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HomeMy WebLinkAboutNatural Resources Advisory Board - Minutes - 05/17/2023Page 1 05/17/2023 – MINUTES Natural Resources Advisory Board REGULAR MEETING Wednesday, May 17, 2023 – 6:00 PM Remote 1. CALL TO ORDER: 6:07 PM 2. ROLL CALL a. Board Members Present – • Danielle Buttke • Bryan David • Kevin Krause • Dawson Metcalf (Chair) • Barry Noon • Kelly Stewart (Vice Chair) • Matt Zoccali b. Board Members Absent – • Lisa Andrews • Drew Derderian c. Staff Members Present – • Honoré Depew, Staff Liaison • Julie Pignataro, Councilmember, NRAB liaison • Jason Graham, Utilities Water Director d. Guest(s) – • None 3. AGENDA REVIEW 4. CITIZEN PARTICIPATION 5. APPROVAL OF MINUTES a. Dawson motioned and Kelly seconded to approve the NRAB May minutes as amended. Motion carried unanimously. 7-0 6. UNFINISHED BUSINESS 7. NEW BUSINESS a. Council Liaison Discussion – Councilmember Julie Pignataro (liaison to NRAB) joined the board for introductions and general discussion of NRAB work plan and Council/community priorities (Discussion) Page 2 05/17/2023 – MINUTES • Discussion | Q + A • Dawson – Q – This board typically writes quite a few memos throughout the year. Just curious from your opinion and perspective if that is really the most effective way for us to contribute. Julie – A – I think that’s a great question and I think every board is very different. We do not get a lot of memos from the Golf Board or some of these other boards and some have very different functions as well. I have also been, since I have been on Council, the liaison to the Air Quality Advisory Board. That board and this board are extremely high functioning is how I call it. Yes, your memos are super effective. I know you may not see that feedback. I think all seven of us up on the dais obviously make decisions differently and so for some they need more than others. I personally lean very heavily on our boards and commissions, as the purpose is to be a separate body from Council to help inform us. As far as the memos go, I think yours have been just the right length. I’ve seen some that are a little too short and some more often that are way too long. I did have to coach the Air Quality Advisory Board a little bit earlier this year. I was like don’t bother telling us what we’re doing right because it was a six-page memo they sent us. Your board has been very good about sending things in a timely manner and I credit that to your staff liaison to knowing what’s going on. I know this isn’t part of your question, but I just can’t help talk about it. We have a new Ad hoc boards and commissions committee with me, Emily Francis, and Tricia Canonico and we are tackling a lot of these things. I had a list four pages long in this notebook about things I wanted to change about the boards and commissions or things that need standardization, things to really help move the process. I took a lot of those from how well this board functions as well as the Air Quality Advisory Board. A big piece of that is having a liaison that’s plugged in and knows what’s going on at the Council level and is organized enough to know what’s coming so you are not rushed to have to write a memo. Like oh they are going to be talking about this next week and we don’t have a meeting. Unfortunately, that happens more often than people like. So as part of this I think there will be liaison training which will be very helpful. Chair training as well; I did have one board fall apart because the Chair didn’t do a very good job, unfortunately. Dawson – Comment – I think that is really great information for us to think about potential changes that come down the road and everything as well for us just from a procedural standpoint. Kevin – Comment - If you want to engage on that subject, I think just some bouncing feedback back to you in route for 4 years I think that is great to have the training because everyone walks in and there is nothing upfront. I commend that; that is going to be very cool. I know it’s more overhead, but function will kick into gear. Julie – Comment – Well you should see the overhead we need when a problem occurred. So hopefully it’s proactive and preventative in that way. • Julie – Q – Another thing we tried to do is three years ago we instituted the one-year terms. What we were trying to do is make it not seem like a huge commitment because all they had was four-year terms at that time and hopefully get more young people involved. Like if you were a student here or about to graduate but what the Page 3 05/17/2023 – MINUTES unanticipated consequences of that were the need to interview constantly and there were some other administrative things happening in the Clerk’s Office that made things really bad for a while. Did you guys always have quorum, or did you have a problem there? Kevin – A – We did maybe once or a couple times, but we still have been functioning. Julie – Comment – So I think we will be getting rid of those one-year terms. We will still have two- and four- year terms and as Bryan knows we are not going to come after you if you don’t serve out your term. Life happens. So hopefully that will help some too with longevity everyone can still do it for 8 years total but shouldn’t have to interview all the time. • Matt – Q – I’m pretty new to this. I am learning how it goes. I believe in this board having autonomy and you know individuality about the things we look at, the perspective we bring, and I also think it’s important for me to understand what keeps you up at night about these subjects that maybe we have an influence on or impact or provide input towards. Julie – A – That is a great question, Matt. In the environmental space, what keeps me up at night is making sure that there are not unintended consequences to what we are doing. We do hold a lot of power locally and so for some of the things we did like putting in the plastic bag ban on the ballot was huge and thinking really long and hard about the unintended consequences for people with disabilities, for example - it was an equity thing and trying to keep that in mind. That is just one kind of extreme example. Another thing I really pushed as a priority, and it did go through, was that the City now refers to it as a climate emergency and there was some feedback that certain groups of people find that it didn’t translate well and so it was kind of offensive to call it a climate emergency. That was such a weird one for me because it was such a no brainer and trying to empathize with that and realize what that meant. • Barry – Comment – Some of the concerns I have is that your workload must be phenomenal, and you were talking about how you appreciate a short memo. I totally get that. Where I think it becomes difficult and I guess this is where you must really rely on staff, is if you are dealing with any sort of environmental assessment document. They are never short and often the key things are buried deep into these documents and I am thinking explicitly of Northern Water and their so called mitigation or enhancement plan. All the caveats about flow maintenance and peak flows start at about page 92 and there are so many conditions that have to be met before there’s any obligation for so called mitigation to occur. You really don’t get to these key things unless you put the hours into reading these documents and I am wondering how you, because there’s so many issues you deal with and I’m going to guess they are all quite similar but often you really have to go into the weeds or you’re going to be tricked into believing something that is simply not true. Julie – Comment – That is a great point, and I’ll talk about it in a bigger philosophical way first and that’s when I first started on Council, there is an expectation from some that you know everything about everything that comes to you. We get 500-to-1,000-page packets every Tuesday night and learning how to trust staff. If we were a full- time council that might be a different story which, like the County Page 4 05/17/2023 – MINUTES Commissioners or what we have in Denver proper, which is this is their daytime job as well. I can see that the expectations are more but setting those expectations for the public is kind of something I’ve tried to do but also assuring them that I have the skills to know when to dive deep. That is something that took at least the first two years to figure out. When something comes forward with NISP and we get that entire technical document as part of our packet to read, that’s where if it’s something that, I’m not a scientist, I may need some extra help. I can always set a meeting with someone on staff and say let’s walk through this and make sure on a whole separate level make sure that staff understands clearly what Council’s - not expectation but - feeling is about a certain thing. So, I’ll use minimum wage as an example which did not pass last night. That is something that at the beginning Council was not clear in saying we want to raise the local minimum wage. So, staff spent almost a year approaching it of let’s research and see if raising the minimum wage is a good idea here or not. So that is kind of a lesson learned for future is when we come up with a priority, we need to make sure staff understands what the intent is. So going back to the climate emergency language at the beginning staff was like we are going to need $30,000 to do a study and we were like no, just do it. Just change the words you are using. I asked a lot of questions about when did you switch from global warming to climate change? Was there even a process or did it just happen gradually? That is what we are asking for, is this next evaluation of words. I know that doesn’t directly answer what you were asking but it is like a science and an art to figure out what to spend your time to read. There are