Water Commission - Regular Meeting

Harold? Guys? Harold. Okay.

So we're gonna go ahead and call to order the meeting, the October meeting of the water commission. We'll bring that to order at 03:35. Couple of announcements to make real quick before we do begin. One is we they're having trouble with the Internet on getting online. So as soon as we get online, there might be an interruption into what we're doing and have to introduce people and get that done. But to respect all those who are here and our presenters, we need to move ahead and not wait any longer on that. So with that in mind, so the first thing I'd like to do is I just called the meeting to order and I would like to take a roll call. Let's start with Trish.

Tricia Bernhardt, present.

Sean Tanner, present. Clark Hamilton here. Roger Hudson here. Jack Gilbert here.

Harold

Smithell is here.

So at this point, I think we're good. We've got everybody accounted. We have a couple of seats. We're still waiting to find out. But with that, we are going to move Well, somebody's still trying to get logged in. But anyhow, so we're going to look at the minutes. I need approval of the minutes for September 22. Anybody have any questions or changes they would like to bring up at this point? Then I would seek a motion to approve.

So moved.

Second? Second. Have a motion and a second. All those in favor say aye.

Aye.

Opposed, nay. Abstentions. We're clear. Okay. Now we're going to move right on to our first referral item we have, which is, as you know, this part of our agenda is typically a comment only section, but it's regarding SB 2025611866, which is Heirloom Parkway, which is a church that's right over by those who don't know where it's at, it's below the reservoir, right next to Parker Water and Sanitation. So it's in that general area. So with that, let's look at the board for anybody who has any comments, questions or concerns. Tricia?

Bernhardt, just a quick comment. Although, I did find the will serve letter from Parker Water that said that they would serve this new development or new church. 7,000 acre feet is a significant amount of water and they also have plans to expand and would need additional water. So, just pointing out that that is a big portion of Parker's portfolio.

Can you expand on that? When you say it's a portion, yes, it's just

Well, Parker has a certain amount of what they consider their water rights, their paper water rights. I think it's something like 48,000 acre feet. I could have

that number slightly wrong, that they have that they can continue to serve new developments.

Okay.

And this one would take approximately 7,000 acre feet. So, it is a significant portion of Parker's

availability.

So the note there being that though there's covered in there, just wanted to be aware it's a large portion of their commitment. Okay.

That's correct.

Anyone else? Don?

I'm not sure about where you're getting that 7,000 acre feet number.

That was in the will serve letter from Parker.

That the church was gonna use 7,000?

Yeah. Seemed it seemed like a lot. Okay. Okay.

I think it's a good thing to do. But maybe that's to cover the conference center they plan on building. No, just kidding. It's just the stadium. Football stadium.

Okay. Anybody else have any other questions or comments? Harold, no comments? Okay. So the staff will take the comments that were made forward and just bring it to their attention and we'll leave it at that. All right. We're moving on next to our first presentation, which is the Plum Creek Water Reclamation Authority. And so when you come up to the mic, please introduce yourself and we'll take her from there.

Thank you very much. Good afternoon, commissioners. My name is Weston Martin, and I'm the authority manager at Plum Creek Water Reclamation Authority, located just at the bottom of Happy Canyon in 85. Plum Creek let's see there we go. Plum Creek provides wastewater services for the town of Castle Rock, Castle Pines Metro District, and Castle Pines North Metro Districts.

We serve a population of approximately 109,000. The permitted capacity at current time is 6,440,000 gallons a day. Our permit has been administratively extended since 2017, to which we're really trying very hard to get a new updated permit, which we went through an expansion in 2022 to increase the permitted capacity by 3,000,000 gallons. To this date, no permit has been issued. To give you guys a little bit of a overview of the facility and what it entails at Plum Creek, We have the influent come in.

It goes through a screening process and then through grit removal. We actually have three oxidation ditches that biologically treat the influent. We do a biological nutrient phosphorus removal at the facility, which means that we do it naturally, reducing the chemical costs and the chemical requirements to feed into the system. I think the laser, there

we go.

So from that point it goes into secondary clarifiers where those, the biological process is settled out and the clean water goes out. We can feed chemicals at this point should we need to. It goes into a tertiary filtration system, which basically filters the water a little bit more off of the clarifiers. And from that point, we can go to ultraviolet disinfection, which will move us to either non potable reuse or we discharge to Plum Creek, which eventually ends up in Chatfield Reservoir and is taken into several drinking water intakes. At at one point, we take the sludge and we actually feed it into a thickening system and then into an autothermic digester, which reduces the solids, leaving us with biosolids, which is then centrifuged and then taking out to class B, which actually converts it to a class B biosolids, which is what we handle a little bit later here.

I'll show you guys. And then we can return any of the wastewater back to the front for treatment to start the process all over again, so we don't have any waste. PCWRA has a reuse program, and we provide reuse to four local golf courses. Red Hawk Golf Course here in the town of Castle Rock, the Country Club at Castle Pines and Castle Pines Golf Club, which are both in the metro districts, and then The Ridge at Castle Pines, which is up in Castle Castle Pines North. And last year, we delivered about 213,000,000 gallons to the four courses to be reused.

Is is that your effluent reuse or is that treated?

That is treated. So effluent is treated. So it's treated to the same quality as the stream standards, that meet the permit. Actually, little bit more, of a requirement for

Yes. Yes,

it is. And that is a little bit we have notice of authorizations from the state of Colorado that require us a little bit stringent, more stringent levels, but our effluent is generally of better quality and and good quality that we can send that out. Go ahead, Don.

Do you have any kind of a feel of how much of their their total water demand is met with this reuse water?

Pretty much all of their demand is met with this water. The, country club or or sorry. Yes. The country club has, put a well in, and they have started drying off of the, using well water. For the most part, both courses, the Country Club and Castle Pines Golf Club, were using 100% reuse.

Wow.

They have since put in some wells to supplement, but I know the Metro District or the the Castle Pines Golf Club uses mostly reuse water, and the Country Club is is going back and forth on how much water rights they have and and what they're able to use for that. Thank you. Is there any additional questions on on this? Go ahead, Jack.

Additional questions, but I apologize. Forgot that we need to give our name when we ask a question or comment. So the first question was Jack. Don had the second one. Okay.

All right.

Any other questions on the reuse program? Go ahead, Harold.

Smithfield, would you go back to that very first slide?

Yes.

Actually, let me.

Let's see. You're permitted 6,000,000 MGD, you've expanded five years ago to 9,500,000.0. So the money has been spent. You're waiting for a permit. Do you know what the permit's gonna entail? Or I mean, you may have to go back and do some additional work not knowing what what the permit's gonna require.

How much time do we have for this presentation? I'm just teasing. Sorry about that. That's alright. So that is a huge problem that's facing utilities right now, wastewater utilities, is individual permits are backlogged 95 plus percent, which is they they've released only a few permits in the last few years. So most of the individual permits in in Colorado are administratively extended, which means they're frozen.

Yeah.

So they can't increase capacity. They can't change chemical usages. They can't change the process. And also with the current proposed requirements for nutrients, temperature. We're not really sure what we're looking at for that, and we really don't know how or what to plan for to treat.

