Water Commission - Regular Meeting

Okay, we'll go ahead and call the meeting to order. Two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. Looks like we have a quorum. And Mickey and Roger are online. So we'll do the roll call starting with Tricia.

Tricia Bernhardt present.

Evan Ehle present.

Clark Hamelman here.

Don Langley. Jim Morris. Zach Land.

Harold Smithels, present.

Okay, we need to have an approval of meeting minutes from the last commission meeting on June 22nd. Does anybody have any modifications, changes that they'd like to make, or should we move to approve the minutes? Nothing from the floor, so... Motion to approve? Jim Myers, motion to approve. Okay.

Second.

Very good. All in favor? Aye. Okay. We have a couple referral items today. The first one is this Antelope Crossing rezoning and minor development final plat, which looks like it's dividing up. This is one of Lauren's projects. I think your name was on this one, right? No, oh, dividing up a hundred acre property into I think 10 different lots. All the water would be by well water. So did anybody have any comments that they'd like to make? Tricia.

My comments are just really for thought for all of us. I don't personally have a problem with subdividing into the two acre lots. But it made me start thinking about the density of things, of projects that are using groundwater. So for example, the Pine Canyon development that was looking at using groundwater, I had a real problem with. And the density was such that the amount of groundwater was going to be excessive. In this case, we're talking about two acre lots. Each family probably is going to use an acre foot of water a year. Maybe they're saying two. At what point do we want to suggest that the density is wrong or is okay? In this case, I think two acre density is okay, but what if they were proposing to put 100 houses on 100 acres? Is that okay? Where do we draw the line for what we recommend is an appropriate amount? My other comment is that they do have adjudicated water rights on this acreage. However, when you look at the water court decree, it does not seem to match. It does say it's in Albert County instead of Douglas County. So not sure that's the right decree. And then my other thought was I'm wondering if there be any problems for the subsequent new 10 owners in trying to get a well permit. This would be rezoned after 1972, in which case they wouldn't be able to get an exempt well permit, and they may have to have augmentation for their groundwater use, and they may not be able to get a permit for such small lots. I'm not sure that they've looked into the whole water situation as clearly as they should before this is resound.

That's pretty interesting. Did you you're making note of that?

Yeah, Clark, I thought I thought this was 100 acres being divided into 10. 10 acre lots.

Oh, you are correct, 10-acre lots. I think what I was thinking was, where do we draw that? If they were two-acre lots, or if they were one-acre lots, or if they were smaller lots, is that still okay?

I do have comments on it though, and I think, again, from what I read, They were the wells that they were proposing, at least in the narrative would be. Have 2 acre feet. Decreed per 10 acre lot and my simple math says that's 1800. Just under 1800 gallons a day per residential lot. And. eighteen hundred gallons a day in this area for residents way too much lot uh... parker water castle rock water we're looking at one hundred two hundred and twenty or so gallons per day per person so couple hundred gallons per day for residents uh... i think this is where the board of county commissioners ought to be in part of the approval process ought to be asking for the conservation plan and the leak detection plan, et cetera, associated with any future approval of this subdivision. They're probably not gonna use their 1,800 gallons a day, but the message has to go out that you have to conserve that water. And I think this would be a great one to start with.

Okay, thank you. Anybody else? Harold?

Clark, I think you're right. Because theoretically, they could have a major lawn or garden out there, something like that. And so I think this might just be a good place to put a stake in the ground.

Okay, thank you. So Lauren's taking notes on that, correct? All right, so the next one was the Bobcat of the Rockies Rezone. So that's a lot, I suppose it's a lot that they want to develop this. Bobcat Service Rental Center, they have, it's a commercial application, they have a letter of service from Roxborough. Roxborough says they can run a, I think it was an eight inch main about 2500 feet and pick them up and provide them two inch commercial connection plus six inch fire connection too. So anybody have comments on that one? Harold.

I don't have any problem, of course, with the water service, but the whole concept of reuse, which runs all the way through this plan, is that when sewer capacity is available so we can get the water back rather than the septic, that it should be a requirement that they connect. This whole concept of commercial businesses on septics

So was this a septic? I don't recall.

Pardon?

Were they going to be using septic on this one?

Well, I assume that's what they're doing. I didn't see any discussion on sewer. I did not either. At some point, we need to be cleaning up the septics, commercial septics along Plum Creek. So I think this might be a good one to start that concept because The septic, that water's lost forever, or if they connect to, there's sewer plants along there, it can be reused to extinction. Plus, I think it also, the idea of commercial septics in alluvium above a drinking water supply is a very poor public policy.

Did you get that? Okay, very good. No further comments and we'll move on to our presenter for today, Steve Bowen. And you can go to the podium so you can be on TV.

And you have to be on the microphone too, so.

Steve has two presentations that he's going to do. He's going to recap for us a presentation he did with the Rural Water Authority of Douglas County when they reviewed all the well data from the USGS and he had analyze that data and talk to them. So he's going to give us an overview of what he saw and how the rural water authority folks may have reacted to that. Then he has some presentation on some of his viewpoints, I'll say, on water in Douglas County. He's got a lot of history here, so. You have to go to the microphone, yeah.

I promise not to touch the microphone. Warnings all over. I'm Steve Bowen. I've lived in the county for 40-something years. I got involved in water in the 1980s, mid-80s, when I started the Castle Rock Water Review Board because we were having trouble. We were losing 40% of our water somewhere. We found where it was when we replaced the downtown water lines. Since then I've served on a bunch of water boards and we'll talk about that perhaps later. But I want to talk first about the USGS water level data that the Rural Water Authority of Douglas County has been working on for a couple decades now. We have in the county, by my count, almost 6,800 domestic and household use wells as of last June. Now, there's some discrepancy in this between other counters on who counts what. I clearly understand that. We would have to sit down for about two weeks to get through that issue, section by section in the county. It would be fun. But most of them are domestic wells, but not all domestic wells are, quote, domestic wells. They don't have the definition that a 35-acre domestic well has. They have restrictions on them. And then, of course, we have household use wells only, which, you know, 10, 11%. So if you look at Douglas County household and domestic wells constructed, this data comes from the state engineer's office. You can see over time, prior to 65, we actually don't show too many wells, but we actually don't know because we weren't collecting information back then. Then we went through a peak in the 90s and then a drift down and came again up a little bit, but Look at the numbers. I mean, they're in the 100 to 200 wells per year, and that gives you a perspective on how domestic wells are developed through the county area. So the Rural Water Authority monitored 36 wells, and they changed over time, which some people went in, some people came out. Properties change hands, and the new property owner may not want to participate, so they were removed. 15 wells have continuous data, which means they're monitored every minute. And then 21 wells have periodic monitoring, which they're monitored quarterly. The Colorado Division of Water Resources monitors some wells sometimes. That's their data set.