certain technical things that I will glaze over and highlight. I don’t know if you watch Council often, but I do tend to ask a lot of questions because there are things I know I could spend ten hours reading and still not understand. I’ll be like I’ll just ask that question instead. Barry – Comment – Just recently on the May 2nd I gave an oral testimony about the NISP project and for the 9th I submitted written testimony that was quite detailed where I went line by line from the approved mitigation plan and pointed out specifically the language in there that are all these caveats and conditions, some of which will probably never be met. I shouldn’t go off, but you can go through the entire approved EIS on a word search for climate change, you won’t find it. The science is horrific. You can’t get there unless you dig deep and how can you possibly do that given the scope of issues that you’re involved in. Julie – Comment – In that case, I happened to go through the Water Literary Leaders’ class while I was campaigning and then after I was selected, which I learned a lot about water law and that sort of thing. Actually, three of us have gone through that class now on Council so that is great because we have that history. But knowing that part of the decision we were making about the 1041, it wasn’t necessarily related/about NISP it was about how we’re going to protect our natural areas from federal and state level projects. Even though that stuff is important, it is kind of separating that because, as I said up there on the dais, NISP project showed us a flaw in our process, but we are not creating 1041 to try and stop a particular project, it just showed us that flaw. • Danielle – Q – Along those same lines, we have a lot of scientists on Page 5 05/17/2023 – MINUTES this board which I think is fantastic and we do get into really technical deep discussions in our meetings. Are meeting minutes something you reference or is a situation we should probably go if we feel really strongly if there are very specific nuance details probably go testify in person, send additional comments, and/or structure our memo in such a way to really highlight specifics that may get lost otherwise? Julie – A – So a couple different things there. Yes, structure the memo in a way that makes sure your point’s clear. So, when I say short, I don’t mean lacking in anything I just mean to the point. And then yes, and sometimes they include the minutes in our meeting packets if it’s relevant to the decision we’re making. That happens most of the time with planning and zoning. The thing about testimony is it helps but one thing this Ad hoc Boards and Commissions Committee is doing is, and I am not sure if its going to be encouraged or mandated, that when people speak or email Council and are on a board or commission, they need to say if they are representing the whole board. They need to call out that they are on the board and say if they are representing the opinion of the board of if they are just there by themselves, which you totally can do. It is just a clarity thing because there have been some things misconstrued in the past. I am happy to hear you guys read your minutes instead of just glazing over that part of the agenda because I heard you say you had some adjustments, so nice work there. Good job being thorough. • Danielle – Q – You mentioned affordable housing when you introduced yourself and again, I am just so proud and impressed with what the City has been able to accomplish in terms of really looking at these tough issues and trying to address them at the root causes. I think the messaging around some of these initiatives, however, was not as spot on as it could have been, and we saw the public backlash to that in terms of some miscommunication that people against these policies put forward and that I think really confounded some of the specifics and the intent. Moving forward are there lessons learned for communication, public engagement, etc., with some of these issues and/or what are the next steps there and how do we support you? One of the things we talked about in our last meeting is that people often weigh the status quo versus these changes which is a fallacy because we know the community continues to grow, the climate crisis continues to worsen, economic inequality continues to worsen, and so it’s not the status quo versus these changes. It’s a future projection where all these factors will impact our quality of life and having more control over some of these policies. Julie – A – As far as lessons learned from that whole thing, there’s a lot to unpack. The decline in media and the quality of media locally is not helpful. And then groups not meeting where you might normally have gotten information like say, you would go to church and someone would say hey you heard they’re working on the Land Use Code; just those conversations are not happening anymore and I think we’re still trying to figure out how to communicate coming out of the pandemic, especially as more people work remotely and as we do with different things remotely. So, the lesson learned there was to be more vigilant. I have one on ones with the City Manager each month and I talk to her about what the Communications Department is or is not doing Page 6 05/17/2023 – MINUTES differently because when we live in a time where so many people get their news from social media; how do you fight misinformation or disinformation and then get your message out and not get it lost in everything that is out there? I don’t think anyone has that answer so I’m hoping now specifically with the Land Use Code, the City has done a ton of outreach sessions and I’ve met with a lot of people one on one which is my preference, because I think that when you meet in groups, sometimes voices tend to get drowned out. So, I think we are all hearing very similar things about the different, what I am calling the different buckets of issues that people face, are thinking, projecting or, imagining. It’s all different. One thing that was definitely lost was the environmental benefits of multi-family housing, the environmental benefits of a duplex as opposed to a single-family home. For me, I stuck so much with the air quality stuff because so many people drive in and that got lost in the discussion. I hope we come back to that. It’s interesting because we got so much done in these two years and in my opinion, I am amazed and thrilled, and I think maybe we moved too fast and so nobody caught up with us. I was telling the Mayor today, because we also meet one on one each month and I was like you know, as you guys talk in leadership planning, it is okay if some things don’t get done because I watched it and experienced it the first two years I was on Council where at the end, everything’s coming to a head. You are doing all these huge things at the end of a two-year term and things can get missed and it can be really bad. So, I hope that is helpful. Danielle – Comment – It is, and I think the environmental benefits, public health benefits, the Surgeon General’s Loneliness Report just came out, community benefits, the climate, resilience benefits, mutual aid and communities, there’s so many benefits there and so I think there’s a lot of opportunity. Let us know how we can help support that. You know we’ve written memos in the past, but I think we have expertise and passion here that can help articulate some of those points if it would be helpful. Julie – Comment – Thank you. I would say for now, I mean your community conversations with your neighbors because what you are fighting, and this is not my own idea but what someone said is what you are fighting is someone else’s imagination and that is a hard thing to disagree with someone on and explain the data shows that no one is going to come and scrape the house next to you and build a triplex because that doesn’t make sense. You live in Clarendon Hills. That is not how they see it. It’s still very different so I think the conversations have helped. I know they’ve helped me and the people I have met with. Sometimes, you just know you’re never…like someone patted my arm and said I’m sorry when she learned I lived in a split-level house, and I was like I don’t think we are ever going to really see eye to eye. So that is okay, thanks for listening to me and I listen to you and now we will purpose. Honoré – Comment – This board has had a couple of conversations with the planning team, Noah Beals and Meaghan Overton over the last ten months. Julie – Comment – Okay, good. I am eager to see how this goes and if we decide to put things to a vote. I have no idea. I am glad no one asked me what are you guys going to do because I really have no idea. Honoré – Q – Is the plan to do something before the Page 7 05/17/2023 – MINUTES end of this Council’s term though? Julie – A – I hope so but then again, if it’s going to be rushed then no, which is a gamble. I mean the thing I love about elections is you get immediate feedback. Even though it’s kind of a win, lose thing, it is the way things go. • Kevin – Comment – I think the point of the imagination is like there’s a real art in the storytelling side of it, and we’re all running our own stories. So, how do you tell and show that story instead of showing more of the nuts and bolts of the thing you want to accomplish. I think to your point, how do you do that, where do you do that? But I think it is those conversations, hearing those concerns, and figuring out how to arm everyone with the same chapters in their story that they’re forgetting about. For example, to build up their knowledge. I like how you framed that as well. Julie – Comment – Well remember too because most of you are in the science field, you can’t always talk to everybody that way either right? Kevin – Comment – So I guess I mean more like