Water Commission - Regular Meeting

Okay. We'll we'll begin. It looks like there's three people online. Is it

James Effland,

John Connor,

and Roger. Okay. So we certainly have a quorum. So let's start with roll call.

Tricia Bernhardt present.

Evan Ella present.

Clark Hamilton here. Don Langley present. Mickey Conway present.

Jim Morris present.

Harold Smithles present.

Sean Tanner present. Harold, you just pushed the little button up.

Well, he's feeling good, Danny. And I think James is there too. Is that correct? I see a hat. Yeah. We'll assume that's him. Okay? So we have approval of minutes from our last April 27 meeting. I don't think we have a minutes or approval from the special meeting. Not yet. Okay. So we just need to approve these. Any comments, amendments?

Harold? I move them. I thought they're pretty well done.

Okay. Do we have a motion to approve those?

Second.

Motion and second. All in favor? I. Very good. No referral items today, so we don't have to dwell on that one. And we're right into discussion. And action item is the water plan update, draft water plan review. So I'll turn that over to Will.

Okay. Thanks, Don, and good afternoon. So this afternoon, as we look ahead, we're looking to give you an overview of the public outreach and engagement phase of the work. And then we also have a have lined up Bill Fronczak to do an overview of the GIS work and that interface that you can get on and see a lot of this data very well visually. So we'll start with that, and then we'll have wrap up with comments regarding the latest draft of the plan. So with that, Ann, if you want to go ahead and run through your presentation.

Hi, everybody. Thanks for your moment there. Can you all see my screen?

Yes, we can. Okay. Yes.

Great. Alright. So this is it's been a minute. Since we talked about this, this is a bit of a recap. I'm in Kukenmeister, and I've been running public engagement.

So we've, kind of reorganized some of the order of events having just completed the focus groups. But our goals have been about the same. So we want to make sure that we're sharing the overview of existing conditions and work done to date with the public and the community so that they have a solid understanding of what's informing the recommendations. We want to gather their input on recommendation strategies. So that'd be looking for areas of community support priorities, and then also identifying any questions or additional informational needs that the community might have for those recommendations as well.

That'll help us understand ahead of, you know, trying to roll out a recommendation what additional steps might be beneficial to get further buy in or, help make sure that we get a significant uptake on, incentives or, regulations. And then excuse me. I'm sorry. Took a sip of water, and it just is giving me the cost. We're hoping to use that feedback to inform and further give nuance to the recommendation.

So it's not gonna be a prioritization activity, but it's more gonna be providing additional detail, nuance, and guidance on how to best roll out those recommendations and where you might see a good amount of community support related to them. So, so far, we have set up the website, which is up and running. It has a draft of the plan on there, which has been available for review. We also have a project flyer that we've created, which is also available. Has timeline information and overview, for the community.

At the beginning of this, we also sent out a, early social media post just announcing that the plan was happening, and we'll continue to do that as we ramp up engagement. Ahead of going out into the community, we'll work with communications to share information via newsletters, and social media posts, to help boost awareness. And the things that we'll be sharing with people are going to our social engagement site. So this will have opportunities for people to review recommendations, review the data in a more interactive way, in a way that kind of breaks it down for them so that they can provide feedback on recommendations and also see the the work that's been done to date in a more digestible manner. So far, we've also completed our two rounds of focus group sessions, which I know you all were debriefed on.

So we have a lot of input available from those, which were included in the chapter two of the draft plan. And then coming up alongside that digital space, we'd have our in person, engagement activities, which will the content from both of those will kinda mimic each other so that, we have consistent messaging. Person's gonna give us a chance for those more nuanced discussions, to get a deeper understanding and offer that kind of, you know, deeper collaboration moment. We can also share the data there, and we're hoping to have two of those geographically in different areas of the county offering, similar content, but just different times and locations for convenience for people to come and, share their feedback. So we'll take all that.

We'll incorporate it into the plan, for, after your review and approval of the content that we'd be going out to the public with. And, one of the critical, paths for decision on that would be identifying workshop dates so that we can start advertising them with enough time for people to be aware that they're happening and aware of the opportunities while also giving us time to then incorporate, that feedback into the final plan, in August. So looking at that window of, ideal, I believe, July, late July for those meetings. That is just a recap of the, engagement, what's what's up and running, and what's been done, and what is planned. We're happy to answer any questions.

Yeah, this is Don Langley. I have a question. On your slide, it says, board of county commissioners and water commission to review in May. So that's the, I assume that's the, just the draft that we have in front of us right now today. And it won't be a review. So, that's going to come in front of this public engagement. Am I seeing that correct?

I believe that the plan and Lauren can correct me as needed but is to have a more final draft of the plan that has been vetted by everyone. You've seen all the chapters, and you're comfortable with the content that's within them ahead of us going out to public engagement.

This is Lauren Polvor with staff. That's correct. Think the draft you see now with whatever revisions we make or kind of final more final version of chapter 10 included is what will be presented to the Board of County Commissioners in May to kind of get their comfort level and and okay to move forward with, public meetings.

So, yeah, sure did. Will you present that to them in a public meeting, or is this gonna go to them to read and give us feedback? How how do we do that?

It will be provided to the Board of County Commissioners through a work session, a board work session.

Trisha?

Real quick question. Where are the meetings going to be and who will make those decisions on where and when those meetings will be?

Forest Green is working with staff on that. And really, I think a decision point with the Board of County Commissioners when we bring this next draft to them will be format discussion. What would they like to see? Do they want to do town hall? Do they want to do open house? Do they want to participate? All of those things we'll work through with the Board of County Commissioners. And of course, keep you all updated as anything gets determined.

Question, inevitably, when this gets up for public discussion, there'll be some good ideas come out. Will will the commission have one more review after we get input, both in public meetings, and I'm sure we'll be getting individual input to take one last look before it's final. So should that be scheduled that it'll come back from public comment? We'll we'll consider the public comments and just what we've learned. One final review off to the BOCC for final approval. Am I reading that right?

I think that would be the expectation, Harold. Yeah. That we come back with any public comment we've received over the meetings, for discussion and and if anything needs to be integrated or updated in the plan. Anything to add?

Yeah. I agree with that.

Has the Board of County Commissioner seen any of this yet? Have we given them any summaries or updates? Is this going to be their first look?

The board was provided the draft into the December draft. So that first draft, they've not seen this updated draft yet.

So so we won't catch them totally to all cool. Yep. Okay. Any more questions? No? Good? Okay. Thank you.

All right. Thank you, Anne.