Steve?

Can you go back real quick?

Yeah.

So this reminded me of a question I have for you. You have the logo here for the Rural Water Foundation of Douglas County. Could you explain that entity to us?

Yes. The Rural Water Foundation was set up to receive donations. The Rural Water Authority, and Trish, you may correct me here, is a was a government entity, and people couldn't get write-offs for giving to a government, but they could to the foundation.

So the two are linked?

They are linked, yeah. They're like this. Okay, you've all seen these diagrams a hundred times, but when this was presented last June, actually a year ago June, to the community members, We needed to talk through this because everybody isn't coming from level expertise that all of you have now. Okay, this is periodic water level data that the USGS collected. It's pretty interesting. How does the USGS evaluate this? They use a statistical modeling program to do that. And then we have continuous water level data, which is every minute. You can tell when somebody's running their washing machine, when they're brushing their teeth, all these different things. The dips are when people are using water. You can see most of the time we have recovery and then we have the summer where people irrigate and then it comes back in the fall. This is a list of all the 19 sites that we're going to review tonight, which I tortured them because this presentation went on for a couple of hours. We're going to do this quickly. Okay. We're just going to get hit the highlights, but these are all the wells that. You know, we're looked at this is a graphic of the continuous water level monitoring wells, transducer well locations there in red. This is a graphic of the periodic water level monitoring. They are not in red. Okay. But we can see which is which and the water monitoring that went on over the years. Okay, now we get to the basics. If you look at the continuous data, one of the most important things to look at is where are the water levels in conjunction with where we have perforated section? I'm sure you've heard the fact that some of the wells in the county do not go to the base of the aquifers. Common. A lot of people, especially spec homes, They drill to where they hit water, then they stop. Folks don't know which is what, the level of understanding of domestic wells is pretty limited, honestly. But you can see in this well that the rectangle on the left shows the entire depth of the well. The upper part is plain casing. And water has come up inside the plain casing. It's not artesian, but it's above the perforated section. And the little blue box on the left represents the data. Depth to groundwater, and that's the maximum range. And that's the most important thing for a rural water user, is what is that range? If it gets down to the bottom for this well, I'm too blind at this age was 120 feet. Um, that would not be good.

So, Steve, you, um, sorry, quick question. Um, so your, your data, uh, is water level water or level within the well, so it starts at 0 at the surface and goes down so many feet to where the water is. Um, when I look at data, the levels that they show are in relation to the. Datum the North American got a name datum that's like sixty five hundred feet or something like that and everything's above that. And the data that we have is an elevation. So ours is in sea elevation compared to sea level. So how do you reconcile all this data? I mean, you know, where's the top of the aquifer, the bottom of the aquifer, which is really important for us to know. And so did you just manually have to go through and do that?

Yes, every one of these takes a day to do. And you have to look at the data. I then pull the well permit, the well completion report, the pump installation report, all these data points, and then construct this little diagram on the left. Where is the water level in that well? People don't care about elevation or datums. They care about where the water level in my well is. And that's what policy makers should also be looking at because it's what drives concern and real function with rural water users. And so we'll go through a bunch of these and I'll try and do it quickly so we can get through here. Okay, so this is where I said thank you and I said get ready for the next level which is the data. Thank you. I think it's coming up. Oh, no. Part B. Everybody is tuned into their own well, okay? And they're concerned when they have a burp, they're concerned when they have a failure. Failures can happen, but they don't happen very often. You'd have to do an analysis of replacement wells in this county. All wells, all domestic wells are just like people. They begin to age at 50, they kind of poop out at 70, 80, very few make it to 100, but some do, so. Okay, if you can stand it, I'll go through these quickly because each one of these is a profile of are they having a problem or not? This well, you can see the blue box is way above the base of the well, but you can see there's variation in that water level in the well, and that's reflected in that blue box. Is this well okay? Yes. They're not seeing drawdowns to the base of the well. When you have drawdowns well into the casing or to the base of the well, you have problems. And we have a number of municipal wells across the county where that effect is happening. Here is another one up and down. People are brushing their teeth, redoing their laundry, irrigating, and you can see that the water level at the surface is going up and down in a very consistent pattern. That's water use in rural Douglas County. Here's their profile. The bar on the right side of the rectangle in blue shows that they're doing just fine. We'll hit another one of these. This one is affected by scale. You can see that water levels are pretty consistent. They don't irrigate much from this well. We had a data shortfall for a bit, but then we came back in 2022. And here is another well. This well is showing exactly what we see in so many rural wells. Water levels are consistently showing that daily use affects the water level in the well. I tell my wife this every month, that the water levels in the summer go down and they come back in the fall and winter. Does that make sense to everybody?

You know, what's, I can't quite see the scale across the bottom. Is that one year?

Yeah, one year. Okay. Just to give you a profile of one year. So, great question though, because how do you convey the story? Most people get confused by multiple years of data. So, we selected some years out of the data set. This one I thought was interesting. Big changes, summer to winter. And this is, what, seven years?

Yeah.

But they're okay. We are seeing no wells that are into the base of the casing.

Are all of these into the Dawson?

