Water Board Meeting – January 25, 2021

Video Description:
Water Board Meeting – January 25, 2021

For a transcript of the meeting, please read below:

Meeting Transcription Disclaimer:

Note: The following is the output of transcribing from a video recording. Although the transcription, which was done with software, is largely accurate, in some cases it is incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or [software] transcription errors. It is posted as an aid to understanding the proceedings at the meeting, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.

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https://otter.ai/u/pAFi1YSTx3YYIs7m99ANw2BL08E

0:00
With that I’ll call the January 25 2021. Water Board meeting to order. The first item is the roll call. Can you please do that either? Sure.

0:12
Todd Williams.

0:13
Here. A little.

0:15
Alison Gould. Kathy Peterson. Here. Roger Lange.

0:22
There.

0:23
And Scott Horwich is not here yet. We’ll see if he’ll be able to join us in a few minutes. For city staff we have Ken Houston. Here. Nelson Tipton. Here, West Lowery. Here. Heather McIntyre is here. francy. Jaffe, here, and price. Hadley, here. And Councilmember Martin.

0:48
Here.

0:49
All right, Jerry, you have a quorum.

0:51
Great. Thank you. Scott had a mediation today and said he may be joining us a little late. So Scott Horwich may be joining us here at some point during the meeting. The next item is the approval of the previous month’s minutes as everybody had a chance to review the December 21 2020. Meeting Minutes and if so, is there a motion to approve those? So okay, Roger made a motion. Is there a second? Kathy? Second that Any further discussion? Seeing none, all those in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Those opposed? Okay. It carries four to nothing. The next item is the water status report. Wes, are you doing that? Okay, Nelson. Go ahead. Go I’ll go ahead and talk. Um,

1:50
so the flow is safer and cricos lions

1:52
gauge at noon today was eight CFS and the 24 year historic average is 14 CFS.

2:00
A little bit down from the from the average

2:03
fall in St. Brent Creek is Highland lake. And the admin number is 1009 17 with a priority date of may 31 1874. I’m calling the main strip stem of the South Platte River is north Sterling canal app and number 26,003 oh 2.23953 with a priority date of one 519 22. I’m Ralph price reservoir button rock preserve is all but full

2:34
due to scheduled outlet repairs. And union reservoir is at 20.2 feet full 28 feet, so it’s down approximately 5000 feet

2:46
or 5000 acre feet. I wasn’t clear.

2:51
And snowpack for South Platte basin is 77% of normal and the snowpack for the Upper Colorado basin is 70% of normal.

3:03
That’s all I have. Is there any questions? It’s it’s dry. Very, very dry. So we need to get some snow. So everybody put your your snow dance and

3:15
snow hat or whatever

3:16
you you do.

3:18
I’ll do it all.

3:20
Oh, but we are is dry. Okay, any questions or comments? I know Wes is pregnant in the water supply update. We’ll be getting into the snowpack. A little more detail. But he will questions on on current flows, that sort of thing. Okay, I don’t see any so we’ll keep moving along here. All right, thanks. item. Item five is public invited to be heard and special presentations. Heather, is there anything on that?

3:46
We do not have any community members who wanted to make public comment and I don’t believe we have any special presentations this time either.

3:54
Okay. All right. Thank you. Any you know, Ken, this is yours. Any agenda agenda revisions or submission of documents?

4:02
I have none. Okay.

4:05
Okay, we’ll keep on moving. item seven is development activity, which does not look like there’s any Is that correct? Was

4:14
that is correct.

4:15
Okay. So on to eight A, which is the designation of posting place for board meeting notices. Wes.

4:24
So each year waterboard may recall, one of our annual requirements is to notice the general public of our official waterboard agenda posting place. So what we’ve included in your packet is information about that including a attached email for the City Clerk’s office with the city attorney’s recommendation, that being that your official notice. Posting place will Be at the city’s website. And then we will additionally posted at the service center there at 1100, South Sherman as a secondary posting place. So this is an action that the board needs to take to designate those as your official posting places. And then lastly, included in the packet was a some information on the Colorado sunshine law, just speaking to the requirement of noticing any meeting, or there’s a meeting of the Board.

5:34
Thank you. So is there any questions? Go ahead, Kathy. I

5:36
just have a question. I read through the opinion of the, from the City Clerk’s office and legal opinion. And I’m certainly ready to make a motion to designate the city website as the official posting site. But then I thought in somewhere, it said that the Civic Center was was the physical posting place, not the service center. Doesn’t matter to me, but not very many people come to the

6:05
Yeah, so the so the email was the email that came from the city attorney’s office went to all the board liaisons. And some of those board liaisons don’t have a location such as ours. So each board is free to choose where their designated spot will be. for consistency, the recommendation was to keep it on the city’s website, but then additionally, having a hard location, which is, quite frankly, easiest for us to use right there.

6:43
Yeah, that’s true. Okay.

6:47
And then also, one note of clarification, even though we would designate that as the service center as our secondary place, I also send up an agenda to the Civic Center. And that does get posted on that board as well.

7:01
Any further discussion? I don’t see any. So it looks like we need a motion to make the city’s website as the primary pose or primary place for posting the notice for the meetings, and then the service centers the secondary. So I’m going to want to make that motion. So move, Kathy. All right. Kathy made the motion. Is there a second? All right, Roger had the second. Any further discussion? Hearing none, all those in favor say aye? Aye. Opposed. Okay, the motion carries forward and nothing. Okay, so, under we’re on to agenda item nine. And nine A is the annual button rock preserve and Forest Stewardship update price.

8:03
Great, looks like the screenshare is working. So good afternoon, everybody. I’ll let you all know that it is snowing up here at button rock. So if we got a couple billion more of these snowflakes, we’ll be doing a little bit better going into the water year. But I’m here to do a annual update on button rock preserve and our Forest Stewardship efforts up here. Also give you a little bit of an intro to myself and the other full time Ranger up here if you want to go to the next, Heather. So unsurprisingly, when we look at the year, the big standout was COVID-19. And its impacts on our operations up here at button rock. As you may have heard, we’ve also had quite a fire season and that had its own impact here on the preserve both big and small fires and also talk about several ongoing and completed projects at button rock. Next slide. Before I get into that, I want to give a quick intro to some new or nearly new faces. Some of you may have had the opportunity to meet Myles here’s a picture of him if you want to go back one got some area. So miles Churchill he is he’s been hired as the full time watershed Ranger. He was a seasonal Ranger with us at button rock since 2019. He knows a place like back in his hand comes from a ranching background has a lot of good appical experience to work stewarding the preserve out here and he has the title of being the Lone Ranger at button rock during 2020 in the summer of COVID all the challenges that he had to overcome. Click on the presentation there. And that’s that’s miles if you run into him up here. He’s working under me and has a fair amount of he’s got quite the work cut out for him again,

10:07
who’s the human?

