https://otter.ai/s/9UXXbPfQTD-R88LGesOtgg
0:01
I’m going to call the Monday September 21 2020. Water Board meeting to order. Heather, can you please do the roll call?
0:09
Sure. Chair Williams. Here. Alison gold. Yeah. Kathy Peterson. Here. Scott Horwich.
0:21
There.
0:22
Roger Lang. Your staff member can you sing? Yeah. Nelson Tipton. Yeah. Wes Lowery. Here. Kevin Bowden, here. David Bell. Your fancy Jaffe. Here, Jason Elkins here, and Heather McIntyre’s here, and no council member Martin yet.
0:51
So before we get further into the agenda, I just want to welcome Scott Horwich to his first water board meeting. Welcome, Scott. I’m glad you could join us today and going forward. So thank you for your your time. With that, I’m going to go into Item Number three, which is approval of the previous month’s minutes. Is there any Are there any questions or comments on the August 17 2020? waterboard minutes?
1:25
Hearing none,
1:28
I need a motion to approve a motion in a second to approve the August waterboard meeting minutes. So. Okay, Roger, we have a motion. Is there a second?
1:39
Second? Kathy Peterson.
1:41
All right. We have a motion a second. Any further discussion? Hearing none, all those in favor say aye. Aye.
1:51
Opposed. Okay.
1:55
Go ahead.
1:56
Just for the record. I abstained from voting since I wasn’t at the last board meeting and have no idea what the minutes they are. Don’t stay relatively.
2:06
We appreciate that. Thank you, Scott. The record? Thanks. Sure. Next item item four is the water status report is that Wes or Nelson who’s going to handle that? Well.
2:16
I’ll give that information. The flow of the same brain at lions gage am today was 18. CFS, the hundred and 24 years historic average of 55 CFS for the state. The call in the same brain Creek is James ditch admin number 8756 with a priority date of June 2 1868. The call the main stem of the South Platte River is north Sterling canal admin number 26,302.23953 with a priority date of January 5 1922 ralpher price reservoir and button rock reserves currently spilling with 20 CFS being released. And union reservoir is at 25.1 feet are now at approximately 2000 acre feet. That’s all I have.
3:19
Thank you Wes. Are there any questions on the water status report? And please speak up. I don’t have a screen where I can see everybody right now. So if anybody has any comments, please just speak up. Okay, with that, we’ll go on to item five. Public invited to be heard and special presentations. Heather, you mentioned there was one person who did want to speak are they are they with us?
3:46
Yes, they are. Okay, so I’m gonna go ahead and ask you to unmute looks like you are able to unmute. So if you would please state your name and address for the record and then chair Willie Williams will give you three minutes to speak.
4:02
Um, hi, this is Lisa Flynn and I live at 9998 weld county road one here in Longmont. And I actually just had a couple of questions. One was, we have a half a share to the bonus ditch and we have a meeting coming up on the 29th. And so I was curious as to what the the additional benefits and values to the minority shareholders were that were mentioned in the letter, and then what the water what the water is going to be used for. and Heather did tell me that this was a comment period. So but I will be in route next Tuesday for the phone call. I’m not sure I will be in a good traffic area. So I thought I would try this avenue first.
4:51
Lisa, thank you for your comment. I talked just briefly I think can Houston would be the one to maybe answer those questions. So you have, Ken, are you on? What would be the best way for Lisa to get in touch with you to get answers to those questions?
5:08
Um, yes, Lisa, thank you. I’m Ken Houston, the water resources manager for the city of Longmont. And we are indeed, having a special stockholder meeting of the bonus ditch to talk about a potential change case, the city will be filing and want to talk to shareholders. There’s a lot of issues, a lot of things that go around change case in water court. And so just to be real brief, we’re changing, we’re basically adding additional uses mostly augmentation to the decree, so doesn’t take away from the degree it adds to the degree. And I’d be happy, I’d love to be able to talk to you about it. If you could just give me a call at my office number. I can go over the entire case with you. And you can call me anytime I have it forwarded to my cell phone. So you’ll get me either way, in my office number is 303-651-8340. And I’d be happy to try to give you and yeah, if you can’t make that meeting, then I’ll be it’d be really good for me to talk to you beforehand.
6:20
Wonderful. Thank you so much. I appreciate it. And I will reach out offline then. Okay, thank you,
6:26
Lisa. Have a good day. You too. Thank you, Lisa.
6:31
Ken, are there any special presentations today?
6:35
I have none.
6:36
Okay. Then we’re on to item six, which is agenda revisions and submission of documents.
6:44
I do have one agenda revision. We’re gonna have Dave Hayes join us for the item on the windy gap firming project. He can answer any questions you might have about the actual allotment contract or the other contracts as well as give you a little bit of a background on some of the legal aspects of that case, first of that agreement. So he was not available until about 323 30. And so with your indulgence, I’ll postpone item eight a and till about 330 when Dave will be able to be on the meeting, and then we can go ahead with cash in lieu and if need be some of the items from staff.
7:28
Okay, so we will address eight B before item eight a based on Ken’s comment. So just everybody be aware that the next item we have is development activity. I did not see any of that correct was?
7:46
That’s correct. We have none this month.
7:48
Okay. Well, with that we move right into a B, which is a cash in lieu review. Wes, are you going to handle that?
7:57
I will. And since we have 20 minutes, I’m going to me slowly. Now, I’m so I’m included in your quarterly review, we have some information, as you’ve seen before, the three basic criteria that you’re using to set cash in lieu, I think it’s on page 76 of your packet. The first one was the native bass in water rights transactions, still really just limited transactions that have occurred, those being late Macintosh and oligarchy ditch. And at an average cost of just a little over $15,000 an acre foot. Those are consistent with what you saw in the last quarter, we review the second one. Number two, the cost for new water supplies. You only know let’s see those numbers stayed the same. We’ve looked at the virals, reclamation construction cost index, and as it turned out was the same as last quarter. And so there really was no adjustments. We just updated those in the last quarter, especially for windy gaps. So you see that the the average forum is 17,007 88 with a weighted average that was based on the firm yield for their respective or their dry yield sorry for the respective water supplies at 16,660. And then I’ll remind waterboard at currently cash in lieu is what the winning yet firming project amount was, which is set at $17,683 an acre foot. So then the new information in this in this Quarterly Review would be number three, the CBT allotment units. And so if you were to scroll down to the next page, it’ll probably Pick up my head or probably pull it up for us. But in June, we had 167 units that were transferred at an average cost of $78,703 an acre foot. Then in July, we had 73 units transferred at an average of $78,560 an acre foot. And lastly, in August, there were 67 units that transferred it at an average cost of $76,579 an acre foot. So the average of all those three months was just a little over $78,000 per acre foot. So as as we’ve seen, quite, quite expensive relative to the construction cost of new water supplies, and at native bass and water rights transfers. So other than that, there’s really nothing real new to report. But if you have any questions, I’d be happy to take those.
11:05
there any questions for was
11:08
and, and with that, also, I don’t know if any of the water board members happen to catch it in the newspaper last week. But the town of Wellington up just north and east of Fort Collins a little bit, just increase their cash in lieu price to a little over $100,000 an acre foot. And, and that was a, that was quite an increase for them. And it’s made quite an impact. It made a little bit of a splash on the local news up there. So
11:46
it’s just
11:49
if you don’t have if you don’t have availability, a good local supplies or things like windy gap firming project or some of those supplies, alternatives are pretty expensive.