No, this one is, excuse me. This one's upper Dawson. I think we have all four aquifers, except everybody from the Laramie Fox Hills dropped out. Tells you something. West side of the county tended to have very few wells because that's where we have the challenges. Water levels are declining over there more rapidly. Here's another one for 10 years. Now, you would think this is a problem because the water levels in the well are down to below The surface casing or the solid casing, but water levels are still within the range of the perforated casing. So this well is actually doing okay. So, you get used to the pattern yet. Up and down brush your teeth. It goes down on the wash. It goes down on your dishwasher. It goes down irrigate. It goes.

way down but it comes back later yes but this is 12 years right and you know the pattern like you said it's getting very familiar but this one also seems to have a a long-term decline to it of maybe it's not a whole lot but so you will always see some subtle long-term decline my comment on the antelope hills thing it would be this

I don't care what the county says or the water court says most rural people never use what their quote annual use is because they care that their water supply last for a hundred, two hundred and three hundred years. I would never buy a lot smaller than five acres. There are a lot of reasons for that. And I also believe that you only recover about sixty percent of the water that is allocated in your state engineer's model or your decree. That's just my personal perspective over the years. Okay, so we can, there is an endless series of all these. And that's why it took a couple hours. This one went up, went down, came back up. That is a common phenomenon. We actually see water levels in some wells that are being used increase. Why is that? because the aquifer becomes more productive over time in some instances. My well in 25 years of use is up five feet. It's very confusing, but it's the reality. Here's another well that shows a decline, then a resurgence.

I can't read this. Is it just one year?

Yeah, one year. Water level's fine by the blue box on the rectangle. Here's another one that you would think is having problems because we're seeing a decline, but no, it's a bounce back. Same here. This one is interesting. Does the data gap mean that we're just too early in the recovery period, or is there a real decline I suspect there's a real decline between September and June, September 21 and June 23. These folks are very water conservation minded and their well shows it. They are way up near the top of the aquifer casing. This is a lower Dawson. Well, you can see water levels are increasing. over seven years. Why is that? Well, it's because of the dynamics of well operations. If you have a rapid intake into the casing from the aquifer, your aquifer will begin to shed material into the well. And that's what we see in a lot of municipal wells. But in rural wells, because the entry velocity into the casing is slow enough, it gives it time to, quote, develop as a well. Okay, I don't mean to torture you guys, but I just wanted to show you the extent to which the Rural Water Authority looked at the data. This one shows a definite decline, okay? We'd have to look at this to see, maybe see why. We did have a resurgence in 2022, But maybe this one is of concern. This is up in Grandview in the northern part of the county, Douglas County's oldest subdivision. A lot of people believe they have problems, but the data doesn't show it yet. Sorry, Mr. Chairman, there were a lot of wells. What I wanted to get to is this diagram. This is the periodic data that we're showing for many of the wells monitored by the USGS. It shows exactly the same pattern. We had a lot of points early on, but later on, things kind of stabilized and the well is in good shape. You do have to look at the construction dynamics and the pump installation report on every well that you're gonna evaluate. Water level elevations are for people who are evaluating aquifers. We're evaluating wells here, real wells. This well you would assume is in real trouble, right? I mean, it looks like it.

However, this data

Pretty good. Same here, periodic well. Periodic well looking good. And I think that's it. I think your torture is over. So what do I take away from this? I mean, are we seeing massive declines in domestic wells? Not really. Domestic users are ultra conservationists usually. They realize that they don't care what the water rights says. They do care what their permits say. They probably have maybe even read their well permit. They know that they do better with water conservation. I've worked on lots of augmentation plans where we were able to get reuse via septic tanks. Not as easy as a pipe, but it does happen. It's happened on Plum Creek. But it's mathematical. It's all mathematical. It is not actually measured. It's based upon the fact that interior water use is generally 90% return to the septic tank, and the water courts have allowed that as a standard factor. only for traditional septic tanks. For the new kind of evaporative septic systems, I mean, we have an engineer here. What do you think?

I mean, we still work in the courts with that 10%.

10%? Yeah. Well, the state engineer will give you a holler out if you come with an evaporative septic system. And usually they say 50% return flow. So, not happy. Okay, I'm ready to answer any questions on what the Rural Water Authority did and has been doing.

So have you ever, or have you yet?

Evan. Oh, sorry, Evan. Microphone, please.

All right, start over. Evan Ehle, have you looked, so some of those domestic wells showed maybe a slight decline or some of them may be pretty flat. Have you taken that slope off of every one? crunch those numbers to see if the Dawson has a slight general decline or not, or whether the Denver has that or not?

I haven't done that yet. That would be a great next step. It's a lot of work because it does involve statistical analysis and just linear interpolation isn't good enough. So the USGS is using a new statistical model to try and answer that question. I've not seen the verification that their model works, though. You know, modeling is just modeling. Yeah.

Yes. Oh, okay. Yeah, we, didn't you give us that about two years ago?

Yeah. So should that work be done? Yeah, that would be great.

Harold Smithels, Steve, you made a comment that you wouldn't plan on more, I couldn't quite hear what you said, 50% of your adjudicated water, did you say? What did you say about that?

Yeah, 60%, yeah.

So really what is available of your adjudicated water for common sense planning is about 50% is what?

Yeah, round figures.

That may fit into some of the things that we're putting in the report as well, something to consider. Because we were trying to figure out, we have all this adjudicated water, well how much can you get? Steve's got a role of experience in this, he's saying 50%. So we might want to consider that as we look at our water supply in the report. Because we just didn't know how, we knew we needed a discount, we didn't know how much. This is the first time I've heard a number that makes sense to me.

So the state engineer's model gives you an initial estimate of fully saturated section. They don't count what's under artesian pressure, They just say when we're at water table conditions, this is our best guess. That's why we have retained jurisdiction on every water right in the Denver Basin Aquifer. The court ultimately wants to see your data on what you have. I guess I usually advise my clients to go early and not late, because if you're 50 years into it, they're going to see half of your water left, and they'll make adjustments per se. The state engineer's office does not yet know how they will do this. But fortunately, I won't be here to give any advice. Well, sure you will. No.

Then another question. One of the things we wrestled with here is should the county be having a broader database? This is a relatively small number of wells. Small. But a broader database of a wider margin because it would seem intuitively that if we're going to be having problems in some of these aquifers, it may be where they're located. And so how would we come up with some type of a recommendation for a monitoring system that would give the county good consistent data of what's happening throughout the county on a regional as well as the aquifer basis?

Well, I would use some kind of a grid based approach in each aquifer. You really need to see the spatial dynamics of it. We had a really difficult time. I should say, Trisha had a very difficult time convincing anybody to go in to have the Laramie Fox Hills monitored. Well, the reason is there aren't very many domestic Laramie Fox Hills wells. They're only in a few areas of the county. We have some other areas of the county near Larkspur where the upper aquifers are somewhat dry. Okay, why is that? Well, it's geology. It's just how it works.

It's geology.

