Water Commission - Regular Meeting

We're just going to give us just a few more minutes to see if a few more people will roll in or show up online. Since there's a big rainstorm outside, people might have got delayed a little bit. Monsoons, it's beautiful. Love it, love it. So I do have a... a correction to something I said last week. So it's a good chance to maybe bring it up. But Sean asked me when I said that, you know, this is shaping up to be the biggest El Nino ever, you know, as far as the temperature anomaly. And Sean said, what the hell does that mean? And it was like, well, that's always a good question. But so I went and looked and it's superseding 2015, was the last, kind of held the record for the biggest El Nino. And in 2015, we got 72 inches of snow.

So not a prediction, but... From your lips to God's ears, we're going to have a monster powder season. So get your epic pass is what you're saying. Get your passes. Get your ski pass. Get your passes.

Yeah, mine's got a fuel leak.

I think I need to get it fixed. I didn't need it this year, so. Hi, Mickey. And James is online, so we should probably go ahead and start.

Everyone we'd expect. Okay, so we'll start with a roll call. We'll start with Sean.

Sean Tonner present.

Clark Hamelman here.

Don Langley here.

Mickey Conway here.

Jim Morris here. Harold Smithels present.

Okay. And then online we have, I think it's Tricia, James and Roger. Roger Hudson.

Roger.

Okay. And I know James is there, I can see him. And we know Tricia signed on earlier. So we certainly have a full quorum. So we'll go ahead, first order of business. We had a, do we have minutes from the meeting? We do, yes.

Not from the 14th, they will be, or from the 17th, we'll get those in September.

Oh, okay. All right, so the meeting minutes we have to approve are from the... last regular meeting on July 27th. And we'll have meeting minutes from the special meeting we had last week at the September meeting is what I've just been told. So we need a motion to approve the minutes or if there's any revisions or amendments anybody wants to make. Second. Okay, we have a motion and a second for approval. All in favor? Aye. Any nays? Looks like we have approval. I would make a comment about, I did get feedback from the last meeting from a couple different people. One of the people were part of the focus group that came to the focus group meetings and they seemed very appreciative that we took the time to go through all the comments. one by one and kind of look at them and get through them and talk to them. So I think some positive feedback on that, which I thought was good. We have no referrals tonight, so that's easy. So we'll go straight to our guest speaker today. which is Christy Davis. Christy is with the Colorado State University Climate and Science Department. And she, I would guess, I think her full-time job, she says, is she takes care of the CoAgMet network, which is a data gathering network to calculate ETs and all those kinds of things. But she also is an expert on climate stuff. So we'll turn it over to you.

Yeah, thank you so much, Don. Yeah, my name is Christy. I do work for CSU full-time. I am also starting my master's program in hydrology tomorrow. So that's pretty exciting. Yeah, I mainly work as a co-agment station data analyst as well as technician, but most of the time I also do climate center duties such as giving presentations like this and drought monitoring and all of that good stuff. So thank you for having me. Just a little bit about our, excuse me, about our office. We work as a small team to fulfill a threefold mission of climate monitoring, climate research, and climate services. So climate monitoring, as in like the COAGMA network, another part of our office is COCORAS, and then managing state records and things like that. And then climate research, determining things like El Nino patterns and like this has been the hottest water year ever, things like that. And then climate services, My presence here today falls under that category and then just providing data and all that good kind of stuff. So this is another member of our team. I just included some photos with her because all of our photos are really outdated. But this is our newest engagement climatologist, Allie. She does a lot of work like this and she just finished her Ph.D. in the atmospheric science program. So really excited to have her. And first I just wanted to give you a little bit of background about our overall state climate trends. Oh, and Don told me to tell you that I grew up in Elizabeth and I live in Douglas County now. So I do have a little bit of a rural perspective to water too. So I almost forgot to mention that. But before we jump in, I just wanted to give a background of what our climate typically looks like. So this is our entire period of record for the state for temperature anomalies. So this is in respect to the 1971 to 2000 average. In climatology, we really like to use 30-year averages, and then we'll often use different ones to give different perspective as like there's inter-annual climate variability. So looking at the entire period of record or looking at just 30 years, either like the 1971 to 2000 or 2000 to... like if we wanted to break it down a little bit more. So we have a couple different perspectives to look at it, but overall we've been on this gradual increase of warming within the last two decades where our seven of our top 10 warmest water years on record have occurred since 2012. And we can see that we have quite a difference between the period of record trend in that orange dash line starting in 1896 all the way until 2025. And then the 1980 to 2025 trend, which is that dark red dash line, which may not be very easy to see over the red bars, has a much steeper slope. So we're kind of seeing this overall increased trend of warming. And then precipitation is a little bit more murky. It's not as clear of a picture as to this trend of warming, but typically our dry years outweigh our abnormally wet years on a magnitude of about two to one, but no definitive trend when it comes to precipitation. So that's just an overall look at the climate. So let's talk about this year. This is water year 2026. It is, in fact, the warmest water year that we have seen on record. And Don talked about this a little bit with the super El Nino effect that we're having. Warmer temperatures are an effect of El Nino, and we're currently in an El Nino. And I'll talk a little bit more about that in general. But as you can see, spatially, this has been occurring across pretty much the entirety of the state where we're seeing record warmest And a little bit of background on water years. I usually will stop and explain it to people, but since you're the Water Commission, I figure that you know that water years start in October and end in September of the following year. So I've just laid out October 2025 to this recent July, and I apologize that I didn't update the T rank. That should be out of 131 years, not 130. That's my bad. But the big driving forces of this record warm heat has been December, February, March, But we've had some pretty close follow ups within July and then a lot of months falling into the teens like June, October, January and April. Our only like near normal month as far as temperatures go has really just been May. And we'll break this down a little bit more month by month in a couple of slides. But I think the big takeaway here is that it has been statewide and exceptionally hot. And March in particular was astounding and we had to change a lot of our graphics to really adjust the y-axis for just how abnormally hot it's been. So this has caused a lot of evaporative demand and has really contributed to the drought that we're seeing now. And then if we want to look at it a little bit differently, this is actually the departure map. So the last one, this is like rankings. So this is out of all 131 years and the months are comparing all 131 months. So like all of the Decembers compared to the 131 Decembers in the past. So this is the warmest December, so on and so forth. And then if we look at departures from the 1991 to 2020 average, so our most recent 30-year climate normal, which is also the warmest, we still see these large temperature anomalies, even kind of changing our point of reference of how we look at the data. And then at the top of these maps, you can also see that compared to the 21st century average, which is 6.2 degrees warmer, whereas this 30-year normal is only 4.6 degrees warmer. It's still very, very hot. And if we look at precipitation, it's not quite as dire of a story, but we do have some record driest rankings throughout the state. Some of the northeast and the southwest portions of the state are doing pretty normal on par. The biggest driver of this so far throughout the year has been March. which was not only incredibly hot, but also pretty dry. It just barely missed that mark for being the driest on record. The record driest counties you can see, we got Grand, some Eagle and Pitkin counties, as well as a little bit of Summit, and then a lot along the Front Range from Weld County down into the Denver Metro area, into Douglas even. I'm pretty sure my house is right in the smack of one of those dots. And then Huerfano and Los Animas counties down south have also experienced some of that record dryness. So that has also kind of contributed to this overall picture of drought now.