There's actually studies going on with the division and the NWRI that are studying on if these requirements are feasible. So it's kind of been put on hold. We were supposed to get regulation 31 requirements in our permits, but they've kicked those out to 2027 and now to twenty thirty, twenty thirty one before we actually see what we have in our permits, what we need to treat for. I've been pushing for a a new permit for quite a while. This puts us up against a pretty significant issue with expansion of the communities because I have to approve lift stations, that are going into communities, to say that we have the capacity to treat.

And right now, we're not in in risk, but we are bumping up against that limit of our permitted capacity at this time.

So what happens can I continue on? What happens if, you know, the community is growing, Castle Rock, for example, is growing right along, and you bump up against their, is it six point, whatever that number was for a

while Yep. What do you do? So we're in, we're

you at growth or do you, can can you exceed it? What do you do?

So, that's a really good question, Harold, that I've that I've proposed to the, the commission, to the attorney general's office, and to the CDPHE. Sorry about that. And I've been told that, basically, we would be in violation of our permit, which would, basically initiate a violation notice. But at some point, the division could use basically their decision making and decide not to impose fines or enforcement upon my facility. So that's basically what I've been told.

Let me see if I understand this. You you won't know what the requirements will be until you violate it, then you know what action they'll take.

Well, actually, I will know if we exceed in hydraulic or biological loading, which is probably what we'll bump up against first, those will basically put us into a violation situation, to which I have informed the division that we're not okay with that condition regardless of if there's enforcement discretion. I I don't wanna be put or put our communities in a position to where it basically goes on the record and with the EPA that we are in violation of standards that are out of our control. We followed the exact requirements that we needed to do to expand the facility at 80%. We went into the design phase and then started planning for the expansion, which we got site approval. We got preliminary effluent limits given to us to review to build the facility.

We we actually started the construction, completed the facility, and now we're we're basically being told that division doesn't really like to do PELs anymore, and that we shouldn't really be able to base planning on them. It's kind of a guideline, not really a strict guideline. But that's what we did, and we're still waiting. And again, I've I've presented it, the one zero two regulation and the 61 regulation hearing stating our situation and some of the issues that we're facing or could potentially be facing. And we are actually on a draft list, PCWRA is, to get our permit renewed at the beginning of next year, potentially starting this year.

Sean Tanner, given the number of districts that are backlogged, what was it, 95%?

Individual permits. There's two types of permits, a general and an individual.

And I'm guessing this is spread out across Colorado?

It's the entire state.

Has have you all as a group, a collective, considered filing a lawsuit against the state for inaction?

So we're actually trying to work with the division right now, and they've have some new staff. So the EPA is concerned about this as well because that definitely, I can't remember if it's 34% or 43%, is what the EPA's requirement of staying ahead of permits. So that is a topic of discussion. I'm not sure if anybody in the room is familiar with the general permits, which are small facilities, a million gallons or less. The division shot out a whole bunch of general permit requirements.

They're all under one permit. Now those, requirements had significant limits that none of these, facilities could meet. So we got together, came to us at the wastewater utility council to which we're a member of, And we got together and we talked to, senators, local, politicians, the governor, and tried to get some things. So they've stopped enforcement on those general permits, but we're still stuck with the individual permits, which we're hoping, to get something moving and work with the division on a plan to get these permits caught up. Now they're looking at possibly twelve to fifteen years before they're somewhat caught up to the EPA's requirement.

And basically, they're stating they don't have the finances or the staffing to meet these requirements.

Sean, again, infuriates me. So on the staffing side, have you guys proposed building in and I I say this by way of background when I I used to be with governor Owens Mhmm. And we would try and cut through some of the bureaucratic backlog.

Yes.

On the staffing, if there is there a primary excuse that they don't have the staffing to get through the permits?

They're they're making that one of the arguments. Yes.

So if that is one of their key arguments Mhmm. As a group, you may want to consider given the delay and what it's costing and like Harold identified, you know, having to go back to the drawing board and Mhmm. Millions upon millions of dollars that Douglas County residents and residents around Colorado are gonna have to pay by them delaying to

pay for

the staff. You're not paying for the outcome, but pay for the staff to speed up the process.

Well, I don't believe that that's possible that they can take those funds. One of the things and use those for staffing, I don't believe that's possible due to the requirements that are out there. I do know that they are working on a or they did just vote in a increase in permits and permitting, so we will be paying more for that. One of the options that we're working with the division from the wastewater utility council is letting which they've battled us until recently is allowing for a facility like ours to hire an independent engineer, go out, get all of that done and take it to the division and then present it and then accept so they don't have to do any of the work. Now they are looking at that right now.

They do have one facility that they are looking at starting that process with next year. Now they're not sure because they don't trust the engineers or the select engineers. And they are gonna start that, which may in the middle of next year, if they approve it, they like how the process went and it doesn't take a whole lot of their interaction, they may start allowing that as being one option to get these permits caught up.

K. Thank you. You're welcome.

Harold Smithles again. One of the things that I think we should be most proud of as a county is all of the districts either are or moving rapidly towards closed loop, where the major water treatment plants are able to reuse the water to extinction. I don't think there's any other major county in the state close to that, that I know of. But if we can't get permits, it really cripples our ability for closed loop water use, which Douglas County is built upon. Therefore, it would seem to me, would it be appropriate for the commission to request of county staff to look in, should the county be in a position to perhaps help or work with, I mean, the county is an extension of state government, It's its job to get back to state government to move some things forward like allowing outside contractors, you know, to make to prepare permits.

But I think it's incumbent upon us as a county to make sure we can't be closed loop if we can't get the permits out the door. And so I just wonder if I'm not saying it very well, but I just wonder if we shouldn't request staff to look into this to see should the county take a position or offer whatever, whatever to move this along. Don?

Yeah, I don't remember the exact bill number, but I think it was a Colorado State Senate bill I thought that was passed in the last session. It was passed that actually enabled you to use this private contractor route, pay for those private contractors and submit that data and kind of goose the government or the state's ability to handle these permits. So I mean that it's been recognized for a while. I mean we still don't at Parker Water, we still don't have a permit for our last expansion. We're starting our next expansion early next year.

We would like to discharge effluent into Ruder Hess, but we don't have that discharge permit yet. So yes, I mean, it's all backlog. But I mean, as far as trying to get things moving, there's been some movement, I guess, with this senate bill, and hopefully, that'll help. More would be better. Faster would be better, for sure.

So, yeah, Don, I'm I'm not sure if they're required. That's a requirement. I think it's up to the division whether or not they do take that route. I think it is strongly recommended in the senate bill. I don't know if they're required to do that, but that is an option that they can use. They haven't even looked at that for, those preliminary effluent limits I mentioned early, which would help us at least plan for something that's coming down the road and put finances aside and and get the expansions rather than short compliance schedules. Any

other questions? Harold, to your statement, I think the key there is that because it's an outside entity, the commissioners would have to provide direction. We can't provide any direction to staff to go outside of the county for anything. And so I think what we could do is just ask the staff, would you just bring this issue to the board's attention someday and see if there's anything the board can do to get in there and help expedite and or release it. And I would highly recommend that you might even want to reach

out to the commissioners also. Sean? Sean Tanner, think to piggyback where Harold was going, the county retains lobbyists for down at the legislature. I think getting a report from lobbyists as to the current status of what is permissible and then find out if we need additional enabling legislation, including setting up a fee structure or at least an outlet valve by which you could have entities pay into it and it has dedicated staff to reduce the backlog. You can do that with enabling legislation and then then our commissioners could and we as a group all know our local electeds, our state senators and state reps lobby them because bill season's coming up in November, where they're all gonna start picking their three to five bills to run next year.

