Cave Creek adopts comprehensive utilities master plan addressing Colorado River water crisis through 2052

that's the signal the session is now in order it is a special uh actually we we'll have two special Town Council meetings tonight um and before we do that we'd like to have the Pledge of Allegiance a friend of mine is in the audience Lisa haldane would you lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance Pledge aliance to the of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liy and justice for Thank you Lisa the first uh thing we're going to have tonight is a um a general agenda item it's U Council discussion possible nomination and appointment of a Cave Creek council member elect to fill the vacancy on the Town Council for the term ending December 2nd 2024 uh Paul Ela after many years of uh faithful and valuable service to the town both on the Planning Commission and on the council has moved and leaving us with a vacancy on the Council of one person uh in the past this has always happened before elections in this case it happened after election and we have council member elects sitting there uh already having gone through the fire of a campaign and having been elected and passed on by the voter ship uh so to keep things simple um after some consultations decided to just uh make a motion and take the high the person who got the most votes and uh most votes among the the new members the non-incumbents and the second most votes overall and make a motion and see if we get enough votes to uh appoint that person to the council uh saving some work and keeping the council up to strength um just doing it very simply uh this special appointment would be between the time it was approved if it is approved and uh the meeting on December 2nd when the new Council will be uh sworn in and that council member then would just be able to uh continue after that point um so I'm going to make a motion and uh there um that U to nominate and point uh Cynthia Driscoll as the council member elect to fill the vacancy on Town Council with a term ending December 2nd second discussion from Council I see why she got more votes than I did this is so much easier and so much cleaner when it's post election sure is okay uh so I'm going to we have a quorum here of five so I'm going to call for a Voice vote all those in favor of appointing Cynthia Driscoll say I I opposed the eyes have it motion carries 5 Z car would you swear cynthy in please get your camera ready wal I need to bring this down a few notches for both of us I Cynthia Driscoll affirm that I will support the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution laws of the State of Arizona that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same and defend them against all enemies foreign and domestic and that I will faithfully and impartially discharge the duties of the office of council member of the town of Cave Creek Arizona according to the best of my ability so I do affirm thank you just like to mention that that Cynthia has been a member of the Planning Commission for a number of years and is a very longtime resident and we look forward to her service continuing service to the town very good so Cynthia would you take the seat next to Tom please when you have don't forget the secret decoder ring with no further business on this particular agenda um this uh this this special meeting meeting for the appointment is closed adjourned and we'll move on to the next special Town council meeting and this is the special Town Council work session with the agenda item being the presentation of council and Council discussion regarding the final recommendations of the integrated utilities uh master plan I I wonder if we could uh if the the new members of the utility advisory committee would stand please I number in the room three of them um perhaps you'd come to the each of you would come to the podium and introduce yourself can we ask you to do that come on up car Kepler I'm a resident from Desert Hills and I'm glad to be on the committee well thank you welcome I'm lean Sherman I've been a resident since 2008 and again very excited to help out welcome Lynn Walsh 35 year resident of Cave Creek and lover of this town welcome hi Nancy Merlino thank you Nancy welcome it's nice to see you all in the audience uh you're G you're going to be delus and this is for those who who haven't seen the book this is the uh plan it's about three inches thick I'd say yeah um did you get a copy of this so this is going to be presented by the utilities director so Sean the meeting is yours thank you Council um so first I'd like to introduce the project team that we have several people in the audience uh Lisa Jackson and Brandy Thigpen and Leah Irvin from black and Vach black and Beach took the lead on the project uh we also have Brad Hill who helped us with our water resources and then Seth Morales with ghd um who helped on the Wastewater side of this master plan so uh we had a a really good team that's been working on this uh project for um over a year now actually we started in December of 2022 and it was last August uh that we actually did a checkin we actually um wanted to talk about the assumptions we were making on the project to make sure that was um okay with Council before we proceeded um Brian can you start the presentation what I'm GNA do is I'm going to kick it off and then we'll go from there we'll have each of the area experts come up and talk about anything and then our goal here is actually to solicit comments from Council I know we gave you a little bit of Light reading over the weekend with the document itself but our goal here is to really distill that down a lot of it's very technical in nature so that's why uh we were our technical hats uh but we want to make sure that the policy direction that we're going in is correct for the town so tonight we'll go through why an integrated master plan uh and obviously the the four components that make that up the Water Resources uh the Water physical system improvements the Wastewater system and the reclaimed water system so the town's unique and that uh for small jurisdiction we actually have all encompasses all utility aspects and then we're going to go through the draft uh summary of the capital Improvement program that again the first step in that will be when we uh uh update the town's Capital Improvement program this fall and we also looked at fundability of that program and then I'll outline the next steps we'd like to bring this back to council for actual adoption um again it's a very technical document but we would still like to have it adopted by our resolution so it gives us some support and and implementing the uh exercises so tonight we're going to recap the uh assumptions that we went over back in August uh so it's a year ago over just over a year ago and then we're going to um uh present the individual components and then gather any comments we get from the public and or the Citizens first question is why an integrated master plan in the past uh agencies used to do individual Master plans but the integrated master plan really highlights the the fact that it's a water cycle so um I'll that side for a minute um so while we provide water services to the town we also have Wastewater Services some some of that water comes back and return flows and we actually have to do something beneficial with that which is at this point the effluent that we produce that goes to the ranch of minana but as we move forward one of the uh things the town can look forward to is is getting a new Water Resource out of the effluent and be able to actually add to our water portfolio so it's good to look at all the systems together because they actually intertwine as far as the flow volumes that are going Direction you know our Wastewater system is much smaller than our water system but it's still something it's worth us considering overall um again it's it's a unique system the fact that we provide services to um the desert Hill system to our our uh West we have just over 1,800 accounts in Desert Hills um in Cave Creek Water itself we have just under 2900 so about 4700 4,800 uh total water accounts sewerside is much smaller because we only provide sewer Services throughout the town core and along um um Cave Creek Road going south to our border with carefree and then along uh Carefree Highway um but in total you know the demands in the system aren't great the problem is that we need to have the water resources available in order to meet all these uh the demands and it's really we have to balance that out to average day demands and Peak flows because there's actually a structural difference between being able to provide an average day flow to the system and meeting the peak demands during the summertime uh because things like the central aizone project only allows you to take off so much water in any one month so we have to balance that that's part of our thought process Sean can I interrupt we're having some technical difficulties here Captain Kirk Brian is gonna see what he can do about them tell you what let's let's just continue and we up here will not have it in front of us so we'll just look at the big screens here and we'll see if this uh get fixed it doesn't we'll just continue okay so take over Johan thank you mayor council again um so this is uh trying to graphically uh explain why an integrated master plan and what we're trying to accomplish with this specific one we want to establish growth limits uh the town has been very Progressive in the fact that uh 2017 they adopted a water policy we amended that in 2021 uh we put volumetric limits on on accounts um so the town has been very uh Forward Thinking With how to how to preserve the town's Water Resources uh we want to look at developing redundant Water Supplies the town is 95 plus perc dependent on Colorado River supplies uh uh brought to us through the col uh central Arizona project Canal system while that's typically a very redundant reliable system there's some issues uh structurally happening with that that's going to impact the town's ability to get water off that Canal um physically legally get water off the canal um the man the so once you get past the supply question then you get into actual infrastructure questions on the water side you want to look at things like fire flows water quality even the collection system make sure we have it sized properly in our case a lot of our collection system is oversized which means we actually have to improve our maintenance system of the system uh a question that got asked of us to look at with this plan is the dry sewer areas and septic areas we have uh two subdivisions that were constructed with dry sewers uh that meant that the developer put the sewers in there services to the Lots but the actual properties because the sewers weren't connected to our our collection system and then brought down to the treatment plant the all the individual lots are on septics so that's one area of conversion that by connecting the dots together we could then work with those Property Owners to then make the connection from septic to sewer services for the town and there's also another large area we refer to as lock Mountain East of Cave Creek Road um that uh it there's really no gravity sewer system up there so we actually did the evaluation how we could provide gravity sewers up there what that might look like what that might cost and then allow uh to help um those residents convert from uh septic over to the town sewer system and that becomes new Water Resources so that feeds into the idea of well now what do you do with that Water Resources because currently all of the effin is sent to the ranch and golf course but if we get more customers it comes to an imbalance point for us and we actually want to get beneficial use out of that Water Resource um that goes into optimization of the reclaimed water deliveries um again with it all going just to Ranch Manana right now and as you seen on the corly reports when I bring those forward you'll see there's always an imbalance if there's a monsoon storm in the summertime the their Lakes will fill up they stop irrigating for a while to the point that we start overflowing it typically happens in the winter time where we're overflowing their Lake system because we don't have control and another uh Source or um place to put that effluent um and then wrapping that all together is how do we expand the town's Water Resource profolio how do we add uh redundancy to the system how do we allow for both the existing customers making sure that we can keep water in the pipes for the existing customers and allow for growth in the town because there is still room to grow for the town so this graphic uh tries to illustrate all the things that we really looked at um for the town uh up in the top we have the future growth areas and I'll sort of work my way around clockwise from the future growth area so there's four large state land areas in the town Apache wash Rogers wash Willow Springs and the corite they comprise in total 11.4 square miles of land uh the pre-annexation development agreements with state land uh in the town require them to bring down town Water Resources but we wanted to look at that what would it look like if the town was to bring that in and the Water Resources because we have to look at infrastructure availability not the Water Resources if we've asked them unless the town wanted to say for say some of the core sites along state route 74 um since that's potentially some commercial development which would bring in uh tax base to the town do you want to preserve some water resources for that um we also have a lot of properties the town's water system was built as a private system so it was basically just expanded to those who wanted the services who wanted to pay for the extensions of the lines so you'll see a lot of the the um there's two colors of beige on this it doesn't show up that clearly on this graphic but we actually looked at the uh future Lots we have existing Lots not connected to town water so they probably have a private well or Community well or hauling water um and then uh and have a Helm on it and then we actually looked at the vacant lot so we actually looked at the town's partial database and identified those partials we could come up with an ultimate demand that they they would be if we were to try and extend service to all those properties and then we looked at committed subdivisions so the town uh has a history um you know we have a lot of subdivisions that were actually ploted prior to the 1980 in the requirement to actually have a final plot have a 100e assured water supply which is the certificated water supply rules so we have a number of those subdivisions we accounted for those because in a lot of cases a lot of them are close to build out but not all of them so there's a lot of vacant Lots within those areas so we looked at that as as a separate element um the light blue on this map shows where our ex metered existing metered service lots are um so you can see