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HomeMy WebLinkAboutNatural Resources Advisory Board - Minutes - 07/21/2006MINUTES CITY OF FORT COLLINS NATURAL RESOURCES ADVISORY BOARD Regular Meeting 200 W. Mountain, Suite A June 21, 2006 For Reference: Linda Knowlton, NRAB Chair - 223-9328 Ben Manvel, Council Liaison - 217-1932 John Stokes, Staff Liaison - 221-6263 Board Members Present Linda Knowlton, Joann Thomas, Jerry Hart, Alan Apt, Ryan Siaychock, Nate Donovan Board Members Absent Glen Colton, Clint Skutchan, Rob Petterson, Staff Present Natural Resources Dent: John Stokes Guests Nicole Seltzer, Northern Colorado Water Conservatory District Agenda Review Linda would like to complete the discussion on having point people for various priority items that were identified in the special meeting. Glen suggested people take a lead position and bring to the board the relevant information. Public Comments None Northern Colorado Water Conservatory District Background: Nicole Seltzer The Northern Colorado Water Conservatory was created in 1937. The conservatory was created in order to facilitate the construction of a trans -basin water diversion project. It diverts water from the west slope of Colorado near Granby and Grand Lake. There's a tunnel underneath Rocky Mountain National Park that brings that water to the Big Thompson Basin and from there the water ends up in Horsetooth, Carter Lake, and Boulder Reservoir. We are the fiscal agent that re -pays the federal government for the construction costs of the original project. We supply the CBT system which in this area is Horsetooth Reservoir, we supply about half of the city of Fort Collins water supply. And the way that works is that every year Fort Collins pays us an assessment charge of about $400,000 a year in order to help facilitate, operation and maintenance of that project. The water assessment funds from our district boundaries go down Broomfield up North of Fort Collins and follow the South Platte River to the east. Those assessment charges make up 40% of our revenue and the other 60% is made up in property tax. One mille Levi property tax on all real property within the district boundaries. The line item on your Natural Resources Advisory Board June 21, 2006 Page 2 of 9 property tax bill is from NCWCD in the amount from $11 to $15 and you help to pay for about half of Fort Collins water supply through that. The conservancy district manage and operate and maintain those facilities. We have a lot of contracts with the bureau of reclamation on how we take care of the facilities. The seven power plants on the system and those are operated by Western Area Power Administration. We're not involved in the power process but in terms the water features we operate and maintain all those. Our main headquarters are in Berthoud with about 100 employees there. The pumping facility is on Lake Granby and we have about 30 employees there. Fort Collins is the forth largest CVT unit in Boulder owning 6%. Northern Integrated Supply Project presentation by Nicole Seltzer: This is a regional project to be coordinated by the district. The goal is to provide about 40,000 of acre feet of new yield to 16 municipalities and water districts within our district boundaries. The cost will be $407M. • Knowlton: If one of the participants can't make their payments, taxpayers get stuck with it? • Seltzer: Taxpayers are paying for it anyway. • Knowlton: Rate payers are committing to it, but what if they can't? • Seltzer: The answer that I've always been given is that this is a highly marketable resource. Once this project is built and filled up with water, it's not going to be hard to sell your portion of it. New reservoir storage is at a premium; it's very difficult to fill it. If there was a participant who defaulted on their loan I think it would be very easy for them to sell it off to someone else. • Knowlton: So this isn't regarded as a high -risk investment. • Seltzer: No, the numbers look very feasible. • Knowlton: Once you start diverting water, how long will it take to fill it? And if it isn't full, does each participant still get its promised amount of water? • Seltzer: To fill we estimate it will take about 3-5 years. It won't be completely full all the time, but will be a great recreation site. • Stokes: Do you ever worry about dust blowing off during a really dry year? • Seltzer: It is a concern. That's probably one of those things that you fix as it occurs. • Stokes: My concern is if significant amounts of dust are blown off that becomes an air quality issue and potentially a health issue. • Seltzer: That's actually a really good question. • Knowlton: That should be taken into account in your #6 here (referring to the hand-out). • Seltzer: I will take that back and ask. • Stokes: One thought about the land that's being taken out of irrigated agriculture. It seems like there should be a mitigation component as the water districts and municipalities buy this water. Because that land just sits there and blows away. Unless someone goes out there and does a CRP or what ever. • Seltzer: Thorton was required to do that as part of the transfer. Natural Resources Advisory Board June 21, 2006 Page 3 of 9 • Stokes: Another option would be that they would be required to conserve that land and put a conservation easement on it when they sell it. It would probably go back to agriculture then back to grazing and dry lands and it could be managed for all kinds of values other than sub -divisions. It seems to me that when a new project