HomeMy WebLinkAboutCOUNCIL - AGENDA ITEM - 09/04/2007 - RESOLUTION 2007-078 AUTHORIZING A REVOCABLE PERMIT ITEM NUMBER: 22
AGENDA ITEM SUMMARY DATE: September 4, 2007
FORT COLLINS CITY COUNCIL STAFF: Lindsay Kuntz
SUBJECT
Resolution 2007-078 Authorizing A Revocable Permit to the Colorado Department of Agriculture
for the Urban Front Range Monitoring Network Project for Monitoring Pesticides and
Nitrates/Nitrites in Groundwater.
RECOMMENDATION
Staff recommends adoption of the Resolution.
The Land Conservation and Stewardship Board and the Water Board recommend adoption of the
Resolution.
FINANCIAL IMPACT
The City is not charging for the Revocable Permits because the monitoring well locations will not
interfere with the use of the City-owned property and the periodic groundwater testing will be
conducted only every two to three years.
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
The Colorado Department of Agriculture is developing the Urban Front Range Monitoring Network
which will cover urban areas from Fort Collins to Pueblo as part of the Colorado Agricultural
Chemicals and Groundwater Protection Program. The Colorado Department of Agriculture has
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requested that the City of Fort Collins grant permission to enter various parcels owned by the City
to install monitoring wells and conduct periodic groundwater testing as part of their Urban Area
Monitoring Well Project.
BACKGROUND
State Senate Bill 90-126(C.R.S.25-8-205.5)mandates that the Colorado Department of Agriculture
be responsible for the monitoring of groundwater to assess its quality with respect to agricultural
chemicals. The Program has effectively established well networks in nearly all the major agricultural
regions of Colorado to help achieve this goal. With the increase in use of pesticides and fertilizers
in urban areas by a variety of user types, a Program goal for 2007 is to establish a long-term
monitoring well network which will effectively work to provide baseline data for all major urbanized
September 4, 2007 -2- Item No. 22
areas along the Front Range corridor. The Project will involve the installation, maintaining, and
sampling of monitoring wells on various City properties owned by the Natural Areas and Parks
departments. Each monitoring well will have flush mounts with lids bolted down which should not
inhibit grounds maintenance but yet would provide needed security. Utility locates will be scheduled
prior to any installations. Sampling will be performed every two to three years and a complimentary
copy of the lab results will be made available to the City of Fort Collins. All data will be studied and
used for preparation of Annual Reports and uploaded to the Agricultural Chemicals and
Groundwater Protection Program and Groundwater Quality Database System.
City staff from both the Parks and Natural Areas departments have met with Department of
Agriculture staff to review the proposal. Both departments have agreed to the Colorado Department
of Agriculture's request.
ATTACHMENTS
1. Location Map
2. Minutes from the August 2007 meeting of the Land Conservation and Stewardship Board.
3. Minutes from August 2007 meeting of the Water Board.
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Land Conservation & Stewardship Board ATTACHMENT 2
August 8, 2007
Department of Agriculture Monitoring Well Request
• Sears: My memo may be going to Council on August 21, 2007. The memo is
regarding a resolution that Council will approve to allow the Department of
Agriculture to install several ground water monitoring wells at various local
natural areas and parks. At the moment they are looking at three different natural
areas and I'm not sure how many park sites. Monitoring wells would be placed in
a situation that we would approve, probably close to a trail, road or a parking lot
to limit the disturbance and to make them easy to access for installation and
monitoring. The purpose of the monitoring wells is to monitor levels of pesticide
in the water over a 30 year period. The monitoring lids would be flush with the
ground and have a locked lid, which would almost be totally innocuous. The
current natural areas sites would be NIX, Redtail and Ross.
• Grooms: Is this purely a monitoring site?
• Sears: Yes. They are trying to understand the effects of pesticides on urban
agricultural setting.
• Eckert: These are not many wells,but it will give them an early indicator/
warning.
• Haines: Are there several areas that they are looking for and it just happens to be
natural areas that were selected?
• Sears: They are looking for areas along the drainages, and taking the easy route
by coming to the City of Fort Collins instead of a dozen different private land
owners. Their goal is to get it all done by the end of October. I feel this is an
environmentally good thing to be monitoring.
Haines motioned to recommend to Council that they approve the Colorado
Department of Agriculture's request to install monitoring wells. Grooms second, and
it was unanimously approved.