it doesn't expand everywhere there's still a lot of development that that could occur and then we we've talked about before the committed cause caws um certificates of assured water supply so the town does not have a designation of assured water supply we actually work with adwr through their assured water supply program and and if the subdivision were to come in in order to meet the uh 100e uh assured water supply rules they get a certificate that the state issues the state looks at our Town's water portfolio says do you have enough water to authorize this and can you support a 100 years worth of residential growth on that property um so we still have some certificates that are still outstanding some that have no growth that have uh been occurred on them and some that have what we refer to as significant growth but we actually mapped them all out actually our town staff and Ryan Hills behind me um he spent a lot of time working with adwr staff to actually pull all their certificates together and work through the water balance for the town um so that's a big thing that we worked through and then we looked at the committed to whb domestic water improvement district that's that area of the Incorporated in the town on the west side of the town where years ago when they annexed into the town uh there was a commitment to provide water resources for them so we broke them out as a separate element in here just to account for them separately um but the goal is to see how we can get water services to them so having this as the base we were actually then able to summarize that and do the calculations on what would it take to provide you know the different uh groups of properties with water services in the town um so we in this map you're seeing the existing demands in the system about 1.54 million gallons a day is the average our buildout uh yes that's actually our average sorry and then so that's about 1725 acre feet of water we're providing and that includes the water we're sending out to Desert Hills at this point uh to support that system uh so if we look at just the committed certificated areas that have some growth left within them um there's another 221 acre feet but we actually have some larger certificated areas that are still outstanding effec it's it's a contractual obligation so totaling 417 acre feet of water resources that we would need to apply to them and then as I brought back the subdivisions that were ploted but prior to the the rules requiring a certificate of assured Water Supplies there's still 120 acre feet of water to meet all their needs and then we accounted for about 69 acre feet for the domestic water improvement district so if we look at that we come up with a a total demand of of 2,500 52 acre feet of water to meet the average demand uh yearly demand and then taking a step further those vacant Parcels that currently are not connected to the system and or are away from the existing system if they were all to get wanted to get water service from the town that's another 54 acre feet of water and then the growth areas that's the state trust land so again um a lot of water is uh potentially going to the state trust lands but the pre-annexation development agreements requires them to bring the Water Resources to the town we needed to figure figure this number out so then we can look back to the infrastructure how do we provide if they were to come and were to bring us Water Resources can we Supply that physically with the infrastructure that's what uh this was looking at so well the numbers are very big on this it was a way of looking at different scenarios and then allows us to get into different growth projections and to see where we think is realistically what we need to be planning for and then at this point I'm going to have Brad hill come up and then Brad can start speaking to some of the slides and I'll interject is if necessary and again this is a workshop so if Council has any questions let us know um so Brad you can control it by the mouse I believe or you want to control this I can control this it's probably not a good thing control it you want to control it you want me to control oh you can do it I'll do it okay so mayor and councel it's an honor and a privilege to speak before you again I'm my name is Brad Hill I'm an independent consultant as part of the uh black and Beach Water Resources team so I'm going to go over briefly before we can help you look to the Future of of Alternatives we got to start with where you're at today so what this graph illustrates is three columns the first one is the black which is the three different types of Water Supplies that the town has it has central Arizona project Supply groundwater and reclaimed water the next two columns in Gray are kind where where's the town at today and some projections of where the town could be added buildout I'll step through those uh when the important thing with your cap apply is are two separate priorities and that's very important to understand m& priority is a much higher priority than what's known as non-indian agriculture or on this graph it says niia water and we'll just use those acronyms if that's okay it's what we do in our in our water business so I've got the volumes here and I'll just kind of Step the important one is I have a circle over the uh capap Nia water at buildout and that may occur sooner than buildout is that's very suscep to Drought uh and so there's always already some Talk Amongst the water uh industry in in the state that that may go away in just the next several years so that's an important volume of water and and and its priority the next ones is groundwater Desert Hills service area has groundwater Cave Creek service area doesn't so there should be somewhere in our historical records how much water a Cave Creek can get out of our wells it's got to be there somewhere yeah um I had heard in the past it's like 300 and something acre feet but somewhere in the records there is something because when we inherited that water company it was there yeah mayor and council member so we've actually looked at the records of the wells that we do have I think it is approximately 300 acre feet of Legally available what we're trying to do is is um when you drill a um it's not an exempt well a municipal well you actually go out and you have actually do a well designation a well um evaluation and they'll give you determination how much water you can you legally have rights to whether or not you can get that water out of the ground and that's what we're going to go that's what we're working on right now is to figure out of the existing Wells that are close to the to the existing um well system in town well line system how much physically can we get out I think it may be close to 300 acre feet but we're not sure until we test these and then you get into the issues of water quality and quantity available at each of those Wells so there's one's a legal amount of water versus physically how much because in case of Desert Hills for example the three well we have out in Desert Hills Have I forget the it's more than 206 acre feet of water uh legally available we physically can't get it out of those Wells as they are constructed right now so we have to balance both of those but very good point short I have a question for you you said I believe you said that our cap allocation is approximately 95% of the water that's available to us is that correct yeah so and where would that other roughly 5% be that' be the the ground wall that we're pulling out of Desert Hills right now so yeah which may have arsenic contamination yes one of the three wells in Desert Hills does have um higher uh elevated arsic levels we actually have to blend with Central o on Project water from Desert from Cave Creek uh we're looking at doing a Wellhead treatment to allow us just not to have to force the water out there help balance that system out thank you Sean at the uh the number 300 is recurring again and again I just did a quick calculation of of the uh committed water that we have that we don't that if if that we need to do the subdivisions and things that uh and the dwid on the west side which matches 300 but in probably in the Carefree base and and the uh the additional water we can get out of Desert Hills it it just seems to me that we just got to get answers on groundwater ASAP so I what I'd like to we're we're keeping a list of things I'd like to see I'd like to see a definitive plan with dates um costs put in place and then a monthly report to council okay on how what the status is the groundwater operation we'll go ahead and do that thank you for bringing that up so you clearly have a mayor and Council clearly jump to the end and the I haven't even got through this slide of where you're at today but absolutely that is one of the top priorities that we have recommended the town to do so um because uh both for Cave Creek that we know there are existing Wells historically and so what what what right here on this graphit shows zero but you know we need to explore uh Alternatives and then the same thing with Desert Hills so we're kind of mixing on this graph it was just brought up by Council but I want to put make clear capap is a paper water right number the Desert Hills at 207 that's the average pumping that's the physical availability that's been pumped out of those Wells so it's a little bit of a of a mix just so it's clear to me uh for Cave Creek itself we are pumping a certain amount of water we may not be portable water but we are pumping some water uh into our system uh no mayor and council member um no we actually are currently none of the Cave Creek walls are currently active just the three wall in Desert Hills I thought you said 95% of our water is capap yes I think when I think of it I look at the entire system which includes Desert Hills so the 5% is the Desert Hills fre Wells so that's important so our conversation will be both service areas that's a that's a good point and then the third water supply that I want to touch on because it's important looking forward is your reclaimed water uh the 206 is roughly what's being delivered today uh depending on the growth scenar that happens here in the town your reclaimed water could grow substantially we have the numbers from a little over 300 to could be upwards of 800 so that's an important resource to be keeping your eye on as we look as we look forward to the planning oh you so now what we're going to do with this graph is we're going to blend the growth projections uh uh the scenarios that Sean just presented with the Water Resources probably the most realistic Water Resource scenario and so I'll step through what this graph means because this is a really important uh for everyone uh to understand um the the how these two interact um and so first of all the vertical nature of this is either on the left or the right is volume of acre feet whether it's MGD or acre million gallons a day or acre feet the x-axis is um time and then interlaid are a bunch of horizontal lines and some other lines uh and so I'll step through the growth projections so Sean two slides ago shared with you what was in the green or the moderate growth or I might refer it to as the 3% growth what was in the blue or the aggressive in this case 6% growth and what is the future uh uh growth that that you have a policy that requires new resources so those are the three different uh growth scenarios now I'm going to Overlay uh of the Water Resources so the first one is the gray horizontal line it says full cap m& ni and groundwater we put that on there because I want to make it clear that if you actually had access to all of the paper water supplies and physical supplies that you have available we you could accommodate under the blue excuse me under the green anything under the moderate from Over the planning Horizon planning Horizon's in 2052 so if you had access to all those those Water Supplies but uh you would be fine to accommodate under the moderate growth now the aggressive growth would be roughly 2045 or so so you'd have time to breathe and to look for different Water Supplies however we all know that given the conversations going on in the state in the lower Basin that you probably won't have access to all of your Sur uh in particular surface water supplies so I just we put on this graph the next scenario is the capap m& only what if your groundwater went to zero Sean mentioned that that there are some challenges with the and the decrease the declining production in those Wells out of Desert Hills so one of the challenges just one of the scenarios on this one would mean if you had only your capap supply you would still have roughly 10 years of growth before you had to deal with under the green moderate growth scenario um thank you for turning that one so we put this one in red because this is the conversation that's going on right now in the state is what if the Bureau Reclamation in central Arizona project where declare what's known as a tier three shortage um there's conversations that it may may occur in 2027 so we said what if you what if Cape Creek uh had a tier three shortage on its m& supplies so what that means is no non-indian agriculture that's been very clear clearly made already and then what if you took and this is an example so there's been some discussions of ranges of tiers tier Decline and we just used the on this ex uh scenario the least volume which is the least reduction 14% so what that means is you can see on this graph the the where the intersection of moderate growth green and red is as soon as it's declared you're going to have a struggle of meeting your water demands now note this doesn't include groundwater and tensional a so you will have a little bit of a buffer but what this is saying in the water business uh for sha and myself and I used to be a utilities director uh we got to solve this problem now because you do not want to be in a position uh this puts the town in a very challenging position so we'll go to the next slide of course we would never give you a problem that would be not good for staff or consultant to give you a bring a problem to to city council and not without some potential solutions for Council to consider um and this is where we just heard about people jump uh council members jumping to the end so here oh I'll stop here I'm just going to have actually uh while we've been mapping this uh presentation together we actually also did a a options Matrix I want to hand that out to council and that's something we're going to be bringing back uh to council it's it's sort of our our cheat sheet of what we want to do moving forward to help with water resources and I'll hand that out and then we'll continue Brian since you didn't specify can can we jump back one slide where they ask these need 2030 that what you were talking about um correct that's when we would have trouble yeah starting 27 yeah okay if there's a declaration in 27 and that's without the current negotiations that is um bringing tap water down the negotiations uh with the upper Basin