And then if we put them together, we really, really love these quadrant maps in our office.

We like looking at the whole picture. So on the y-axis, we have precipitation. And that's our normal is 14.49 inches. And the x-axis is our temperature. And that's 42.9 Fahrenheit. And again, this is statewide. and for the water year so far, so October through July. And you can see the black star for 2026 is incredibly high in comparison to all of our other years in the period of record. We can kind of compare this to 1934, 2018, 2000, and 2012, but as far as the heat goes, there's nothing really comparable. And we're fortunately not as dry as Hallmark 2002, which was particularly bad. We're about 4.6 degrees above the normal for that 30-year normal again, and the average for this year has been 47.5 Fahrenheit, so you can do the math, and then 3.79 inches below the normal, which is an accumulated precip of 10.7 inches so far. So a little dry, very hot. And then this is the month-by-month breakdown that I was talking about. This is our climate at a glance graphic. We really love these. I think they really depict what's been going on throughout the entirety of the year. And especially within precipitation, you can see where we kind of start to get this massive deficit in accumulated precipitation starting about mid-December. That just continues on. Even though some of the months like May and April and July were closer to normal, It's not enough to really catch us up as far as the water year has been going. And then for temperature, you can see all of those anomalies within like December and March in particular, as well as November. And despite July being the second warmest on record, it doesn't really scream super duper hot in comparison to December and March, just because, and February, just because those months were just so outstanding in the temperature anomalies. So that's really contributed to the overall top ranking this year. And I'm sure many of you are very tired of seeing this graphic as water commissioners, but this is our snow water equivalent for the year. We had a record low snowpack this year. As I'm sure you know, it was in historically bad shape up until March, and then it took like a turn for the worse with that record heat. And then luckily we had a little bit of like some buzzer beater early snowfall in May that kind of just brought us barely below the record low. but then we continued to have a quick melt off and that was closed out as of June 9th and we were completely melted out. So our peak median SWE was only 51% of our typical median, which is that green X. So not a good story for total snowpack. I know it was hard for us throughout the year to kind of determine if this was the worst snowpack on record for a while, just because snow-tell sites haven't been going on for that long. They started in about the mid-80s, and there wasn't a lot of good spatial coverage. So all of this data is the average of all the snow-tell stations throughout the state. But we do have manual snow course data that occurs every year, and that happens on April 1st. So we were really curious before April 1st if this would compare to other historically bad snow drought years, 1977. in 1981 and then the data came out on April 1st and most of the sites were lower than those two years so we were able to definitively say this is the worst measured snowpack in history. And then I gave some graphics of the South Platte for you guys to take a look at the water year here so far in discharge. So this is average discharge over a week at a time. And as you can tell, we're like pretty on par with the two medians that are provided here, the 1971 to 2000. and then 2001 to last year. And we were pretty on par up until April, and that's when you'd start to, I mean, you wouldn't expect to start seeing melt that early. We did have a lot of melt in March and April and then into May. So we're kind of starting to see this peak in February and March from those hot temps. And then we taper off a little bit as we got a little bit more snow in early May. And then you see that little end of the runoff in the South Platte. And you also have to remember that the South Platte is like a heavily regulated river system. So take this with a grain of salt as to how like natural these flow streams are. But we are seeing this early pattern of early melt and then we get this big deficit from the median because we had such a small early melt. And you can see a similar trend within the cumulative stream flow for the South Platte, which I think this graphic makes it a little bit easier to tell where we kind of break away from those medians where we're on par, we had our melt, and then there wasn't much after that to really keep us on track with the median. So, but not, historic lows on the South Platte. The South Platte is doing a lot better than a lot of other watersheds throughout the state. The White, the Colorado, a lot of southern rivers, like the Un Compadre is doing really poorly, so they've gotten a lot more attention than the South Platte, but you guys are at least in a little better shape. So why is that? I have to imagine it's a spatial difference of where snowfall as well as the overall temperature regimes contributing to those flow rates, as well as some of the water stress. So the Rio Grande also was doing really poorly. And I think that was because the San Decristos did not get very much snowfall at all. They were, throughout the winter, worse than a lot of the other mountain ranges, even though they were all historically bad. The San Decristos were very bad, as well as a lot of the San Juans. that's a big contributor is the spatial variability as to where the snow fell and where it didn't fall. And then if you really want to get into the weeds, you could think about soil moisture and like antecedent moisture in the soil and how that might contribute to subsequent stream flows. So in the Southwest, they had a lot of moisture last October from Hurricane Priscilla and tropical storm Raymond and that probably helped them have better flows on like the Dolores and those rivers in the southwest because the soil was already pretty saturated from that October going into winter and then when it had run off more of that was going to run off into the river if that makes sense. So you can get really into the weeds of the science on that. I'm sure there's lots of studies going on about that right now but that's my short answer. This is our current drought map from last week on Thursday. I would like to say to start off with that we're not particularly happy with it within our office. This author from the national office, this was his first week ever authoring, so we have to give him a lot of grace here. But a lot of our recommendations got missed. So Albert County should be about one category better than all that it's shown right now. They got about five. inches of precipitation in the week preceding the 18th, which is the cutoff for this map. So that area should be a lot better, as well as some of the northeastern plains. And then into Douglas should also less D3, but maybe still a slither. So it doesn't, accurately depict what we kind of want right now in our office, but we'll try again tomorrow. And then we're also missing a little bit of D3 and D2, excuse me, between Pueblo County down into Otero and that region. They've been particularly dry in that stretch of the state overall. But the big takeaway is that almost the entirety of this state is in drought right now, about 97%. and nearly half the state is in D3 to D4 conditions, which is typically the range where you can get like ag payouts from insurance and stuff like that, and water rate payouts and things of that nature. So definitely something that's incredibly notable and especially apparent through our mountains following that abysmal snowpack from this year. So that drought has just continued to linger from the lack of snow throughout the mountains and then leading to those lacking stream flows throughout the season now. So check this out on Thursday. It'll look a lot better hopefully, but it's not entirely up to date how we want. But overall it does depict that we're in not good shape. And then we can look ahead with my favorite graphic of how I feel about forecasting. So these are CPC, Climate Prediction Center outlooks. So we can forecast about pretty accurately up to two weeks, but when you get past two weeks, it's not very reliable. We have to look at other things like ENSO, the El Nino Southern Oscillation, and overall climate models and statistical relationships, and we kind of have to take a bigger guess versus a two-week forecast where we can get into the nitty-gritty. But this is our eight to 14-day temperature outlooks and precipitation outlooks. These work by overall giving the probability of being above or below normal chances for either temperature or precipitation. So leading up to September 6, we can see that we're going to be probably above normal for temperature and then near normal for precipitation. And that's to be expected this time of year with El Nino. And I would go on a limb and say, in my opinion, that most of the area of the country is near normal, especially within the Southwest, just because that monsoonal activity is kind of hard to pin down. And the El Nino is still developing, which we'll talk about in a second too. Like we're in it, but it's gonna get bigger. It's gonna get stronger. Don talked about it. It is probably gonna be the biggest El Nino on record. And that's really gonna kick off from this month into the fall. and then into the winter. So again, this is another CBC graphic and this is just the probability percent chance of each type of event. So like very strong La Nina to neutral conditions and very strong El Nino conditions. So it's just the probability of those events happening and this is based off of sea surface temperatures. And then what does that tell us about weather patterns in Colorado? Well, We have made some graphics, and this is based off of data from 1951 to 2020. So not that full period of record, but still a significant chunk of time. And these maps are all broken into months. So we have December, January, February for winter, March, April, May for spring, June, July, August, summer, September, October, November for fall. Most of the time El Nino does tend to be wetter throughout the state, with the one exception being winter, where La Nina does tend to be wetter throughout our central mountains. However, the southeast corner of the state does tend to be wetter with El Nino summers. So when we look at these next couple of Climate Prediction Center maps and graphics, we can kind of see these, oh, I just smacked the microphone. We can kind of see these patterns emerge in those graphics. So this is the precipitation outlook for fall. I did not include the temperatures because unsurprisingly they're warmer because it's El Nino. So I didn't think it was very interesting to include them. plus we like water here, so I thought this would be more important. So for September through October, we're getting above normal probability, which is great, and this is heavily driven through monsoonal activity, and we can see that trend happening from Arizona up into Nebraska, basically, and Wyoming. And so we're hoping this active monsoon season kind of comes to fruition. We're already in it a little bit and we've seen a little bit of it and we've already had a little flash flooding and I think the big caveat is with monsoonal activity that can often lead to flash flooding and then the bigger question is how beneficial is that precipitation to our drought conditions when it all comes in one big dump and runs off? So If we get everything our way, hopefully it just rains a consistent amount every couple of days and that will put us in good shape. But if we get like one big dump every so often, then it's more of a toss up if that's really beneficial to the drought conditions that we're currently in. And then please stop me if you have questions because I'm. Going through this kind of quick. And then in our winter outlook, we see a little bit of a different pattern, but it's to be expected with how El Nino is kind of strengthened. So this is like very characteristic of the jet stream, the tropical jet stream strengthening and kind of moving to the east. So we get these troughing patterns in the Great, the Salt Lake region as well as the Great Lakes region. And then Colorado is pretty opportunely like positioned in this like middle ridge. So if all of our odds here kind of line up and we get the trough and the ridge over the northern Rockies and that lines up nicely, then we can have a pretty active and wet winter like we did in 2015, like Dawn mentioned. And primarily the El Nino storm track is technically a southern tier phenomenon, but we do see that statistical relationship in Colorado. But I always like to tell people to think about it like playing poker with a rigged hand, where when you're in ENSO, you can have more face cards in your hand, but that doesn't necessarily mean you're gonna, or in your deck, but that doesn't mean you're gonna pull a good hand, right? So it's just a matter of luck sometimes. So we'll see how it pans out as we move into the winter.

