 Well, it is three o'clock, so I'd like to call the June 21st, 2021 water, Longmont Water Board meeting to order. Heather, could you please start with the roll call? Yes. Todd Williams. Here. Allison Gould. Here. Kathy Peterson. Here. Scott Holwick is absent today. Roger Lang. Here. And Ken Houston. Here. Nelson Tipton. Here. Wes Lowry. Here. Kevin Bowden. Here. Francie Jaffe. Here. Jason Elkins. Here. And Heather McIntyre is here. Council Member Martin. Here. We're good to go. Okay. We have a quorum for the meeting. Yes. So the next item is approval of the April 19, 2021 water board meeting minutes. Are there any questions, comments on the. Meeting minutes. And I'm sorry, I'm trying to get to her. We get to gallery views. Sorry. I am not seeing any hands up. And I know Allison is on her way to a screen. So I can't see her. And if there are no comments on April 19, 2021 water board minutes, we need a motion to accept those. Kathy is making the motion to accept. Is there a second? Roger is making the second. Any further discussion? Hearing none. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Okay. The minutes are approved. The next item item four is the water status report. Yeah. I'll go ahead and give the water status for June 21st. So the flow on the St. Brain Creek today at 10 a.m. was 321. Part 351 CFS. With the historical average. For this date at 525 CFS. St. Brain Creek peaked on June 7th at a flow rate of 1,120 CFS. There was currently no active call in the St. Brain Creek, but. I kind of a change could probably later in this week could happen. No, so. But currently no call in St. Brain Creek. Calling the main stem of the South Platte River is sterling. Number one canal. Bees you. Admin number 14154. Priority date of 101888. So we had a on the main stem. We had a lot of on the main stem. We had a lot of on the main stem. We had a lot of on the main stem. There was a free river for quite several weeks. And over the weekend, it went to the senior, just more of a senior. So at the beginning of June, the St. Brain Basin storage was at 86%. So I figure they'll, the water commissioner will give a. End of June beginning of July. And I. I predict that number to go from 86 to somewhere in the. 90% tile. I think this for a lot of mod is we're all private reservoir at. What rock preserve is all but full. Between releases and the spillway. We're releasing a total of 250 CFS. Union reservoir is also full. And we're releasing approximately eight CFS. And birch Lake is full. Lake Macintosh is full. So. For the majority of ownership of lawn moths, based on reservoir, weren't, weren't pretty good shape. We had a really good wet spring, which really helped us push as much as I'm sure you guys all noticed the Algarkey ditch was running full for several months. We were had to push as hard as we could to get that full and. And with some reposition of but rock water into union and pushing as hard as we could, we did get it full. So water resources as a group was pretty, pretty happy that that occurred. And that's all I have. Is there any questions? Any questions for Nelson. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. On the report. I'm not seeing any. Okay. Thank you, Nelson. All right. Item five is public invited to be heard in special presentations. Can are there. Or I guess let me start with Heather. There's no public invited to be heard. Is that correct? We do not have any. That's correct. Are there any special presentations today? No special presentations. Okay. All right. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Item six, which is event agenda revisions and submission of documents. I know Allison has one item. She'd like to bring up. But before that. Can are there any agenda revisions or submission? Submission of documents. No submission of documents. I would like to note for the record. That I general business item eight. I would like to postpone and tell the July. Water board meeting. Although I would like to make a few. Explanatory comments on that particular item that you. That you will be reviewing in July. Okay. Thank you. Allison, I know before the meeting you mentioned, you wanted to maybe add an item to this agenda with regards to cybersecurity. Do you want to. Mention what you're thinking there. Yes. Thank you. I would like to add. Cyber security to the agenda for discussion. We want to. Can maybe make that item eight C. On the agenda. Does that work? That would be fine. Yeah. I don't know that we'll. If you're, if there's. Planning to take action, we can do eight C. Otherwise we can put it under items from board. That would be fine. Maybe, maybe that makes more sense. So we'll make a 10 C, which will be that, that item. That makes sense. Okay. That sounds good. Well, thank you. I guess with that. Am I right? West. There's under seven. There's no development activity this month. You are correct. We're on to eight a. So Ken, do you want to give a quick overview of the Erwin Thomas water supply agreement? Yes. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. What we have is. We had a proposal to bring a water supply agreement. Before the board. Unfortunately. We were not able to get all the parties to the agreement. We were not able to get. To get comments and. Finalize that agreement. Get it ready for you. Essentially the Erwin Thomas property is, is a part two parcels of property located. East of the harvest junction. As you may know, just immediately east of the harvest junction area. It's where left hand Creek. Is flowing kind of Southwest and Northeast crosses. And. Flows into the same rank Creek. And just East of that area. There's a undeveloped parcel of property, both on the North and South side of. Ken Pratt Boulevard property in the North side of Ken Pratt Boulevard is open. Is owned by the city of Longmont. And is what we refer to as a golden farms open space area. And the property South of Ken Pratt Boulevard is the main. Partial. Both properties are scheduled for. A gravel mining operation. That really predates annexation into the city. That was where gravel mines that were permitted. Through Boulder County. Prior to annexation of Longmont. Well over two decades ago. The property owned by the city of Longmont is its own. Gold and sand and gravel company. And it has always, you know, It's always been planned for my gravel mining. More recently. The Costco. Approach the city about the development. And. The gravel resource is still owned by the Golden farm. Company. The predecessor of the golden golden sand and gravel company. And it has always, you know, It's always been planned for my gravel mining. More recently. I think it's a great opportunity to really take this opportunity to really approach the city about the development and, and construction of a Costco. Store. And on the very North. West corner of the whole. Erwin Thomas. Property. So I'd be immediately