12:02
One maybe I’ll mention a couple of things for Allison in Scotts benefit. I think I know this is the first time I think we’ve gone over this with the two new board members. You know what, what we try to do is visit this quarterly to make sure that the cash in lieu rate for the city of Longmont is kind of staying up with what we believe is the current cost of developing new supplies within the city so that developers are truly paying their own way. And they’re they’re paying it at the current rate, we expect it to cost the city. A couple other notes under the cost for new supplies. You’ll notice that water conservation is lower than the when you get firming project. And then we have a cost estimate for union and button rock enlargements underwater conservation. You know, I guess one question would be why don’t we maybe lower that cash in lieu, I think that the thought of the board in the past has been that kind of there’s limited amount of water development that can be done at that price. And we have the entire water conservation plan that we’re trying to enact. So, you know, if you tried to say, Hey, we get $10,600 per acre foot on developing large quantities, that that really doesn’t hold very well. And then on the union in the button rock, those are just kind of those are cost estimates that were done quite a while ago. And I believe staff tried to update those to current standards in terms of you know, construction pricing, but those would take a lot more effort than I think what is to actually build those in terms of permitting and, you know, getting them ready for construction. So those are kind of estimates, more than they’re probably, you know, hard costs at this point. The windy gap. firming project, on the other hand is a lot more vetted. There’s actually a contractor that’s been selected, and is given a bid for the project. There’s kind of questions with regards to the timing and related costs of the project. But that one is kind of a different level in terms of surety with regards to cost them the other items listed under you know the the cost per new water supply. The one other thing I’d maybe mentioned is under native water supply, you’ll notice those are lower, but those are limited as well both for like Macintosh and oligarchy. The city is allowed people to dedicate that as non historic water and that continues to happen. But the city has not chosen not to date to try to get into those markets and buy those supplies directly so that once again, it’d be somewhat limited as to the amount of water could be that could be developed in in that way. It can or Wes, is there anything else you guys want to mention? I guess on those items, I’m just thinking so Scott and Allison can maybe understand this a little bit Better how the process works, and maybe a little background behind the numbers.
15:04
Yeah, I appreciate you doing that, Todd. And that’s all really spot on there, we really have been focusing on the windy gap firming project, or all of the reasons that Todd outlined, and they’re all all good and valid. And then the other half of the equation of that is that cat money that we get for cash in lieu currently, as well as in the foreseeable future, will go to actually pay for the windy gap firming project itself, that’s actually where all of our cash in lieu that we have will have a cube cumulated at the time that we post our cash or money for the windy FME will go up to that project. And so the most fair, equitable thing to compare the cash flow is the windy gap firming, not only will we use it at the time of construction, but in the in the near term. For the next three, four or five or so many years, we’ll also use it to help pay off the bonds because the 4040 approximately $49 million cash that we need to come to the table with 36 million rupee from the bond was approved a couple years ago by the voters by the citizens for the windigo firming project. So when we take out that bond, we’ll have to pay those bonds off and will part of that money to pay those bonds off will be cash in lieu. So that’s really why.
16:49
More recently, we’ve been looking fairly
16:53
closely at the windy gap forming project is the appropriate venue to chart to compare and set that cash in lieu.
17:05
And all add that just kind of is a just general numbers. So since we’ve started taking cash in lieu in about 1965, we have received around a little over $11 million in cash in lieu. with about a little over a third of that, just in the last eight years or so. More people for development, have chosen to use cash in lieu as opposed to transfer a non historic water rights as they’re allowed in the raw water requirement policy primarily for availability. And because they’re able to explain that to the bank is usually paying that up front to just get a bill. And so we’ve had some conversations very recently, with marquel Holmes who’s doing a large development, and they’re putting in their financing, we’re expecting to get a check for a little under a million dollars soon. And then there’s another large development that might be around that. We’ll see it’s it’s it’s kind of a difficult gauge, they really have to wait to the last minute, but those are some of the bigger numbers that we’re expecting to be coming through as it relates to cash in lieu in the near future, though.
18:22
Thank you, Wes. And Ken, Scott or Alison, because have any questions with regards to the cash in lieu, how it’s calculated or the history of that.
18:36
Now, thank you.
18:39
Mr. Chair, I have a just a quick maybe observation slash question. So as I understand it, then the windy gap firming project is kind of the the metric on which we proceed forward, at least now because it’s relevant, it’s timely, it’s the cost of Water Development, the other the native base and water rights transaction CBT. allotment costs, kind of a check and balance. So if those things skewed wildly in a different direction that would cause us to potentially rethink or relook at our underlying assumption that the windy get firming project costs are probably, you know, valid, is that the way we look at that.
19:19
And I can give you a little bit of my thought and then Wes and Ken can step in if need be, I think, you know, maybe a little history there is when I came on the board. The CBT price was the metric that was used. And then I think as we proceeded in in the windy gap firming project became you know, closer to receiving the necessary permits and then firmed up the construction price. Obviously there’s a huge swing there in terms of order of magnitude of CBT prices in relation to to win the gap. So we did have that discussion. Scott with the City Council at that Point in, there was a decision at that point to try to tie it to the kind of actual true cost of developing additional supplies. So you’re right, I think those do give kind of almost like book in the, you know, give you some relative cost. And as Ken mentioned, some entities are out there using CBT. And, you know, the Wellington using 100,000 versus the 78,000. That may be what yield they give for a CBT unit may account for that difference, but just gives you some idea of the other options to develop supplies. But, you know, like I said, there has to be a little context given when you start looking at those of you know, what is kind of behind the numbers. And, you know, the main reason is because we’re moving forward with when you get firming, that’s the direction we’re going we’re using those prices, but this does give us some context of what the cost of developing other supplies is. So yeah, I think that does give that the information, as you mentioned, Scott, anything. Can or Wes, you want to add to that?
21:05
No, I think that was excellent, Todd? I I do? I think it has, it has been, you know, we have continued to monitor the CBT. Because I think, even though we made a decision quite a while ago, that we wouldn’t be out in the CBT market. Obviously, you can see why we still think it’s valuable to track that and know, know where that’s going? Because it does, it does give a bigger picture of what’s happening in the water world. You know, in northern Colorado, and if nothing else, it lets you appreciate prior water boards and councils that helped us develop our wonderful drink water system here and how valuable that is.
21:58
I guess unless there’s other questions. What we need to do today is come up with a recommendation for the City Council as to the cash in lieu rate. If we follow what we’ve done previously, the windy gap forming project is at the 17,683. I guess the Canon? Wes, that’s where we’re currently at. Right. So I guess the question would be, do we need a motion to, you know, reaffirm that or if we’re going to if we decide to leave it the same? Do we need a motion in a second on that?
22:33
I don’t need a formal motion if you don’t want to change this your recommendation as such.
22:39
Okay. I guess with that, I’ll ask the board. Is there anyone who wants to entertain or recommend a cash in lieu prize other than the 17,006 83 related to the when you get firming project? And I’m not hearing anybody and like I said, I can’t see everybody so
23:05
anyone?
23:07
Okay, sounds like we’re gonna leave the cash in lieu price at the current rate of 17,683 until we revisit it again here in a few months. Ken, are you guys ready for the eight a discussion?
23:26
Um, why don’t we go on to nine a and and we’ll jump back to a day when Dave gets on.
23:32
That’s fine. Okay, so item nine A is the button rock preserve update and can you leave man?
23:40
Yeah, I am actually
23:44
real happy to report a number of things up at button rock. While the the most significant item we have is we’ve finished all of our interviews are both the senior watershed Ranger and watershed Ranger positions permanent positions up at button rock in August. We have made initial job offers to two candidates. And I believe they both pass all their tests. So I think I can I can give out their names right now. We’ve selected as the senior watershed Ranger, a gentleman by the name of price Hadley, price comes to us from Pitkin County. He was an Open Space Ranger and Pitkin County, primarily dealing with some property they had on the
24:43
stream up there.
