Water Commission - Regular Meeting

Good afternoon. So I'm not Jack Hilbert. I know we look a lot alike, but I'm not Jack Gilbert. And, you know, on on a more serious note. So the reason Jack's not here is Jack has turned in a resignation from the water commission.

He has some personal things that he says he has to attend to, and he doesn't feel like he can, you know, put the time in. So he's just going to go ahead and step down and resign from the commission. I think he's pretty sad about it. He really, in his comments and his letter that he sent, he really wants to see this succeed. It's something he said he really wanted to do.

You know, when he was County Commissioner, you know, water plan was something we really wanted to see done. So we'll have his support, you know, people behind us. And hopefully, you know, he'll be able to return and maybe come see us and help us over the finish line as we get down the road. So I'm stepping in today as the Vice Chair. I'll go ahead and run the meeting today.

If you'll all indulge us, indulge me, I suppose, would volunteer to go ahead and run the meeting next Monday because we have these two back to back. Next Monday is a special meeting. And just kind of keep, you know, continuity here going. And then in the April meeting, we'll need to have another election of officers. So we'll need to elect an officer, President and Vice Chair or one of the two or however that works out.

And then also the county commissioners, not exactly sure what their timeline will be, but they'll designate a replacement for Jack. And it'd be really swell if that happened before April, but we'll see. But otherwise, we'll press ahead. Okay. Quick comment.

I put a copy of the Colorado Water Conservation and Efficiency Guide, the community guide that's produced by Water Education Colorado. I went ahead and got everybody a copy of this because they just updated this. I think this thing's maybe been in print maybe three or four months now. It's fairly recent. If you're familiar with their community guides, there are a whole series of guides.

Generally, they're very good information. The previous conservation guide was dated. So this one's been updated. And I think it's a really, really good document. You can have one. It's okay. So let's go ahead and do the roll call.

Tricia Bernhardt, present.

Sean Tanner present. Clark Hamilton present.

Don Langley present. Mickey Conway present.

Harold Smithles present.

Online, Roger Hudson.

There's Roger.

Jim Morris online.

Okay.

So James Eklund online.

Oh, there's James. Okay. Great. So we got a got a full quorum. A couple other one other thing. You know, you all got a technical memo that was mailed out to you from Forsgren that Forsgren put together. We'll discuss that in the member discussion section. There's also, I want to talk a little bit more about water conservation when we get to the discussion section. And I've got something else I want you to talk about, but we'll do that when we get there. So we'll approve the meeting minutes from the last meeting, if we have a motion to do so.

Or any comments or amendments? That's it. So motion to approve the minutes.

Sean Tanner, motion to approve the minutes.

Second from Roger Hudson.

Okay. All in favor?

Aye.

Any opposed? None opposed. Okay. So we do have one item for consideration that was directed to us from the county commissioners. This one was pretty straightforward. It was simply a replat, if that's the proper terminology. Person dividing one lot into two, served by Perry Park Water District. So anybody have any comments on that? Okay. No? Okay. So you can advise the county commissioners no comments on that. And so we'll move in. Oh, there's Evan. Hi, Evan.

No problem. Yeah, was going say that that makes us 100%, right? So, great. So today's main feature, if you will, is the water plan chapter three. This is land use planning.

And what we're going to do is to, I'm going to turn this over to Lauren and the county staff. And they're going to spend probably the bulk of this session walking us through land use planning. You know, how it works, the things we can do, things they've been doing, you know, kind of where things are. So I think that'll get us really up to speed. I think this is really, it's timely and important because it's the other side of the equation.

We spend a lot of time talking about water availability and groundwater and what the water providers are doing. So we're kind of all on that, been on that supply side. So this is going to be fill in that other side of that equation on what can be done to manage water and land use planning. So I'll turn it over to Lauren.

Lauren Pulver with staff. I wanted to give you a brief update on the Chapter three portion of the water plan as well, which is the land use portion. So we won't be reviewing that in detail today. We'll have the presentation from staff instead. And staff is working with Forest Green to kind of do a full rewrite of that chapter to really dig more into County land use. It was a pretty high level overview, and we'd like to provide a bit more detail in that section. So you'll see that coming your way for review. And we have Steve Coster, our Deputy Director of Community Development here to present Kurt Wykanat, our Long Range Planning Manager and myself. So we'll kick it off and get started here.

Okay. So, hi again. I'm Steve Coster. It's been a minute since I've talked with y'all, but I'm the deputy director, and I'm gonna get things started here. Kurt and Lauren are also gonna talk about some of these things, and then we'll be available to kinda talk more, all three of us, with you.

So we just wanted to dig it a little bit deeper into some of the things that Katie and I talked with y'all a while back when we talked about land use referrals and and those kinds of processes and and dig a little deeper into kind of the the whys and the hows of our land use review process as it pertains particularly to water supply, water adequacy of water supplies, things like that. Anything I'm missing before I jump in? Kurt, anything? Okay. So my notes are actually over here.

So title 32 sets up county land use powers generally. Generally. That's in in in the Colorado revised statute. So that sets up the responsibility to develop a comprehensive master plan, to develop subdivision regulations, zoning regulations. It's also the root of having a building code.

So that's where the the whole basis for the the regulations that you see us talking with you about live. There's other sections that cover things like the title 32 districts, the PUDs, plan unit developments. PDs are are a different section, title 24. But kind of the the the meat and potatoes of land use lives in in title 30. So we adopt a comprehensive master plan.

Our planning commission does, and that has policies on urban land use, non urban land use. We have some rural villages. It establishes policies, goals around environmental quality, water quality, water supply, things like that. And then we try to implement that plan through the zoning and subdivision resolutions primarily. Also our ten forty one regulations to a limited extent, but primarily zoning and subdivision.

Those generally, the the approval criteria for different types of land use applications then reflect back to the comprehensive plan by including criteria that are typically along the lines of demonstrating conformity, consistency with the comprehensive master plan. So while the comprehensive master plan isn't a regulatory checklist kind of document, You do have to demonstrate that to the board on the whole, you're consistent with what the plan is trying to accomplish. And title so going back to that title 30 that we talked about, title 30 is specific to subdivision. It says at subdivision, the county, needs to assess adequacy of a water supply. Title 29 then went in, that that is some statute twenty nine thirty three zero one through three zero five established more general requirements for land use development review for water supply.

And and, basically, once during a development permit process, which is actually multiple steps, not just one big thing, once one of those steps in a in that process, we are required to determine the adequacy of a water supply. Because title 30 says sets up requirements for doing it as part of the subdivision process. We've tried to harmonize those two things by primarily doing that adequacy determination at preliminary plan and minor development, which is why we try to bring those kinds of thing those are the kinds of things we bring to you primarily when we're bringing you referrals. Things like the one that we had today, the replat, that was originally platted in the nineteen seventies before these water standards and these water, requirements existed. So that's why that came to you today because we will, although it seems pretty perfunctory, we will be needing to make an actual determination about the adequacy of the supply for that since it is creating a new lot.

Sorry.

Real quick. Best guess, how much of that type product do you think is out there in the county?

Not a lot. Okay. I mean, we see five, ten of those a year.

Like, like non urban areas?

In in the non yeah. In the rural areas. We see five to 10, maybe that, lot splits like that a year. It's definitely not something we see a lot of. And there's probably technically something in the statute that would exclude a a a strict interpretation that says you absolutely have to do it here. But because we're just kind of we've written our regulations so that when you bring something forward and it hasn't gone through that process, we're just gonna look at it, and then we're gonna get that ground covered. Clark, it looks like you've got a question too.