East of. Left-hand Creek and then South of Ken Pratt Boulevard. In addition to the Longmont houses and authorities in the process of purchasing. of that property for an affordable housing development. And then there's about another 15 or so acres that the Golden Farms Company is planning on having for future development of commercial and possibly mixed use development. But basically, in essence, the very northwest corner of that property will be developed. As far as that overall development process, the gravel mining needs to occur so that it can be done and kind of hopefully it'll be done well on its way before the other developments are completed and opened up. As part of the overall package for the Costco, the actual property underneath the Costco site and the affordable housing site was going to be mined. And so there's kind of ongoing negotiations between aggregate industries who purchased the gravel resource from Golden Farms and Golden Farms about how to make aggregate industries whole and also how they'll be able to mine. So there's quite a bit of activity going on out in that area right now in terms of planning and developing projects and processes. So it's in a long month's interest to try to keep all those projects, both affordable housing and the Costco development, moving forward. One of the aspects of that is to get a lease back of some of the historical water, especially the bonus ditch irrigates those properties. The property on the north side of Ken Pratt Boulevard, going all the way back to the late 1990s when originally the county purchased that property and then the county sold it to the city's open space. In that original county purchase, the shares of the bonus ditch over there were contemplated by agreement to be used for the mining operation. And then the historical bonus on the south side until that property actually develops would naturally be leased back under historical lease back. Currently it's a hayfield and they're using it to grow hay but eventually when they mine it as a historical lease back, we'll be able to use that until the development occurs and we'll need that water. Ultimately that water needs to be transferred and used for development. We actually do have a current change case filed for the bonus ditch that includes all of those shares of water. The two shares on the north side are being changed only for the augmentation plan, the 34 shares on the south side are being changed for municipal use as well. So that just kind of wanted to give you a heads up on this is a fairly big important water supply agreement. We had hoped it'd be ready but it's not quite there yet but we expect to bring it to the July meeting and we'll give much more information and maps and actual numbers to the water board at that time but just wanted to give you a heads up so you can kind of anticipate that coming before you at the July meeting. I'm happy to answer any questions. If not, we'll bring it to you and Jai. Okay, are there any questions for Ken on the overview of the agreement that will be brought in July? I'm not seeing any. Okay, I guess we'll revisit that in July. Thank you, Ken. Item 8B is a Keshe and Lou review, Wes. Yeah, so the board has in their packets some information on Keshe and Lou and I'll draw your attention to page 14 of your packet. What's new in the packet from what you've seen in your prior quarterly review is the cost for new water supplies and that's where I was gonna focus my attention on for the most part today and even more so towards Windy Gap firming project. So we've updated those costs primarily due and driven by the increased requirement for the federal lawsuit. So there was a payment that's gonna need to be made for that and so we've adjusted for that as well as some construction cost index adjustments. And so the new Windy Gap firming project cost has shown is $18,528 an acre foot and as you'll recall, it was currently at $17,683 so it went up almost $850. And so we've shown the average cost for the four different items, the water conservation, Windy Gap, union enlargement, button rock enlargement and then a weighted average which is the, as it relates to the firm yield but just to remind the board in the past, you've chosen to look at cash and loo as it most represented by Windy Gap firming. So those are the, that's the adjusted number at $18,528. We did also include quarterly information for CBT transactions and that information is given the sum for the quarter average acre foot cost on CBT was $76,853 per acre foot. So that's right around $58,400 per unit and that range of as you would see in the following pages range anywhere from 54,000 unit to 62,500. So there's a pretty good range. It seems to be stabilizing a bit but it's still considerably higher than the cost for new water supplies. Other than that, I really don't have a whole lot to share but I'm happy to answer some questions if you have any. Thank you, Wes. Are there any questions for us? So I'll go ahead, Roger. You're muted, Roger. The number's on the far right on the chart. They're off the screen now. I'm trying to, one's in parentheses, the other's bold. What is the difference between them? The $17,990 versus $16,660. So the bolded number, the $17,999 is simply the arithmetic average of the four. So if you took the sum and added them up and divided by four, you come up with roughly $17,999. The bracketed one is a weighted average based upon the firm yield. So what we've done, and we have it kind of footnoted on the number one, it's further down in our thing that it says that the weighted average construction costs for new water supplies is based upon the respective dry yield. So we've put more weight towards a dry yield on some than others. And so, but again, I think the emphasis is the project that we're looking at moving forward with is the Windy Gap Firming. And that's higher than the two, which is that $18,528. Okay. All right, thanks. You're welcome. Okay, are there any other questions? So as Wes mentioned, I guess we're gonna be consistent with what we've done previously, which is to set the cash in lieu with the current cost per acre foot of Windy Gap Firming. We would go from the $17,683 to $18,528. I don't know if there's any discussion by the board of that. If not, we would need a motion to go ahead and adjust the, I guess the recommendation to city council to go from the $17,683 to the $18,528. So it looks like Roger just made the motion. Is there a second? Kathy is seconding that motion. Welcome, Allison, we can see you. So glad you could patch in there. Is there any further discussion on the change or the recommendation to council on the cash in lieu? I'm not seeing any. So all those in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed? Okay, that motion carries unanimously. All right, so now we are on to section nine and nine A is a monthly water supply