy of the presentation from?

Yes, sir.

So I can see that this is from the demographer's office. It's it's through twenty twenty sixty. So on the numbers on the first table, which is the 5.1 table. So I can see that that takes us through there. So that's the '3 94, which references then. If you take the remaining years of of thirty five years, then that's where I came up with there's a way for us then to calculate what we think it's gonna be for the next as far as, the the population on a per annual basis is what I think we would be looking at then. Okay. So

Jack?

Yeah. Don?

Yeah. Well, page five two in the original draft, you say, show where growth is expected to occur in the county, make a heat map using provider survey responses.

Yes, sir.

But the water providers did not provide population estimates in the survey. Right. So the only thing you have there is the the the the forecast demand Right. That you can aggregate. Right. So is that what you're gonna try and plot in this plot?

Is it Yes, Yeah. We would be looking to use the projected demands for heat map. So that'd be a change in the demand? That will be, it'll be using the demands that we got from the water provider surveys and then doing a heat map for that. And that hasn't been included yet, but we'll add that to this chapter. So this was a working draft. We wanted to describe the things that are still gaps in here.

Okay. Alright. Thank you. As

point one nine is the unit demand per capita. Correct? Right. On table five three? Yes, sir.

Is that assumed to remain flat through 2050 with in in this demand summary? Or because we've got, you know, obviously, big moves are being made inside the county is a water provider that we're in right now. Castle Rock has very robust, probably the cutting edge, if not the bleeding edge of water conservation techniques deployed. And that would suggest that that number could decrease over time as those became more adopted throughout the county. So I'm just that was my question is, does the 0.19 maintain a static

That's a good question. So the 0.19 is consistent for the application for using the state Markfor's Office projections. But then with the water provider surveys, which we also compare to, we would imagine that the conservation savings that each water provider is going to be projecting in their demands would be incorporated in their demand projections. And so for that, that's another means of comparison here. And so when you look at Table 5.5, you see there's they're really very close in the two methods.

The third column is using it figuring the demand based on the projections from the state demographer's office. And the last column shows from using water demands from the providers.

I have a question. So is this projection based upon there's got to be an assumption here, and you're driving this in your algorithm. And the assumption would be that it's a flat water usage rate on a per person basis? Or what is you basing the water demand on?

That is based on using the, a flat assumption for the when we use the state mark versus projections. But then when you look at the other side of the coin here, looking at the the projections from the water providers, there's probably some conservation baked into those numbers. And so I believe that probably includes some conservation involved there.

Just a question on

So everything

I see, most of it anyway, I can tell. Maybe you can help us get through this, is based upon water providers. Okay. Is there anything in here on the well users, the 8,900 well users?

Those are included with the water provider numbers. We used an estimate of 0.75 acre feet per unit for the well users. And is that currently what

and you're basing that based upon current usage assumptions, I'm assuming? Yes, sir. Okay.

It's kind of a standard number to use for for individual owners. Okay.

Is that you said per unit. You mean per well or per person?

Per home. Per unit.

Per

home. So point seven five acre feet per

Per well then,

really. Per well. Right.

Yeah. Domestic well. Yes, sir.

Somebody have a question. I'm sorry. Harold?

At the last meeting on some of the information that was provided by the different districts, there were some errors that's going back to be created. So I imagine that this table, like five seven, will be updated.

Yes, sir. Yes, we're going back and rechecking some of those numbers with the water providers.

I think I know in one case, I think we did provide some different numbers. So that will be updated, give us a little bit better picture. Right.

Yeah. I provided a few numbers. Few corrections.

Go ahead, James.

Thanks. Do you know what the indoor versus outdoor split as long as 167 gallons per day?

Don't offhand. I imagine it's a 64,000

Yes.

Maybe. Yes. K. Do you are you are you guys ready to go to the next chapter, chapter eight then? Well yeah.

Hang on one second. Wanna make sure everybody's comfortable with understanding where we're at. And I know some are at a disadvantage. You didn't have a copy of the chapter five with you. So any other questions on chapter five?

Okay. I'll make a note to go back to it. Go ahead.

I'm just formulating this one on the

fly based

on what the demographer's office has said. If the number of housing units rises in Douglas County and but the number of people living in a housing unit falls or drops, does I'm I'm not articulating this well, but the size of the home is probably going to determine, you know, how how many people are in a unit or is gonna help determine how much consumptive use or how much water is being demanded by that unit. And so I'm just I'm not sure if it's possible to take from the data that the demographer's demographer's office has available to us and back into that that projection on where the housing unit stock in the county is headed. That's not a good question for you, but I'm trying to I'll I'll think about how to better word it.