And if given all but one of our legislators are republicans, so they're pretty fiscally conservative, saving the taxpayers a lot of money by by these not having these delays would be, I think, a feather in their head.

Yeah, there you go. So why don't I think in regard to that then I think what we're going to have to do Katie is maybe you, Don and I as part of that little subcommittee just figure out what we want them approach the commissioners with and seeing if we can get them to reach out to their lobbyists to help organize what I think Sean was talking about, which makes sense because then it provides the right avenue probably to get to those who could control that. It's it's a tough issue with the state having tried to pull those. And the other problem he kept alluding to is there's also feds are involved. So the EPA is in there, and so you've got this there's nothing we can do with that except lobby the EPA.

So it's gonna be interesting.

This is Sean. One last thing. At At least we have a sympathetic year at the EPA right now

to

So speed permitting if ever there was a time to strike, I think it would be this window right now. Right.

Okay. Thank you.

So I I will let the commission know that the wastewater utility council is a great resource and that we're actually changing our status from a five zero three c to a five zero four c to allow us to be able to do lobbying work, which we weren't allowed before. So we could do educational informational, but we couldn't actually do the lobbying work. We do utilize several attorneys and we work with several, you know, politicians around the state to try and get these things move forward. So that is a great outlet, and we do plan on taking a more, stronger stance and to have more teeth with the wastewater utility council and help other small utilities and other utilities around the state in those efforts.

Okay. Thank you. You're welcome.

Alright. Jumping ahead.

This is Jim.

Who's online?

This is Jim Morris.

So Jim Morris is online. Okay. Anybody else? So Jim, do you have a question?

Yeah. So we're fighting the same permit issues down at Perry Park. If county commissioners are gonna do something, they may wanna check with other wastewater treatment providers in the county because we have the same problem.

Gotcha. Thank you.

Alright.

Onto our biosolids program. This is basically what we end up with at the end of the process when the biological process is removed and then reduced down to a solids, to which we haul out. We hauled about 4,712 tons of biosolids out to the Eastern Plains and it's basically used for dry land wheat and it's applied with all other facilities biosolids out for beneficial reuse. We do have an industrial pretreatment programme that's pretty extensive. We're not required at this point in time to have this programme, but we've got a really robust programme that protects the workers, the collection systems in our facility from illicit discharges or things that'll upset the future usage of the water.

And as you guys can see, you know, in the town of Castle Rock, in the two metro districts, handle about 60 dentists, which we inspect, monitor, make sure they're not putting amalgams and things in the system in as well as petroleum oils, grease, fats, oils and grease, which affect the facility, cost money to remove and actually affect the collection systems and prevent SSOs. Breweries, we monitor those industrial dischargers and then non significant users are ones that go through our permitting process and application process, but we find that they really don't discharge anything that we need to monitor and inspect. So and that's pretty much it unless there's any additional questions or

The questions online? You know, have to tell you this has been very informative. Thank you very very much for that. What it also points out is a couple things that is that what a way for the state, and this has been all over everything right now, to start getting into land use is to come in through the back door. You control this process, you control growth, and you can really cause the expenses to our residents to skyrocket too.

What I don't understand is it doesn't make sense to me because then you're affecting water conservation efforts because now you're requiring more water versus being able to do reuse on a loop system. So these are the issues that they're putting us into. It's like if they're talking out both sides, but really what it comes down to, I'm terrible to say this, it almost like it's an effort for some means to do growth control because you can't exceed your permit status. You can't. And so there you go. Now what? Well, then what happens is they're gonna have to build their own little million dollar permit if they can get it approved. So it's just really interesting process we got ourselves into. Well, thank you.

Mhmm. Alright. Thank you, guys. Thank you.

Okay. Next item up on the agenda is the Douglas County Water Plan update.

Good afternoon. Will Koger with Forsman Associates. We've received our received these surveys from the water providers. We've compiled that information and are preparing that to present for presentation. We also have been reviewing the landscape of land use policies. And so that's another important aspect of what we're working on. Our time this afternoon, we wanna really focus on some some a good update on the groundwater analysis, and this is a very important analysis and good conclusions, I think, that we're coming up with. And so with that, I'll I'll introduce Bill Fronczak with LRE Water to present.

Good afternoon, commission good afternoon, commissioners. Bill Fronczak with Ellery Water. I'll just give you kinda I'm trying to give you the highlights of what we've done on the groundwater report. We're scheduled to have the groundwater best draft of the groundwater report out in a couple weeks. So what we wanna do is get some high level thoughts about what we've come with conclusions.

So in our groundwater report, we've really focused on three major subjects. One was, you know, Denver Basin quantifications. We want to understand what based upon current data, data that the state engineer may or may not have or haven't gone through yet, but based on current data and current tools, what is the quantification of the Denver Basin groundwater in each of the aquifers, both county wide and outside the water service providers areas. I'll explain why we do that. We also wanted to really take a look at what the legal quantification is, which is s b five, which is, you know, senate bill five, which was passed in legislation into legislation in 1985.

It was following up senate bill two thirteen, which was based upon which basically allocated Denver Basin groundwater and non tributary groundwater based upon land ownership. And compare that to Petra. And Petra is the model that we use that really takes a look at a lot of the new geophysical logs, wells, geophysical logs that may be available from different entities, whether it be the oil and gas conservation commission. I know that's not what it's called now. It's the carbon something.

I never get that right, and I apologize for that. But utilize other data out there that may not be available to the state engineer to really take a look at what that Denver Basin groundwater is. The other big portion we took a look at is groundwater level trends. And we qualify that as trends and not as conclusions because groundwater levels in the Denver Basin are very complex. You have unconfined and confined.

You have local real regionalization of pumping. You have a very complex area on the kind of western central part of the county, which is where the hogback is, where the Denver Basin aquifers actually outcropped. So there are some complications there. As well as, you know, you obviously have the fractured granite that it's in the western part of the county. Very hard to do, groundwater levels in that in that in that, aquifer.

And then the final thing that we've looked at is water quality on a general basis. The the good news is is there is some general water quality. The bad news is there not a lot of water quality in the county outside the water providers who actually do monitor their groundwater quality and their which is mainly what their water services into the drinking water plants. But outside, when you're individual property owners in that, there's really not a lot of data on water quality. So that is one basic data gap in the county.

It's not just unique to Douglas County. It's across the front range. There's really not a lot of good data what we're future. In to we'll get to where we can look at this data visually as well as with the written word. So, groundwater well quantification.

We went through and finalized and computed and tallied, if you will, all the different groundwater wells that are in the county. We looked at it from the, we it the bedrock wells or the Dawson, which are really in the mountainous areas and then go all the way up through margin, believe, A. Margin A is just outside the hogback. There may be some Dawson water in there, but it's really complex. So we actually lump that in to the mountainous areas.