update. Wes, are you gonna handle that? Yeah, I really, Nelson did a pretty thorough job of capturing what's what we've done and what's going on. I'll just reiterate that Button Rock and Union are now full. Those were, and those were two pretty large vessels that were important for Longmont to fill. We use Button Rock in the winter and we use Union Reservoir in the summer. And so quite an accomplishment and appreciate everyone's help to make that happen. We, again, as Nelson said, we peaked on the seventh. The average peak usually happens around the 10th. So right around what you maybe consider a normal peak time. The last time we seen flows over 1,000 CFS in the peak, that would have been back in 2017. And then it was a few years before that we had it again. So it's kind of, I went back and just looked at the last 10 to 15 years and we've been over 1,000 CFS, probably a little over half that time, but it was refreshing to see the higher flows compared to last year where we didn't even get into the 500 CFS range. So again, we're expecting, well, if you were to look at the snowpack, there's really no readings for that right now for all intents and purposes, most that's ran out. And that's why we're expecting a call in the same terrain to occur probably later this week. The Highland will be probably the call for quite a while, as you guys may recall, that are the largest ditch in the same rain basin. They're taking over 250 CFS of the river right now. So it takes a little while for the Highland to drop out, but we're just thankful that we were able to put as much into storage as we did. We think that when we get the state water commissioners report for the year or for the month end, we're gonna expect to have nearly everything full in the basin. So other than that, I really don't have a whole lot more unless there's a couple of questions. Are there any questions for Wes? Wes, I do have one. Did you guys end up having to move any water from Button Rock down into Union? I know, obviously it went real wet for a while and maybe you had moved some prior to that. Just curious what you ended up with. We did, yes, we did. Back in May, from about May 1st to the 26th, we put some water in there, roughly around 1,000 acre feet. On the 27th of May, some of our decrees start coming in, but we had ran the numbers and realized that had we not done that, we weren't probably gonna have enough capacity in the oligarchy ditch to get that filled. So preemptively, we moved some water into Button Rock as the board will recall, with Button Rock being a non-channel reservoir, it's easier for us to fill that quickly than the off-channel reservoir of Union. And so we essentially moved some clover basin decree that was water that was eligible to be stored in both Button Rock and Union. And we got that filled and then now we're storing some of that same clover basin water back or until it was full up in Button Rock. So to answer your question, yes, we moved about 1,000 acre feet in there. Okay, thank you. Any other questions for Wes? I am not seeing any. All right, we'll move on to item 9B, which is the monthly legislative report, Ken. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Honestly, the best report is the legislature's done. So there really weren't a lot of real interesting water bills this year. There were a couple other bills I thought I would highlight in addition to what a little bit of water bills there were. Just go through a couple of them that ended up being passed. The first one was House Bill 1008, which was the Forest Health Project Financing. That bill essentially now allows special forest health districts to be formed. It requires the owners of the property and the county that it's occurring in to approve it before it can go, but it's kind of an interesting, it's an effort to try to get forest bills, forest health projects built more closely to where they're needed up in the mountains. So not a lot of impact there. Probably the biggest water bill was House Bill 1046. Everybody calls it the Turnback Bill, but that was, the title was the Water Share Right Municipal Ditch Corporation Bill. Don't know who named that. That was the bill that originally was intended to allow turnback into the ditches, into the minority, I'll call them minority shareholders in ditches, especially in the case of a change case where say for example, Longmont will change part half of the ditch out of the ditch. When Longmont's not using it, we couldn't allow our shares to be used by the other shareholders in the ditch. The courts have not been allowing that more recently. And so there was a bill that went through really to allow turnback and to not put basically a limit on the remaining shareholders in the unchained shares or at least minority shareholders who are still using their shares within the ditch for the historical irrigation. That bill was probably one of the more hotly contested bills. And honestly, it got a little bit of a lot of pushback primarily by users downstream on the main stem of the plat who wanted to see water go down there, both historical irrigation ditches, but also in my estimation, a lot of the entities that are looking at water on the lower plat in the metro area wanted to see more water down there. So the final bill that came out essentially says that shareholders in a mutual ditch can take, the mutual ditch company can allow the water to be distributed as it sees fit, that you don't have to do it pro rata based on the ownership in the ditch, as long as it's through some rotation scheme. That's really how all of the ditch companies have historically worked for 150 years. So that really didn't change anything. Just kind of put that into statute language. The parts that said if you change a case out of the ditch, you can't let that water go back in the ditch. That was in the original bills and was struck. And so the bill really doesn't do much, but it doesn't hurt any either. It doesn't prohibit it. It will now be up to each individual case, which is what many argued that that should be adjudicated in every single change case. We'll see. I think that's, long mod has historically had language to set if we're not using our water, it can be used in a ditch. Although once a year we have to declare whether we're going to use our water as a changed water or irrigation water. We can't go back and forth, but we, for our use on the historically irrigated land, but for the ditch itself you could, but now you can't. That I expect that bill to come forward in the future. Again, I expect there to be a push for that particular concept as the water court is really prohibiting anymore on cases. And that was really about the only true water bill we had all year. So we did have a related bill, which was House Bill 1052 water related. It basically defined pump hydroelectric as a renewable energy source. There have been