City Council Water Workshop 6-22-17

[0:00:00] go ahead and call this meeting to order but just so everybody understands we're still eating so give us a moment if we have just put food in our mouth before we answer so I'm going to call this to order at 6:07 this is a special agenda we are going we're here tonight to discuss water and so the issues that we will talk about is water supply and demand water infrastructure and water utilities financing so I'm going to turn it over to Bill Riley who I believe is going to lead us through the program tonight there is a council we certainly appreciate you you taking your time this evening and with the food was course so that that's when we'll ask you questions right as he's taking exactly as as you know water has has been and still is one of the most important issues that the city is is dealing with has been for some time and we'll continue to look for ways to find new water supplies and resolve those issues water is a clear clearly the lifeblood of a community and certainly is important for economic growth and so and just to sustain the community so what we would like to do is kind of share with you we kind of want to go back tonight and kind of start at the beginning and give you some background into all of our water rights and understanding what our water supplies current water supplies are take a look at the things that we've been looking at over the last few years the water advisory board has been looking at and incomes began to set the stage for how we move forward in meeting a future water supplies for the city I have asked Jason Hill who you all know who is city's water rights attorney to

[0:02:04] join us here tonight and he will start off by taking us through some of the most complicated water rights probably in the state of Texas and and we're not going to get too far down in the weeds but it is important to understand the the background of that is we begin to look forward in the future and make decisions on how we move forward so again we appreciate you being here and the opportunity to have this discussion obviously it's a workshop so please do not hesitate to stop us and ask questions at any time but as we move through the topics as we kind of change from one subject to the other we'll make sure at that point that we have time for any questions make sure we don't move forward with any lingering questions it might be important as we move into the next subject so with that I'm going to turn it over to Jason and let him start having some discussion about our water rights mayor and members of the council it's a pleasure sit in front of you again let me first give you sort of a sneak peak of the the agenda and the schedule that we're going to try to follow today and we would sure like to get you out here early but we anticipate you all may have some questions and we want to give everybody plenty of time to get their questions answered we broke this as you can see we broke this agenda down into into multiple parts here I'm going to start talking about our surface water rights give you a little bit of background on those and we'll start talking about the ground water rights and and then we'll get into you know sort of total inventory anticipated demands and the plans for trying to accommodate all that growth the city's going to anticipate over the next several decades so let's start out with surface water let's see he's got rights or or access to water in multiple buckets across the region Twin Buttes and nads whether you're the most obvious ones here in town and and

[0:04:07] Fischer but the city also relies on water out of Oh HIV and so regionally this is this is how our reservoirs line up one of these lakes has their own watersheds we want the rain upstream of these lakes not downstream that's how to get full closer into town which matches the big big map we have up here on your left just wanted to give you a little bit closer feel of some of your surface water infrastructure that you have here in town Twin Buttes and as worthy and Fisher or obviously the the big sources of supply there but as you can see we've got multiple impoundments especially on the south concho the the waterway coming out of Lake Nazareth II he has rights to impound water behind Metcalf and hide benthic one and then the lone wolf as well the city's water intake structure is off of lone wolf and then the city uses Bell Street to capture water from OC fissure and throw it back up into lone wolf or the city takes us into your water treatment plant about a decade or maybe a little bit more ago there was a petition effort from some water rights holders downstream on the main stem of the concho who had requested that a water master be created for the contrary watershed I like to explain I'll Ike in water masters to you know the closest analogy I come to as an air traffic controller you know water ride surface water rides are governed under the priority system in the state which means first in time of the water right being issued the most senior variety so we refer to those as priority dates we refer to water rights as having priority

[0:06:09] dates and earlier in time your priority date is the more senior water right is and the superior that right is superior to the water right that was issued later in time way the law is supposed to work the way water rights are supposed to be managed without a water master is on a basis of water rights management priority isn't strictly enforced unless the TCEQ steps in and and curtails water right diversions which outside of a water master doesn't happen very often water masters like I said her like air traffic controllers when demands come into the water master's office requests to take water out of the river the water master takes all those requests they line them up by priority they determine who gets what water first and so on trip of watershed as you can see there on the map is the area within the within the red lines all the water rights within the watershed of the concho are governed by the water master and so we've attempted to just to give you an illustration here of the campus the majority if not all the water rights surface water rights in the controvert or watershed many of those downstream between the city and lake and lake IV have much older priority dates thank you sir much older priority dates then Twin Buttes for example and so when those folks call under the water master and say they need water the city has to yield what are the city's water rights well the predominant volume of water that the city has access to doesn't come

[0:08:13] in the form of a paper water ride it comes in the form of a contractual right the city has a contract with CR MWD Colorado River Municipal Water District for water out of Lake IV and water out early expense and then of course there's oshi OC Fisher reservoir the water right for that reservoir is owned by you CRA and the city has a contract with you CRA for water out of Fisher the city's surface water rights reservoir wide rights predominant reservoir rights come out of Twin Buttes and man's worthy so as you can see the majority of the access to water that the city has comes through contracts only be as worthy are significant sources of supply but on a daily basis the city relies almost entirely on in many instances on the water from lake IV so the next series of slides I'm about to take you through are going to illustrate a an issue that water rights owners especially cities and other water suppliers deal with from a water planning standpoint all the time and that is you have an actual right you have actual access to all the water that you're entitled to under your water right let me take you let me walk you through what what I mean by that let's take a look at Twin Buttes Reservoir Twin Buttes and as worthy are permitted and the state recognizes that the city operates those two reservoirs in a system in fact the two water rights themselves refer to the water rights authorization for the other so the state permitted those two to work together combined between the lighten as worthy water right and the Twin Buttes water right the city on paper has a right to divert 21 thousand acre feet a year from