what we were talking about last meeting, it’s not a choice of the same or the alternative. You’re imagining. There are more layers to what you need to imagine with respect to will your street still feel safe because there are more cars on it. There are a lot of very similar examples that you have to go there and it’s easy for everyone to imagine what they know in their world today. For example, if you think parking is hard now, or whatever resonates and also ties into that reality. It is going to be hard to park because everyone has to. There’re more people that need to drive that area. There’re so many layers that you just have to deal with and have those sub storylines available to at least put out there for each version of everyone else’s story. It’s hard but that is why we are here because we know it is needed. So, I guess more ideas on how to do that effectively. I guess that goes into my question when it comes to priority setting, it feels like that’s a really important time to plug in but your feedback on that, for our board or for the public when you all come in with these ideas like you said, you want to pack everything into this time that you have, at least that you know you have to start to engage at that level in person because just in other conversations, I’ve been told that it can have a huge impact where, if you engage effectively at that moment versus just what’s in your head. Julie – A – That is a great question. As a board you could because of the new cadence for elections which is going to have so many benefits, even though I was dead set against it. I was the only one, but I felt like I was voted in for four years and eight months. I was with it for four months and it was a disservice to my opponents - future or past - to get a bonus of eight months, but the vote is a vote. You could start on it before then, but you will know in early November who will be on Council. They won’t start until January. You can provide a memo prior to the first strategic weekend, which I would assume would be somewhere in mid, possibly late January, they try to do it really quickly, of priorities you would like to see. On a personal level outside of your board stuff, if you have someone who is in a district, which is 2,4,6, and the mayor, which is everybody, I feel like you should feel free to reach out to their campaigns and say just so you know I am one of your constituents and I think this should be a priority. The thing about the whole priority setting, I call it the priority setting weekend Page 8 05/17/2023 – MINUTES but that’s just how I’ve experienced it. When I came in my first time, I didn’t really know what was going to happen that weekend and someone said just bring a list of stuff that is important to you, and we talk about it. Well, I did not realize that this is a weird game in some ways. Mayor Troxell at the time came in and everyone puts their ideas on yellow sticky notes, and he did like 40 of them and I’m sitting here like I don’t know. He had very specific things. So, from that day forward, I started a list for the next two years, being in term four years, and then when we had our priority weekend the second time, so that was with this Council now, they started talking about changing the process and I was like no I am so ready this time. I had a document, I had my reasons, I had worked on it for two years and then I’ve done the same thing these last two years, so I am ready to roll. Because I was so prepared last time, I’m thrilled to say that I think I came forward with maybe 30 or so priorities, ten of them were kind of already in process, and I believe 17 of them are part of our 31 priorities. I hate to make it sound like a numbers game because it is important, but I do feel like being prepared and then having my reasons helps tremendously. Kevin – Comment – So maybe for us, that we are thinking in November timeframe that we are getting something together that we want to push out in that January timeframe because if you said someone else coming in new maybe they’ve got a shortlist and can also pull from that. Julie – Comment – I think that would be great. • Julie – Q – Well Thank you. First of all, I do appreciate your memos and I know you send them to me and staff and its very effective to make sure they get included in the appropriate packets, so that is great. Thank you for your hard work. I am not sure what the cadence of the annual plan is. When does that happen? Honoré – A – I know the annual report is due in January from the prior year and then the work plan is pretty much February or March. Julie – Comment – I can’t remember they usually send them to me in bulk for all the boards and liaisons and I love reading through those. I just want to let you know we do read these. Even though we are not getting back to you all the time, we do read them. It’s part of our job. So thank you. Danielle – Comment – That might be another place for us to put priorities as well if they are read. Julie – Comment – Yes, let me give you that caveat, I read them. I will put it that way. I can’t dictate what other people do. b. Regional Water Update – Jason Graham, Utilities Water Director, shared about the water supply and storage challenges faced by the Fort Collins community, as discussed by City Council at a May 9th work session. The discussion provided an overview of the Fort Collins Utility’s water system; water supply challenges including drought, growth, and the Colorado River Compact; current water storage projects; and the City’s role as a regional partner with other water service providers in Northern Colorado ( Discussion). • Discussion | Q + A • Bryan – Q – Has the City looked at augmenting any of its depletions on the West Slope out of priority? Jason – A – We have not; not to my knowledge. Bryan – Comment – I know some participants are Page 9 05/17/2023 – MINUTES looking at that now. Jason – Comment – To my knowledge we have not looked at it. • Jason – Comment – So Councilmember Pignataro asked if it correlates with I-25, to go from south to north and nobody has ever asked that, observed that but I have not gotten to that. Bryan – Q – So it is only owned an operated by those cities? Jason – A – Greeley is not up there, and Greeley has a lot of water storage. They are hesitant to divulge that information and how they account for it is not really clear. I think they account for some aquifers and agriculture. They have some different storage items that are hard to match up on a graph like this. But I ask that question every time; I wish I had Greeley’s number up here. I think that would be good. • Barry – Comment - I have been sending them (comments) in for years in a lot of details. I don’t consider Northern Water to be an honest broker, not even close. The CPW Mitigation Enhancement plan should have never been approved. Then as I indicated, and I wrote this up for the County Commissioner, so I have all this documented. I have been working on reviewing all the draft environmental impact statements all the way through the final, all the mitigation plans. I am currently reviewing the Halligan mitigation plan so I don’t have comments on that. It is interesting to go back to the history of what the City of Fort Collins has done. In 2014, they contracted with the Water Center and physical and biological researchers, professors at CSU to develop the ecological response model. That model already found the river to be impaired. That was followed up by another City project the Poudre River Report Card in 2017 and that gave the river a grade of C and they concluded in that report that the river could not sustain any further decreases in flow, peak flows, and minimum flows during the summer. That was followed up in 2020 by a peer-reviewed scientific publication of with seven of the nine authors are CSU professors. Many of them involved in the ecological response model and I will quote from their conclusion in that paper: “changes from proposed additional water development would essentially ensure that general and long-term decline in Poudre River, aquatic and repairing ecosystem functions.” So that are resources right here in town. People who are world scholars in riverine ecosystems this was work done and commissioned by the City and it’s as if the City has no memory of this work that’s already been done. For Northern to claim that you can enhance a river that has 62% of its flow already diverted by taking more water out defies common sense. Its BS frankly and it doesn’t match up with critical peer-reviewed scientific evaluations of the status of the Poudre River. There are also other things that are not so much in my area of expertise and knowledge but building dams and reservoirs is really antiquated technology. You have incredible evaporation loss and that is going to accelerate as climate warms and recent work done by the EPA has also found that reservoirs are highly significant source of methane emissions, so they exacerbate climate change. None of these are in the environmental impact state, none of this stuff. It is as if the science doesn’t exist, as if this river hasn’t been studied for decades. The CSU Water Center for some reason doesn’t engage politically but if you read the work of Brad Page 10 05/17/2023 – MINUTES Udall, their lead scientist, and you mentioned about how much water we get through CBT, that is in serious decline. That puts more pressure on taking water from the Poudre and those flows are also declined and being exacerbated. I don’t know how you could possibly think that you can increase demand when you have declining availability. All you have to do is look at the data. There is an amazing amount of data out there and its pie in the sky. To simply say that they can mitigate, you can’t. I commented on their adaptive management plan too. So, they must not have read any of