many people over the years wanting to have hydro power defined as renewable energy because it, well it is in my mind. It's never counted as a renewable energy source. And so there was a bill, the bill 1042 came through to allow that because it didn't define how you could build that project. There was a lot of opposition. And the opposition wanted to make sure, and basically it was those who don't support storage reservoirs, water storage reservoirs. So the bill basically, while it defines it, it says as long as it's the reservoir that's constructed as part of the pumped hydroelectric system is not located on a natural waterway. So that really kind of left that long term argument about on-channel storage. But it does open it up if you build a completely off-stream hydro pumped storage hydroelectric project, it does allow that to be count towards renewable energy. So it's maybe a step in the right direction, trying to get us into one of the solutions for renewable energy as a pump source. So it at least starts that. And again, not directly a water bill, but a related water bill was house bill 1226. It was a bill which allowed for more robust aquatic nuisance species testing. If anybody's ever driven a boat to a reservoir, anymore you have to have your boat inspected for aquatic nuisance species, quagga mussels, zebra mussels, snails, those millfoil, all kinds of plant species. And this bill just actually allows officers who are doing those inspections to physically require a vehicle to stop. Many people didn't realize they had a check station and you didn't have to stop at the check station. I think I just drive right through and there's nothing they could do. Now that's a $100 fine, still not a big fine, but in my mind, I think that was a positive bill. Anything you do for aquatic nuisance species control in my mind is positive for the water industry. I always support that. And then house bill 1260 was just kind of continuing support for the state water plan. And they appropriated about $20 million for moving the current state water plan update as well as some money for the base and round tables to implement the state water plan update as it moves forward. So again, just kind of preferably related. And then finally, again, this one is again, it's fire, but it's related, it was set up bill 240, which is watershed restoration grant program. And that actually I do believe is positive for us. It appropriated $20 million to put out for grants to do watershed restoration primarily for grant funding for stewardship to prevent wildfire, future wildfires. And we are doing some efforts in the same rain basin to try to look at wildfire prevention instead of always just reacting to the wildfire afterwards. And so we believe some of that money might be available locally in our basin for the forest collaborative effort that's going on right now between the US Forest Service Boulder County, City of Longmont and other entities in the same rain basin. So we think that is positive. So really that's all I have on the legislation. And I think it's probably good news or not a lot of water bills because nobody was trying to do anything crazy with water this year. So I think we made it through this session. Pretty well unscathed from the water standpoint. Okay, are there any questions for Ken on the legislative items? The only thing I would mention is I think that Senate Bill 240 also allows that part of that 20 million to be used with the current recovery efforts. And the Northern District is the sponsor for the upper portion of the East troublesome recovery. So they're able to access that as part of their matching funds or their contribution as the sponsor with NRCS. And since Longmont obviously is a owner of quite a bit of CBT water, I think that's a positive development. The issue is ultimately gonna be how much money can our NRCS come up with on the federal side to match the sponsors portion. So there's gonna be, there's still a question as to the scope of the East troublesome recovery, but Northern is moving forward with a portion of the money they've been allocated with NRCS and having that grant money to the extent they can get some of that from the state will help to offset what would have to be used directly out of Northern's budget. So anyway, just another kind of additional item on that one. Any other questions or comments for Ken on anything? I'm Allison. Yes, thank you. I just wanted, I was wondering if any of our planned activities were affected at all or delayed because of the failure of the gap water bill? Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't quite hear that. Can you repeat that? I was wondering if we had any planned activities that were affected at all by the gap water bill that was kind of contemplated and that ultimately went nowhere? Yeah, we really, we don't, we haven't, at least on Longmont's end, we haven't postponed any projects on that. Okay, are there other questions that that could, there's quite a bit of detail behind the scenes with regards to the, what's defined as gap water. And I think the issue is there was federal regulation, which was kind of conflicting and the state was maybe gonna take jurisdiction over what they call gap waters in the context of wetlands and permitting. So anyway, that's kind of a, in a nutshell what Allison's alluding to and the state decided not to, at this point, take over, create. I guess they still took jurisdiction, but they have not created within the, they go CDP, they were gonna create staffing to help administer that, which they have not done today. So there's kind of some questions as to ultimately if they aren't gonna take jurisdiction, how they're actually gonna administer that. So anyway, there's a lot behind the scenes there that with that question. So anyway, any other questions? Go ahead, Allison. I'll follow up question. And yeah, you're absolutely right. But I guess where that question came from is I was just wondering if any of the fire, course fire mitigation activities, as far as doing some of the cleanup would fall within the gap water and would create any delays for us trying to remediate. So that's kind of where that question was coming from, but it sounds like that's not necessarily a concern for us. But the second question was if there was anything, I saw the interim committee was posted this morning for the water, for the general assembly. And I was just wondering if you had any word on whether or not there were any big water bills that were gonna be passed before the interim committee that would be kind of coming up early and hot and the upcoming legislative session. Yeah, I haven't heard that the interim water committee has taken up any discussion on any bills. So of course they can't pass any, they can only recommend it. And then it becomes the first bills essentially to get introduced in January for water bills come