Don brought up CoagMet.

This is my baby. We're the Colorado Agricultural Meteorology Network. We have 101 stations across the entire state, And these are all measuring evapotranspiration data, or calculating evapotranspiration data, and then measuring your typical meteorological variables like temperature, relative humidity, precipitation, all that good stuff. We also have Northern Waters weather stations on our website. They have about 22 throughout Northeast Colorado. And we're always happy to try to expand the network and fill in some of our data gaps like Albert County and up in the Northwest and some other counties that were missing stations. So we're trying to still fill this agricultural niche of ET data while also expanding to overall climate monitoring. So that's a big goal for us. But if you have any questions about that, I'd love to talk about it. And then another big part of our office is COCORAS, which is the Community Collaborative Rain, Hail, and Snow Network. We have over 20,000 observers throughout the United States, Canada, and Puerto Rico, and Mexico. And all we ask is that you get one of these four-inch rain gauges and put it in your backyard and record the rain every day or the lack thereof. That's equally as important. And it's a really important data source for us and the National Weather Service and NOAA and pretty much anyone in the weather world It is an incredibly useful tool. So we're always encouraging people to record the rain for us. And you can also do snow and hail if you're really, really passionate and you want to do more than just rain. And you can ask me a bunch of questions about that too. But yeah, this is our Chatfield co-agment station that's nearby. It has fancy all-season precip data. So you can see the snow here soon if we get some. And that's all I had. If you have questions, I'm I think we have some time. Thank you.

Yeah. Thank you.

Yeah.

You have a question? Yeah, Mickey. Take the measurements in the South Platte for the volume.

For the CoagNet stations?

No, for the, when you had the river volumes for the south end?

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I believe these are above Cheeseman Reservoir because when you get below, you start to get really, really regulated. So that was one of our, I mean, all of them are still pretty heavily regulated by Denver Water, but I believe this is above Cheeseman Reservoir. Good question.

I was looking at some South Platte River flow data and it was at Kersey. Oh, yeah. And the numbers seem to range from like 400,000 to maybe a million acre feet a year. Does that sound about right?