We also obviously looked at all the other Denver Basin aquifers, the Dawson, both upper and lower and then unconfined, or I'm sorry, undifferentiated, the Denver, Wrapah, Fox Hills. The alluvial water, we didn't spend a lot of time on, and the main reason is it's a net zero. If you're pulling alluvial water out, you gotta replace it. You gotta find an augmentation plan and replace those depletions to the river. So, over time, you are replacing those depletions to the system.

You're pulling out groundwater, replacing it from water source. There also isn't a ton of ground alluvial groundwater in the county in and of itself. There are some old irrigation wells, but they are pretty much abandoned or they've been noticed by the state engineer to be plugged and abandoned and sealed for the very purpose, no augmentation water. Again, there is some deviance to that. You know, we got Perry Park that has some alluvial water. There's some other folks there. But really in the county, there's not a ton of alluvial water. I say that with a small caveat as well because all that fractured groundwater up in the mountains is considered alluvial. You will need an augmentation plan. And there is a community that's in the Southern Southwest part of the county in the mountains that do actually have an augmentation plan to development.

Other than that, it's just you have to work with the exempt wells and make sure that you're not causing injury. We did the Senate Bill five total based upon a two mile by two mile grid across the county on each aquifer. And what we did there is basically, I mean, to make it realistic, to really trying to make the data available, is break the county up into the Denver Basin aquifers and do a two by two grid, and then go to the SB five or the OG three analysis in the state engineer's website and really take a look at what does that aquifer look like in that two mile by two mile grid. That gave us the SB five analysis. It's not perfect because there is, within two miles, can have a complete change on what's going on in the aquifer, but it gives us a good idea of what's going on from a legal standpoint, what SB5 was based on.

And then, again, we used the three d geologic model associated with Petra. Was able to give us the heat maps as well as really focusing on those geophysical logs. Apologize for the poor table, but this will be cleaned up, and put into graphs in the report, and it'll be a lot better here in a couple of weeks. But this is the raw data or the data that's been compiled for the groundwater wells in the county. There is 10,375 wells in the county.

That's a little different than what we had before in our original meetings, which was a little north of 9,600, I believe. And that's because we did include in those 9,600, we're really focused on the Denver Basin, and now we've added in the 700 plus wells that are up the mountains and in the fractured granite. So that's there's the difference there. And there's just not a ton of them. And that's what we're also saying is forest.

Those are the those fractured wells that are up there. And again, those are tributary wells. But as you can see, there's six sixty six sixteen, excuse me, that are low capacity wells up there, nine that are high capacity wells, but we include wells that are obviously offset by augmentation. And so there's quite a few wells in the mountainous region, but not nearly as much as you would think as you'd see in the Denver Basin, which is the primary water source for the district. Other interesting just kind of fact here is that you can see a lot of the low capacity, which I call the individual Walmart wells, wells that are drilled by your individual property owner.

A lot of those wells are in the Dawson, Upper Dawson and Lower Dawson. And the Dawson and the Upper Dawson are are combined in the state engineer's website just because it becomes undifferentiated in the south part of the county. There is no Lower Dawson. But you're looking there about, you know, over you know, north of 6,000 wells that are individual on lot wells. And that's expected. I mean, it's that's where the shallow aquifers are. That's cheaper water to get to when you drill your wells. And that's what we would expect. What you do see, what's also interesting is the high capacity wells, there's more in the Denver and the Arapaho Wells, aquifers. And the reason that is most municipalities are going into those deeper aquifers.

There are obviously some municipalities that are going into the Lower Dawson, but the Upper Dawson's pretty much you're gonna need an augmentation plan for. So that's consistent with what we've seen across the board, not only in Douglas County but in other counties. Municipalities can afford to drill deeper wells and get into the aquifers. From individual property owners, difficult for them to do that. This is just a simple map and it's very confusing, but it's just all the wells and you can see all the wells in the county.

What we are gonna have in the report is we're gonna have wells broken out by aquifer. So you're gonna see what are the Upper Dawson, what are the Lower Dawson, what are the Dawson, what are the Fox Hills, so on and so forth. But you can see this is also broken out by the different margins consistent with rule 18 a of the county. Pike Rampart, we're calling forest, same, you know, six one half dozen the other. And then margin a.

Those are all the wells that we've we've we've included as forest because margin a, which is technically Denver Basin, but it's not really, it's in that really complex area that's in the hogback. So then you get out to margin b and then the Central Basin, obviously, the most of the wells are in the Central Basin. What's also interesting, which I always like to put up this map is you can see where the clusters of wells are across the county, like in the Northwest part of the county. Those are all subdivisions. Those are all individual well subdivision up in that area.

And then you can see some more that are in the central part of the area. Where you see these big blank areas are where you see your water providers, where you have the big municipal wells. I've shown this figure before. This is our petro analysis that we've done. We've done quite an extensive cross section, north, south, east, west across the county and looked at over five fifty five wells to really take a look at what are we seeing from the data in the analysis.

Here's our groundwater kind of quantification based upon Petra. This is county wide. How we've looked at this is we've did gross water availability. That is using the Petra analysis, then using GIS based upon the acreage of the county or, well, acreage of the Denver Basin in the county by aquifer to really get a look at what is that total amount. We also use the state engineers' rules of the specific yield. We use 20% for the Dawson, 17% for the Denver, and 15% for the Arapahoe and Fox Hills. I think I got that right. So that's how we've computed this. When we get down to this total available, what we've done is we've subtracted out a couple of numbers. First number we've subtracted out is your pre-two 13 wells.

Those are the wells that were in existence prior to 05/08/1973, when Senate Bill pre-two 13 was inducted. These were wells that were issued by the state engineer based upon beneficial use. And so what the state engineer does then is they compute to protect that water right prior to those permitting requirements, they basically compute a cylinder of appropriation. And you take that cylinder of appropriation and subtract it off the land area. That is guaranteed to that well, and it's to protect that well, so we subtract that out of water availability.

We've also subtracted out not nontributory actual. The reason we do that is because if you have not nontributory actual, you need an augmentation plan. You also need an augmentation plan for 4% water too. But really, not nontributory actual, all groundwater pumped out of that aquifer that's considered actual. You're not planning to replace. Why wouldn't you I mean, it's OG water's tough to come by in the county. You know, you might be getting some surface water, renewable water coming in from other areas of the state, from the South Platter or whatever. So we've excluded that one as really usable water. So we're really focused on the non trib water, and we've also factored that out. You have to replace 2% of that water by rule back to the upper most aquifer.

So 98% of that water is available. The final number we've taken out is those individual well not wells and the amount of water that's been pumped out of that. That well, we assumed about 75.75 acre feet per acre, and that's fairly consistent across what we've seen through various subdivisions. Most subdivisions are one acre foot, but there's quite a few that might be 0.65. So we felt 0.75 was a pretty good number.

And other counties we've used one acre foot for those individual on lot wells. I mean, that usually is enough to provide irrigation of about 10,000 square feet lawn and garden, one single family dwelling outside of animal watering, ballpark, you know, plus or minus a couple thousand square feet of lawn and garden. Are people using that amount of water? Probably not, but we don't know. And so we used to have to go off the permanent amount because that's what they can use.