24:47
should forget the name of the stream now that goes through Aspen. But they have they have a lot of recreational use of the stream and so did a lot of work with a guy communities and fishing communities. He also did some work on some
25:08
Pitkin county open space properties
25:13
off the stream. So he’s got some good
25:20
for stewardship abilities as well. So we’re real excited to get price on. He’ll be starting Monday, the fifth of October. And then our this will be the first year that we’ve actually been able to hire both a full, regular senior watershed Ranger, as well as a full time assistant, watershed Ranger. we’ve converted we had the watershed Ranger, and then we had two seasonals. we’ve converted one of those seasonals to a permanent position. And so now we’ll have the senior watershed Ranger, the Assistant watershed Ranger as well as a seasonal next summer. But our current seasonal miles Churchill was selected for the assistant, watershed Ranger position. And, you know, I can’t give enough of a shout out to miles he, he essentially was there alone all summer through the entire COVID situation. Button rock. Everybody else kept closing stuff which kept putting more and more and more pressure on button rock Preserve. At one time, we had the entire parking lot full people park in a mile and a half up the road at a school bus turn around parking on the county road down below that hiking in a mile and a half just to get to the facility because was one of the few facilities that was open. And and miles hand handled wonderfully. And just you can’t so so I’d really like to give a shout out to him. So we’re now fully staffed at button rock. And we will be staffed this way for the wintertime period. next spring, we’ll hire our seasonal to bring us back up to three. But real excited to get them. they’ll both be living up in the area. So we’ll have you know 24 hour people up there. They won’t be on duty 24 hours, but they’ll be there. So we’ll that’ll work real good. Things are going very well. Button rock. The outlet button. rocla is as Wes was telling you a little earlier is down to 21 CFS coming out of the outlet. That’s as low as I can ever remember it being this time of year. It’s just been dry enough this summer, once the last tiny bits of the snowpack melted up in the high country. Creek is great. Greek was running at about 5040 to 50% of normal most of the summer, especially towards the end of the summer, about 40%. And now it’s even lower than that. And so that that’s a little scary this, you know, to low early, have that lowest snowpack. That’s that’s I mean stream flow that’s kind of kind of tough on the aquatic environment up there. Yeah, it’s kind of tense. Luckily, most of the water is coming out of the reservoir. So that’s cooler. And that keeps the stream kind of protects against those low stream flows that if the reservoir weren’t there, it probably get critically hot before just natural stream flow. So luckily, we have that hour. As you may remember, last spring, we we brought information on the management plan. There’s ongoing up a button rock, we’re actually still working on that doing some of the drafting. And we hope to come back, we’ll come back this fall with a draft of that plan for a lot of board to start looking at, hopefully, October or November but but hopefully sooner than later. But so expect to see that fairly soon. We’re getting you know, we have some good data and we hope to bring that back to the council fairly quickly. So that’s a battle I have the visitation has luckily dropped off quite a bit of the hot weather always kind of pulls back on the visitation. Button rock so like our parking lots run in about half full now. So that’s really good at it. It’s kind of back more to a normal visitation. So things are going very well there and We hope to hope to keep going from there. And then. So that’s all I have on on button rock, then I believe,
30:10
Jay Williams, we did have Dave, join us. So we can go to item eight. If we’re ready to do that.
30:19
I can do it. Why don’t we finish this this one out? And then we can jump over there?
30:22
Yeah, that’s all I had a bedrock. So,
30:25
you know, I want to make one comment. You know, I think we’re as we’re seeing in the the fires up the puter Canyon mean, that’s going to have potential major effects on for Collins Greeley, tri district water supplies, and maybe once again, for Scott and Allison’s benefit. You know, my experience on the board today has been that I think staff has done an amazing job in terms of leveraging some of the city funds and resources to try to do water shed management, kind of thinning of the forests and the watershed going into button rock. Which I think, you know, obviously, if you can’t, as we’re seeing with some of the fires, you can’t control all of those aspects, especially if it’s kind of rough terrain, that sort of thing. So I just did is you, Scott, and Allison get further into it. I think there there’s just been a lot of work done historically on making sure that watershed stays as healthy as possible and try to minimize or, you know, the the fire impacts if something were to happen. So you’ll see more about that, but just kind of a little preview. As we get deeper into it. I think there there’s been good work and hopefully will continue to be good work in that regard to Given the importance of that water supply to the city of Longmont overall water system. So anyway, that’s all I had Dean bales have any comments on the button rock preserve update.
31:55
Okay,
31:56
then Todd, one last comment. I would thank you for bringing that up. One last comment I would make about that as well, is that we have the city water board reviewed and recommended approval and council approved and intergovernmental agreement with the US Forest Service Boulder County, and a lot of the local fire agencies in the same brain Creek basin will say rain in or same rain including both agree. But for us, it’s really savoring Greek. And that intergovernmental agreement will allow us to work cross boundary. For the first time since I’ve ever been here. Really fires respect, no property boundary. So it’s actually kind of an exciting new area for us to be able to go into to maybe look at a more watershed scale. Fire Fire Prevention aspect. So thank you forgot. Yeah,
33:02
thanks again. Alright, so now we’ll move back up to eight A, which is the when you get firming project final a lot contract recommendation, I mentioned to can earlier and Heather that I think most of you know, I’m on the northern Colorado water Conservancy District Board of Directors and also the municipal sub District Board of Directors. And based on that, you know, there’s obviously going to be that side of it in terms of this allotment contract. It’s going to have to go in front of the enterprise Fund, which I’m on the board of directors for. So based on that I’m going to abstain from the discussion of a day. And I’m going to turn it over I’m actually going to turn off my video and audio. And I’m going to let Cathy take over the meeting a day and then I’ll come back once once it goes we’re done with that discussion.
34:01
Good Kathy.
34:02
Okay. Kathy Peterson I’m the vice chair here. And this ad is the when you get firming project, final allotment contract recommendation. What we need is a recommendation from the water board to the city council on the final allotment contract, which is now has gone from 8000 acre feet to 7500 acre feet. And I think is it Dave Hayes is going to do a little background and review for the new board members are for all of us, but probably wouldn’t hurt of how we got here and what we’re being asked to do.