Yeah. So when you get to like past Bar Lake on the South Platte and you start to get to Greeley and Kersey and then well, it doesn't get to Greeley, but Kersey and then out to Sterling and that stretch, the South Platte gets really, really interesting because it's built off of a system of irrigation recharge. So I think it's really dependent on who's irrigating when and who's releasing when from all the ditches in that stretch. And the South Platte is super neat in that region because it'll just completely disappear for a while and then reappear from recharge. So I would say that sounds reasonable just because it's so heavily regulated in that like whole stretch of the state up until Nebraska.

Yeah, I was kind of comparing that to, I think the, you know, the numbers around Lee's Ferry on the Colorado River is like 12 million, 14 million acre feet. So the South Platte was like, you know, like 10% of the volume, I would say.

Yeah, this time of year? Yeah, that would not surprise me right now. So I guess looking above Giesemann in this example gives a more hopeful view. outlook than probably Kersey right now, because I'm sure so much of that water is being used. But knowing the South Platte, it'll probably show up again another 50 miles downstream.

Well, I mean, the South Platte's important to us in Douglas County, that's for sure. We have a lot of people diverting, and Englewood for Highlands Ranch, Dominion's building a diversion. So it's more our river than the Colorado River, I would say.

Yes, absolutely.

And if you could tell me what the hydrology's gonna be like in 2050, I would really like that.

I mean, I wish. I guess you're gonna have to go talk to, like, Weld and all those counties and see how much land they sell off and how much buy and dry happens, because I think that's going to be the biggest determining factor for the South Platte. Granted, that's not as much of an issue for you guys upstream, but I imagine those water rights get complicated quickly. So I wish I had the answers, I don't. I would say more rain, less snow, but probably similar amounts of precipitation moving forward.

You said that once before about, you know, I guess the trend that you appear to be seeing, and this seems to be maybe kind of widespread, is more rain, less snow.

Yeah, and that is in line with those warmer temperatures, right? So we're seeing snow events later in the year and rain events earlier in the year. So overall, we're seeing more rain on snow events, too, which can also... contribute to that quick melt when we have events like that and then just overall warmer temperatures throughout the high country unless of that snowpack build and more rainfall events.

So yeah, that's the overall trend right now as far as like what will precipitation be like in 50 years.

We can pretty confidently say that, but we can't confidently say, oh, we're gonna get five more inches than we get right now or five less inches than we get right now. As far as climate prediction models go, precipitation is really murky, aside from we know it'll be warmer, so we'll probably have less snow.

Murky.

Murky, yeah. It's a daunting world in the climate modeling space, but we do have a climate change in Colorado report that just came out this past year that's on our website, so that has some good details on precipitation and what we anticipate with it, but overall, not anything definitive except for more rain. Yeah, you're welcome. It's a million dollar question.

Actually, from where I sit, it's actually a billion dollar question.

Yeah, yeah.

That's a whole long story.

Yeah, I believe it.

So anything else? You want to show your first slide again?

Yeah.

Just go back to the very beginning.

There's a lot in here. The very first one?

Or do you want to go to the very first one? Because that shows, is it one more?

Oh, yeah, it is one more, sorry. It's a couple more. Haha, that's my title and my information. And the last slide also is my email, as well as my boss and manager.

Yeah, so I was gonna put in a plug that this is a great site, the Colorado Climate Center site is a great site to visit. You can sign up for the monthly climate reports.

Yes, yes, please do.

And then the climate in one slide, you have to go looking for that, but if you're clever, you can find it, because I think it's just the coolest slide around.

It is. If you go to our main page and then you click on the climate header, it's one of the first ones where it's climate at a glance. Hopefully it's not more than three clicks to get there.

Are you all located now down at the National Western? National Western Stock Show Complex there?

Oh, no. So our main office is actually in the Department of Atmospheric Science in Fort Collins at the Foothills Campus. So that's where my boss is. But my manager is out of Rocky Ford at the CSE Research Farm down there. And then we also have another technician that we recently hired out in Grand Junction at the Orchard Mesa farm out there. So we are a little scattered in CoagMet land, but most of our Climate Center team is up north. But we do show up at the stock show and attend stuff at SPUR. Thank you. Yeah, thank you. Yeah, Harold. Yeah.

I think, could you go back to that slide that shows the Black River flows?

Yeah. Do you want the cumulative or the seven-day average?

Well, that one. Okay. No, no, keep going.

The cumulative. That one. Yes.

You know, it seems to me, an observation today, if you look at 1902, things could get a lot worse.

Yes, they could.

And also, I think, shows the power of Douglas County with our well backup system. Because if it does get a lot worse, Douglas County, unlike other areas dependent on the Platte, has a backup. Maybe I'm misinterpreting that and I appreciate others' thoughts, but it seems that's a powerful slide with the advantage of the Douglas County water system. Just a thought.

You made me feel better. that it could get worse because it's, I mean, I think it was, I think I read today, Denver Water said that now there's not enough water to satisfy their 1860 water right, which is the oldest water right on the Colorado River. So it's like everybody, it's gone, right? It's just like, there's nothing there. I thought that was just astounding. So the South Platte's a different beast, different animal.

I think it just had more favorable conditions within the... you know, like the mountains surrounding like Breck and South Park and that whole range. So I think the South, also the South Platte, like, you know, you pull from Dillon to begin with and like Denver also diverts from like, is it, it's not Wolford, it's another green mountain. They pull from a lot of different reservoirs to feed into the South Platte. So you guys have like a lot of really robust infrastructure on the South Platte, like before the South Platte, like truly becomes the South Platte and meets, the north fork so i think it's just astounding water engineering on the south platte in particular where there's so many diversions that it is built a really robust river system whereas the colorado is kind of just the colorado it's not pulling from i mean there's a lot of reservoirs along the way and they're kind of pulling from things here and there but they have a lot less pulling from the west to the east like the south platte and it's more so just feeding to the west so I would say it is a different beast as a whole. It's a very regulated system. Yeah, well, thank you. Thank you.

Since we have your presentation, do you mind if we post that on our little portal for everybody to see?

Yeah, no problem with that. And if you ever need more graphics like this or information, please just let me know and I'm happy to send them your way.

Well, mark your calendar. We want you to come back next year.

Yeah, absolutely. I'd love to. I'm not far. So thanks so much.

Yeah, thank you.

Yeah, thank you.