Clark Hamillman. Could you briefly describe the the distinction between the areas that fall under your jurisdiction and the areas and and what the requirement is for areas that fall under, the municipality's jurisdiction and how that is separated?

Sure. And Kurt Kurt's got a a section actually that covers that in greater detail. Generally speaking, the county has pretty much no land use authority inside the municipal boundaries, an incorporated municipality. So we if a if a water provider has obligations that span jurisdictions, we want to understand that that sum total of their their obligations across all of those jurisdictions can be met, not just within Douglas County because otherwise then it'll be a competition later. Right?

So that what commitments they've made in areas that aren't in our jurisdiction are important to understand. But if the town

of

Parker has a different opinion on whether or not the supply for a development in its jurisdiction is adequate, we don't have really any, extra role in that.

And if, area is annexed into a municipality, does that then transfer that responsibility?

It does. Yeah. So, the only time, something that the county might do could, transfer over is if we had entered into it's a very rare instance. If we had entered into a development agreement with the developer and actually had they had a vested property right, those vestings, those vested property rights are unless they get negotiated out as part of the annexation, by default, they would still be applicable. But we really haven't seen that.

I think the the developments that have development agreements with Douglas County have intended to stay in the you know, unincorporated.

Kevin, Hila, just I may be getting ahead of your presentation, but when the county does assess whether the water is available or you have adequate water, is that done by a county staff person, or do you have a contracting engineering company? Or how do you do that?

Well, yeah, we'll get into that a little bit more too. So, but, yeah, we have consultants that we use, to supplement staff. And then that title 30 review that I was talking about at subdivision requires that the state engineer's office receive a referral from us on all preliminary plans and that the state engineer's office then provide its opinion on the adequacy of the supply and as to whether or not the use of the water rights will material injury materially injure other water rights.

And then does the county typically just rely on the state engineer's assessment, or do you have a staff person?

Well, I mean, the the the commissioners don't just rely on the state engineer's office's opinion. No. I mean, because they're they're making a pretty limited review of of what they're statutory obligated to do. We've got that title 29 review that also has to be done. And so but we we, as staff, rely on our consultants a lot to advise us on the the technical sides of things. The policy side is, still the you know, really in the board's jurisdiction. Harold?

So it's a good overview. A question, if a, municipality has a water enterprise and it wants extraterritorial service, who has jurisdiction for the is that up to the county then as soon as it goes territorial, or is that by the standard of the municipal enterprise?

It it's still the county's jurisdiction to review that supply even if a municipality is providing it. Yeah. Thank you. Sure. Alright.

So so the the we'll talk about that that title 29 requirement first since it's a little bit more broad than the title 30 requirement. In that, it really establishes standards for minimum requirements. County can have more and and probably does have more because that intersects with 30, the title 30 requirement. And the state engineer's office has said it needs certain information and and put out put out kind of a checklist, basically. These are the this is the information we need to be able to provide our our opinion.

So we've tried to then make our requirements what we say you know, what the documentation requirements are, meet twenty nine and thirty so that everybody hopefully gets what they need out of one set of documentation. Another you know, so developers aren't preparing one kind of documents one set of documents for the state engineer's office, another for us, another for our water consultant. Everybody provides one cohesive package that that they that they can all review. And as we mentioned before, that it's really important, this can only happen one time. So if we make the decision, the the the determination that the water supply is adequate at preliminary plan, we can't then come back at the final plat and say, well, no.

Actually, it's not. And, that was actually something that wasn't clear enough, apparently, to the courts. When at right after that that statute was first adopted, the county, ended up getting challenged on its interpretation that it is only at a specific stage and that we set it. And it was the challenge was that, well, no. You have to make that determination at every step, rezoning, preliminary plan, final plan, every step.

And so the legislature actually went in and clarified that that section of the statute so that it was more clear that one time. So

Is there a time frame on that? Because if somebody made that determination and then ten years later, they wanted to go to develop, it's a different scenario.

Is there a time frame?

No. There's not a time frame on it. There is a time frame on the approvals that underpin that. So a preliminary plan is generally only good for one year unless it's been acted on. So if a preliminary plan gets approved under our process and then no plat happens, nothing happens, the applicant doesn't do any.

The owner doesn't do anything with that. They don't ask they can ask the board for extensions of that approval to kinda keep it alive. But if they don't do that, the underlying approval that that that adequacy determination was made at, well, then that goes away. The the the preliminary plan goes away. So then when they come in for a new preliminary plan, we're looking at it again.

But and and and that was part of the reason that the this idea of if you approve if you make your determination at rezoning, rezonings live forever, and there's no mandate that you build something in a certain amount of time. A rezoning doesn't expire if you don't build something within a year or get a further approval in a year or something like that. And so that approval could live a really long time. There's also a requirement that if something materially changes about the water supply, though, they're supposed to disclose that, and we may then have to make a new determination. So, I don't know exactly what that would look like, but because we haven't had that come up yet.

But if something materially changed, I don't know, let's say, you know, a water provider lost some sort of challenge to a water right that they thought they had, And the court said, no. You actually don't have that water right. Well and they were relying on that. Well, that would be a material change. But we've we've not, encountered that so far, but it could happen.

So we hope, we believe that making that determination kind of there in the middle of the process, not real early so that it gets stale, but not so late in the process that there's a huge amount of reliance been made on previous approvals that we're hitting a sweet spot in that process.

We are confirming that it's still true.

Oh, yeah. That's Kurt brings up a really good point. We do ask that you provide that an applicant provide information that says, yeah, everything is still so we don't just say you have to tell us if there's a material change. We want you to affirmatively tell us everything's still good. We're still on track. We're still doing what we need to do. Here, this is, in case we needed it, a list of those minimum standards that title 29, sets up for, for that adequacy determination. So this estimate the demand through build out of whatever that is. What you know? So whatever that preliminary plan is or that minor development.

And and sometimes we see it at uses by special review. You know, description of the physical source, estimate of the yield under various conditions, what conservation management what conservation measures and demand management measures are gonna be in place. Those are minimums. But like I said, our standards require a bit more because it has to meet multiple sets of requirements, and we we wanna just get one set of water documentation, not three. And this then is the list that the statute says or gets into what the statute talks about at specific to subdivision and specific to that state state engineer's office opinion.

It still says that the board has to make the determination. The state engineer's office just provides its opinion as to, the possibility of of injury to decreed water rights and adequacy of the supply for the proposed subdivision. But it's a it's a little bit that that set of standards is is a little bit more narrow and a little bit different than 29. So, yeah, they get into and this gets into that evidence of potability as well, which generally is documented by the the water supplier document and that they're complying with state standards for water quality and gets into that idea of making a commitment, the water provider making a commitment to provide service. And now I'm going to turn things over to Lauren.

Thanks, Steve. So given that kind of very specific, somewhat limited role for the county in water review, we wanted to also touch on some of the kind of policy programmatic aspects that the Board has taken on related to water resources. As you can see on this slide, the Board has made historic and natural resources a core priority, which really gives a policy level focus to water resources. So one of those is the board currently provides $25,000 to support the South Metro Water Supply Authority's conservation initiatives, and that includes their Quell, Qualified Water Efficiency Landscaper Program. So they train the landscape workforce.