34:41
Oh, thank you Kathy ppreciate arkin is
34:45
going to
34:47
turn over to Dave. Thank you, Kathy, for that introduction. Yeah, we have before us the actual final allotment contract to take action on just kind of real quickly on the history. we’ve we’ve, for many years have been doing interim allotment contracts, as we do the engineering the bidding, higher getting a contractor on board. We’re now getting all the permits, getting everything done, have all been handled with interim allotment contracts. So the final final allotment contract is really the, it will put all those to rest. And this will be the contract that we’ll have going forward that will operate the reservoir. From this point forward. It’ll actually be the last last contract. As you may recall, last August, we looked at or excuse me, last July, we looked at the preliminary allotment contract and went to City Council on August 4, for direction. waterboard recommended and council voted to set long mots final participation at 7500 acre feet in the project. And as such, a couple things we needed to do to get that done. The first course was to get an allotment contract at the 7500 acre foot level. We have participated 1000 acre foot foot up to that point. And so we have 500 acre feet that needed to be reallocated to other participants. There were two participants that had expressed interest for some time that either belong mode or any participants, if they were to go down they would they wanted additional capacity. The first was the city of Loveland. And we had worked with them before. So the city of Loveland had a goal of 10,000 acre feet, they’re about 400 acre feet short of that 413 acre feet short of that. And so of the 500 acre feet, the city of Loveland will take 413 acre feet. The other entity, a much smaller entity is the city of Fort Lupton. And so the remaining 87 acre feet, they were very happy to be able to have an opportunity to participate. They actually had balance there windy gap for me project with the windy gap water, parent water that they owned, but they got additional windy gap parent project water, I believe from for clever power. And so they needed a little more firming project to go with that. So they have actually already taken it to their city council and gotten direction from this city council to go ahead and proceed with 87. So we’ll we’ll be good for that. So really what I have before you today, obviously the most important part is the final windy gap. allotment contract. That’s the bulk of the package 4045 some pages. But in addition to asking for a recommendation on the firming Project allama contract, I also have attached an escrow agreement. The firming project allows us to either pay cash, or to participate in a pool bond. Because of some some aspects of our city charter, we’re not able to participate in the pool financing. So we’ll be paying cash, even though we’ll issue our own bond for part of that. So we have an escrow agreement attached that escrow agreement is basically how we move our money up to Northern water, they’ll set it up in a separate escrow just under our name. And they’ll pull money out of that as as needed to construct the project. It helps make sure that that’s a formal formal agreement to move them and it’s a lot of money to move around. So that does that. And then the third and fourth agreements are basically the two IGA is between the city of Longmont and the city of Loveland and the Cydia for Loftin. In essence what we have to do we do an IGA with those two cities. And then together, we submit a petition to Northern water, asking them to assign the 500 acre feet of capacity to those two entities that actually went to the northern board early in September, just as a kind of a
39:49
preliminary review. The actual petitions have wasn’t was not before but the concept was, and their board agreed in public Except that generally the form of our petition application to them was good, and that they would generally favor those petitions if they came before him. That’s really kind of what we needed to make sure. Everything, it’s kind of a chicken and egg, all of its assets fit together. So we wanted to make sure the northern board was okay with that. And they were, they’ll actually formally approve it in October, but or early November there, they may do a special meeting late October, if all aspects of agreement can go forward, if not, um, one thing I did want to point out on the allotment contract, is that in the section under pooled financing, that really, technically doesn’t affect long mom, because we won’t be participating in the pool financing. But there there is, part of that is for a 30 year note, a 30 year bond, about half of the pooled financing participants want a 20 year bond, and about half of them want a 30 year bond. And so the Northern District is doing everything they can to try to see if they can make that work. Of course, you got to go, you know, you got to go to the people that have the money and say, Hey, will you do that. And so you got to, you got to have them smiling when when you come up with language that works. So they really are trying hard, but there’s no guarantee that they’ll be able to make that happen. So exactly what happens with the bonding institutions and whether they can make that that language may tweak slightly between now. And when this agreement goes to city council. We’re currently scheduled for city council on on October 13. For we may have to do it on on two weeks later, on the 27th of October, when if that language is in 100% done yet, so that will we’ll probably know that yet later this week. So, but with that caveat, knowing that that particular part of the contract isn’t 100% done everything for long what we believe is done, and that language is good to go forward. So that’s why we’re recommending we take action. So that’s kind of where we are with all the contracts. And with everything that’s going on. I would like to turn it over to Dave. And let him just kind of give you a real quick rundown of what the different sections of the allotment you know, how, what is an allotment contract and where it goes just so we have that on the record just so we give also give the board an opportunity. If there’s any part of any of these contracts that you have a legal question, Dave would be much well better situated than me to answer those questions. So go ahead and introduce Dave. He’s our special water counsel. And let him jump on as well. Thank you.
43:07
Okay, thanks, Ken. Okay, go ahead, Dave.
43:12
sceptile can’t hear him.
43:16
I think he’s muted. Heather, can
43:24
you see Dave? Yeah, he’s muted. I think
43:30
he’s muted. He is muted. Hold on one second. Okay. I think Can you hear me Got it. Yep. There we go. Okay. Technical, technical malfunction.
43:41
Well, it’s a pleasure to to appear before you this afternoon. I was telling can I’ve been special counsel along with Ray Petros to Longmont, me personally for about 20 years now. And this is actually the first time I’ve been in attendance at a waterboard meeting. I’ve been to a number of city council meetings and worked with staff countless times but but never a waterboard meeting for some reason. So it’s a pleasure to to meet you, albeit it was in person. The allotment contract. Its girth of 45 or so pages is a creature that’s taken a long time to get to this form. We started negotiations with the sub district and all the participating entities back last before Thanksgiving, I think it was and had a number of meetings in person up in birth, that were long, multi or well full day sessions and then eventually moved online and worked through a lot of issues over the course of almost the last year. So you can rest assured this documents been very heavily vetted by a lot of different attorneys, not only of water interests, but municipal interests, and financial interests also. So it is safe to say it’s hopefully in pretty good shape at this point. You know, despite being a hefty document, what it what it really kind of boils down to in a lot of ways is on page seven paragraph two. That’s that’s the guts of it. And what it does is it is an allotment a right to essentially granted by the municipal sub district the windy get for me project and our prize granting Longmont 7500 acre feet essentially, if capacity or you know roughly 8.33% of the the project, whatever its ultimate capacity will be and the chimney hollow reservoir. One way to kind of think of this is, from an analogy standpoint is akin to
45:57
shares of stock in a mutual ditch company.
46:00
The subdistrict will be the owner, essentially, of Jimmy hollow reservoir. As far as title itself goes, but the participants themselves have funded it, much like shareholders in a ditch company. And instead of shares of stock because the sub district is a creature of statute to quasi governmental entity, the rights to the use of the the water rights and in this case, really the water works are granted to the individual participants in the form of perpetual contracts. So that’s what paragraph two really does, they’re in a lots perpetually long on the right to 7500 units in the project, subject, obviously, to the terms and conditions of the contract. So while you could boil it down to that one paragraph as to the important part there, there’s obviously a lot more to it. And I’ll kind of just give you a quick overview of the sort of the highlights of the contract. The recitals sort of outline, a little bit of background about the Fermi project and recital D actually sort of gives you the roadmap of what the four main parts of the contract do. Part One being definitions, there’s quite a few of them, most of them are fairly straightforward and explanatory, or self explanatory. One, a couple of note would be 1.8, the costs and expenses definitions, there’s a breakdown of various expense categories that will be associated with the project. capital funding, first to initially construct the reservoir, if there’s cost overruns, Completion, costs and expenses, and then what would typically be considered kind of O and M, which they’re calling operating CNE. And then also, there’s a provision for future extraordinary say, if there was a, you know, a dam failure issue, cost to repair it, that kind of thing. And those how those are handled or spelled spelled out elsewhere on the contract. Another important definition would be 1.27. When to get from a project a lot T, there’s two categories, there’s 10, kind of alluded to, there’s cashalot T’s and there’s loan a lot. t’s Long, long being a cache allottee, at least initially. Because like Ken said, you’ll be paying upfront from your own revenue sources. So into part two of the contract, and feel free to jump in if you have questions at any point. Like I said, paragraph two of part twos pretty critical there. That’s the the grant of the actual right, paragraph three or section three there. And that part two, kind of deals with what happens as the project as the chimney has been built before final completion and you know, what, what might happen if it’s determined to be infeasible, that kind of thing if the project were terminated, and establishes when it’s considered complete, which gets into paragraph four then is operation after completion. Importantly, spelled out a few key terms, but a lot of the operational aspects are yet to be determined and will kind of be developed through operating experience to some extent and also yet to be negotiated through operating principles, which Ken has been stressing the need for seeing those sooner. Then later and is on the committee that’s that’s helping to develop those, those will be important. Going to jump in through into paragraph 5.3 spells out provisions regarding default. That was, that took a lot of time and negotiation among the parties how the process works if if an entity doesn’t pay their, you know, assessments and operating expenses on an annual basis, what’s the, you know, cure period that’s developed? What’s the penalty if you ultimately don’t care? What happens if you know a party forfeits, it’s somewhere all of its interest who gets to take up that forfeited interest, so that the 5.3 is definitional, primarily for that.