10:09
Yeah, miles is on the right, Kelly. Kelly’s the dog on the right. She’s kind of our mascot of button rock, and that miles is there on the left. So again, my name is Bryce Hadley, I’m the senior watershed Ranger I work hand in hand with miles and services supervisor. This is my seventh year as a park ranger and very excited to be sharing work with city of Longmont. I got hired in October. Prior to that. I was the Ranger supervisor for Pitkin county open space and trails. Before that I was living in this area living lived in Lyons worked for city of Boulder open space and mountain parks and different natural resource capacities and EPA masters of environmental management from Western State and gunnison. So very excited to get to apply that knowledge. And that’s what I look like without a face mask on. Next slide. So, as I alluded to COVID-19 impacted button rock, just like it impacted the entire globe. It interrupted a number of our projects that preceded my time with the city. Our Boulder County Youth Corps season was unfortunately suspended, our volunteer efforts at the preserve are limited to one project, we pull the management plan for the button art preserve was extended into 2021 due to the impacts of COVID-19 on our ability to do the public process and meetings. And when that said that’s going to be extended into I believe, July. And along with COVID came a number of management challenges. Next slide. So the biggest most obvious impact was increased visitation. You know, we have the privilege and Colorado of having accessible public lands and even in a pandemic, you know that that’s an outlet for us. Definitely thankful for it. But that use had impacts on the preserve. We hosted 71,510 visitors in 2020, which was a 39% increase in hiking 55% increase in vehicle use the impacts from that increased visitation including crowding, you know, impacts on the natural resource and the recreational experience at button Iraq and quite a lot of demand on the Lone Ranger miles that was out here typically have a staffing level of three in summer seasons in miles was here by himself, but I’ll get a little bit more into how he dealt with that. But we saw a lot of use of our overflow parking lot and miles issued over 140 warnings for illegal parking at the trailhead. Next slide. In addition to COVID, we dealt with a pretty severe fire season. I was hired right before the Kellogg fire, so I was here for that period of time. But during the summer season, we had three small fires, they’re all suspected to be caused by lightning. Obviously, whenever we hear fire, we think of impacts to our watershed. With sediment loss and water quality issues, we had one fire on the south shore and two along the main county and city road on the way into the preserve that Rangers responded to or a ranger responded to miles responded to. We had the Cal wood fire that burned 10,106 acres Luckily, not a single acre of button rock however, did burn within 1.3 miles of our preserve and miles and I were paged out and we’re up here and watch the fire burn right past us on the other side of coffin top mountain. we evacuated the visitors and close it preserved from the 17th day the fire ignited to November 4 when it was deemed safe again to allow visitors back into the preserve. Unfortunately, we’re looking at another dangerous fire season in 2021. Next slide. So just a couple quick photos from the small fires. Lightning cause fire there on the south shore on the left photo. And on the right is a photo from a forest service crew that came out to do a helicopter mop up. Next slide. The Kenwood fire as I said, we watched it burn right past us if you look on the right there, that’s the Pyro cumulus cloud from fire, right on the other side of highway seven, probably within four miles of where I’m standing in that photo when I took that photo. We’ve got this smoke burning, you know, again, they’re down to the south of us at photos. That photo on the left is from button rock dam, so impacts to button rock itself. Luckily, we didn’t have any burns. However, if you go to the next slide

15:00
There were some there were some severe burn areas and impacts to the south St. Green watershed. This is a photo from Central Gulch on Forest Service and maybe some Boulder County property. We did do a site visit in central Gulch, what we hiked up it from Satsang, drain can Houston and I and representatives from the Forest Service in Boulder County and a couple other agencies and Ken might have some more updates about that. But luckily, in terms of the North St. Very watershed, we were spared, but the South St. Green could see some sediment loading. From that fire. We’re working with our partners to mitigate that to the best of our ability. Next slide. So COVID didn’t stop everything. In fact, we are probably outnumbering visitors four to one right now with contractors. The winter is our time to get projects done. Overall, we got some work done on forestry mitigation. And we have a lot more planned. We’ve got new, we’ve got multiple capital projects in the works as well some small improvements in that visitor safety. Excellent. So in terms of forestry, this year 2020, we signed an MOU with Boulder County in the US Forest Service focused on cross boundary, forest restoration and wildfire risk mitigation efforts. We continue to coordinate with the same green healthy forest partnership. And those initiatives as well as on the catalog fire recovery and left hand fire recovery efforts. We awarded a bid for a cut on the west side of button rock, it’s 40 acres, it’s it’s being funded by an SFA grant in 2017. There’s more financial information pertaining to the forestry operations in the handout that’s in your board packet. We’ve got a proposed cut another 40 acres, we applied for one grant with Colorado State Forest Service. And we’re hoping to get that funding Well no, I think in February, whether we have won that grant. And that was 40 acres of compliment and an additional 73 acres that are being cut on neighboring Boulder County openspace Hall Ranch, so kind of maybe not so much a landscape effort at wildfire risk reduction, but at least in watershed level risk reduction. So we’re definitely hoping that that goes forward. Next slide. So you see here in the these are forest management units at button rock, and there’s a unit there that’s circled in red kind of red box on the center left of your screen. And that’s the unit that’s going to be treated as starting in March 2021. The three units that are highlighted in yellow on the right side of your screen are the three that we’ve proposed to do a cut with for one grant funding if we’re able to secure those funds. Excellent. We’ve got a lot of capital projects in the works a lot of contractors busy out here. The biggest project been repairs to the button rock dam outlet, our regulatory gate was in need of repairs due to some leaking. We also did our annual outlet inspection when we depressurize the pipe to physically pull that gate out and have it machined and and repaired. During that time we’ve been diverting water over the spillway as opposed to through the outlet pipe. Currently we’ve got two large pumps operating in the spillway outside my office.

18:55
Basically diverting water additional water over the spillway during the CVT closure. I can answer more questions about that later on. I’m sure it can also speak to that. In addition to those capital projects, we’ve been working on renovation of one of the residences up here that will serve as the secondary Ranger residents that have had numerous safety and health issues. So we’ve been looking at as best as installing a working heat system and addressing drinking water safety issues at both rental residences up here and repairing damage to the structure. Next slide. So there’s our regulatory gate. I understand that it used to be about a 50 year occurrence for when you’d have to machine it and repair it. I believe that according to Jason Elkins that this could be a once in 100 year repair job with improved technology. But it’s pretty cool to see this piece of equipment installed in the 60s seeing the light of day and get to like it up close and see what that looks like. So those are the photos before it was machined and pressure washed and sandblasted and treated. And it looks a lot better now, and will look even better once it’s all put back together hopefully in the next couple of weeks. next photo. So this is the second resonance that I was discussing. Obviously, it’s needed some TLC, I got creative and took a photo through the hole in the wall from inside the outside of my arranger track there. So it’s a work in progress, but it will be a good investment going forward. And we’ve definitely made a lot of progress over the last couple months. Next slide. I think there’s one more photo after that. So we’ve been have, we had to take it down to the studs, and we’re improving it from there fixing wiring issues and other problems as we go along, you can see the holes to the daylight there in the center of the photo. Next slide. Great. So we’re also looking at visitor safety as Rangers, we’re always concerned about public safety and not only wanting to cultivate a positive experience out here for visitors and make sure that they’re safe. So as part of that, we’ve been updating our equipment, looking at how to better train our Rangers and still to 911 call boxes. And we’ve considered a third that we have to install one at the Ranger office and one at the base of the button wrap dam that are also available to staff. So when when we’re doing water resource, or maintenance activities, contractors, engineers, whomever can call out now from the exterior callbacks on the control house. I’ve also been coordinating with my counterparts at Boulder County to map on official trails, improve signage and update our pamphlets and kiosk maps to avoid searches for lost hikers up here. Next slide. So if you see these signs around, if you do get the chance to come visit button rock, they’ll be directing you to the to a place where you can call 911 which is great since we don’t have cell connection up here and we have pretty spotty radio connection. And I’ve went and looked back at past annual reports. And it seems like my predecessors have always had a critter slides that I put that in there. Just a couple photos that I’ve taken in my first couple months up here. It’s a beautiful wild place and very lucky to be tasked with protecting it got a mule deer book there on the left in Holland Park and putting rock preserve and black red fox on the west side and the Baro area. West Shore riff Ralph price reservoir. Excellent. Have you take any questions about our my directors, your operations and the Ranger program or anything else?