And then it's turf replacement program that's implemented through our county local water providers. The Board and county staff also participate in the Colorado Water Conservation Board's Metro Roundtable, Colorado Water Congress and other regional water organizations. In 2012, the Board of County Commissioners received a request from Plum Valley Heights residents seeking assistance in finding an alternative water supply to replace failing domestic wells. This kind of spurred the county to engage in an outreach process with Plum Valley Heights, Roxboro Water and Sanitation District and neighboring subdivisions, resulting in the Northwest Douglas County project that enabled Plum Valley Heights, Chatfield East, Chatfield Acres, and Titan Road Industrial Park to connect to Roxboro Water for renewable water resources. You can see on this map the purple highlighted areas are the areas that Roxboro serves only water to.

So this in anticipation of similar requests, in 2013, the Board created the Douglas County Water Alternatives Program to assist homeowners and small domestic water providers in developing water supply alternatives by funding feasibility studies to evaluate water supply options, infrastructure pre design and engineering, and estimated project costs. During this program, staff provides assistance with contract management, establishing partnerships with surrounding water providers that could provide and evaluates potential funding options for a connection. Utilizing this program, the County has funded a feasibility study for Louviers to address long term water supply as a result of elevated radium content in their groundwater. So that resulted in ground in that well treatment that they have implemented. Engineering design for Sedalia for upgrades to its water distribution system, construction and engineering design for Bell Mountain Ranch's connection to Castle Rock water.

And the county has also funded feasibility studies for evaluating connection to renewable water for the subdivisions of Happy Canyon, Keene Ranch, Castle Oaks and Castle Mesa. And then we've received a request and funded a feasibility study for three individual property owners in Larkspur that were experiencing well failure. Lauren? Yes, Don.

So is there any alternatives that actually show up in this other than connecting to a water provider?

I think the Louvier's example, the study looked at connection to renewable services or treatment of the well and just given cost at the time, well treatment kind of ended up being their shorter term solution. So it's one example.

So it's still a pretty narrow range of options?

Yeah.

Yeah. Okay. Thank you.

Lauren, you mentioned that under this program, you assisted three individual homeowners. Could you just tell us what those were or what you did?

Yeah, exactly. We received a request a couple of years ago from three property owners all adjacent to each other right outside town kind of infrastructure border in Larkspur. They were experiencing, I think it was high levels of iron in their well. And so the well was really unusable. They were trying to figure out what solutions they could have for water.

I don't know if they connected the county funded feasibility studies to look at what what it would cost for infrastructure connection to the town of Larkspur. And the county also worked with the town of Larkspur and the residents to kind of make that connection as well. Does that answer the question? I don't know. We'll have to follow-up on that. Okay. Thank you, Tricia. Yeah, Evan.

What was the driver for the Key Ranch?

Concerns about the Dawson Trails development coming in and impacts to potential impacts to their wells. Again, the HOA approached the county with what could we possibly do to explore options. Any other questions? All right. Well, we'll jump back into regulations here.

You've all heard a bit of a presentation about AT and A or an in-depth presentation about AT and A, I should say. So some of this might be a bit repetitive. The Douglas County Zoning Resolution 18A provides a process by which the Board implements its statutory authority that Steve was speaking to earlier and kind of defines where it makes its determination of the adequacy of a development's water supply in terms of quantity, quality, and dependability. The standards in Section 18A are specific to type and location of a water source as well as to types of land use proposed. The county has established presumptive water demand standards for various land uses to provide a basis by which the Board can consistently assess if water supply will be efficient or sufficient for development proposals.

So this is often referred to as 0.75 acre feet per year per household, and the county does require one acre foot per year per residents in rural and agricultural zone districts. Section 18A also sets demand standards for other land uses like commercial buildings and golf courses. The county also sets standards for documentation that applicants must provide, as Steve outlined earlier. So here's the Section 18A water supply overlay district map. It is applied as a zoning overlay that is supplemental to underlying zone district.

It does encompass all of Douglas County. It divides the county into four margins, as you can see here. All the way to the west kind of covering the Pike is the Pike Rampart. Then you have margin A, margin B and the Central Basin. This graphic depicts the Denver Basin aquifer kind of positioned east to west.

The deepest Central Basin area is allowed per our regulations to use groundwater supply to 100% of a proposed development. Margin B can use only 50% of its groundwater supply to supply development. And then margin A requires the provision of renewable water or groundwater transferred from a property zoned open space conservation district or subject to a conservation easement. And then water in the Pike Rampart is limited to renewable water or development in the Pike Rampart, I should say, is limited to renewable water given the kind of granitic rock fractures that the water is coming from. Development in the Pike Grand Park, so the western part of the county, is limited to renewable water.

And then looking at district demand standards as it pertains to Section 18A. When Section 18A was first adopted in 1998, several Title 32 districts were already in existence and providing water supplies to residents of Douglas County. Those districts were identified as existing districts in Section 18A and were formed based on unique assessments of the estimated demand for water and type of water supply that was available for the development. In 2022, the process for established district designation was developed and approved by the Board of County Commissioners to provide an opportunity for these Title 32 districts formed after the adoption of 18A to have kind of a similar level of review and autonomy that these existing districts had. Through Section 18A, the Board does retain authority to assess the sufficiency of these district specific standards during its review of new development.

The demand standards in Section 18A do apply to the formation of new Title 32 districts. The county's role in the formation of districts is really at the front end of service plan creation and district creation. And so the county does have a limited role once a district is created. Right? And so reviews 18A at that front end when a service plan comes in. And now I'll turn it over to Kurt.

Good afternoon. Just for review, Kurt Whitekenahn. I'm long range planning manager here at Douglas County. So I oversee a lot of things such as planned developments, rezonings and the comprehensive master plan. So thank thank you for listening to me today here. Just gonna kinda hit on some of the water review, how we take a look at this as we go through the development process, and we're gonna start kind of broad down to narrow here as I go through this. Right now, this is kind of an overview we'll go. We'll dive into it a little deeper, and we'll probably use a lot of water references and things like that. So diving into or we'll funnel down through it. You can That's more for my entertainment than you all.

So just so you know. Okay. Alright. The CMP comprehensive master plan. When do we look at water? We take a general review of a proposed water supply when somebody is going from a nonurban, let's say, a rural area into an urban level. We're expecting that intensity of level of development to go up. So we wanna make sure generally that there's, the best way. Could it be supplied? Is there probably enough?

We're looking at it very broadly. Is there the potential for this to be have the the water supply it needs? Then as we go down and we're looking, let's say, they've moved into the urban area or somewhere else, they're looking at rezoning or doing a planned development, we're gonna dive we're gonna dive into that as well there. We're gonna do a basic review of the sufficiency of the water supply. Is there enough water to supply the proposed zoning?

So if they're looking at some sort of commercial development, is there enough water that would conserve a commercial development or a residential or a large lot residential type development? We may be looking at this point, can a district serve it? That's where you'll hear the term will serve. And generally, we're looking could a district serve it, will they serve it? Depending and a lot of it has to do how far they are away from the nearest service or what it would cost to bring this into the district.

Also at the rezoning stage or PD, we're looking for the groundwater declaration of restrictive covenants here. And what this basically does is ties the groundwater to the land and reserves it for those uses or related to, that property at that point. It prevents from being sold off. The applicant is required to seek an appeal if they don't have the water. We do have some case we've had some cases before where the water was severed from the property.