50:58
And then 5.4, it kind of gets into how that process works. And I’ll get to that here in a little bit.
51:10
Jumping real quick, back just to 5.1. It does identify that the operating provisions are perpetual. Under the contract. A couple of the sections will go away, for instance, the construction provisions, section three.
51:28
But but the the allotment itself is perpetual.
51:35
So paragraphs six, a yes. Sorry, this
51:40
is like I apologize for interrupting. You said to jump in, I looked at this a little bit. Because that’s what I do for a living. And I think there might be an inconsistency between paragraph 5.7 the amendments provision, and paragraph 5.8, in particular, subparagraph. Four, that there’s language I think is meant to protect Longmont. And I think it’s correct and 5.8 point four, but I it doesn’t read right in 5.7. So I don’t know, if you want to look at it outside of this conversation. It’s the last clause. And it looks like it allows the possibility of a material adverse impact on longmans rights, whereas I think it should be not result in does not result in so I can send that to you in an email if you want. But before anybody signs it at City Council, if it does operate to be opposite of what you intended, or what the group intended. It was just something I thought I wanted to share with you.
52:39
Yeah, I appreciate that. Scott, why don’t you send that Jimmy? And they are, you know, still amenable to? Yeah, hopefully that’s an editorial change as much as anything, although it’s goes to substance,
52:52
correct? Yep. Thank you.
52:54
Would you mind repeating that, please?
52:56
Sorry. It’s under paragraph 5.7. The amendments clause, I think, is one long sentence. And it’s the last phrase which talks about five lines from the bottom and further provided that this contract may not be amended, with long months written consent in a manner that results in a material adverse impact. And it may be correct, it’s really awkwardly stated. But in 5.8, point four underneath that, it says the exact opposite, or at least is worded the exact opposite way. And so it may just be a really awkward last phrase, and five, seven and may actually mean what it means to say, but it doesn’t read very well. And I wanted to at least alert you that it could be read differently. In my opinion.
53:37
That’s good. There was a lot of last minute
53:41
wrestling with, you know, what it takes to amend this contract between the parties. And so there was a lot of changes there at the end, and probably just, you know, somehow got to be consistent or so. So thanks. And it
53:54
may may mean exactly what it says. Anyways, they may be Miss reading it, but it was awkward to read. So
54:00
I thought I pointed up. Okay, well, we’ll look at that. And we’ll talk with Ben and also about it.
54:05
also had a quick question regarding the enterprise for rules and regulations. Those are specifically referenced herein is done, reviewed, do we have copies of those?
54:19
We do not they have not been promulgated today. And we bet we have asked them about that. You know, that was that’s the operating rules. The Enterprise board rules have been a bit of a concern that we’ve we’ve raised issues about in the past as to you know, whether that could impair the right we think we’re getting and they’ve tried to address that through some of the language that Scott was just alluding to about, you know, nothing can result in a material adverse impact to the rights under this contract. And that, that sort of strewn throughout here in a number of places, but
54:58
you know, obviously Without seeing those,
55:03
there’s probably a minor degree of risk there.
55:06
Okay. Similarly with Exhibit B, it looks like that is a TBD.
55:17
Real quick.
55:23
So, yeah, so that would be
55:27
that applies to, yeah, because there’s no those costs wouldn’t be known at this point. So those will be populated once. That applies to if there’s cost beyond the initial estimate to construct, or the future extraordinary would be, you know, a damn problem that had to be corrected down the road. And there’s a process, you know, just jumping into that. The the way the allotment contract spells things out right now for the initial funding for construction, long, lots of cash a lot t but if those future costs are presented, Longmont has a choice, they can decide whether to be a cashalot to Europe, pooled finance, a lot t in that case. And the default if you don’t make that choice as you become a pool finance, a lot t so so that Exhibit B spreadsheet would populate once those costs are known.
56:21
No, are we going to have any sense of that prior to the October meeting?
56:27
I’m sorry, the board meeting of the city council
56:31
of have a sense of that being
56:33
which direction? We’ll be going as far as that default kicking in or not?
56:40
Oh, well, those would only be you wouldn’t have to decide until those actually came up.
56:45
Okay.
56:46
Right now, the city has determined it would be a cashalot T for the initial financing.
56:54
Okay. So that 30 year bond is completely inapplicable under the contract.
57:01
Correct? Yeah, that that goes into part four of the contract, which really doesn’t apply to Walmart’s current position for the initial capitalization.
57:10
Okay, thank you. And I have a couple other questions. But, um, yeah, just let you go on.
57:17
Okay. Um,
57:20
so I think I was actually kind of getting into the funding provision there, just about two and part two section, Part Six, the windy gap forming project funding. And so there’s a, you know, the initial capital costs, there’s, you’re either a cash participant
57:39
for the the initial $600 million
57:43
or, or part of the pooled financing
57:47
provision, and then 6.2, point two kind of gets to that completion, see any costs and expenses, if, if that initial estimate of $600 million, if it winds up being 800 million, the parties are going to have to figure out, you know, how to fund the additional 200 million whether they want to pay it up front or be part of pooled financing for that. And same with 6.2. Point three, that’s, you know, if there’s a crack in the dam or whatever, you know, 20 years from now, the the parties need to decide how they pay for that. So that that paragraph sort of spells out the procedure for for initial and future financing. There’s also reserve funds that will be maintained for both operating go and M expenses. And within the pooled financing people, there’s sort of a pre prepayment kind of pool that’s maintained in case somebody defaults to make sure they make their bond payments on time. And those are kind of all spelled out in Section six. So section, part three, Section seven, this is what’s applicable to Longmont currently for the initial capitalization.
59:06
Basically, long model pay, it’s almost $50 million
59:10
over to the sub district, they’ll hold it in an escrow. Pursuant, and there’s a separate escrow agreement, that’s it’s an exhibit, they’ve also set up as the final agreement for execution. Basically, the sub district or the enterprise, at least of the sub district will hold that cash and invested pursuant to some investment standards they’ve adopted. And, you know, dole out those funds pro rata for each entity that they’re holding the money for as as construction costs are incurred. And you know, to the extent there’s there’s surplus cash left over the kind of kept in segregated accounts for each entity, and they’ll report regularly and Provide auditing information. To the staff there’s there’s no money left over knock on wood there. At the end, it’ll be refunded to the city. And then Part Four, as I mentioned really applies to the loan a lot of T’s in the pool of financing. And that’s a little more complicated. Just because they have to sort of manage where the funds are going and what’s getting paid off first, as far as the the bonds and all that. I mentioned the default provisions and how those apply. There. They vary a little bit between whether it’s for the pooled financing payments, whether it’s for, you know, whether you default on your initial cash, cash payment, and then also as to O and M payments. But the basics are, there’s there’s a about a year period for each one that’s applicable, if you if you miss your initial deadline, you have they send out the enterprise sends out a notice and you’ve got the period to cure. If you don’t cure by really over a year in the end, then you’ve got the each year you’ve defaulted as a final default, and you forfeit essentially, your your interest, and you know how much of that interest depends on sort of your non equity interest that you would forfeit at that point plus a penalty of a vested interest in some cases. So it’s, it’s kind of a balance of giving enough time to make sure these entities have time to pay if they run into trouble, but also providing a pretty strong incentive and a heavy penalty if you don’t ultimately. And again, that was a pretty controversial issue to try and work through. So it’s it’s fairly complicated terms. That’s sort of the overview of the contract. It’s obviously the details are fairly complicated. But that gives you an overview, I think.