So I can't I can't go I mean, unless we have actual meter data from these wells, it'd be very difficult to actually see what people are actually using. So the next so and this is what we've done is to show between unincorporated and and I call water provider or water service provider's land area. There's your water service providers in the county. We just take that those land areas away from the overall county land county land area in the Denver Basin. So as you look here, just roughly, it's about 40% of the land area that we exclude from water availability in unincorporated Douglas County.

The reason why is most water service providers have deemed consent, if not all. So if you're in the water provider service area, that water provider service you you that water provider that water service provider, excuse me, will have, ability to access all their water underlying that service area, typically. Smaller ones may not have that, but for the most part, we've seen that's what occurs. So this is what we've come up with, the unincorporated versus the total counting. So your upper, your bottom one is consistent with the previous table that we showed.

How about how much total water is allocated based upon Petra, not nontributory actual. So as you can see, like in the Upper Dawson, most of that water in the county is requires augmentation. There's very little water in the county in the Upper Dawson that does not own. And we'll

polishing that report

to is to make the data look a little better. Then But you can see that, you know, in Lower Dawson, Denver, Arapahoe, you know, there's still about half of the water, if not more, is in the unincorporated areas. But there is still quite a bit of water that's in those aquifers that are in the service water providers. This is the most interesting thing that came across to us as we really scrubbed the data, and I actually had our engineers and hydrologists go back and redo it and look at it. Based upon our Senate Bill five versus Petra analysis that I explained earlier, we're showing that the Lower Dawson Denver and Arapahoe aquifers have more water capability in production than what SP 5 is estimated.

Here's the reason why, and this is why we've gone back and over. Upper Dawson has been routinely and historically got a lot of geophysical logs on it. It's the shallowest aquifer. A lot of folks have gone out there and drilled wells. A lot of good data that the state has looked at. As you can tell, well, don't didn't come through very well. Sorry. It's about the percent increase is 1% on Upper Dawson. I'm not sure why it didn't come through. So it's very close. And that's what we would expect because we have good data there. Down at the Fox Hills, again, very close. Why is it fairly close? There's not a lot of different data in the Fox Hills than what from SB five. So we don't have a real complete data set in the Fox Hills.

Why it's so deep? I mean, there's just not a lot of folks that have drilled wells all the way down to the base of the Fox Hills to give us good data. What we do have, based upon recent and more available geophysical logs, are these logs that go down through the Arapahoe. A lot from the water providers that have water wells in the Arapahoe or the Denver or the Lower Dawson. So we have really good data there that may not be available to the state or the state hasn't been able to process yet.

So that's where we're seeing more water availability based upon our analysis and then where water might be available in those three aquifers, which is good news. I mean, that is it's also as you think about the Douglas County, Douglas County's deposition in the Denver Basin is a lot closer to the hogback. We've seen this up in Boulder County and others that are have the, or have the Denver Basin, and they're fairly close to the hogback. As those marine sediments settled way back when, you know, millions of years ago, the more coarser sands and the more available water was, you know, with the coarser sands was closer to the hogback. As you push east and you go out further away from the hogback on the Denver Basin, you get a lot tighter formations.

That water is just physically not available as you push further east. So that makes sense also here in in in Douglas County. Douglas County also is fairly close to the center of the Denver Basin as you look in the Northeast part of the county. You got Upper Dawson, Lower Dawson, Denver, Arapahoe, Fox Hills right there at relatively big and thick saturated thicknesses. So, as we went back and looked at it, you know, this made sense in those aquifers.

The next thing we looked at, obviously we did the quantification, figured out all the number of wells and all that, was looked at water level and the trends analysis. And we really looked at it in the last fifteen years. There was a study that was put out by one of our colleagues that works at Ellery Water from, I believe it was 2000 to 2000 2005 to 2019. It was a USGS study that looked at water levels across the county. We built on top of that and went up through 2025.

Looked at wells that were primarily completed only in one aquifer. If they're multiply completed across the Dawson or in Denver, for example, it's just not reliable data. We just don't know where that water level is. A lot of the wells that we've looked at, unfortunately, from the USGS study, are not fully completed in the aquifer, so there is a little analysis that has to be done there as well. But as you can see here, most of the wells here let me just get my little notes out because I always forget the colors.

The purple are the Fox Hills, the blue are the Denver, the orange are the Arapaho, and the green and dark green are the Dawson and and and Lower Dawson. So you can see there's quite a bit of smattering around the the county that we've looked at. And general conclusions and we're still finalizing this, but Upper And Lower Dawson over the last fifteen years, we have not seen a significant decline in water levels across the county. Now, again, there are gonna be always local pockets where you're gonna see heavier pumping or something along that line. But as we looked throughout the wells that we have here, and we've looked at over 98 wells total, not just in one aquifer, They're very small declines, if if any declines at all, in the Upper And Lower Dawson.

Denver aquifer wells are mainly unconfined when you start looking at municipal wells. And that's primarily because there's more pumping in the Denver Rockford by the municipal wells, bigger pumping. As you see the individual wells that are further, you know, for individual on lot wells, they're mainly still unconfined. It means the water is above the water table and it's sitting up higher in the wellbore. And again, except on the margins, which is on the, I call, the central part of the county, you know, right next to the mountainous regions, we're seeing very little decline in the water levels that we've been able to measure from the wells that are, you know, reliable.

Aquifer, a little more complicated. It's, again, we show a mix of and that's why it's fairly general and I apologize for that. We show a mix of confined and unconfined. Unconfined is primarily again on the margins. As we get closer to the hogback and the marginal of aquifers, you're seeing more influence from the surface and you're not as much confined groundwater.

You're also seeing more potential declines there in those types of aquifers. And that's the same thing with the the Lurie Fox Hills. Fox Hills is primarily confined when we see the data, especially in the Eastern. You can see there's really no Lurie Fox Hills wells as we head to the Southeastern part of the county. But in the central part around Castle Rock and that, there's still confined aquifer wells. So that means the water level again is above the water table. We will see further declines in that piezometric water that confined aquifer head just because you're pumping the pressure off the aquifers. But once it gets down to that aquifer itself, we're seeing a lot less declines.

This is Jack. When you talk about that you're not seeing major declines, what you're saying is that it appears that the water is actually and the aquifers are replenishing to some degree, but I'm guessing that, but that what we're getting mostly is loss of pressure because there are so many wells that are being punched into the ground. So people are running into more the issue is more of lost pressure than lack of water.

It's a mixed bag. So we do see the reduction in the I'll I'll

to over turn

Mike, little little more seeing a detail results. At least they've been that way for the last fifteen bit years. And again, that's fairly consistent with data that we've seen in the past. We've seen more conscious thinking about removal of Denver Basin groundwater as we all know Highlands Ranch back in the late 90s, maybe early nineties now that I think about it, you know, my age, we saw very low very steep declines in the water levels. We saw very, you know, two, three hundred feet of declines.