We have to think about the future, right? Okay, so that was interesting. Now we got something a little bit harder, right? We're down to the last bits and pieces of the water plan. Everybody got a copy of that working draft on Friday. So should have had a chance to look through it. I don't think we'll go through page by page. We don't have enough food for that. But I mean, I don't know if anybody has any comments that they wanna just get out right away or if they wanna call attention to certain chapters. I mean, from an overview, I think you can see the executive summary got really worked hard from the first versions we saw. And it seems pretty complete to me. Seems like it's a pretty good summary. So I know Lauren, Katie and I all three jumped in on that one too. So that's kind of where that one stands. In chapter one, we did insert a little note about the relationship between water provider or the water world and wildfire world. So there was just a little addition that was made in there. Then chapter two was probably the biggest edits that I think you saw, because we added all the public comments. So I don't know if you got a chance to read through that, if it felt like too much, not enough, or if you think there's more that needs to be done. I think it looked pretty good to me. So, I mean, any comments on that or keep rolling? Oh, I guess I kind of walked through that one pretty quick. Yeah, so we can back up to that for sure.

Two comments on the first one is on I comment on kind of the visual impact of what's being said there. At the top of page four, there's the three bullet points that talk about the risks. I remember at our last meeting, we talked about that there are risks, and we should identify those. But we've got those three big bullet points with the risks, and then down at the very end of the next sentence, we sort of say, but the providers have plans to address that. And it just seems like there's the real emphasis on the potential risks and then not much to say that it's being addressed. It's just the way it's formatted there. That's my comment.

Okay, all right.

And then my other comment, to find it here, let's see. Where is it? In the recommendations, I guess it, oh, the third bullet point says discourage long-term water supply. Is it, oh, discourage or, ah. The third one, discourage or subject to heightened review, urban level development that relies on groundwater. Last week when we talked about this, we inserted the word prohibit, not discourage. And I think that should say prohibit is our recommendation, not just to discourage it.

Did we add prohibit in chapter 10?

We put prohibit in the language that Harold had submitted last week. So this is really kind of inconsistent with that now because either we're going to, our position is that we want the board to prohibit development based on groundwater. or we don't. And if we feel that we want the board to prohibit urban level development like the Pine Canyons, then we should say that. If the board wants to water it down and say they're just gonna discourage it, or yeah, discourage it, that's fine. But I think our position all along has been that we feel it should not be allowed.

This is Lauren Pulver with staff. That specific language, along with that language that's in Chapter 10, was provided by James Eklund. I don't know if he wants to speak to that. Don, I know you worked on that language as well.

I don't know if you guys can hear me or not. Yeah, we can. Got me? Awesome. Yeah, I think based on kind of the presentation that was just given about the need to have a diverse portfolio of water resources, I think the idea that this commission, as smart and sharp as you are and we are, is going to know for all time what should and shouldn't be allowed in terms of water supply especially in light of the data that we've been shown by our consultant saying that there's more water than even the state's model suggests there is in the aquifer. You know, I think it makes sense to make a recommendation that it be scrutinized and evaluated, but to recommend a full prohibition seemed like it went too far to me. Yeah, it sounds like others have different opinions, but that was mine.

This is Trisha Bernhardt. I tend to agree with Clark. Can you repeat the exact location of that comment? Which page of the executive summary or of Chapter 1?

It's the executive summary, and it's the very last page. It's the recommended policies, item four there. There are six bullet points, and it's the third one down. It starts discourage. And I'm saying I think we ought to change discourage to prohibit.

I would agree with Clark. I disagree with Jim.

There's no good reason that we would want new development to be developed on groundwater.

We should have it as a backup. My opinion.

Yeah, I think I'm trying to... my laptop is giving me that little spinning red circle, which is not being very helpful right now. But what I recall from the conversations were that we didn't feel that it would be within our charter or within our ability to recommend a prohibition. to somebody not being able to exercise their rights to develop groundwater is where I recall the conversation. So we tended to go to something a little softer and essentially kick it to the, and it basically kicks it to the Board of County Commissioners is what it does, I think.

I guess I see it kind of the reverse of that. We ought to tell the Board of County Commissioners what we feel And then if they want to write new regulations or a new policy that softens that, then they couldn't do that. But as far as I'm concerned, our recommendation ought to be to prohibit that. The language there actually softens it a little bit because even if you say prohibit, the next words are, or subject to heightened review.

So I'd like to see it changed. I'm with Clark on this. I think it should be prohibit. If we want to soften it, it already does soften it, higher review. You can't prohibit someone from using their water underneath it. I mean, that's a taking. But it can be prohibited if there's alternatives available or something like that. really what we can do, if someone wants to do urban level development on three quarters of an acre foot per home under 18A, they can do that. It would be taking to take that away from them. But it says in the write up is we're not gonna give you density bonus or increased density beyond that on appeal. And so I think the concept in the introduction saying to prohibit is appropriate, it really does. Then we pick that up in the recommendation that, you know, you can always use your water rights, but you're not going to get higher density if you're strictly on groundwater and there's alternatives available.

Mr. Chairman, I guess.

In the executive summary, you know, which granted a lot of people won't read any farther than the executive summary. I think it's important for people to read that the Water Commission has taken a strong position on this. I'd love to have people out there in the county after this is released talking about the pros and cons of prohibiting new urban development based solely on groundwater. You know, let's have that, let's get that discussion going, and that's a good thing. So we ought to say what we mean.

Yeah, I agree 100%.

James, you got another comment?

Sorry, yeah. I guess either it's a taking and you can't prohibit it, or it isn't and you can. But I don't think you get to have it both ways. You can't tell people that you're going to prohibit them drilling a well under their private property. which that's questionable whether or not you could even do that. But even the county commission in all their power and majesty may not be able to do that. I get that you want to say and send a signal that you don't think that this should be the only source of supply for new development. And I think that's what the language tried to say is you're discouraging it. That's pretty strong language or you're subjecting it to heightened review. You're not trying to do something that is questionably unconstitutional. But if you want to put that in there and have that fight later, then or like you said, punt it to the county commission and let them have that fight. then I guess that's your call. But I would say that the language is pretty stringent or pretty emphatic that it is the position of this commission that you're trying to discourage that kind of development. Tricia Browne, I don't know I just I i'm the person coming from outside Douglas county and here i'm i'm the one arguing for private property rights, which is kind of shocking to me, but. Tricia Browne, i'll close my my rambling with that.

Tricia Browne, Can I make a comment.