22:58
Thanks, price. Any questions for price on the presentation? I did have a couple. I guess one observation and one question. On the price. You mentioned the number of the increase in visitors out there. You know, has that been a major mean? What kind of problems have you gotten in terms of that big of increase in the visitation? And I guess you know, I know recommend National Park has done more of a reservation system to try to manage that. I don’t know if that’s warranted in this case. But just kind of curious what you guys have seen and what problems that’s resulted in? Yeah,

23:38
I think I mean, with a lot of public lands, often the most visible impact of increased visitation or capacity issues is parking, congestion, parking issues. The city took a number of steps this summer to address that we posted temporary no parking signs along county road 80 on the way into buttoned rock to make sure that we were maintaining a proper flow of traffic if we needed to get emergency vehicles in. We worked with other working groups within public works and after resources to bring additional staff to supplement the one Ranger that was on duty during the summer, and also worked with online police department to have police officers out here just as kind of presence. I think the most obvious example is that again, that parking issue, we have an overflow parking area point nine miles from the trailhead that sees use even in January on busy weekend days, especially around the holiday. So you know I honestly having come from a bigger and busier public land system in Pitkin county where I’m used to 10 times the number of visitors closer to 700,000. I think that there’s a lot of similar challenges here but I think we’ve got some good tools to address it and, you know, prevent us from needing to go to a rescue irrigation system, I think that we’re lucky that we have a gate. And we have kind of a self regulating system with limited parking. People are motivated enough they could hike in from Boulder County open space to the Forest Service land. But like that, along with just making sure that we’ve got adequate staffing up here for resource protection and water resource management needs, should really help us to be prepared. There’s a little bit more information about steps we took in that handout, if you want to look at that as well,

25:34
earnings price. But the only other thing that struck me is just in terms of the funding for the last 10 years on the stewardship program, you know, there’s been $951,000 spent 445,000 of which is from grants, I just think, you know, the leverage that the city has kind of done in terms of, you know, doing Forest Stewardship, but trying to use grants to help in the funding is pretty dramatic. So that really kind of struck me. So I think the only other thing going through my mind is obviously with the other fires around anything we can do proactively, and especially using grants, hopefully will reduce the potential or the severity of the fires if it comes into the button rock Preserve. So I just think you guys have done a great job, you know, your predecessor price, and hopefully you kind of going forward in terms of managing the preserve and doing the the stewardship. So anyway, that just struck me. Any other comments or questions for Christ on the presentation? Allison? Yeah,

26:43
thank you so much. First of all, I’m really great pictures. Thank you so much for sharing those, those are beautiful, even though unfortunate ones with the fire. Um, and I also just wanted to commend you, I have been up there recently with my family. And it’s a really great experience. And I did see the Ranger, the Lone Ranger and all together, it was just a great place to be. So thank you very much for all you’re doing. One question is how do you use staff over the weekend? Because it was pretty, pretty busy. There. And with two of you, is that somewhat challenging?

27:17
How do we say it one more time? How do we went over the weekend?

27:21
How do you do the staffing over the weekend?

27:23
Oh, so Myles, and I, we work 10 hour days we split the week, we kind of vary our schedule, really at this point, with daylight hours. Since we’ve we don’t quite have 10 hours of daylight. So we kind of match it to those hours, you try to be out during the busiest times covered as much as 3000 acres and preserved as we can live, you know, pretty frequent, frequent snaps back to the front side to kind of assess the parking situation. And we look forward to having an additional temporary rains are coming onboarding looks like in March, well train. So that’s going to be really helpful. You know, I’m able to piggyback on a lot of what a lot of the good stuff that Daniel Levine and Myles and Ken and other people have done up here. Got some ideas for how to better manage the flow of traffic and whatnot using pop up signs and things like that in server 2021. So we’ve got a fighting chance. Thank you. I’m glad you’re here.

28:35
Thanks, Alison. Kathy.

28:36
Um, I just I don’t know if I missed it somewhere along the line. But

28:40
last year, we

28:41
talked about dogs the issue with dogs. And I wondered if has that been resolved? Or are there problems with people bringing giant amounts to dogs are

28:56
specifically speaking to the you know, So currently we require dogs be on leash at all times. And then we require people only bring one dog per visitor. And I would say shockingly based on my prior six years of of rendering experience and maybe a community of less compliance, but that the compliance with the especially the one dog per visitor rule is pretty fantastic. I haven’t seen any dog walkers and own past that was an issue and you’d have someone with eight dogs and you there’s no way you could possibly clean up after him and that has water quality impacts. So I mean, I wouldn’t even say it’s once a week that we encounter somebody with more than one dog per visitor. You know, we probably talk to people almost every day, but dogs off leash, but there are a lot of people out here with dogs. So overall compliance is definitely the majority. So I’d say based on my previous experience working on other public land systems as Ranger that compliance is pretty good. And it helps that we have one gate where we can present people with all the signs and Make sure that they’re educated and they they do understand what the rules are when they come in. We post in both Spanish and English, so people have every opportunity to be educated on it before they come through the gate.

30:15
All right, good news.

30:19
I could go ahead, Ken,

30:20
is that a little bit to that? What we did a year and a half ago, when we recommended to counsel to change that to one dog on a leash. This has really been a year and a half will be about two years. Next summer, when we’ve been trying to this method. And we certainly hope this is working. Well, that part of the overall button rock preserve management plan will be to address that very question, decide if this is working, are we you know, need to go loosen it a little, or go to no dogs at all. All of those will be explored as part of the conversation. And you’ll really start seeing that conversation and this coming spring, I hope, late spring as we bring forward that final master plan. And that will be one that final decision we made when we bring forward that management plan for both waterboard and City Council’s consideration. So we’ll have one more. One more look at that in depth look.

31:34
Thanks, Kim. Roger, did you have a comment? Um,

31:37
yeah,

31:38
just curious. The

31:39
spillway restoration what what is the estimated completion date on that being finished up? anybody’s

31:50
on the restaurant?

31:52
outlet?

31:54
Yeah, yes.

31:57
I believe that we’re looking at the first week of March. Can does that still sound accurate?

32:03
Yeah, that’s we actually they’ve just finished the internal outlet work repairing some of the coal tar lining and epoxy coating everything. The gate is still down in Denver being rebased but should be coming back, maybe even this week. And then we hope the first week of February start reassembling. And and in February, early March, is when it should be completely back and fully functional.