States your next correct this is you're not considering that here no but in our internal staff work we're working on that also just but this is not part of the so what this mayor council so what this tier three reduction means is it's based off the bureau Reclamation does a 24 24mth review and every August is when they set what how much water they're going to deliver in the lower Basin on in January so what this tier three is estimating based off of that 24 month and I'm sorry you're getting too technical is in anticipation of next year uh two years that they might declare what is what is called a tier three and in this case we don't know based on the hydrology is it 14% this scenario we also did a 27% but I was just showing you even if it's one of the lowest reductions of tier three the town's going to have a problem with it so we just stuck with the 14 as an illustrative example we did a lot more analysis that's in that master plan we just kind of simplified it to this one we thought that was the easiest to get the message across okay so what Sean handed out and and what is kind of highlighted on the on the slide is a matrix that uh our team put together of short-term and long-term options in the high highlights uh and and then on the paperwork that you have we added some pros and cons to it for Council to consider this is what uh Michelle Sean and I have have kind of put down on paper and and uh uh identified the pros and cons but you know in the near term what we are what we're advising is some agreements it's easier with the city of Phoenix because you're adjacent to them you share infrastructure uh they're very so far willing to help and what we call water exchanges or storage the ability to exchange reclaim water to get cap water or to recharge some of your excess reclaim water we can go into details but I'll just leave it high uh at the moment the next one is the opportunities that you you know you're going to have a delta in the next few years do you go out and have a conversation there's there's several subcontractors within the State of Arizona that have more uh water than what they're using and so can you go and and and and ask to purchase oneyear annual uh if you have a deficit of 300 acre feet to some of these uh subcontractors 300 acre feet is very very small compared to their allocation maybe they be willing to entertain a conversation about selling Cave Creek that and what that would only do is get you year toe until you could solve your longterm we're trying to get you a short-term Bridge uh and so that's what the explore opportunities to Pur C supplies um another is what was recommended or what was previously discussed as they go back out reassess or or relook at the existing Wells both in Cave Creek and Desert Hills and or is there a potential for new wells these are immediate things that the town can have control over and Implement uh uh soon uh other Alternatives uh we just had a meeting today uh with the Arizona Water banking Authority part of their Charter d back to the 90s was the state would fund uh uh and prepare the subcontractors for this day this when I say this day meaning if there's a truly a tier three shortage and we had a conversation with the staff at the Arizona Water Bank of what because they don't have a firming policy or they have a loose firming policy and what they do have only goes through 2026 we have mentioned we're probably not going to have a shortage in 2026 so we asked them what are you going to do after 20 27 and Beyond and they aren't ready to uh they don't know as staff and and the state needs to have a conversation what does that look like uh because the town is in much different situation than other cap subcontractors uh that I have done similar water resource planning they have a a different water supply portfolio that's completely different than the town so I think it's important that we put that on the water Banks you need to come up with a AFF firming policy surprising that they haven't yet but that was what we heard from staff today which staff was that Brad at the Arizona Water banking Authority okay um what what are the are any other towns in a similar situation to us that you're aware of um for future growth yes but they're on the fringes so Buckeye and and um and uh EK Queen Creek thank you uh but they have actual physical groundwater of what you don't have yeah so that's a so so yes and no uh you're you're you're actually up against two walls you're up against the base and Boundary so from a I'm a hydraulist geologist yeah you're you're you're limited there so that's what a lot of other Urban cities out in the out in the plane in the Phoenix Metro can do is where you don't have significant groundwater resources as an emergency backup Brian for those in the audience who are watching can you define easily what you mean by firming your F the water bank's firming power IES I can uh vice mayor mayor vice mayor so firming um is a if there is a shortage on the river and the federal government says you're not you're going to get my example 14% more firming is the Arizona Water Bank was charged with taking back in the good old days uh excess water putting it underground off the Colorado River so there's many different physical locations in Arizona where we have been storing the water bank and others have been storing groundwater underground so what the firming means is if there's a shortage to the town's capap Supply the water Bank in two different ways can either withdraw those credits and put it in the canal so you get wet water in the canal or we work with central Arizona project to do that there's a couple different ways to make it but it's it's to the state had the the state had the foresight to recognize that things on the Colorado way I'm talking 20 years ago uh uh what do we do with all the excess water and so we brought it into the state and put it underground and that the water banking Authority was the state agency created to make that happen which we have been doing since 2021 how many acre feet do we know banked we have just under 2,000 I think right now our our long-term storage credit account we actually have been putting it all in to recharge into one of the cap facilities of hieroglyphics one of the issues that running up an to is to get access to that water there needs to be physical infrastructure at that facility so there was discussions actually at CP meeting um I think a month or two ago where they started talking about recovering that water but they were using the tonopa facility out on the west side of the of the area um so we have to figure out um an opportunity to get access to that that credit or is that a long-term shortage credit something we can transfer with someone else and buy wet water on the canal so there's opportunities it's it's still a benefit for us and I'm glad we went and did it but one of the things looking forward the top point is water storage we actually have agreements with City of Phoenix to allow them to store and recover our water at three of their Wells just south of town so for the next two years it might be beneficial it have a cost to it to actually work with Phoenix to recharge ex any excess cap water that we have for the next two years so post 2027 or in 2027 if there's a shortage we have access to work with Phoenix get that delivered to us after the interconnects done so that's something we need to uh consider it is more costly um but gives us direct access to wet water so and just um at at the mag level the number I heard uh a couple months ago was that the plans are and these are Transportation plans they're busily working on Prop 479 another half cent sales tax uh to fund uh more freeways more light rail more Transportation um and another million and a half people over the next 20 years meanwhile on the water side they're talking about these massive cuts on the other hand it just the the dichotomy between the different agencies in the state and the lack of bringing those plans together overwhelms a simple engineer like me it it just seems like someone ought to get together and kind of put all these numbers down and I think the people in the room and those online there's many other things beyond that we're not putting in this here and other activities going on uh both at our level and at the state level and capap level and other places so it it's going to be water is a good place to be in the next five years I'd say if you like to help straighten out big naughty problems and I understand the City of Phoenix has more water than they're using at present they they have more excess Supply than we do to mayor council we'd hate to put words in their mouth but oh yes it's so mayor yeah so many because of the issues you just raised many of the urban cities are going through what you're going through right now is re-evaluating what are your supplies and what are your options so it's very foresight that Council and and your staff is moving forward with doing this because of the issues you just raised so I'll come back to this slide if that's all right so we just talked about Sean just raised the other bullet which is a recharge he used reclaimed water but also when you had excess C water take that opportunity at any time uh to continue to generate what's known as longterm storage credits the last one on the short term is customer Outreach and what's that's implying is water conservation uh you may need to invoke uh one of the opportunities if you come into a shortage situation is to invoke enforcement uh and and and additional know water water conservation uh Education customer Outreach meaning if you don't have the supplies attempt to address it from the demand side or both there's some long-term things that we think you should be uh considering one of them is water banking again we just need to keep an eye on there the state has a lot of credits to a lot of water in the ground how are they going to U take that out and firm IM uh uh m& customers so that's both a short-term and a long-term issue uh for the town the next is I hear there's been a lot of conversation on this and that and I think we're going to come back next week on the Barta Dam uh uh project this so River Project is uh is leading up heading up so we'll we'll I'll wait and talk a little more about that next week um others long terms are efficiencies one of the challenges that Sean has raised is is uh the how much EXT extra water as being sent to Rancho Manana that doesn't actually get used used on the course it's get spilled off uh and so that's another uh not a short term it's probably going to be a long term but how do we get Rancho Manana to get be more efficient with its uh with its operation and it does the town can the town play a role in that and then the last one is there will be most likely some opportunities of C water that'll be out there for lease um and potentially Colorado River waterer so keeping the town a price of what those are and when those may become available um again the pros and cons that you have on your spreadsheet tells you we didn't get into the cost but once we get some direction from you uh we'll be able to uh farad out some of those costs associated with all of these uh options for you would those purchases be ongoing or would they be year by year in other words you know to build a home you need 100-year assured Supply the purchase of cap water could that be applied toward a 100y year availability is my question clear yeah mayor uh Council M McGuire so probably not home by home uh certificate by CER yeah so subdivision by subdivision okay we're not looking at getting in this this last option we're not looking at getting something one year that wouldn't be available a year or two down the line no this would be adding to your portfolio a new water supply which would be central Arizona project water is it Indian lease is what we call it or some other option and those are long-term leases those are those would be long-term leases through the Department of Water Resources correct another question about the efficiency uh the general plan indicated that uh the loster unac counted water is still high 10 to 12% above the Department of Water Resources guideline is that strictly due to the Rancho minana or is there other loss or unaccounted water that could be brought to bear so we have a couple different losses in the system that we track mayor council member um one of the things that we're doing we actually in the Cave Creek uh upgrate right now it's we're updating the metering system we believe that the customer meters are Under reporting usage so that once the metering project is done we'll actually uh improve the overall efficiency uh we we track things like uh one of the things that we can't in that calculation we're not allowed to use is the water we use for flushing of the waterers of the water lines to keep water quality in compliance so that's one thing we're looking at as there other opportunities for us to do uh new ways of treatment Andor operating the system to mean we have to flush less water which adds to our loss and unoun for water non-b build water what we look at so and then the treatment plant itself you know we run a hybrid treatment plant with some older technology westtech filters that actually typically will produce over 10% waste water and then we have the pul membranes which are very efficient less than 5% right now it's a hybrid so it gives us opportunities once the CD Phoenix interconnect maybe a not moth ball that keep the west Texas an emergency backup which means we can run the plant more efficiently which means that we have less water uh being produced but right now that backwash water from the water treatment plant is actually being sent to Ranch minana as one of their water supplies so they're all interconnected and it's something we're looking at but we are trying to get down below 10% we think the metering project will be the first big step because we do believe hate to say it to customers who are listening to this that we're under billing people right now so that'll get corrected as U um and then the metering upgrades are actually also going to provide a lot more efficiencies because we're going to get more real time data to customer so they can look at things like what the leaks happening so they can deal with it more quickly so there's multiple things wrapped into that discussion well it sounds then like another Paul filter is also an energy conser uh water conservation project if if you know 5% of it was they a million gallons a day um yes we have the two Paul trailers Council um that produce about two million gallons worth of flow the the plants r at three so we run currently we run a hybrid with the the westex but yeah if we were to convert that plant to All Pauls we get an efficiency but there's a cost to that upgrade is yeah I mean if if you take 10 thou I mean last I heard was $10,000 to get to lease a 100-year supply breaker foot is that is that close spread I think May more Mich wants to say something I shop a lot if you were to get a 100e supply water right now