I think what you're getting to is that the the homes, whatever however many people live there, there's an irrigation demand that's getting met every year. Right? And so if you have just a few people living there, the the use per person is very high. But if if you think of more people being in in condominiums or or something, then, obviously, there's less less demand per person. Right.

Hello?

It just seems to me I I look at this point one nine. That seems very aggressive. I mean, if we can't see if we get below about 1.3 in a home just for toilets, that kind of thing. So that doesn't leave you much on the outside. I just wonder, are we comfortable with that number?

Point one three for well, point one nine is the per capita number, so it's not for the whole home I per capita.

And, Doug?

Is it possible if you're going to recast some of this to get the indoor and outdoor numbers?

Yes, sir. We'll factor that in as well. So Doug noted that.

Yeah. I'm I'm kinda struggling with the calculations too. I mean, the point one nine per capita, I would say, per person. Right? So if I had two people in a house, that'd be point three eight for a house. Right. But, yeah, we're seeing SFE, you know, acre feet per SFE, which includes a house irrigation and children in that same range. So this number feels high, I guess, would say. And then I I don't understand the calculation to come to the one sixty seven GPCD, what that's reflecting.

K. I mean, what you

see around the water providers is in the one twenties.

Right. Right. Some are that low. Some are not that low. There's a

Some are high.

This is kind

of an

average for the county, one sixty seven. It varies, so there's quite quite a variation between

Does that include domestic wells?

That I think it does. I believe it does. Yeah.

Because that's a big number.

Right. That factors it on the higher higher side.

Okay. So your calculation is for the entire county based on demand as provided by the water providers plus the well owners divided by the population from the demographer's office. That's the number you you come up with. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. Mhmm. James? Oh,

sorry. Go ahead.

I'll be here.

Evan? James? Yeah. This is Evan, Hila. So I guess my question is, would it make sense following up on that conversation to take out the rural well numbers? Because it seems like most of the growth is not gonna be in the rural well category. Right. Although, I don't know that we've seen any data on the growth in rural wells development using individual domestic wells or not. Yeah.

And we that's a good good point. We assumed the same amount of growth in the rural well users as for the county as a whole as a percentage each year.

But we don't have any check on that whether it's compares favorably with what's happened in the last twenty years, for example, or

Right.

Okay. Is there a way to check that or to compare that historical data?

I can't think of a good way right off the bat, but we'll take a look. We'll consider that further.

I mean, permits, number of well permits.

Right.

I guess, is something you could dig out pretty easy. Right. I don't know. Just a suggestion because I think Don's right. I think that $1.67 per capita is a pretty large gallon per capita number for today's world. Mhmm.

It is.

Last one, Jack. I promise.

Oh, James

chapter. So if chapter five, this goes to the question I have for the Demarcus office. If if we can get, you know, low, medium, and high, that's a lot better than just one static projection or number on demand. We've got people on domestic wells that do, you know, use a certain amount of water. We've got people here in Castle Rock who are using far less.

And I think our water plan, if it's gonna do something more than just be an Atlas, is gonna need to be able to say, here's what the county looks like if everybody were to adopt what Castle Rock's doing. And here's what happens if we just keep going kinda where we're going, which is kinda modest conservation or, you know, we I guess, you you could put in a you take all conservation measures away, and everybody's just kinda left to do whatever they wanna do. But having that those different scenarios would make a lot of sense to me anyway.

So this is Evan, Elo. So I agree. Following on that, I mean, if you in the water provider summaries, in some of the sub providers, you did have a a use factor per per capita or per tab or something. I think it was a per tab number. And it seems like you could look at at least the four major water providers or the top 10 or something and see which one has the lowest, which I think it might be Castle Rock, but whatever. Compare those. And then make a projection on that. That would be getting at Jim or James' idea as a low end and then maybe one of the higher ones as a high end. It might be a way to just narratively talk about some of these options.

So

I think at this point, let's get chapter eight, and let's get that one done real quick, and then we can circle back. Okay? Because we're still in this whole discussion point. Okay? If you can, sir. Thank you.

Okay. For chapter eight, it's the projected demands versus supplies. And for this portion, Mr. Jason Broome is online with us to discuss this one. Jason?

Hello, Commission. Temp rate's pretty short. We wrap up and summarize supplies versus demands here. We've got a table or a chart here that shows a bar graph of current up to twenty fifty supplies versus demand and then a discussion about that. Couple of things that we are going to work into this is some mapping regarding some pie charts for each provider showing sort of what portion of their total supply are they looking at using by the time they get to twenty fifty.