32:40
One question, one question can you know price mentioned you guys are pumping out of the reservoir in relation to the southern spy pipeline outlet or outage I should say? Well, you need to continue to do that. Are you going to let the reservoir fill up and then start spilling again? coming up. Once the out the southern spy pipeline work is done.

33:07
Great question, Todd. So during this outage of our outlet at button rock, we’ve been taking most of our water from the current CVT system through the corner Lake connecting pipeline. It has a pipeline up to quarter lake. It is going down for an annual inspection starting tomorrow morning at eight o’clock. And it’s scheduled to come back Wednesday at about four or five o’clock. So we’ll have about a day and a half for that pipelines down. As a result, you know we needed to get water to the water treatment plant for tomorrow and Wednesday. We’ve installed two large capacity pumps at our spillway. Prior to today, though the reservoir has fallen was spilling over the spillway. But that was just fluctuating with the natural flow of the North same rain Creek which was nowhere near sufficient to supply our water demand. Those two pumps right now they can each do 4000 gallons a minute. We’re we’ve got them running right now. We just turned them on today at 3500 gallons a minute each and that’s a lot of water. We will be pulling down the reservoir about a foot and a half to two feet over the next day and a half. So it’ll no longer be spilling. Then at that point, CVT pipeline should be back on. We will turn off one of those two pumps and then we’ll keep the other pump running. We’ll throttle it down to almost just basically barely idling so that we’re still pumping a little bit of water over the spillway kind of keep the creek flowing, but it won’t be anywhere near enough to run down to our water treatment plant. And we estimate it’ll take about three days for every day we pump three days to recover for every day we pump. So about four or five to six days, we should get the bat close to having the spillway full. And at that point, we’ll just let it go over the spillway for the remainder of February. So you know, we can completely shut off the river for four or five days. But we’ll keep those pumps running. We have we have at least for an additional week on past the end of this current week. So that should be sufficient to get allow the reservoir to recover.

35:53
Thank you again. Any other questions or comments? I don’t see any thank you for the presentation price. That was very helpful. Thank you. All right, next item is nine V which is the monthly water supply update. Wes.

36:11
Yeah, so um, I’ll go through that with the board. You’re welcome to kind of follow along with me in your packet. So I’m going to be starting by looking at page 19. In the packet, just kind of go through some of those water supply and, and drought indicator bullets. As I’ve mentioned before, llama continues to remain a sustainable water conservation level. We’ll be revisiting that level with council waterboard and council this summer, late spring early summer, once we get our complete snowpack. The recent flows, St. vrain. And bedrock, Ken just spoke a little bit to that we have slightly more increase releases for button rock, but the majority of that water is being picked up in our North pipeline going to the water treatment plants. So the effect on the river is still negligible. We’re as Nelson reported earlier today. The flows that lions were around eight CFS with an historic average of 14. So given depending upon the day, we’re somewhere in that third round the third of the historic average. which lends itself to how dry it is. Local St vrain Creek storage is below average, where we’re at around 62% at the end of last month. And normally we’re around 70%. The good news related to that though, is were full higher up in the system that is button rock is full or would have otherwise been down. And union reservoir and Pleasant Valley which would normally be fuller are down. So we still have even though we are down more in total storage. We’ve got it in a place that we’re happy to have it. Again, again, as Nelson mentioned, union is down about 2500 acre feet below the historic average. So normally we’d been down about 2500 acre feet. But we’re down about 5000 acre feet. Our water treatment demands last year were about 104% of 2002 numbers. And the reason we referenced 2002 that was kind of what a start of a drought year. And when we were in what’s interesting is our population is obviously increased since 2002. So in the last 19 years, our population has went up, but yet we’re only using about 4% more. So if you look at it on the short term, compared to last year or the year prior, sorry, we’ve used about 2000 acre feet more. But we’ve still used a similar amount to what we used in 2008. So in other words, with all that being said, the citizens have been doing a great job of conserving their water, they’re using what we expected. And we want to continue to encourage them to do that. The Colorado snotel data, which Nelson kind of shared some of those numbers with you or South Platte River Basin is at 77% of normal. With Colorado River Basin. It’s 70% of normal, not a significant change from last month when the reported didn’t really expect there to be a significant change where we’re really going to start to see that here is in the next month or two, that’s when we get those wet snows that contribute to the higher moisture content, that snow. Pleasant Valley reservoir was a call for quite a while it it put some water in its reservoir and we took some water a Pleasant Valley decree into the treatment plant. So it was good that we had that water right available to us and the water treatment plant, or that ended up was that Pleasant Valley reservoir sits now at about 42% of full. So we’ve got about 1800 acre feet left to to fill Pleasant Valley. So we’ll either take its own decree to its own decree, its enlargement decree to come in or Longmont has some other water rights that have been adjudicated to be stored in their high mountain dams. Or we could even choose to put CVT. So we’ll see how the rest of the runoff season comes. But we’re thinking, we’re definitely going to get some more water of some sort in Pleasant Valley reservoir.

41:12
Again, up there at button rock, you guys have kind of touched on that a little bit, we’re hopeful that we will be ready to have that outlet fully functional. By the first part of March. We The staff is did an exceptional job, I believe in my opinion to make sure that even during this outage, that should something unforeseeable happen, there will still be water be able to be provided to the water treatment plants and serve the citizens. So I appreciate everybody’s effort because it’s taken a lot of energy and resources to make that happen. Moving on to the next page. If Pleasant Valley reservoir doesn’t fill there, there potentially is some impacts to the rough and ready ditch system in particular ucrete Golf Course foxhill Golf Course, Steven de parks, things like that. But it’s probably premature to expect there to be significant impacts on those, but we’re aware that that might happen and and we’re preparing accordingly. A current CVT system is relatively full for this time of year long mod with a 50% quota issued by northern on November 1. Adding to that our carryover that we plan to declare here within the month. And along with our Excel agreement, we should have more than sufficient CBT resources to get us through this next year. As always, we have to wait till northern board sets its next quarter. That happens usually and I believe it’s in April, and March or April. We have what’s 50% quarter right now they can issue an update up to an additional 50 for a total of 100%. And they’ll take a lot of things into consideration and making that determination. But as of right now, we’re fairly feeling that we’re very solid with a trans base and supplies that we have available for us. Again, it’s been mentioned several times, but it’s worth over emphasizing we’ve got extremely dry soil moisture. And so it’s going to take an above average snowpack to yield an average runoff. So we’ll have to continue to monitor that. I’ve included some other additional attachments. And I’m going to go from my notes because I had it pulled up and and I