I would estimate it's probably $30,000 per acre foot just to get the privilege and then you'd pay for all the costs so that pays the Paw filters out even faster yeah so it's something to look at yeah thanks for discussion so we're going to start off on actually physical improvements at this point um we actually have Brandy come up and start going through some of the physical improvements Andy p uh with black and Beach and thank you for taking the time to talk with us today and as BR and Sean and everyone's been talking about understanding and coming up with a solution for the supply is is just one piece of the puzzle and um so what seep and I are going to go through now it's really if we can solve this Supply issue how can we make sure that we can get this water out into your customers and so really a lot of the improvements that we're going to talk about are into three buckets right have some improvements that are needed just to increase capacity and so those will be our growth kind of um type projects that would be looking at as Sean was just talking about what do you want to do with the falls in the west te builds is there a need to expand oh sorry um I talk loud even without a microphone so sorry now that it'll be too loud um uh again another growth um type um of improvement that would be needed as one of the certificated areas that you do have is the the kava the area and so in order to adequately serve that area there is going to need to be some additional improvements that are going to be Associated um uh to serve that area and there'll be a couple of booster stations that would be needed um so beyond growth and we look at performance how is the system performing are you able to meet your fir flow requirements um when we met a year ago um we talked about um establishing a fir flow requirement of 500 um throughout the system so there was some improvements to um either increase the the fire flow capability at some of the booster stations um or put in some quick connects um to enable you to bring in some temporary pumping at some of your smaller uh lift stations to increase fire flow to some neighborhoods and then lastly not only is it important to grow your system and improve the performance but condition that is often something with these systems that we just forget about when we look at these Master plans we come up with all these Capital Improvements but we forget that you need to have the funds available to continue to maintain and ensure that all of these facilities um are available when you need them and so in that bucket um there's some additional assessments at the treatment plants um there are some areas within Zone one and Zone um 9 and 8 um where there might need to be some uh pipeline uh main replacement programs and then looking at uh your CI uh your capap pipeline it is a you know the single pipeline that brings your supply um from all the way down to the canal up to your water treatment plant so ensuring that you're going in and and Contin contining to assess um those facilities so what we're going to jump to now is a map which is going to show um all of the various improvements that we um came up with so this map here is going to be a combination of all so it's going to be your growth improvements um your uh um your condition and as well as your performance and I'm just going to jump on I'm just going to hit on a couple of them and um there's lot lot of detail in that Master Plan that'll identify but one of the the first and most important um uh improvements that you're currently working on is that interconnect you know once you have the interconnect up and you have that ability to bring in a um a secondary supply to the to the town it's going to enable you to do some of the the maintenance and and and do some of the condition stuff so just having that it's it it doesn't the c um the city um interconnect won't solve that additional Supply but it will give you you know more Supply it will give you the ability to have a redundant Supply um another really key component is what we were just talking about is the Wells you know getting a game plan for what can you do with the the wells that are for the town you know if drill see what kind of quality what kind of um Quality what kind of yield you and if you can't use them as a portable Supply you know is there a potential that you still drill them and use that as a means to offset some of your reclaim Supply at Ranch om minana can those be used to offset that then you can trade reclaimed water potentially with the city of Phoenix you know the more wet water you guys can get your hands on it just it's going to increase your ability to make some different choices and and it's going to be a game and so having wet water available to you is is going to be really important and then the last um water project um you know we did talk about that kajava um and there are some um performance issues uh that are existing and um will continue to get exacerbated um with development west of Cave Creek wash and so um as you guys move towards developing um potentially additional infrastructure or modifying infrastructure out there um uh correcting some of the capacity deficiencies out um and we are showing on this graphic um a single line that's running down uh Carefree Carefree Highway and then running up 24 Street we looked at a couple of diff different options so this is by no means the only option that's out there um you could uh parallel the the existing line on Cloud Road um but just to make sure that you're kind of opening up another straw to get some additional flow um out that direction uh before you would continue to grow north um those are the majority of the the water um improvements um I think we had one other one do we have another one oh okay um and then lastly um as Sean was indicating we got to um it's important that the the town decide and and go in and do the study to assess uh what's going to happen at the water treatment plant you know when you have the additional connection with the city of Phoenix um where do you want to take your Cap supplies and and what types of redundant facilities do you want to have um between the to the interconnect and the treatment plant yeah as part of that specific project we'll be looking to do a scope of work to um well black and V actually helped this with an evaluation when the town brought the Paul Paul membrane units to the treatment plans for first year we uh lease them um and then we did an evaluation to show whether we should continue to lease them and the the recommendation was to purchase those units we've been purchased them and operating them for the last three years um producing very good quality water for the system but then there was also discussion on how to expand the plant and make it a Paul only plant so our thought would be to spend some money and almost go to a 30% design level to get a really good cost assessment of what it would take to um upgrade the plant to aollo only plant um the old evaluation did at a high level we'd like to get to that next level of detail and then we can factor in things like water efficiency to the plant also but that's something that's a project we think we could do we're actually working with Maricopa County Environmental Services which issues the operating permit for that treatment plant to expand the uh extend the current permit U which expires this end of November this year um the polls were considered a pilot program um since we purchased the units the county is agreeing to allow us to get a seven-year extension on running the current plant with the uh the hybrid plant with the west teex and the poles that is time to breathe react and then figure out what the the cost should be to upgrade that facility so it's a good thing the County's allowing us to continue that um but now we got to do the next step and that's one of the projects we've identified is to do that we think it's about $125 $150,000 to do that level of details on that plant to get us to a good cost assessment so we're going into it with our eyes open so and so we took all of these projects and we put unit cost um to them and then so for each of the water the Wastewater and the reclaim system um we've developed kind of a a near-term fiveyear CIP a 10year CIP bucket and then a 15 and then all the way out to buildout and um this was our first you know we sat down with Sean and as a team and and we put projects which made sense you know if they were needed for growth and they were um put in when the growth when we anticipated the growth to occur um you know it's it's a matter of of funds being available and they'll need to be some movement um within this and so we were looking for feedback on um some of the um the placing and years of some of the improvements as well yeah so we're getting into a lot of details here so this is where you know what the next step after this would be uh um you're okay with if I don't know if council's had time to look at all this uh I have with staff but the next thing is we'll bring it forward as a new capital program and then also we're going to look at fundability of this there's a lot of projects in here that have not been identified before so we have to look at how how can the town afford to do these and what or and put that prioritization lens onto this so that has not been done that's going to be a step that we do once we adopt the master plan and go through the update to this year so we do a fiveyear capital program we adopt the first Year's worth funding but that'll be the process this gives us sort of the checklist of where we need to be uh watchful of especially things like that second fee to it's called Desert Hills but it's actually the second feed to the west side of the system so as again as kava grows we bring the wib customers on as growth occurs on the west side of the system and we have to continue to support water um supplies to Desert Hills augment them you know that pipeline is is is a single point of failure in our systems now we've we've we've repaired the single point of failure in our cap delivery system with the Phoenix inter connect now the next priority would be that connection to the west side west side of Cape Greek wash so um can we afford to wait till 2035 but more so can we afford to do it sooner and that's something we're going to have to figure out and bring that back to council as part of a fundability program so these numbers are very reasonable for us to be able to fund it I mean just we're g to have $2.1 million of uh of of debt service that's going to go away between 27 and 30 m M lying that by 12 13 that means we got 20 20 2022 Million worth of bonding ability that we can fund these numbers are within that that's without any increases in in rates I'm not saying the rates aren't going to increase because we've got inflation and we have operational cost other things going up but but uh this looks like it's it's fundable and I think bonds are a are a fair way to do it because you're putting something in that's going to last for 20 30 years well I won't be here in 30 years so I'd like those people who are taking the water at that point to pay their share I'll pay my share now and they can pay their their share when they when they arrive okay so I I I think this is uh I'm I'm just talk the not these specific projects but the overall looks like it's something that the town can can that the Water Systems not the town but that the Water Systems can deal with out of their own rate structures yeah yeah and we we'll we'll quantify that for Council as we move forward because we looked at all the fundability and then uh again obviously this is a list and and the master plan provides you the overall list and it's up to me and staff to actually put together the five-year individual Capital Improvement programs that are coming forward to council to look at so this gives us the the the list to work from to come forward to council then we can work with the rate model and uh the town's other uh Bond uh Bond staff to see you know how do we do this how do we bundle it together so the one thing that about this section that that still um tweaks my interest is the THM control uh solving the problem at the treating plant location rather than trying to solve it out by draining water out and flushing and things like that um do we have any data on whether the the Paw filters take out more precursors than say that the old the old treating system does um mayor council so we actually do measure the um total organic uh carbon and alkalinity TOA at the plant so the plant is more efficient with running the poles at treating the and um the organic carbon is a precursor so carbon in the water uh Toral organic carbon in the water reacts to chlorine and has time to sit in a Reservoir in the pipes then uh creates the formation of tthms and other disinfectant byproducts which are regulated um that's a technical of that so yeah it the the the the TOA um removal at the plant is much better the problem still is we have a large portion of zone seven and zone eight and even getting to zone 9 where we do not have much demand in the pipes so we actually have a lot of water age issues still to address um you know one of the things Brandy brought up when she was doing the model she looked at me and said what do you need the Rockway reservoir for because that actually is a place where we form a lot of water age issues in the system and we actually have to manually manually manipulate the system that what I mean by that is we send water to that Reservoir and we drain it down back into the system and staff still have to flush that area of the system to to get water age down so I'm not sure if we can do it only at the treatment you know I think the PS have been a great Improvement to the system I'm not sure of other things that we can do to help augment that and Supply that we're looking at other Technologies for flushing of the system um there's a couple of different Technologies for flushing the lines to see if we can get rid of the bio growth that occurs naturally in Water Systems to to see if that'll help clean out the lines reduce uh um uh some things but it's it's just hard it's just hard the nature of our system we don't have a very loop system in a lot of cases and we have a lot of single feed lines with very little use on them so that's just inherent nature of our distribution system and we struggle seem like rock away that that doing some treating doing some some stripping at at Rock Away stripping is not that expensive it's a power issue up there so we looked at that a little bit it's um the the blowers that would be needed in order to do the stripping the Iration and stripping on that was just even the electrical upgrades was we were looking at over a million dollars to just get the electrical that would be needed to do that so I mean that is an option I mean that's that's something that we looked at like with the city of Phoenix interconnect as some as a potential future you know I mean that is an option that's the only way and in the distri ution system