A lot of that was pressure water, but also was into the aquifers. There was reduced pumping in some of those aquifers, and we saw a rebound of, you know, 200 to 300 feet of water. So you're seeing more conscious work by the municipal, by the water providers of managing the aquifers and making sure that there's water available in these aquifers for sustainable use.

Great, thank you.

This is just an example of what I was talking about. This is the Fox Hills Well. Stonegate is a well that we looked at. If you look for the last fifteen years, taking out the high the low peaks, that's obviously was a measurement that was taken while that well was pumping. You can't use it.

So but if you go from basically 2010 up to present and you kinda do a average line through there, you can see that the water level, even though that this is confined, has not really changed over the last fifteen years. Now you're gonna see, like I said, these peaks because when the when the data was collected, was that well pumping? Was that well in recovery? That's where the lot of the work comes into play about how can you get a real accurate number of what is that water level. We unfortunately don't have dedicated groundwater monitoring wells out there in the Denver Basin. We have to use individual wells or municipal wells to kind of get us our data. So, does take some work. Yes, Don.

Yeah, Don Langley. Is the top of the aquifer on this chart then at 3,700 feet?

That's correct. It's in the purple.

It's in So, that's the where the top of the aquifer is. So, all this level that we're looking at is above the top of the aquifer.

That's correct. Yeah. It's confined Yep. That's what we're seeing there. We also will see some wells in the report that the water level will be in the purple, for example. But the purple is a lot thicker. It might be 400 feet versus what this one is. And you but you'll see the line be very straight right across the you know, nothing really major declines. So we have pumped off in that specific area. We've pumped off the pressure water, but the water in the aquifer is declining at a very slow rate.

So some initial conclusions we came up with. The analysis of the geophysical logs through PETRA indicate that there were more water recoverable in the Dawson Denver excuse me, the Lower Dawson Denver and Arapahoe Aquifers. Water level trends indicate relative stability with greater declines at the margins is what we would expect. As you are closer to that hogback, you're going to have greater declines in groundwater. Water quality data, besides from water providers, which sometimes is hard to get, is fairly minimal.

Most water providers are accessing deeper aquifers that we've seen. Least as part of their asset portfolio, they're going into the Denver, the Arapahoe, not so much of the Fox Hills yet, few wells out there, but primarily Denver Arapahoe, which is good news because that means there's not as much draw on the Dawsons. And individual wells typically we've noticed, and I've made this comment before, we typically notice that most of these individual wells do not fully penetrate the aquifer or you know, their pumps are set at shallower levels as a result of what that pressure water might be. This runs the risk of a lot of these individual property owners maybe having to re drill their wells to the bottom of the aquifer or lower their pumps. And I have one.

This is an initial map that we've kind of put together. This is with the Homestead Subdivision Northeast in part of the county. We took from 1973 on, because prior to 1973, there was no well permanent requirements in the Denver Basin. You could get basically wherever you wanted. But post 1973, you know, that's when these provisions came into play with impacts to the overlying alluvium, and that's in the senate bill five, and this as well was further refined.

As you look at the subdivision letter here from the county, it is from the seventies. They say this subdivision should have wells constructed in the Lower Dawson as the Lower Dawson in this area is nontributory. We've even seen the redrills that come in for wells that were constructed in the Upper Dawson from the seventies and sixties. The state has asked them to move, put those wells in the Lower Dawson because of the impact for the Upper Dawson. But as you can see throughout that, there's very few wells.

I mean, I'm talking probably less than six that have actually completed the base of Dawson. Most of them are above, so you're not getting the full benefit of the aquifer, and you're gonna, you know, while we're not seeing major water level declines, a lot of the pumps are actually even set above where that upper, that average top level of the Lower Dawson is. So you're seeing folks that, which again, it makes total sense. I mean, why spend a bunch of money on a water well when your well driller's drilling down, you see water shoot up to the surface, you know, 20 feet below the surface, complete your well there. It's a lot cheaper than going all the way down.

So we've seen this. It's not it's not inconsistent, and it's not unique to Douglas County. We've seen it in Adams County, El Paso County, Albert County, Arapahoe County. It's just individual property owners. I mean, it's it's a dollars and cents thing. And so but it is there is a there is gonna be an issue, and we've seen it with other subdivisions in other counties. What happens when those you can't push your well down can't push your pump down any further because of the size of the wellbore, and that you you can't get a pump down of appropriate size to move water up from 1,100 feet. What happens if I have to redrill the well? These are not inexpensive endeavors. And so right now, there's nothing in the state to say, hey, listen.

You know, we're gonna help out with that, help out with those costs. I mean, it's strictly on the landowner, but those are it's it's a it's a relatively costly endeavor for sure. So those are some of the initial conclusions. Obviously, our report will be out in two weeks and a little more figures and a little more fun, but that's kinda where we're at.

Okay, questions? Tricia?

Yeah, Tricia Bernhardt. In one of your earlier figures, were showing the margins, A, B Central. That concept was developed years ago by Bruce Lytle. Is that something that you feel is important to continue to analyze? Does it make a difference in what you're analyzing? Are you planning to explain that or split it out in your analysis? What's your opinion of that situation?

Yeah, what we've, our initial conclusions on that is based upon our data that we found from Petro, we wouldn't recommend changing those boundaries that the county has put into place under 18A. Couple reasons. One, along the margins, we're looking they're very consistent with what we're seeing in the heat maps that based upon where we put margin a and margin b as the county put that together, that's where those complex areas are. I'm not gonna talk much about the forested area or the mountainous area, the the fractured granite, because I think that's, you know, unique in and of itself. But those margin areas that are right along the hogback, you know, are complex, and I think the the county does have reasonable rules and regs in there for development of water in those areas.

As you move into the Central Basin, the central part of the zone, we are seeing the Denver, I'm sorry, the Lower Dawson, the Denver, and the Arapahoe with more developable water. So, it looks like that that report was actually done and those analysis by Bruce were pretty accurate. I mean, again, we were thinking that we may have an issue like we've seen in other counties where we'd see a reduction in the amount of physical water available in these areas. We just didn't see that. And as we've looked through the data a couple times, you know, it's a good thing.

And I think leaving those regulations in place to manage that groundwater and still keep a focal point on what that groundwater availability may be in the future is a good thing.

Any other questions? Don?

Yeah, Don Langley. Could you go back to the Petra slide where you said there are surprising results? Yeah. So so saying, you know, having Petra indicate that there's more water than the the paper water, that's way different than Arapahoe County or any place else you've been or El Paso County even?

That's correct. And the reason is most of those, as I indicated, most of those counties are further away from the hogback. So you're getting a lot tighter formation of waters. It's just not physically being is is the water the the ground is more physically tight, so it's not releasing that water. Yeah.

Here in Douglas County, we're close to the hogback, you know, versus Albert, Arapahoe. You know, that there are probably some areas in El Paso County that are similar to this, but overall, that's you're also in El Paso County, you're getting down to those margins as well, kinda on the Southern end of the Denver Basin. So it's just a tighter formation, So we're seeing in those tighter formations, you're just not getting the water release from the aquifer based upon what we look at. And we use a measure it's 12 o meters on when you look at those geophysical logs. And that really is the line that we've seen that where water is producible.