44:00
don’t mean to share any of those, if you would

44:02
that would be that’d be great. Other we could jump to page 21 if you wouldn’t mind just kind of showing those and then I can speak to those as you roll through them. So there you go. Thank you. So um, on this one, we’re gonna continue to provide you, you all with water supply, drought indicators. What this is showing, we’re kind of updating these twice a month at the first of the month in the middle of the month. Not really expecting any real significant changes to these but more trends. On the very bottom, there’s a runoff forecast, and that information really started coming. Information started coming to us this month. And so it’s early in that runoff forecast model. It’s saying that we’re around 80% give or take for our basin and Next time we come to waterboard, hopefully, we’ll be at least that or maybe maybe even better. Next Page Heather. So this is a copy of the end of mother end of month reservoir storage. Again, I mentioned earlier, we’re at 61, around 61 and a half percent. And it kind of shows you how button rocks nearly full or at full 100%. And some of those other reservoirs are down. As always, Island is a significant part of that contribution, they’re kind of they’re in the middle. And so it takes a while for their system to fill. The advantage Longmont has with some of its reservoirs is we, we have the ability to put more than just the that reservoir decree into our reservoirs. So it gives us if you will more more water at times available to fill fill them up Lake Pleasant Valley in Union, as well as button rock. So still feeling pretty good, even though it’s below average. Next slide, please. So starting in January, the Colorado water supply outlook comes out. I’ve included on this month kind of a statewide is what you’ll be hearing in the media and in the news is oftentimes a statewide and sometimes statewide reflects what we hear hear we’re seeing here in our base, and sometimes not so much. As of right now, the Colorado statewide water supply conditions are very similar to the same rain basin. And so I’m going to, I’ll be including that. But what you’ll see in this graph here is that we’re better than we were in the water year 2018, which is that green line. And we’re not quite as good as the average. So we’re kind of in the middle. But again, I guess an important part of this is you see that that’s falling and around five to six inches of snow water equivalent, we’re normally at the towards sometime in April, we’re pushing around 15 inches, and so we’re only about a third of the way there. So we don’t need to panic, we just need to, as Nelson said, Do our snow dances. All right, next, next page, please. So this is just another graph kind of showing some of those different basins and how they shape up. So you can kind of see down in the lower left in that south west corner, it’s a little drier down there. Whereas in the upper Rio Grande in that blue area, they’re closer to average. But generally speaking, we’re just slightly below average. All right, next slide, please. So this is our Colorado monthly precipitation. And what we find here in this graph is generally drier up most to Colorado, relative to the all of Colorado, it’s been a little a little bit wetter in the Arkansas in the upper Rio Grande. And so Time will tell hopefully we can push above average in our precipitation for Colorado here later on in the in the water year. Next Next page, please. This this particular chart shows the Colorado reservoir storage and what you the thing to note on these is they’re all very similar to what we’ve seen in prior years. So no, no one particular basin has has a significant change either increase or decrease in its in its storage. And so that’s that we might say is good news. Next page. So the Colorado streamflow forecasts, those come from a number of different sites.

48:57
For our site, the South Platte which one and the Upper Colorado that we’re paying attention to they take a number of different specific locations to come up with their streamflow forecast, ours is in that 70 to 89% of average as of January 1, where the the Upper Colorado was just right right in there, maybe slightly slightly lower. Next sheet. So on the next several pages here, what we’re gonna, what you’re going to see is just some more detailed information, I won’t go through each of these pages, they’re just kind of give you some more description of what’s going on there. I think will when it becomes really important for us to pay attention to the Colorado River Basin because that ties into our CVT supplies and the South Platte River Basin will be more in your April and May timeframe. So those are when we’re getting a more complete picture. So we’re gonna go ahead and if you want to jump on up to people page 32. For me, Heather. So the way that the that they present this information, they it’s kind of it looks a little interesting to try to follow what there’s a line at about 100% on the far right. And that is showing how much flow we would have, if we seen 100%. Normal runoff, what the, what the green is, is where they think is most likely to occur. So you have a kind of a 50 50% chance of occurring. And so when you see this line is kind of this line on the right hand side, what that’s telling you is there’s a greater chance that we’re going to be drier than it than it is that we’re going to be wetter. And so we kind of just kind of look at these as a general barometer to see where we’re gonna, where we’ll kind of fall out at. And if we jump to, I think it’s Heather, if we go to age 36, I think it is. Let’s go one more, please. 237. And right there. So St. vrain Creek at Lyons, they kind of give you two different forecast periods April through June and April through September. And so what this is saying, essentially, is that we have an equal chance of seeing 66,000 acre feet of water and flowing through lions in April or June, we have a equal chance of seeing 76,000 acre feet of water flowing through lions on April through September, we’re normally we would expect to see at 8000 acre feet or 103,000 acre feet respectively. So that’s a that’s a lot of information. But it just basically says right now they’re planning that it’s going to be drier than it is normal. And that’s not that’s not surprising, given our current conditions. Next slide, please. So we always like to include these, the USDA snowpack summaries, they’re a real good visual where we’re at similar to that one we looked at before. We’re not as low as we’ve historically been, nor are we as high. But again, emphasis is we were at we’ve now at five inches of snow water equivalent, where our peak is normally at 15. So we’re only a third of the way there. And so the next few months will kind of be a telltale of what this year is going to look like. Next slide. Same thing on the Upper Colorado, maybe slightly grimmer than it was on the South Platte. But again, it is early, so we’ll have to wait. And we really emphasis added how much these springs norms can change those Snow, snow water runoff predictions. Next Page please. And then lastly, we have this is one specific for st moraine. It kind of those little bandwidths give you the kind of the confidence level that they have that that we’re going to see certain run off. And so where we would like to see it obviously is higher. Right now it’s showing about a little over two inches of snow water equivalent. We’re normally you know, we would be somewhat higher. I think in certain years, we’ve had, you know, four to four to six, even eight inches of snow water equivalent. But again, these graphs all start to look very similar to one another. And that is we’re not terrible. Not great, but we’re not bad. We’re just going to keep hoping for hopefully some good wet snows. And I think that’s I think that’s all I have for that I’d be happy to answer some questions if you have them.

54:17
Thanks, boys. Any questions? not seeing any one question was I had is if if we’re 5000 acre foot down on union what what bearing or what does that have any implications with regards to the ability of Longmont to meet the Pisco trade? I think you’re using wholly consumable effluent and then you supplement with union is that right? And if that is right, and we’re that, for that much lower than kind of average or 2500 acre foot below average are typical for this time of year. Does that create any concerns or worries about meeting that obligation this year?

54:56
So a lot of what the ESCO agreement has to do with is it’s about timing. So they’ll tell us when it is that they need water. So, and that varies based on a number of conditions that they evaluate. One of the strategies that we’re exploring is, Union union is off channel. So it has to be filled via the oligarchy ditch, and it takes a while to fill. And so one of the things that we’re considering is taking maybe earlier in the spring, releasing some fully consumable water out of button rock, and over a longer period of time, deliver it to Union through the oligarchy, so it can have a chance to fully filled before the runoff season is over. What that does is it creates a space in button rock to fill, which is on channel. Because it’s on Channel many times in a single day, we have more water rights available to us that we can quote unquote use. But being if it’s on channel, we can utilize those decrees and get those stored. So we think there’s some operational things that we can consider to allow us to manage our water resources in such a way that it’s less of a concern. Right now, I don’t think we have any, any real concern about meeting that trade agreement, because we could always release water out of button rock and send it on through the same brain, we just have to work very closely with the state engineer’s office to make that happen.