Thank you.

All right. Now we'll there's some work regarding the GIS overview that, we've been working on, and so Bill Fronczak is going to give us that overview. K, Bill?

Oh, well, hopefully, you can still hear me.

We can. Thanks.

Alright. I'm gonna share my screen real quickly if it's possible, so we can walk through it. Can everybody steer steer my screen?

Yes.

Okay. So what I'll do is I'm gonna do a high level walk through of the GIS mapping. Obviously, please, you know, if if there's things that seem a little clunky or wanna see something different, please let me know and we can, you know, we can work with Spheros to see if we can, get that corrected. And I already noticed one that, you know, I'll get to in a minute that I think we should clarify a little bit on, but I'll I'll get to that in minute. Long story short is this is what when you click on to the link in the in the report, this is the first page that'll pop up.

And you'll see on the left hand side the various layers, the various, like, the word file folders that have the different data that's in there. What we also try to do is in chapter seven, put together a brief little outline of how that this may be working first, in particular, the individual, well owners that are out there in the county. But this map this map is designed to be used not only by individual well owners, but by the county as well as by water providers to kind of really take a look at the Denver Basin groundwater and and kind of what's out there regarding subdivisions, this type of thing. It's a combination of data from Douglas County And State Engineers Office and and and other sources that we looked at. So I'm just gonna walk through these, how this works.

It's pretty straightforward. You head over to the little carrot there and you expand it. So what we have here is like water level analysis by wells. When the box is checked, you gotta have that box checked from the from the upper, from the main file folder, and then you can click on the wells by agency. What this is one that can show is this is this is in relation to what our discussion was in the water level analysis.

So you can see the water level analysis that we looked at throughout the county to kinda get an idea of how water levels on a kind of a a trend analysis, if you will, but nothing really specific because it's really tough to deal with the data. But you can see down here also in the lower left, here's all the different wells. There's we got Arapahoe wells from Division of Water Resources, Arapahoe from USGS, so on and so forth down. And you can see how they're laid out on the counter and what we looked at to try to get the most accurate water wells for water levels. I'm gonna shut that off.

I'm gonna go down to specific groundwater data. It's another one of the this is specific to, you know, the Denver base and the groundwater. So a couple of things here, like with the admin data, we have underneath there and we can clean this up, but the pre two thirteen cylinders in Douglas County, there's obviously ones that show up above the county line, but you can see within the county the pre two thirteen cylinders. And those are wells that have were in existence prior to Senate Bill two thirteen, which was in 1973. And and basically, how this, you know, these we the state need to protect those.

So again, you can go through down here and kinda see the different colors of what the different areas are. You can also click on that and get an idea of what it is, you know, to Lower Dawson, so on and so forth. There's some data there of a pre two thirteen well. Here's the permit number, 561RN. Those that type of information is available for those who wanna look at it.

So that's under the admin. Decreed water rights, again, all these are pre checked, so you can turn them on or turn them off. But if you click click on the decreed water rights, it's now gonna show you all the decrees that have been, at least from public data standpoint, issued in Douglas County for the various aquifers. And again, just an example, I'm gonna click on this one. It's gonna say decree Denver Basin adjudication, and it's the Lower Dawson that has been decreed at that point. No others are there. But if you go to a different one, I'm gonna go up here, for example, and I'll click on this one, it's part of a subdivision. You're gonna have various decrees. You see this number one through three. So you got decreed bit, Denver Basin adjudication.

Here's your decree number. This is Upper Arapahoe, but there also is gonna be Liberty Fox Hills underneath that one as well. You can also get to that by just going to, cutting off everything else, and just going to Fox Hills. Here's the Fox Hills decreed water rights in the county. So multiple ways of looking what those decreed water rights will look like. Shut those off. Next one is just the bay is pretty standard, Denver Basin aquifer. Whoops. So here's your just your basic Denver Basin aquifers and water in Douglas County. And click on them and basically get this is the Upper Dawson.

This is the Dawson. Here's the Denver. Oops. The Denver. So on and so forth. This is just kind of general information for the Denver Basin Aquifer. Next one is, you know, your non tributary designated groundwater basin. Now you can see in this this file folder, they're not checked. So you wanna look at each different one. So for example, I'm just gonna go to Denver.

Here is your non tributary, not non tributary status as it's consistent with state law. The green is non trib, so that's the non trib area within the county. It actually goes outside the county, but you could definitely see where it is. 44% area, which means that it's, since it's outside of designated basin, that area needs to have an augmentation plan to replace the post buffer depletions associated with the 4%. And then the red is the not nontributory actual.

That's the water that's within one mile of the alluvial outcrop and any depletions or any, modeling that shows that there's impacts to the surface streams, those have to be played in actual time, location and amount. So you can see, and this is just an example for the Denver, we have it for each and every one of them. And what's interesting here is that, like again, as we talked about the non tributary groundwaters in the Eastern Southern portion of the county, as you get into this North Central and kind of western edge of the Denver Basin, that groundwater in the Denver really isn't available for appropriation. I mean, is, but you have to get an augmentation plan, which can be very challenging and contentious. So just as an example, that's what you can be looking at.

Let's go to Fox Hills real quickly. That's that's what we would expect. A lot more non tributary ground on Fox Hills. It's deep. But again, as you get out to the fringes, you're starting to see areas where you're not gonna even be able to get a lot of Fox Hills well because you're in those areas that are 4% or actual impact. So any replacement plans will be needed in these two areas. So that's one, that's that's a non tributary that we've looked at. Here's another interesting that we put in there. Here's the production wells. These are every well permit that's issued in the bay in the in the in the county, all constructed based on the state engineer's office.

And I'll get to this in a minute, but what's interesting about this is you can definitely see the subdivisions that are on individual allot wells. Where you see all these clusters of wells, those are subdivisions, that have been issued for individual allot wells. Obviously, ones that are out here and that are kinda out, they're either large wells or they're livestock or individual wells on 35 acre properties. I'm gonna come back to that one in just a minute. Let's go to Douglas County reference data.

This is where some other nice information is in. Got the water that's the boundary. Got the water providers that are in here, so you can take a look at that, you know, click on it. Not only do you have this down here about who they are, but it will if you click on it, it'll pull it up what the water provider is. We put in the water treatment plants that are out there based upon the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment.

So, you know, you can click on that and it's gonna show that this is Thunderbird Water Sanitation District and that's there. If you go over one more, that's going be their public and private utility. So we got a permit out there, for that water treatment plant for Thunderbird. Final, we put out here was the interconnects. And these are the interconnects that that has been provided us between the different districts, and how all the different districts kinda work together.