They didn't have a sufficient all the water underneath. So they have to ask the board, is it okay if we go with forward with development when we don't have enough water and we don't have all the water under the property? Moving down a little bit more, the determination at subdivision, as Steve mentioned before, this is our determination of adequacy of water supply, specifically at the preliminary plan portion of, subdivision. So this is what we're looking there. Then finally, with site specific, this is where we're getting into the nuts and bolts.

We may be looking at we get that will that letter from the district that says, yep, they can have a water tap. Or maybe we're looking at it with a building permit, making sure they have the the correct well permit. Maybe it's a commercial well permit or maybe it's an ag permit or whatever it may be domestic. That's when we're looking at that. We drill all the way into that at the site specific developments stage there.

But going back out, we'll go back up here and look a little bit at the comprehensive master plan. I think it's important for you to for the water commission to understand how, the comprehensive master plan has guided, development within Douglas County since approximately 1986. That's the master plan, there on the left there. And the general pattern has remained the same to today's plan, which is on the right there. Generally, the colors have changed, but the overall pattern has stayed the same.

We've, the more northern tier is where we have had expect more urban level, more dense development, more intense development. And that's primarily because that's where public services and facilities are. That's where a lot of our water districts are that can serve urban level development. And as you move further south in the county, you get into the more rural areas where there's lesser services and just generally fewer services and less intense development. And as Steve alluded to earlier, our comprehensive master plan is unique in that compliance with its goals, objectives and policies is demonstrated through the approval criteria in the zoning resolution zoning and subdivision resolutions.

This is where our master plan gets its teeth in being implemented. And most of our land use applications, when we look through them, we're looking for consistency with the master plan. And, without that consistency in being implemented in those zoning resolution, master plans remain purely advisory in nature. I also like to point out that our nonurban tier, if you look kind of in the lighter colors and the green areas of the pike, there's some in holdings within that. We generally consider development of less than 35 acres inconsistent with the plan.

The one exception, this is the Northeast Portion of Douglas County, actually called the Northeast Sub area, where we've had some of the larger lots, the five ish acres, 10 acre lots, that historic pattern has been represented and we do allow lots down to around two and one lot per 2.5 acres there. So just kind of giving you a flavor for that at the master plan. Our master plan has general water policies as within it, a section on that as it relates to land use. With its primary goal, since we're not a water supplier, is to prolong the life of water resources as the county's future depends on a safe, reliable and sufficient water supply. We look to we really look to water providers to encourage water conservation.

And these are just some of the policies I pulled out that that we've looked to do, encourage developers to obtain service from existing water providers, and develop may and maintain partnerships with countywide and regional partner water providers. And that's something you heard Lauren talk to. Yes.

I'd ask a question because this frames it here. Yes. I get confused with the overlay of the policies of the county with the regulations. For example, look at the second bullet, penultimate one, encourage development from existing water providers. Someone comes in with a plan adjacent to a water provider Uh-huh. Meets 18 a, but doesn't meet that because they refuse for pricing reasons or economic reasons to include, who controls over that? Can the county decline that because it fails the policy if they meet 18 a. And and if there was a lawsuit, how does all that fit together?

I mean,

it looks to me like this group is gonna be spending some time on policies if I had to bet. That's really where we wanna go. So what how does that control versus the regulation?

Well, as the comprehensive master plan and the interpretation sections within the zoning resolution, they look to balance out competing policies within, the master plan and other documents. So if somebody were to say this was important that you connect it to, an existing water provider, we encourage it. And I don't think you've met this policy within the master plan. Certainly, it's within the purview of that to say, I I could recommend denial of this for that reason even though they meet it because they wouldn't be meeting a comp plan policy that was of importance to them. Into the zone yes.

They could. But as you can see, we've used that very squishy term there, we encourage. And if the if the applicant said they didn't want to or they didn't, well, we've incur well, we would encourage them to do that. Doesn't mean we can make them, but we've encouraged them with this policy. Well, what what if we require developments to obtain service from existing water providers, what if your existing water provider was 20 miles away and you were in the Cherry Valley?

Well,

I don't well, if it were this this policy applies to anyone. This applies to any if we had require, it would require it. It would be thou shall or thou shall not.

You could define it. Sorry.

Getting at adjacent to an existing water supply.

Mhmm. And you choose not

to go in for economic reasons.

Mhmm. Sure. Yeah. I guess it would be the board's interpretation, yeah, of that comp plan policy and balancing it out. And if economics play into it, that's what they do.

That's that's what the board gets to do. Yeah. I guess it's for a bit. So looking in at zoning, this is where we promote the health, safety, convenience, welfare, aesthetics and welfare of the county. The zoning resolution identifies, regulations, prohibitions, procedures and restrictions for land uses.

It is the refined categorization of the general land uses seen in the master plan. In that, you'll see the more intense uses in the county, in the northern tier for the most part. It provides for orderly development of the county. It establishes uses intensity and development standards. It also includes within there, its own, pardon me, established procedures for amending maps and adding or removing changes.

Also within the zoning, it has overlay districts and that's where the 18A happens to live as an overlay district for the whole county. As we go into the zoning, generally, once we're funneling in a little bit closer here, we provide for the review and approval standards. We're looking at the demand standard based on the proposed use, whether it's residential use or nonresidential use or maybe when a district on the demand standards, a district has not established minimum demand standards. The documentation standards are reviewed here. We're looking for individual or nondistrict entities sometimes, maybe they're on individual wells out there.

There could be a service from an existing district or water provider or it could be we may also be looking from one that is being formed in support of the, development that is being considered. The documentation standards are also reviewed at this point to ensure that the, information provided has the quantity, quality and dependability based on the supply zones that Lauren mentioned earlier. And AT and A also includes a provision for establishing alternative demand standards or providing alternative documentation standards, as Mr. Walker is very familiar with. One of the interesting ones we did with the alternative documentation standards that came to me, we had a development up in the Northeast portion of the county that was getting its water from Aurora, the city of Aurora.

They were far Northeast. They were adjacent to the Black Black Hills Country Club, I believe, is what up there. So they were looking to get water from Aurora rather than provide the documentation standards for all of Aurora's water supply as we would normally get their entire portfolio. We let them seek an appeal to the documentation standards, so we didn't get a room of cardboard boxes of all the water decrees and on. So if we basically said, yes, we have enough water to to supply this development of x number of units, and we you know? So that's one of those cases where these alternative, documentation standards are useful, in appeal that can be appealed.

Is that right?

So that was one. Zoom zoom in here a little bit more. The subdivision standard, The county approves all land divisions for of of those, except for those creating lots of 35 acres or greater. The main purpose of the subdivision resolution regulations is to protect the individual homeowner by ensuring that lots have water, sanitation, roads and necessary services such as police, fire, schools and parks are available. And that's viewed depending on what portion of the county you're in, a little bit differently.

The process also ensures that homeowners' homes are built in areas, that are not at risk for flooding, rock falls, and wildfire. The criteria is based on comprehensive master plan consistency, site suitability and the hazards as I mentioned. We look at surrounding land use pattern, feasibility of extending services, adequate of drainage transportation facilities. And with this is what we're looking at generally. And with a preliminary plan or minor development, this is where the county makes its determination of adequacy of water supply per state statute.

And this is also at the stage and when we refer it to the state, engineer's office as well. And the fine and that's our onetime termination of the of the adequacy there. But as we also mentioned before, final plots are the last step. We're also confirming that that water supply is available and still as they proposed it during the preliminary plan. This is where we get all of our engineering reports and studies and you're establishing the legal boundaries of these lots, tracks, roads.