56:39
So as the reason you’d use the releases out of button rock through the oligarchy is because later in the season, they’re delivering their own water and there’s not capacity in the ditch to get it there is that? Well, actually,

56:52
it’s it’s it’s a function of, we don’t know how long union may come into priority under its own decree. And if for example, it came under into priority under its own decree for 30 days. 30 days would not be long enough to be able to fill it. And so what we’re what we’re wanting to do is to create a situation where we can leverage the time, ie early before run off, and take a longer period of time to start slowly filling union so that when it does come into priority, we can finish filling it. And yet at the very tail end of the runoff season, when we still have a lot of water rights available to us that can go into storage, we can put those into button rock visits on channel.

57:47
And one other point I’d like to point out Todd is that in a typical year, we’re going to have three to 4000 acre foot hole and button rock and a three to 4000 acre foot hole and Union for a total of about, you know, six to 8000 acre foot hole this year, even though unions down more than normal 5000 acre foot down button rocks is zero. So that actual hole we have left to fill this year is actually a little bit smaller, then in a typical year. And that’s that’s primarily a fun is partially a function. Of course, we couldn’t get anyone on a button rock. But also because of the situation we’ve had with button rock and union going down. We’ve actually collateralized loan a lot of more CV CVD water into windy gap water this year, so we had higher effluent return flow credits. And so that helped us keep from releasing even more water out of union. So the actual whole is it sounds vague because it’s the one spot but it’s not too bad.

59:01
Good point. Thank you can any other questions, comments on the water supply update? If it was

59:09
good, I could just point out one thing. You look around the horn on all of these snotel sites and it is a little bit scary this year. There is one note I would like to point out and that is the birth ID pass snotel is sitting at 90%. With this weakness, couple days of storms coming through, it’s even going to get closer to no it’s just going to be barely below 100% at the birthday pass. That’s the Fraser River Basin. And actually if you look at look at some of the photos from Winter Park all the way to birth the past it looks it looks really good on the snowpack there. That’s our Fraser River Basin which is our windy gap water supply and so One of the advantages of having a really diverse portfolio, both windy gap CBT and nifty basin is that one of those three basins might do better in a year and this this year, it happens to be windy gap that’s paying off for us. Obviously, we’re only a third of the way through the snowpack season and a long ways to go. But it looks like we should be able to pump some windy gap water this year to meet meet all of our deliveries we’ve already taken. And so that that’s going to be very beneficial to us when he gets paid off this year.

1:00:45
Thanks, Kim. Any other questions? Comments? Okay, we’ll keep moving on. item nine. C is the monthly legislative report.

1:01:00
Sorry about that. I don’t have a whole lot to report on the legislative report, the legislature met on January 15th. Just to seat and formally start the legislature and then immediately went into recess. They have recessed until I believe it’s February 16. And and that I’m sure is a kind of if we’ll see how everything’s going with COVID at that point, but they’re they’re recessed because of the COVID issues. So there’s only been one. All that one day they only water bill they introduced that day was the annual joint resolution on the water projects authorization. That’s all the about 100 projects is funded through the Colorado Water Conservation Board. We see that every year. I don’t believe Loma doesn’t have a project on it this year. But we usually support it just because it helps so many water utilities. Although that really rarely has any problem moving forward. So there really isn’t any legislation yet to talk about. But they’ll be back in session on the 15th which is about which might even be I believe our February no be a week before February board meeting. But we’ll, we’ll have a little bit more to report in February. So that’s it on that.

1:02:33
Thank you. Okay, thanks, Kim. Next item is nine D which is the water resources engineering projects update. And if I understand right, Jason’s Submit button rockin Are you gonna handle that?

1:02:44
Yeah, I’ll handle that for him. actually kind of stole the thunder on this one. And we were going to talk about the the outlet repair. And I think we’ve probably covered that as well as the pumping and where we’re going there. So the only other major project we’ve got going on right now is the pre planning and engineering for a pump station. We plan on putting in the town of Lyons to pump water from our South sabourin pipeline to North Saverin pipeline that recently went to city council to approve an IGA with the town of lions, for Acquisition to the right away for that installation of city council as well as the town of lions board also approved that agreement. So we’ve we’ve got the IGA foundation ready to go for that agreement. We’ve just working on acquiring the it’s going to be a design, build, installation. So just working on that, and should be moving that project forward here pretty quickly. And so that’s really all I have right now and projects. Thank you.

1:03:59
Okay, thanks. Any questions from the board? Right, I don’t see any. So keep moving on. The next item is 10 items from the board. And the first item is review of water board bylaws and guiding water principles. And the memo looks like it’s actually for me. But what I wanted to maybe give a little background, Ken contacted me and said there were some items in there that we should maybe discuss as a board. So those are listed. I think there’s five of them. Kim, do you want to just maybe walk us through those items and then you know, we can discuss that as a board.

1:04:39
Now that’s bouncing off here real quick here. The first item is the wording reference in the bylaws to chairman and Vice Chairman, that was actually reviewed about 10 or 15 years ago by the board who chose at that time to to leave it that is the actual proper terminology but Many boards choose to use the word, either Chairman chairperson, or just chair. You know, that’s really a more of a style. The actual legal way to do it, as you say, Madam Chairman, or Mr. Mr. Chairman. But that that does tend to get changed in some, some bylaws. As far as the other boards in the city, if there is no uniform standard, about a third of them in the department use Chairman about a third us chair and other third usurpers. And so, I think, you know, I just wanted to highlight that, in case there was an interest in looking at that issue. The next one was absenteeism. We we really never waterboard changed the language what you see today, again, about 10 years ago, we really didn’t get too tight on on what is excused versus an unexcused used absence. Practicing policy so far has been, as long as you call in, you know, it’s an excused absence. Um, if it’s just don’t show up, it’s not excused. And we’re staff is fine with that. But we wanted to make sure, you know, sometimes that can make it hard to we’ve we’ve never had a problem with with board, enough board members attending to have a quorum, but wanted to highlight that. The third one is a public broadcast of the monthly meetings. We’ve really, in the past, I’ve never had a live broadcast, although the zoom meetings, if everybody, you know, probably getting tired of them, but they actually do work. So we thought we may the board may want to consider thinking around that issue, partially for the ability, whether or not a board member who’s traveling out of state or not available, you know, could maybe attend remotely like that. It does sound like you know, Heather did explain that the long leader will now probably resume once we go back to live means we’ll probably resume. So that may be fine, we may leave it at that. Or maybe we may, we’ve never had a policy where you can attend remotely. So that’s really kind of both the public broadcasts the next two bullet points. So the board may want to consider doing that or may not, you know, and then finally, is the timing of the waterboard packet. Currently, it’s kind of hardwired in there. Five days. And I have to admit, we try to meet that five day but we don’t always meet it. There’s a couple of couple of points you could think about. We’re fine if we leave it at five days, and we’ll do our best to get you that packet. Exactly. Five days before the meeting. You could some board members kind of preferred even earlier, because they don’t want to have to spend the whole weekend I know, it’s like City Council, I can’t imagine how they get their packets and huge 500 page packets. And today, I feel sorry for him. But at least this is just once a month instead of every week.

1:08:42
But the first year you stop reading hangar leases, that’s how we do it.