really that you're going to be able to strip it and then re chlorinate it it's it's a water age issue so the option really to to is would be the removal of Rock Away up there it's you have too much volume in comparison to demand and the other specific issue we're running into right now is out in Desert Hills the extreme West End of Desert Hills is becoming a water age issue for us you have to do a lot of flushing out there because that's another of our monitoring points is is 11th Street um Desert Hills 11th Avenue sorry close to the edge of the water system out there because of the Mount of of and it's really an issue related to if we get more groundwater into the system that's actually a benefit because we're using so much sun project surface water surface water has organic carbons in it and that's the problem inherent problem and we're sending so much uh additional water to support Desert Hills that now Desert Hills has a tthm problems we have to do a lot of flushing on the west side of Desert Hills and every quar seems like the other issue there's there's two reasons to put for Rock Away mean if you can clean it up and hold higher volume because you've also got the availability of a certain amount of fire water if if there's a fire downtown where you're you're pumping 11500 GPM for a period of time you're going to run out of water pretty quick we've done that we run out on on some the structure fires downtown um and we don't have a lot if you and that and that's where the Phoenix interconn will will physically change how we can operate this system where I know the history of Rockaway why Rockaway was chosen uh as that site um and it it served the town well moving forward I'm not sure if it'll serveice as well and then when we start looking at things like fire protection in the town core you know as long as the treatment plants producing water we could be pushing 2,000 gallons of minute into the distribution system so if there's a fire event that gets buffered by the near Reservoir but once the Phoenix interconnects done we also have a million gallon Reservoir down and at um that site that can also push into Zone 4 and refeed ner and keep water going so it's going to drastically change and augment the town's ability to fight fire flows throughout the entire system so great that's that's great news would you tell me what stripping is we're talking about the experts well T please please step to the microphone and I'll I'll do a nsh show while while Lis is getting up here is we're going to You' actually push air into the water volume in the reservoir and then the air bubbles actually strip the tthm it actually air rates it and then it actually gets into the air space above and then gets dispersed into the atmosphere that's right mayor council there's a portion of tthms that are volatile it kind of depends on the the ratio of more volatile to less volatile tthms how much you can strip but that's the purpose of stripping is to remove those from the water and then be able to re unfor you also strip chlorine you have to re chlorinate before you send it back to the distribution system thank you that helps me understand the process well very good discussion and very technical for some of the people but uh yeah it's all good and that's why in a master plan we get very technical because we have to look at these issues um the one good thing that the town now has is the water model um you know we've had uh water models before 2013 was the last update to that water model but the new model that with black and be's help is actually now considered um the old models were static so there were single snap shops and pine the new model is actually considered Dynamic so we can do things like water age we can actually predict that based on the consumption in the different zones putting in the metering data so we can see where the issues will uh occur so that's that gives us another tool to work forward to be more efficient um so it's a great another great tool or uh thing that we're going to be left with with this master plan something we can keep updated and and run different scenarios on as we move forward so with this uh any other questions uh we can wrap back around but we're going to switch over switch gears over to Wastewater right now so we're bringing Seth up to the mic one more question on groundwater issues um in assessing the Cave Creek and the Desert Hills uh operational Wells and what can be done what modeling or what assessment is done for protection of of the exempt Wells the private wells in the area how does that factor into that assessment short answer is they're exempt Wells and they uh you know if we go out and start running our wells we're not going to be looking at the adjacency of them because the we actually as was brought up earlier we have a water right with that existing well to withdraw it sometimes we're going to be restricted by how much in the draw down that will occur in that case but you know um the exempt Wells the reason they're considered exempt Wells is because they're allowed to go ENT where they want um we actually have a higher level of well rights with our Municipal production Wells so as we go out and try to protect that um and especially in the town core the ones we're dealing with Town there's very few private wells in the town core adjacent to one our old Wells are so we think that's going to be the case in Desert Hills that's one of the reasons we actually had to stop development in Desert Hills is the number of exempt Wells that were the number of straws in that aquafer out there there was no regulation no limit on that and that was impacting our wells that were out there um so it's it's not an easy answer but um and we don't look at that standpoint I go out to the neighbors Wells and that we do a well draw down analysis and there's a cone of depression that we have to look at um but say that we're going to have to protect everybody else's water rights when we actually have to protect the town's water system and we actually have a pre-existing right with that well that's it's kind it's almost a policy question at that point so if it is going to impact their Wells though then how are you going to provide them water because that's the offset well I go back to the answer that they didn't collect to the town's water system so you know if our wells right now in Cave Creek would be in the town core so again there's there's almost no private wells in the town core area close to our wells so if we start drawing it off will we be a lot of our water actually comes from the East side of town comes through the town that way so a lot of the private Wells are along Cave Creek wash I don't think any of the wells if we start activating will impact Cave Creek wash and the wells that are up around Cave Creek wash it's just that I do believe that Arizona Water law is if people have been using well you're you're going to answer I was just going to provide the rule I I can't say what the politics would be because there's that too but the current I'm sorry it's on the current um Municipal Wells are holding an authorized capacity because they've been previously used or they should be if they're old and I think they are yeah so older pre-code Wells can hold capacity forever so if the well is used at that location or approximately that c location they can use that reserved capacity if they were to go though and put a new well next year well they would have to run a well impact study and the state rules say how much they can impact you under those rules so that's good all but I think it's good point the town the town's got to consider all the residents yeah how that work out I don't know we have to watch out for everybody that's why we're going to focus on actually reactivating existing wells in the town core first and then Desert Hills the discussion has really been about the existing casings we're drilled at 8 in diameter and as those are been failing there's no real solution to repair them a better solution be to redrill those wells in a large capacity not to get more volume it's just to make sure that we have a casing that doesn't fail on us so okay that we'll switch to Wastewater right good afternoon mayor council member my name is Seth Morales I'm with ghd which definitely does sound like an engineering acronym but it is not um so I'll be talking about the recommended improvements for the Wastewater system similar to the water system um we categorize them based on growth performance and condition uh when it comes to growth I think Sean touched on uh the two main areas that we focused on so the dry sewers that are currently um existing in two neighborhoods um we we looked at how we could connect them to the existing system and then the area that we're calling the Black Mountain area we identified its proximity to the existing uh collection system and how we can connect that uh to send those Wastewater flows to the plant um when considering growth in a waste swatter system I think it's important to note that uh you're limited to realistically how how much you can reach um waste waterers conveyed through gravity and therefore topography uh plays an important role and so therefore when we were identifying um how much the system could actually grow it was really how closes it to the existing system and these two areas um seem to generate the most waste water that could be used as effluent um and definitely beneficial for the town's Water Resources uh in regards to Performance um as Brandy mentioned it's identifying how can we optimize the existing infrastructures performance to be able to serve the town um and we identified a couple improvements required at Wastewater facilities uh specifically the lift stations and also some improvements at the town's plant uh that could essentially improve operation of these facilities uh there's also um some improvements required specifically for the forest Mains uh that convey float from the lift stations a forest M essentially is a pressurized pipe that conveys waste water um and so identifying what improvements are required to make sure that uh the town can serve um the the customers uh we will we talk a little bit about which ones are required in order to improve performance uh and then finally condition essentially understanding what the condition is of the existing system is it's essential to make sure that everything runs smoothly uh the town has done a great job actually uh performing multiple video inspections in the collection system and gravity sewers as well as manholes and so we've um also identified a couple other um approaches that the town can take to also assess different components of the Wastewater system that are a little bit more difficult to assess uh and we'll talk a little bit about that here in the next slide so similar to how we did with the uh water system improvements we've kind of highlighted a couple projects that are related to those three categories um so for the two first two projects uh as I mentioned some improvements are required at the town's lift stations so um if you see once it comes out the two rectangles on the top left corner of the uh the system they're highlighting two lift station so the chupar Rosa lift station uh serves the the area to the north of the Rancho Manana Golf Course um and then the Rancho Manana lift station uh serves the bulk actually of the Wastewater system so for the trar Rosa lift station um what what has been found is that the forest man that conveys flows from this lift station um has actually become exposed it crosses a wash and uh essentially when a pipe crosses a wash you want to make sure it's protected from scour just because um when it rains essentially that um that storm water can scour the ground and expose the pipe and so unfortunately that's the situation for a portion of the um chbar Roa lift station force that needs to be addressed just because exposing the pipe essentially makes it vulnerable um and if something was to happen then you lose the ability to be able to serve that area uh to the north of the golf course uh the Rancho Manana lift station again as I mentioned it it basically serves the bulk of the system because um everything gets sent there so it makes it a critical lift station um there are a couple improvements that we identified as a team that would help um improve the performance of the lift station first of all it's location and the elevation it's it's at um makes it susceptible to overflow if the system ever backs up now if the system's operating correctly that shouldn't happen but sometimes it does especially when you have a high uh storm water event um so we've identified the potential of relocating that lift station to help prevent that uh in addition the customers that this lift station serve kind of nearby um seem to dispose of a lot of Rags within um within the area and so that creates problems because it's harder to break down those rags and that can create some maintenance issues from clogging pipes uh to damaging pumps and so uh one Improvement we've identified to improve the performance of the liist station would be to install uh screening equipment to to be able to eliminate those rags and U make sure that the lift station's performance is optimal are are the rags something that are happening primarily in that area that's my understand why would that be um recurring perlex um cherosa and Stage Coach don't seem to have the ragging issue that um uh ranim Manana is seeing so the gravity sare connections to Rancher Mi which is the town core and and some of the adjacent uh residential homes immed around town hall are where it's coming from so um yeah it's flushable wipes and effectively they bind together um they end up breaking down partly and then they combine together and they become basically a little it's a yuck factor for staff to deal with but more so it's potential for damaging a pumps we've actually seen the um the check valves which hold back the Force main pressure get get clogged with them and actually have to physically remove the material so yeah so uh we do want to do some more education in the town core because that's where it's coming from from again we're not seeing it in chiosa we're not seeing it at Rancho Manana we're seeing or sorry um the stage coach lift station we're seeing it up north or through the town core is really where we think it's coming from flushable means flushable it means it'll go down your toilet it doesn't mean that it won't harm the system yeah and I understand there's some uh work ahead to get rid of flush Bowl most of the flush Bowl wipes that you see on the back will say you know do not flush in the toilet um but now they're going back to try and change that name that doesn't work that little note on the back doesn't work yeah I believe there's actually legislation actually changed that because this is an industry issue um and it's gotten to the point where I think Federal government's gotten into saying you need to take flashable off the names I believe there's some recent legislation on that so moving forward