the theory of adaptive management. Adaptive management means you don’t preclude any options that you may need to visit if you make an error. Well, if you build a 1.2-billion-dollar dam that has a capacity, and I bet it would never be filled ever, that’s larger than Horsetooth, that’s your reversible. You can’t practice adaptive management because you can’t revisit it. It is a permanent transformation of the environment and the landscape. I could go on; I mean there is so much flawed in this NISP project, and they are pulling wool over people’s eyes. The big thing they are talking about is maintaining minimum flows in the summer of 15-25 CFS. Well maintaining minimum flows is a big thing, but the way to deal with that is not to have 60% of the water owned by ditch companies and being diverted right when you come out of the canyon. There is no way you can have recreational activity at 15 to 25 CFS. There is no way you could float a tube down there; you would have to have a pad on your butt, and you wouldn’t even float. The white-water park isn’t going to be used. You are not going to inundate the flood plain. You’re not going to recharge the aquifers. I could go on. One thing we do know is we know how rivers and streams work. The science is phenomenally strong, and we know the things you can’t do to them and sustain them as a river. So, I think the whole NISP thing should be thrown out; It’s flawed, it’s misleading, and I don’t think they are honest brokers. That is my opinion. Jason – Comment – I appreciate that. My comment back or challenge would be from a water standpoint or City standpoint, how do we take everything you just said, and you are by far more of an expert than I am but they have received all this permitting that has been reviewed. They do have approval and we provided feedback similar to yours and similar to that whole process. There is a cross functional team of skilled people in the City that have done this, dissected it over the last 20 some years. Council’s official position is opposing this so we’ve done this dance with them for the last 20 years to make sure that we are doing everything we feel is responsible to address everything you just said and yet they still got to where they are at. So how do we take it from where it’s at to continue to mitigate or continue to… I don’t know the answer. Barry – Comment – It’s a total loss to me to how the City is where they are at. When I mentioned 2014 Ecological Response Model, 2017 the Poudre River Report Card where they give the river a C and say if there are any more changes to the flow regime it will go even worse. That’s work done by the City. It is as if it’s been ignored. And then the peer reviewed publication by the core of the scientists here at CSU to develop the Ecological Response Model and I read their conclusion. Do people not read these things? Jason – Comment – The City Page 11 05/17/2023 – MINUTES doesn’t own the water. We don’t own everything; we don’t control everything. So, we need to reconcile. How do we take all of that and do it? Barry – Comment – That is why the 1041 has potential. Because what it can do is keep the infrastructure from NISP outside the City, it can change that retake which occurs around Mulberry and Lemay. What is going to happen to the rest of the river, all the natural areas, CSU Environmental Learning Center, our contributions as it goes into Greeley? It is a re-uptake. How about the designation by the US Congress in 2009 to say that the Poudre River is a natural heritage area? Nine miles of that natural heritage area lies within the bounds of Fort Collins. Has anyone thought about that because the 1041 set was put in place in 1974 to sustain the environment in Colorado and it gave local municipalities, at different scales, the ability to have regulatory bounds/powers beyond the boundaries and that is something that it seemed like the legal service is here for the City. I watched a video of a meeting with developers, I don’t know how much of the Council was there and I couldn’t even believe that the legal council for the City wasn’t aware that there’s been three Colorado Supreme Court tests of 1041 Law and sustained the law’s ability to regulate beyond the bounds of the municipality that’s involved. We are downstream of Glade, so how can Glade, if it gets built, not affect the City because it’s water flows downhill. I could go on. I am sorry, I have been working on this for ten years and I can’t believe all this BS they are saying about how they are going to make the river better. I have quotes here, and one of the things I sent to City Council for some of their meetings, quotes that they said, they’re going to enhance and improve the river. Does that mean all the scientists over at CSU who study the physical and biological components, world known scholars in their field, that what they’re saying is wrong and somehow Northern Water is right. I don’t think so. This City would not be here if it weren’t for the Poudre. The Poudre is the heart and soul of this City. And then climate change, you read an environmental impact statement 1,500 pages or whatever it is, you do a keyword search, it’s like climate change…what? It’s like come on. Right away someone would lose their credibility. If they submitted that for a graduate degree, in their dissertation I’d fail them. What a joke. Anyhow, I will stop. Kevin – Comment – We don’t want you to. • Matt – Q – You mentioned Mulberry, and there were possibilities with, my understanding is that there’s water rights issues where you have to put water back into the river after Mulberry and if you ride by Mulberry on bike right now you smell effluent. The river is pretty much Mulberry effluent. So, what would be the mitigation or what would change with Mulberry as one of the solutions you had up on the board? Maybe I interpreted that wrong. Jason – A – So there is a water rights that we need to put in, I think it is five CFS from the Mulberry facility. We have not met that simply because there is not that much water going into the Mulberry treatment facility. So, we don’t have that much water, for whatever reason that is going into the Mulberry facility so we put in about two and a half and we have to notify our downstream users and make sure we’re not harming them. The cool thing about the wastewater system is Mulberry is directly Page 12 05/17/2023 – MINUTES tied to the Drake water reclamation facility. So, the Drake water reclamation serves as redundancy for the Mulberry facility. Drake rated 23 MGD. We only treat about 12-13 MGD so we have capacity to shut Mulberry down and take that flow to Drake. From an operational standpoint it makes sense. It is carbon limited at the Drake facility so the biological process would do better with that carbon coming to the Drake facility without having the Mulberry facility upstream. So, there are operational reasons to do it. We have talked about it as a wastewater utility for several years and so that is one potential thing to talk about potentially the effluent into the river, if that wasn’t there, head of clay is built and homestead is a natural area we don’t want to impact. Could we float more river water down to the Timnath Canal and pull off there where there is already existing infrastructure. That would lessen the impact on other natural areas. Matt – Q – So you would bypass Mulberry and send it to Drake but run more water out of Glade down the channel? Jason – A – That is a possibility. You just wouldn’t have to take it off before. Barry – Comment – I could read you also all the caveats about whether that augmented flow, flow augmentation will ever occur. Number one on the key is it will never occur until there is full build out. Second, this is in the mitigation report starting on page 92, it will never occur unless it’s at least 72% full. It will never occur unless the minimum purchase selling a 40,000-acre fee happens. That is the market allows them. I could go on. There’s more. This all appears that we’re going to do this great instream augmentation, low flow augmentation. Important? Absolutely. But it’s all the “buts”. And it’s like whoever approved that mitigation plan didn’t do their work. They simply didn’t do it. Those should have been red flags. As soon as I started studying and commenting on the mitigation plan, for my comments to the army core, I couldn’t believe it. It’s like wait a second, this probably will never happen. And if it does happen, it’s going to be decades after that dam is built, full build out, 72% full. You look at climate change, you look at declining flows, you look at what’s happening to the Colorado River. What’s the chance they are going to reach 72%. Another big thing, all the recreational benefits. Well, you are not going to be able to launch a boat there. I would argue the last thing we need is more motorized recreation. We certainly don’t need that. Those are my opinions. Sorry, this stuff is important. All life, not just us, all life depends on water, and we need to think about the rest of life too, not just ourselves. • Matt – Q – Barry, I don’t know if this is a debate and I certainly am not going to step into the ring with your knowledge, but I am just curious. We have more and more people pouring into Colorado, and they need water. So, I understand everything you are saying and it feels a little bit like we’re looking in the rear view mirror with that. So, what are the potential solutions? Do we limit growth? Barry – A – Yes, limit growth right there. Danielle – Comment – I think this is where we look to those lower basin states. We have already seen in Arizona, communities that were built that no longer have water. We have multiple landowners, agricultural development etc., that no longer have access to water. That’s absolutely critical for people to live there. We have the salt