1:02:10
Sounds good. Any more questions for Dave?
1:02:14
Ellison, did you want something else answered?
1:02:17
Yes. Thank you very sure. Peterson. Um, I did have a couple of questions. So I’m just scrolling up to where it is. specifically regarding the operating CNE or o n m.
1:02:29
m, the last page, are you on?
1:02:33
page three of the agreement page 12 of our packet. It’s paragraph 1.8. Point two.
1:02:41
So definitions, Yeah, yep. Okay.
1:02:45
Um,
1:02:47
they’re the last line operating Sienese any and all costs and expenses that are not capital CV that may accrue after execution, this contract? That seems fairly open ended to me, as did number three to meet regulatory requirements associated with a W GFP. That’s the third item in that list. And specifically, I was wondering, given that the Federal cases still I outstanding, please correct me if I’m wrong, would that include additional litigation, that Longmont might be on the hook for as far as funding to get that permit in place?
1:03:30
Well, so the intent, I think of the subdistrict is that any funding won’t occur until the federal litigations finished.
1:03:52
So I’m not sure the allotment contract will be kicked in until the litigations finished at this point. But it could be confusing that at this
1:04:06
can do you recall where they’re going to handle
1:04:09
through further in interim agreements until
1:04:15
these were all executed?
1:04:17
Um, no, there there
1:04:22
should so they’ve made a decision.
1:04:26
I think if I describe how the pooled financing folks are going to get their money in might help. The pool financing participants have two pots of money they’re gonna go for. The first is the Colorado Water Conservation Board has approved a loan in the in the sum of $90 million. Would we call a subordinate loan because it will be subordinate to the the issuance of the bonds for the pool. And so the remainder of the money, which is the bulk of the money, three or $400 million, that the pool financing, folks will take, they’ll delay, they’ll issue a bond. And then following up, the original plan was that would be followed up with the subordinate loan from CW CB to kind of finish out the construction. And that was really, the original idea behind that was actually pretty good. Because the CW CB loan doesn’t start accruing interest until you draft on it. You know, when you pull out a bond, you have to start paying the interest right away, I mean, you can make a little bit of interest, but usually not as much as you have to pay out. But the CW CB loan was kind of it was there, it was guaranteed, but you didn’t have to draft that money until late in the project.
1:06:05
Now, because of the federal lawsuit,
1:06:10
the the idea is that they’re not gonna issue a bond, the pooled bond until the federal lawsuit is done. But, but if in fact, to keep the project moving, especially the keep the project has some expenses related to environmental mitigation work that was triggered upon the issuance of the Federal permit. And the federal lawsuit doesn’t change that timing. So there’s a number of number of things that are going on. In addition, participants are all very interested, and keeping the conductivity channel construction on the Colorado River, around the windy gap reservoir going because three fourths of that funding is federal funding that we’ll lose if we don’t get it built by a certain time. So that project is still kind of going on. But, but there’s a number of things like that. So the, if we don’t get a answer on the federal lawsuit fairly soon, then the trigger is there going to go up the project, we’ll go pull some of that CW CB money. That’s what the pool financing folks will do. The cash financing folks will have to bring an equivalent amount of money to whatever the CW CV draft is, or proportionate of that, and that’ll go in to do the interim. So that’s the interim, if the if the federal case comes back. And and basically the federal case isn’t gonna mandate that we do any additional work or any additional things other than it can say, the permits not valid until you study this, or you do this, or you do something else. And so yeah, at that point, we would have to go back in and do that and that would require possibly even an amendment to the llama contract because that depending on what the federal court says, we’re pretty confident or you know, we tried to cross every T and dot every I and we’re pretty confident but you never know what a federal court will say. So there is money in the project. So the construction bid at one price if we got a ruling last spring, and add another price, if we got a ruling in time to start construction, this fall that was about four or $5 million more. And now that we’ve missed this fall, we’re currently talking to the contractor about what the price will be if we can, if we get a ruling and we start next spring, we think that’s probably on the order of a similar four or five $6 million increase. There is there the the $600 million price that we’re going for, has enough money in there to cover that part of a cost increase. Because the fall number had we started working fall the bid would have been about 500. Well, all the all the other dollars would have been 580 or $90 million. So still a little bit of money for a delay on the federal case until next spring, but if it go if it goes much more I mean, we’re getting, we’re getting pretty tight on, on the ability to hold the contractor’s feet to the his bed, as well, as you know what? You can only carry it out so long. So yeah, there there is a little bit of a risk there, based on when that federal case comes down. We believe right now we’re covered with both the estimate what this contract is bringing forward plus what it will cost us additionally, with the contractor for a start a construction next spring. But beyond that, if we don’t get a ruling sometime.
1:10:42
Yeah, it’s gonna be tough.
1:10:45
And Allison, I think, you know, part of your question was, where would the litigation costs fall as far as these Sienese? And I think that it would fall into the operating most likely the way these are defined.
1:11:02
Okay. Um, follow up question to that, and what you just explained cam, thank you so much. Um, if the court did come back and indicate that there was a significant amount of work, say it’s doable, but it is takes doing, would that potentially trigger winding up under 3.4? point one, which is on page seven. Specifically, under the infeasibility, impracticability and inability to fund specifically, what I’m concerned about there is it it looks like basically what happens under those circumstances is the enterprise sells to the sub district. And then all the assets are divided up pro rata. And if long wants a cash buyer, paying up front would mean we’d have more sunk costs than other parties potentially. And I don’t know if I’m understanding this incorrectly. But that that seems like a potential concern that might be lingering there if things go sideways with the federal lawsuit.
1:12:12
I mean, I think that’s a potential scenario where there could be wound up if it if the litigation looked like it would not be a positive outcome. As far as the ensuring Walmart got back, what did it put in? proportionally? I have to find where it is. But I know that was an issue addressed in here that when refunding money that cash participants got back, you know, you the cash participants money wasn’t going to pay the pool participants way. And I’d have to dig out exactly where that concept is in here. But I know that was an issue that was raised and addressed.
1:13:00
Okay, and I think it was below I guess the sentence that got me a little confused was in 3.4, point three, any remaining funds shall then be distributed to the wg FP ladies based on their respective participation percentages. So in that case, brimfield would get a pretty large chunk.
1:13:20
Um, even though maybe long lat pay cash up front.
1:13:33
So So, well, Nelson, and Dave, the, the allocation of those funds, well, month’s funds will be kept in the so that’s part partly the escrow agreement. Well, most funds will be kept in escrow. And then as funds are needed for the project, the pooled financing participants, funds will come forward, our funds will come forward, out of escrow. So everything is still in escrow will come back to us, okay, everything will be proportional will be the money that’s, in their case, the money that came in from the loans. And in our case, the money that came in from the escrow. And any value of the project is already built or already started. But we won’t, our money or all of our money will go up there. That’s kind of the assurance that the pooled financing folks have, that we won’t renege halfway through the project. But our money will go at risk until it’s actually needed to be spent on construction. They’ll they’ll pull drafts each month, they’ll pull money out of that escrow. And so the money that’s kind of the value of the project is what will be divided up are far less whatever left in our escrow account will come back to us fully by the escrow agreement.