that'll least help but it's been people using it and it really started in the town you know I started just before Co in 2019 it started we saw it after covid and we believe it's people using things like either dat or disinfection wipes the Clorox wipes and flushing them also so it's the same same issue we have they don't break down in the sewer system yeah all right uh so those were two examples of of that performance category um next we'll talk a little bit about the condition aspect of of our improvements um so as I mentioned the town has done a great job video inspecting a lot of the gravity sewers in the system and that's that's something that we recommend to continue doing just because it gives you an idea of what the condition is of the pipes and helps you prevent um any failures in the future as I mentioned there's certain components in a Wastewater system that are a little bit harder to um to inspect uh for example a force main as I mentioned because it's pressurized you can't just stick a camera in there and so um you actually have to take the Force main offline in order to be able to take a look at what's going on inside and so um that requires a little bit more of a sophisticated condition assessment um one forc me to highlight in the in the Wastewater system is the um Force main that convey conveys Wastewater from the Rancho Manana lift station as I mentioned um because this is the bulk of the Wastewater that's generated in the system that's a critical Force main and um as of right now there's no way to uh be able to bypass it in case there's ever a break or in case you want to um perform an assessment to see what what its condition is so one of the um Improv improvements that we uh recommended in the master plan is uh installing a redundant Force main um unfortunately because of its length it's not there's not an easy um route uh that you can identify to to install a new Forest M but um what we're seeing is is installing a new hem along New River Road would allow you to uh at least isolate the last portion of the Force main which actually seems to be the one that's more susceptible to um corrosion just because of how the Hydraulics work within that Force man um so that's what we're highlighting here in the map is that redundant Force man uh the catch with that is in order to be able to bypass those flows you'd have to um make those connections of the dry sewers within those two communities uh to the plant because that bypass route essentially depends on being routed through those communities um which is also a a great incentive to bring those connections online um it provides some redundancy in the system and even if it takes time to transition from septic to sewer um you would have flows that you could send through that uh through those dry sewers and that connection new connection to to the plant um and so yeah highlighting once again um that in the growth category it's really those two big projects um in green on the bottom left those are the new um I guess gravity sewers and infrastructure that would be required to make that connection um by looking at the topography it looks like whoever installed these dry sewers thankfully had in mind on how that connection could be made so we were able to model that and confirm that it would work and then same thing for the Black Mountain area which you can see in blue to the right of Cave Creek Road um through our modeling efforts we were able to confirm that with the existing topography we could make those connections and be able to offer a gravity sewers for that community so that the green line is is partially Force main and partially gravity yes that's correct where where's the break uh it would be know if I can point basically if you see there's circles there that represent manholes um it's hard to to show without without pointing but basically the left hand side would be all gravity sewer the right hand side of river of New River Road would essentially be Forest M and that's where you'd be able to um uh bypass the existing Forest man and then uh discharge into the new manhole and convey that all through gravity but the the so you're only bypassing from where the green line comes off down down to Carefree Highway because it yelds to a gravity gravity after that doesn't it uh yeah and as Council might recall the the failure we recently had was at the end where the the end of the force man is is uh exposed to sewer um atmosphere sorry and that's what caused the corrosion we think of that pipe section so when we actually we did a few entries we didn't do the best um along the rest of the pipeline it looked like it was good and solid and then we've sadly since I've been here we've actually had to open up that Force main twice uh once because of broken uh inline valve and and some work at the wrench M and it's it's been intact at that upper level so we believe the most of the issues have been down where it connects to the gravity sewer system so that there's air air pockets developing in the lower end of it that actually is allowing corrosion to occur um that's Downstream of this connection point so that would allow us to do a full rehab of that section and then uh we can continue rehabbing the rest of it but it seems to be in good shape the rest of it actually that's not that long a line though that the new Force main is not that long a line to get rid of a lot of Maintenance and future problems is that what I'm hearing okay yes but the problem is getting that connection to the treatment plan I think overall cost is about $6 million is what we came up with so we started this treatment plant may we work backwards towards that to get us that outfall and then there's an opportunity to also make some of that forc main connection into a gravity source so there are some properties along New River uh in cap Creek that we could connect that that'd be something we have to evaluate it's really about putting a valve vault in around New River and cap Creek Road to allow us that secondary flow for the Force main to give us that bypass and backup with that lower section of the Force main that ties into to um uh Cave Carefree Highway right now cave Carefree Highway sewer so we think it's a good option expensive but now we have it mapped out so in addition to Bringing on the dry sewer areas uh state of Detroit one and two and uh Canyon Ridge uh we would actually extend this a little further to actually make a bypass a force main bypass for the town which we think is a is a huge thing for us for reliability in this this sewer system since we just recently had a very expensive uh and uh stressful repair of that Force pain so yeah and just one other project to to point out as well um that kind of helps limit the Reliance of just the Rancho Manana lift station uh right now the way that the the system operates is that the stage coach Pass lift station actually pumps up to the ranch Manana lift station and then that's pumped through that Force main um there's a potential and a project that we've uh recommended of just making the connection uh of the stage coach pass Li station directly to the forest main lower um in the lower part of the system and so now you don't you know you you're not necessarily able to bypass those flows but now it's not all coming from further higher up in the system if that makes sense and and now you're kind of splitting up where the flows are rather than having all of the flows from the system come all the way from the top so um that's another approach that that we feel would be very beneficial providing some redundancy and also improvements because right now we're double pumping the the flows that go into the stage coach Lo station because we do send them North through the gravity SW system to Ranch Manana so it makes it challenging if we have a ranch an issue at Rancho Manana because we actually have the two adjacent uh Force Mains to manage their sending Flo to rench Min but this this would give us we still keep the existing Force man and Service as a backup but we the primary flow would go down south so instead of double pumping pumping it once gravity into Ranch M and then pumping down the hill we would take that lower section of the Basin and bring it down so we' see some operational efficiencies too at that Improvement so the I'm sorry go ahead uh for the area of the Black Mountain septic conversion uh to go from septic to sewer like that uh What uh portion of the cost of that goes to Residents in that defined district and is it voluntary or is it Collective what mayor that's a very good question that's almost a policy decision you know we tried to quantify it with the master plan to come up with what it would cost um you know and I think again the option like even the green line coming out back into the plant to allow for that flow if we were to divert the Rancho Manana flows through there that that makes that an active line the last thing we want to do is keep adding more dry lines to the system but yeah as this next slide shows is we tried to quantify what some of these might be and Black Mountain sewer um to do it all in one project would be very expensive I think it's showing up at the bottom in year 2050 right now Black Mountain septic toour at at $10 million just under $10 million so that's something we would have to work on whether we do that as an improvement district with those customers up there I know one thing council's asked us to do is we're trying to map out when we get um uh septic waiver requests I.E someone who has a um if someone's putting in a new septic system they actually get a septic waiver for or if they have to modify an existing septic so we're mapping those out to see if we're starting to see failures in specific areas um our first blush it there's not distinc thing areas it's really more the growth in the system so we haven't seen too many failures but that that may accelerate in the near future up in that area which may uh they've had some sewer backflow or septic system back flows the last couple big rains we've had so a lot of those systems are put in in the 60s and they're getting ready to replace yeah so that that is something we ought to take a look at typically the way I've seen that uh that happen in other is we pay for the main and then they pay for the connection so the system itself would pay for the for the sewer main line and then the 10 or $20,000 they would pay that but instead of paying it you have them pay a couple hundred bucks a month for 10 years that way you amortise it you're not you know a lot of those people are older and they they just don't have uh you know Expendable income another Factor we should probably look at if we went down that path is when we developed the capacity fees a few years ago um at the time we didn't know if that was going to be a project so we actually developed capacity fees over a small number of new connections so we might want to look at that again because right now our capacity fees are fairly high in the Wastewater system so that would allow us some opportunity to lower that fee if we think more customers are going to come in and then spread that out and this is a new project that we didn't anticipate so we have to figure out does the Town Fund it all upfront and then how do we fund it because obviously the Wastewater system is one of our struggles we only have n just over 900 account so if you're going to if you're going to force them to connect then you've got to give them a payment plan over time you can't you can't dump a 30,000 or $20,000 bill on uh the second question I had piggybacking on on M Driscoll's question um is there going to be a problem with the steepness of slope there with the sewer runoff and what do we do about that yeah that that's a great question um so a steep sewer can create hydraul problems um what we found through our modeling efforts is because um the flows going within those Mains aren't very high they don't they don't create those performance issues that you typically be concerned about and so um what our modeling showed is that you'd still meet all the um performance criteria that's established by engineering standards yeah I know there's some locations that have fairly long runs and they're fairly steep lots of problems yeah yep absolutely well financially there's a huge amount of money in prioritization lwh hanging fruit because we're right now you got a half cent sales tax subsidized the sewer system and you got another million and a half dollars a year historically just going out of the general fund in the sewer system so as you add people on you start to recover that back in plus we'll have another $2.1 million uh that's that the general fund is now paying um that uh to cover bonding if we decide to do it the same way but here again it seems like we ought a prioritization and staging for the economic because this is going to be an economic lift for the town to mess because it's it's in such a hole right now we've got to dig our way out and then we can start to turn this into a neutral where the general fund isn't and we you know a $14 million general fund and uh you got million and a half dollars in direct subsidy and another couple million dollars in that that's a lot of money you can buy a lot of fireman for that that kind of money which is one of the issues in the general fund yeah so um this is where the economic expertise is going to come into play yeah Seth pointed out and on this slide you'll see there's still just general condition assessments you know the uh there's a lot portion of the sewer system was put in in the 70s and some of it was put in the '90s and you know we're seeing things like just across the street we actually had a a sewer line repair today it went very successfully we were able to clean out the line we're going to do the liner in a couple of weeks but we actually had a section of ductal iron pipe that was very highly tuberculated we were able to get that cleaned out um and the the contractor will come back in a week or two and put the liner through it um but we have a couple of sections like that we have some dip sewers to still deal with but a lot of our manholes need repair so there's a lot of ongoing maintenance to keep up with the system but the the one neat thing about this is that if we do EXP to the dry sewer areas or Black Mountain then that this is one of the reasons we did the master plan that then means there's more flow going to the wastewater treatment plant with then exacerbates the issue that right now the only outfall we have for that flow is ranch and minis golf course which we know we already have an imbalance certain times of the year so you leads right into our reuse uh discussions which is the next uh chapter in the master plan so you going to check with Phoenix see if they'll take our Wastewater in return we get some wet water we actually had that meeting already mayor and Council so um we actually had a discussion on the use of or exchange of um either uh well we discuss couple different options uh one was a City Phoenix has a reuse system that actually extends