And then also looking at trying to break out and give you an idea of future use of renewable versus nonreviewable renewable sources. So with that, I'll open it up to your comments.

Thank you for relaying that. I think just looking at the pages we have here, unless we break out as we go forward, the amount of these future plans are going to be renewable, nonrenewable, reuse, it's hard to really come up with a plan. So I would hope when you go through that on your pie charts, you'll break it out so we can get summary data as a county. How much of our future are we anticipating renewable sources, nonrenewable sources and reuse sources? That may come into some very serious policy decisions.

I'm not ready to make them now because I haven't seen the data. I don't know what it says. But but then I think we can extrapolate things if so much of that is is renewable, excuse me, nonrenewable. How many wells do we need will need to be drilled, for example, and that type of thing. You can start to extrapolate some important data from that to give a perspective on a plan. So when we when we see this again, I'd like to see that broken out in summary data.

Is there any questions on that, sir? Does it make sense? Is it doable? Okay.

Tricia? Okay. Tricia Bernhardt. I felt like this chapter was just really weak. We need a lot more analysis here.

Know, they're due to the fact that, you know, these are based on paper water rights that really needs to come in. We need to talk about, the difference between physical supply of water and paper water rights. I think the charts, the way they look are really, not accurate. It really overestimates to the average person who would look at this that there's so much water supply, and we're talking about paper water rights, not physical water. So that really needs to come out in this chapter and be discussed more thoroughly, not just a paragraph.

I'm going to come back to that question one minute, Tricia. Just going to let me push back just a little bit, make me understand it is all I'm asking here, your clarification. So your concern my concern about what you're saying is paper versus renewable or paper versus usable water?

Paper versus what's actually physically available. So, for instance, if you get a jurisdictional determination on your property that you have a 100 acre feet per year in all four aquifer formations, That's one thing to have that jurisdictional right or paper right. That does not mean that water is there. That groundwater is physically there or able to be retrieved in an economical situation. So

Excuse me for this for a minute. Just because it could be my naivety on understanding how this works. But a lot of paper water that people have is based upon trying to meet, their allocation requirements, based upon the state. In other words, if you use it here and I have paper water there and I let you drop it in up there, I've met my my ability then to offset those water usages up there. So the point being that that paper water that type of paper water is never gonna get us to here.

And I don't understand how I'm I'm I'm being really honest. I'm just trying I understand in my brain here how that is gonna tell us where to go with this. I mean, I get what's the water we have, what's the water we use. But when we get to paper water, that that's often used to offset requirements to overcome water that you put out and didn't put back in. Now because it's just sitting somewhere else. Here's the analogy why I say that. Now if they don't have that paper water, then more water would leave here to offset that amount. But it doesn't leave. It's here, and it's being used here. So I'm trying to understand

These are these are complicated issues, and we're also we're also talking about two different things. We're talking about surface water and groundwater. And those those are different types of water rights and and types of water exchanges. I was primarily referring to groundwater and the paper water right of groundwater. But surface water is a whole different issue. We Okay. Got talk about that too.

So if it's groundwater and it's paper water on groundwater, are we talking like I'm trying to understand what your definition of paper water is here. I'm sorry.

Just because, like, I'm just gonna use my own example. If I have 35 acres of of land in Douglas County, and I have paper water rights to say 10 acre feet of water underneath my 35 acres, It doesn't really matter that I say I have 10 acre feet of water if that water is not there. If I can put, I can put a well in, I might be on the western edge of the aquifer system. I put a well in and I get nothing from the Dawson. I get nothing from the Denver. Maybe I hit the Arapahoe. Anyway, those those water rights are not real physical water.

Okay. But then that takes me back to The States. Water, staying that everybody has a hundred year supply based upon whatever tests you've done under there.

They're just guessing. They're just guessing. That doesn't mean there's a hundred year supply. That doesn't mean there's a hundred year supply. That's that's just an estimate to use. Yeah.

Same thing paperwork. It's just an estimate.

Right. So we we have these estimates that it look really high. That does not mean that much water is there. I'm gonna let somebody else try to explain this.

Sorry. This is not I'm just I'm just trying to help us thinking here.

Yeah. I guess taking it up a notch to a service provider. Let's use not to beat up on them. Right. Castle Pines North. Castle Pines North has a lot of paper water. Right. Their wells are not producing like they did even five years ago. But if we look at the paper, looks like Castle Pines North is okay. But if you go up there, their wells aren't producing. So that I think that's where we're telling the citizenry that, hey. We got all this water when the reality is you turn the spigot and no water's coming out. But on paper, you got water.