There's no really specific numbers with that, but there's definitely interconnects between some of the water districts out there. I'm gonna go I wanna go just keep going through here. Here, we got this data from the county, urban growth, land use areas, rural sites. The real interesting one is the subdivisions. So we can have the subdivisions now that pop up that's gone from the county. And then the other thing is you put the production wells over the top of it. So for an example, here's a subdivision here. We know that that's individual walnut wells. You can see it. We can click on that, and we know that, okay, this is a Surrey Ridge Estates.

From there, we can look at a specific well permit that's in that Surrey region. So I'm I'm here, and this is my this this is my well permit. I can go over the state engineers website to to click there, pull up image documents if the site if the state site is working, it yeah. Now look at that. So I can look at, you know, the information the state has, pump installation, what the original permit was, or where the well permit is, and the original file.

So we can, you know, we can look at the various documents that are on file with the state engineer's office with the original permit, that it was gonna be into the Dawson Aquifer depth of 600 feet. So max seed is what the permit says. And then we go to the well construction log and see, okay, this one was actually drilled to the bottom, you know, down to 600 feet. So we know that that that that's looking pretty good for that well and how it was constructed. But we can also go back and see the pump installation, see where the pump is is set, and the pump intake depth is at 500 feet.

So you're now you're you're not right at the very bottom, but you're down definitely in the aquifer. So this well should be in pretty good shape and should be able to be pumping some pretty good water out of the Dawson Aquifer as an individual well. And these are just examples of of what might be out there. That's just one subdivision, but you can look throughout the county. You can see the different subdivisions that are around MacArthur Ranch. You can go over to Grand View. You can go over to Homestead Hills. I mean, you you all of a sudden, Chatfield East and look at those individual wells that are in there. So if you have a subdivision where there's some issues and someone's saying, okay. Well, you know, I'm not getting water.

My individual well is not working. We can go to the subdivision, find the individual well, and kind of do a forensic analysis on why that is not why that well is not performing the way it should. So that that's some of that information as we go through land use. And now the final thing that I wanted, you know, we also have, you know, water supply zones that we could overlay, which shows, you know, what zones are where, central, you know, here's the marginal area of forest, so on and so forth. That can be looked at as well.

But what I wanna get to is spend a little time on after I get through this, production wells, is I'm gonna go over to the s p five analysis. Well, I don't have to s p five. I want to do Penta. So there's the cross sessions. This comes up across there.

And again, what you can do with this is you can, you know, leave the sub leave that on, see how these see how these subdivisions, where these things cross, the the water, the cross sections. Click on the cross section, and then open up the cross section to kinda see, okay, what's going on with the aquifers in this specific area. So you can see it's the DD across this northern portion here. Here's your different aquifers. Here's the nets.

Here's the sand packages that are in there that are the really the water bearing formations. There's obviously clays and others, but, you know, you can see the Laramie formation, you know, really has zero water in it. You got the Fox Hills, there might be some in there. Arapahoe, there's some. Denver, there's some. So, you know, that's kind of how we come up with, you know, the the net sands or the water producing, portion of each one of these aquifers. So that's one example. And then like I said, you can see where it goes across certain subdivisions if you zoom in. Okay. Which one am I looking at?

Where's the depth? Give you that information. So I'm gonna turn off the cross sections, and then I'm gonna turn off the subdivisions too. So then I wanna go to the final one is, Petro By Aquifer. This is where I think we need to do just a little bit of work, and I'll explain why. I'm just gonna go to the Denver as an example, but it's the same in each one of them. So if I click on the Denver, I'm gonna get first the aquifer, you know, kind of this is the outcrop of the of of the of the Denver where there's, you know, recharge and other things that are going on. But here's what here's where you can do the structure top. I'm not sure why it's not showing up. There we go.

Structure top that shows you the elevation below the surface area. What I don't like about this is that we obviously have it in '55, like 5575, which, you know, you have to subtract off what is the the elevation, the surface elevation to get your depth below the surface. What I'm gonna do is gonna have, Speros go ahead and change this to an actual number below the surface, so you don't have to do that math. There's the top of the Denver Aquifer. Here's the bottom of the Denver Aquifer.

And again, I'll do the same thing just to make sure that, you know, we're not you know, it's it's easy for someone to look at and say, oh, the top is at 300 feet, the bottom the lower is at, you know, 700 feet. I'm gonna get that I'll get that cleaned up. Here's the isocor map, and the isocor map is simply the saturate not the thickness of the aquifer. And I would say it's all saturated, but there's certain packages in there like we talked about before, the net pay, the sand packages that are really the water bearing formations. The formations that's going to release water.

There's going to be water in the shales and all that fun stuff, but it's it's just not gonna they're not gonna release water. So you can see, for an example, across the the county, here's where you see the deepest portions, or the thickest portions, I should say, of the Denver Aquifer. As you get out towards the edges, as we would expect, you're starting to see pinch pinch them out. And right up in here, you see really very little Denver Aquifer. And it doesn't start even improving till you start going to the east up in here.

After you get done with the ice core map, the real this is where you'd look at what's your net pay, which means as as we just as we just walked through, I'll just look right over in this area here. The IsoCore map says over in this area that, you know, we got about 800 feet of aquifer material. Well, if you go to the net pay, you're 400 feet. So 400 feet of that aquifer material really is not gonna produce water. It's the shales, it's the clays, it's this that's intermixed with those sand packages. So that is what we come up with Petra. Petra will show us that as we look at it.

Hey, Bill.

Yes.

We're having a little trouble, tracking with your cursor, so you might just slow down a bit on where you're pointing things out on the maps.

Okay. My apology. That's the joy of the Internet. So did you I mean, did everybody hear about the Denver and what we were doing? Do you want me to go back through the structure tops and bottoms? Or how do we wanna go through that one? So this is like so this is the net And

don't need to back up, but you can keep on going from here slower. Yeah.

So what the interesting thing is, is to really then overlay this net pay with our cross sections of Petra. So for an example, I'm gonna do e e. And what you can look at there is you'll pull up the the report, and you'll be able to really take a look at you can go back to the map, and you can look at, okay, here's obviously, there's not a lot of net pay here in the Denver getting better through here, and it's, you know, a lot better here with the purples. And, you know, it's not as good with the greens. So does that correlate well with your cross section?