Tricia Browne, Go ahead trish.

Tricia Browne, there's a difference between allowing. private landowner to use their land for what it is zoned for and drill a well and use that groundwater underneath their property for what it is zoned for the county has land use control so if they want to prohibit the changing of zoning and the changing of the land use to say that you cannot have urban level development with this zoning and you cannot use that groundwater for new zoning, I think that's definitely within our right to say prohibit. It all goes back to land use controls.

Yeah, so I mean, kind of the key modifier here is urban level development that's in this phrase, right? Correct. So urban level development. Correct. And if a developer wants to do urban level development and meets the 0.75 acre feet per unit, that's legal, right? Even in urban? Or is that a requirement in urban? I thought urban could be less.

I think it's the same, right?

So, I mean, if they come forward and they're gonna do the 0.75, I don't know how you stop that, right? Yeah, well, I mean, that goes back to the appeal process and whether they could appeal that or not. Well, I don't know what to do.

Take a vote?

Huh? Take a break?

Take a vote?

Well, I think we had a vote more or less. I'm seeing one, two, three, four, at least four people for it. Jim, I don't know where you, Jim and Mickey, you haven't said one way or another? Okay. Okay. I think that's five to two, five to three. So, um, happier way in and there's Roger. Okay.

I really hate prohibiting. I really dislike it. I dislike it in the Douglas County codes and in the water plan. Douglas County is open for business. I hate restricting. I'm a big defender of property rights in Douglas County. I think it's up to the Board of Commissioners to be able to overrule that. I'm with James on this.

Okay, by my count, there would be five that are voting for a prohibit and four that are voting for the language the way it is. So it looks like we'll go ahead and modify the language and see what happens. Okay.

If I can clarify, this is Lauren Pulver with staff. We're changing discourage to prohibit and keeping the rest of that statement the same. Is that correct?

The language exists in chapter 10 as well. So it needs to be changed there as well.

Yeah, this is just a summary. So hopefully it exists somewhere in the main body, right? If it's in the exact summary.

Okay. All right.

Well, that was fun. Anything else, Clark? Anything else, Clark? Okay.

Okay.

Yeah, my laptop's lost its mind.

That's not good. Hey, Don. Jim Meyers said, I don't see a definition for urban level development. Is that actually in there somewhere? Because that seems to be a defining term in urban development.

No, we talked about it, but I don't think it's...

It's not in the definitions I looked, but I didn't look through the other part of the document because of time here, but...

I don't recall it being defined in Chapter 3, which is where you would want it defined in.

Yeah.

So you'll look at that more? Okay.

Okay.

Yeah, so chapter, I had us up to chapter three, land use, which has been worked pretty hard by the staff. There's some issues with the figure numbers. I don't know if you saw that. Yeah, the first figure on page 3-5 is 3-2, then the next one is 1-3, then the next one's 3-2 again, 3-3 and 6. So that's just, we're just gonna have to go through that chapter and iron that out. But those are probably some of the modifications that have been going on there.

This is Lauren Pulver with staff. Yes, there will be final formatting revisions to this entire document, yes.

So any more comments on Chapter 3? Are we good with the way it looks? Harold?

Mr. Chairman, I'm having to go from memory because I can't open it here. I don't know what's wrong with my computer.

It's the same thing that's wrong with mine. We've been zapped by something here.

I recall in Chapter 3, and this really leads back to Chapter 10, a discussion about urban level development, not using the upper level, the Denver Dawson, and protecting that for all users. And there's some languages in our column three, it swings back to 10, which is one of the new red lines. Again, I can't open it, so I'm not very articulate. But I believe we unanimously felt that urban level development major users should be in the lower aquifers and not in the Denver-Dawson. And I would like to strengthen that, particularly in the recommendations that permitted use or groundwater use for urban level development should be discouraged, I might use the discouraged word rather than prohibited in the Denver-Dawson. I think that's consistent with what we said. I'm sorry I can't wordsmith it, but I'd like to see that strengthened in that second red line in chapter 10 where it talks about it should be discouraged use. So when people, my thought is when people come in for water supply, they count, they even use Laramie-Fox Hill, but they'll never use. They say we have this much water. It's an urban level production. You shouldn't be able to use the two top aquifers. That's my comment. I'm sorry I can't articulate it better.

So speaking from the generation that still has some affinity for paper, It's on page 10, it's on page 10-1. And the sentence says, generally the recommendations encourage increased utilization of potable and non-potable reuse system by water providers. Oh, this is the one, I'm sorry, this is the one that discourages to, or subject to heightened review development that relies solely on non-renewable groundwater. So that's in chapter 10. I don't see it. Oh, yeah, all right, it's in 10-3, on page 10-3, last bullet. The county should consider policies or amendments that reduce reliance on shallow aquifers and encourage centralized systems and the use of deeper aquifers, reuse strategies and renewable sources. I mean it's there in the in terms of considering policies and reducing reliance. Through amendments through the county zoning resolution, so I guess this is kind of a kick to to the planning side right. you're seeing it to me.

That was the one I'm focused on. Thank you, Jim. But it says the county should consider policies or target amendments to encourage centralized systems and the use of deeper aquifers should be stronger than encourage. The county can wordsmith at their council on how they put that through, but should not rely on the shallow aquifers, because what we really want long term for the county is protect those aquifers for the rural users. And and and centralized systems can afford to go down to the maintenance. So I would, I'm sorry, thank you, Jim, but I would take that to consider policies. It's recommended that under Section 18A that reduced reliance on shallow aquifers requiring centralized system and the use of deeper aquifers. That's what I'd say. that we've talked about that i don't know how many times and i think there was consensus that that's what we want it'll be deep if you're a big system don't be shallow because you're driving joe schmidlapp out there and his shallow well he's the one that's going to get hurt or she susan schmidlapp pick your person so in in this instance if um

If someone is proposing to develop a centralized system, which would be a district, right, could be a district, likely would be a district, I know there's no more municipalities that are gonna put in water departments, you're saying we should prohibit their use of Denver and Dawson Aquifer water, even though they have rights to that water?

Centralized systems should be able to go down to the deep aquifers.

I mean, they're probably gonna want to, right? Because that's where the water, that's where the water is. But I mean, this is back to, can you then require them not to use their Denver and Dawson rights?

County can make a decision, the commissioners can go either way, but I think the more this commission recommends that centralized systems should be deep, protects those rural users. And if someone wants to go down there in the .75 and use the shallow one, we can't stop them.