Okay. It really kinda gets to the point of what's economically producible. And and so there are areas where there appears to be more water than there that can be economically produced. But then from Chapter seven, when we reviewed that last time, you may remember that there's the deeper aquifers, which it's estimated from our modeling that the there's actually more water than would be allocated by the state, members. So there's a balance there that we we have to try to get to with this plan.

But if it's paper water, it's your water, and it's and it is accessible. But but okay. So their wells aren't pumping. And so how is for water. I'm I'm like well, what I'm what I'm trying to get to is how do they then do a will serve on paper water when there's no water?

This is one of the things we'd like to know.

Mister chairman, I call your attention to eight two, the second bullet, my compliments to our consultant. They said, the supply values represented are based on water rights or allowed usage volume and source paper water versus physical. If the physical water proves to be less than the paper water, less than water will be available and safety factors will be reduced. We're We're seeing our safety factors come down. And so it is incumbent on us.

I come back to my first comment, how much is renewable water, which is one risk factor. The other, a reuse water, which is a much lower risk factor. And then how much is new drilled water. And the question that Don and I and others have been asking, how what is the what do you call it? The proven reserves of that water we really can get at.

And sample that you're working on is a pretty small sample in the steepest part of the aquifer. When we get out east and west, we don't really know what's out there. And so I think understanding our risk factors of how much of this growth are we gonna be covering with new wells, we start to look where they are, etcetera. We start to get some risk factors because what thing we know for sure is that our margin is declining. We know that. And where is it declining from and what are the risk of those? I think that's something that we should be looking at. I think the other thing I'd like to see, you know, the the you make the comment that that the factors are declining. What is an appropriate factor? Is there any standards on that?

I have no that's AWWA kind of stuff. But is there other standards for what is an appropriate risk factor coverage? I think that would be helpful.

Okay.

Okay. So one of the things I'm just trying to leave this move, guys. I'm not being a pain in the butt here. So I'm not trying to be. Probably am being one. But, let just say we take this, and it's a special district. Special district has paper water. Okay? What can the county do about that? The commissioners have no authority over special districts.

None. Special district says I can serve and I will serve, and I'll serve it based on paper water. Based on the water I'm having here shows me I have this much water, and I will serve you because I have it. So what do we what regulation can we put in place to force a special district to not use paper water.

Jack Tricia Bernhardt. Jack, this is part of the problem of having so many districts in this county. We have allowed all these districts to be created. And if one of them fails, what do you do? And we've seen that example a few times, and Castle Rock has come to the rescue of taking care of a district that couldn't take care of themselves.

Right.

What your question is, what can the county do? I mean, ultimately it does reflect on the county. If we run out of water

Right.

As a county, yes, it is up to that district. But those that are not in a district, like myself, we just simply run out of water. We are in a county that is not able to provide us any water. It is ultimately not the county's responsibility, but it's a big problem.

I'm I'm just I'm I'm trying to get us to be thinking to the next to be honest with you. I'm really worried. Getting because it was something we wrestled with when I was a commissioner over and over and over. And it just was always this big circle. They just come back all the time.

Jack, if I can help you. The Okay. If we look at this, I think it was called the Jam Ranch, whatever it was that was on the agenda today. Right. And they wanna form a metro district or a special district to serve the needs of those houses in that 35 acres or or 35 houses, I guess it was. The county has complete authority on whether to approve that district. In reality. Well, you do. I mean But but we're proving that the district commissioners have ultimate authority. Commission

adopt the service plan. But once it's approved, then the service plan, you can review the service plan annually, and you can take action as a commissioner to help them tell them we have concerns here and here and here. But once you've approved the water district and they get that title status, I mean,

it's crazy. Once once it's been correct or or or organized by the county and allowed to occur, then you don't have a lot of authority over what they do. But in creating them, you definitely have complete authority. The the board of commissioners does.

Okay. So looking at it from the beginning versus

okay. Exactly. I get it. Exactly. I gotcha. So if we're looking at policy in the future and how the county will develop, yes, very good point. You know?

Should you

should you allow the creation of more metro districts and these little small pocket developments? Or should it be more coalesced into the large Parker or, you know, other big water districts that are already established and improving themselves? Okay. So you know what?

Evan, that went from my ear to my brain finally. Thank you. Okay. Go ahead.