And it appears to be. Here's the Denver. As we're kind of in the middle, there's a lot of stringing sands that are throughout each one of those aquifers. But if you head kind of in that middle part, it looks like it's pretty good. But then you get out to, you know, the the Far West, and there's really not much Denver at all. And so you take a look at that based upon thickness and where those net sands are, you can really get an idea. And again, the intent is for this is to give you an idea that, okay, in this area let's go back here. In this, I'm gonna close this. In this area, I have a well. What does it look like?

You know, is it you know, am I in the Denver Aquifer? Am I getting the best sands to be able to get water out of? And ideally, as we get better water level data, we can start looking at how the water levels are behaving in this area as well. We have some data obviously that we put in the report, but it's not dedicated wells, the monitoring wells, it's really hard to get through all the data, make sure you're looking at consistent data. So it can really only do kind of global trends at this time.

But if there are individual wells that we can turn into specific monitoring wells that are not pumped, that's really gonna improve that data, for what water levels are. So it's a it's meant to be a tool for people to go out, you know, whether it be water providers, the county, or, individual property owners to really take a look at, okay, what does the aquifer look like? And is it really an aquifer issue with my well, or is it really a construction issue, or a combination of both? And again, that water level data is gonna be that one that's gonna be the interesting one to see if we get better data to kinda see how that's all correlating with with what we are computing as a result of the, the aquifers in the in the Denver Basin. And that's really kind of the the nuts and bolts of of this, GIS mapping.

But there's quite a bit of data there. And, it's really meant to be a a database that you can get all this information in one, you know, one website, if you will. You can get you can get your, information for your for your wells. You can get information on the Denver Basin. You can compare it to S B 5.

That's another thing that we did. I haven't gone through that one. I I can, but, you know, the S B 5 analysis also, this is what the state does. You can look at the Upper Dawson. That's just kind of the the grid that was done, and you can see the points that we used to basically take a look at what that was gonna be for, you know, you know, parts of the points to figure out what our volume would be for the s p five.

The one thing that we haven't done with S P 5, just because it might be a little clunky is to have some of those heat maps for S B 5. Our intent in this report was to look at S B 5 versus what is physically there. The petro analysis really is the one that, you know, shows kinda where the Denver Basin is, the aquifers. And that's about all all we have in there. And I don't know if there's other data that you all wanna see. If there's questions, I can definitely answer them, or attempt to answer them.

Tricia Bernhardt, can you tell us, how we can access this? Is it available now for us to look at? And two, how did you choose all the cross sections?

So the cross sections were were done as a result of review of over 550 geophysical logs and raster logs that we're we have available to us. And we chose basically looked at ones that were very that and had good data. As you can imagine, over time, there has been a lot of these logs that have just they're not clear or they're not the the scaling is wrong or something along that line. So we really tried to focus in on those logs that are that that we could definitely get normalized and in the same, really with the same scale, so we're looking at the same thing. And have enough data in those cross sections to really kinda understand how to link this together.

And again, this is done with the computer, you know, when you put in the geophysical laws, you get things normalized. It can, you know, it'll draw that line, if you will, about where those net sands are. Obviously, the more data we have, that's reliable, can make those cross sections even better. And then to answer your, let's see. I I apologize. The first question I always, it's still available. Yes. It is available right now. There is a link in the report. But you just have to hit control and click on it, and it's out there for anyone to play with.

Yeah. This is Don Langley. The link is on page seven-two, and it's embedded in the text. And Bill, this is an ArcGIS map. So that data what what you showed us today is what we should see if I click on this today. Correct? Correct. Okay. I mean, I I spent a lot of time in in there looking at the well data, which was very, very convenient, where you could click on the well and the depth and the yields and all that just pops right up. I did not find a lot of this other stuff, but I'll get to work on that. Thank you.

Yeah. I mean, the main thing is is when I went to the original when it originally pops up, there are some of these boxes that are highlighted. Definitely go to there and then open up the caret, like I just did there. Open up the caret and go down and really and and click on the ones that you want. I mean, Arapaho, for example.

Okay? Here's the grid of the Arapaho. Whatever it might be, make sure you're clicking on, and that green check mark is in each one of those boxes So you can, you know, get to the data that you need. Like, for example, this here I have Petra by Aquifer, which is the main one of the main file folders, it's not checked. So it's not gonna show any Petra.

So I gotta click on the Petra, then it comes up. And then if I go to the Denver, I can look at all the different, you know, tops, bottoms, net the the thickness of the aquifer and the net pay. And you can just click on them. It gets clunky if you don't shut off one because you're looking at different data. And then, you know, you do have to zoom in a little bit to really kinda get the actual numbers. And this is like I said, this is gonna be one of those ones that I'm gonna ask Spiros to do is not have five seven I'm sorry if I couldn't hear 5575, but I'm gonna have it 200 feet below the surface, whatever that comes out to be. So you don't have to do the math of, like, what is your surface elevation and subtract that off of it.

Sean, do you have a question?

I do. Bill, fantastic. This is is such a leap forward for our county. This is this is great stuff. Question on as we're clicking through, and I'll use your term carrots. Yep. Can we sort by going back to the commercial wells since that's where the majority of the large amounts of water are taken out? Can we source can we source by the size either by production or the amount they're decreed for? Like, if I want to look at all the 300 acre foot and larger wells, would it populate, or is is that something that needs to be added in the future?

That's something that we have that data. I have not put that in, but we do have that data. We have those commercial wells. We have irrigation wells. And the way we've set it up is simply is, one, we got the exempt wells, which are the six digits or five digits with no suffix after it. Then we have the fee wells that are associated with those decrees, and then we have the irrigation wells. So, yes, we have that data. That's something I can also ask Firoz to do is like, okay, we have all those wells out there, but now let's code color code them, if you will, where your commercial wells are versus your individual or not wells. So you can get an idea where those things are on. So absolutely, we can get that data Thank for you.

Harold. Fascinating information. A question. I think one thing to monitor is the productivity, particularly of the large capacity wells over time. Is it possible to include in this not only identifying those large wells, but also their productivity?

A kind of a canary in the in the coal mine, if those things start to decline, that's telling us a lot about the health of the aquifer, certainly in that area. And I would think that might provide our successors in following water commission some some good data points of what's really going on out there. I'm reflecting back to the comments on on Centennial we had versus some of the others that knowing knowing the decline curves of those wells could be vitally important to us. So I'm wondering if if it's possible to identify those and then have an ongoing program of monitoring their productivity.