1:08:47
I can see that on the hangar leases. I gotcha. I agree with you. So So, you know, one thought is, you know, it’d be better for the board if you went earlier. But the if, if we got it, if we had to get it to the board earlier, that works his way back to we have to have the information earlier to put the pack together earlier. And then you have the applicants then have have to come in earlier. And it makes people actually miss a waterboard meeting, because they couldn’t get their information to us in time for us to process it and get it in the packet. Or you could do it later. Now that we’re doing electronically, it’s really easy for us to, you know, hit hit sand, and we can hit sand on Friday. And that’s, you know, two business days for four calendar days. So it could be moved. If that kind of time is no problem. It will give people who are trying to get on the board and trying to get information to us an extra day or two. So I’m not advocating for either one either way or either direction. I just wanted to highlight that. That’s currently what it says is five days. And we do try to meet that and we apologize if we don’t meet it every time. So those are kind of some areas don’t need any of those changes would be perfectly fine if you wish to, you know, adopt prove the bylaws as is, but this were a couple of things that we got a thought about over over the last year and thought you might want to consider.

1:10:26
Kathy, go ahead.

1:10:28
So just a few comments. As far as what you call the chairperson. Unless the men are happy to be called Mr. Chairwoman, then I would say that we should change it to chair, I just think the whole person thing is too awkward in the mouth. And then I like when we get the packets that gives me plenty of time. And you know, and I could even be a day less,

1:10:55
but

1:10:57
that’s where I fall on those two issues.

1:11:04
Okay, is there other Roger going?

1:11:09
Back to the chair thing? I mean, if everybody gets anybody gets, you know, really upset about the way it is, I would be fine with chairperson or VICE CHAIRPERSON, I’m just going to give you my I’m not going to go with Chairwoman. I don’t think Kathy would. CHAIRPERSON would be fine with me. But secondly, on the packets, you know, some I used to go on to the website of city council or I mean Longmont advisory boards, and you can you can scroll in there. And they got a place where they show the meeting time and show the packets and what have you. I’ve noticed for several months that is not being utilized, for some reason it used to be populated. And when you open it up now there’s, you know, there’s nothing there. And I just kind of curious why that changed, or anybody else noticed that.

1:12:07
They’re there, Heather Marsha, Marsha, you start.

1:12:11
Um, they have changed the document management system. And so the packets are still accessible. And so what you’re probably looking at is an EZ link that hasn’t been updated. Unfortunately, since I use the internal one, I don’t know what it is, but I will be happy to contact the right person will take that as an action item. And could you please email me the length that isn’t there anymore? Or the this the spot where there’s nothing there anymore?

1:12:49
Well, it’s it’s not so much there’s nothing there. But you go to the waterboard. And the space where it says agenda and packet, it’s just it’s just not. It’s just not there’s nothing there. And then date is not. So you don’t even see a meeting date anymore.

1:13:13
Okay, so this is that, where all of the boards are along the like the left side of the page, that page that plays.

1:13:23
Okay,

1:13:24
so I can help clarify that a little bit if I can jump in. So as Councilmember Martin said in July of last year, we started using a different document management system, and to streamline where all of the community members are appointed to, to make things a little bit more transparent for people, we have taken all of the agendas and stuff from the various boards and put it into one place on one page. So I’ll share my screen real quick, and I’ll show you how to get there from the city’s home page. So this is the Longmont colorado.gov. And if you hover over the department’s tab along the top, over on the left hand side, you’ll see where it says agendas and minutes and right underneath that says agenda management portal. If you click on that, it will take you to the page where every council meeting and every advisory board meeting is listed. And you just scroll down and you’ll see the place where all of those are listed here are the current ones. You’ll see the water board here. And then there’s also an agenda that you can download. And if you click on this three dots here, you can download the full packet there as well. Oh,

1:14:37
but that

1:14:39
that kind of made it easier for all of the community members to find everything in one place.

1:14:45
That’s helpful.

1:14:46
Thank you.

1:14:47
Heather.

1:14:48
Are you sitting you’re sitting up at being right as I during the meeting, I went and clicked on that I got I pulled up the agenda while we were all talking and I see me looking away I’m looking over at my other computer

1:15:00
The agenda, but I didn’t know those dots bring up the packet. So thank you.

1:15:03
Yeah. And then also, as a note on the waterboard page, there’s also a link to take you to that portal. So if you get to the waterboard page, you’ll see a listing of this year’s meeting dates, but the portal, there’s a link on there to get you to the portal for the agendas and the packet.

1:15:25
Okay, any other questions? Comments? I guess what’s striking me is maybe on the I’m fine with just going with chair is to Kathy’s suggestion. Seems like that kind of simplifies simplifying things, and we, you know, if we won’t have to deal with it, hopefully in the future, maybe what we need, if we’re going to go that route is a motion, do we need a motion can to go ahead and do that? And then we change that in the bylaws, is that right? Okay, let’s see if there’s anything else in terms of the absenteeism? You know, it seems like it’s been working fine to date. You know, in terms of the, you know, as long as people are letting us know, and we’re not having people just not showing for multiple meetings at a time, I guess we get to that point, we could address it. At that time, in my mind, the public broadcast and talking to Heather before the meeting, it sounds like the Longmont observer, the Longmont leader now is actually in a contract with the city to provide kind of live streaming, if and when we ever can get back together, Marsha looks like you have a maybe an update or comment on that.

1:16:33
I’m just that it’s not the limelight leader, which is now a private business. It’s, it’s long enough public media is under contract.

1:16:43
But I guess bottom line is we’ve got another entity that would be live streaming that for us. So when we get back together, hopefully, sooner than later. You know, it sounds like that’ll the city as a whole is handling it through the public media outlet. So that’s fine, I think we can maybe just hold off on on that they’ll be recording it. The remote attendance at meetings in that. I think it’s good to have that that capability in the future. But I think we maybe hold off on that now until we can get back together and see, you know, where we end up with as far as you know, kind of future recording. And maybe that’s a year from now we just revisit that item. I don’t know if we need to act on that now. And timing on the board packets, I’m fine with the four days if that gives us the Friday, you know, so they have an extra day can Um, I don’t know if any other board members have a thought on that. But I think we typically get it on a Friday, which works for me. I can review it over the weekend or on Monday before the meeting itself. So

1:17:55
and we’ll try to get it out sooner.

1:17:59
That’s fine.

1:18:00
We just didn’t want it to be a hard deadline. And

1:18:03
that’s fine. Do we need if we go that route? Do we need a motion on that then to change it to? I don’t know at least four days prior? What do you recommend there?

1:18:14
Yeah, I’d recommend you just make one motion to amend the bylaws and then approve them for those two items.

1:18:23
Okay. Those are my thoughts. But any other comments? Or is everybody okay with with those two items? All right, if we are we need a motion for I guess the changing the bylaws to have chair instead of chairman. And then the timing of the word packets at least four days prior to the board meeting. So we have a motion. Do we have a second? Motion by Alison, we have a second by Roger. Any further discussion? I don’t see any All those in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed. Okay, that carries forward to zero. That the other item I guess we need to talk about kind of separately is we have the guiding water policies the statement of goal and the policy statement. Was there any questions comments or Kim? Did you want to have us look at anything specifically on that?

1:19:30
No, we that’s that’s our standard set of guiding water principles. We like to include them with the bylaws just so the board can a cm every year but be right before the legislative session is good. Our legislative primps principles really stem from these God guiding water principles. So it’s always good if we wouldn’t change them today but if you know any board member once you’ve read them and looked at them, if you Have Any thoughts on it? And then, you know, we’d be happy to entertain looking at those, bringing it back as a formal project, if not more fine the way they are. Okay.