Piggyback on Evan and to answer, I think, add more clarity on your question, what can the county do? I think going forward, knowing where special districts are paper water heavy, I think as the county starts to budget and look at where they allocate dollars for water infrastructure improvement and things like that, one solution may be to aid those special districts into being moved into a larger district or fixing existing infrastructure. But I think it allows us a data point of being able to say, look, you know, in our analysis, looks like you got a lot of paper water. So might be a ground guide for the county commissioners.

Yeah. I mean, the the county could certainly encourage consolidations of districts, smaller districts into a bigger, more economically functioning district or something.

Gotcha. I see now what you're thinking and how that would go. Okay.

Great. This is Clark Hammelman. Yeah. I think I saw today that the county that the commissioners were looking at, a request. I'm not sure whether it's from Bell Mountain Ranch or whether it was from Castle Rock, Water for some financial assistance as Bell Mountain Ranch is moving into the Castle Rock, water, system. And, it it seems like that that's exactly that. I mean, that's something the county can do is to encourage that either through policy or through dollars, those kinds of consolidations. K.

So okay. So recommendations then being county needs to look more forward and progressive in where do you consolidate? Where do you not allow because thereof? Telling that we're looking for less paper water, but more valued water. So okay. I'm see, this this conversation to me is valuable. It's great. Okay. Because now we're getting into the gist of why we wanna ask for some information that we're driving through. Because sometimes, to me, I'm looking at, so why would you wanna know that information? The real question is the so what? And so you're getting there now. Thank you.

Another comment on the 8.1, graph, and that's just and I think it's been said. That's just way too basic. We need to know what the components of the green lines are there.

The yeah. I wanted to make this comment a while ago. The provider water providers do not provide a split between renewable and groundwater supplies for the future water projections. That is not in the data. Right? It's in the data for current, well, you know, the current supply. But the projections going out do not break it down into future into renewable and groundwater or water resources are. So we don't know what that is.

But I think as Harold pointed out, you know, depending upon what the components of that green line is, the risks are different with the ability to control the different some of the different components.

Oh, well and good, but we don't have that data. That's

saying

that

should be there. Didn't ask for.

Okay. I'm gonna apologize because it looks like we're banging up on three minutes according to my clock. I'm five. So we we may have to ask the board's permission. Can we go over tonight or is planning commission? We're up against the planning commission guys, so I'm going apologize. I don't want to apologize to you, sir. So it's going to push us into an area here. My concern right now, I'm gonna tell you honestly, what we're running up against is our contract for the amount of time they're putting in on things, and we're driving. And we keep delaying things.

And pretty soon, I think we're gonna see a change order request if we're not careful, just as an FYI, which I don't think is probably gonna happen. We just have to see if it does or doesn't. But, so because we can't get into the other questions, I definitely think we need to have I just wonder how this board feels about having an extra meeting next month.

Fine. Are

we good for next meeting next month? Okay. Let me talk to staff and see what we do about same time, same location, all that kind of stuff. And to just because we we're not gonna be able to push through and get to a point. Because the real issue we gotta think about is we do need to get to public input sooner than later, guys. I'm just telling you my my history on the public. I'm just telling you it's the last thing you want to be is accused of not allowing them to participate and or letting them participate when you've already done your decision. It ain't gonna work. So I would say that we need to concentrate on that and be ready to have that discussion too. Sir, were you done? Do you have anything else you want to close with?

Just one thing to mention is now we've gotten through six chapters roughly. There's still more to come. And so we still have some more workshop ahead of us. And I think it makes sense to, once we've gotten all those comments, then we do a revised draft at that point and then layer in the information from focus groups as we can. And more bit I

think about water the district because we have we don't have control over them. But you made good points going forward. What can the commissioners do to not continue creating the problem we have? So Harold, did you have another question? Saw Just your

that I really think it is important before we don't want to cut the focus groups out of public comment, but there's been so much that's been brought in advice from the commission. That's why we're here. That we should have one more look at what goes out to make sure that we can agree or disagree, but at least we understand that the input's in. I

I am thinking based on our scope. Our scope says called out the fact that we're supposed to have public input wrapped up and everything by April. Understand. So what we need to do, I think, is that, that's why I said two meetings next month.

Let's double

down in

March. And then so we can double down, and we can probably get us to a point where I think we can get to those public hearings quicker. Okay? Sorry. That's the bad thing about being chair. You have other task managers, masters. So, okay. Any other questions? Thank you, guys, and thank you for indulging me. But I really like the conversation, the thought process. I appreciate it. You are adjourned.