Yeah. I think that data is out out there, but it's gonna be individually specific with each individual water provider. Whether they wanna provide that information over time to update this map. The state does not have that information on a well to well basis. They just have the well permits and, you know, if they they can request those meter readings. But typically, those meter readings are filed with state. Some are, some aren't. So we would need to get that from the individual property owners or individual Yeah.

Something to consider we might request, and then just have it fed in and then update, because that's in everybody's best interest to know what's going on. Something to think about.

Let me just give you a quick answer first, Jim, real quick. So one of the one of the things I've been working on in the background is a notion of getting all the water providers, I'll say, into almost like a water provider association, if you want to call it that. You know, a kind of a working group, where they all could come together and meet. What I saw in the focus group is, you know, we had them all in the room, and they were all engaged. Of course, maybe that's partly protecting their interest, but a lot of knowledge there.

If we had such a group, and if we met on a regular basis, I think we would then approach them and say, can we see your well data? Can we see your hydrographs for your wells? Can we talk to you? Can you reveal to us your production data? And maybe as a group, we could get enough of that to get the picture you're talking about. I mean, is it two fifty GPM well or not? Right? So that's a that's somewhere we maybe we'll work on after this goes forward. James, Jim, I'm sorry.

I think my experience with our wells down there with the water district is the productivity can be affected by a bunch of things. Age of the motor, they get weaker as they get older, This type of screen that's down there, quality of water that can plug the screen. I mean, there's so much stuff that we've found that income that can impact production. And, you know, so we're monitoring our our pump performance and, you know, how the you know, how the part of the water is up in the screen. And and, you know, so there's certain triggers where we pull a pump and, you know, replace it or flush the screen or or and, you know, how you develop your well and lettuce well we had.

We use instead of a gravel pack, we use the glass pack. And so we expect that's gonna be a lot better for us and make the well perform better, longer. So I I I think you gotta be careful when you start to say, well, production is going to be a trigger to see how the aquifer is doing. I'm not so sure that that's the case.

That's why it's got to be very broad based. So any one group of wells can affect it. But overall, it might give us a good sense of what's going on in the aquifer.

Yeah. Thanks, Jim. That's good information. Evan?

Yeah. Thank you, Evan, Hila. So, Bill, this model that you have, this interactive, is really a snapshot in time, like a year ago or right now or something, right? How often should it be updated to add new wells as they come online? Like once a year or once every three years or every month?

I would say minimum yearly. And really what the data is gonna where it's gonna change is to evaluate and see if there's a better geophysical log that's along one of those one of those cross sections and see if that helps out. Or, you know, are there different wells that are added in or taken off? Typically, that's pretty pretty quick process. That's something that could be happen that can happen with the county, or it can stay with, say, a Spheros or something like that with a small annual contract to make sure that that, works.

But, yeah, it's basically just comparing the data that we have associated with. Yes. This was a snapshot in time, comparing that data with the new data and just updating that, well, table, if you will, that is referenced and and evaluated in this GIS modeling.

So you're talking about along the transects, but what about generally? I mean, those heat maps are informed by Wells as well. Right?

Yeah. That's that's what I'm referring to is you can you know, as new data comes in, you can look along those, cross section to see if you can improve that. Also, every well that's out there, you know, and again, working back with Sean indicated, we're going to maybe get those commercial with those commercial and exempt wells separate out by different colors and irrigation wells. Then you can start seeing where wells come on and come off. You know, there are certain wells that are abandoned every year.

There are certain wells that obviously got new permits. So you'll we we that database, if you will, for all the wells can be updated. I would recommend no not longer than every year just because, you know, well permits change on an annual basis pretty you got enough data to actually make it worthwhile. But monthly probably would be overkill. I mean, you just be you would get three or four new wells in every month and okay. That's, you know, great, but that's a lot of time and not a lot of time, but some time and effort for three wells. It'd be better do annually. You know, three, five years is probably too too long out. So it's just something for the county to think about what they want for time wise. It's not a lot of work to do.

It's just, you know, what is it? Annually, is it the end of every year, is it by January 31, Something we could definitely talk about.

Okay. Yeah. It's a great tool. So we'll weave that into our recommendations about updating it.

Yeah. And and the other information that would be nice to have updated on an annual basis is just the new subdivisions, which is, you know, the GIS that the county has for the subdivisions, you know, it you know, that's a snapshot in time too. But as new subdivisions are added on, we just replace that existing database with a new one every year. So now we have the new subdivisions that are out there. Those type of things is, you know, the the decrees really don't change a whole lot, but, you know, we'd look at that as well just where there's new data. But it's really the wells and the subdivisions that really give a a good snapshot on an annual basis what's going on.

Okay. Any any more questions? Lauren, I'm thinking that, you know, this is a gosh. This is a really powerful tool. So much data embedded in there.

You know, I don't I don't know how we, you know, get the public to even start to explore or want to get in. And we may have to make, like, a little video, right, that says this is here. You know, kinda shows the the output screens, the kinds of things you can go find. And then and then people that are ambitious can, in the end, you just kinda gotta click your way through it and just keep clicking and seeing what you get. So I think it I think it's really I think it's really pretty powerful to have in the plan. So thank you, Bill. We appreciate that. Yep. Absolutely. I'll stop sharing now.

Thank you, Bill. You know, it's amazing how much information you can pack into maps like that and all the data and forms and all the all the the well permits and everything. It's it's great to have that all in place. So, yeah, very, very powerful tool. Exactly.

And as as Harold indicated, if there's other data, like, you know, this pumping data that might be by individual, water providers or anything like that. That's the good thing about that is you can add it in there and increase that power of that visualization as other data comes in. This is just really the publicly available data and what we're able to have. But if you can get, like, you know, some groups to give some of that pumping data, that that that would definitely add into the the power.

Yep. And I I think the the suggestion for video is a good one. It's good way to help help people figure it all out. Yeah. So yeah. You may have picked up a few times. Bill said he would work with Spheros to get something done. Bill, incidentally has has recently left Spheros, and so we're looking to continue relationship with Speros and Bill also to get this get finished the plan together.

Who this is Evan, Ella again. Who owns the model at this point? Is it gonna be the counties, or is this gonna be Spheros, or is this gonna be whose?

It's a work product that the county is paid for, so the county, I would say, owns it.

Yep. I would concur. Would only thing say the county would need to consider is who do they want to have updating it. It's it's like I it's not difficult. So county GIS folks could do it with a little bit of training. You know what mean? I think we did that for Arapahoe County. We spent half an hour on the phone with the GIS folks in Arapahoe County, similar type mapping, and they just picked it up right away, and then they can grab the data that they need from the state engineer's office or what else what else. It's pretty pretty straightforward.