and sea in California, right? A huge Page 13 05/17/2023 – MINUTES development that was built that’s completely abandoned because they no longer have access to water. I think it’s really interesting. Two things, one was that you said there’s a 20-year mega drought. A drought is a negative deviation from the expected norm. This is not a drought; this is the status quo under the climate crisis and we need to change our terminology because we have to get used to this reality. We saw it in this last year. The combined crises of climate change and inequity, which is a cause. Climate change is caused by this inequity that requires constant consumption, has meant that last year we didn’t see our expected growth. There is a problem with assuming one potential future, especially when we have so much uncertainty as the climate crisis. We are probably not going to see a lot of that growth under the current economic situation, under the compounding biodiversity and climate crises, and under all the really significant impacts we’re going to see because of the climate crisis here from wildfires to heat. We are at extreme risk of really significant heat in Colorado because we don’t have the urban tree canopy because we don’t have the water to support that. So, when we have the urban heat island impacts, it can have really significant impacts here, particularly for the higher elevation communities where you are at higher risk of cardiovascular insult and our older population as we have more retired people because they are the only people that can afford to live here, move here. So, I think we have to plan for some of these alternative futures, because those are, in fact, quite possibly some of the futures we are going to see. Also, interesting to hear the mention of support some of these bedroom communities, as you mentioned, that’s the only place people can afford to live, and they are driving into Fort Collins. The problem though with putting that as part of our priorities is that we can say these are the conservation practices that you need to practice if you’re utilizing our water here in Fort Collins. We can’t say that for those other communities and so prioritizing delivery to those other communities is essentially kicking the can down the road just the same as saying, let’s build up our water supply to support more people when you know 10 years from now, we’ll never have those supplies present. I think that those are some of the challenges. You are in an impossible situation because the science behind NISP is so flawed and so poorly done and yet those policies and practices are so far down the road that the City has to play ball. I do really question, what I didn’t see in your presentation is what exactly does enhancing the environment look like under option two. What does better utilization of water rights mean? Better utilization could mean we sell it to the highest bidder, it could mean we put it in the ground in aquifers, it could mean we provide it to more people. Everyone has different values there and I would like to see some more specifics of what exactly that would like to be able to have a more informed opinion on what I hope isn’t the future of NISP. I hope the 1041 and I hope that there are opportunities to revisit some of those very flawed scientific rulings. I just don’t feel like we have enough information to weigh those two options in front of us, particularly given again the expectation only of growth and more people when in reality we have some signals already suggesting that’s not going to be the case. Jason – A – I Page 14 05/17/2023 – MINUTES appreciate that. That is a good point. I have thought about that. The research I have done says 88% of the projected growth in Colorado will happen on the Front Range in Northern Colorado. So that is the lens I was looking through when I was doing this. The people are coming so how do we, or don’t we limit growth, which is another option but that doesn’t seem to be a policy kind of decision that we are going to make. I don’t know. So how do we make sure that we have water for the people that are coming? So that is one thing. The other thing is when I say we need to better utilize the water right is making sure that we have the ability to use all of our water rights in whatever option we choose to do it. We don’t use all our water rights. We let our water rights go right down the Poudre and we are fortunate to leave some of them to ag but there is not a market for all of them. So, we let some of them go down and it’s – I wouldn’t say a waste. Barry – Comment – Not if you let them downstream, its not a waste. It’s essential. Jason – Comment – It is essential. I guess what I am saying is how do we better utilize, capture, or manage those bottom rights that we currently don’t have a strategy to manage other than releasing them out to ag as we need to. We have already decided not to lease out the CBT shares that we have because that is a question we get but because of the challenges with the Colorado River, but we are not leasing those out but we do lease out Poudre River shares and access what we plan on using so that is what I mean by that. • Barry – Q – So the price for NISP keeps increasing over the 10 years that I have been working/looking at this project. Now I think it’s 1/3 billion or something. Just think if that money had been used to increase water use efficiency and agriculture, which is where 70-80% of where water use goes. Get rid of flood agriculture, get rid of center pivot. There was an article in the New York Times last week that says every almond you eat uses 3.2 gallons of water to grow that. So, agriculture is the elephant in the room. And that is whereas a society we should be focusing on increasing water use efficiency and agriculture. That is where we could get the biggest bang for our buck, not building a reservoir. In other parts of this country, they’re tearing dams down and we want to build a big one. I am guessing that thing is never going to be full if its built, ever. All you have to do is look at the climate change data and what’s happening to water. Hydrological cycle on the earth is a closed cycle; we can’t create more H20. It is what it is. The other point is about growth. I taught building mathematical models of biological populations. You would never build a model that didn’t have density dependence. That is feedback. The density dependence happens when resources become limited and population growth has to decline and eventually reach an equilibrium where there is no growth at all. Every single biological population, plants, or animals. You build a model of their population dynamics and there’s feedback for resource limitation. We are a biological population and it’s as if it applies to every other living thing on earth except humans. It is absurd. We just won’t acknowledge that there are limits to growth. There are limits to how much we can consume. There are limits to how much development we’re going to have. If we live by the rules of economics, we’re all going to perish along with the Page 15 05/17/2023 – MINUTES rest of biological diversity. If you look at the data, that’s exactly what’s happening. I study fish and wildlife. All my career has been studying declining populations, every single one. They’re all declining. Everything I work on, and I work internationally too, they are all declining. It is hard to teach a class when everything you are teaching is in decline. We live by the same rules as every other biological organism, and we are going to pay the price. Who is going to pay the price? Our kids. So, it is irresponsible to think we can continue to go on and live the way we’ve lived in the past. We’re advocating our responsibility to the future generations, to our children, and grandchildren, their kids and so on. That is why I get so passionate about it because I really think we are at a phenomenal crisis point. I’ve done a lot of work in India, and I have lived in India. There you can see what the human welfare costs are of exceeding the resource space: tremendous inequality of distribution of wealth, availability, and tremendous human suffering. So, we need to say sometimes, you know you just can’t keep building these things. • Kevin – Q – To ask a question related to policy with regard to how we look at, okay we see this as the growth of the City and so, therefore, is there an actual policy to say that the way we’re managing our water and our sources and delivery and the whole thing is to meet that future growth. Is there some level of policy in place that’s getting us to do that? Because I guess when you look at Halligan for example and I am just going back to the 7,400,200, 72% growth. We have talked about this in the past with respect to the assumptions based on that, climate change with that, and additional evaporated losses, different run off conditions, that whole thing and in the same timeframe, what is the foundation that we are building to. If we have a policy that said, you know actually that same level of storage is needed for our current population and that’s what we are meeting before we are saying we are still open, everybody come here because we are building to here. I just wonder because we’ve said your role is kind of impossible because of the circumstances but is there a policy basis for those decisions to be like no? At a former job of mine we use tenants a lot, like here are tenants that we operate off of for a given for a whole mission as well as for sub levels of projects and so forth. You go back to the tenant, and you’d be like are we doing that or are we doing something else. So, it just feels like if you don’t have that to operate very clearly of, like we are holding on to the growth and these are our assumptions versus we’re building to be truly resilient to our existing community. And