I mean, we can't see down there. You know, I built a house in Douglas County about 30 years ago. I waited until it was built to drill the well. And I always remember what my wife said to me, Buster, there better be water here. Yeah. But you know, I relied upon the technology that we had at that time and it ended up being pretty good. But this type of analysis helps to, I think, quell the fears a bit. Now the real challenge we have is when we have municipal wells in the same aquifer within, and I'm gonna say a half mile of any domestic wells. How do we challenge that issue? How do we approach it? In the next presentation, I'm going to talk about the first water commission that Douglas County had, the Water Advisory Board, which was impaneled in the late 80s by the Board of County Commissioners. And one of the recommendations that came out of that group was, look at that issue, begin to think about it. That has not happened. So you can get five hydrologists in the room to get 10 answers. On the answer to the question, so it's kind of like lawyers. Sorry, Jim. Yeah, okay.

You want to go to your next one?

Yes, go to the short one.

And I thought it was, you could ask. 3 geo hydrologist the same question, and you'd get 4 answers. At least it works with metal urges all kinds of different crafts.

No. It's the one you brought up first, which is the 15 minute one.

Yeah, that's it.

Okay, now we're going to go to something very concise, 15 minutes on three water issues. And I've taken some of the materials from your version two of your draft report, which I'm still working my way through. Okay, I'll do this. A bit of history first. Douglas County has been active in water issues since the late 1980s. This group, which I was much younger but served on as a member and then the chairman when we wrote this report, came out with the first assessment of water conditions in the county. And then you probably remember these types of cartoons. There are a bunch. When the first Determination came out that we had non-renewable water. The cartoonists just had a marvelous time dealing with the issue. They knew water levels in the Arapahoe were dropping 20 to 30 feet per year. Hydrogeologists told them that. What they didn't know is the rest of the story, and we're just finding out what the rest of the story is now. But I wanted to go over county water activities over the decades. The Douglas County Water Advisory Board was the first board that addressed the issues. I gave the county commissioners a copy of the report to give to you all. I'm sure they did that, right? We then had a Denver-based knock for groundwater purchase and a subsequent sale. There was a company who was speculating on groundwater in the county. They put a bunch of water on the west or middle side of the county near Franktown up for sale for export. Of course, that made the commissioners nuts as it should. Commissioner Sullivan led the purchase of several million dollars worth of groundwater back then. When I came on the board, we looked at the annual payments we were making on that and said, huh? We actually can't put the water in a box and keep it, so we should do something with it. And we sold it to the Pinery for the amount that we paid for it. So we got rid of the certificate of participation. I'm not sure whose home was the collateral for that. But we did make a sale to the Pinery. That caused an uproar in the Franktown area, that sale. While I thought it was the best thing to do for the county on a fiscal basis, the folks in Franktown wanted to see that water reserved and kept in the ground because of the impact on them. We did do analytic modeling to determine what that impact was, and it was at 100 years of full use, about a foot. They were far enough away that there was little impact. We then came across Section 18A, which was a great analytic investigation into and the creation of the different sections of the county. We should go back to the original determinations, honestly, not what has changed recently. The county then created the Water Resources Authority out of paranoia that the cartoons would continue. It evolved into the South Metro Water Supply Authority. And then we did rainwater harvesting research with the CWCB. Nice study there. But rainwater harvesting is tough if you're doing it on an individual well basis. It's enough for maybe a garden some years. Then we created the Rural Water Authority. We had water summits. We had WISE come about. The Board of County Commissioners endorsed WISE after a year of negotiations with Aurora so that the water supply for Roxboro would be insured or assured, sorry. And that was difficult because it was leased water which could be terminated by Aurora. We worked hard to get that done. many not so happy meetings. We then had water summits. We had the WISE purchases and sales by the county. We had the Water Alternatives Program, and now we have you, the Water Commission, okay? So you are part of a continuum of work by Douglas County on water issues. We've already gone through this, but my conclusion is a lack of knowledge and well-specific information leads to concern and fear of conflict. I think it's time to begin to address that conflict. Whether we can do it with our big water partners, I don't know. It'd be good to figure out some direction on it, talk to Parker Water, talk to Castle Rock, talk to Centennial, and see if we can address the problem. Good ideas might come. You saw this type of analysis. We did well-specific analysis, not aquifer analysis. They are A and B. Well-specific analysis is what's needed to evaluate the well issues for the 6,000 domestic wells in the county. And there might be 10,000. Here's what caused the major concern that led to the first Water Advisory Board in Douglas County. This study by the USGS came out in 1989, and it portrays the mathematical reality of long term use of Denver basin aquifer groundwater. Yeah, we started a water levels decline and actually it's a yield of the well declines. We then have to put in another well at B to get the same amount of water out. A and B together then produce more water, which then declines ever so briefly. And then we get into C, D, E, F, and G, which is not good. So the mathematics behind this for our water providers are well one is really cheap, $12,000 per customer. Well two, we now have to add another increment at 23,000. Well, $370,000 for a total of $106,382, and from then it's not economically viable. When will this happen? Well, it depends. And that's why we have some great projects underway. The South Platte project that Parker and Castle Rock are working on, Centennial's done a good job over the years to work on those, although they have a lot of leased water apparently. So one of the things I do is, you know, I like data. So I create a water supply profile every few years and I'm working on my second one now to look at the average annual water supply for every water providers by water supply class. Renewable, reuse renewable. One of the benefits of renewable water is that we get reuse water that continues, non-renewable water from the Denver basin aquifers, which will last a long time, but not forever because of the economic challenges and then reuse from non-renewable resources. And this is just a hypothetical prototype, but I presented this type of analysis to the South Platte Water Group that meets every year about 25 years ago. as a way of considering the issues for Douglas County. So here's a profile of the somewhere water and sanitation district.

Okay.

These are all made up numbers, but kind of real for the future. If they had a renewable water supply of 590, tributary groundwater wells are 25 for them, the wise project 225 and surface water rights 340, you know, those are average year yields. One of the challenges with renewable water is you often have a zero acre feet dry yield. And that's one of the challenges with WISE. WISE is projected to have a zero firm yield in certain years. Not very often, but it can occur mathematically, okay? Non-renewable, if they have 800, You know, where would it come from? I said the Arapahoe here and then as you've all talked about reuse is critical. But reuse can never be 100% because the dynamics of urban water use and reuse. I used to tell my clients we are lucky if we get 25 to 30% effective reuse. Just because of timing and how the river is working. Well, they were horrified because they'd been told that they would get nine reuses out of a drop of Denver-based NOC for water. That's how the math works out. But it's in a spreadsheet, it's not on the river. So we have challenges or disconnects between mathematical reuse and actual reuse. The work that Castle Rock is doing right now is outstanding of creating a complicated reuse collection system. And I think they'll get into some really good numbers with their reuse plan.