It's their property right.

But when you get into these centralized systems, they're gonna need zoning amendments, and I think putting in there we want you deep can only help. Not that developers wouldn't wanna go shallow because it's a lot cheaper, but they will.

I mean, this looks like the same circumstances we talked about before.

Yeah.

Right? It's something that there's probably not an apparent authority to be able to do this, but we're gonna say that you should do it anyway. Right? I mean, do we need to vote on this one again too? Is it gonna be five to four again? I mean, it seems like the same thing, same circumstance.

Don, this is Tricia Bernhardt. Harold's first recommendation of words was the county recommends rather than they should consider. Does that strengthen the statement? Harold, the county recommends to consider policies or targeted amendments, etc. Instead of should consider. stronger i'll take anything stronger than what we've got i agree that's a win i personally think 18a needs to be revised but yeah recommends covers that any other comment i mean i'm i'm okay with recommends but i would leave encourage instead of require

On this one, I actually, I'm more in line with you, Don, where encourages as opposed to, cause I get nervous that we're starting to, you know, put a lot of prohibitions in here. Um, well, I agree a hundred percent, Harold, we don't want one, we don't want new big developments using the aquifers, their primary and only water source. And we do want them to go deeper. So I think using language because they can afford to go deeper. Um, and it protects our rural users that are most at risk right now.

Maybe use the word encourage here and then pick it up on the second one. I'm fine with that. I'm happy. Okay.

All right, so that's, you got that? Let's see, so where was I? No, no, that's okay. I mean, this is getting right down to the bitter end here, right? I mean, this is really close. So in my notes, I had chapter four, five and six. I mean, those have been sitting there for several months. I mean, that's all the data from the water providers, that's the demand supply. And then the gap analysis I think is in there. I don't think we've touched those in quite some time. And I mean, the water providers got to see all that data in their focus group and they didn't come back and say it's wrong or it needs to be modified or anything. So I'm thinking those chapters are good unless anybody has something they'd like to bring up. No. Chapter seven. Chapter seven is, I'll call it, I'll give it the title, a really robust groundwater study. There is a lot in there. There's a lot of data in there. And really, I mean, the only, only comment i i i read everything again this morning and um that one's a i mean it's that's a very technical deep chapter um it has you know it takes you to the to the website you can click on the link and go to all the wells and all that stuff um and the only the only comment i come back with i mean we've talked about you know, maybe that some of the results are uncomfortable when it says that potentially there's more bedrock groundwater there than we thought, that we're uncomfortable with that, but I mean, it is what it is. So I mean, we kind of talked through the data and the numbers and how that all stacks up. So I think, I don't see anything that I would try and change in chapter seven. The only thing that I don't think we really address very well, and I guess this goes in the parking lot or the list I've started calling the things to think about, is we really don't talk very much about Parker versus Rhine and the limitation on 100 years worth of water being an actual volumetric limit. So it's a paragraph, but we don't really try and make an assessment on what we think that's gonna mean. I don't think we know. but we don't really recommend that we try and figure it out either. So that's the only kind of little weakness that I saw in that chapter. So anybody else? We're all groundwater experts now, right? I don't know if... No. I mean, this is your last chance. Well, you had the opportunity to look at everything. So I'm just checking, right? So, I mean, nothing, I don't see, I don't think there were any red lines in chapter eight, right? If that's gonna, we're gonna use that as a criteria. Chapter nine was, there were some modifications there. Did add a comment about the new biochar facility in Douglas County being a good source of soil amendment if you're doing turf. So kind of a little connection to our wildfire action collaborative friends. So that's in there. chapter 10 did have changes, right? We just talked about one, but there were quite a few red lines in there. Anybody has any issues or comments that they want to make on those?

Again, the second paragraph has the same language we've already talked about.

Yeah.

Would be changed.

Right. Going once. So, I mean, if we don't have changes in chapter 10, I think we're done, right? Can I declare it's being done? I mean, do you have a few more, do you have anything more edit-wise to do? I mean, you said you want to clean up the formatting and... And I saw some things in there, I made a little list too, just a little mix and max. Otherwise, with the edits that we just talked about here today, I think we're done, right? Mr. Chairman. Yes, Mr. Eklund.

So I know we took a vote, but I wanted to just see if we could refer a question to the county attorney on this use of the word prohibit. And the question would be can Well, there's a legal distinction between the county statutory authority to determine the adequacy of water supply for a particular development and a categorical prohibition on any individual landowner's use of Denver Basin groundwater. I think there's a distinction there. And if there is, then the state statutes allocate groundwater based on ownership of the overlying land. I just want to make sure that this commission isn't going on record as doing something that is on its face unconstitutional. So that's my... I know we acted. I know people expressed their opinion. I just want to make sure we're all comfortable. I want to be comfortable having my name associated with something that's at least gone... through someone's legal analysis that's sharper than mine.

This is Chris Pratt with the County Attorney's Office. Having listened to the conversation, I think I can say you're making a recommendation to the board that the water policy be to prohibit urban level development that is only groundwater. That is not necessarily a blanket prohibition on such development, but that's a water policy recommending that that's how the county should set its other policies. How they implement that in those other policies will determine whether that's constitutional or not. I don't think this document by itself, even if adopted verbatim by the Board of County Commissioners, which we don't know yet if that's what they're going to do, even if it were adopted verbatim with that language, I'm not sure that in itself would prohibit such. That would just say it's the policy of the county to try and spread that to the other land use and other levers of authority that the county has. And how they would go about trying to implement that policy would determine whether that was constitutional or not.

That's helpful, Chris. Thanks for weighing in. My old days at the state, when we're talking about plans, guidelines, policies, requirements, regulations, at the local level, you trigger There's a statute, 29-20-104.2. I would take a look at that. I'm not saying it's going to change the analysis you just gave, but that statute was expanded significantly. to prohibit generally applicable land use laws, local land use laws that reduce permitted residential density or residential uses below what was allowed back in 2025 without providing a corresponding increase elsewhere. And that's where the land use law is a defined term and it includes plans policies guidelines requirements etc this is a plan so i would just take a look at that that's all that's all we need to make sorry to elongate the meeting no that's okay um

Chris, would it be more useful to make this explicit that it's a policy recommendation for the board to consider rather than just saying, I mean, we just say it's in a policy section, we're gonna say prohibit or subject to heightened review?

