Public Amenities Committee - Regular Meeting

Welcome back to this biweekly meeting of the South Platte River Committee of Denver City Council. Join us for the discussion as the South Platte River Committee starts now.

Real life is kinda tough right

now. Good

afternoon. Welcome, everyone, to, the South Platte Committee of May 13. I'm councilwoman Torres. I represent West Denver District 3. Today, we have a briefing. And before we get to our, guests from Denver let's do introductions, and we'll start with those in the room on my left.

Councilwoman Flora Alvidrez with Lucky District seven.

Good afternoon. Kevin Flynn, Southwest Members District two. Thank you. And do we

have any council members online?

You do. Diana Romero Campbell, Southeast Denver District four.

Perfect. Thank you so much. And thank you for joining us. We will turn it over to Denver Water. Thank you for being here, and we're excited to hear what you have to present.

Great. Thank you so much. Thank you, council members, for having having me today. I'm Rick Marcyczuk, the chief water resource strategy at Denver Water, joined here today by Ashley Denault. I think some of you know her.

And really gonna focus on on the drought and give you kind of an update on current conditions, compare that to maybe some previous years, and then talk about our response and then ongoing coordination and messaging. Diving right in, just a little bit of overview, as all of you are probably well aware, some of the Denver Water history, but we've been around for over one hundred years. Bought the Denver Union Water Company in 1918 and then have the charter, obviously, that talks about the coordination between City County of Denver and Denver Water. We serve 1,500,000 people. So about half of that's within City and County of Denver and about half of that outside distributors.

So we have 61 distributor districts that we provide water to as well. Maybe the most important item on this slide is the bottom this year anyway is the bottom bullet that we get all of our water from snow melt from the mountains, from both Colorado River and the South Platte River. So this is a map of our collection system. The orange line kind of squiggling through the map there in the middle is the Continental Divide and then we bring water from Dillon Reservoir through the Roberts Tunnel as well as from the Fraser River through the Moffett Tunnel near Winter Park. And then on the South Platte side, the we have a series of reservoirs on the South Plat.

Half of our water comes from the South Plat. The highest reservoir in the basin, Antero Reservoir, we are actually as part of our drought response, we are moving water from Antero as we speak down to 11 Mile And Cheesman. Today's the last day that Antero Reservoir is open to recreation. So you have about, I don't know, what time is it now? You got about six, seven hours maybe if you wanna cruise up there real fast and catch some fish before we close Ontario for recreation for the season.

And the reason for that closure is that's our we evaporate more water out of that reservoir than the other reservoir. So to try to save water, we're bringing that water down into into more reservoirs that don't evaporate as much. So we've been in coordination with with Park County, with Colorado Parks and Wildlife and whatnot in draining that reservoir and then harvesting the and relocating some of the fish. This is just a map of Colorado. This isn't the Denver specific.

It's not even only a Colorado. It's really the Western US situation and that really dark red there in the kind of upper left. That's our West Slope collection system. Summit County, Grand County is within that. So pretty bad situation statewide.

And this, you know, as we look at our system, we our records really only go back about forty years and this is the worst year that we've seen. But we went back even farther to the 1936 is when we use we measure snow through both snowtells. They're kind of they automatically kinda measure that. We have telemetry that sends us those signals daily. But then we also go around and measure snow by hand once a month.

And April 1 snowpack is plotted on this graph back to 1936, and this is kinda statewide. And you can see 2026 there as the, by far, the worst year ever. And you can see kind of this downward trend from from climate change. But but this is by far the worst we've ever seen. And we will likely be talking about 2026 for a hundred years from now.

I mean, that's how bad this is. I hope we're talking about 2026 and not twenty twenty six, seven, and eight in this because this is really gonna be a multi year situation. But it is it is the worst that we've that we've ever seen. Just another way of looking at this more specific to the South Platte Basin specifically. And this is a graph that is put out by the Carl State University Climate Climate Center.

And the we're there in the upper upper left. So the temperature is on the left hand scale and we're probably five or six degrees warmer than any other year that we've seen in history. And then going towards the left, one of the driest years. You know, I showed the April 1 snowpack being the worst. You know, like, why is this not the worst?