out of the interim committee. You know, we have heard that there's real strong talk about it and a summer session being called by the governor. But if they do that, it can only act on a limited number of bills that are pertinent to whatever reason the special session is called. And I would be really, really surprised if there's any water bills in a special session this summer. I would think if there was a special session would revolve around COVID or the economic recovery or the economic recovery or items like that, but financial items, but I wouldn't see any water bills. So I really don't see any water bills coming before next January, but we do track, we do follow the interim water committee actions because you really do need to be listening to those and giving input so that come January the bill looks like you want it to look like. You know, it's always harder to amend it in January if it's gone through the Interim Legislative Committee first. So yeah, we'll continue to track those. Great, thank you, Ken. Any other questions? Okay, looks like we're on to item nine C, which is a windy gap firming project update, Ken. Yeah, quick update on windy gap. There's probably not a lot more since our last meeting just to refresh the federal lawsuit was settled, signed. The first installment, it was a $15 million settlement and that first installment's gone forward. And I'm not a hundred percent sure if the money's actually been transferred because the Grand County Foundation that's going to receive it and then disperse it, they weren't quite ready for this big a chunk of money. And I mean, you know, I'm sure they're a great organization, but this is real big time with going to have a lot of people looking at it, you know, as compared to more of a local entity that works within Grand County. So they're still working a little bit to get that done. But with that process, you know, it's all been signed by the courts, everything's done and that funding will come. The first five million now, the remaining 10 later on as the project proceeds. All the participants are on board. Right now, probably the biggest push is the financing portion of it. The municipal sub-district is looking very hard at trying to get everything done and ready for the pooled financing bond issuance. Probably the biggest new item coming out of the financing is that the city of Broomfield, city and county of Broomfield, they have since they're a county, in addition to a city, they're a county, their process takes a little bit longer to go through financing. For one thing, Longmont, we've already gone to our voters. We've had the issuance of the bonds approved by the voters. So at this point, we just need council to authorize staff to actually sell the bonds. So that will be occurring in July and then we'll be able to go out and sell the bonds. We'll plan on having our money up to municipal sub-district early August. Unfortunately for the city and county of Broomfield, they have to have like 30 days between a first reading and a second reading of an ordinance, the issue bonds. And then instead of, in Longmont's case, when we do an ordinance, we have a 10 day waiting period where anybody in the public can actually petition against the ordinance. Since they're a county, they have a 30 day. So they're gonna have first reading in early July, second reading in early, like July, early August, and then there's like a 30 day waiting period. Then they go out and sell bonds. So they won't have their funding available until September. So that's gonna slightly delay the payment by Broomfield. But all the other participants, I think I'll be ready to go and moving forward. Broomfield has signed an agreement that allows them to bring their money a few weeks later than they otherwise would with the acquiescence of all the other project participants. But kind of the flip side of that to kind of make sure that we're all comfortable that Broomfield is serious about going forward, they were gonna bring 22 million in cash. They've already brought 2 million last January. So they were told, you need to bring the remainder 20 million of cash cash to the project right now. And so they have actually already done that. And those funds have been transferred up to Northern to go into an escrow account, similar to the escrow account that we set up for a long months money when we send it up. So right now we're comfortable with Broomfield's counsel and that everything's moving forward smoothly there. Just kind of a timing issue. So that's a little bit of a timing issue. Still plan on once the pooled financing will sell early August. Our financing will sell late July and the funds will be available early August. So the bulk of all the money, both pooled financing and the other participants, cash financing will all be up there early August. So getting really close to ready to issue the notice to proceed for the contractor. I mean, that's really kind of already happening there. They're getting ready to construct or staging area and they're fully ready. So looks like we might actually have a good ground breaking, probably sometime in August and certainly would want to invite water board members to attend that ground breaking. If you're interested in going, I think it'll probably be pretty big. A lot of people there I hope and a lot of excitement about getting the project moving forward. So that's really where we are right now. Nothing on the ground yet, but we're getting really close and we feel like we're moving forward in a positive manner. So we'd be happy to answer any questions if there are any on that arena. Great. Are there any questions for Ken? Ken, I do have one question. So when we did the cash and move it looks like the costs have gone up just under 5% is the increase in the per acre foot cost. I assume with the bond issue I think you gave yourself enough room that if the cost went up it would still fit within the bond issuance. Does it also, I think the other question was is if the cost goes up, was that due to rates? And maybe the amount would be the same but there'd have to be redistribution or prioritization of work within the overall use of the money from the rates. Have you been working through that is in terms of what that means from a practical standpoint in terms of are there certain projects? Did you have enough contingency in there where it covers this increase or is there having to be a shifting around the money to cover that increased cost? Just curious. Sure, that's a great question. And the short answer is yes, there was and will be enough money and contingency in the project. So of that increase about one half of the increase is attributable about $400 per acre foot of the 800 acre foot increase in the cash and loo was attributable to the federal settlement. The federal settlement is actually going to be. So the first thing is that won't only the