Can I ask a question? Yep. Evan, Hila again. So when you talk about reuse on this chart, you're not talking about direct potable. Reuse no, you're talking about putting it in the stream and then exchanging against it or whatever. Right?

Yeah. And. The stream segment I'm assuming is at least a mile.

Yeah.

So you can pick it up again as quote clean water. Okay. Which is what Parker water is doing.

If you have direct portable, but not direct pipe portable.

Correct.

Yeah.

Okay. Indirect reuse. Once we go to direct potable reuse, these numbers change. You just have to convince your users that that's a good plan. Price may do that. Maybe they won't be aware that this is direct non-potable reuse.

So if you're assuming that you can get from your non-renewable source, your Denver Basin source, 65 acre feet out of what, 150 or out of 850? Out of 850, yeah. Out of 850? So where does all that loss go?

Stream losses, timing issues. For instance, reuse comes from interior water use, really. There's a little bit of exterior use, but there's not a need for the water during the winter. Right. So you lose that reuse component. We've always seen pretty substantial stream losses that the state engineering imposes. Uh, sometimes there are 100%. In in Plum Creek in Plum Creek, it used to run dry.

But that's true, but I mean, don't they assume now a much more. Much smaller loss factor, see if you can get them to write that down. Well, none of it is written down. That's right. As you know, Steve.

But as we move, I mean, let's look at Sellers Creek and Plum Creek and Castle Rock. They have become, they were ephemeral streams, you know, 20, 30 years ago. They are now intermittent to permanent streams, depending upon where you are, what segment you're in. So Castle Rock gets a ton of reuse off those, but it has to go to a tributary well that needs that water or to a pipeline that picks it up where it's needed. It's kind of an exercise in reality that's reflected on the monthly augmentation plan reports issued by water providers. And that's what you have to scour to figure this out.

But there are ways to improve that efficiency.

There are.

I mean, if you can capture and store and recharge or whatever. Absolutely. That's what Castle Rock's doing.

Yeah. I mean, you can tweak that significantly.

You can tweak it.

I'm not sure you can ever get to 100%, but I think you can get way up there. Yeah. So the reality is where we are now is different than where we will be in 20 years. But, folks, I mean, will we have direct potable reuse? I don't know. People, water users get to decide what they'll use as their water supply. They may not go along with the water experts, but they may look at their pocketbook and say, hey, this is the best deal. But I'm moving to Farmington where I don't have to drink the water. People are funny. I always loved public participation elements because I never knew what I was going to hear. Yeah.

Well, I think it becomes more acceptable over time.

Yeah, perhaps. Texas is doing it out of necessity. I'm not aware that anybody in Colorado is doing it. But they will, maybe. Thank you very much.

Okay. Question? Clark? Thanks, Steve. It's really appreciated. A couple of questions. The 6,700 wells roughly that you've identified, do you have any idea how many of those are not producing any water?

Zero. How many? Zero. Zero? Because I took all of the old, old, old wells that are not producing out.

Okay.

And that's why this is difficult. Some of the wells we have in the county are, you know, really old and they've been replaced. And that's why the number is different depending on how you interpret the data. It takes half of forever to do this. And a lot of arguing, especially with certain folks.

Yeah, Clark, our, our number of wells in the report is a lot larger. Yeah. Yeah. Eighty three seventy nine that we have that are in the lower Dawson, upper Dawson, Dawson or the Denver.

Yeah.

So it's quite a bit bigger number. Yeah.

So, and your number may be right. I took a very conservative approach, so I looked at replacement wells. I looked at the age of the wells, all those different things. And, you know, that's why we have all these different folks who think about this.

Yeah, the other question or observation that you, I think you said that the. 36 or so wells that you've been tracking, especially those that have stayed with, you know, they've been there the entire time are kind of the model citizens are the people that really care. They're, I mean, they are on top of it. How do we, how can we convince. A lot more people to think like that.

Well, as Trish knows, Tricia knows, um. I volunteered to do a water symposium last year, but basically as a volunteer, I ran out of time to get that done. So maybe we do that. We've had one rural water symposium in Douglas County in the last 30 years. It was very well attended. People were interested and we had over 400 people that showed up for that. Parker Water volunteered to host that symposium in their facility. Maybe we begin to build trust and understanding by having it at a municipal water provider's place. We have a huge amount of untapped groundwater in the south central portion of the county. Huge amounts. I look at that as the emergency reserve in case this all doesn't work out. I mean, I live next to essentially all the big ranches. And yeah, I know exactly how much they had, because they had me do the work years ago, and it's a lot of water.

Contrary to these model citizen well users, I had one large rancher from that area that will go unnamed that told me, I don't need to worry, I've got plenty, so I just use what I want.

He didn't care.

And so there's no conservation in his plans or no conservation in his thoughts at all. It was, I got enough, so I don't care. Yeah.

Clark, one thing I wanted to point out, Tricia Bernhardt, is that the amount of groundwater that the rule well users are actually using is very small compared to the amount of groundwater that's being withdrawn by the major municipalities and major water districts. So yes, it's important for the individual well owners to learn how to be conservative and to take care of things, but the mass amount of groundwater is being withdrawn by major water districts. So what do we do about them?

It does change over time, but I think we declare success that we're moving forward with long term thirty to fifty year replacement plans. A suggestion I'm going to make in writing on this plan is that Castle Rock, Parker, Centennial, the South Metro Water Authority provide periodic updates to the citizens of Douglas County on how they're doing. It's complicated, but I think people will understand and be supportive. with more information. Maybe I'm wrong. As my kids said, dad be quiet, you're often wrong.