Well, it's that temperature in conjunction with the the dry weather that resulted in that April 1. As you can see on this graph, lot of our snow has already melted off. Now, this figure is is what about almost a week a week old. Today, if we were to look at this, we have completely melted out in the South Platte. There is no more snow in the South Platte Basin and we are at 2% or nearly melted out in the Colorado.

So where so this blue line is is twenty twenty six. The black line is kind of our average or median. And usually, this time of year, we are still on a downward trend. But if you look at the South Platte, a lot of times we are well, it doesn't quite work on the monitor, but we we still have a significant amount of snow, but this year we don't. So what does this mean?

It really translates into our reservoir storage and where right now we are at 79% of capacity. And typically, we're at 85. Next year, this time this time next year, we'll be between 5060%. So we will we are basically serving our customers off of reservoir storage this year. What does that look like on the ground?

Just a couple pictures of the Snake River near Keystone. You can see on the left that's 2019 and on the right 2026 where there's really really no snow. So that was the doom and gloom, bad news. I'm gonna pivot now to talk a little bit more and a little bit more positively about how we're responding. And really want to thank you all, The the departments at the city and county have been working with us and I'll talk more about that in the future, just the collaboration and cooperation that we have had, as well as our customers who are really listening and have really responded well to the situation that that we're in.

You know, always in place whether it's a drought year or not. We have certain watering rules that's don't water between ten and six, don't water the sidewalk, don't let water pool, you know, fix your irrigation system, things like that. Also, our landscape transformation program. And I will highlight it was just a month ago that we had a groundbreaking, or should I say, sod rolling activity here with the the mayor and and council members. So just wanted to highlight that that partnership that we have with you all.

And then ongoing rebate program And you can learn more about that on our website. So what does our response look like? We have four stages of drought, anywhere from a watch to stage three currently. And this was our board approved a stage one resolution on March 25, which puts us in and I'll talk more about that. But the big piece of that is mandatory water use restrictions and two days a week.

Then later in April, we also passed drought pricing. And and that starts with water use as of May 1. That'll be billed in June. So currently any water use that's in tiers two and three on rate schedule will have additional charges. So that tier one is kind of indoor use that's measured based on usage from January, February, and March each year. And that's your tier one allotment. Anything above that is in tiers two and three. So what's the goal, main goal of our our drought response? The main one is to achieve 20% reduction in use from all customers. And that looks different for indoor versus outdoor, and I'll get into some of that as well.

But really upholding community health, safety, and economic fight vitality. So, you know, we wanna maintain our trees. Obviously, lawns may look brown, but but do wanna maintain the health of our landscapes and our community. And maintain customer trust. So through communication and working with our customers is a big key. And then really stretching that water supply. As I mentioned, likely this is a multi year situation, so we want to save as much water as we can for next year and beyond. So what does that mean for outdoor water use? We have days of the week schedule. If it's residential, it's odd versus even.

So odd numbered addresses, Wednesday, Saturday. Even numbered is Sunday and Thursday. And then all others including multifamily and commercial water on Tuesday, Friday, and there's no watering on Monday unless you are on a water budget. And I'll talk a little bit more about that in a little bit. So indoors, what does that look like?

You know, it's really making sure fixing leaks, taking shorter showers, things like that. And then we still do offer, you know, we do offer toilet rebates so people who want to replace toilets. And that has a lasting effect even beyond the drought. So we encourage that. As far as businesses, restaurants serve water only on request.

Public car washes can continue to operate, though fleet vehicles. So for Denver Water, City and County Denver, really limited to washing vehicle fleet vehicles once a week unless it's a health and safety reason. And then golf courses and parks. Here, still looking for a 20% reduction, but if you can't adhere to that Tuesday, Thursday schedule, then we offer what we call a water budget for that. So work individually with with folks to put in place water budgets where it's 20% less than what your kind of last five year average is.