first one third of that about 400,000 will be charged to us right away on the next annual assessment. And then the remaining one third will occur about halfway through the project a couple of years from now. The remaining one third will occur at the end of the project when it gets completed. I'm ready and accepted by the state engineer's office. So that spreads that half of the cost out quite a bit. It actually is not going to be charged against the initial capital for the project. It's going to be in the yearly assessments that we pay every year for windy gap, which is good for us because we will then be able to have future cash and loo payments the actual payment you're reviewed today. That those funds will be available to pay that off over time. And so there won't be, we won't need to go to either the bond or to any rates of the customers for that cash. That'll be future cash and loo which will pretty easily cover that amount. The other half is project escalation costs primarily due to the delay. The project had enough contingency in it that right now the project is not asking the participants to come to the table with additional funding to cover those delay costs. They're basically being picked up by the contingency. Well, what that does is that narrows your contingency which would be a cause for concern in year three or four if you need those contingency funds. And for us, we really have two avenues if that were to exceed the contingency that is. So as a result, we're not being asked at this point for that additional half of the cost increase. If the contingency isn't enough to, because we've eaten some up with this right now, A, we'll have future cash and loo available to pay that but also our bond issuance of the amount that the voters approved which was $36.3 million. I believe we only need about 34 to 35 million for to actually bring all the cash that we need to bring forward. And we're a little bit lower than we were looking at a little while ago, mostly because we've had additional cash and loo come in between even though the federal cost us money and unfortunately delayed it. During that delay, we had additional cash and loo money come in and so one of our financial strategies is we're basically taking all our cash and loo and putting it on the project as the first dollars in then we're using that high mountain dam fund as the next dollars, all of that. And then we had some cash in our cash reserves that we were going to use. So in essence, the amount we need to bond is reduced by the amount of additional cash and loo that we've realized over the last couple of years. And so yeah, there is in addition to all of the above there's a little bit of money in the bond. So we got a little bit of money in the bond and we'll have money if for some reason all the contingency is eaten up then we'd have cash and loo and we'd have a little more there. So there's quite a bit of, I had to say when we're talking millions of dollars I had to say quite a bit, but yeah, there is funding there that allows us more not currently at all concerned about where we are from the financial standpoint because we do have that both of those gaps they're covered. Okay, thank you. Yeah, it does. All right, so now there's no further questions on that. Move on to 9D, which is the water resource engineering projects update, Jason. Thank you chairman. Yeah, I just wanted to give the board a quick update on a couple of projects. So the South St. Vrain pipeline, as you might recall we've got two projects kind of going simultaneously. We've got the rehab project and then we've got the pump station project. We have a Smith and Loveless under contract to build the pump station. They've submitted their first engineering drawings and we've reviewed them and they look very good. We have comments, but there's no red flags, nothing that's gonna delay the project. So far, everything's going good. And if anything, we're making up for some lost time. They submitted their first round of engineering drawings two weeks early. So we were actually caught off guard. We weren't quite prepared for that. So they surprised us. So that was a good thing. So the pump station's moving forward and then knock on wood. We think we have the entire section of the entire South St. Vrain pipeline unclogged now. We think we have all the material out of it from the flood. We're in the process of running a camera through to try to confirm this and then try to identify any point repairs we're gonna need to make. But so far, everything's looking very promising. We have a contract executed with C&L water solutions to get the liner installed. So that's on order. That's looking to be about 12 to 16 weeks lead time but that was expected and everything is on schedule. So I've been saying it for a while and I'm gonna keep saying it. I think the South St. Vrain pipeline will be back online early spring of next year. With maybe even a pump station. So it's going pretty good. So so far it's been a busy schedule but everything's looking very promising and I'll keep the board updated as things unfold and hopefully we're kind of over the hump on some of this stuff and it's smooth sailing from here on out. Any question? Thank you. Jason, is there any other, that's the update? Is there another project or is that the approval? Unless the board has specific questions. Those are the two big projects I have updates on. Some of the other stuff is not a lot of change. So I'd use necessary. All right. Are there any questions for Jason on the South St. Vrain pipeline projects? I'm not seeing any. Great. Thank you, Jason. Yeah, thanks everybody. Okay, we're on to agenda 10 items from the board. First off is review of major project listings and items tentatively scheduled for future board meetings. Are there any board members having anything you want to bring up on this item? Okay. I'm not seeing any on 10B. We'll have the item or the discussion item is future in-person monthly meetings discussion. Ken, are you going to take that? Yes, be happy to start out there. So as Water Board may recall when we all went home and the pandemic really took off one of the things we started doing was having our Water Board meetings online. And we are allowed to do that during emergency when emergency declarations occur. And as a result, we've been off on remote ever since. The city council is now ready to go back into in-person meetings. They'll actually be starting their first in-person meeting, I believe, June 29th, at the end of this month. I think everybody's excited for that. As a result, we will, I don't know if there's going to be a declaration, but essentially the emergency is over in that, from a legal standpoint of how you can and can't have meetings that pretty much kind of sets us into a situation where I think if Ward is still not quite comfortable yet in having in-person meetings, we can