Harold. Thank you, Harold Smithles. My experience has been building renewable water systems and I always envied Douglas County because you can take junior rights, you can take the intermittent rights, WISE is perfect for Douglas County, because it's got a backup system. And that gives us a competitive advantage over anywhere else in the state if we could take those intermittent rights as opposed to those of us in the water business used to build two to three years of storage to get one firm yield. We've got firm yields sitting underneath us. And I think the more we can change our thought process to give us your halt the weak, the humble, and poor, we'll take those rights because when they go dry, we just go to the well. Now what that means is we've gotta wean ourselves off of using the aquifer for base loading and use it for backup. We have the only water system in the state that cannot go dry. Nobody else can say that. And it's such a huge advantage And I think as we look forward and strategically plan, think more in terms of eliminating storage in exchange for direct use, using the wells when the storage, when it isn't available. That's a huge advantage.

And I think- If properly used, you're correct. It will not go dry, but it may involve recharge, which is yet unproven. We all talk about recharge, our water providers do, but as that one commercial was, Show me the beef. We've got a little bit up in Highlands Ranch.

Forgive me when I say it will not go dry. What I'm talking about is if you have a junior right, you can offset it. If that junior right goes dry, you still have water. And that's a huge competitive advantage we have in Douglas County.

It's expensive. I mean, you have to weigh the cost of well development versus storage. I mean, router has reservoir is, I think 1 of the best things has ever happened to Douglas County. It's a great asset that is absolutely needed. I get concerned about those who haven't participated in it, uh, largely along the northern tier. But, you know, they will do what they need to do over time, but. Would I accept groundwater as the sole source of supply for any new subdivision? No. Does Denver do it? No. Does Aurora do it? No. Does the upper Thompson Water District do it? No. We have the beginning of some acceptance of groundwater in Central Weld County, but they're just learning and they don't have the ability to produce water from the aquifers like we do. They're not as productive. We have this gift, low regulatory, Considerations for the groundwater it's available here. Yeah, it's tough because you have to put in wells. But, hey, you know, when I was drilling wells for municipalities, they were a 1Million now they're probably 3. And there'll be 5, you know, it's just how things are James.

Did you have a question?

Thanks, Steve. So you've alluded to a couple of times cost and a little bit of economics sprinkled in here, but there's not really a robust discussion of it. And I'm wondering if you've taken a look at the economics, because what will end up happening here or anywhere in the West, in the arid West, is the price per acre foot will drive whether or not you're going to do direct potable reuse. And right now it's 2000 to 3000 dollars an acre foot. And if you can get that cheaper by going to a ditch or reservoir company, a mutual ditch company, and buying shares for less than that, you're going to go do that. That's what cars brings utilities in Pueblo border waterworks and every single water provider up and down this front range is done.

Yeah.

If we get to a place where we may be heading there in a quick hurry in a year like this. The price per acre foot does counsel the recharge that you've talked about being so expensive because it is, or some sort of brackish desalination or a more robust recycling effort. Pure water, the pure water. Movement, I guess I'd call it is started in San Diego. They started with toilet, you know, toilet to tap and that didn't work so well as a PR messaging effort. So enough time passed and enough. Of the cost per gallon per acre foot went up far enough. To where it made sense for them to dust that thing off and go at it again. Now, it's called pure water San Diego, and it is producing the water that they need. Same with the, uh, Carlsbad project is putting water into their system right now. The front range has always been. Way, way, way below the amounts per acre foot that would justify those kinds of techniques. And I'm just wondering, given the really the grass root level. Analysis you've done, if the economics of you've alluded to it, here's how much it costs to drill these these things. If you've got to go down further, you pay more obviously. Um. And, but I was just wondering if you had a comment on. The economics of what you're seeing and what you've seen throughout the history of this county.

Well, those are all great thoughts. One of my business partners, you might know him, Uli Kappas, did big reservoirs for San Diego. But you're right, what they're doing now is, I think, part of the future. When we'll get there, I don't know, but it gets down to money. Do we have cheap water here? I think so. I mean, we're not yet charging 5 cents a gallon for water. I think we'll get there. I mean, I served on a board that 25 years ago raised the rates to 1 penny a gallon. I thought we were going to be lynched. But people loved it because they could understand it. I mean, that's the level that we're dealing with. I had a. Somebody my grandparents knew who called me and I said, this is it my life's over. She said, young man, thank you so much for reducing my water rates to a penny a gallon. They were a quarter cent a gallon prior to that. But what we did is we reduced the service charges. So it was only 10 bucks a month instead of 50 bucks a month. To her, it was a massive reduction. I think it's going to take a lot of creative thinking. I spent a couple years proposing water projects for review by the rating agencies on Wall Street. their perspective was entirely different than what a water provider is. They ask different questions. And that gave me the perspective that where we're headed is probably okay. We just have to be honest with ourselves. I do not believe that we should be looking at the groundwater as a primary source any longer. It needs to be a conjunctive source. But that takes some better modeling.

Okay. One last question, Evan, then we got to move on, okay?

All right. Thank you, Evan Ehler. So if we could go back to that graphic that shows the successive cost of wells. Oh, yeah. From USGS or whoever did that.

That one?

Yeah. So are those, so well number two costs, twice as well. Number one, is that based on inflation and time value of money or what is the basis of that increase?

The fact that you have to replace the well at about 24 years and an estimate of the cost.

But the estimate is based on just the cost of money going up or just the cost of things going up. Yeah. Some kind of inflationary factor.

We don't have inflation, right?

Well, we do have inflation. And the same for the next number and the next number. Those are all based on the same assumptions.

Yeah, the problem is you have to go back to the rate payer and get some additional capital cost coverage. Will they pay it? Probably. Will they talk to their water board about it? Absolutely.

So... Yeah, my question is just how refined those numbers are. I mean, they seem...

Water providers will not talk about this yet.

Yeah.

Okay. If we get them in a room and we told them it's going to be top secret, they might talk about it. So Castle Rock has some of the best data because they've gone into what I call stage one replacement.

but to some degree that's natural anyway because i mean even pipes in the ground you got to replace eventually yep uh everything has a life and a replacement horizon um so anyway i just it seems to me more work could be done on this concept right here yes i believe that the additional modeling could be done on this

Lauren and I were talking about the different types of models, mechanistic deterministic model where you get an answer that's the same answer every time. Elected officials love that. Interim modeling, which is what you really need to do to figure out what the boundaries are, elected officials tend not to like because it doesn't give them an answer. It gives them a range that they need to think about. So the state and USGS models are mechanistic deterministic models. so which is great you know dr paschke has done amazing work um you know and she's worth talking to so

That was your segue, Mr. Chair.