Public pools. This is a question we get a lot about. Yes, pools can be open. We do encourage fountains and water features to not operate. Although splash pads, things like that, we've kind of put in the category of pools for people to be able to utilize that. Healthcare, we get that question often as well. What you know, how are they supposed to save water? They may or may not necessarily achieve that 20%, but to the extent that there's outdoor irrigation, we ask them to follow those rules and then do what they can from an indoor perspective. How are we enforcing this? We really stress education.

We really wanna educate our customers and help them to understand the situation that we're in. So but we do have, for those who are repeat offenders, do have warnings and fines established. We've developed an online tool where anyone, you all, you know, can do this even where you see if you see water waste, there's an app website that you can go to to report that and then we process that through our system. We, you know, send postcards out, make phone calls, send our fleet staff out to follow-up depending on the severity of the situation. So before wrapping up, just want to kind of share a little bit about our ongoing communication, particularly with, you know, you all and and some of the city and county departments.

So we have weekly updates on our news outlet called TAP. From that, there's been over 500 drought related stories since the beginning of the year. So you probably see it almost I see it multiple times a day, but you all probably see it multi you know, every day there's something in the news about the the situation we're in because of the severity of that. We've been messaging this to our customers since last fall and have really heightened and increased that messaging as we as the situation has has gotten worse. Typically, update our board once a month, every other meeting on water supply and snowpack.

This year, we've done it every meeting just to keep that top of mind for everyone. And then coordination with the city and county. Obviously, you all and I think Ashley or someone on our team has probably met with several of you in the past few months on the situation, as well as we keep the mayor's office updated. Work really closely with Denver Park and Rec and Doddy, those water budgets that I mentioned. So that's an area where we're working closely with your departments.

And then we have these signs, an example of that on the slide here, that can be posted and really for public awareness because, you know, the public may call and say, wait, wait a minute, this park is watering and it's not their day. Well, they're likely on a water budget. And then just wanted to also point out our our work with City Forrester and Kasser on maintaining our tree canopy. You know, we had a very dry winter and really need to make sure that we were providing enough messaging people to provide enough water to trees. So work closely with them in messaging to maintain landscapes.

And then One Water, we do work with your team on there's a One Water Leaders group that we meet, I think, monthly to coordinate on those topics. And then lastly, just for additional resources, you can obviously mention our website and then tap our news outlet there as well. But happy to answer whatever questions you all have. And, you know, I live this every day, and so probably went through that quickly and and had some highlights, but happy to answer any questions.

Thank you, Rick. Really appreciate this. I've got a couple council members in queue. I'd like to welcome council president Sandoval to the meeting, and we will start with councilman Flynn.

Thank you, madam chair. Rick, thank you for the terrible news. We knew you know, we were well aware of the situation and and appreciate this detail. If you'd add a little bit more, looking at the drought pricing, the tiered pricing, obviously, with just me and my wife, our indoor use January, February, March, it's gonna be much less than the neighbors across the street with three kids. Mhmm.

So does that set the baseline? In other words, is tier one individualized, particularized to each household? You're you're down in the billing system enough to to know that we use Harry and I use 10,000 gallons a month, but with the three kids, they use 20. So that becomes our baseline. So anything above 10 for me, above 20 program. Okay. What I don't what I'm not clear on is what's the what is the threshold between tier two and tier three? Yeah.

For for residential, exactly right. It it's based your tier one is based on your winter quarter average. And like for me, we use about two or 3,000 gallons on average a month in the winter, but set at 5,000 as the minimum. So it's either your winter quarter average or 5,000, so that your first tier is 5,000 or whatever your use. So if if it's 10,000, it's what you use in the winter, then that's

Thank God it's not. I I had no idea what a reasonable number was.

So so that's that's the but I I think I'm I'm not nor I I would say I'm probably not normal in that Pardon. Household with, you know, still have a wife and one girl at home. But but anyway, that's your first. The tier two, we add 15,000 gallons Alright. To tier one, and then anything above that No matter tier three. User. Correct.

Okay. So anything above 15, a dollar 10 for each of those 15 thou well, each thousand?

Each thousand hours. Yes.

Okay. That's regardless of whether it's a small yard and they're watering or a large yard? Correct. Because, obviously, a large yard, anything over the 15 would be $2.20 a gallon. Yep. Two I have two other questions.