ATTACHMENT
Water Board Meeting-August 23, 2007
Ground Water Monitorine Proiect—Department of Aericulture
Regulatory and Government Affairs Manager Carol Webb introduced Troy Bauder from
Colorado State University who is representing the Colorado Department of Agriculture at
the meeting. The reason for making the presentation is that they are asking the Water
Board to make a recommendation to City Council to grant the Colorado Department of
Agriculture access to a number of parcels owned by the City of Fort Collins. This would
be four natural areas, eight city parks and one City golf course where monitoring wells
would be installed to conduct ground water testing for a long-term ground water testing
program the Colorado Department of Agriculture is working on.
Mr. Bauder gave brief overview of the Agriculture Chemicals and Groundwater
Protection Act. The Agriculture Groundwater Protection Act is a legislative program
which has been around since 1990. There are three agencies that cooperate in the
implementation of this program: Colorado Department of Agriculture (CDA), Colorado
State University Cooperative Extension (CSUCE) and Colorado
do Department of Public
Health and Environment (CDPHE). Colorado State University's roll is mainly training
and education and applied research on practices that prevent groundwater contamination
by pesticides and fertilizers. The Act defines agricultural chemicals as all pesticides and
commercial fertilizers used in both urban and rural settings. Mr. Bauder's roll is mainly
education and training of the general public of agricultural chemical users to prevent
contamination. He also interacts with CDA on their monitoring program and helping
them to design and interpret data. His title is Water Quality Specialist.
The primary focus of the program is on more of the irrigated agricultural of the state.
The Act does specify, and they have a mandate, that they are to work with the urban area
as well and that does include the average homeowner using a pesticide or fertilizer. They
have done some monitoring up and down the Front Range. The CDA is responsible for
monitoring groundwater to detect the presence of agricultural chemicals. They are trying
to develop what they call a dedicated, monitoring well network either of their own wells
or someone's existing well. For example, in the City and County of Denver, they are
going to use thirty of their existing wells mostly in parks and golf courses. Well samples
are analyzed for selected pesticides and basic inorganic elements including nitrate. The
pesticides are selected based on the frequency of use in an area and the physical and
chemical properties of the pesticide. The groundwater monitoring program provides a
baseline upon which to gauge trends in groundwater quality. The CDOHE is responsible
for analysis and interpretation of the groundwater sample data.
The proposal that Mr. Bauder was bringing before the Water Board is to develop a
network in Fort Collins because there does not seem to be an existing system of
monitoring wells in the public owned areas of Fort Collins. Colorado Department of
Agriculture is proposing to drill up to twelve wells. Mr. Bauder's colleague, Karl Mauch
of CDA was not able to be at the Water Board meeting, has worked with City staff to
come up with the agree upon locations. There are two reasons they would like to work
1
ATTACHMENT
with the City or another public entity and install monitoring wells on their property. The
primary one is government owned land or publicly owned land is not turned over much.
They do install monitoring wells on private land, but then you have keep track of the land
if the property sells and work with new owners and make sure you still have access. The
other reason is the City tends to own a lot of land along creeks and shallow ground water
in areas that intersect domestic use of agricultural chemicals as well as use b the City
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itself or other entities.
Board Member Mike Connor asked what course of action CDA pursues if the levels are
beyond the threshold. The first time they collect data on a well, they do a routine screen
of inorganic chemicals or things you find in the water all the time. These are not their
primary interest. The primary interest in analyzing data is in nitrate nitrogen and a sweet
of about 100 pesticides. They have taken about 2,000 samples out of about 1,200 wells
in the State of Colorado though out the state, and so far they have only found three hits
above the drinking water standard for pesticides. About one-third of the wells have had
some pesticides detected at a very low level. To answer the question as to what would be
the course of action at that point, if they found a pesticide above the drinking water
standard, which is very rare, the Commissioner of Agriculture would have to notify the
manufacturer of that pesticide that it's been found above the drinking water standard.
CDA would certainly inform the City of Fort Collins of their find. Beyond that, they
would work with the City to see if education was needed,but the CDA does not have any
enforcement policy. The point of notifying the manufacturing of the product is that it is
required by law.
Chairperson Doug Yadon asked if the data collected would be public information. Mr.
Bauder stated that by its nature the information collected has to be public information
since it is collected with public money. It would be in their annual report, data reports
and they would make a fact sheet out of the data collected. There is an on-line water
quality data base where the information could be found. There is no cost to the City.