is being built, we should be thinking about every single mechanism we can utilize to maximize environmental quality. If that's conserving farms and ranches that we take the water, or wind power to power the system, what ever it is, we should be trying to maximize the environmental quality. I don't get the sense that's happening. That's not a criticism of you or the district, I just feel that there's an opportunity that we aren't taking advantage of as we build these new projects. I think you can achieve the construction of these projects as well as keeping with environmental conservation. • Seltzer: We are in the middle of permitting; we'd need to get a permit to do anything. It puts you in an us -versus -them antagonistic situation in some way. I would love to see that happening, but I see that happening once there is a permit in place and we're actually doing design of the project. • Hart: But where's the incentive to do that? It would have to be a part of the permit. • Stokes: That's the hard part. • Apt: What implemented activities have been accomplished, such as the water rights through Grey Mountain Reservoir, the south bound rights, have those been completed? • Seltzer: The south bound rights are completed. The Grey Mountain are currently being negotiated with objectors which we think will be fine. The court date for that is in August. • Apt: Harden? Is that bad news? • Seltzer: Do you guys know much about that? It's a long story. • Apt: It's not happening though? • Seltzer: Central Colorado Water Conservatory District owns 1/3 of that right along with our 1/3 rights. Central has recently filed on a change case for their 1/3 of their water right to develop it. And we are opposing that; this is a long term 5 year water court case. • Apt: Have the participating contracts been developed yet? • Seltzer: They're yearly, you can't do multi -year contracts. • Apt: Are the original participants still engaged? • Seltzer: No, Greeley opted to go with Halligan Siemen. East Larimer County Water is patterning with the county. Fort Collins and Loveland dropped out and the Little Thompson Water District is building their own reservoir. • Apt: Are the costs that were allocated to each of the participants still based on their share of firm yield? Has each of the participants successfully paid their toll costs for the years 2004/2005? • Seltzter: Yes. • Apt: Thanks. Natural Resources Advisory Board June 21, 2006 Page 4 of 9 • Seltzer: Latimer County has developed their own comment system for the NEPA process. They're a cooperating agency, and they also have to do the location for the reservoir. The commissioners who have developed with Latimer County planning some whole system of public comment and open houses and developing commissioner comments based on open house feed -back which well then go to the core. If you want to have a conversation with Rob about Latimer County process and how Fort Collins can fit into that ... their environmental advisory board and their agricultural board are going to consider comments and then give them to the commissioner and role them up in a comprehensive comment process. • Apt: You mentioned in terms of art? • Seltzer: Location and Extent, that's their planning, review process, which is a non -binding process. • Hart: There was a federal law that passed to support the Northern Colorado Water Conservatory District. Do you have any information on that? • Seltzer: Yes, that was a title transfer of canal facility. • Hart: I read the law but I didn't understand the meaning. • Seltzer: We are going through this process where slowly some of the features of the CDD (?) project are being titled over to us by the Bureau of Reclamation. I think the Bureau of Reclamation would like to turn over more and more of these projects to local entities. And we're actually currently working with them to also turn over all the power plants to us. We're doing a business plan to see if it's feasible or not. We would take over maintenance and operation of all the power plants; that will be 2 years before we know for sure. • Hart: Interesting, thanks. Staychock discusses the draft he sent out. I'd like to get initial comments. The idea again is as an agenda item we would have guest presentations both capital letters, that would be a title of what the agenda item would be. The idea is that the agenda regular meetings could facilitate these guest presentations that could include one, two or three people from the outside to give these presentations and yet try to make it to where we can keep it very organized within one hour to where people don't go off on tangents. The idea would be that a guest presentation would be allotted 13 minutes. And within that 13 minutes they are given their 13 minutes to give their presentation. They were called lectures because it holds a certain definition. Clint and I spent a lot of time on the general rules and would like some general feedback and questions as to what I thought was important. The idea was basically a person's given 13 minutes, they give us their interpretation of a natural resource policy issue and then we go for up to 15 minutes of questions and answer session and then that's it. No one lecturer could have more than 20 minutes of presentation. Within the 13 minutes of presenting no one's allowed to interrupt them; it's like an actual public speaking event to where they're trying to persuade us in some fashion. The other big comments are they have to be formally invited by staff or the NRAB; send materials ahead of time