On top on top of the normal rate. Yes. Yes.

Excuse me. I have two other questions on Antero. Yes. I have a constituent, and I'm sure she's not alone, who is extremely upset with Denver Water because I don't know how many fish are in that reservoir, and I think it was stocked recently. I don't know what recent how recently, but I know we've Thank inviting people up to fish and etcetera. Thank you. So I don't she was very concerned with how much die off there was going to be when we drain it. And so what are we doing when fishing is done to try to save, rescue, salvage those living fish that remain?

Great question. Yes. So so when a couple weeks ago when when we announced this and through coordination with Colorado Parks and Wildlife, they they took away the bag limit. So typically, I think you can catch three fish. Now they say, keep whatever you can catch.

And and we've actually had more visitors at Antero the last couple weeks than we have, and the campground's been sold out for two weeks. Unfortunately, like I said, that stops, you know, to today. And then going forward, there are three days in which Denver Water and Colorado Parks and Wildlife will go to kinda harvest the the fish. Some of those fish will swim downstream. Some of those we capture and and relocate. So there's three days that we'll be up there to relocate as many of those fish as we can to other locations.

I've got a follow-up to that then. It has to you wanna wait at Cheesman, it has to go through 11. What's the status of 11? Does that not also prone to higher evaporation than our downhill reservoirs?

Great great question. And 11 Mile is very, very narrow and and deeper, so we do not see the same level of evaporation.

That's in a canyon. Right?

Yes. Yeah. Yeah. And and so and 11 Mile is also a drought reservoir. So basically, 11 Mile and Antero are they were built, designed, or at least within our system for for drought. For this purpose. For this purpose. And Antero is the first one that we would drain because of and we we drained it in 2002 in that drought, and then we drained it in 2015 for a a dam rehabilitation project. So it's been drained twice in the last twenty five years. The when when we do when it does refill in in 2002, it took four years for it to refill.

When that does happen and we restock it, those fish, they have so much nutrients and and there's and they they grow at a very rapid rapid pace. So the fishery will recover once once we get water back in there and restock it, but it could

be Thank you. It just there's obviously capacity in Cheeseman to hold this, which is frightening in and of itself that to think that Cheeseman can hold whatever how much water is in Antero right now.

Yeah. The

But we're gonna leave 11 mile as it

is. Correct.

Okay. Last question. Can you I'm not as familiar with the system north. Mhmm. I'm I represent Southwest Emerson. I'm familiar with where it ends up in Marston. But what can you tell us if you know what is the status of gross reservoir construction and storage there? And it's particularly when we're facing a drought. Right.

Right. So that's a that's a great question because that's really why we're building Gross Reservoir. Yeah. It came you know, 2002, we were in a similar, just not quite as bad situation, and we embarked on Gross Reservoir. So a couple things I can say about that.

Just a little after midnight last night, we we're still we're building the dam still, and we've been building it for three years now. And just this past just last night, we it's called a chimney on each side of the dam. You've got the spillway and then it goes up a little bit on each side. And we finished one of the chimneys and we're moving the equipment over to the other one. So about next I think next month, we will be done with our roller compacted concrete or the raise of the of the dams.

That construction will be done. Still a lot of other work that needs to be done in order to put water in it, which won't be ready for until next year or even maybe 2028. We are still in the middle of a lawsuit though as well. And so the status of that is I believe later this year, there'll be oral arguments and maybe a decision on that early next year. So in with within that that won't help us necessarily in this drought because you need water to put in it.

That that was my my question. Yeah. Yeah.

So so even so you need water to to put in it, and this year, it will leave our reservoirs half full this time next year. So we have a lot of existing storage that we'll need to fill up in addition to if we were even able to store water in the expanded gross reservoir.

Okay. Thank you. That was my question is whether we would be able to store any more at gross Reservoir than than normal, but the answer is no.

We don't have the we wouldn't have the water yet to to fill, but yes. Once once we get through the lawsuit, gets construction built, then, yes, completed, then we will be able to store water.

Alright. Thank you. Thank you, madam chair.