Yeah, that was a segue. Okay. Okay. Yeah. Thank you, Steve. Really appreciate your time and effort. And you're correct. The comment door is open on the water plan. So we're taking comments from anybody and everybody and every channel is open. Is that fair to say? Okay, that's good. So, member discussion, we've got 1, you listed the wildfire action collaborative is 1 specific thing to talk about. So I didn't go to that meeting again last week. I had to follow up the 1st meeting. I talked about this idea or this concept where we could actually. Um, shut water off, uh, on structures that were potentially on fire, um, where the systems would be compromised and appreciate, or excuse me, depressurization. Um, this is the Marshall fire effect. Um, and they could they. They didn't have the ability to shut down the water, so it was a real problem. So I discovered that the AMI type meters potentially had the ability to shut it off the water at the meter. That turns out to be, that's the next generation AMI meter, which is commercially available. It's about 600 bucks compared to 300 bucks for the other one. You would have the ability to shut water off to a home I mean, you would do this because the home is compromised and it's in flames and the water is not, you wanna avoid depressurizing the system, so you need some kind of a protocol to do that. But those meters aren't, Roxboro's actually experimenting with some right now, I think is the extent they've been deployed. So that suggestion for the water Wildfire Action Collaborative actually went into a think about kind of mode. So that's where that stands. Not sure, I mean, I'm really not, it's not clear to me what they're looking for from, you know, Water Commission or water people in this Wildfire Action Collaborative. They talk a lot about beetle kill and how much fire that's gonna cause and that kind of stuff. We'll stay plugged in and see what we can do with that. So, anybody else want comments? Yeah, Trisha, go ahead.

Yeah, question. Don, just, you know, the recent Penley fire, and apparently there've been multiple helicopter drops of water. I'm wondering the water source, where is the water coming from that they've been dropping from that helicopter?

I know they've gone to Ruder Hess. I don't know if they were doing that yesterday. They were doing drops near Sedalia, and when they get around that neighborhood, they used to go to Riverhouse, which we think is fine as long as they don't pick up a surfboarder or wind paddler or something.

I know that the county has a, I don't know if it's a contract or an agreement or whatever with Castle Rock to get water out of Castle Rock's reservoirs I think it's more of an informal agreement than it is any kind of a contract, but that's where some of the water has come from. Okay.

Yeah, I didn't realize there isn't.

Yeah.

I don't know that they want to fly back there all the time.

That was the deal that.

I don't think they're going to pay for the water.

We just need to be able to predict where the fires are gonna be so you can get those meters in the right place ahead of time.

I think I used the term strategic deployment, right? I mean, that's still a real issue. You know, when these systems get compromised and the system, your water systems depressurized, so now it's exposed to contamination, you're not doing any good. but we're a long ways away from any kind of a solution for that that I can see. Yeah, Harold.

One time about a year ago, I met with the wildfire commission suggesting that they pre-position water in certain strategic areas because there's some dry lakes and that back up actually where that fire was by Pendley, that they just pre-positioned, put some water in it and that they felt it was better to truck the water but you can do it at the heck of it. Every gallon of water comes out of that hell attack is so important. And yet from a water system, it's around the air.

It's so important.

But I think maybe we should reconsider pre-positioning some water in some of these high-risk areas. Because a lot of the normal ponds that they thought of have gone dry now. Normally there'd be water in them. Just thought.

I think Jim's gonna probably talk about his pond. Go ahead. Oh, go ahead, Jim.

Yeah, the Jim Mars, the pond in front of the Perry Park neighborhood was probably four years ago determined by the state to be an illegal impoundment of water, even though it had been there for 50 years, of course, but they had recently done some cleaning on it and got a bunch of state and federal grants to do that work and then afterwards determined it was an illegal impoundment. And the way they got around it was they had it designated as a fire reservoir. So that pond in front of the park, the helicopter can dip in there and pull water out of it. And for some reason that automatically clears the slate of any problems, of any impoundment, as long as it's available for firefighting purposes.

Yeah, the legislature passed an act a few years ago, not that long ago, three years ago, maybe four, to allow the designation of fire suppression ponds. And then they're exempted from the Water Rights Administration Scheme. So that is what we did with that pond.

They used some of Perry Park's surface water rights that they leased from the district to actually fill that pond. So there is actual water rights associated with it, but it never went through the courts or anything to clear because they did the fire designation to clear the slate for them.

Well, it was in the court, but then we... were able to disentangle from the court because of the suppression designation. So anyway, there's not very many of those though. I think Douglas County might have three ponds that are designated. So there's plenty of room for a lot more of those if the ponds are out there and if they have water in them.

So anybody else have any member discussion items they want to bring up tonight? Harold?

Mr. Chairman, I have a concern and a question I want to ask on the water plan and what was put to the public. Is that germane?

Yeah, anything you want, actually.

One of the concepts that flows all the way through, and I go back in Section 2, Section 4, Section 10, is the prohibition, or not prohibition, but discouragement or prohibition of urban level development based solely on the aquifer. And another concept that flows all the way through is that when nearby a water supplier that can serve you, you need to connect. In fact, that's covered in here. But one concept we discussed that didn't make it, and I'm just curious as to why, was we specifically discussed that urban level development, which does not connect to a system with renewable water plans or availability and reuse when they're available, will not be considered for a water appeal. That didn't make it, and I was curious as to why. Because we specifically discussed that, we voted on it, matter of fact. I didn't know, did we miss something? Because it seems to me, we just saw another one potentially come up this last week. It was TABLE, a major development near a renewable water system. There's no commitment one way or the other, and yet it was going forward. And I think I think one of the things that we discussed, we want to clarify it, is if you've got a system that's renewable-based or will be, is reused, nearby, you must connect, or there's no water appeal. In other words, you can't get urban, that water appeal means you don't get urban-level density. But it was dropped out, and I was curious as to why.

So I don't know, I have an answer for that, where it might be or not be in the text. I don't know that we're in a position to deny an appeal before it even appears. Right. I mean, that's what that's what you're saying is that the appeal process, which I mean, in my world and water provider world is pretty wide open. I mean, it's generally the pathway for people to pretty much bring anything that doesn't conform forward for consideration. So I don't know if we can actually cancel that.