1:20:14
Any questions or comments on the those policies? Just one comment when I reviewed them, I think just in general, they they make sense we’re working on. I think staff is working on some things that are pretty specific. You know, one that was striking me is under conservation, we have a goal or a policy statement that we’re trying to stay 10% lower than current projections for water demands. But we also have the city’s sustainability or Climate Action Task Force. And I know we’ve tasked the staff with trying to kind of determine what’s attainable in that regard, of conservation measures. And it may just be one that as we get feedback from that, you know, ultimately, in the future, we may want to update that policy statement to correspond with what we get as feedback from what’s attainable, or what level of conservation we feel is appropriate. So there’s just a few items like that, where I think, you know, this is kind of what we’ve done historically. But we’ve got maybe a few projects or a few things that staff is studying that may change that in the future. So anyway, that was just one that caught my eye. So maybe we can just go ahead and leave those as is. But then if if we do get, find additional information from that, for example, that study, we can update that in the future. Any other questions or comments? Marsha? Go ahead.

1:21:48
Oh, I just wanted to say about the Climate Action Task Force, I think that one was universally set aside, you know, as an unsupported outlier, and Oh, Hi, friends. See. So I think we would be in. We will be glad to hear about what a you know, a attainable worst case scenario might be. But I think everybody understands that. You have been pretty cautious in your recommendations to date. So it’s not like we’re finding that there’s a hole in the plan or anything like that. Probably Francis should weigh in on that as well.

1:22:41
Sure. Go ahead, Francis, if you want to chime in.

1:22:45
Yeah. And I just wanted to clarify, just in terms of timelines. In the recommendation to city council that was approved and how that Climate Action Task Force recommendation should be adjusted. We propose that the study would begin in kind of timing of the 2024 Water Efficiency master plan, update and return the city council to evaluate more ambitious goals. So that probably won’t begin until 2023. would be. So we’re probably two years out from beginning that more extensive study.

1:23:19
Okay, that’s fine. Thanks for the clarification. So I guess bottom line is, we’ll analyze that and then determine what, what is the potential or what can we do? Is that study is done. That makes sense. Any other questions? Comments? Okay, so I guess the, we’ll leave the guiding water principles as is. At this point, let’s say anybody has any problem with that. Okay. With that, we’re on to item 10. b, which is a review of major project listings and items tentatively scheduled for future board meetings. Can you have any comments on that?

1:24:04
I have not No.

1:24:06
The one item might I would put in there and it may, I guess it may fall under item 12. Day for future board meetings. As we talked about savoring left hand word Conservancy district. They’re doing a stream management plan. They’re trying to do the implementation. And they’re going to come back to us in March or April. So I guess my only comment would be to stay in touch with Sean Cronin. So that after they get that determined we can get a presentation. So we’re kind of on the same page as them as to, you know, what they’re looking for in terms of implementation and specifically how the city would fit into that.

1:24:43
Very good point. Well, we’ll include that and talk with Shawn.

1:24:46
Okay. That sounds good. So we’re on to 10 C, which is a resolution of appreciation for Ray Petros. Ken maybe I’ll have you kind of give an overview of that. talked about it and I suggested we maybe do a resolution, given the time and effort that ray is put in, in the thing, items he’s helped the city along with.

1:25:10
Yes, thank you, Todd. Yeah, and and I guess for me, that’s a little bit personal personal as well. I’ve worked with Ray for over 35 years of the time he’s been here. Ray really started. Even before the city did its first major water rights transfer cases, we have a set a set of water rights transfer cases, we call them our 81 transfers, they were actually if you go back to 1929, we transferred a call, you know, some long months supply and palmerton water, just a real small amount. But really since then add hadn’t, you know, we had water ice but hadn’t really gone through a transfer process. We got a lot of water rights in the 60s and 70s. None of them had been transferred. So Ray really helped, as well as Bob brand really helped put together the city’s first major water rights transfer cases of which we then were able to model or other transfer cases over the years. He also helped guide us through all kinds of issues surrounding our water over the years. Windy gap, CVT. gas and oil, gravel mining and our first ever Northern Light augmentation plan for sandstone ranch and just a myriad of things over the years that really helped move Longmont forward, and help us get one of the most dependable water supplies along the front range of Colorado here. So so I really do appreciate all his efforts. Ray has, at the end of this year, at the end of December, fully retired, and turned over his firm to some of the other Junior principals. I don’t know if they turn it over solid, but it’s now now different, even named differently. But he’s now no longer are water special water council after over 40 years of providing service to the city. So I just thought it would be funny to just send him a resolution thanking him for all the work that many years and really helping Longmont move forward with an extremely dependable water supply.

1:27:59
One comment I would make is, you know, we talked about earlier union reservoir and was you gave a little overview of your ability to move water into union, move it up in a button rock. And and I would just say you know, I’m a water resource engineer, this is the kind of I do some of us work for a living and having that flexibility is no easy task. So I assume, Ken, when you’re alluding to what ray is done for you guys, that’s a kind of testament to that, that flexibility and having that flexibility is invaluable in terms of managing your water supplies. So anyway, I just want to bring it back to something we talked about a little bit earlier in the meeting that that that has immense value to the city. So I don’t know if anybody else has any other comments, but I think having obviously 40 years of service to the city and you know what he’s done, I think deserves us trying to recognize that in the context of resolutions. So any questions, comments or any problems with with that? If not, I think we need a motion to approve that the resolution was included in everybody’s packet. I don’t know if anybody had any comments on that. Otherwise, if there’s a motion to approve the resolution was included into the packet. I’d

1:29:17
like to just see that if we can. All right. We have a motion by Allison, do we have a second?

1:29:29
Kathy? A second, the motion Any further discussion? Hearing none, all those in favor say aye? Aye. Opposed, okay. The motion carries four to zero. Thank you for for doing that. And can I guess Have you talked to Ray wish him happy retirement. So

1:29:50
we’ll do that and we will get this put on some nice, nice paper and get around for the board. Sign. Thank you very much.

1:29:57
Thanks. All right. The next is item 11, which is informational items and waterboard correspondence. I don’t know if the board has anything there was a couple in the packet thing just in terms of the schedule, the meeting and that sort of thing. So I think kind of standard on that. Is it board have any comments? Any anything else they want to bring up at this point? I don’t see anything. informational items in waterboard, I guess we already did that. I’m sorry. Item 12 is items tentatively scheduled for future board meetings. In March, we have the cash and lieu review again. And then as I mentioned, maybe in March or April, we can hear from say brain left hand water Conservancy district on the stream management plan implementation. So are there any other items coming up? that you see on that, Kim?

1:30:53
I have not No.

1:30:54
Okay. Anything else for the good or the order? All right.

1:30:59
February’s meeting is going to be the week after Presidents Day. So it will be the fourth Tuesday of the fourth Monday of the month, like we did for

1:31:08
this month.

1:31:09
Great. Thank you other. If there’s nothing else, I’m gonna go ahead and adjourn the meeting. Thank you. Have a good day.

1:31:17
Thank you. Bye, everybody.