When we do this at Douglas County, we're seeing a lot more water. And we actually have seen this with the state too over in Greenlands Ranch. We've actually done some work specifically on Greenlands Ranch in the Arapahoe Aquifer and found significantly more water than the state actually had in SP 5. And they we walked it through with them. They went, yep. We we just don't have that data. The state doesn't have that data and haven't been able to process that data. So they've been more I mean, they've been catching up and using real real time data.

Is the 710,160, is that acre feet available per year?

That is per year, but I wouldn't say it's available. And the reason I say that, this is just gross numbers.

Yeah, okay. I mean,

that's available. We've carved out, you know, the the not non tributary 4%, not non tributary actual, all that fun stuff. So, and the previous slide was yeah. But this is per year. Yeah. And again, across the county, of course. This is not just in the unincorporated areas. This is all we wanted to compare apples and apples. We wanna do all county, all of county. We take out the amount availability and unincorporated, which the county would be involved with, but not getting involved in the suit in the water providers businesses as they say, because they have their own water asset pools. That, you know, that number is a little bit is less.

Yes, I don't know what you're showing for total water provider consumption yet. I mean that data is data that you've been summarizing. I mean the rough number I had was somewhere around 55,000 to 60,000 acre feet a year.

That could be right. I don't know, we've the point

being is that this availability is 10 times that.

Yeah. Is still quite a bit of water in the county for development. Mean, as we look back through here

I mean, that's a good thing.

Yeah, it is. There's some positive results that came out of this for sure. Again, there's always caveats for dealing with groundwater. There are gonna be local areas that have more water level decline than others. But looking at as a county on a whole from unincorporated areas, you know, we can see that there is, you know, I I for some reason, the the Fox Hills got cut off, and I apologize for that.

But if you just do the math across and just look at the nontributory water, you're looking at, you know, north of 300,000 acre feet in the unincorporated areas, which is about right. About 40% of the surface area is in water providers versus unincorporated. So there's still quite a bit of water. The problem is also there is the water's the deeper. It's down in the Denver, it's down down in the raffle, down in the Fox Hills. So that becomes more of a challenge for the individual property owner. But there is water there. I mean, it's and we've seen it in other counties too that just have not accessed those deeper aquifers. It's expensive. Let's let's face it. So, again, that's some of the thought, think, that we've done in other counties is that do municipalities look at those deeper aquifers where they have the dollars to be able to go down there.

Thank you.

Yeah, Harold.

I hope we understand what we're saying here on a gross basis. Our task, we're looking at twenty five years from now to see what we should be doing as accounting. During that period of time, water providers will be spending billions with the B dollars developing renewable water in anticipation of moving off groundwater. So it becomes very important what you're saying here, there's significantly more groundwater than we thought there was. Has nothing to do with is it retrievable, but it's there.

And so it would seem to me as a business person, I just want to know what is retrievable and do we have twenty five years to transition to renewable water? Or is there just plenty of nonrenewable water here and this whole chasing renewable water is not prudent use of time because it's all recoverable, but you're not saying that. So I'm not exactly sure what we are saying with this because it seems to me people are going to be making decisions with B dollars in it based upon what comes out of this, what we anticipate the life of the aquifer while we transition if we need to transition. I'm not sure I'm getting that. So help me understand it, Maybe I'm missing something.

What we're saying here is there's quite a bit of Denver Basin water but it's deep water. It's

deep.

It's deep. You

you gotta go down north, south of 1,200 feet to access it. So is it really accessible to the individual property owner? Probably not. That's an expensive well. You're looking, you know, a couple $100,000 for the well to get a proper permit, proper well in there or proper, I'm sorry, pump.

Yeah, I understand the individual. That's a risk that somehow we've got to be able to explain to those people that they're taking, that they're going to have to go deeper and deeper, and 1,200 feet is. But as a county as a whole, like I said, billions of dollars can be invested in renewable water. So how reliable is the aquifer? Do we have twenty five years or beyond that? Or how do we put in what we need as a county, need to do as a matter of policy? That's what I'm interested in.

I mean, we're working on the final supply and demand analysis, but based upon initially about what municipalities or I should say water providers are actually pumping out of the ground now versus what we see in the groundwater based upon real data that's out there, there's significant amount of Denver Basin groundwater in the deeper aquifers, the Denver and the Arapaho in particular. The Arapaho looks really favorable for the county. It's deep, but there's a lot of water there in the county. Bringing in renewable water versus Denver Basin, I think it would be a cost benefit analysis of looking into that. One being, one of the comments that was from the water service provider here that was doing wastewater treatment, The reason we could do reuse on that water is because it is Denver Basin water.

Denver Basin water does go into Castle Pines, does go into Castle Rock as their main water supply. That is considered foreign water, that means it can be used and reused to extension. Surface water, you can't do that. Know, Denver doesn't have that ability except for water they pull from the Western Slope. They pull water out of out of the out of the south plat drainage, that's one use water.

It has to be put back at once it runs through the water treatment plant, it goes back to the river to not be used again. So there's different challenges in that regard when it comes to renewable water. If you're bringing water into South Platte into Douglas County, which would be Division two, yeah, you might be able to go ahead and, you know, have usual and use and reuse of water to extinction to promote that reuse water. But since Denver Basin water is primarily used right now in the county, that's where you can actually use to have that reuse.

But that's not the question. The question is, but over twenty five years, but which are time, is that going to be declining? And do we need to be looking at renewable water? And a lot of renewable water is not first use. It's used to consumption, used to extinction. So the question is, as we build this, are we going to be able to answer the question, is there sufficient water in there to last twenty five years or beyond, or should we be as a county moving towards renewable water at least in the major systems?

Well, mean, we haven't finished our demand and supply analysis, so we have to look But at our population in looking at the data, yes, there's significant water in the Denver Basin to last twenty five years. Absolutely. Okay.

But, all right, so maybe we need to rethink some of our policies then. Because that's different than the anecdotal report we got from Centennial saying that some of their wells are failing, that they're using, what, 35 out of 50 or some number like that. So that's a little different than what you're saying. So we need to reconcile this because at the end of the day, it isn't a hypothetical. This is real dollars being spent by real people to get real results. And we need to understand what this is.

Agreed. And I think when you look at water providers, they have their own asset pool. There are certain water providers that pull water from the Denver Basin at a greater rate that have further declines like a Centennial. What we're looking at is what the county would look at outside those water provider areas. An individual water provider can look at renewable water for its asset portfolio if it feels that that is going to be the best asset for its water providers going forward. There could be others that look at the Denver Basin. And at next looking at

the

the

we're

That makes sense?

No, because it seems to me as a matter of policy, what we've been directing is we want unincorporated areas to connect to major systems because they're bringing renewable water in. And if we're saying we don't need to do that anymore, that's a big policy change, at least in my mind, that's a big policy change. If we're going to be incorporated, we just had here in Douglas County recently a community inside a major water provider who wanted to save a lot of money by not joining into renewable water system. And what you're saying, that could be okay. Well, lot of us felt that was absolutely not okay because the major water provider was going to connect for renewable system.

So no, there's, I think that's, those are some really major questions that need to be answered. And one of the biggest policies right now is do we want unincorporated areas not connecting to major systems to bring renewable water in? That's a big question.