Thank you. Councilwoman Oviedras? Thank you, madam chair. I appreciate that, and that's very interesting because one of my questions was, you know, some people call it global weirding because it's more of unnormal natural climate patterns. And so I anticipate potentially right now we didn't get a lot of water or snow.

However, there are other parts of the country that got abnormally high levels of water and snow, and so there's a chance that next year because of global weirding that it could be a high level of precipitation. And so from what I understand from that exchange is that you are prepared for a large amount of water potentially and being able to store that for moments like this in the future because my understanding is weather projections into the future are for just more abnormal weather patterns.

Yes. Great great question. Thank you for that. And you're right. Yes.

I think we have a downward trend of or a warming, right, and downward trend of water availability, but then this variability and more extremes like we're seeing now is exactly right. So that's why storage is so important in not only our system, but several systems in the West. And just to also maybe expand on the multiyear situation that we're in, likely next year we'll start off in some level of water use restriction as well. We would have to, you know, have extreme flooding this fall or have a 130, 150% of normal snowpack to recover our our reservoirs. But, we'll have a lot of capacity next year should we receive that snow.

Okay. That's helpful. And then one of the concerns that I have around the water restrictions is I know like revision from district three serves district seven as well where people don't have as easily access to fresh foods, and so they have these gardens outside as part of their food source for the summer. Is that taken into consideration? Are Denver urban gardens or other people that are growing food for our food pantries?

Yes. So it's it is it's the the lawn that the it's the lawn that you can only water twice a week. If you have a vegetable garden or gardens, you can water those any day of the week.

And So that's not you'll still be charged more?

You you will still be charged the drought pricing for water that's in the larger tiers. Yes.

Okay. What my understanding is that residential use from our constituents basically is the number one use. What's the number two use of Denver Water's water?

So the number two use is commercial, industrial. If you look at the kind of the indoor residential use is about 45% of our water usage. All landscapes is about 40% of our water usage and that leaves commercial industrial at 15%, if I did my math in my head correct. So it is it's residential and then commercial industrial.

Okay. And then I don't think this is directly in your purview, but curious about messaging or communications or where people can go to learn more about, like, the rain barrel as a resource.

Yeah. So as far as I don't know if we have anything necessarily on our website about rain barrels, But you are under kinda state law. You're allowed to have up to two rain barrels to to do that. So we can follow-up with you on more specifics. But I don't know that, like again, I don't know if we have anything on our website, but they are they are allowed. And that's as of several years ago that the law was passed on that.

Yeah. I think that could be helpful information when people are on your website to know that if they're super concerned. This weekend, I think we have rain, and so that's another option. I think we're all trying to do our best. And, you know, I've been very thoughtful, and it's in our faces when we have parks in our city that, you know, have dry lakes. It's a huge complaint I'm getting at the moment. Let me just double check my questions and see if that was everything. I think the fish thing, I just wanted to elevate that too, has come up for me. So that's all I have. Thank you. Appreciate the efforts.

Mhmm. Were you interested in sharing information about how to get rain barrels? Yes. Groundwork Denver Groundwork Denver. Great nonprofit here, and they can do both take requests for rain barrels as well as provide education about how to use them, kind of the overall landscape. But they're great. Thank you. Thank you. Councilwoman Romero Campbell, you're up.

Thank you. That was pretty sobering as far as what we're going to be facing this summer. Can you tell us more about the Land Landscape Transformation Assistance Program, and are applications still being taken, and what we can do to help promote that?

Thank you for that question. So yes, our Landscape Transformation Program, we have a few different options there. There's we give away free native grass seed. We also have a program to for residential customers to do lawn removal or bluegrass removal as part of that process. And then we have our larger programs.

This year, unfortunately, our large programs and residential removal programs have been are fully subscribed, fully committed. We did, I think, quadruple our offerings of the native grass seeds. So I think we do have more of that available, but it tends to go quickly once we offer that again on our website. And then we have Garden in a Box and those offerings, and that's where it's kind of select plants from Resource Central, one of our partners. We have a spring sale and a fall sale.

The spring sale's already occurred and that sold out. So there will be a fall offering of garden in a box. So those are some of the programs that we have available. And and so it's really the grass seed and the garden in a box from a residential standpoint that's still available this year.