probably go for a little bit longer on remote, but we're getting close to the end of the emergency. So I did want to pose to the board that we may want to look at an in-person meeting, go back to in-person meetings in July to be consistent with what city council is now going to be doing. But I wanted to open up for the board to get your feelings and discussion on that. Okay, thank you Ken. Any questions, comments from the Water Board going back to in-person meetings? I guess I'll give, Roger, go ahead. You're muted again, Roger. Sorry about that. If you had some comments, you could go ahead, Todd, but my general opinion is if everybody's headed in that direction, I don't know that I see any reason from my standpoint why we wouldn't want to head there next month's meeting unless there's something that I don't understand that it would be delaying us from do that, but I'd be comfortable doing that. I'm just offering my opinion. Okay, and Roger, I'm of the same mind. I think my experience is I think I'd much rather have in-person meetings. I think you gain a lot more from those than I like the Zoom meetings. I think they've worked well given the situation, but to the extent we can come back in person, I would much prefer that. So that's kind of where I'm at, plus it gives me an opportunity to meet Allison in person and some of the Board members we've added since they'd have been only virtual to date. So anyway, that's where I'm at. I don't know, Allison, if you have any thoughts or Kathy, if you have any thoughts. I would second both Roger and Chairman Williams your thoughts and look forward to meeting you all in person. I also think it's, you'd lose a lot. I mean, I think we've done the best we can, thanks to the staff actually doing the Zoom meetings, but you're really, I think you lose a lot of the nuance when it's all, it gets really dry when it's all virtual. And as the father of three teenage boys and have to do that school for everyone, I'll second that comment, Kathy. It's tough to kind of stay engaged as much as when you're there in person. So thank you for that comment. All right, do you have what you need on that then, Ken? I think do we need a motion or anything along those lines to go back or do we just go ahead and set it for next month in person? Well, I do have one clarifying question I would like to ask. And that is staff is comfortable having the meeting where we normally have it at the service center, but that's a little bit smaller room. We're usually not overrun with public if I had to be heard at the meeting, but if a lot of public comment might get a little tight there, staff is very comfortable and it makes a lot easier if we can have it there, but we could also if water boards not, it's comfortable having an in-person meeting but not comfortable having it here, we could look for other locations, but we're finding doing that. And yeah, if all's I need is a consensus from the board, if you are so inclined, we'll start those meetings next month. I guess my perspective is we've, I think we've only had one or two public invited to be heard and not more than probably one of meeting since I've been on the water board. So I'm fine having it at the service center as it always has been. Does anybody have an issue with that suggestion that just keeps it simple as well for staff, which I appreciate. Okay, let's go that direction then. Thank you. So move on to item, we added an item 10C which is cyber security. Allison, do you wanna go ahead and give? Yeah, thank you very much. As all of you probably have, I'm sure you've heard quite a bit on the news about the colonial pipeline hack. And as part of that coverage, one thing that I continuously heard is that there's local governments are potentially going to be targeted as a part of those type of compromising cyber operations. So I thought it might be timely to bring that up to the water board and just ask some really basic questions to our, the folks who would be overseeing that specifically what type of cyber security do we use? And what is our plan if we do have any sort of system compromise? And those are things that I'm sure we don't necessarily wanna talk about in a very publicized setting for security purposes. So I wanted to bring up with the board, if that is something maybe we could hear a little bit more about, but it may be a more secure setting. So perhaps in some sort of like executive session, if we do have that coming up at our next in-person meeting, that's all I have. And do you wanna, is that something we could put on the agenda and then go ahead and set for an executive session topic? I mean, we can, I guess I'd be talking to the attorneys how much can we say in open session and then maybe, you know, obviously go into executive session for items as Allison references that are sensitive in nature or the attorneys feel like are compromising can be covered under the executive session rules. Yes, the whole arena is a really good question and really good subject because that absolutely is very high priority, you know, top of some of the things that we're looking at. That being said, you know, we do have a pretty good cybersecurity here, but as is obvious, it can hit anybody, you know, anywhere. The short answer for long month, at least the water is that we are a little bit lucky in that we basically run a gravity system and that gravity system can actually operate completely independently of a skate of control. It's certainly harder and it certainly takes more effort, but parts of our system are manual operated. So we can do that, but there is a lot of things that we'd be more than happy to update water board on. The nice thing about water system security is that we're actually protected at the federal level, kind of even a step above the state on non-disclosure laws at the federal level. So we're able to not disclose a lot of things. In fact, we're actually required not to disclose a lot of things about how a water system operates from the federal level, you know, based upon the clean drinking water acts. And so, yeah, that would be if we do it, then what I would do is set up with our city attorney's office and executive session for the July or August. I'll have to check with them first, but probably one of those two meetings I'll set up an executive session and we can give you, I can't tell you, I don't even get a copy of the documents. So we literally hold a lot of that security stuff in a few people's hands and very tightly controlled and as it should be, as you would want it to, as I think all the citizens would want it to be, but yeah, that is a great subject to look at because it is a good thing that Water Board would be concerned about. So if the board has a general consensus that they are very interested in looking into that a little bit and understanding that a little bit, be happy to do that either July or August as