If I understand what you're saying, I mean, what we're doing is making the recommendation to the board to decide countywide policy regarding water. So the language you're putting forward is a recommendation. It'll be up to the board to decide if they want to implement that. If they want to implement that, that may be a discussion in perhaps executive session with them as to what impact that might have and how that could be implemented by them across county. Resolution and subdivision and all the other.

Right in the document, it says recommended policies, not recommended legal stands or anything like that. It's just policies.

Yeah, I was just, I mean, it's in a category of recommended policies. I thought maybe if it was useful to go ahead and make, you know, kind of articulate that this is, this prohibition is really a recommended policy. I can, you know, I say no, okay.

And I don't have any problem if we need to put a couple sentences. Modifiers. From the legal department, you know, protecting us in that regard. As to what, you know, we really don't anywhere say exactly what, well, maybe we do. What this is.

And I would say the county attorney's office doesn't want to, your role here is to make a recommendation as the water experts. That recommendation will go to the board. If the board is interested in that language, that would be when the county attorney's office will step in with them and say, okay, this is what that looks like.

is how that goes it's not something we would do at this level because we don't even know if the board would want to implement that yet so that's when they turn to chris and they say how in the hell do we do that right correct correct okay and i guess just last comment is chris i just wanted you to be able to tell them that we had this conversation when you get called on to ask you know did this come up it did and there was a discussion in fact there was a very close vote And one of our members wasn't even there. Evan Hila is not here, the other lawyer on this thing. And I just I'm glad we had the discussion. And hopefully it's been committed to memory for that conversation, if it's ever had.

Well, it's certainly committed to a recording. So and there might be people watching this right now. So, you know, Okay, so I guess I'm good with all that, and everybody else is good with all that. The only other thing we didn't talk about was acknowledgements. We've still gotta build that acknowledgement page. I sent you what El Paso and Arapahoe County did. I could send anybody that's interested to see what the other ones did. I mean, it's a pretty extensive group to acknowledge and recognize. But we had a commission where, I think it was, I think El Paso County had a committee of like 30 people or something like that. I mean, it was really big. So that's the only other thing that's not done. So assuming that we have last edits, basically what we discussed today, plus we're authorizing staff to go ahead and fix formatting and any of the little things that they see, working closely with Forest Green to do that, I think we're ready to make a motion to move this on to the Board of Commissioners, or how do we move it on from here?

This is Lauren Pulver with staff. And to provide a bit of detail, there is new statute, Colorado revised statute, that requires comprehensive master plans to include a water supply element. And so we're hoping that this water plan meets the water supply element requirement. In order to do that, it has to be adopted by the Planning Commission. So we're kind of working with the board to understand what the final adoption process will look like. So I would recommend any motion be kind of, you know, recommend adoption, something like that, that gives some flexibility to go to Planning Commission or board, whatever that process will look like.

So can we recommend to staff that you take this forward for adoption by the appropriate agencies or departments within the county?

I think that sounds good.

I think we can simplify that to simply say that your motion would be to recommend that this water plan be forwarded to the county as the policy recommendation of this body.

So moved. Second. I can do that, right? OK. Everybody good with this? So all in favor, say aye.

Aye. Aye.

Do we have any nays? OK. Motion carries. We're done. You're all laid off. Exactly. So, Will, big day. Thank you for all the effort you and your team put together. I mean, this has been a big haul. Not quite home yet, but very, very close.

Well, thank you all very much for a lot of great and insightful discussion as you consider all these policies and recommendations. And we appreciate all the guidance from the Water Commission. I also wanted to note that Lauren and DJ and Katie have been great to work with and really helped us out throughout the process. So really appreciate everybody's help on it.

Great.

Thank you.

Yeah, I'd second that. Lauren and DJ and Katie have been just aces with getting this thing through. So they're good at steering us in the right direction is the term I would use. So I guess, yeah, I guess we're done with that. Any member comments for tonight? Member discussions? Harold?

Under the heading of what's next, the board will, in its ways, will look at this. Then will we continue to meet for feedback to respond? Is that kind of where we go from here? What's next for us?

Yeah, I mean, we carry on, right?

I mean, we'll have our monthly meetings. You know, we talked about a lot of things in the special meeting where people had pointed, you know, why didn't you think about this or think about that? You know, you didn't include, you didn't bracket everything with, like, scenario plannings around climates and, you know, how do you know the numbers are good? So, I mean... I kind of recorded all that. I don't call it the parking lot anymore. I call it the things to think about list. So I think there's plenty for us to do. We'll kind of take it easy here for a month or so. I think Clark's recommendation of... let's get this thing public let's get it you know let's get the board of commissioners looking hard at it get them all to read it and see what we got see where we're going and then we'll start talking about doing more things i mean i'm still i'm still passionate about forming this water provider working group you know and i think all we have to do is ask them and we'll have that going um experimenting with modeling so we'll share some of that information too We heard about climate. I think the next kind of big change, and this is not soon, but maybe it's a revision that's a year from now or so, we try and bracket this thing a bit. Try and say how bad can it be and maybe how good can it be. And then how do your policies look when things look really bad? That's the question. That's the big question.

sean toner and i i'd like to um get more knowledgeable about what arapahoe county and elbert county is doing with their water plans um since they're a little bit ahead of us in completing them in el paso county for that matter but as we spent a lot of time talking you know our water network is the denver basin and so those two counties are going to be on the south end of the basin like us and understanding what their plans, policies, strategies are would be, I think. And much like you, inside the county boundaries, talking about having the collaborative network. I love that idea. And then from a county to county collaboration.

Yeah, I like that. And bring in Elbert.

Yeah, Elbert and Arapahoe, I think, because they both had water plans at the same firm. But we can all start looking at ours and seeing how they're the same, different, and what policies are coming out of it.

I think that's good. I like that. So anybody else? Any last comments? We've got five more minutes. Is the planning commission meeting tonight?

We can loiter if we want. Okay. All right, everybody. Thank you. Man, what a, this is a big day. That was quite a ride. I think 18 months. Is that right? 18 months to get to this point. Hundreds of pages and websites and all kinds of good stuff. So thank you, everybody, for your continuing engagement and seeing this thing all the way through. And we look forward to what's next.

I think thanks to Don, thanks to you, Don, for picking up the reins on this and guiding us through.

Never rode a horse in my life, but I know what reins are.

You did a great job.

Thank you. All right. Motion to dismiss? Adjourn?

OK. Second.

All in favor say aye. We're done. Thank you.