Thanks. I you know, we've got a lot of Kentucky bluegrass in my district, and so I think it's a matter of education and also the conversion of a lot of those lawns. I mean, if you don't have if you're trying to water all your grass and you have something else in place, I think that that is gonna be key. And I don't know if you're gonna have new materials or things that we can send out to constituents to help educate around landscape conversion or ways that they can think about using their lawns in different ways?

Yes, we do have a do it yourself guide, I believe, in both English and Spanish available on our website. So you can go right to our website and get that information on the do it yourself guide.

Okay. I appreciate the partnership that we've had with Denver Water, just being able to also come out and maybe, hopefully this summer, do additional, like, presentations to the community. I think it's that opportunity to be able to have somebody to talk to to help, you know, figure out those landscape conversions are going to be really critical in my district. I do have one other question about My the wondering, and maybe this is more of just dialogue also with my colleagues, but do we have any cross jurisdictional strategies? I mean, I know you're presenting to us, and this is what Denver's doing, But is there a larger regional strategy for drought restrictions, or what we're doing, or how we as a broader metro area are addressing the drought?

Yes. Thank you for that that question. Yes. It is coordinated. We've learned from previous droughts where, for example, we might have one set of days of the week and Aurora might be on something else and another community might be on something else.

And so we've coordinated extensively with our neighboring communities to coordinate on that as well as water sharing type of opportunities. There's different projects that we work on with partner agencies, Aurora's one, many districts in the South Metro area that we have a cooperative project with to kind of help each other out during not in all years, but specifically in years like this. So a lot of coordination regionally on the effort.

Thanks. Thank you. That's helpful. Then just a level set, like, what do you anticipate that we will see this summer? I mean, this is the South Platte River Committee. It will the South Platte not have water running through it, the Cherry Creek, like, what would we anticipate? Or will there be water in those waterways?

Yeah. There there will I mean, there will be water probably less than less than than other years, but there are minimum flows in in those rivers. So there will be water in the river, but but less than we're used to seeing for sure. And, you know, hope we are you know, the the outlook, we're not we're not quite sure as far as from warmth. I mean, we we hope we hope that we get some moisture, obviously, to help this this situation, though it will be a rough year all around for sure.

Okay. Thank you for that. I just keep thinking, you know, I have the High Line Canal, which is no longer a waterway, which has been, you know, dry, and one of the reasons why Denver Water no longer holds the High Line Canal. But it's interesting because as the water was no longer flowing through, it also surfaces a lot of things within the canal, and that's more of my question of do we anticipate that, you know, without the water, things tend to cave, you tend to get more debris. It's also an opportunity to clean the waterways and the systems that are there.

So just more of, like, taking the opportunity if you're going have less water to be able to do some of that maintenance that is otherwise difficult to do when you have a full waterway.

No, that's a great point. And we are looking at those opportunities. We have, in our collection system, we have one area that we typically cannot access until September timeframe usually and we're gonna be able to get into that area a lot sooner to be able to do work there as well as, you know, some of the waterways and Antero Reservoir. There are opportunities to do enhancements there. So taking looking at the positive or the opportunities, it's a good good suggestion, a good point, and we are looking at those opportunities in our system.

Okay. Thank you. Thank you, madam chair. Thank you.

Thank you. Councilwoman Oviedras, you

have one more question? Yes. Thank you. And I'm sorry if I missed this, but you said you were going to explain water budgets, and I didn't catch that. If you could explain what a water budget is. Yeah.

Yeah. So for for and, you know, think of parks and rec, you know, Denver golf. Users like that that their typical water days would be Tuesday and Thursday. But they have so many zones and so much area to cover that they can't do that. Or if it's a sports field and they have games on, you know, those days and so they can't water during a sporting event, they're able to apply for a water budget.

And if you can't comply with the TuesdayThursday, we encourage folks to do that. But if not, we have a special agreement and we're working on several of these. I think we have about 30 or so in the works right now where we will look at your past usage. It might be, you know, the average of the last five years, for example, usage and we say you'll get 80%. We want our goal is to save 20%.