There's a dedication dedication of infrastructure as well as a pub. Oh, yes. And all dedication fees easements are finalized. Those are parks, schools, water, roads. Oh, sorry.

Evan, Hila, do you, does this apply for any subdivision? Like if a lot wants to be divided into two

build blocks? There is a streamlined process for some of that. That's where, if it's been subdivided previously, there is a little bit more of a streamlined process where we're just confirming that there is adequate infrastructure.

But do you go through a water supply determination at that time?

No. Not the full. No. We assume that no. If they have the water yeah. We do not.

If they have water, would they have to demonstrate they have some water?

Yeah. Yes. They would have to demonstrate even through, sorry if I'm not answering that one correctly. But yes, they would have to demonstrate. So if it's like in the case of Perry Park, yes, we would get that will serve showing the district still conserve this new lot being created. Or in the case of somebody taking a large lot and splitting it in half subdivision, we would make sure that they have the adequate water for that new lot in the terms of a water decree adjudicated waters.

Let me talk with you about one afterwards.

That'd be

all right.

All right.

Finally, we're kinda just going into some general land use development to kinda take a look at. The red dash line kinda represents the urban kind of the urban edge within the county based on the master plan and some of the development based on our development reference map and the comprehensive master plan map here. But I kind of broke it out into the urban and nonurban. And the reason I use nonurban as opposed to rural is the state statute uses the term nonurban rather than rural because they viewed as the highest goal of a county is to promote urban level development or have these a lot of the properties annexed. So that's one of the reasons for the term urban and nonurban.

The general land use pattern in unincorporated Douglas County, really shouldn't change based on, current master plan policies. Now that's it. Somebody wants to amend the master plan, they can come in and suggest, some changes to it. Growth and development is still guided to the northern tier where services can support more intensive developments. And our master plan also guides it to the urban areas, the municipalities within Douglas County.

So the Castle Rock in the center, the Parkers, the Castle Pines, the Lone Trees, our little rural hub down there of Larkspur's Incorporated as well. But that's generally where we guide urban level development too because they have the services, whether it's fire share fire police, also they have water and sanitation that can support higher levels of development. But I do like to point out that urban development from what we look at can include small single family lots around 2,000 square feet, those attached single family. We also have multifamily, commercial, industrial in those urban areas. And all of our urban uses require the provision of central water and sanitation, and this usually comes from a central from a special district or a water provider that controls obviously controls water usage.

With nonurban development down here, rural development, we'll just call it that. As I mentioned earlier, divisions of 35 acres or greater are not subject to subdivision rules, meaning these can be created the lots can be created by deed and these parcels receive a basic review at the time of permit for improvements. Generally, new non urban development new non urban subdivisions we're talking earlier are rare as they're not supported by the master plan. These smaller lots of less than 35 acres in the southern tier here. Of course, is all planning.

There are exceptions to this. The Perry Park development was platted in the seventies as we heard, and you just saw that referral this way. But Perry Park is interesting that it was platted in the seventies, and it actually has its own central water and sanitation, the Perry Park Water and Sanitation District there. And so there is that expectation that those will be developed. However, most nonurban parcels in the southern tier here and throughout are developed on well and septic.

There are some few exceptions to that. And I I always like to point out that a lot of these, you know, they don't without the without a a central a special district that controls a lot of the services there. Most of them are kinda covered by covenants in that area, as there are ways to kinda control and oversee development within the nonurban area. And, last but not least, Lauren Lauren and I and Steve, we've been working on this to kind of give you an anticipated residential development heat map, if you will. We based this on zoned and platted areas within the county, and we also looked at what had water and the water provided provider boundaries out here.

Hopefully, this kinda shows up clearly. If you look at the boundaries in gray, that's a lot of the water providers throughout Douglas County. See. This is actually

Where are cutting the new development in Highlands Ranch?

I think that maps have been heated. There are still some uses. There are still some allowances. There is still some stuff left to redevelop and develop. They keep finding ways to squeeze more in there so that we've kinda left that one as the potential for heat there in that northern tier.

We also have the Meridian here, but Castle Pines Village over there. I we do have interesting. We have some zoned lots left down in Larkspur. So if you're wondering what we're missed that one, there are about there's about 250 200 ish acres that is zoned to state residential. So and it's an unincorporated Douglas County, and it is in the Perry Park Water and Sanitation District. Whether or not it develops, I don't know. It's very hilly there, a lot of trees. I just wanted to point that out that it does have potential based on what we were looking at generally on the zoning. Up here, this is the trail this is the Northeast. This is a Piney Lake Trails and Piney and the trails up there.

There are about 200 lots that are in development. This is the one that I was talking about that is getting service from Aurora extra territorially. The water rights are reserved under the property for the use of those future owners even though they so Aurora has an obligation to keep those water that water under there for their residents. Just over here, we have something, some other nonurban development that's going in at about one per two and a half acres, one unit per two and a half acres, Ramblewood and the fields out here. Both are going to be served by the Pinery or pardon me, by Parker Water and Sanitation, potentially interconnecting the Pinery.

We still haven't heard on that, but that so there will be some units out there. And North Northwest Douglas County, obviously, is probably one of our biggest areas of heat coming in and, obviously, all under districts district different district services under there. We do have Rocksboro Water and Sands and so forth. So that's kinda what we've looked at projecting it out here. If you notice, if you if let me just go back.

If you kinda look, it still follows a lot of the line that we see that I drew on that previous map. They're pretty well aligned with our historic pattern of where we've guided development to and that aligns with the districts that we see throughout, you know, in the gray areas. So that's all right. I'd be happy to entertain all three of us entertain any questions or if someone wants to yes?

Question about annexation.

Okay. Involved does

the county get if a small municipality, such as Larkspur, wanted to annex

Can you

use the mic, please? Sorry.

Tricia Bernhardt. Question about annexation. If a small municipality such as Larkspur wanted to annex in some property and did not intend to provide them with water services, how involved does the county get with looking at that potential annexation and providing their opinion back to a small municipality?

We do not have anything other than procedural overs. We can say that they messed up on the process. If something in the process didn't go right, then they would just go back to square on, but really very limited in any sort of, yes, you can annex, no, you can't annex other than the procedural rules and regulations. Did you have a particular one in mind down there?

Yeah, but I'll leave it for another time.

Thank you. This is very helpful. It puts in perspective a number of things. This has been a very useful use of time. A question, as the commission goes forward and after our meeting, I guess, is it next week on 10, we may have some thoughts in terms of policies. At what point do we have an opportunity to discuss those?

So we'll discuss the Chapter 10 recommendations. And the Water Commission is, you know, it it's in your purview to add recommendations as well to that list for consideration, if that's what you're asking, Harold.

When when would you like to have those? We have some recommendations to these.

I think during the discussion next week would be great so that the consultants can grab those and wrap them into the next review, version of the water plan that will come out.

You mean discuss them now? Is that are you looking for feedback now or where or what would you like?

Next week during the

Next week. Yeah. Thank you very much. It's very stimulating.

Any other questions? I think our hope was that this would be a good lead in to the Chapter 10 discussion knowing it's really policy based.

Sean Tanner, yes, second what Harold said. This is fantastic. I only regret this. I wish you guys would have given this to us a couple of months, but it's fantastic. I love it.

Don Langley. Maybe I'm curious if we could circle back to the discussion a little bit, if appropriate, where you talked about the ability to encourage people to join a water district, a nearby water district. The discussion was, you know, is is it possible? Would it be possible to have a policy that would require that? Because that seems rather problematic to me, but I don't know if you all have given that any thought.