All the Way North up to the golf course uh what's the name of the golf course just south the Valley Ranch it's one of I think 13 or 14 customers they have on our reuse system north of the central Arizona project Canal system um so we talked to them about you know could we tie into the top end of your system so effectively instead of you pumping the water 10 miles north um we can we can give you some at the top end um well sounds good they actually see some structural issues that because the top end of their system um they balance at that top uh end of the system and then the water quality um our waste water flows even though it's Class A Plus that we produce at our treatment plant it is actually has high to toll dissolved solids and that's a concern for them um so we looked at a couple different options we just actually had a meeting with Phoenix staff two years two weeks ago sorry and then uh another option that came out is do we do just a Wastewater exchange with them in that when we know that we don't have a place to put the effluent we could uh divert some of our Wastewater flows to their their system we talked about that and then they said well what about diverting some effluent and they actually preferred the effluent option so our our treated effluent we' do a connection to their sewer system the sewer system would then convey it down to their their their Cave Creek Water Plant which they're currently working on an upgrade project for right now and then give us a water exchange that way that was the preference that they came up with so that would mean that we'd have to construct a connection to the gravity sewer system to send some of our effluent down through their sewer system so what I'll let Brandy maybe speak to the technical nature but this is the slide that we're talking about the purple line is the existing It's Over a Four Four Mile pipeline that we send the water from the wastewater treatment plant all the way back up through the town um to the ranch of minana lakes um but we looked at a couple of different options uh the orange was a connection to the golf course Lake system that would go down the access road to the the Phoenix dump site one of the problems with us was doing a direct connection to the golf course Lakes is that they're already a reused customer on with Phoenix so we'd actually have to enter into a reuse customer uh agreement with them so you know why would they work with us is one question then we talked about the idea of connecting to the ReUse system I believe that's the um the red line that we're showing there and you can see we have to come quite a quite a distance down to tie into the ReUse system so if we were do a connection from the effent line down um it's actually a shorter connection into their their sewer system just south of where the um the Home Depot and Fries is there's actually uh Brandy pointed out that there's a 10 or 12 inch sewer M that we can make a connection to which would have capacity for us so that's our recommended option at this point based on that discussion two weeks ago with Phoenix is a is a project that would allow us to divert flow some our affluent flow down there the other Advantage we have is our water wastewater treatment plant currently it struggles um wastewater treatment is a biological process um so we we refer to it as keeping the bugs happy to make sure that they can treat the Wastewater um and our our plant struggles in the summertime because our Wastewater flows go down as the number of customers as the number of businesses aren't sending them their flow it it struggles with that bi biology so our fear is if we we cut off the Wastewater stream or send some of that waste water to um Phoenix that's actually exacerbating the problem that we have at the treatment plant by treating it and then giving them the affluent that means the plant can still operate better more efficiently so that's so we saw a bunch of pluses for us for doing that and again it's based on a conversation that we had with Phoenix just a few weeks ago and their senior staff so it require a new IGA with Phoenix I don't think we could amend one of the two that we have in place right now but they were agreeable to the op at least starting the discussions we could then map that out we actually have a program in this year CIP to help us map at what that might look like we set aside $250,000 to do this study so we can engage an engineer to look at how that would physically work and then work with Phoenix and then get an IG place and then build that Improvement be something that we'd have to construct and and have something in place so it's not something immediately available but once we get it available right now we could save the water we'd be looking at the ranch Manana Lakes if they're overflowing we're going to send the water to Phoenix we can balance that out because that can happen in the summertime when a monsoon storm occurs that gives us an outfall we just work with Phoenix on that to send that water and as we gain more Wastewater customers that's just exacerbating the problem that we have currently with Rancho minana and I believe that's a good solution to give us a new diversity in our water portfolio so a water exchange with Phoenix they give us credit for the flows going down there it would be metered and then they would allow us um uh an exchange of new Water Resources back through the interconnect site so we believe this is a good opportunity for the town to to diversify our water portfolio and continue that relationship with Phoenix that's that's really exciting yeah yeah so and then this was sort of the the project scenario what we're trying to deal with um we also looked at the opportunity um in the the new news there's been a lot of discussions on Direct poble reuse so the town could go down that path of looking at building our own treatment effectively the effluent from the treatment plant would be reprocessed and turned into potable water supplies ourselves but that could be very costly for us to undertake ourselves and actually add another treatment method but um I think the the exchange of affluent with Phoenix to make a water resource is a great thing for the town to help diversify our water portfolio and help us get the balance with our deliveries to ranchu minana under control and then we can continue to work with ranch Manana on the overall efficiencies of their Lake system where we deliver the water to and then also improve look at them and and work with them on the improvements of their use of water internally too so to help the town you know we do have a long-term contract with ranch Manana uh we send them multiple Water Supplies but how do we get beneficial use of that and right now we're wasting 50 to 70 acre feet a year just in overflowing their Lake system because we don't have somewhere else to benefit she put that water let alone what else is happening up there but I think this is a great opportunity for the town to really again diversify our water uh portfolio so is is what about an alternate outflow for the for the uh for the extra water rather than letting it overflow why it put it back in the a fir we actually brought on um cleer Creek Associates during the process of master plan and their hydrological firm and they looked at it the opportunity of recharging we thought about why can't we just recharge the excess water um there what they concluded was while especially around where the water Ranch is right now is actually a viable spot for doing uh surface uh spreading Basin recharge at into Cave Creek wash the recovery of that water is going to be a difficulty we do not have recovery Wells nearby so we'd have to drill some recovery Wells I was going to ask them Tobe look at it one more time to do if we do what's called an ARS injection well so effectively we inject into the aquer we draw it back up but there might be issues with we might have to do well head treatment if we do it that way too so we might need factor in those types of things something we can value it a little bit more initially we thought of hey why don't we just recharge and recover like I've done that in other agencies but um their suggestion is it's not viable we don't have any recovery walls in place and you might actually have to do Wellhead treatment to it so that's all adding to the cost of the solution so um it's something we can valuate a little bit more but we're thinking this especially when we had the the meeting with Phoenix staff they were they were agreeable to the idea of the water exchange so cool yeah so that direct poble re cc wtp is that a study what you're looking at the 50,000 uh the bottom one there just before the 2030 reclaim CIP total oh yeah um yeah that's it's there something if we want to do a study we think it requ that so it's whether we want to go that direction um City Phoenix is currently looking into that at their Cave Creek Wastewater Plant and also at the larger Regional 91st Avenue wastewater treatment plant where they're doing in conjunction with the other partners of that facility um that's a very large project I think black of each is actually involved in the project that's going on at the uh the Deer Valley uh or sorry Cave Creek Waste Water Treatment Plant so yeah that would just evaluate that and give us a better you know the $50,000 would just tell us are we looking at a million project or a $5 million project if we wanted to do direct pable reuse of RF loin and for the amount of water I think it's I don't know be honestly my practical opinion is I think the variability in the flow and the amount of water I don't think it's going to be that an economy of scale issue economy scale yeah we don't need more Wastewater equipment we've been had too much for too long I mean that's been the problem the town is overc capacity yeah and this would be adding a new water treatment facility for us to manage so so Sean when we when we approv that water treatment plant the people sitting in this room and go back through the meeting minutes and they told us that we could drink whatever comes out of the out of the water Ranch and I think I'd like to go back and find some of those people and have them come here and actually show us how that works well the staff run it very well they've made a lot of improvements I'm still not sure if I'd grab a GU I'm [Laughter] not but it is it's uh you know again our staff do a great job of managing that facility make sure that it's it's A+ so it's the highest highest quality so it's um uh can be used for direct reuse um but yeah as far as it's not potable water and that's that is sort of what's happening in the industry right now but on larger scales Phoenix is looking at it uh Scott sell's had a pilot plant for a number of years you know it's a water cycle and in fact most of the times a lot of agencies have been recharging that into the ground and they use the soil interface and then you draw it up during a via a jent well so it's effectively been going on we're just consolidating into a process so but it shows the water cycles contained we're not making new water so it's effectively using a a w water stream which is waste water and converting it into a poble supply so okay so I've gone through a lot for you today um and then we actually have the CP these are the three individual tables that we've uh the master plan again provides a road map for us to move forward with it's up to staff to then work on the the feasibility of each project the fundability of each project and then the prioritization of moving things in and out as as things happen but um I think overall I commend the the work that the team's done and all the work that's been put together with this I think the town has a very good uh master plan which is what it is it provides that guidance for us to move forward with and see what we need to improve on the systems so the next steps in the process are so uh we'd like to bring this back with council's approval or any questions or any revisions uh at a future meeting we'll ask for resolution just to adopt it just it gives us that a little bit of more support rather than it's just it's a staff driven exercise but it's actually something done for the town and then we have Council support to allow that to be the guiding principle we'll update this every five years the other one was more than five years since we updated it when I first came on board to be honest with you I looked into doing a master plan right away and I didn't think we had the infrastructure mapping and understanding of the system so it's taken a little bit of time to to do things like get our GIS system up and running uh get some other efficiency things done so we can get to this point that we now have a master plan so the thought would be every five years now we can do an update to this we have both a good water model and a sewer model Wastewater model that we can then keep updated intermediately so that actually is a lot of effort that we don't have to move into the next update uh we'll work on updating and staff the new uh five-year Capital Improvement program that will be presented towards Council as part of the budgeting process next year um I brought I brought forward the Water Resource Matrix this is one of the key things that uh get get gives us a road map of what we need to look at you know it's got pointed out we have short-term issues the town needs to uh work towards uh post 2020 6 is which is when the current uh drought contingency plan for the lower basins expires um there's an expectation that the colado river water supplies will be reallocated and there'll be reductions in in the individual subcontracts what that means the town technically is that we rely on our Colorado River water supplies and we expect there'll be cuts to that so how do we meet both the current customer needs and growth in the town so that's bringing new water resources in so we have both shortterm and longterm so um that we need to be working on the wells are are one but other arrangements and other projects to allow us to secure the towns and diversify the town's Water Resource portfolio is key um then we also have a lot of infrastructure improvements to work on um and then we do want to bring in the um uh the rate Consultants Wan um have done the rates and our financial consultants just to look at the fundability overall of the program that we've presented and then maybe that might move some of the projects out allow us to group some projects together so we could do if we say do a bond or something else that we can group some projects together so that's that's the next step again we're bringing that forward through the capital Improvement program uh to bring towards Council to adopt the the first year of a five-year program which is being fed into by a document that's looking out to 2050 towards a buildout scenario and then with that we have I know we've had some questions if there's any more questions and comments or if we want to open this up to the public and gather any more comments yeah I I do have a question so options