yes, that makes it harder to live here, it drives up cost and so forth if water is more. But water is more so I feel like to your point, Barry, how do we start to close that gap? More of it’s not no growth but it’s saying here is the science. If these things are connecting here, we’re planning for this to protect our community and not say like come live here because we have 25% to go. I don’t know, it’s a lot but it feels like you need the tools and the tool sets to be able to do that. Jason – Comment – The plans that I go back to are those strategic objectives on the first one of two slides. One of those is to provide a resilient reliable water supply for the City of Fort Collins. The projected growth in the City of Fort Collins is what I put up there. So, unless we want to change the way we manage our growth, then I Page 16 05/17/2023 – MINUTES feel like it’s my job as a Water Utility Director to make sure that we have water readily available, reliable, resilient, all that stuff for the community. We also have one up there about how do we be regional partners in the water space and in other issues. So that is where I think my job gets even more impossible; how do we recognize what you all are talking about and recognizing the regional partnership that I feel is more of a higher level calling for the cold Colorado River compact, and all this stuff. I think there’s an opportunity between Greeley and us, Greeley is in Weld County but we are the largest city in Larimer County and so we have a leadership role in that. Between Greeley and us in Northern Colorado, what is our role in leadership in that space. Weld County brings in ag. I think we talk a lot about the ag representation in that Northern Colorado Water Alliance and how do we make sure that they are not lost and that there are not buy and dry kind of opportunities. Barry – Comment – Also the water they use for fracking. It is huge quantities of water. Since it is proprietary information who knows what that is doing to water quality, even if we could harvest that water sometime in the future and the expense of purifying that water could be absolutely massive. I mean the reality is we have the water law from the 1870s that in no way envision that the climate change crisis that we are in. There is a small group of people, the ditch owners, and you all know how it works. The people who got the water rights were farmers and miners and they are the ones who still control. They have senior water rights and they’re rich. They are not suffering at all. They are going to have enough water to fill their swimming pools, but it is all the other people. Northern Water is not trying to solve social problems; they are trying to get wealthier. That is what it is all about. So, cities and leadership in cities have to have the courage to call a spade a spade. No, this is not generally benefiting all the citizens of Fort Collins. We need something. We need to recognize the limits to growth, we need to recognize constraints, and we need to have that burden somehow equitably distributed across everyone, so it doesn’t just fall to one group who are already lacking in political and social power. I don’t know how to do all of this, but you can’t begin to solve a problem until you define the problem. That is the first step. Kevin – Comment – Maybe one thing we could consider, and I don’t know where this came from, but this doesn’t have climate change on it. As a City can we do more to define? Jason – Comment – So there’s a lot of other strategic objectives. Kevin – Comment – I get it, but it just feels like we could elevate every one of these because you can’t do 4.4 without that consideration. What can you do as a City if it’s just like our language matters a lot. Our stories matter a lot, our partnerships, from that language and the stories and it’s just like that’s maybe what we can keep contributing. • Julie – Comment – Can you go back to the map that shows the different water districts? Another reason this is one of those widget problems is that the City boundaries are much bigger than the actual water utility. I don’t know if every one of those around us has bought into NISP. Jason – Comment – The ones in the north have not. The Fort Collins Loveland ones down below are part of NISP. Barry – Comment – They may have bought in because they have been misled. Julie – Q – Well we can’t make them not buy in. So, with that Page 17 05/17/2023 – MINUTES black dotted line, that is 24,000 Fort Collins residents. They do not get Fort Collins water. So how do we help them? That is Shirley Peel’s and Tricia Canonico’s districts, and I know that is on their minds when we talk about this because that water provider decided for better or worse… is that 50% there? I can’t remember, maybe I am pulling these numbers out of a hat. The Loveland Fort Collins water district, what does their water portfolio look like? Jason – A – So, 90% is on CBT so depending on the Colorado basin is affected they can be without water or challenged by the water. So, talk about affordable housing and they have more expensive rates than we do. We already have the cheapest rates as a City but the disparity may be greater. Bryan – Comment – I think water is already having an effect on growth I mean CBT is one of the most expensive commonly treated water assets in the Western United States. One-unit costs about $100,000 an acre foot right now and serves about two to four homes per year. That is really expensive. Often developers have to buy that water outright and then dedicate Fort Collins Loveland, or they have to provide the equivalent of money for Fort Collins Loveland to go in and buy that water. That is absolutely priced into a home. So, there’s one factor of growth we have already seen in housing affordability and no offense I can’t afford to buy a home here. I would love to, but I can’t. There are many different reasons for that, but water is playing a really impactful role in the cost of new homes. That is partially done to not impact current residents and no increase their rates out of control by providing these cashes and fees. New people moving here are bearing that burden. • Bryan – Comment – Barry I want to push back in response to your comments a little bit on agriculture being rich. I think that is a little unfair. Maybe on paper theoretically, the theoretical value. Barry – Comment – Ditch owners are rich. Bryan – Comment – Ditch owners are mutual shareholders so its agricultural. It is the farmers themselves. A lot of shares are already owned by municipalities, so they are benefiting from that water. The ditch rights are only for certain times of the year, which is irrigation season, so they need storage. Cities need storage to make use of irrigation rights. I would say there have been a lot of negative economic impacts when municipalities have historically bought ditch rights and transferred the water away from farmers into urban use. Buy and dry you mentioned. We see that in the Arkansas River Valley. The cities have basically gone to dust because there has not been an economic base. I think there needs to be a better balance but also the solution of just transferring water away from agricultural use, you still need storage to provide year-round reliable supplies for municipalities. Barry – Q – Well would you would agree that that is where most of the usage is? Bryan – A – Yeah, absolutely. Barry – Q – Would you agree that current irrigation practices aren’t necessarily state of the art? They may be reflecting the way they’ve irrigated for decades and there could be increased water use efficiency. Bryan – A – Certainly. I think that, like you said, 1.3 billion could be redirected towards that because that is probably the cost of installing drip on all these systems. Barry – Comment – But if a resource is limited and water is limiting, we are all in agreement of that. And the major consumer is Page 18 05/17/2023 – MINUTES the agricultural sector, doesn’t it seem logical that that is where you would target increased water use efficiency. It is a simple resource allocation question. Bryan – Comment – There is misalignment of policies and incentives for farmers to change their practices. That is a state level issue and that is part of the issue of the Colorado River compact that we are seeing right now. Use it or lose it principle and I think there are changes at the state level that makes it easier for people to improve their efficiency. However, the South Platte is super complicated, and I don’t want to get into this for everybody but some of that water still is obligated to go where it has been before. So, you can’t move all the water away from agriculture with efficiency. We have also seen historically that if you improve efficiency farmers are going to expand their use of it and it is obligated to return to meet the compact with. Barry – Q – What is your solution? How would you begin to tackle the problem. Bryan – Q – Which problem? Barry – A – The fact that there is more demand than availability, the demand keeps increasing, and with climate change scenarios, the availability keeps decreasing and demand increases. I mean to me that’s the problem. So how would you go about solving that? Bryan – A – We are making a lot of gains in per capita efficiency that we are seeing in urban use. Barry – Q – Are they fast enough? Only rich people can afford to buy a house here. Bryan – A – Yeah... I mean I would think that new development and regulations going in for new development and the amount of water allowed on a lot is improving. Honestly, I would say that I think there are available supplies. I think capturing it when it is available is difficult. I am not saying build a reservoir everywhere because I agree with you that there are profound ecological impacts. However, I do believe you have to