Staff Recommendation
Carol Webb Regulatory and Government Affairs Manager recommended that we allow
the CDA to monitor the wells for testing. The Land Conservation Board has already
approved this and is recommending the well testing in the City of Fort Collins to the City
Council
Board Member Mike Connor moved that the Water Board lend support to the proposal to
approve the monitoring of wells in the City of Fort Collins to City Council. Board
Member John Bartholow seconded the motion. The motion passed unanimously.
2
RESOLUTION 2007-078
OF THE COUNCIL OF THE CITY OF FORT COLLINS
AUTHORIZING A REVOCABLE PERMIT TO
THE COLORADO DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE
FOR THE URBAN FRONT RANGE MONITORING NETWORK PROJECT
FOR MONITORING PESTICIDES AND NITRATES/NITRITES
IN GROUNDWATER
WHEREAS,the Colorado General Assembly has declared that the public policy of the State
of Colorado is to protect groundwater and the environment from impairment or degradation due to
the improper use of agricultural chemicals,while allowing for the proper use of such chemicals;and
WHEREAS, in furtherance of that purpose, the Colorado Commissioner of Agriculture is
charged with identi 'n agricultural management areas of th g fyi g gn estate and conducting monitoring
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programs to determine the presence of any agricultural chemicals in groundwater and the likelihood
that an agricultural chemical will enter the groundwater based on predictions of its behavior; and
WHEREAS, as part of the Colorado Agricultural Chemicals and Groundwater Protection
Program established under that authority, the Colorado Department of Agriculture (the
"Department")is developing the Urban Front Range Monitoring Network(the"Project")to develop
groundwater monitoring data in urban areas from Fort Collins to Pueblo; and
WHEREAS, the Department has requested that the City of Fort Collins cooperate with the
Project by allowing the Department to install, maintain and sample monitoring wells on various
properties owned by the City,and in particular on certain Cityparks and natural areas properties;and
WHEREAS, City Parks and Natural Areas staffs have worked with Department staff to
identify mutually acceptable locations for the installation and operation of groundwater monitoring
wells; and
WHEREAS, the Department has agreed that each monitoring well will be flush-mounted
with a bolted lid to prevent interference with ground maintenance or risks to public safety, and in
order to secure the monitoring well; and
WHEREAS, the frequency of sampling from the monitoring wells will most likely be once
every two to three years, although sampling frequency could vary; and
WHEREAS, the Department will bear all costs of installation and maintenance of the
monitoring wells, and will provide all lab results from groundwater sampling from the monitoring
wells to the City at no cost to the City; and
WHEREAS, upon revocation of the permission authorized hereunder,the Department will
remove or relinquish to the City any monitoring wells remaining in place at the City's request; and
WHEREAS,based on these agreed upon conditions, the Department has requested that the
City grant to it a permit or license for the installation of 14 groundwater monitoring wells on City
property,at or in the vicinity of the specific locations described on Exhibit"A",attached hereto and
incorporated herein by this reference (the"Permitted Wells"); and
WHEREAS, in light of the public purposes to be served and the benefits to the City of the
preservation of groundwater and environmental quality,the potential benefit to the City of obtaining
regular monitoring data about its properties, and the fact that the monitoring wells will have little
or no impact on City operations, City staff recommends that no compensation be required for the
rights granted hereunder; and
WHEREAS, the Land Conservation and Stewardship Board considered the installation,
operation and maintenance of the proposed Permitted Wells at its regular meeting in August, and
recommended that the City Council authorize the issuance of a permit to allow the Department to
proceed as proposed; and
WHEREAS,the Water Board considered the installation, operation and maintenance of the
proposed Permitted Wells at its regular meeting in August, and recommended that the City Council
authorize the issuance of a permit to allow the Department to proceed as proposed; and
WHEREAS,Article XI, Section 10,of the Charter of the City of Fort Collins authorizes the
Council to permit the use or occupation of any street, alley, or public place, provided that such
permit shall be revocable by the Council at its pleasure, whether or not such right to revoke is
expressly reserved in such permit.
NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED BY THE COUNCIL OF THE CITY OF FORT
COLLINS that the Mayor is hereby authorized to execute such documents as are necessary to grant
a revocable permit consistent with the terms of this Resolution, to the Department as described
herein,together with such additional terms and conditions as the City Manager,in consultation with
the City Attorney, deems necessary or appropriate to protect the interests of the City or effectuate
the purposes of this Resolution.
Passed and adopted at a regular meeting of the Council of the City of Fort Collins this 4th
day of September, A.D. 2007.
Mayor
ATTEST:
City Clerk