for second feed to Desert Hills figure four tac 8 um option one and option two look fairly reasonable uh why would we create a really long option to go from fur cross over to Cav we struggled with this one a little bit when it came up but when you actually look at it um spur Crossroad um is a large deadend 12in line in the town system it was put in when there was potential for a large development in on spur cross so it currently stubs to the north we put a fire hydrant at the end of that line to help provide fire service but that's one of the long dead end lines that we flush a lot of water actually I think the most water we flush in our system is spur cross the thought is that and it's something that came up with the idea of getting water to the west side of the town if uh we're already pressurizing that water to pressure Zone 7 kava Springs is not much more than one pressure Zone away from that so instead of connecting Kava and the DB area through um effectively two subsequent pressure zones to get it up to the top of the hill one pressure Zone from Seven would get us up there and then we could use the 12inch line that kava Springs built to flow that water back down so that actually becomes our secondary feed to the West Side so when we looked at it technically because of the amount of water that we're flushing out it does have some validity working with kava Springs development I'm not sure if we can get that built but we wanted to put it in as a technical option that maybe that's something that we want to look at in the future it would basically allow us to push Zone Seven water out of the system through kava down into the west side of the town and utilize the existing 12in lines that we have we went through a whole we we're currently going through something with the trail mhm my suggestion would be we change option three if we choose to whatever they you know they come back with on the trail option just follow the trail going down Morning Star and cutting across per across you're having to drop down 50 some odd feet vertically and then you're going to have to raise 60 some feet vertically so it just kind of doesn't make sense where where they make the trail it'll be a little bit easier as far as drops and things like that so I would just suggest you follow the trail wherever the trail goes because you'll already have the easements at that point no good point we'll put that on there so yeah that was just more of a graphical that again initially we didn't think it made sense but then when you walk through it logically you know the spur cross line is just oversized the line that got built up there and how can we move water out of that rather than just dump it out the top of the of of the line which a second option might be to take and push that line about a mile and a half up into spur cross itself into by the parking lot area provide water to Spur cross Recreation Area and then cut it West uh and then come back in to the north of kava Springs that might be a more viable alternative than even following a trail because then that kills kind of a second bird which is uh you know birds with one stone the second bird is it it now provides water to people who are going into spur cross and Lord knows we've had people having to get pulled out of there because they didn't bring enough water good thought yeah no very good suggestion Mar c member yeah well let's uh let's get comments from Council and we'll open up to the public for brief uh comments if they should have any so um uh Council comments you know I I'd like to note that for the short-term projects the big one seems to be the interconnect and that's already online we're already going there so adding the other projects if you look at what we've already got it's not such a huge jump it's a very good observation and I pointed that out I said that's that doesn't make the numbers look so bad once you pull that out we've already factored that in so you're absolutely correct council member comments down this way um could we synchronize with this with Hal's pavement master plan so as we're putting new pipes in or as we're doing different things we're not tearing up something we just put in your CC member that's something we try to work with how and again looking forward yes we have improvements in pressure Zone one and then pressure Zone 8 and then through the town core yeah we want to work with uh Town little cheaper if he helps people pay rather pay the bill once rather than have to pay the bills yeah that' be up for me as staff to work with Al now that we've identified the deficiencies and we can work through that appreciate Mary you're right this is a lot better than the last one I have a couple comments uh uh first of all we're going to have to we've had a lot of projects come in two and three times the estimation um we had some inflation but seem to be going away but we're going to have to have a real effort in Project execution that includes accurate estimation and then um the best-in-class bidding uh to get the pricing and to be able to reliably estimate a project and get it uh get it put into place and the other other in the same area I'm not sure we have the um enough people on staff um professional engineer uh sort of skill set for some of these things um it's been a problem ever since that 2013 master plan which was one of the outfalls of that very shortly after was recommendations for additional uh Personnel uh to get these things done I I'm I'm Blown Away by how many lowcost options there are I I just did a real quick calculation of the way that vermes well used to operate uh when it was in service at 60 uh GPM and that's about 10 $10,000 for acre foot compare that to the 30,000 that Michelle was talking about so that could uh get a project done at one onethird the cost of going out and buying $30,000 uh per acre foot um for a 100 years Supply which then we have to supply the operating cost to actually get it here uh which is very and pump it up the hill which is H right there's a dollar per thousand gallons of energy cost so I mean we we've got tons and tons of options on the supply side that are small uh we've got the freshwater being used the Wastewater Plant um we got the Overflow I mean it's just we we're covered up with with good options I don't think it's going to come up to the kind of levels we need we're gonna have to have others too but uh the good thing about the wells is we have control of that right now we can do that right now without anybody else's uh in input so I'm I'm very encouraged by that um and I just want to say that the 2013 plan uh this really beats it and I want to thank people uh that who've put this this together thank you very much uh Wastewater uh Brad shelle who who am I missing and of course our own water our own water people I think you've done a really good job here our own staff yeah our own staff yeah yeah Sean you and your staff I think this is a a really good good plan and uh I'm I'm very encouraged by it so congratulations to everybody came up with a question okay and cther get the question so very early in your presentation you mentioned the salt project Bartlett Dam potential project that we might get involved in I'm curious and I'm so grateful that we have four of our new utility advisory committee members in the audience um because this was huge educational value for them are we going to be having them be educated on the SRP project prior to the council deciding whether or not to pursue it m council member um no the first meeting of the advisory committee and I actually before we had that meeting with SRP staff that attended I made sure that the utility advisory uh committee were able to um knew about that meeting and this meeting tonight so that they could attend but we our first meeting will be actually after the next council meeting on Monday night so um yeah we actually tried to get that scheduled and we thought we had it scheduled and we found out I was it three members couldn't make it I think three members couldn't make it and one didn't respond yeah so part of the that was part of the challenge because they would have been able to get educated on this um before Council has the action on it yeah that would have been you know one of the biggest projects that we might Undertake and their recommendation would have been beneficial I I think the other thing is the the utilities advisory committee hopefully it's it's a really good marking effort because we haven't even touched on on residential conservation which I think is huge I I think we've got to I do my own measurement of my own pool consumption and also my irrigation and my uh my numbers are that uh half to one-third of the water is outside um so I I don't quite believe the numbers you have in here for your your recovery on on the Wastewater system I think they're too high the percentage is too high Bas is my my numbers but uh the the I think utilities advisory committee is going to pay a really really important role in helping the town you're part of the government now how does that sound um we we have nothing scheduled from the public but let's open it up for public uh comment Mary I had no submissions but anyone wants so would anybody like to aine here yes please I just have a quick question something I did not hear in this plan um we talk about the groundwater Wells um obviously Desert Hills and you're talking about how many acre feet you're getting that does doesn't last forever and then if we think about um activating our current Cave Creek Wells um approximately 300 I think was thrown out for acre feet so there wasn't anything in here about you know rainwater harvesting or an injection Wells I didn't see any numbers on any of that and my well went dry because of a neighbor so my aquafer is dead unless I go beyond 13,000 1300 feet so I'm sharing and reminding that you know and we are going to have to rely more on groundwater and we can if we inject and we help our aquafers but if we're talking about the what we're doing in Desert Hills and then maybe some here just remember if we don't inject and do something I live next to rash once a year maybe twice a year I get so much so much water comes through that we have no plan right now and there's nothing in what I heard about when we get big rains we have a lot of water here we're not doing anything with it so my question is where is that in the plan and I think that needs to be considered um big time thank you can I have your name for the record piggy back thank you N I want to piggyback on that um fortuitously uh when I built my barn uh we had a water runoff issue and I would end up getting two huge puddles um puddles being about two or three times the size of this room um we put in two French drains and so when Larson came out I had used Larson Excavating to come out and do it they put in two French trains one was about 12T deep the other one's about 6 feet deep and they figured on my 5 acre property I'm putting back somewhere around one and a half to two acre feet of water every year now those French drains cost a couple thousand bucks a piece but it sure would seem like when we do construction wherever we do future construction we make people M put it down and put a French drain in that recharges the aquafer I mean it's it's crazy amount of water that we get in Arizona I mean it's only 9 inches a year 10 inches a year but still if you take it take a look at that per acre um you know you're looking at at three4 of an acre foot a year for every acre of land you've got that's a lot of water so just simple things like that I mean I'd love to see our town code up you know looked at to say put everything back in the ground and for people who are interested in doing it um Larson or any of the other excavating companies can come out and take a look I mean everybody has standing water somewhere in their property that's where you want to put the drain just a thought good one uh yes just approached and and please give give your name very clearly so we have it for the minutes Abraham so during the conversation my mind was considering the fact efficiency and dollar spent in majority of the conversation that you had about Water Reclamation and all these things things there are very very large numbers that are assessed for these projects is there a consideration of where is the most efficient money spent for the maximum amount of money compared to the maximum amount of water that is going to be generated I don't think that conversation was had mayor council so we didn't specifically add that prioritization to the projects um but yeah I think overall it sort of blended into all the projects that were developed is you know we have infrastructure improvements that need to be made some are specific so there's no real efficiency you need to upsize a water line in zone 8 to make it work properly um but as far as overall efficiency that's where like things like the ReUse connection with Phoenix that's an overall you know sending them our our treated effluent to get water exchanged back to us that actually fell out of a discussion on you know how how expensive would it be for us to do direct po reuse or injection Wells or something else so yeah there was some framework of efficiency overall and just making the system uh from efficiency standpoint and utility we look at it from efficiency of water loss that's a big thing for us and then a water balance and how you tie that together and sadly right now it's there's a lot of big numbers involved between the infrastructure and or the cost of water new Water Resources so yeah at the end the council will have to decide financially what it means to the town so perhaps it would be a good idea to provide the council with some sort of a structure showing them what the priorities are and how to really be able to maximize the funds that are going to be spent short term compared to long term okay okay thank you thank you thank you yes Lyn Walsh and I'm uh a new member of the new committee but we haven't met yet my son lives in Tucson he has this huge huge recycled this this sstn that captures all his rainwater it Waters his yard it is incredible he drained it last year because the rains weren't regular but it fills right back up it's an easy winwin and it makes everyone in their home more aware of the water that they have I mean the key is we have to be diligent in making sure that every citizen has has some Buy in to this the the fact that we live in a desert and we can't put up a wall and not californicate this this this state I mean they're coming and we can't stop them uh so we need to educate people on you know the basics of um you know drip irrigation and all that but having 35 years on my Mountain I've replaced the drip so often and I have so many leaks and it's so frustrating but I want my beauty so we need to educate people on harvesting the rain any else okay seeing none uh our for our business is finished thank you again to Black we LA and Beach and all the presenters and Brian thank you very much and uh meeting and Jour and welcome Cynthia that's right