capture what you can when it’s there. Barry – Q – But how about the people who live in the communities downstream from you. What are your ethical obligations to them? Bryan – A – Unknown. Barry – Q – What if your kids live downstream? I think that we are all in this together. There is one planet we are all in this together. • Bryan – Q – That is one question for you (Jason) talking about Halligan, you would build storage capacity greater than current needs necessary. Has the City considered using some of the water to augment flows through the City of Fort Collins and then recapturing below the City. Jason – A – Yeah, that is the advantage of controlling Halligan Reservoir is to control flows, return flow, manage our water rights in a better way for the downstream users. For them, theoretically the health of the Poudre River. • Danielle – Q – So there is some really exciting science on nature- based solutions for water storage that really dramatically improve the resilience of watersheds, particularly during large scale fire events where they cannot only act as fire breaks, but they can also filter and really improve a lot of that turbidity problem, soot etc., during wildfire events. Beavers and beaver dams are really that phenomenal both resilience as well as a storage mechanism. Is your staff looking into this opportunity because it does help address so many of our goals. It helps improve resilience and it also improves economic recreational opportunities too when we still have intact forest for people to recreate in. Jason – A – I can’t say I know the answer to the beaver Page 19 05/17/2023 – MINUTES dam part. I do know that going back to, we do have natural areas and they are really tied into those types of things. I don’t know if you know Jill Oropeza, but she is really dialed into the wildfire mitigation. She’s done all that kind of work, so she is really an expert in that area. I can’t say if we have done it or not. I don’t know but I would be surprised if we haven’t even looked at or talked about. Matt – Comment – Danielle, if I can jump in, when Jared came and spoke to this board a few months ago, he mentioned that they had done some research in conjunction with CPRW about beavers. I don’t know any more than that, but I do remember. Danielle – Comment – I asked a question at that meeting specifically about this so I kind of knew the answer but want to put it on the record that it is a really great opportunity and I think we should do more to look into beaver populations. Barry – Comment – In Rocky Mountain National Park beaver population is really depressed compared to what they were historically. Danielle – Comment – We have some IRA funding for restoring beaver populations there. Barry – Comment – You have got to reduce the elk population, which means you have to have wolves. • Danielle – Q – The other question I had was you present to Council last night… Jason – Comment – Well no, it was a work session. Danielle – A – So what are the next steps and what input do you need from our board? Jason – A – Well I guess I am open to whatever input you want to provide. I didn’t come really seeking input but I am open to it. I would like to partner with any or all of you about these conversations going forward. I don’t have all the answers and my group doesn’t have all the answers. You have a lot of expertise in that and if there’s a willingness to share, I would love to engage in that. To answer your question about follow up from the work session though, we did get clear directions on alternative one/option one. So, we are going to make sure that Northern knows that we are capable, willing and able to participate in those activities as they go forward with their project. So that is option one. We are also setting up a meeting with Greeley to kind of manage that a little bit because they have some of the same things. There is also this idea, well its not really an idea but Northern is interested in hiring a third party to help with the adaptation management and this river master plan. We did engage the Poudre River Coalition and they will not be taking a lead in that role, but they will be at the table as well. So, we’re building this network of groups of cities and non-profits to engage with Northern as they go forward, all within the same capability. As far as the other option 2, those conversations, we will look at some of that infrastructure on the Poudre River, that was one we got support going forward. The storage one I think I need to make sure that I understand. So, from input or feedback from you all, it’s just really to provide, through me or Honoré, and I am also the Water Commission Liaison for the Water Board. So as that group talks about Halligan and Northern, I can come back and engage this group and ask to give updates if that’s of interest. I don’t know if I have a good answer other than that is the next steps we are taking and have taken since the work session. Julie – Comment – Can I interject really quick, so if I understand it’s not that we don’t really have a decision point on Council coming forward. So that is something to consider as well. Page 20 05/17/2023 – MINUTES Barry – Comment – So just coincidence, just yesterday I looked at the current membership and expertise on the Poudre River Coalition and there wasn’t a single CSU scientist who studies rivers and streams. In fact, there was very little scientific expertise. It would be like having a medical advisory board with no doctors or nurses on that board. When I looked at the makeup, the goal was to have a healthy working river. Well, when I hear those two things together, they are in conflict with each other. It is a working river now and it is not healthy. Even the City concluded that, and the subsequent scientific work has concluded that it’s impaired already. I just looked at that and there’s no one who studies the physical and biological dynamics of the river, streams, and watershed. Matt – Comment – Barry, if I can jump in, CPRW, and I have a soft spot for them because I work very closely with them in the way with Cameron Peak Fire. They are not tasked with doing that work, but they do hire people like Dr. Chuck Rhodes and people like that to do the work that you’re saying. To provide information about post-fire restoration. So CPRW was formed in the wake of High Park in collaboration with City of Greeley, Fort Collins, Larimer County to have a group to coordinate efforts. Barry – Q – But isn’t that a different question than what we are talking about. We are talking about water availability and water use. Matt – A – Indeed but I was responding to your thoughts about the coalition not having the right people on the board. They are a small nonprofit that is intended to coordinate restoration activities, tree planting, erosion control, and post fire restoration. So that is their role, and it came up with the question about beavers and things like that, that could add to forest watershed health. So that is just to clarify CPRW’s role. Jason – Comment – That is why they are not taking a lead role in this going forward. They recognize and we recognize the limitations of what they do, the resources they have. But they are a stakeholder on the river, and they have an interest in it and so Northern has asked them to be involved in it. So, to what degree they are involved, it is kind of what we’re all talking about. • Matt – Comment – I just want to say I appreciate Danielle’s question to you about next steps for the board because we can continue to debate on these ideas, but it feels like we need to come up with an agreed upon action items, steps, or approaches. You all have taught me a great deal tonight and that is helpful to see. What does this group do with this discussion? Danielle – Comment – It is such a fascinating conversation, and it also is a little bit déjà vu. It seems like we continually in all of these issues arrive at the limits to growth, the consumption-based economy that we are operating under and these very optimistic setting future scenarios that we are planning towards. Would it be helpful for us as a group to have a futures planning session where we think about how do we actually decouple resource use from population, extant or future? Where we think about what all of these potential futures are instead of this Polyana futuristic everything’s great situation and how do we build for a resilient future that includes both that great Polyana situation as well as a much more realistic two degrees of warming future we are moving towards. I feel like we may be more effective as an organization if we have those same tenants, that you were mentioning earlier Kevin, that we Page 21 05/17/2023 – MINUTES could really have some of these philosophic conversations about how do we communicate as a board when we come up against these limits to growth? How do we communicate as a board when we come up against some of these decoupled. I wish the conversation tonight was how do we put a better lever on reducing our water usage and get a better lever on changing our values such that we value these life sustaining ecosystem services. But we don’t have that framework right now to have those conversations, and I feel like there’s work we could do as a board to try and make that happen. Matt – Comment – Your futures idea seems to me to be a really innovative way to develop a work plan for this group. Danielle – Comment – I like that. Kevin – Comment – And to help with the Council longer term big product that has this stuff built in for decision making framework, and a lot of staff arguably is doing some of the same stuff but there are often bounds that are being worked with and I think that’s a hard position. Honoré – Q – Julie, I wonder if the Ad hoc committee has talked about increasing the opportunity for interdisciplinary conversation