such as topics of discussion. The parameters are we invite them, it's a formal invitation and everyone receives the email. Once an invitee returns the official correspondence they're considered a lecturer. Each lecturer is expected to present an informative factual based presentation that helps us understand the Natural Resources Advisory Board June 21, 2006 Page 5 of 9 issue better. No one guest presentation that could consist of one to several lecturers that's presenting different issues can exceed past one hour, that's the limit. When there's more than two lectures, the chair and vice chair decide how much time is allotted and who goes first. NRAB reserve the right to stop a lecture from continuing if they abuse the process. Basically if someone's up there giving a personal soap box opinion that's not appropriate. It's there responsibility to make sure we have the necessary equipment. I couldn't think of any thing else that would be important to include. Does anyone else have any other ideas? • Donovan: June 28 in Greeley, I don't know if the location's been set yet. • Seltzer: Oh the CILT yeah. Laura's got cancelled. • Donovan: Maybe there'd be a presentation by Brad Winn of the Northern Colorado Water Conservancy District about the south back water well issue. The Colorado of Leadership Institute for Leadership Training, I serve on the board and we're putting together this training, educational discussion session. • Knowlton: I have a comment and a question. I hate the word lecture. • Staychock: Do you understand what it means? • Knowlton: I do not want to come here and be lectured. I just have an aversion to that and it's only under parameters that you use lecturer and in the beginning part you talk about presenters and presentations. I'm willing to have a presentation, a briefing, not a lecture. I just hate that term. • Staychock: The idea was to learn things. • Knowlton: Well we learn things all the time. What Nicole just gave us was not a lecture. She just gave us a presentation. I object to that. • Staychock: There was a method to my madness but it's a fatal flaw I can change. • Knowlton: I just don't know what's wrong with presenter. • Hart: What ever you call it, it doesn't change what we receive. • Knowlton: Right, it's just the perception. • Donovan: You want to be very explicit about the purpose of the these kinds of sessions. • Knowlton: My question then is, who would this apply to? Give me a specific example. • Staychock: We brought this up two months ago, almost this exact same issue. We were taking about... • Knowlton: What issue? • Staychock: Tensions started rising ... we're not going to have this group in here unless this group can talk and bring their point of view here. Well if that group's going to come then I want my group to talk; and that's how this discussion came about. And so I was asked to draft up these rules to have outside presenters such as SWIG, or the citizen planners. This is for any group that is outside the realm, whether from CSU, non-profit organization. We know these people have a certain interpretation. • Knowlton: When you say outside the realm, so Nicole is inside... • Staychock: Outside the city of Fort Collins. 0 Knowlton: What about Nicole? Natural Resources Advisory Board June 21, 2006 Page 6 of 9 • Staychock: We invited Nicole to be part of a guest presentation, two capital letters, it's certain, and she would have been allowed the 13 minutes to give a presentation, and then 15 minutes for question and answer. • Donovan: Could she serve in the role of guest presentation from the outside as well as an insider, like presumably she did tonight? • Staychock: Tonight it was not considered a guest presentation. She gave us an hour and a half, almost two hours. • Donovan: I'm not worried about the time. I'm just worried about how you characterize someone you would invite. • Thomas: We had a meeting a couple of years ago where the board conservancies here in the Sierra Club, that was the big commotion. Are you trying to set up that this is a pro/con thing, that there's a for and against. • Staychock: Exactly. • Thomas: Well I like that except I think it would be hard. Nicole's presentation was very cordial and real nice. I think it would have been a different atmosphere if it had been anything other than that. • Staychock: Absolutely. I'm not saying that every month we have one of these. This is just the foundation for saying, okay, next month we want to have these two or three different sides present because we don't understand why they're for or against an issue. And then we provide them with this statement and say okay. It's like an extended public involvement. You're going to be given these 13 minutes and we're going to open up the floor to you and you're allowed to present for up to 13 minutes. After that we're going to ask you up to 15 minutes of question and answer. • Knowlton: So let me ask a question. • Staychock: When you take public involvement, public speaking, at any academic institution you're given guidelines on how to present to people. There's a three minuter, 5 minuter, 8 minuter and 10. You have to have your act together if you're given 13 minutes. It's a formal situation. • Knowlton: So let's say tonight, since we're having this presentation from the Northern District, that if somebody from SWIG said, well I want to be there because I don't agree with them and I want to be there to be able to give another view point. So then they would be subject to this where the district wouldn't have been? • Staychock: Whoever's involved within the guest presentation, they're specifically invited by someone in the book, formally invited to participate within a guest presentation as an agenda item. • Knowlton: Well what if we said, to be fair, we have to invite somebody from SWIG. • Staychock: And that's the exact idea. We're saying, okay, we're going to invite SWIG, and whoever's for it. • Knowlton: But then we wouldn't have been able to get a good presentation from Nicole. Natural Resources Advisory Board June 21, 2006 Page 7 of 9 • Staychock: But that's a different agenda item. There's a different thing happening there. • Apt: If we do invite SWIG in, we give them an hour and a half. We just gave the district an hour and a half, why would we give SWIG 13 minutes? • Staychock: I don't know. • Hart: To me, what this was, was a good hour of background and information for me. I wasn't as up on the project as some of you folks involved in it. Maybe if we're going to follow this kind of process when we're having pros and cons of the issues, the first thing we have to do is get brought up to speed as a board about what the whole concept is and then that's part one. Part 2 is what are the issues and what are the pros and cons. • Staychock: And that was the idea. That's why I was asked to draft this. • Hart: I don't know if we can get someone like Nicole here twice. • Staychock: Another concern that came up was what if city staff has a lot of information on pertinent to the topics that are covered within the guest presentation. Well then city staff gets another agenda item. The idea of this was to open up and to understand different pros and cons. That was my task. • Thomas: And there are a lot more issues about the risk part that she went into and they weren't even touched on, like evaporation and how long it's going to take to build and the guestimate is a long time. • Staychock: And so this was in response to understanding the pros and cons from people that... and basically formalize it make it serious and give them 13 minutes. It's not a lot of time; but it's more than enough time to get your issues out if you know how to give a presentation. • Stokes: So Ryan this was designed specifically as I recall, for situations where we were going to have pro/con. • Staychock: That's right. • Stokes: So, it's not intended to address all situations or all presentations. It's just when we specifically set it up to have two or three parties to present different view points and just like council they've got a process, you get your few minutes, and it's just a formal process when you've got parties that may disagree with each other coming in to make a presentation. I think that's a reasonably good way to deal with that. I don't think it's a good way to get back ground like Jeri said. • Staychock: No, this is not for every presentation that anyone gives us. This is saying, hey, this sounds like an issue for a guest presentation, or what ever you call, you can call it something else. But notice how I put Guest Presentation in capital; it's a formal name whereas in one agenda item it would be called a Guest Presentation including pro/con. • Stokes: I would just articulate that. First of all I would call them guidelines and not rules, that's always helpful. And the other thing I would make clear in the preamble is that this is for those situations when we have parties of opposing view points who want to come in and make presentations to us. It doesn't apply to all presentations to the board, just those specific instances. So it's pretty limited. 0 Staychock: Yes, it's super limited. Natural Resources Advisory Board June 21, 2006 Page 8 of 9 • Stokes: It's only going to happen once or twice a year; it's no big deal. • Staychock: That's right. • Hart: Given that we just had the district in I would like to hear from SWIG. • Stokes: We tried to get SWIG here and they just never got their act together. I don't know what's going on; they're not really a group. It's just a really interesting group of people. • Apt: For my money right now, particularly given John's comment about the inevitability of reservoirs, I'm sure there are different points of view on that. • Stokes: Absolutely. • Apt: But one of the positive things this board could do would be work with those people who are involved with putting this proposal together to make sure that the environmental benefits were maximized and the environmental costs were minimal. I think that would be very effective root or action this board's taken. How this board can go about doing that would be really key. • Donovan: But our role is to advise the City Council so. • Stokes: You could advise City Council of this issue. You can say we believe this issue has an impact on the city of Fort Collins for the following reasons and this is why and we have some information or advise we'd like to pass on to you. The other thing you might want to do is hot sync the board with the environmental advisory board of the county. I'm sure they're paying a lot of attention to this at the county level. Maybe you want to establish some sort of communication and see what's going on in their minds. I don't know what they're thinking. Does anybody know anyone on that board right now? Knowlton: Yes, I do. I will follow up and see. Adjournment The board adjourned the meeting at 9:00pm Natural Resources Advisory Board June 21, 2006 Page 9 of 9 Submitted by John Stokes Director, Natural Resources Approved by the Board on: 0 C'k 1 � , 2006 Signed John S Date Director, Natural Resources