1:15:10
The there is some, there’s some value there right now. In property, we purchased about the project purchased about 1200 acres of land where the reservoir is going to sit. And so that’s a very valuable thing. And if the project doesn’t go forward, you know that that land will be sold. And we’ll get, again, a proportionate portion of that money back.
1:15:42
Was there ever discussion of a first right of refusal amongst the law to use subsequent if the school district did decide not to move forward with purchasing the project from the enterprise? Or inheriting it from it? Just curious, not that. Just curious if that was part of the discussion.
1:16:05
I want to say yes, but I’m trying to think what context that came up. And if that was the same context.
1:16:24
I can’t recall at the moment.
1:16:28
I’m sure this was all negotiated on many, many for many, many years. So thanks for helping me understand I just have one more question by May.
1:16:41
Go ahead.
1:16:42
Um, God is specific to
1:16:48
3.3.
1:16:54
That sorry, um, the definition of W egfp. Completion. Um, the way that particular paragraph reads, it completion is accorded upon final certification of Jimmy hollow reservoir for storage of water to its full capacity. However, the W GFP project is defined in 1.3 points, one point 36. And also includes delivery structures. And so I was kind of wondering about that connectivity. And whether the completion, it was considered completion where it could actually hold that water or it was actually holding that water, such that it was actually delivered from its source and holding the full amount
1:17:48
in which I believe
1:17:50
I believe the 3.3 was intended that when it could hold water, basically, when the dam safety aspect of the the dam is certified by the state.
1:18:05
Gotcha. So that doesn’t necessarily mean that that connectivity structure would be
1:18:09
functional.
1:18:11
Right, although the the connectivity piece, I think, are they working on that now? Ken? Is that right?
1:18:19
Yeah, there’s actually the conductivity channel, won’t is not part would not be part of what the state engineer’s office would either they’re going to review it because there’s a dam over there. And that dam gets rebuilt. But the conductivity channel is it the intention is that it’s going to be ready to go. And as long as the project can move forward, that that project will start construction, and it’s about a one year as opposed to the reservoir is about a three to four year project. So that project will be done. And and in operation well before the completion of the dam. And, and then you also there’s a connection portion, this our reservoir has to connect to the CBD system at our dam on this side, and all of that will be approved as part of the state they will not approve, prove storage in the dam until the connection with the CVT system, all the valving every all of that is done as well. So there’s really two quick connections going on. One is connection of the reservoir. There’s a connectivity channel on the west slope. Okay.
1:19:48
That’s That’s how those two are.
1:19:52
They’re all connected because that conductivity channel is part of the mitigation for the Fermi project.
1:20:00
So the the actual permit will be issued for dam safety until those are already in place. So this really is the best one.
1:20:06
But
1:20:08
reservoir
1:20:09
Yeah, yeah.
1:20:11
Perfect. Thank you guys so much for your patience. I appreciate your
1:20:14
answering my questions. Okay. Does anyone else have a question looks like Scott.
1:20:19
Yes. Hi, Vice Chair Peterson. It’s really a process question. And that is, somebody asks, If there are any other questions on this document? Are we considering this one separately? Are we bundling all Four Agreements into an ultimate action?
1:20:35
Well, you know, we’d be happy either way. You know, when city council is going to look, they’ll see all four of them as well. We will have to take action on each one of the four and city council because, but we’ll probably do one resolution approving each one of the so yeah, you can either make a motion to recommend council approval for or you can take action on each one individually, especially if there’s, you know, one of the agreements you may not want to recommend.
1:21:10
You can do it either way.
1:21:11
Okay. Um,
1:21:14
is there any concerns on the four different issues the allotment contract the escrow agreement and to Fort Lupton and Loveland agreements, such that someone would rather we did not do just one motion to recommend to the city council for approval, Scott? Oh, like,
1:21:40
I don’t have a problem. I just want to understand the process because I had a question on the two conveyance agreements with Loveland and Fort Collins, and they didn’t want to put the cart before the horse and talk about that if we were piecemealing these and dealing with only the document in front of us. So I just wasn’t certain which way you wanted to go, Kathy?
1:21:57
I think, from my, what I would prefer is to have one motion because we simply are making a recommendation for approval. But if someone else on the board has an issue with that, I don’t have a problem doing two or three or whatever. What did you actually have an issue with it, Scott?
1:22:22
No, not Not really. I think maybe, if I may. And you can tell me if I’m out of line on the question I had had to do with the sale and purchase of the units to Loveland and then the sale and purchase of units to Fort Lupton. And it was just a math question. Frankly, the the consideration being provided in both cases are fairly different on a unit basis. And I didn’t know how that was derived. Unless I’m reading something way wrong. It look like one was about $8,000 an acre foot for leveling, and it looked like about an order of magnitude less than that for fort Lupton. So I just wanted to figure out why how how long was being compensated for what they’re conveying, in these ancillary units that were no longer subscribing for.
1:23:07
Can I maybe you’re the one to address that, please.
1:23:10
Yeah, absolutely. Actually, what we what we are getting back is our actual cost for each entity. And so that should be about the same on an acre foot basis.
1:23:28
So Ken and I, I’m not gonna profess to be a math whiz. But if you guys want to check that, that’d be helpful, because we’re getting it looks like 350,000 from Loveland, for 400 units and then 75 for 87. Maybe that’s maybe that’s equal, I guess it’s clear, probably maybe it is close, my calculator must not punch the right numbers, but it raised my eyebrow, and I wanted to figure out what we were actually getting compensated for. Because it seemed like that was a pretty small number, given the amount of participation we’ve had over the years for these units. So it seems like a small number, just generally, it’s, it’s,
1:24:09
it’s based upon our actual cash into the project on a per unit basis at this point. So we’re getting back 100% of the money that we invested for those 500 acre feet. Okay, we’re selling.
1:24:28
I’ll trust your bathroom versus mine. That was just my question.
1:24:31
No, I will definitely double check that because I don’t want that to be wrong, but double check it and ask one of my guys to triple check me.
1:24:41
Yeah, well, I think the one is 413 acre feet, not 400 which would make a difference in the per unit. So okay.
1:24:53
Any more discussion or questions?
1:24:57
None. Seeing none right now. I will would ask for a motion to approve the four different aspects of the when you get firming project final allotment contract as presented. Motion by Roger Lang the second anyone? I’ll second Kathy. Second bias got Horwich, all in favor say aye. Aye. And raise your hand please do
1:25:23
I
1:25:25
opposed same sign.
1:25:27
Nothing opposed. So I that motion passes to recommend to the city council on the final allotment contract for approval. And I will turn it back over to chair Todd Williams if he’s somewhere building or in some building to come back on as the chair.
1:25:50
Alright, thanks, Kathy.
1:25:53
Alright, so now we’re on item nine B, which is a water resource engineering projects update. Jason, are you gonna give that?