So your allocation's 80% of what you used in the past five years Mhmm. And that's your water budget. You can use it however you want through the season. You can use it whatever days of the week, just dot between ten and six. And and then if you go over that 80%, you get a you get charged two times the rate for going over that. So it's a it's a benefit to be able to spread that water out. But if you misuse it, then there's a penalty if you go over that allocation.

Okay. And the other thing that's come up is rumors that there's other water sources some irrigation systems use. Is that common, or does that exist that there's irrigation systems that are connected to water sources that are not Denver water? With with the a Parks and Rec question if you don't know.

That's okay. So there there may be some on like a well for Wells, for example, that might not be completely tied, but typically there a lot of times we might still be involved in that supply. We do have customers, I should point out, we do have customers on our recycle system. So we capture our return flows from metro wastewater I'm sorry, metro water recovery. And and we capture some of that, and so we irrigate with what we call our recycle system.

Since that water source is somewhat, I'll call it drought proof, maybe not the best word, but it's not impacted by the current situation we're in, those water users and uses are able to irrigate like normal without that reduction. So some parks are able to continue to irrigate as normal if they're on that recycle system.

Okay. Thank you for that. Appreciate that. Thank you, committee chair.

Great. Thank you so much. There was a slide, I think it was what is this six. It's got the purple peach gradient of dots. Actually was the one right before that, statewide snow course data, yes. What is the SWE that's reflected on the is that the x

axis? Good question. Snow water equivalent.

Okay.

So it's the amount of the inches of moisture in the snowpack. So if you were to take snow and melt it, it's the water left over. Think of it the kind of rule of thumb is one foot of snow equals one inch of moisture. Obviously, the density of snow would change that. But if you're looking down here at, you know, snow water equivalent in inches on April 1, It's about two inches. It's about two feet of snow.

Okay. And that's the total. It's not like an average or it's total over a season

or something? Yes. So so this draft specifically is April 1 averaged over every snow course that's done in

Got it. Okay. All right. Thank you for that. Does Denver Water have anything like a mutual aid agreement? Do this might be similar to maybe your conversations regionally. But does Denver Water have an agreement to come to the aid of Aurora if they need it or another water region? Is that written anywhere?

Yeah, so great question. Yes, and typically we have what we call emergency interconnects with several areas. That's typically for infrastructure failures and a lot of those agreements have a clause that excludes drought as almost like lack of lack of proactive planning doesn't constitute an emergency. And so we do have a lot of those agreements, though though not necessarily for the drought situation.

Got it. Okay. You mentioned this with Councilwoman Alvidrez. Residential is your number one customer base user. And then you mentioned 45% indoor, 40% outdoor. That's all residential?

Good clarification. That's not all residential. So, yeah, our residential indoor is 45%, then 40% is all outdoor use. All, okay. Yeah. Okay,

that really helps me understand. And then I guess just in terms of how you're monitoring and how we or how Denver Water arrives at, whether or not we end up at a level or a stage two or a stage three. When, I guess, in Denver Water's history, have we ever been in those stages?

We have not. We have not. We never been in a situation that was less frequent than two day a week. I will say in 2002, in October 2002, we ban outdoor watering yet really the irrigation season was over and then we reevaluated the following year. So moving forward, we will be looking at a few factors.

One, how well do our customers respond to what we're asking them to do and are they saving that water to help conserve water in our reservoirs? What type of, you know, what does the monsoon season look like this year and do we get some moisture out of that? And then it's mostly really highly dependent on next year's snowpack. And so we will be looking at the probabilities of what the op will we continue to be in a stage one? Might it be worse? Might we be able to relax? Really dependent on snowpack determined next year.

Okay. Perfect. Okay. Thank you so much. And just thank you and Denver Water for being so deliberately in touch with Denver, Denver agencies, but also with our offices. So I really appreciate you coming and spending some time with us today.

Thank you. Thank you for taking the time, for having us here, and likewise, I appreciate our partnership and collaboration.

Awesome.

All right. Thank you, Rick. With that, do we have any consent? We have one consent item. Otherwise, we are adjourned. Thank you all. Thank you.