I mean, it's it's certainly possible to have a policy around that. But it it you know, there there's always unanticipated conditions that come up. So if you have a policy that's absolute, almost immediately somebody seems to come in with a a reasonable reason that the policy, you know, needs to be modified or you need to take a different approach. If the development is a worthwhile is is a good project, and I'm I'm gonna just throw out a totally hypothetical kind of example here, but the adjacent water provider is unable for some reason to serve a a strict reading of a policy that says if you're adjacent to a district that provides service, you have to include into that district. And the district says, we're not interested.

We're not able. You know, we so now you start writing in exceptions to it. Well, if the district so long as the district says, well, what when does that come? What What are the terms under which that's acceptable that the district says no? I mean, there's a lot of issues that come up when you make absolutes in policy.

And that's so that's why, for example, 18 A has its own unique appeal section. We have variances for other zoning standards. We have waivers for subdivision standards and and and things like that because you have to have a relief valve or, you you run the risk of being legally challenged because you're not giving somebody an opportunity to prove that they can do something a different way and it's still a viable option. So our advice to our planning commission when they're writing policy is to not write in absolutes, but to write in trying to bring us to where we wanna be. And where we wanna be is efficient services.

We want these and and a great way to achieve efficiency is is to bring those together, but it it isn't always the only way that it can be done. So I I I don't know if that quite covers what you're talking about, Don. But

Yeah. I I think that's a I think that's a very good answer. I mean, the other side of the other side of that that I was thinking about was, you know, if you say, we want you to join this certain water provider district. Well, then you're then you're causing that developer to agree to all the rules rules and regulations that district has, deed over water, you know, everything that goes along with that inclusion and, you know, cap fees and everything else, you're saying, well, you have to do that. And I I just it just seemed to me like that would be a stretch to require people to do that.

And an extreme example is we've seen with municipalities. It's a little bit more nuanced with counties. It's a little bit harder. But with municipalities, we've seen they they start shopping for somebody else to to deal with. And we've seen that to a lesser extent in, you know, in the in the county.

The the county commissioners in the late eighties, early nineties, denied the first version of the Canyons, which was a very, urban much more urban level of development than what the county then did approve in the year 2,000. Then seven years later, new municipality came into being, city of Castle Pines. And the developer said, oh, here's somebody who is different than the county. The county commissioners have said no to urban level of development. A decade later, they they did say yes to a nonurban level of development.

They seem to be pretty much set on that, but here's somebody else we can negotiate with. And now we have the Canyons development that we have today, which is that urban level of development. So there's even in that case, it wasn't exactly that they said, well, we're gonna go to somebody else. They didn't really talk to the county. They said, oh, here's a new opportunity, and they went there.

And so, again, it's that idea of, you know, you you can hold to your policy. You can hold to your principle, and that was what the county did there. The county really had policies that said, you know, essentially no development within a mile of highway. And the first version of the canyons plan met those requirements. But when they they they found a new opportunity, they went out and and and, sought that out and and made it happen. And we have a very different development there now. We still get comments from people, well, this isn't what the county approved. And yeah, you're right. It's not. That's not what the county approved.

It got annexed into the city over a decade ago, and it's being developed under the city's policies and the city's plans. So the the, instinct, the the desire to try to come up with every policy that can get us exactly where we wanna be, I can tell you from twenty six years of of this, it doesn't always lead to where you want it to be. And sometimes you end up wondering if you couldn't have maybe found a different middle ground that would have done something different than what you ended up getting because, well, this is our policy. And and sometimes that's what you have to do. I mean, there are times when there's there's there there have been developments where developers came to the county and said, we we used to have a bonus program.

We want a bonus. And the county and by the county when I talk about the county, I'm talking about the commissioners ultimately, you know, they their their feedback is, well, you're not you're not doing the things that earn a bonus. And sometimes that's okay. And and and they they went on and they developed a different way, but that was still a better decision than saying, well, we'll just not require you to meet the I mean, sometimes it's unreasonable, but there's is a certain amount of reasonability that rolls into it also. Yes?

Donna, I was just gonna respond to your initial comment. And and I understand the complexities of everything that we're talking about, but here's what what happens is if a developer cannot attach themselves to a water district that is moving towards trying to find renewable water, then the only other alternative is just to go ahead and suck out more groundwater. And that is the crux of a lot of the issues that we're talking about here is how much groundwater do we have, how much can we keep extracting, and how long will it serve this county. And we all know the aquifers are finite and they are depleting. Depends on where you're looking at, how fast they're depleting, but that's the heart of the issue.

So if the developer cannot attach themselves to a district that is moving towards renewable water, then we're just taking out more groundwater, and that's where we have to look at land use controls.

I'd like to add to that. I think the there's such a competitive economic advantage for developer to use the aquifer rather than connect to a system that's moving for the cost of renewable water. And and the county, you know, if if if our goal is to have systems with the financial capability to bring renewable water in, we shouldn't be providing economic incentives for those not to connect so they can use cheaper groundwater, and compete with a robust system. So I think that's a that's a tough policy to craft, but, we we've talked for for years. I've heard discussions about we have too many districts.

We need lesser, better, more capable districts that have, water recapture and reuse and all these types of things embedded in it rather than smaller districts for competitive advantage. So I think that's when the tougher ones have to deal with whenever it's feasible to connect, of course.

Mhmm. And, you know, the there hasn't been I shouldn't say that. There have been very few new truly new districts created that weren't integrating with a so even if the service is being provided by a new district through intergovernmental agreement with another entity, take, for example, the range. Dominion isn't the direct water provider. So that's an that is a new district.

That is a new thing where the range is is providing that water and sewer, but it's providing it in context with another provider. Every I I think the last time a district was created that independently provides water and sewer was the Solitude Water District for which is now what's it called? Keep. The Keep, the rural site plan East Of Sedalia. Now I guess it's not exactly right.

Louviers wasn't a water and sanitation district until the mid two thousand, the mid aughts. It was a mutual before that. So that was a situation where a new district was created to take over for a private corporate company that wasn't really running it. But other than that one and the keep, I'm not aware and Dominion, I'm not aware of any other new districts that are providing their own water service in unincorporated Douglas County. Oh.

Oh, okay. What? There have been that actually are Okay. But we in since eighteen a, we haven't had other than those two new districts that provide water and sewer independently from from one of the districts that predated them. So under Dominion, Leveres, Solitude, those are the only three that are not piggybacking on with somebody else.

When did AT and A go under that?

1998.

Sean Tanner, maybe to level up the policy discussion because I think

this is this is

great. Looking at the heat map locations and looking at where most likely your slide before, most likely where development is going to happen. From the county's policy perspective, one of our two focal points is working with providers and then working with extraterritorial providers, e. Wise, I. E.

Aurora, which services Roxboro, Denver services, Longtree. I mean and we have Wise, obviously, which, like, had it not been for the county, Wise wouldn't have happened. Same thing with Roxboro, in my opinion. And so I think as we level up the policy, think that will also help sharpen where the county can kind of future cast back to the renewable water statements, future cast how and where, what financial mechanisms need to be pulled to get that renewable water into the county.

Thank you. Any other questions? I wanted to put a little addendum on what the conversation about referrals on annexations for municipalities. Staff's role in reviewing referrals is to look at those procedural and those kinds of things and provide comments. Our board has, a purely policy standpoint, taken positions on, on annexations or proposals in municipalities that are really beyond what staff has the authority to do.