Whatever ground rules it wants to set for appeal. Well, just just tell them up front.

I bit my tongue long enough.

Oh, well, okay.

That's not true. Harold, you can't just do whatever you want because you're the county. There's some, there's such the thing called due process and you can't just have an administrative process that denies somebody an appeal.

No, but you can define what what constitutes a proper appeal. You can define that if you go through regulatory.

That's not what you said. You said that they would not be allowed to appeal.

Would not be well, all right, you can change that would not be. Yeah, you better change that.

The attorney for the county is going to have a problem attorney. Maybe he did. Maybe that's why it's not in there.

And you may have answered my question, but I'm curious as to why, if that's the reason that the County can't set ground definitions of appeal that goes through regulatory process. That's a new legal theory I haven't heard before, but it's true. But we've seen two of these so far where their developments are right next to major water systems that are willing to serve them, certain criteria and costs, and then they go back for water appeal. And I think the county can provide ground rules for what constitutes a proper appeal, or at least guidelines. So it can be changed, but I'd like, you know, we did discuss that, and I'd like to see why it didn't get in it. And maybe it's totally illegal and it can't be done, I'd be curious.

Harold, this is Lauren Pulver with staff. I do remember that discussion in reviewing the meeting to, you know, pull comments into the water plan. I don't believe there was a consensus. I think Don commented, we'll come back to it. So if we want to have that discussion now on if that language should be in the plan, you know, we absolutely can make that revision.

You know, we're not gonna have that discussion now. We're out of time today. But I mean, yeah, I mean, we can have it, right? We see where it goes. As far as the water plan, since you brought that up, we have the public outreach on August 4th, correct? Which is next Tuesday. And I don't know how it went at the county fair, whether you got a lot of comments or not. um i know i've got a couple people that said they're emailing comments um one of them i think is going to be quite lengthy former county clerk so there's maybe a lot of stuff that's going to come in lauren has suggested that maybe we have a special meeting on monday the 17th which is the monday before the 24th which is our next scheduled meeting And use that meeting to try and take inventory of all the comments we got and then make a decision about and we'd have a, we want to do that as a group decisions on, you know, well, if there's any, if we want to include any of that, if we want to modify what's in the plan, or how we want to dispose of all these public comments, not dispose. That was the wrong word. Where's my attorney friends? It's all resolved. Thank you resolve. Yeah, what I meant was that we're going to look at each 1 and make a decision about each 1. that's how that's going to go. I'll guarantee you that. So, yeah, Trisha.

Yeah, Don, I just wanted to add a comment to Harold's comment and Harold was referring to the crow's nest development. So I kind of wanted to start thinking about the timing of when the water commission is asked to do referrals. Um, because, you know, for instance, today we looked at the analog crossing referral, um, But we haven't heard anything to the Water Commission about Crow's Nest. And it seems to me that discussions about water and water source for such a large development, proposed development, maybe need to come sooner than later, before there's a decision from the Planning Commission.

I think they were quite... quite articulate in the way they presented what they want to do with Crow's Nest to say that the only thing they're asking for today is this modification to the master plan.

I understand that, but it all involves water.

I know it does, but they're not talking about, they've not put in new on the table other than what they went to Castle Pines with on density, number of homes, consumption and the like. So there's nothing, there's technically nothing for us to talk about other than we could talk about what they said before when they talked about I think three thousand single family homes, a thousand townhomes, commercial and the like. So it's just, I agree.

It's a gray area. But what we do know is that Parker did not say that they were going to serve them and Castle Pines did not say they were going to serve them. So they tried two different large water districts. And so what does that leave you with groundwater? So do we need to discuss that?

Yeah, so, I mean, they certainly said in their presentation last week that they're in conversations with Parker Water. It is within territorial limits, I'll say, of Parker Water. There's potentially a pathway for wastewater treatment. But they also said they only have a thousand acre feet. We think it's even less. I would say I think it's even less based on data I've seen. Parker water requires 1.1 acre feet is a presumptive consumption standard. That's like 700 homes. Not 3000, so so this has to play out.

It does again. I bring that up because the timing maybe is something that the water commission should talk about. Before kind of just did I understand. Okay.

So, I mean, would you all be amenable to a meeting on the 17th?

I mean, if possible, that gives staff some time enough time to kind of summarize what's coming in. I don't want to show up here on Monday with. You know, two hundred separate emails that we're supposed to try to figure out. It needs to have some work done ahead of time. We've got something reasonable to work with.

I'll work with more. Yeah. Make sure we kind of, you know, if there's a lot of common kind of phrases, I mean, we're going to hear a lot about no growth. We know that, right? that we oughta limit water to limit growth. So there's some things that we know we'll hear. But yeah, we'll commit to try and make it digestible as we can. And maybe even try and decide where it would land in the plan. I mean, if there's a comment that we wanna integrate, then is that section three or eight or nine or something? Try and think that through a little bit before we really dive in. So all in favor? We can do it that way. We'll give it a go, okay. That was the sentiment of the council, yeah, or commission, thank you. If you don't have any other comments, I would add one update. We did talk about modeling again. I met with the three district managers of Highlands Ranch Water, Castle Rock Water, and Parker Water and Sanitation District, talked to them about this notion of hiring Dr. Paesche. I thank you for those nice comments about her. And It's going to take a little bit more development to try and understand what we want to expect to get out of that kind of a modeling. It's not something that the water providers are anxious to see or say that it's really going to help them with their plans and what they're doing. A lot of them are doing their own. Highlands Ranch is doing a couple hundred thousand dollar groundwater study because We've heard they have problems with wells. So I have been in contact with her again. She bought a new laptop. She said she's kind of getting ready. But what was interesting was we may be able to reinvigorate this model, pull out Douglas County and look at future scenarios, which would be helpful for I'll say policymakers, maybe those people that are involved in governance of water providers, like boards, city council, those kind of folks. And it looked like the cost might be somewhere between twenty four and thirty eight thousand dollars. So this is not. a $500,000 big party. This is something maybe doable, but that's still in my job jar. I'll keep working that and I'm hoping maybe we'll actually get a chance to meet with her and talk with her on the 24th. So that's where that's at. We'll see where it goes. Okay. Other than that, I think we're good.

Okay.

Thank you everybody for for being here. Appreciate it.