Yeah. That's a that's a good tip because there are GIS people here in the building. Yep. So they might just take to it right away.

Exactly. Maybe we

can get them to make a little video. So Okay.

Thanks a lot, Bill. Appreciate it. K. Now if, we can we'll turn to this latest draft of the water plan and see if you all have any last comments included in our next version of this, this plan. Yes, ma'am.

Tricia Bernhardt. I know we're all tired of making changes. On the second page where we start into the comprehensive master plan policies, I kind of think it's an odd spot for that discussion. Maybe that discussion goes at the end.

Where where are you, Tricia?

So we're on page two of chapter 10.

Of the chapter 10 draft. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Thank you.

The the new one. Because we're going into basically talking about the recommendations, and then there's this very small odd paragraph about the comprehensive master plan, which I think actually needs to be expanded and maybe put at the end of this chapter. One of the things we need to talk about is that the comprehensive master plan needs to also incorporate the recommendations of this water plan. The two need to sync together, and there needs to be a little discussion about how that would happen. But I do think the placement of that paragraph is kind of funky.

K.

You said you said that was on page two of?

Yeah. Page two. The the small paragraph on the comprehensive master plan.

Yeah. I've kind of wondered myself as we've been kind of getting these things all put together. And I hope you all had a chance to read chapter three, which is the land use chapter. My opinion, I thought it was really well written. Load nicely.

You really cover a lot of ground. It's kind of complicated. So I'm kind of asking Lauren maybe a couple little flow charts we might use. But as I read that chapter, it made me think that, you know, at some point, are we going to say that we think the board of county commissioners needs to reach back to the comprehensive master plan and actually make some modifications there. Things about maybe renewable water or, you know, some of these these things that we're trying to say.

These principles are really important to us because it's kinda the comprehensive master plan turns into kind of a key document. Right? For the land use planning people. So it's an opinion I have. Yeah. Harold.

Tricia, are you saying if the conference master plan, should should the committee and water include, like, just to look at 18 a again?

Yes. I also that was one of my other recommendations I was gonna bring up is that maybe not necessarily I don't know that we need to discuss more 18A in this document than is already in here. But at some point in time, I think this commission should be reviewing and looking at discussing some of the provisions in 18A.

Yeah, Harold.

I have a couple comments. I thought, Mike

It's on. He's he's got a little closer. Okay.

I'm sorry. This is mechanical equipment. I I thought this rewrite of chapter 10 was quite well done. My compliments. I do have a few concepts from a policy level we might consider.

On the opening comment, the fourth line down, extend extending the available water supplies to reliable meet projected demands, I think a policy statement as the county transitions to broader conjunctive use. I think that conjunctive use concept I'd recommend be included consistently. And and that one paragraph down, if you look at the fourth paragraph, it says landscaping practices and securing renewable supplies. And then on the next pair page, the comprehensive master plan policies when we get down to that last bullet, I would include I would strike the word new. Water providers should have a the state requires it anyway.

So the water providers should have water conservation.

So I'm I'm not with you where you're at, Harold.

I'm on page two. Yes. New district and plan development requirements.

Okay. And

then I would go down to the bottom of those little dotty points where it says requiring, I drop the word new.

Oh. Gotcha.

And then on the next page, conservation policies, third bullet down, continue financial report to South Metro Water Supply Conservationatives and other initiatives. There's some other good ideas out there. Beyond that, I thought it was really well done. My compliments to you. That's one person's opinion.

Yeah. Well, thank you. I would I would tell, make sure everybody understands we have a debt of gratitude to James Echelon, who really, put a lot of time into, massaging language and seemed to really I guess he knows this well because he pulled out what we were thinking and put it into words, but that's what he's paid to do too. So thank you, James.

It's done.

Yeah. Yeah. Clark.

Yeah. Had one change. I thought we had agreed to this last week. Second paragraph on page one, third line down, where it says, minimizing urban level development solely on groundwater. I thought we had changed that to prohibiting. Thought we wanted to make it crystal clear.

Well, we had a discussion of what urban level means.

So

I guess it would be nice to have that defined somewhere.

Yeah. I I you know, after studying chapter three and doing a little bit more reading, you know, even if we tried to put in policy that or have the the board of county commissioners put in policy to prohibit something like that, I don't know that that would withstand an appeal process. Right? The appeal process is always behind the scenes, and they would always am I am I correct in saying that? So, I mean, we we can put it in here and see how it flies.

Mister chairman, the way you tie that together, I I give a lot of thought to that concern, is water appeal. Because it otherwise, you're point seven five acre feet. So as soon as you tie that to get a water appeal or increase density, then that works. And it would stand a legal challenge. Having learned that the hard way.

It's a good way.

Can you clarify that a little bit with what you're thinking with that language?

He's bringing out minimizing urban development solely. Yep. He's eliminating minimizing. Change that from minimizing to in order to get water appeal or increase density cannot be solely on groundwater. As soon as you get there, that's that's just policy. And it's been you know, we've been down that it's been through the course.

But here, all the water appeal is to reduce the demand per capita or per unit. Right? Yep. Yes. Not to increase density. It's to reduce the demand per unit.

That's fine. It has the same effect. I'm with you. The same effect.

Yeah. Boils down to the economics of the development.

That's right. Yeah. So I think Evan's right. But you get to the same place.

Yeah. I think we'll dwell on that one a little bit.

That's that's that one. Alright. This is Evan Ehle again. I had a couple of comments on, let's see. We're on page three. You have those bullets that are open circle bullets. And, it's just just stylistic, I guess. But the the second one on page three says use of drought tolerant Colorado Escape landscaping. It seems to me Colorado Escape is low water demanding as well as drought tolerant. Right?

So I would insert that in there that you are putting in low water using and drought tolerant. And then throughout the rest of it, it seems like I don't know. Maybe I'm wrong. I guess I was probably conflating what's in the later. But I think we should somehow adopt Coloradascape as the words to use anytime we're talking about landscaping as it becomes a countywide goal, I guess, something like that.

There there's a rumor that Mark Marlowe and Castle Rock has copyrighted that term. So

Well, he needs to show up with the copyright, and then we'll we'll talk to

him. Yeah. I mean, they're they're very much promoted in Castle Rock. So I'm, you know, I'm game to to say that's the preferred way to talk about landscaping for sure.

Second question I have is back near the end there on the page five, and there's a big discussion about the groundwater modeling and so forth. And the use of the term test boreholes shows up several times. Do we really mean monitoring wells? Do we mean new wells put in just for the purpose of monitoring?

Yeah. So I can answer that. Yeah. Test boreholes was the term that that Bill used in the groundwater report. So that would be a new drilling. It would be a brand new hole, but it's not a well. It's it's a test hole, test bore. Right? So, it just getting to the Denver, And this was in some of the backup information he sent to his technical memo. That might be a $60,000 drill. It's kind of the number of thinking. But then you get all this data. Right? And you'd have a fresh hole. And then you turn it into a monitoring well when you're done getting your data.

And you can actually put it online where people could watch, you know, to this point a while ago. That's not a production well. I mean, it's just a monitoring well. So that data should should be really reliable and stay mostly pure.

And that's where I got hung up. Because I've always referred to them as monitoring wells. You can get an easy permit from the state for a monitoring well

because it's a non production. So to get to do a monitoring well, you first have to drill a borehole.

Oh, yeah. That's what a well is. It's a hole. So I don't care. It's just, that batch. It just seemed to not make sense because if you call it a monitoring well, I mean, that's exactly why you're putting it in the ground, to monitor water levels. I mean, that's the whole idea.

But it's more than that. We're we're putting it in the ground to, determine with absolute, I'll say, local precision, the tops and the bottoms of the aquifers. We also want to do the water content, specific yield of the aquifer in that location. Net sands, essentially, you come out of that. So it's a data, you get a lot of data out of it, drilling it and studying it.

You may do, he's talked about doing nuclear magnetic resonance to get a real picture of the aquifer in that location, the best picture that you can get. And then when you're done with all that, then you turn it into a monitoring well.

Okay. Well, I think we should call them logged something or other so that you get all the information you're looking for.

Okay. We'll work on that wording. Tricia?

Just bringing up a point. I'm I'm all in favor of additional data. However, there probably are a lot of monitoring wells that we could get some information from throughout the county. So, you know, drilling one new borehole, or are you talking about a 100 new boreholes or, you know.

So the idea here is, my thinking, and this is this is something I've been trying to develop over the last few months here. You try and put this in the middle of a neighborhood that's saying they have trouble. K? So it's not, well, let's just go find a well and see if that'll give us enough data to help people over in that neighborhood. Theoretically, I would say you'd love to put it like maybe in the middle. And then the two neighborhoods that came and talked to us, Happy Valley, or Happy Canyon. Happy Canyon, Happy Valley. Happy Canyon. That's a granola bar. Happy Canyon and Grammy Estates.

They both talked about that, and and it just made me think. I mean, they they really they're watching. They care. And if it's not a ton of money, it just might be a really valuable tool that that really speaks to the individual well owner community. Yeah. Right? This is really focused to them. That's kind of the thinking. I don't know if it'll go anywhere, but it's in there. Harold?

Mister chairman, I I had some comments on chapter seven since we were talking about that earlier. I think if you looked on page three page two, excuse me, of chapter seven, I think that legally available groundwater aka paper water, the physically extractable groundwater is a is a good concept. I believe it needs to flow through to I have marked some other areas because the the the final graph at the end, page seven dash 30, shows massive amounts of groundwater that's not been accounted for. But it doesn't say anything about what's economically viable to get and what's what are proven reserve versus this is the discussion we've had before. And I think that that that must be dramatically strengthened that this has nothing to do with the economic viability of being able to extract or use that water.

I don't wanna get the word out there that Douglas County mis misconception that we have a 140,000 acre feet of of annual acre feet of Arapah Arapah Basin available because that may not be true. And we're backing ourselves in a hole. I think that that must be dramatically expanded and all the way through to talk about fact it's there doesn't mean it's economically viable or reliable. And that's just I I don't wanna scare people. By the same token, I don't wanna give false expectations because our overall county direction, I believe, is moving to conjunctive use and taking pressure off of the aquifers.

So some additional comments I'm happy to give you, but I think as an oversight, I think that that's gotta be even stronger stated more strongly.

Just to be clear on the next page, seven thirty one, that whole section, that whole page is about physically extractable groundwater that follows that graph that that you'd mentioned. So is that yet what we need there, you think? Or

Well, there's a there's a paragraph on that, the third paragraph down, that you and you're correct. But I think it needs to flow through the whole report, particularly when you show graphs of that amount of water. This is what's technically available. We don't know if it's all economically viable. So I think just having two paragraphs of it and what, a 32 page report, doesn't really capture the spirit when we show these huge graphs and the amount of water. I don't wanna mislead anybody.

Hey, Harold. I'm gonna jump in and say, chapter eight then. Same thing. Right at the beginning, 8.1, one of my big complaints is showing this graph the way it's shown. I understand that those numbers are what we've come up with, but that graph just jumps out at me as, oh my gosh, look at how much groundwater we have. So I would like some additional language to go along with that, and maybe the graph goes at the end of the report, not just like right in the beginning. Look, we have so much water.

I

don't know. Tame that down with some language.

Yeah. I mean, it's it's, you know, on that graph, certainly understand what you're saying. In both cases, it's projected increases supplies. I mean, if you go back to both Castle Rock and Parker, Their projected supplies at that twenty, fifty point are 100% renewable. Boy, that's a pretty tall order that we're going to have to get to that.

So, I mean, these are projections out in time. I don't I don't think we can deny, you know, what what the data says about the the physical sands and the structure of the aquifers. How much water has been withdrawn to date since development, is a key question. That's a hard one to figure out. So, I'm not sure we're off target on this.

I mean, I'll I'll read it again myself and try and see if I think, you know, to take your comments, Harold, if there's places where we ought to toughen it up a little bit, or just make sure that people understand. We know we know the aquifers are there, we know a lot about them, but there's always, you know, circumstance where the water may not be to the extent we think it is.

So And and and

much but

on the other hand, there's a lot of water there.

Well, there is if it's all recoverable. And and there's a dynamic since this is a 2050 plan. I think as lifting costs become higher, some of these waters that are available are not gonna be economically viable as electric power costs rise because you're lifting water 700, 800 feet, seven pounds to the gallon.

Yeah, I mean, we're lifting at 1,300 feet today.

We're at 1,300 feet. So I just think, I think as we go forward, we have to have a a long term perspective that some of these water supplies ultimately may not be viable. And and I I really don't wanna face residents saying, gee, there's a 160,140 acre feet of groundwater out there. Why are we going to renewable?

Well, the same could be said about renewable. I mean, if you if you're lifting water from the lower end of the South Platte all the way back to Douglas County, you're pumping it. And the electricity is going to increase the same for that pumping as it's going to increase for this pumping.

Oh, no question. But you're moving 25,000 or 30,000 acre

feet. Unfortunately, it's uphill.

I'm sorry?

Unfortunately, it's uphill.

Yeah. It's uphill no matter what. No matter what renewable project you do in this county, you're gonna be moving water uphill. So you're either gonna be moving it straight up a borehole in a well, or you're gonna be moving it across two or three counties. But, I mean, you're still gonna be pumping that water, and those economics are still gonna be part of the factor.

Okay. So I don't know. I think the the more important piece that might be left out of this is the fact that we're talking about the quantity of groundwater in the whole county, which includes all the way, you know, way out to the eastern border and a lot of area that's not at all populated. Or maybe not even within reach if Castle Rock or Parker wanted to, you know, extract water, 200 or not 200 miles, but what it would be, a 100 miles east and then run it in a pipe back to Castle Rock. Those economics are difficult too because it's a it's a long lift, and it's a long travel.

So I don't know. I I I take your point that we we show the amount of water available in the whole county, but it's not all of that all that gettable because of geography as well as depth.

I think one of the overall themes that we have to keep in mind, at least from my perspective, an objective of this is to let people know that we're not going to run out of water. There is water there. So that's kind of what this picture shows. Now, there's a whole lot of complexity in how you get it. There's different efficiencies associated with different technologies and whether you're pumping water up or pumping water horizontally, and how much you're reusing and what kind of technology you are for reusing.

But so there's a lot of issues, and there's a lot of reason to conserve, and there's a lot of reason to be thoughtful about it. But you don't have to worry in a kind of a global sense that the county's gonna go dry. And and I think that that's kind of a overriding theme that we wanna get out there.

Yeah. I think I mentioned that in front of the wildfire task group. Right? That no. I no. I I think it's just it's a it's a solid point. It is complex. I I really, in in my thinking, just want to try and I think it's really important we keep emphasizing to to people that groundwater's finite. We can't we just can't live on it forever. We've got time to re we got time to act.

We got time to be thoughtful, to use your term. But but we gotta find we gotta find the alternatives. We just have to. We don't wanna put expiration dates on homes. This is Sean. I I couldn't

agree more. I think we have to work with not our hair's on fire, but some level of urgency that we need to wean ourselves off of the finite resource, which is the aquifer.

My my hair fire wouldn't last very long. But thanks for that. That's a good that's a good comment. So any other comments you all wanna make? I did also work through chapter four. I don't know if you noticed chapter four in there. The the report out, if you will, of the focus groups. I thought that was captured really well too. It was chapter two. I'm sorry. Yeah. Chapter four is the water providers. That's right. Chapter two. So I think we got that in there.

I don't know. I think it's I think it's looking pretty pretty strong right now. I mean, I think it's come come pretty good ways here. So and Tricia, just so you know, I put in wording revisions to six point five point one, and I think it'll look better. K? So Mark?

I agree that I think we're at getting to a point where we're we're winding this draft down, and we gotta get it out there. A question that I have for Saul, and maybe it's more staff, is what happens after August? And then maybe maybe that's something we wanna put on an agenda for this group to discuss June, July, sometime

Lauren Polvor with staff. Is that a what happens to the water commission or what happens to the plan after August?

What After commission. Okay.

So the plan will go to be adopted by the board at public hearing. After that, it'll be kind of up to the board on looking through recommendations and what, what gets implemented?

We've talked about a number of things that we think we haven't really zeroed in on any. But we've talked around a number of things that we think maybe monitoring should be or different data should be updated annually. How should we follow-up on this? And I just think that's the kind of thing we ought to maybe start shifting our thinking towards.

Yeah. I mean, I'd agree with that. I'm I'm already I'll say I'm already kind of thinking about how I I would want to approach the board of county commissioners with this is good. We got this done. There's the stake in the ground. Here's a water plan, but we're not finished. Right? That there's work that needs to carry on, I'm going to say maybe year after year, updating the data. We learn more things. Projects may come and go, population growth may stop.

Right? I mean, there's just, you know, all kinds of things could happen. We've just basically, we've touched just a little bit in the population projections with almost a kind of a dip in our toe in scenarios where we say, the population might be 10% less, or it might be 10% more. But that's really kind of the only place we do that. And I, I'm a firm believer in scenario planning. I know James is too. He's talked about it a lot. It's kind of another layer that, that you would kind of go on. The Colorado water planning, I think they really got to that in the, in in the later, or the second draft. So, I think there's a lot to keep doing.

I think there's, you know, I'm looking to keep us employed, if you will. So, I think there's a lot that we could do. I'm not sure how to take it to the commissioners. You got an election coming, you know, all that kind of stuff. I think they all care deeply about water. That's one thing that's that I think that we can say. So we'll work on that.

Harold?

Feeling these are pretty good recommendations going forward. It's gonna be commission's gonna have to chew on that, get some feedback. There's gonna my sense of it is an important role for this commission is the give and take as they consider what do they adopt, what do we mean, how does it fit. That's gonna be a pretty good job. It's and then the second, I I think the concept is as Trish brought out, we need to take a look once those recommendations are final. We need to take a look at 18 a, how that fits and are we on the right track all the way across. But I think we've got quite a bit more work ahead of this.

Yeah. When I talk about scenarios, we've got I think we have Christie from Colorado State University, who's a climate climate researcher with them. She just did a recent, update for us, on Earth Day. We sponsored that Parker Water. So she's got that whole climate picture.

So when we talk about scenario planning, I mean, that's that's the one you kinda gotta start to sink your teeth into and say, what happens, you know, if it stays dry like this? If this twenty two, twenty four year drought, really a hundred year drought. And that's when you try and, you know, that test your imagination. Right? If you say, well, okay, we're going to pretend that the water's never coming back. What do we do? But that's that's when you maybe lead to the best innovation as well. So I think there's a lot to continue continue working with. Wow. Are we done early?

Really? I mean, everybody's good right now? Everybody online? You all good up there? I'm not hearing Tony either. There's Sean. You you realize that that thumb is about a foot long on the screen.

It is. That's a pretty big one. You take James' hat off. I gotta put my cowboy hat on.

Yeah. Okay. And I think it's safe to say, you know, any anything comes to mind, any comments or things you want to suggest, always send an email to Lauren. She's very good about receiving that stuff and doing something with it. With that, I assume we're good to adjourn. K. Thank you, Will. Thanks for coming.

Appreciate it.

Yeah. Yeah.

Take care, guys.

Thank you.