So that has happened. That that that can happen. But from from our standpoint, you know, that that becomes an issue of does the county want to start investing, you know, some more ex extensive resources into engaging with that municipality. It really needs to be something that the board has a role in at that point because it's it becomes really elected board to elected board kind of a conversation. So that can happen and has happened in the past on annexations and on just development on existing incorporated areas when the commissioners have had concern.

And they're aware. They see what kinds of external referral we call them external referrals. They're because they come from an entity other than us. They're they're aware of those and see those. They get a report of those and can engage with us if they have specific concerns on development happening within another jurisdiction.

Yeah. I just want to change the subject just a little bit. I Sure. Wanna refer back to this the the items that, Lauren, you covered. And that one, especially where it was talking about the I can't remember the number that was associated with that, the section.

But the section that addressed the individual well owners, again, I just want to reemphasize. I hope in the final plan that we see some more emphasis placed on what has the current requirements are, what is available for those people, and what we might want to suggest be done for those people in the future, for the people that are the what I would call the self providers. Just like to see a little more emphasis on that.

Okay. Any other questions? Good? Okay. Thank you very much. I think everybody really appreciates your time and sharing your thoughts with us today. Very useful indeed. All right. So we're doing really good on time. This would be the part of the meeting where we have member discussions.

So I promised you I wanted to do a discussion first. So just a brief little conversation I'll say about water conservation. I did, you know, pass out the new water manual from or the community guide from Waco. I think it's pretty well written. Maybe take a little pressure off of Forsgren to try and incorporate a lot of conservation things into the water plan.

I think these kinds this is a just a good reference. And I would tell anybody anywhere in the county if they want to know about water conservation. This is just a good source to get a good high level information about how it works. You know, I there's also maybe a question about, you know, what's what's the role conservation is going to play in the future. I would I mean, I think James is still on the line. I'm going to say this. I don't know how he might react to it. But I don't think we're going to save the Colorado River with water conservation, you know, at homes and gardens. You know, but we can certainly not make it harder for them. And, you know, everybody do our part.

I mean, there's just, it's intrinsically correct to not use more than you need. I would tell you, in our water plant at Parker Water, we have a conservation goal to reduce gallons per capita a day by one per year to get to from like 120 to 111 by 2035. And that reduces the total water demand that we're looking at from like 6,000,000,000 gallons a year to 5,400,000,000 gallons a year. And really, what's buried in there, we think, too, is a reduction in the maximum daily demand, which is at peak. So there's just a lot of good returns that come with that.

So, the other, I'll say another reason why conservation has become or has always been important, but something that we recently saw. We've hired an engineer at Parker Water to work on our engineering or excuse me, our environmental impact statement for the Platte Valley Water project. And lo and behold, one of the items that has to be filed is with the Corps of Engineers. And the Corps of Engineers, let me get this, let me get this correctly. So they need to see a summary of past, current and planned conservation.

It's required in the documents so the U. S. Corps can understand that the Platte Valley project is needed even with industry standard contemporary conservation efforts. So when this plan goes before the Corps, we need to, at Parker Water, we need to be doing water conservation in absolutely earnest and meaningful way. So there's my plug for conservation today. The other, yes, please.

Just going to give you an anti plug. I believe in conservation. I think it's great, and I'm all for it. I think what I'm hearing a lot of people talk about is the drought, the heat, the change, the climate change, etcetera. And given that a lot of people, and you're seeing articles about Denver and Aurora and everyone else, are asked to restrict their water use or told to restrict their water use.

And maybe the price goes up, etcetera, etcetera. And they're like, how can we be asked to conserve more water when Douglas County is just building more and more and more houses? And so why should they limit their water use when in fact 5,000 more homes are being created downstream? Or it just to most people, it doesn't make sense. So I'm just pointing that out. Conservation is great, but the growth and development of housing is so intense, it just overwhelms the idea of conservation.

You've said that before.

I have.

I think one of the key points that Douglas County is leading on is water reuse. I think, I was going through the other day. I can't think of any other county where all of the major water providers have developed, non indirect potable reuse. Parker has it. Castle Rock's been leading the way. We're building our system. Centennial was built on that. And really, what can save the Colorado River is indirect and direct portable reuse. And they talk about this in the plan. If there's an area I think needs to be strengthened, it's right there.

The more we can connect to indirect or direct portable reuse of water, the less water we'll have and stretch the water we have dramatically further. So I think that is one area that is Douglas County is leading the way. Douglas County has led the way in conservation, at least everything I've been able to see, in terms of of outdoor irrigation. Because remember, what goes outdoors is lost forever. What matters is what's used indoors. We get that back. And I think if there's an area we really should focus on is not so much conservation, but on direct and indirect potable reuse. It's gonna be the key to the future.

Sean? A question for Don and Clark. With Aurora, I haven't seen what Colorado Springs is doing as far as stage. I know Aurora is looking to move to stage two, and Denver is kind of following suit. Do you all's water districts have similar staging for drought conditions?

We do not have staging. Okay. We have drought restrictions that would, that can be activated through the, I'll say, the rules and regulations section. For us, it's mainly no new turf installations. So we restrict people from putting in new new yards, new turf.

But we do not have a restriction on, watering, amount of water they can they can draw. We actually start sending people out to look at, you know, violations of watering times and watering days, you know, the kind of the bad practices. And you can see, we can see a lot of that with the data these days too. So not not particularly a lot of teeth in what happens in Parker.

Perry Park does not have any drought watering restrictions. Never has. And a few times, it's been talked about when we've had a couple of a week or month of dry periods. The district's position has always been, we've got lots of water. We've got plant capacity. We're trying to sell as much water as we can. Let them go.

Yeah. I mean, Castle Rock's had in place pretty, extreme or no. Shouldn't say extreme. Effective policies and and requirements for, you know, when you can water, time of day, days a week, and all that. And people do get fined occasionally.

Castle Rock uses some of its pricing tiers to support funding for removal of turf. As you know, you know, any new new residential construction doesn't have turf. It's not allowed anymore. So as far as putting an x something on top of that in response to the drought, nothing's been done to my knowledge yet, and I'm not sure it will be. We'll see.

Yeah. Mickey?

Yeah. Just a comment on what Harold was talking about. I'm just trying to conceptually fit this together. Talking about reuse, which I agree, which is very important. I I can see how conservation can fit into land use regulations, but reuse is done by the water providers themselves. Right? Is there any any area for the county itself to get involved in reuse or that would just be encouragement for the water providers?

Mickey, it's a good question. Number one, it goes back to the comment we had earlier suggesting that if possible or feasible is the right word, when you're nearby a water provider that has a system, you connect to it. And that would include the sewer system. Because once you're in the sewer system for the major water supply, you're automatically in reuse. Like Hynens Ranch was built a lot on reuse.

So I think that's one. The second is, I think as the county looks down the road, and I'm thinking now, for example, in the Santa Fe Corridor, there's now a sewer line, part runs to Castle Rock, part runs to us. But any new development should have to connect to those sewer lines so we can get the reuse back and keep it in the county. And additionally, in that one, that area, you do get the septic filtering into a water supply in Chatfield. So I think policies that require connection to not just the water, but also the sewer. So we can keep that water in Douglas County, I think it will be essential to us.