soon as we can get it set up. Okay, so Ken, you'll look into it in terms of getting, how we get that information at the board and then we can put it on the appropriate agenda so we can get information on that. That's it. Alison, thank you for bringing that up. It's a good point. All right, so we're on to item 11 and I guess where I'm gonna, I do wanna bring up one item there and unfortunately this is kind of with mixed feelings, but I believe this may be Kathy's last Water Board meeting if I'm understanding that right, I think. And Kathy, I may let you speak to this a little bit, but I know you have other things that you're spending your time on and wanted to maybe allocate a little more time to those items. So I guess we've got mixed feelings, definitely sad to see you go. You've been a great member of the Water Board and have added so much over your tenure, but I understand that you have many things that you're wanting to volunteer efforts that you wanna put your time towards. So I'm glad you're staying involved in those things. I know you've done a great job and you'll do a great job in that other role as well. So I don't know if you wanna say anything, Kathy? I really enjoyed it, actually. And I think it was, I realized I was spending quite a bit of my volunteer efforts on water, which is what I spent my career doing. And I thought it would probably be a good opportunity for me to do some of my other interests and spread my volunteer efforts. Specifically, I have in the past and I would like to get back into hospice as a volunteer effort, not necessarily on the board and the Marana one-on-one volunteer effort there. So, and then of course I've got nine grandkids that I haven't seen during COVID and want to spend some time traveling, although that still seems problematic as far as flying. But anyway, so I think it's a good opportunity to let some other citizen who maybe hasn't been any deep in water for so long and could learn how important it is to the city. I'm very impressed with Longmont's water system and always have been, but getting to know staff even more so. So I really appreciate it. Well, thank you, Kathy. Sorry, I was toggling on and off my mute switch there. So, well, I just, I've really enjoyed working with you. And obviously before when you were left-handed as well, but it's been a joy being on you with being on the water board with you. So thank you for your service. The one other thing I guess I'll ask the board is if we get together in person, I'd like to suggest that we could maybe do a short kind of reception afterwards for Kathy if you'd be willing to maybe come back in for one more month as a thank you. And frankly, we have, you know, Renee that left the water board and John Caldwell as well. So if we could, if we're willing to maybe afterwards just say thank you to those who have given their time and efforts to the water board in the past. So if possible, I'm gonna try to pull you in one more month here, Kathy, if that's possible. So it's great. Well, thank you. I guess that, and I think that's all I had and let's see what else had. And I'm sorry, my screen kind of freezing up on us guys. So anybody has an item if they could just let me know. I'm gonna move on to item 12 and that's items tentatively scheduled for future board meetings. And 12A will revisit the cash in lieu in June. And then under 12B is discuss future water boards agenda, agendas, I think the only thing with Kathy's departure is we're gonna need to nominate a new vice chair for the water board. So we'll need to put that on a upcoming meeting agenda. So can we do that or Heather? Yeah, we'll get that scheduled. Thank you. I think that city council is doing their board interviews or did them last Friday or something? So we should have a new board member for July as well. So. Okay, great. Yeah, actually, we interviewed them last Tuesday. We have not voted on them yet. So I assume that's gonna be on the upcoming council agenda for next Tuesday, which will be a first in-person meeting. Okay. Yeah, I think I did see that on the pre-agenda as we're working through things. So. All right. Well, that sounds good. Is there any other future items that need to be any future water board agenda items that anyone wants to bring up for discussion? And I'm not saying any. So, okay. Based on that, we are ready to, oh, sorry Ken, you have something to say. Yeah, yeah, Todd. There was one item for future board meeting that I would like to throw out to see if a water board is interested. As we're getting closer to the windy gap, groundbreaking and the start of construction, the municipal sub-district does hold tours for boards and councils of the entities or participants, special, you know, special tours just for the participants. And so I wanted to check in and now that we're getting that close to see if water board would be interested in having a tour set up. Could do it a couple of different ways. Could do it maybe before like noon to three or four before one of the board meetings, could do it on a separate day, could do it on an evening. But just wanted to see if there was an interest on the board to have a special tour up there. And if you do have a tour, we'd probably even invite council to come along with us and see if anybody on council would like to go. We thought it might be an opportunity rather than go up to a groundbreaking that has 300 people and you know, you kind of stuck them on spot. We thought it'd be a lot easier to have one. So no need to do it, but just wanted to throw that out to see if the water board would be interested in setting up a tour. Okay, I got a thumbs up from Allison. Roger, your thoughts? Okay, we've got a thumbs up there. I guess my preference that we could do would maybe even make it the same day as the board meeting. So then we could just do it and then roll right into our board meeting if that's a possibility for everyone else. And we need to make sure we got a spot for Kathy to come back and participate as well. So any opportunity to bring her back in would be great. Yeah. Okay, well, I'd suggest go ahead and maybe get some dates for the upcoming water board meeting. See if you can run those by Northern staff and there's something that works there. Maybe then we could get it to the city council to see if who would wanna participate on that end as well. So, but it's a huge allocation of obviously of money and meeting the future water of supplies for the city. So I think that's a great idea, Ken. Thank you for thinking of that. Okay, cool. Thank you. Great. All right, with that, anything else for the good of the order here? I am not saying anything. So I'm gonna go ahead and adjourn the meeting. And once again, thank you Kathy for all your time and efforts with the water board. It's been wonderful. Yes, Kathy, thank you. So we appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you.