Understood, I agree.

And if what you're saying, well, it's fine for them not to, that's a change in certainly my thinking of what we need as a county.

Well, I think if I could just interject, I think though, when he gets the rest of the study done, the demand study and the availability, that's the other part that's going to be able to answer that. There's a little bit of a crack in that whole issue that we've got to have that other information, at least in my mind.

With population growth, exactly. But also and I'm not I'm not saying that renewable water is not something we should be doing or something the county should be looking at. I'm just saying what the data says here is that there is significant resources in the Denver Basin for new development. I mean, that's the numbers should I can't argue with what the numbers say. Well, the one

thing it tells me right away, frankly, as a former commissioner looking at it and having been there is that one of the things we do need to look at in the non incorporated areas or the non provider areas, I would say, is okay, developments that have large numbers of two, one and two acre parcels, maybe we need to rethink the concept of individual wells and say, maybe you guys need to create little districts and pump deep. And this way you can afford to do so. Because if you don't do that, you're going to run into this issue of a diminishing supply at that upper level very quickly. I know that's one of the things we pushed hard on the Flintwood development that was out there. Okay, it's 58 homes and they were all on one and a half, I think one and a half, I'm asking somebody who may not know, sorry, one and a half to two acre parcels and the point being, no, tell you what, you you need to go ahead, punch two wells, go deep, and help these these people out.

So we don't want them running out of water, plus it helps everybody else around them. So that's kind of the concept I think we're going to be seeing when we see the supply demand and the way we have to think. The problem with IC water provider is that, yeah, I don't know how we get into their portfolio management and get the full demand and draw out on it, I don't know. So, it's going to be interesting once you get your last study and we overlay it into here, then we're gonna be able to see what the demand is versus the supply versus what we basically have in place.

I mean, of the other things that we don't know how it's gonna actually play out in the future is what the supreme court did in November 2024

Yeah.

Which says that you get this amount of water underlying your land. That's it. Is that perpetual? We know alluvial water or renewable water is perpetual. It when it rains, we got some some water. But right now, this is a resource. Whether we may show a ton of water there, it's only accessible to whoever the overlying landowner is for that specific volume. Period. I mean, that's just what the Supreme Court said. Now until the legislature steps in or there's some new thinking about what will happen after a year, after that volume is taken

Yep.

Then, you know, that might be an issue. And that's one thing that I've seen with other counties is how are we gonna address that? Just by definition, it's not sustainable using the Denver Basin water. You got a hundred years. Are we gonna be able to do that? Right. Is is that reliable to have a perpetual water supply for just a hundred years? You know?

Sean, you were up next.

Sean Tanner. Jack, I think where the intersect is with the municipal and the water district water providers is when they come to the county for either funds or grant opportunities, I think that's where the intersect is when we're driving policy of what do we want to see in this county. Because I echo kind of Harold's sentiment where everyone's moving towards getting renewable water, not just Douglas County, I mean, all our neighboring counties as well. But I also understand you're doing a county wide approach and individual well owners. And so I think maybe a solution once we get all the data is we're able to start spot marking areas of the county where we're seeing the steepest decline in the aquifer, and then the county putting together pools of homeowners to say, look, you guys may wanna come together.

Exactly. Go drill one well that goes down into the Denver Aquifer.

Well and that's kinda like the Thunderbird concept even though they still didn't go deep enough the first time. But it's but right. That's exactly, I think you're right in that aspect, Sean, from a standpoint. Roger, you you had something?

You're killing me. First of all, thank you for coming and bringing all this data. I appreciate just the window, the peak hole into what you're doing. I know it's not a complete end game here, but just a little snapshot of what you're doing. I think we've got our pants around our ankles a little bit here because some of the questions we're asking here are policy questions and that's really not the job of what we are doing here at the table.

That's really for the commissioners to decide what we do with some of the data. Some of what we're doing here is really making sure we have the data that the people who are going to make those decisions have to make the correct decisions, right? Making sure that we give them whoever the commissioners are was they look at this in the years to come as this is a living document to make decisions about renewable and aquifers that hopefully will recharge and be able to supply water for our county. So I want to make sure that we have the correct data that will live and breathe into the future. That's what I'm concerned with.

What you presented here is really good news about the aquifers. And I do agree with Harold that I want to incorporate as much as we can about renewables. I also think that's our future. I think you don't disagree with that.

I don't disagree.

So very much appreciate all that. Something you said at the very beginning of the presentation that really intrigued me because I didn't think we'd see anything by the end of the year. What will you show us by the end of the year that we might be able to look at that will be completed? Did I mishear you?

Oh, no. It'll be our full report about text, the GIS interactive map, all that stuff. Basically what we were tasked to do, you'll have a draft final, if you will, of our report of all the data about what our conclusions are.

And at that time, for a Merry Christmas for you, if we had some addition that we wanted to add, would we be able to add another request in at that time that we might be able to get on the other end of the New Year?

Yes, believe so. Yep. We'll definitely have response to questions.

Okay. I've got a blood oath from you then. Okay. I'm kidding. I'm just kidding. Awesome. Well, that's great. That's great news. I didn't expect it that early. So that's awesome. Thank you so much. I appreciate you coming.

Jack, any other questions? Just one other comment.

The other side of the concept of a bunch of homeowners getting together and putting down a 2,000 foot long well is that once they do that, then they become a sanitation district. And now then the the issues like trying to get a permit and trying to comply with the federal laws and so forth just go through the roof. So it's not just all one-sided. Just just a thought. Any

other questions, comments? I can tell you one thing. It sure does I think at some point we're going to have to look at renewable water because Sean said something which is absolutely correct. The more renewable water is desired and the more problems we have with existing groundwater, that cost of renewable waters is do nothing but go to billions with a b. And I think the longer the state waits, it's gonna be an issue.

I know that's why there's a lot of efforts on other projects that are moving forward right now, quietly but subtly on like I think even the South Platte issue is something people are looking at again. Okay. Well, with that guys, it is three minutes till. So if you have any other questions, anybody? Anybody online have any questions, Jim?

I would just say I'm not surprised by this groundwater data. I, you know, have seen other pieces of information over the years that have indicated that, you know, there is quite a water. And I I saw this confirms that. I I do think, the renewable water issue, you know, is gonna play in the future, big way. I'm still wondering if we're missing the boat by not doing the alluvial water analysis.

And I I know there's not much alluvial water available, but, you know, I'm just wondering if if we're gonna head down the path of renewable water, the re the water in the county if we at least try to get a handle on what's there and not just you've heard today in in prior meetings that they're just not gonna look at it via wells because it's such a small item. And I realize it's a small item, but it's the path to renewable water.

Ten four. Anybody else? Well, with that, no objections. I think we are adjourned except one thing before we adjourn. Sorry. Our next meeting is November 17. Put that on it's a week earlier, just so you know. Tricia?

Yep, sorry. Just wanted to retract my statement about the referral for the Heirloom Parkway. I reread that will serve letter. They are not, it is not 7,000 acre feet. So I misread that, so please retract my comment. Thank you.

No take backs. This is no take backs. You're on the record. There's no take backs. All righty. Thank you guys very much.