between boards. We have our super issues meeting but I know you are probably aware of the TBL pilot board. That was all the boards that were supported by sustainability services. This was 2018 or 2019 came together on a single topic. Anything coming out of that on a Ad hoc committee. Julie – A – Yeah because there were some weird legal limitations from boards meeting each other and collaborating, super weird legal stuff. So we have it as part of the new policy, there will be a road but it has to come from a request from one of the boards and at the approval of the liaisons. You can’t just meet with the other boards. That will be coming. I think the Ad hoc board will be done next month or the month after. So hopefully adopt those in the next two months. • Matt – Q – So this board could not meet with the Water Commission? Julie – A – No. It all started because the Youth Advisory Board wanted to meet with a different Youth Advisory Board from a different town. Which would have been great because there are a bunch of kids and that would be awesome but then they were like no can’t do it. • Jason – Comment – So one thing we didn’t talk too much about is the water conservation side of things. That is part of that Colorado Water Alliance because we can set conservation goals as a City of Fort Collins, but Fort Collins Loveland doesn’t have to adhere by them. So, it does get into that values that priorities and really that conversation. We have talked about that as maybe that is potentially the landing frame although I am optimistic in that but if we could get at least the districts in the City of Fort Collins to agree on not putting Kentucky bluegrass into your lawn and we have xeriscaping. So having those kinds of conversations that get some consistency across, so everyone in Fort Collins can play by the same conservation rule. I think that’d be one good thing and a good way that I think we could actually pull that lever to do but again, it takes these partnerships, these conversations, this kind of shared value commitment to doing that. I did want to let you know we are having those conversations and trying to do that as well. • Julie – Comment – If any of you live in those other water districts, Page 22 05/17/2023 – MINUTES they have boards that frequently have elections just to let you know. Danielle – Comment – I live smack dab in the middle of that blue district, but we are served by Alco, so that map is really interesting to me. Jason – Comment – There are enclaves in our district that are served by Alco and Fort Collins. Just old systems. That was a question that I think you asked, and the pipes are their pipes and their system and there are not cross connections. But that is why there is a box at the top and Alco, that is Anheuser Busch. The City of Fort Collins serves that. Matt – Comment – I am South Fort Collins. Danielle – Comment – We just had elections, I think. Matt – Comment – They do not do as good of a job in communicating when there is a watermain break. Jason – Comment – They contract that out. So, I will highlight my group, we have crews that go out at two, three in the morning, New Year’s, Christmas Day, whatever to fix that stuff and if you live in Fort Collins-Loveland or ELCO they wait until Monday where they can call a company to come out and do it. It is a totally different customer service level expectation. • Jason – Comment – Whenever Honoré wants me back or whenever you all want, I can come back. I can give you updates on anything water. This is just one presentation but there are cool things; the whole one water philosophy, the whole structure that we are doing, we are the leading edge in that regard and in the industry so there is a lot of cool stuff going on. It is complicated but it is cool. Wastewater is fascinating. Meadow Springs Ranch is an amazing place that not many people get to. It does take about four hours of a day but to go up there and see the water, the conservation that we have done up there. To me it is the biggest unknown sustainable success we have in the City. The redirection of the black footed fairies, the prairie dogs, the butterfly. We delisted the Colorado butterfly plant that we have done out there. It is amazing out there and not too many know about it, which is fine in some regards but I think the residents of Fort Collins should be very proud of that operation. 8. BOARD MEMBER REPORTS a. Matt – It is not really a board member report, but I would like to promote for the City of Fort Collins, this Saturday is the hazardous household waste collection event. It is a great thing. You take your paint, pesticides and the City takes care of it for you. It keeps it out of landfills, out of gutters, out of your sheds, under your sink. Barry – Q – Where do you take that? Matt – A – I believe it is at 625 9th Street. Drive in, drop it off, drive out. Honoré – Comment – Just north of New Belgium. Danielle – Comment – And if your truck is empty, you can go get some free mulch Saturday as well. b. Danielle – So I attended the Bicycle Advisory Committee meeting last month and the only thing of note I really want to highlight is this really amazing memo the committee is hoping to put forward to really advocate for a bike park and /or additional bike infrastructure and more diverse infrastructure for the City. One thing that I found really striking in the presentation from the Parks Department was that the current inventory for actual infrastructure that’s being built in parks moving forward disproportionately serves very young children, and there really isn’t a lot of infrastructure serving kind of middle of the road kids in terms of adolescents, older kids. They’re all dependent upon a very traditional form or ideal for recreation. There is also a very distinct need for us as a culture to get more people used to bikes at an earlier age because this is Page 23 05/17/2023 – MINUTES shown to be a really important social factors in people’s acceptance of biking as a potential alternate form of transportation and getting people into biking clubs. Having more biking parks is a really great way to do that. And then third bike parks have a very different water use requirements than Kentucky bluegrass that we currently have in a lot of our built infrastructure parks. It is a great way of introducing more xeriscaping, reducing overall water usage as well as again serving a more diverse portion of our community and potentially providing some wildlife habitats. I think this is a potential issue. If this memo goes forward that there’s some potential engagement of our group, and it’s something to be thinking about the next time we have any voting items or presentations from the Parks Department that come before the board. Matt – Q – So not like a paved bike park but like we have a natural hill. Danielle – A – What was the quote of working against other people’s imagination? In my mind it’s only a xeriscape landscape. Kevin – A – I will say I think it is everything. It’s a bike culture thing. When I ride around now, I’m personally not feeling like our bike culture is growing. I’m feeling like we have a plan to divert more trips to other modes. But the plan feels impossible when you’re interacting with what’s out there right now. It feels like more cars. We can’t just say we’re going to build more bike lanes. We have to look at how do we just get more people culturally looking in that direction. To the point of what it looks like, I think it should just be everything. Whatever can get youth this opportunity and freedom to get out here by their house without having to be shuttled somewhere. In my world, I am getting reports just in the last couple of weeks of people taking a trip to what’s called Erie Single Track where they take an open space and build these neat flowy, downhill lines of different levels and abilities. In between them are all native grasses and it’s beautiful and great that they are out there. Windsor just announced they are building another park that has an asphalt pump track and people are commuting from here and driving to take their kids to go ride bikes. I am blown away and I just really want to work that cause because I think there’s a lot of benefits including environmental on multiple levels. c. Dawson – The discussion point that I am curious to bring up, as we’ve talked about in our previous meeting, the 6-month planning calendar is looking a bit wider over the next month or two. So, we did reach out to the new chief sustainability officer, Jacob Castillo and he is available for 6/21 what would be our meeting if we wanted to cancel the meeting and do a more social, get to know, Jacob, maybe have some more conversation around what futures planning could look like. So, cancel the meeting and have more of a social at Avo’s like we did last year, I believe. So just interested to see who would be available to do that in June. The board expressed interest; no motion needed. The June meeting has been canceled. Honore and I won’t be able to make it but Kelly, Honoré, and myself meet in planning for these meetings and everything so perhaps from that conversation when we meet we could discuss what July could potentially look like maybe regarding some of this future planning. 9. STAFF REPORTS 10. OTHER BUSINESS a. Six Month Calendar Review • Interest expressed in Land Use Code and Oil and Gas topics and combining some of the topics. Honoré will look to see if it is possible. Page 24 05/17/2023 – MINUTES • June – Canceled • July • Economic Health Strategic Plan – Circular Economy • Oil and Gas Reverse Setbacks & Oil and Gas Operational Standards • August • LUC landscape standard update • Noah Beals coming back for update on Land Use Code • Parking Lot • ESD Background/Overview 11. ADJOURNMENT a. (8:31pm) Minutes approved by a vote of the Board/Commission on 7/19/2023