Yeah. If you go back to that question of, you know, can you encourage developments to join a water district, it's not only to maybe pursue a renewable water path, it's to connect to the reuse possibility of the sewer. And all this and if it's groundwater, that's your initial water, that's a 100% reusable. That's right. You know, and you can reuse it, you know, once, twice, three times, maybe even four times, you know, that some water will be able to circulate through. So it's really really big, really huge. I agree. So any other discussion items that anybody wants to bring up?

We we got the question. We got the recommendation from Leonard Rice. I can't think of their new name on the expensive study about something we've talked about and how much of the water depending on the area is actually economically or physically reusable. It was a huge number. I'm wondering if the county might want to consider, maybe there's some other strategies or philosophies out there that could take the work that's been done and give us estimates on recovery, on firm yield, on what we call proven reserves of water.

Maybe if the county were just to ask others for ideas, we might get some very unique concepts that might allow us to get to the same place and that is realize how much water there's huge numbers of water out there, how much can you really recover and use. The study that Leonard Rice has done is basically in central aquifer. Those are the data points on I can't think of the name of that technology they

use. But

of course, that's good. But what about the rest of the county? I just wonder if it wouldn't be worthwhile just asking what do you call that? For information or request for interest or something to see what else might be out there that might be able to get us some data.

Yeah. I mean, thanks for bringing that topic up. I mean, came out as a technical memorandum. It was kind of teed off of, you know, the discussions we had about, well, trying to really understand the data, how good is the data, how useful it is. So I think those are Bill's recommendations.

We all know Bill, you know, on things you could do to improve the quality of that data. I've been looking around at some other sources of data. I've had some conversations with some geohydrologists and more technical experts. I think, I think a couple things that need to be pointed out when this physically available water, I think, is just kind of an engineering term that they all use. And the physically available water, when applied to these Denver Basin aquifers, actually refers to the quantity of water that hasn't been affected by groundwater removal.

So you could another place you'll see it in USGS terms is like the predevelopment amount. And I think when you just do the calculation of here's the thickness, here's the area, here's amount of water that's in a given area. You know, that's the number you get. So it doesn't reflect what's been taken out of the aquifer. So it's almost like the starting point.

So the question then is, well, do we know how much we've used in the last forty or fifty years? And I don't know that we do. I mean, you can kind of make numbers. I tried to back a number up from the data that we had from Forest Gren and say, well, what do I think it was thirty years ago and how much do we use? I come up with a number like 1,200,000 acre feet that maybe we've used over the last thirty years compared to like the $78,000,000 that they're saying is in there.

So it's you know, when we talk about maybe more precision, more precision, changing this recessivity data, those kinds of things, the question that I really come to is, is more accurate data going to really change how we set policy, land use policy, when we start down that process? Or is it just kind of going to be, you know, kind of a fine point on something that we intrinsic or inherently know needs to be done to protect the resources. I tend to think what we're seeing is probably good enough, but I'm not willing to say that, you know, that's exactly the position we ought to take. I did find USGS did a study back in 2011 that was a groundwater availability study. It was a 300 page USGS kind of report.

I think you've maybe all seen them. This was authored by an author named Susan, Suzanne Paschke. I've tried to post this study on the site here. It's a 256 megabyte file. I see yeah.

So I sent Lauren a link to see if we could get it linked where everybody could at least see it on there, and post it up if you wanted to go look at this. The report is on the entire data entire Denver Basin. And they conclude in the end that going into the study, thought there were two ninety eight million acre feet in the entire Denver Aquifer Basin, entire system. They revised that to be two forty seven million acre feet, so it's a big number. But what's pretty interesting is they did a groundwater model.

There's a whole section. Section C is a groundwater model. Very detailed and very elaborate. In the end, they're trying to predict where the basically the water levels will be in the entire Denver Basin in 2053, think was their term. So what I'm trying to do is I'm trying to get this, bring this forward, get this in front of Forrest Gruen and LRE and say, hey, here's a model that was done before.

Is this model give us any more or better insights than what you've been able to do? We think that Petra has given us better insights. I know you've had a Harold, you're saying, well, is there really more water? I think what you can say is there's more sand, right? There's more sand than we thought. Does that mean there's more water? Probably. But maybe it's not so guaranteed. So I think there's some stuff we can do around that. And you know, whether we're, you know, trying to fund a modeling effort.

I mean this, the one I had, I mean them had to take a, you know, a couple years for them to do. I can't imagine what it cost. And if if we can, if we can use data that we have that's good and that's good enough to form a foundation for policy, I think that's kind of the direction we want to go. That doesn't relieve us from developing a really good understanding of where we have aquifers and stress in the county. And we know that's probably almost exclusively Dawson and Denver aquifers.

We know there's areas where people are struggling with well issues, with level issues. By adopting the models and the data that we get from forged in the report doesn't relieve us from that, I'll say that obligation we have to try and understand what's going on all around the county and for all the well users, not just the big water providers and the like. So stay tuned with a little luck. We'll have a nice 300 page document for you to take a look at. It's really kind of it's got some pretty cool graphics in it, but it's it's it's thick, I'll tell you.

So I'm going to ask Lauren to talk to, you know, they're going ahead. You got all got the memo from Katie that said the county commissioners want to go ahead and engage with the with the public engagement. So I mean, do you have a kind of a schedule and a plan for that?

Yes. This is Lauren Pulver with staff. So we have begun our outreach and planning for focus groups. We have, again, remind everybody, have the developer EDC focus group. We have the well user focus group, and then we have the water provider focus group.

All of those, their first meeting is scheduled for April 2, so next week or the week after. And then the second meeting will be April 24, and then we will be able to kind of wrap comments from focus groups and wrap those into this next draft that we'll be seeing. And then larger, public outreach will be kind of continue to be held until we get a new revised draft, and the Water Commission and the Board of County Commissioners are comfortable with sending that draft out for larger public outreach.

Are those focus group meetings here in this building or

They will be held in person, in our conference rooms just behind us in this building. Yes.

Okay. Are water commission members allowed to attend if we're interested?

That's a good question, Don. I don't know that we've we've discussed that. I mean, do have valid

passport that will

allow you

to I mean, I'm I'm I'm just very I'm very curious to what them some might say. But then again, you know, if they if if people think there's a commissioner hanging around, maybe they're they're gonna guard what they say because if they don't know, we're not really real commissioners. So I that was just a question. I'd I'd like to know.

And we can follow-up on that.

Yeah. Evan? Meeting.

I don't know how you can be denied, but, you know, it may be smart not to say anything.

Right. Yeah. I mean, that it'd be a listening event for me for sure. No question about it. I know the I know the water providers. There's, I mean there's things that when we with Parker Water when we submitted the water plans and the data and all that stuff, we didn't talk about the Platte Valley project at all. Just really trying to let that one get a little more ripe. But I think when they talk to Ron as a in the users group, they'll hear a lot there'll be a lot more of that that will be able to put in the report. So that's kind of how that's going to flow. And I think I think the water providers will have a lot of a lot to say about groundwater stuff too.

So it should be a very interesting session. So have we done everything we need to do?

Hey, Don.

Yes.

I know you've heard me say this before too, but this report was done by USGS. Susan Paschke also worked on this. Is a summary of data that was collected by the Rural Water Authority of Douglas County for about ten years of data. So it's a lot easier to read than 300 pages. I'm happy to provide that to everybody. I

think that we I think we might already have that on the portal. I don't know. Have

to It might already be up

there. Yes. Okay. Anybody else? Any more comments? If not, motion to adjourn. Do we need one of those? Or Second. Alright. All in favor? We're done.

Aye. Thank you, mister chairman.

Mister Newtube, good night.