1:26:01
Yeah, sure him. Hi, everybody. Give you a quick update on a few of our projects. The South St. vrain. pipeline, we are currently going through the rehab project, we have installed three permanent access vaults and one permanent access patch, we will then be installing some temporary access points. And then from there, we will start clean, jetting and vacuuming the pipeline. Some of the good news is when we were installing those vaults, we actually didn’t see a whole lot of debris in there. So we’re hopeful that most of the debris is towards the inlet, where the water was coming in during the flood. And that maybe it just blocked off kind of the beginning and the majority of the pipe might not be so bad. So we should begin getting and vacuuming here in the next week or so. And after that, we’ll then start to look at lining the pipe. But that’ll further down further down the road. We’re still on budget and still on schedule to have this frame pipeline up and running by spring of next year. The other project wanted everyone to be aware of was the North st rain pipeline. The guys went out and they walked the line and they found a handful of significant leaks, we’re have to shut the line down coordinate with LPC to shut down the hydro plant and basically do our annual maintenance patch, make some repairs. And before we can turn the line back on, we’ll probably be scheduling, the North line shut down. I’ll get with canon West, but probably in the next month or so. And then lastly, for the South St. vrain pipeline kind of a. Another project that ties into that is a pump station that we’re looking to install within the town of lions currently have an RFP out for the design. And we’ll be selecting an engineering firm the next month and starting design on that didn’t actually move them forward with it. We do have the town of lions support. The mayor, trustees understand why we’re wanting to install this pump station and they fully support it and they’re even going to help us acquire some of the land to do it.
1:28:27
Any questions?
1:28:30
Any questions for Jason, thank you for your update.
1:28:33
Oh, I did have one other thing good vision.
1:28:36
Button rock dam, the outlet works, I think we talked about this last time had sprung a leak. But in case I didn’t mention this or you don’t recall is there is a small leak coming out of a cylinder, the cylinder that operates the main gate, as we kind of described it, it looks like a garden hose is on. It’s actually sealed itself. But you know, for for a couple months there, it just was uncontrollably, letting water out. Not a big deal. We were able to divert it, but we’re gonna have to work with deer and salt and they’re coming contractor to go up there. We’re gonna have to shut down the outlet. But rock, pull that cylinder pull the gate and make the repairs so that we can, you know, have controlled regulation of the reservoir. There’s really no damn safety issue here. But anytime you tell somebody at the outlet controls are leaking like it tends to raise my eyebrows. So but it is under control and we will have that hopefully repaired within the next month or so.
1:29:48
Great. Thank you any questions for Jason on his report?
1:29:53
Okay, I don’t see any thank you for the report. Jason.
1:29:57
All right, next item 10 eight. A review of major, major project listings and items tentatively scheduled for future board meetings. Can or were us any staff?
1:30:12
Anything you want to bring up there?
1:30:16
And nothing? No.
1:30:19
Okay, any? Okay, you’re sorry? You’re freezing up on my screen there for a second. Okay. All right. So we are on to some sorry, couldn’t find the right page here. We’re on to item 11, which is informational items in waterboard correspondence? Do you have anything on informational items can
1:30:43
I don’t um, the only thing I was was going to say is that there’s still a lot of activity going on on the Colorado River. And, like all and, you know, thing, things that’s going on there. Most recently, there was a, there’s a project at the Bureau of Reclamation, looking on Lake Powell to for a pipeline out of Lake Powell to Southern Utah. And you’ll probably, you’ve probably seen a little bit of news lately on that project. be interesting to watch that project. And as it progresses, it might end up probably going to end up in, in federal case, somewhere in our windy got firming project. So be interesting to watch that project. If we have additional information, I’ll probably send you a couple things, by email just for informational purposes. It’ll be interesting to watch that. Some real big national politics on that. So interesting to watch that move forward.
1:31:58
In the last month, we had it was Gaither Weiss, I believe was her name, she made a presentation and that there’s some CW CB materials regarding the drought contingency plans on Lake Powell, who were passed out, I did look at it. I don’t know if the rest of the board had a chance. But, you know, I think what struck me as I read that, is there’s just a lot of variables. With regards to coming up with a drought contingency plan from funding to, you know, where’s the water gonna come from? Who’s gonna pay for it? I think, obviously, the funding issue, and given the issues with COVID, it’s made that worse. Those are questions and then how do you balance the supply? There’s legal questions, environmental questions, but I appreciate her bringing it up, I think, you know, in the context of the wind to get firming project. I know there’s uncertainty. But, you know, really, I think that that uncertainty in my mind kind of plays to, you know, you don’t know exactly how it’s gonna play out. But having water in storage and having some capability to store water in the future is going to be in my mind more important, based on that, you know, some of the uncertainty that is brought up in those drought contingency materials. So anyway, I just wanted to mention, I did look at that and appreciated her bringing it up. So I don’t know if there was any other questions or commentarial. I don’t see any item 12 is items tentatively scheduled for future board meeting things. As I mentioned earlier, a cash in lieu ran here and so will will, and obviously with the key one I think we’re looking for is if there’s any change with regards to
1:33:53
the long months cost, Osprey
1:33:58
Can you have a future board meeting scheduled?
1:34:05
I think he’s frozen up at least on my end.
1:34:08
Well, yeah, I thought I didn’t catch any of that. I don’t know if it was just me or
1:34:15
no, I didn’t catch it either.
1:34:20
I’m sorry. We were on item 12. Can you guys hear me now? I can
1:34:23
now.
1:34:25
Okay. On items. Well, did you have anything besides a cash in lieu is listed as a item for a future board meeting coming up in December? Is there anything else can that that you want to make us aware of for a future board meeting? Um, just
1:34:39
the button rock management plan. We will be bringing this fall I don’t know which month but that will now we will really appreciate waterboard input and, and review of that plan. Okay, the heads up, got some homework to do. Yeah,
1:35:01
sounds good. All right. Well, the only other thing is to adjourn the meeting, I guess to leave everybody once again. Welcome, Scott. I’m glad to see. see your smiling face. And thank you for everybody attending the meeting. And anyway, anything else for the good or the earlier?
1:35:21
Yeah, go ahead.
1:35:23
Yes, I was wondering, I don’t know if this technically counts as a meeting. But if we might be able to do a tour of the infrastructure with Mr. Hewson at a Scotland Where can I
1:35:36
go ahead, Kim? Um, yeah, absolutely, we would be delighted to be able to do that tour anytime, with anybody with COVID stuff, we’ll have to have to be careful how we do that. But that’s certainly something. If we did it, just, you know, a few of us at a time could even do this fall, I think, depending on how comfortable people would be with that. And I certainly at any time, we could set up a broader you know, the whole Water Board, if we want to do something like that. We could also set one up next spring, if that’s not too late. So just give us a feeling for when you would like to do that. And we can make it a little bit bigger event if it’s next spring. But we certainly can take anyone any individual Water Board Member out this fall,
1:36:34
I think, Ellison, what’s your thoughts? Would you like to do something this fall? Or do you Okay, window spring?
1:36:41
I’m fine. Either way, I do think it would be helpful at some point just to get a better understanding on the ground to actually go to a site visit. But given all the surrounding circumstances, my understanding if we want to hold off, okay.
1:36:56
Well, can I, I guess, maybe look at the city policy with regards to doing that sort of tour. And then maybe if you could give back the email to the board, on what works. And maybe at a minimum, what you can do is try to line something up with Allison and Scott, to get them more familiar with the system. And then if it allows based on city policy, you could email the rest of the board and any any of us can attend, maybe we could add on to it. And then you know, hopefully, if things lighten up in the spring, we could do something a little bit more formal at that point. But I hear Allison would probably be good. You know, if you actually see it on the ground, it really helped me when I first got on the board. So I think that’s a great idea. Yeah,
1:37:37
good. Thank you for that idea. Well, we’ll look into it.
1:37:40
Okay, great. Well, I don’t have anything else on the agenda. And unless anybody else does, I think we’ll go ahead and adjourn the meeting. Thank you, everyone. Bye.
1:37:51
Thank you. Hi, everybody.
1:37:54
Thanks, everyone.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai