Water Commission - Regular Meeting

All right, it's 3.30, so we'll go ahead and get started. Okay, so looks like we've got one, two, three, four, five, six, we got seven people here, so we're good to go. Then let's do a roll call, so if we start with Tricia.

Hart, present.

Sean Tonner, present. Evan Ehle, present.

Don Langley, present. Mickey Conway, present.

Jim Morris, present. Harold Smethels, present.

First order of business is we have two sets of meeting minutes because we had two meetings last month, if you all remember. We met on May 11th and May 18th. So we need to approve those meetings unless there's any need for an amendment or addition to those minutes.

Mr. Chairman, this is James Eklund. I just wanted to let you know I'm on virtually.

Oh, well, good, James. Always good to see you. although you just look like a name on the screen right now.

I'll move that we accept the minutes as drafted for both meetings, the 11th and the 18th.

Okay.

Second. Jim Morris.

Okay, great. All in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Here, none. So this is the second month in a row, I think, with no referral items. I think that's right. So we go past that. So discussion and action items. What would that be today? We have nothing on the agenda for discussion and action items. So we'll go to the information items. And we have visitors with us today. We have Mary Castle from Sedalia Water and Sanitation District, right? And Matt Collett from Leveers, I got that right? And they've both been doing some things that they're gonna share with us, some actions to improve their abilities. And so we'll go ahead and start with Mary, okay? Yeah, we are broadcasting globally, so be forewarned.

Good afternoon. Thank you for having me. I'm Mary Castle with Sedalia Water and Sanitation District. I'm here today to just give you an overview of what Sedalia has been up to. We have a lot going on and I know some folks are familiar with Sedalia, some are not. So just here to give a little bit of an overview and I'll go kind of quickly through the presentation just because I'm not sure how familiar you guys are, but then I can certainly get more in depth and answer questions at the end. So Sedalia is located right off of 85 and 67. I'm sure you guys see it or have been to Bud's Bar over the years. So we have faced many significant challenges over the last several years. The reliability of our existing infrastructure is a huge concern. we have a water tank that's over 130 years old it is i'm told the only riveted steel tank and operate in operation in the nation which is not a designation we want even though that's cool um so you know this just always it's been a problem for us um some of the pipes also date back over that 130 years with the remaining of them a lot of them in the installed in the 50s and 60s so well past our useful lifespan, different sizes, undersized. I've had water leaks where when you pull the pipe out of the ground, they disintegrate in your hand. So it's just been a long time coming to really improve our system. Just a little perspective, in 20 and 21, we started to incur, you know, $115,000 a year in leaks. seven years prior it was 37 000 total in all seven years so just exponentially our system is completely failing and that said also the number of taps versus our operating expenses that's always an issue for small districts we only have 94 taps a lot of the expenses associated with the infrastructure the wells the pumps know those are the same whether you have 94 taps or 3,000 taps so that's also been an issue we are also a low-income community so limited financial capabilities that said investment in the system is absolutely vital for continued water service so we have been working on a project for nine years running and I can't believe I'm saying nine years but that is the reality COVID affected that a little bit, but we are doing a full infrastructure replacement project. So all of our lines, our meters, services, we're incredibly excited. Our design is done and we received bids two weeks ago. So we're moving forward with this replacement. We have a few different phases, which I'll get into in the next slides. But again, there's no alternative to us. We have to replace our system to be able to continue to provide water to our community. We are funding this through two different funding sources. We have our USDA grant slash loan for $5.6 million, and we have our Douglas County ARPA grant for $2.6 million. We did have to go through an election and raise our property or our taxes, our mill levies, back in 2022 so that was approved um again that was a pretty big lift i mean we're asking a low-income community to raise taxes for water where they have leaks all the time but the message to the community um was that you know this is absolutely vital for us to continue to serve you so i feel like we people are saying well it's a scare tactic and it's like it's not a scare tactic it's our reality and and that is the case for a lot of small districts on this corridor and i think some people you know don't understand that so Ultimately, we have funding for $8.3 million moving forward with this critical project. So, we have two phases of the project. Our phase one, which is that $8.3 million, is replacing all the infrastructure. A really critical component of that is also an emergency water connection to Dominion Water. That line does run through Sedalia. Right now, with our water tank, we don't have enough fire protection. Because it's historic and on BNSF property, we can't touch it or replace it. So we have to have an emergency connection in case of fire. So that's a critical part of phase one. We have all the funding for it. Again, we went to bid on June 9th. We have eight bids, which is incredible. We've never gotten more than two or three for anything we've done. Usually we have to beg for a couple of those. So we were very excited to get eight bids in. They were competitive. Costs came in a little bit lower. We, of course, were conservative in our estimates. But the important piece of that is, you know, we're negotiating with a selected contractor right now. We hope to start construction in July or August. But we also have a little bit of funding to move towards a phase two water line project, which is the other side of the screen here. And that phase two, we do not have full funding for at this time. But what that is is infrastructure up to a second tank site. So infrastructure and the tank on the Sedalia landfill property. And probably most important, or I guess that's all important, but is a permanent connection to a renewable water system. So as part of this whole long process, Sedalia has also just evaluated our aquifers. And we did discover just last year that our aquifers have seven to 10 years left. And previously we thought it was upwards of 40 to 50 years. So this, again, is critical. Getting to that phase two and that renewable connection is really important.

Could you just chat about that a little bit more? I mean, how many wells you have, what aquifers are in, and why you think the life is now very limited?

Yeah, absolutely. So right now we operate primarily off of one Arapahoe well, and we do have two alluvial wells, but due to the filtration and some of the costs associated with those, those are used more for augmentation. We don't use our alluvial wells much. Sedalia, ironically, has a lot of water. We have a lot of water rights that we don't use and have never used. So our plan as part of phase one and phase two initially was to dig another well. So we have water rights in all different aquifers. We have the Arapaho, Laramie Fox, we have all different aquifers. And so when we were going through the analysis with our hydrologists and consultants in terms of where we want to dig the well, And then kind of the permanent connection was going to be in the future, five, 10, 15 years out. That's when they discovered that we're dropping so quickly. And I don't want you to quote me on this. I think it was 15 feet of year in our aquifers that basically we're depleting and we have seven to 10 years left. So when we looked at all the different locations, including the locations up on the landfill site, we just concluded that putting the money into a well with aquifers dropping so quickly is really problematic. Another issue we're running into is our Arapahoe well pump has failed consistently every two to three years for the last probably eight years. Initially we put it in and it lasted 16 years and now it's continuing to fail and that's also due to the drop in our Arapahoe well. We cannot get that pump low enough We get cascading water and the iron in that Arapahoe well basically mucks up our pump and it fails. So we're now also replacing our pump every couple of years. And that we've explored options of trying to coat the well, which is incredibly expensive, but stuff to try to mitigate that. But the reality is it just keeps dropping. So even if we did that, that would last for five years and then we'd be in the same position. So we do have that long range study that we can certainly share. That was... very big news to us, a little certainly unexpected. So as such, we've moved forward with, again, it's phase two, but conversations with Dominion Water and Castle Rock Water to understand what that permanent solution looks like for Sedalia.

Yeah, if you could share that with us, that'd be great.

Yeah, absolutely. So that does get us into the next kind of phase of what we're doing. Because we have to understand what that permanent renewable water source looks like, we have also just implemented, I guess, a growth planning and rate analysis study. We have Hazen and Sawyer completing that for us. They've done that for many small districts. And we do have a representative here who can answer questions more intelligently than I can as well. But basically, this study, again, we started conversations with Dominion and Castle Rock Water and I think everybody's collectively saying, okay, what can we do? What should we do? And then they post questions to Sedalia in terms of, okay, what about growth? Do you guys want to grow? Do you want to remain as a district? How do you want to partner? And we don't have the answers to those questions. And I think that's a problem with a lot of small districts is we don't have the data. We don't have the answers. We don't have the financial ramifications, like the long-term financial sustainability of what any of these options look like. So that is the study that we are completing right now. So again, this is to help us facilitate the conversations with Dominion and Castle Rock Water and understand what that looks like because everybody, and this is so cool, I've been with Sedalia Water for almost 17 years and I think everyone has been on their own little island for so long and these last several years we all have, we understand partnerships, they're not important, they are vital. Sedalia cannot exist without this corridor, without the county, without Dominion and Castle Rock Water And we know that. And I think it's really awesome to see the seat at the table and the water commission. But we still don't have the answers because we are a small district. And I mean, we didn't even have maps. Like we had people who were on the board for 40 years who would walk out with me and say, well, when I was 12, this line was installed through Bob's property. And that's how we got our map. So we've come a long way, but we have a lot of things we still need answered before we can make intelligent decisions and really engage with the larger folks to understand what those partnerships look like. So that's what we're going through right now. How many current taps? We have 94 current taps. With the proposed phase one, I think we're up to around 110. There are some properties in the district that don't have water, so we're providing them taps, and there are a few periphery properties that are looking to connect, or like the Castle Rock lift station that will be in Sedalia. So we have a few increased taps. But this This growth study is for Sedalia, but also what happens in the future if people want water and they're near Sedalia, who do they go to? And what does that look like? So as part of that, they were kicked off last month. So we're just kind of early on. did forget to say that the commissioners just released, they are funding this study. Sedalia, we were trying to figure out how to fund it, and when I was, I went to the water focus meeting last month or two months ago, and that was a question that Lauren and that committee posed. They're like, how do we help the small districts in the community? And that's the answer, is we need to have the experts evaluate these decisions, these discussions. So the commissioners did just release the funding for this effort to move forward. But as part of that, they did want us to come here and talk to you guys about it and also just see if there's anything else. If you guys had questions on it, first and foremost. But also just make sure you guys have a comfort level of what we're planning to move forward with. But yeah, right now we're just doing our data collection and then the growth and demand projections. They'll do some financial modeling and then, you know, get into evaluation of the long-term financial stability of the district. With that, I think that was it anyway. I don't know why the last slides aren't pulling up, but I just, I thank you guys again. I think, again, it's so neat to see this corridor coming together and just looking at these small districts. One last story, because, again, I think you probably all know, but I just reiterate it whenever I can, just a story of why it's so critical and these partnerships are so critical. Maybe six or seven years ago, we had a pretty big water line leak right off of Manhart, so right in front of the Jarmart. So that's a CDOT highway. And we have three, basically, working valves in the district. So when there's a water line leak, we have to shut down the entire district. Once in a while, we get to shut down half the district. But it obviously has huge ramifications. So we had a water line leak. And our emergency crews that typically work in Sedalia told us they could get to us in five weeks. So that's catastrophic. And they're a great group. And the reality is, though, with a small district, we are small. And they have other priorities. So when you get emergency crews that can get to you in five weeks, I mean, that wasn't an option. So at that time, I called Tim Friday at Castle Rock Water, who's since retired. And I just said, can you guys help? And he sent us Castle Rock Water's emergency crew that afternoon and got us up and running. But that's the stuff small districts deal with. And it's nobody's, it's just the reality, but these partnerships and figuring out this collaborative approach is so critical. So appreciate all the work you guys are doing and can certainly answer any questions. Or I have Hazen Sawyer here as well.

Yeah, Evan, go ahead.

You mentioned, I guess what I didn't hear was what is your water treatment plant? What is it? Is it just filtration, or what are you doing?

It is just filtration for our alluvial wells, which we don't use much. So our tank serves, and then we have chlorine. Our operator injects chlorine and does all of our actual treatment, but we just have filtration just for the alluvial wells.

And so you say you have a lot of surface water rights from West Plum, I guess, but you can't use them because you don't have a treatment plant to treat the water, essentially?

Yeah, I mean, it's just not, when we, the filters get so, when we have to turn on our alluvial wells, like if our Arapahoe well is down, we have to replace the filters almost daily, and they're very expensive. They just They just get so mucked up. So yeah, it's not cost effective. We also, the pumps down there, I mean, we're getting 30 gallons a minute. So we'd have to also rehab some of those alluvial wells to be able to use them efficiently. They tried to rehab one of them before I got there, so probably 17 or 18 years ago, and that rehab failed. So we just, we have a lot of water that we don't have access to.

How many acre feet a year do you use?

We use about 40 to 45 acre feet a year.

Thank you.

Yeah, Jim. Jim Morris. So I was the state of Colorado program director for the USDA program until I retired in 2018. So I think we've maybe talked.

Yep.

And I've been out there. Yeah. So I think the challenge... that I saw when I was out and visited with you guys is the challenge of having an active board. I mean, I realize, like you mentioned, you have people that have been on there for 40 years and they would go around and collect the bills. And, you know, did what they could to keep the system running. So obviously, you know, professional operations, professional management, you guys have come a long ways. And I think your story here is probably not much different than a lot of communities across Colorado and across the country. So, I mean, you know, you're... $8.3 million project is a $561,000 loan and the rest is all grant. That doesn't happen very often. So you guys should consider yourself very fortunate that you were able to secure that kind of grant money. That grant money doesn't exist much anymore, especially within rural development. So again, congratulations and we look forward to watching you get your system back up to speed. It's been needed for a long time.

Thank you. No, I appreciate that. And I do want to do a shout out to the USDA because our mill levy, when we went to the election, we had assumed no grant money. So we had, and even then we were told probably 80% loan, 20% grant. And one reason the funding obligation took, it took two years after the election was we got the highest grant award USDA has like ever given anybody. So that was a huge, We just couldn't believe it. So we kind of expected it to be the reverse. So yeah, we're very excited about that.

Thank you So, how did you do that?

It wasn't me. It was Allison Trujillo at the USDA Yeah, I mean they they were equally as surprised she says she's never seen it I think some of the you know the messaging, the critical nature. We didn't, again, some people were saying it was a scare tactic, and we're like, this is not, this is real. And I think that resonated.

Yeah, okay. Yeah, Jim. The key in the USDA program is it's focused on small communities and lower income populations. and health hazards. And Sedalia hit all three of those marks with their system literally falling apart and your poverty income community very small. So that's how you do it, is you have to have those three factors going for you. Still, to get a $5 million grant from USDA for a $561,000 loan, very, very unusual. You know, they're... I think if I recall, the state of Colorado used to get about five million in grant for the whole state. So the grant that they provided to you was likely part of their grant as well as funds from Washington D.C. from the pool out there. So it's very uncommon. You guys are very fortunate and congratulations. Thank you. Sean Tonner.

This is actually for Harold. Harold Dominion, your service area goes Past Sedalia or right at, just past Sedalia, Cherry Creek, you're right.

When we formed Dominion, I'm sorry. When Dominion was formed, the county wanted us to serve areas, if we could, areas like Sedalia, and we agreed to reserve enough water to serve them. The homes had to be built within a certain, I forget the year, 19-something, and that we would reserve water and provide that. So our district goes down there, but it's an overlay district. So we have no, you know, we don't collect taxes or anything on it. It's just we have, we can serve another district in that area.

As a follow-on, so as you talk about phase two of eventually moving away from just aquifer dependent to renewable sources, it would, come through Dominion's pipes, or Castle Rock's pipes, or a combination of the both?

Yeah, probably a combination of some kind, but they're working that out. But we have a pipe that runs right through there. We have two systems. We have a western system and an eastern system. The western system comes off the plat. The eastern system comes through Wise, and then back up through Castle Rock, where we exchange molecules, not the molecules, but water, and then that comes to a pipeline that goes to our water treatment plant. It goes right through Sedalia.

And as a point of clarification, we've been working with Dominion on this for years. Our phase one has a connection to that Eastern Regional Pipeline, and we did it in a way that even though it's emergency only, and we have all of our agreements with Dominion finalized for that, so they are providing us emergency water and that connection, but our emergency connection was designed as such so we could move towards permanent, and we're not redoing the infrastructure. So it's permanent infrastructure for renewable, what we're working on with Dominion and Castle Rock Water is more like, what does our ultimate water source look like? Because Dominion is wholesale in the Sedalia area, so then we'd remain Sedalia, work with Dominion, or, you know, so there's a lot of scenarios, but the infrastructure and the connection to Dominion is what we are doing, even as part of phase one.

Yeah, Evan. Evan, Ila, again. So is the pipeline, Dominion's pipeline, is that treated water or raw water?

Treated.

So it is already treated.

Correct.

And so have you looked at the scenario of using some of your water rights in trade in order to get like a permanent contract?

We have, yep.

So you're exploring all of that.

Yep, they have all of our water right info and that will definitely, that has some value in terms of the connection fees and waiving those connection fees, correct. Okay.

Yeah, Mickey. Yeah, Mickey Conway. I'm curious what you do on the wastewater side. Do you have a conveyancing collection system or is everybody on septic?

We do not. Everybody is on septic. So that's definitely a next step, but we have the phase one and then we still have the phase two and then the septic is the next piece. So we haven't, we've started applying for funding for that, but that's really a next stage. So The Castle Rock lift station is going in in Sedalia. So that will get us $25 million closer to be able to connect because we don't need our own lift station. But right now, there's nobody on. And there's really no viable way to connect to that at this time. They're exploring options, trying to bring maybe a line down Manhart so at least businesses maybe have the option to connect. But right now, we don't. It's not in our foreseeable future.

Anybody else? Thank you. Thank you very much. Glad you could come and congratulations on your great success here. That's really cool.

Thank you. Nine years coming. Appreciate it, guys.

Yeah, thank you. Okay. Matt Collett, right? Thank you.

Our manager, Sarah Shepard, is going to present this. I want to stay up here to answer any questions.

Can you all hear me okay? Okay, great. Yes. All right. I can't really see faces. I can see backs ahead. So thanks for the thumbs up. And thanks for having us, just like Mary said. Mary, thank you all. It's great to be here to give you the updates. And we have a little map so you can see not only where Sedalia is and just north of there is Le Verres with a lot of the similar stories, similar issues, but kind of our own version of it. Should I just say advance the slide? I don't think I can control it. Matt, can you control the slide and advance it? Okay, perfect. Awesome. No, that's great. Nope. I might just have a little delay there. So thank you. Um, so this is our, um, project tracker. Um, since I came on working with Levere's several years ago now, um, we've been plugging away at this and you can see we have had some really big successes, um, We completed our radium ion exchange treatment system just last year. And as of about a month ago, we were removed from our enforcement order and we're on a one time per year monitoring schedule, which is a huge win for the community. So that was funded through combined efforts of grants through CDPHE, WIN, which is federal grant funding and ARPA funding from Douglas County. We're also working on some similar projects. Our water distribution system has some areas that are really similar to what Mary described in Sedalia, some areas that are a little less urgent, but all is aged. And when looking forward to emergency or permanent connection to renewable water supply, We have a big project ahead with our infrastructure. And at the moment, we're about six and a half million dollars away from the gap to replace all of our main lines and connections to all the homes in the community. So that's what our big red boxes. That's our primary project at the moment. We also have been working on several other projects alongside Dominion with ARPA funding from Douglas County that was granted to Dominion. We're working on intergovernmental agreement possibilities for emergency water. Last summer, we had a fairly significant emergency. We had a fire just north of the community that actually came very close to the lagoon site, sparked by a train, and that moved the distribution and supply discussion really high up on our list to make sure we can provide meaningful partnership with firefighting efforts in the community. made it very real. So I'll go into that a little bit down the road. And then we, of course, like Mary mentioned, we're looking at long range infrastructure maintenance and improvements. So we've done a little bit of that work and have been plugging away at it. So wastewater, water storage and water treatment and wastewater treatment, those are on our lists. They are further down the road for us. So this is the big project planner we have for you all to Check out and see how we're funding things. Um, 1 item that's not on here because it's a fairly small project about 130,000 dollar project is we have replaced. We're about. 5 shy of replacing all of the meters in the district. We excuse me. We partnered with Colorado water conservation board to get a grant for that. And we're nearly complete. While we've been plugging away at the water distribution project, we've finished up those last several meters that have been a little more challenging to get installed in some old installation areas there. Matt, can you go on to the next slide, please? Thank you. So this is highlighting our celebration and dedication at the new water treatment building. And you can see it in the background, those two blue ion exchange tanks. That's what's treating all of the district's water. And we were out doing some tours and explanation for the community and our grant and funding supporters. I think that's Mary I see in the foreground there. It was a little bit of a chilly day but it was a really great day to have a glass of water together and enjoy the success of the community. We've been highlighted recently through a couple news sources wanting to celebrate that big achievement as well. Matt, if you want to add anything to this, just as a community member, I think this is something to pause on and celebrate for you all.

Yeah, I think you got it covered, Sarah.

Okay, great. You can go on to the next slide, please. Great. So this is a little highlight of that meter replacement project. So you can see we've had some pretty odd installations and replacements, some really old equipment. As of a couple weeks ago when I prepped this, we were about 10 meters. Now we're about down to five. So we're getting really close. It seems like every... One of these last few takes a huge effort, but it's worth it. It's gonna be really great. We've already seen some really good benefits from the community. So we're excited to get that final one ticked off so everyone can enjoy watching their water use more closely, reporting leaks, saving water generally, and saving property as well. So this has been a big win for the small community. Go ahead, Matt, were you gonna add something?

No, no, it's just heart hurting cats as everybody knows.

Right. And then this is just a highlight of that emergency situation where the entire town was evacuated. You can see our lagoon up in the kind of top or middle left corner of that photo.

The jewel of our community.

Yeah. And it did get fairly close to a few structures. If the photo were to continue a little bit to the left, that's where a portion of the town called Triangle Park is located. And right next to that is the DuPont Sports Complex that the county owns and maintains. So it was a close call, and we hope we won't have any more close calls as we work through to, again, help with water supply in the town to preserve the community. One of the things that we're facing right now with the mainline replacement project is with the gap of funding, we are at, as Jim noted, we're at a bit of an impasse in terms of future funding for such a small community. getting that significant amount of funds to replace the main lines to be ready for an emergency supply and then a renewable permanent supply. That's a big task ahead, and we've had a lot of wins, but we've been applying to several state grants, federal grants. We do have $1 million more through an EPA grant that we will be funding this fall, but we're achieving those milestones without getting across the finish line so um being a regional partner for some of the larger projects that mary mentioned to get water and possibly wastewater up and down the corridor is a big value to the board they're all supportive of those projects and wanting to participate as best the district can. So this is just an outline of some of those challenges and some of the efforts we've made toward funding, and we're going to keep doing it. And we also are in a more and more difficult situation as we look at our alternatives, which are like Mary said, additional tax increases. The districts already levied and approved additional tax increases. So we have quite high customer monthly charges as well as tax charges. And adding to that would be something the voters would have to do and that could lead to a potential state revolving fund loan and or grant, but that's kind of where we're headed as one of our last funding options for the remaining $6.5 million. So we're working around everything we can in every which way, but being part of that regional solution, um really speaks to hoping that that six and a half million dollars will benefit not just the community of louviers although that's really important but the rest of the region and county okay matt probably last but not least we're getting to the end here This is just an overview of that mainline repair project and replacement. So the black areas, those are the areas that will be completed with this project. And then the little red lines are what we anticipate completing with the EPA project. funds. So you can see there's a lot of not black areas that we still have that additional six and a half million dollars to go toward. With it being galvanized, we do have a corrosion study that was performed as we've been in diligence efforts with Dominion and need to ensure those are replaced or we've figured out some type of flushing to ensure we don't have any issues if we were to have to hook on to emergency water supply and then in the further future into the permanent. Okay, next slide, Matt. So these are just the Revere's district boundary, putting it into perspective with where the connections may come from and where some future developments may go and then as Mary mentioned they're talking about the eastern connection this is more on the western side and we're hoping to get all of this infrastructure hooked up eventually to serve current and future water users The cooperation that Sedalia's had with us is wonderful. We've been touching base all the time with similar issues. Not every solution is going to be the same for every community, but Mary's been a wonderful partner with us. So I just wanted to say thank you to her for that. And in terms of the study she's doing, I know that will benefit more than just Sedalia. It'll help Louviers as well. If there's any way we can help participate in that or be a partner or just, you know, read the findings and benefit from it, know that the funding that went toward that study is going to go much further than Sedalia alone. So we're really appreciative of the support for small communities like LeVere's and Sedalia. I think the next slide just wraps it up, Matt. So we're open for some questions.

It's not going.

Oh, is it stopped? Okay, perfect. Well, that means we're at the end.

Sean Tonner, how many total taps are there in LaVere's?

113. 113? Okay. And two parks, county-run parks. Okay. Yeah.

So your first slide, you showed the funding that you have and the funding that you think you need. I think the funding you need was like $28 million. Yeah, $28 million. So are you looking for $17 million? Is that what you really need to do everything that you need to do?

well that's a few years ago numbers um the updated number of six and a half million for the the red square the water distribution that's the funding that we need for the most urgent project um but yes i i would say there are a lot of communities like ours and our district is up against project totals of about 18 million dollars um over you know, the next several decades. And, you know, when I presented to the Mineral Impact Grant Commission, one of the commissioners said, I am shocked. And she called it, you know, basically a catastrophe in the state with all of these small communities in similar dire straits and needing to find funding that just isn't out there. And I know the state is helping with the most urgent safety issues, which, you know, our radium contamination issue was fairly urgent. But as Mary described, nine years later, these issues that are being called out by the leadership of these communities become devastating or so urgent that whole water systems turn off for months at a time as possibilities. So it's a state issue that we all need to be thinking about, not just in terms of, you know, our towns. That's what I serve beers for is as the manager. So that's how I advocate. But I know Matt has a lot to say, and he's thought deeply about how the state of Colorado can, you know, start considering all of the towns around the state that are up against these same huge numbers for the future.

That's my thought after the election to maybe approach our representatives in the state and try to lobby for the entire state, not just for us. I'm sure I can find some momentum.

So do you have a guess number if you said everything that's needed by all these small communities that are in very distressed positions?

It sounds like a large, large number. Yeah. I have not put that together, though. Because it's happening everywhere.

Yeah, I think Colorado Water Congress, don't quote me, but it was probably a year, year and a half ago this came up during legislative. It's in the billions.

Yeah.

Yeah, it's a big number. Billions. Yeah.

Yeah.

We don't have that.

No, we don't. Tricia Bernhardt. Sarah or Matt, could you talk about the wells that you have and the health of those wells?

Matt, do you want to talk about our wells? Yeah. One of them is relatively new. It's a few years old. Then it had the radium problem.

Is that what it is?

And then we had another well that it's limping along. I wouldn't call it quite functional, but it might work in an emergency. I don't know if that reflects on that sheet, Sarah, but we have to think about replacing that well at some point in time, too. And that's also another well?

Yeah. So two rapid wells.

We do have some DOS in two, but we evaluated that. It's too deep and too hard to treat. Oh, is it? You're smarter than I am. Yeah. I heard it's bad water, or not great water.

Yeah, if I heard you correctly, you said one of the Arapahoe wells has a radium problem? Yes. Correct? Correct. And then the other one is the one that you're primarily leaning on at this point in time? Yes.

Actually, the one with the radium issue is the primary.

Yeah, for sure.

but you're filtering that now, so you're good to go, right?

Yes.

Knock on wood. Oh, you got that, thank you. Yeah, Jim.

Hi, Sarah. Sarah just came on board with Perry Park as a manager just in the last couple weeks, so maybe we can get Sarah to do a similar well-informed presentation for Perry Park at a future meeting.

That happens to be a discussion that we're going to have later this meeting, so good timing.

Sean again. On the wastewater treatment, do you guys have a wastewater treatment facility there in Labours?

We do not. We have an application site in the lagoon.

It's a primary lagoon. We chlorinate it. We have a Forest Main that takes it over across Plum Creek and the railroad track to an application site. Okay.

And, sorry Harold, since these are in your service areas, do you guys service for wastewater too in these communities, or are you allowed? Is that part of the agreement?

Yes, in fact, we're building a wastewater treatment plant, a water recovery plant down on the platte. Now, and it shows on here a line when the range comes in, the plan would be the range would do a lift station that would pick up their sewer lagoon and take all that over to our wastewater treatment plant.

That's the last slide, Matt, if you go to slide seven.

That was that last slide. It just showed that it was come in, but that the range, when it goes forward, would actually solve, I think, a lot of their problems. We have, as I mentioned earlier, we have reserve water We can't burden our residents with solving other districts' problems. Can't do it. But we can make water available, and we can make our wastewater treatment plant available.

What's the size of the range? How many rooftops?

I forget.

I think it's changing all the time. 550? Yeah.

Okay, I forget. Yeah, that wastewater treatment plant will pick up hopefully even more of the waste in that whole Plum Creek, because that is a problem. The contamination coming down Plum Creek. But it's designed to do that. But this station should pick that up.

Sanitary is definitely an issue for us, but we have time, I think, I believe. We're all clay pipe brick manholes, so they've been there a while, and they're still functioning, but knock on wood. Can we replace, what, about a fifth of it already, Sarah?

Yeah, about. We've been working our way from the worst, hopefully, to the best, so that's our order at the moment, and also trying to keep things as compacted as we can in terms of our construction and how we're mobilizing and moving through town.

Yeah, Evan, go. Evan, Ila. So is there any growth area in LeVere's? I mean, is there, you had that subdivision shown across the highway, I guess, but.

There's one lot left in town and that's it. We're completely surrounded by open space. Okay. Okay.

So no developer can come on and... What's that? No development can come on and help fund all of these improvements.

The idea with the range R, it is development helping us, but not in our community.

Yeah, it's not being included. It may have some potential funding toward either tap connection to the wholesale area or possibly some additional funding if available for the water distribution project.

Okay, we're all set. So yeah, Sarah and Matt, thank you very much for the presentations. Really appreciate that. Well, thank you.

Are we gonna get PDF copies of this that we can put on the site?

Yeah, okay. So we'll get those. If you all don't object, we'll have those available for the commission. So thank you very much for coming in. We appreciate your time.

Thanks for having us.

So... Member discussion is our next agenda item. And I actually have a PowerPoint for this today. So there's several things that I wanna go ahead and discuss today. One thing I'll start with is the Wildfire Action Collaborative, the Douglas County Wildfire Action Collaborative. So I think we're permanent members of that collaborative now. We've been asked to sit in and join that. I went to a session, that was last Tuesday, I guess, right? where I guess we were the first, kind of the follow-on to that first meeting we had together. So I sent y'all the link to the Marshall Fire Facilitated Learning Analysis, the FLA. Hopefully you had a chance to maybe click into that. There was a really interesting discussion of what happened to the public utility for Louisville and all the things that happened there. So what I told Commissioner Layton was that maybe there's two ways that we'll connect with this. We've got a really diverse group, and sometimes just being in the conversation, being at the table, you hear something that triggers, maybe something where you can contribute. But then we're gonna see how it kind of weaves into the water plan as well. I mean, there's a, There's a synergy. I mean, what's good for water supply is probably good for wildfire mitigation. A lot of the things that we're looking at and trying to, I'll say, drive in the right direction generally aligns with what they're trying to do with wildfire mitigation. So you'll get the invitations if you get a chance. There is a very significant contingent that dials in on teams, gives them a chance to hear and weigh in. If you get a chance, that'd be good to do that. I did discuss at this last meeting after a conversation that I had at Parker Water. You know, one of the things that Louisville had a really hard time doing was they couldn't shut off the water, yet their system was completely overwhelmed. The homes were completely gone. So all the meters, all the piping was just open. Any water they were trying to pump was just going on the ground. They couldn't build any pressure in any of the mains. but yet they couldn't shut off the areas that were overrun. They didn't have either electric valves to do that or electricity. They couldn't send people in, right? They couldn't just get in the truck and run down the street and shut off the valves because everything was on fire. So that was a real limitation. What I've learned, and we're really gonna see if there's any meat on this bone, as part of the automated meter interface system, the AMI systems, there is potentially a capability to shut off a meter remotely. And not sure how you would do that in the context of a big fire, how you'd make that decision because You're only shutting the water off because your system's been totally compromised and you gotta isolate those areas. But anyway, that's something that kinda came to mind. We had a little conversation with that. So we'll see if there's anything that connects with that. So stay tuned to the Douglas County Wildfire Action Collaborative. So I wanted to talk a little bit about maybe additional activities that we're going to have to have now that I'll say the water plan is, you don't want to pick a number, 80, 90% complete. I mean, we're really in a pretty good place there. You did get, Lauren did get the copy out of the polished version, I'll say. We all had the Chapter 10 version draft version in word form. So now you see it in final form. This is the version that went to the county commissioners who are, they're gonna look at it and then give us a nod to say, so we're good to go ahead and do the public comment. So there's still opportunities for us to shape and mold the plan, but we're getting pretty close to the end. There's also an executive summary that went in there. Lauren and I are committed, we're gonna work that over pretty hard. We think that's a really important part of the document. It's gonna, in a lot of cases, maybe stand alone. So I think we even got Katie committing to help us. So the three of us, when we get to the point, when it's like this is really, really done, then the three of us are gonna be the editors to put that final executive summary together. That's gonna be a really important piece of that document. So that's what's going on there. So finishing the plan, I think we know where we're at. We gotta get a nod from the Board of Commissioners, then we'll host the public sessions, the website will go up, all that stuff. Start getting feedback from the communities. Then we'll modify the plan elements as we see appropriate, and write the executive summary, I had that up there, and then we'll be good to publish. So that's truckin' along pretty well. I don't know if you have any idea when we're gonna get the nod from the commissioners. No idea, right?

Lauren Pulver with staff. I do not. A work session item has been sent up to the board. So really just waiting for a work session to get scheduled. As far as I know, expectations are still that the plan is adopted late August, early September. So we'll see how we're able to stay on track with that timeline.

Okay, yeah, Harold.

As you're looking at the executive summary, if we have thoughts on that, is it okay to feed that to you?

Absolutely, yeah, let's feed it to Lauren. Yeah, any comments you still want to make, go ahead and register so there's no, the door's not closed on Lauren's office, so you can go ahead and send stuff that way. You're welcome. So the second thing I was thinking about, as the meetings go on, we get past the plan, what kind of things do we want to engage in in future meetings? I think having a speaker to every meeting has just really been worthwhile for us. We've touched a lot of different bases. some of the ones I came up, Meridian and Inverness, two water providers, water districts that we have not heard, I don't think anything from like ever. They've been very, very quiet. They're kind of up in the north part of the county. They're doing their thing. Both of them, by the way, in the water plan, if my math was correct, show that they're gonna grow at least by 1,000 acre feet each in the next, through the duration of the plan. So they're both growth areas. They're both in the northern county. They're totally well. I think they're totally aquifer water. pretty sure of that, so I'd like to get an invitation out to them, to have them come talk to us. So that was one I thought of. Jenna Batson is somebody I've met and heard. Water Congress, she does a great job on outdoor water conservation, turf removal, all that kind of stuff. Maybe from the Sheriff's Department, I don't know his name. Mike Alexander, thank you. You know, since we get an invitation to go there, meaning they have free lunch, by the way. They do. Not hinting or anything, but of course it's firehouse subs. I mean, can you stand it? I mean, they really do that. But I think, you know, it'd be great if he could come over here and maybe, you know, kind of further this connection a little bit and see what develops. I mean, it's just really, we're all in it together, so if any, we can think of anything to help each other. We've got ranchers, you know, we've got water providers, we've got people who live in rural areas. We've got a lot of experience here, so maybe there's something we can contribute. Christy Davis we've talked about. I think we have her on the agenda for August, yeah. She does a great discussion, you know, what's going on with Colorado climate. And, you know, there's a really tough question if you're looking at using renewable water sources. what do you think that source is gonna look like in 25 years? And that's a really hard question to answer. So she's pretty good to talk to about that. So yeah, Tricia.

A couple of ideas that we talked about. Suzanne Paschke from USGS, could she come in and talk to us about her history of everything that she's done? As well, I wanted to pick up on Jim's comment about Perry Park. I do think, given where I live and the input from people around that area, we should have a discussion about what's going on at Perry Park and have somebody come in and talk about it.

I would agree with that, yeah. Sean?

Yeah, I think as we were talking a little bit earlier before the meeting, looking at kind of what is, now that we're gonna have a workbook or a blueprint of where the county is, what are things we can act on? One thing, we're dependent upon the aquifer right now. Like it or not, we are, and we will be for the foreseeable future. when we were talking earlier about monitoring wells. I think having, and I know Division 3, which is San Luis Valley, they have tons of monitoring wells that the state has put in that have been running for 20 plus years. They have a whole program. I think it would be very informative for us to look at what does a monitoring well program look like and do we need to broaden this out to you know, once we get our kind of feet on the ground, brought it out to Arapahoe County, Albert County, since they're kind of on our end of the aquifer, and maybe we have a combined effort that we go to CWCB or whoever to assist with funding on those monitoring wells. But I would like us to get more knowledgeable on what a monitoring well program would look like, and kind of how you stage it, how do you build it, blah, blah, blah. Great question.

Yeah, Harold. Sean, I absolutely agree. Looking at the monitoring wells, we had good data in the central basin, central area, I don't know what you call that. We didn't have much data outside of that. A lot of guessing and are we wondering what's really there. I think three things. We do need more water monitoring wells. I'm working with the state for that. The second, we need a data collection. You just heard from Sedalia about their wells are going down. Well, how do we get that into some type of a system going forward that we get a sense of what's going on in the aquifer? Because we're betting, the county's betting that that aquifer is going to sustain us until we can make the transition to renewable water. It's a good bet, but not for all areas of the county. And so I think getting monitoring wells outside that central area and getting a data collection of what's going on with the wells out there, particularly, would be very, very helpful information. It could allow us, because if we do have areas of the county that are in jeopardy, well, like Plum Valley Heights used to be in our area, we need to know that and plan accordingly.

Excuse me, thank you. Any other comments at the moment? We'll move on to the next one, which I want to make sure I read this correctly. Growth planning and rate analysis. Right, that's what you did. So what I wrote here was several years ago, the county sponsored a program, hired an engineer that went around to many of the smaller water providers and helped them construct a water conservation plan. So we put some structure around it. Here's the things you need to look at, the things you need to do. Here's how much water you use, so maybe what you can think you can save. And I actually encountered that looking at a lot of the websites for those water providers. It was an opportunity for them to get some technical support to develop that kind of plan. I put the same kind of thinking on that and said, you know, what I would like to see or what would be useful, I think, to all of us would be master plans. And when I think of master plan, I think of the larger water providers. I know Castle Rock Parker, I think Dominion has one too. You know, it's a plan that tries to map out the next 40 year. What's demand gonna look like? What's supply gonna look like? What's the capital that's gonna take to support that? What kind of projects do I have to have? And, you know, it takes a lot of work. I mean, I think at Parker, I think we spent $400,000 doing that this time. And we did that like four years ago as well. So it's maybe a little bit out of reach for these smaller water providers. So maybe we could convince the county to just maybe sponsor something like that. And it sounds like that's kind of what you did. Yeah. And it was like a $70,000 plan. So not horribly expensive, but adequate and it's not done yet, correct? It's in progress? Last month, okay. Okay, so you'll come back and share with us in six to nine months, yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I think it'd be really useful. So that's kind of what that bullet item was about. And I added, maybe I don't know if it was the right spot, but this impact of Parker versus Rhine. We all know what that is. And I just, I don't know if we're just all kind of waiting around to see what's gonna happen in 30 or 40 years or what, but I think we gotta get our minds wrapped around that a whole lot sooner than letting it come to us. Then I added my favorite project, the test bores, which is similar to the monitoring wells. I just happened to pick the two subdivisions that actually came and talked to us at the user group. and they're both having all kinds of issues with levels in their aquifers, and they're trying to figure out what's going on, and they've got all these homes that are dependent on it, and it just seemed like a really good place to sink a hole and see what the hell's going on with that aquifer. And that's in the plan. We'll see if it makes it to any kind of implementation. We'll see. So, any, I got another slide, by the way, but.

Sean, the only additional one, I love this, especially Parker versus Rain, because that is an elephant in the room. I think maybe October would probably be an appropriate time for us to reconnect with Denver water, to find out, you know, the state of play on the Colorado River, because you know, that impacts so many different things, particularly for this county with some of the direct providing of like Lone Tree, but then also the Wise Water. And so, and not to mention all the communities they serve and how that'll ladder up to the state, state's resources. So I think just getting maybe a status report after the summer and then hopefully they make a little bit of progress between the compact states, but.

Yeah, okay, yeah, great idea. I don't think we've ever asked them to come speak, have we? Okay, we can do that.

Provider, and I actually had a... Well, they are, they're in the county, yeah. Yeah, yeah, they're a provider. I actually had drinks with Alan Salazar, who's the head of Denver Water. He's a good friend, so I don't know that he would come. He'd probably send his engineer or whatever, but they're a big monolith, but we could get somebody from Denver Water here.

Yeah, I think that's a great idea. Harold, you got a question, comment?

From the board about Sedalia presented and others, how can we capture reuse from a water supply standpoint and for water quality? I'm particularly focused, because we're there, but so is Highlands Ranch and Castle Rock, that there's 700 to 1,000 ISDs up Plum Creek that are flowing above a drinking water supply. And something that I was wondering if the county commissioners would want us to look at, what do we do to get to capture those return flows? That's a lot of water. And second, cleaning up Chatfield Reservoir, because all flows directly into Chatfield. If they don't want us to look at it, that's fine, but I'd like to, just to ask a common decision, is that something we should be looking into?

I kind of think they look for us to tell them what we should look for, I think. I mean, I don't think I'm being presumptuous to say that, right? So I think that's a good idea. I mean, that's a really core strategy and we can't just kind of throw it out there in the plan and say, well, we really ought to really maximize this and what the hell's that mean, right? So that's a good follow up. Okay, let's do the next slide. So you wanted to talk about Susan Paschke, right? So on our portal, there is a report, it's been there for quite some time, it's the groundwater availability of the Denver Basin Aquifer System in Colorado. This is a USGS report that was published in 2011, and it was based on data basically through 2003. There's three sections to it, and this is really, it's quite the report, it's very deep, it's technical. 305 pages, I think, is the total size of the report. But I've spent a lot of time with it, and I think it's just, I think there's just a wealth of good information here. And it's information, I mean chapter A is basically she talks about, Susan Paschke's the editor, and talks about of course the concepts of the model, but it's a whole lot of discussion about both the luvial aquifers and the bedrock aquifers, basically how they work, who they are, their personalities, the data, you know, everything you wanna, and it's the entire Denver Basin. So, I mean, this is reaching up into Weld County and all the way down into El Paso County. I mean, this is the question that we were given by the county commissioners, what's the effect of development on groundwater availability in the Denver Basin Aquifer? It's kind of like, well, gosh, that's kind of like our purpose here is to try and understand that. Chapter C was that they did a model. I mean, they basically modeled as best as they could, I mean, the entire Denver aquifer. They tried to model the conditions to say this is what the aquifer looked like before 1880. This is what the aquifer looked like from 1880 to 2003, so here's kind of a 2003 data point, which was the end of their data. And then they said, what's it gonna look like in 2050? Or 2054, actually, so they looked out 50 years via modeling. So, I mean, this is the ModFlow modeling system that's been around for a while. They had to make a lot of assumptions, particularly looking forward. They assumed that the changes in storage or the pumping rates on the aquifers were gonna remain constant from what they saw in 2003 through to 2054. which is a real limitation because we all know it's growing. But I don't think they wanted to weave into the model some projection of growth that they just kind of made up. So I think they just said, well, let's just see what it looks like if it stays the same. So it's pretty interesting to look at. They did put the report in the portal. I've pulled out a whole bunch of sections I've looked at. They make predictions on how much storage has changed in the Denver Basin Aquifer. They pegged the change in bedrock aquifers to 2003. I think it was about two million acre feet out of 230 million acre feet, so numbers like that. So you're still faced with this, these aquifers are vast, there's a lot of water there, but it really depends on where you are, what your well's doing, if your well's not working, then it's really location dependent. I found Susan Paschke. She was an employee at the Colorado Water Research Center, which is a USGS office up in the Fed Center in Lakewood. She retired two years ago, but I found her. And I had an hour and a half conversation with her about... what was done, what they would do differently, if they could do this again today, could they do that, would they do that? She said this model still exists on the USGS website, it's like an open source, open model, so it could be pulled off, probably freshened up with you know, a little bit of today's technology, but what really struck me is she said, you know, we could pull Douglas County out of this model and model only Douglas County. And I thought, wow, you know, that's what we care about a lot, right? I mean, I'm not sure how they get all the boundary conditions right and everything, because it's pulling a chunk out of the aquifer, but that's something that could be possible. So, you know, we've got more data now. We've got data, actual level data from 2003 to 2025. So that data could be, you know, we know the results. We could run the model and say, what's the model say it's gonna look like in 2025 based with these input conditions? And we know the answer. So that could validate actually the strength of the model. And if that worked, And now with our relationship with the water providers, if we could get actually forecast pumping rates over the next 30 years, maybe a lot of data, but hey, that's what we do these days, right? Everybody does a lot of data. I think there's potential to maybe build a model of what's gonna happen in the next 30 years as we've been, oh, just went away, next 30 years. So that's, I wanted to put that out in front of you. I'm still, I'm trying to talk to a lot of experts. I'm gonna get to, oh, like Mark Marlowe and Sam Calkins, Dominion, other people, and just really get their opinion on, you know, do we think this would be worthwhile or not? And could it be something, could it be a really, really strong tool, something that we could do, we could sponsor as a commission? You know going forward. I don't know that we could get county funds for that. I've never asked the county for money I don't know that that's probably easy But I'm sure don't mind twisting a bunch of arms of water providers either because they got a lot of stake in this too, so I Wanted to share that with you the reports there. You can take a look kind of poke around at it and Susan's on a, she's a geologist, right? I mean, she's a PhD. She taught at School of Mines and worked for the USGS. So she's on a two-week vacation. going down the Colorado River in the Grand Canyon, right? And just, well, I'm guessing a little bit of both, but I'm sure really enjoying, you know, all the geological structures in the Grand Canyon. So very, very nice. I think she's more than willing to come talk to us and tell us, you know, what, if this is an option or not, what it might take, you know, what we could expect. I think she's very interested in doing that, so I wanted to pass that on. Okay. So there's a missing slide. Oh, we can go to this one if you like. Can you back up? We've got just a few more minutes. Could you back up slides? There should be a... Yeah, okay, this is one we didn't talk about, or I didn't. Oh, yeah, I'm sorry. What I didn't mention when this slide was up was this notion of the establishing, I call it the Douglas County Water Resource Collaborative, because collaborative seems to be a pretty good word to use around the county right now. You know, I went to both focus group sessions of the water providers, and they showed up in force. I mean, they rolled out for this. We had some online. We had a lot of, I don't know, probably 25 people in the room. And I'd really like to try and build on that momentum and turn this into a, I'll say, maybe call it like a mini association or a little group and get them to meet like quarterly, see what kind of conversations they could have, you know, maybe kind of turn them into their voice, you know, in the community or in the county, I should say. And, you know, we talked about, you know, we got a lot of, I think 35, I think is the number of water providers when we count them up. And we tend to get balkanized, and maybe this is a way to try and get a lot of conversations going sideways. Not think, you know, about consolidating effort is a conversation we've had, not consolidating ownership, but consolidating effort, and maybe this is an opportunity to do that. So that's something else I want to try and see if we can develop over time.

Okay.

And again, I'm putting this out here. If you all, you know, thumbs up, thumbs down on any of these ideas or, you know, if you have stuff you want to submit too, just really trying to, you know, get things, you know, how we're going to keep going here as this plan gets toward completion. So we can finish with the figures. So two minutes. Okay, there's the answer, right? So these are figures that show the potentiometric surface of the water in the Denver Basement bedrock aquifers. This one's the Dawson. I put a little star in there for Castle Rock. I was kind of proud I was able to do that. So that's where we are, right? Where we are today. But this report is loaded with this kind of stuff. So it's very, like I said, very technical. But I found with these, it was really just kind of interesting if you just kind of stand back and you look at the colors. because the colors were color coded to the change in water level, this potentiometric water level, which is a little tricky sometimes to understand over time. So on the left, this is what they think it looked like Pre-1880, pre-development. In the middle is 1880 to 2004. And you can see what's going on. And the darker the brown, the more that level has dropped. At least I think I'm looking at this correctly. I've got a session with Susan to help me make sure I'm looking at this correctly. And actually those blue spots are where the level maybe increased a little bit. but the brown is where it certainly went down. And this is the Dawson, this is the upper Dawson, excuse me, this is the lower Dawson, by the way. And then 20,004 to 2054, that's the change in level from the previous slide. So if you had that, if that one on the far right was referenced against the pre-1880, it would be a whole lot browner than it is there. But anyway, it just... It kind of graphically really helped me understand where we know we are, and we'll see that in some of these other slides. But predicting these levels is what this model's all about. Next slide. There's the Denver Basin. You can see these are a little pixelated, you know, on the edges and stuff, so those are model cells. But again, you get to 1880, 2004, where it was all, the development is all in that red, there's a red circle there, it's kind of hard to see, that's the South Denver metro area. And then again, as you go out to 2054, it just kind of continues on. And then the last one, last slide would be the Arapahoe. Again, same story. Looks like the South Denver metro area, which includes us and maybe a little bit of Littleton up into Arapahoe County. We're the ones working the Arapahoe basin, or the Arapahoe aquifer, working it pretty hard. But the good news about the Arapahoe is there's a lot of water there. So anyway, I just thought those are kind of fun to look at. And... this modeling thing. I get frustrated looking at water level data. It's hard to see an agglomeration. I mean, we've got like 80 some number of wells that are data points that were put in the report that Forsgren came up with. And it's just hard to look at it and try and understand what to do from, I'll say, a bigger, broader county perspective. If you're one of those people and your well's getting dry, that's real, right? There's no doubt about that, and we need to understand that, and we need to be thinking about that as we're thinking about policy for the county, but also about broad county policy, so. So, Don? Evan. Evan Ehler. Evan's a closet geohydrologist. I don't know if you all know that or not.

Did you say the blue areas show an increase?

Yeah, I think that's correct.

Well, how is that possible?

So, I mean, there's aquifer to aquifer flow, right? The Dawson gets as connected, particularly upper Dawson, is connected to alluvial aquifers on the surface. But there is flow from aquifer to aquifer. And I'm trying to remember the number, Evan, but it was like 60,000 acre feet a year, maybe, or something like that. Total Denver, total Denver Basin aquifer inner aquifer flow. Well there was a small number in the scheme of things.

There was an old report by Robson back in the 60s or something and they estimated something like 30 or 40 thousand acre feet going through the aquifers to the north but that's before it starts getting drawn down you know by all these users so But you're saying her model assumes some interconnection between the aquifers because the state treats them as being completely distinct, not connected.

Yeah, I think that's the case, but that'd be a great question for her if we can...

I need to look at the report. I haven't looked at it yet, so I will.

You know, it's only 305 pages. Man, it is...

That's got AI written all over it. I was already like, I'm uploading that one.

Summarize this for me, please.

You know, and I asked her about, you know, what's technology done? I mean, since the mod flow model's been around, guys, since we were young, right? Maybe there's new technology that gets involved. I think She talked about a lot of technology to take the data and presentations and process the data and stuff. The calculations may still end up in like a mod flow kind of model, but how you pull that out and how you get something that you can go talk to people in the county about, there may be all kinds of things that are available today, right? Yeah, Jim.

Yeah, Jim Morris. So I'm not sure what exhibit is in the draft report, but one of the last exhibits that we got, and I don't know how many wells, I can't remember how many, I didn't count, but they showed individual wells, where they're at, in the county and then where they, based on the drill data, where they thought the aquifer started and ended and it showed the water level in the wells. And I think that's consistent with what some of this shows is that there's some areas up north where the water is still in the pipe above the aquifer. And it's more frequently down south in the county where you can see that water level is up in the pipe, you know, way above the aquifer where it starts, especially with the Arapaho. So I don't know that that's inconsistent. I think that still is going on. And again, it's location, location, location, man. It's the aquifer changing. from spot to spot, and if you're in the right spot, there's a lot of water down there yet, but there's a lot of the wells that aren't in the right spot.

Yeah, and the change in the characteristics of conductivity and the rocket stuff. So on this one, the Arapaho, since we had the little It's like a topographic map. I mean, those are all elevations, I suppose the elevation of the potentiometric head. So I went to Parker, because Parker was a dot on there, and I said, well, can I read the elevation? And so these are rough numbers, but pre-1880, Arapahoe elevation was 5,800 in Parker. Okay? Parker's at 5,950 feet above sea level, right? And the top of the Arapahoe Aquifer in Parker is probably, I don't know, 1,000 feet down? Something like that? 800 feet down? So it's that much of a potentiometric head that was there then. You go to... 2004, it's down to 5,400, so it changed 400 feet. And then from 2054, it looked like 5,350. So I'm not sure what to make of those numbers per se, but it does seem to align with what we think we see, right? Which if you got a model that aligns with reality, that's always a good outcome, right?

The potentiometric head, though, comes off a lot faster until you get to what are called water table conditions, top of the aquifer, and it declines more slowly after that.

Yeah. There was some interesting charts in there as well that showed the change in Denver aquifer Yeah, Denver aquifer changed from confined to unconfined over time. So it just kind of is like this. It just kind of marched across. We're way confined. Yeah, some confined and not so much. Those are my kind of terms. But it's pretty, I guess, kind of interesting.

The Brown Palace Hotel had a Arapaho well dating from like 1890 or something. And that thing was artesian. It popped right out of the ground, the water pressure came right on out.

And they've had that for their laundry all those years.

But all this calls to mind the third axiom of water law that I learned many years ago, and that is in groundwater, he who bears the burden of proof always loses. As long as we don't have to prove anything, we're fine.

Okay, I'll have to remember that. Anyway, yeah, I think we're kind of out of time here now, so something to think about, try and get Susan.

Did you have some comments, Harold? Two thoughts. One, on further reflection of what the monitoring wells and the comments I made about a data gathering capability, the more I think about it, our consultants were really guessing what was going on outside this, where they had good data in the central area. It's a good guess. But going forward, I think the next step for the county would be to retain a consultant or do it itself to figure out a way to continually gathering data to build models. And I think that that would be a good follow on monitoring wells, getting data from districts, getting data from well owners. to get a picture. I really think that's a follow-on study that the county should do for many years. And then the second, one of the best ideas I've heard in a long time is this idea of the water provider collaboratives. You know, the water providers have a tendency to be siloed. You know, they're very busy. And to bring them together on a county-wide thought I think would be highly productive. But we've got to give them things to chew on. The reason this was successful, they had the water plan that everybody either liked or disliked or whatever. But going forward, it would fall, I think, to the Water Commission to give them, okay, if they're going to meet quarterly, these are some ideas we'd like for you to consider and provide them something that they can dig into. So those would be two thoughts there.

Yeah, I absolutely agree with your comment about we've got to give them real stuff. I'd use a political term, maybe Sean's familiar with this, but they all showed up at the users group because it's better to be at the table than on the table, right? So, but I mean, I... It was all just very positive, I thought. It's like, we're here, we wanna be part of this, we wanna help where we can, and help each other if we can, so we'll see if we can't build on that. Good chance.

And I think Harold's spot on, and I think also the days of being able to be your own fiefdom because of the increase in the price for water, and the price of infrastructure, Unless you're going to go to your rate payers and say you're getting a 2,000% increase, you have to collaborate. And that's what I love today of hearing how Dominion and Castle Rock are working with Labours and Sedalia. I mean, I think encouraging more of that in our county benefits everyone.

Okay. Motion to adjourn. I don't think we really need one, but it's always fun to do that. So I think we're done. Thank you, everybody.

Yeah, and thanks to our visitor.

Thank you.