[0:10:19] from both of those sources of supply I'm not sure what the historical record shows for the capacity of Twin Buttes reservoir but it's at least been since the early 1990s that Twin Buttes was ever considered to be full and I'm not sure that it ever got full in the 1990s but certainly since about 92 or 93 is when hydrologists will will tell us that that the true drought of record for Twin Buttes began and we've never recovered so today as you can see on the slide there it's it's about 17 percent full and you know a relatively decent percentage over the last few years as compared to the last few years our inability to recover from that because of usage or because it like rain like a rain drought and let's talk about that twenty-one thousand acre feet when we talk in terms and surface water rides from a planning standpoint we want to know what can we rely on on a regular basis from that water right how much water can we depend on when the drought pits and don't get any rain how much will that reservoir yield that's Spitz zero one it's you know 17 percent now right that's right so zero the 17 what's the average in there well I don't know what the that's really probably question for bill I know

[0:12:22] and I think that's a difficult question to answer but looking at that that graph you can see I mean to degrade it takes the levels since the 60s and you can see that it's varied and for the last since since the late 90s it's has not had a lot of water in it there was one period in the mid 2000s there that 2006 I think to 2010 where it had a little bit more water but it's been in decline for the last decade so the 21 thousand acre feet were allowed with that low what what do we use um so here here we are to the point I was I was sort of teeing up here there's a difference between what we call a paper right and what the firm yield of you're right is on paper we have a right to divert 21,000 acre feet a year in 2012 there was from a planning standpoint or the standard of care for municipal water suppliers is to plan on the what we call a firm yield of the reservoir which is defined as the yield that you can take year in year out from a reservoir during the drought of record assuming no inflows to the reservoir how much can you take out annually before you drain the last drop on the last day of the drought and the next a it rains in the reservoir fields that's what we call the firm yield how much can you reliably take out before you drain the reservoir and it refills the next day obviously it's a theoretical it's theoretical calculation most water suppliers today particularly west of the 98 parallel don't operate on a firm mule basis anymore they operate on a safe

[0:14:25] yield or even some folks operate off the two-year safety yield and here's what I mean by that they field is even more conservative than a firm yield a safe yield says it calculates how much water can you take from the reservoir reliably through the drought of record so that on the last day of the drought you have one year supply left in the reservoir and so some folks like your counterparts in Abilene or managing their reservoirs on a two-year safe fuel same concept at the end of the drought you have two years of storage left and available to you so the way we calculate a firm yield or a safe yield is the the lowest yield of the reservoir during that drought of record what what is it we can take out before the reservoir fills in the last last day of the drought Twin Buttes went dry function still water in it but it was below what's considered the conservation storage the actual usable storage of the reservoir in 2012 from a water planning standpoint that means the firm yield of the reservoir is zero the reservoir is never refilled so from a reliability standpoint how much water from a planning standpoint do we know we can rely on from Twin Buttes reservoir through from that system of twin Beach reservoir and as worthy yearly basis before it refills after the ground record the number zero zero really Lucy Fisher is in the same shape from March of 2012 to May of 2015 OSI Fisher was it zero capacity on paper our contract with you CRA says we're entitled to 80 thousand acre feet a year but we have no reliable yield from OSI Fisher and OSI Fisher's never recovered

[0:16:29] also just put as a point of reference a bill we start talking about somebody's pretty scared about the anchor fee per year what is the acre feet per year that the city actually uses at this point I mean what is our need at this point our annual use right now is a little over 13,000 acre feet 13,000 acre feet so I just want to make sure that I'm clear that because on paper these that you're talking about runners should be more than enough to cover us except that the yield just not term there's nothing here all right let me say this this reliability issue is is not unique to st. Angelo it's an issue that communities like I said particularly West Texas communities are dealing with all over the state they had reliability numbers based on predominantly the drought of the 50s which was the from a from a hydrologic standpoint that was the worst case scenario that we built all our assumptions around when we give water rights permitting and in 2011 for for most parts of the state 2011 Eclipse the drought of record and so for many parts of the state there is a new drought of record that that sort of blew the assumptions of the 50s throughout away and so now everybody's having to revise their sort of worst case scenarios are you are you allowed or do you factor into any of those calculations evaporation or is that something a totally separate and distinct issue it is from a water rights standpoint its evaporation doesn't come into account from an operational standpoint it absolutely comes into account but on paper what tcq issues you it says no factor Don waters there you take it out okay so evaporation comes into play when you're talking about the capacity of the reservoir for sure lake spence we have a contractual supply with CR MW d for three thousand acre feet of year from july 2011 to September of 2012 lake spence was functionally dry so it's

[0:18:37] important sort of deposit here and point out during the the most severe stage of the most recent drought and really I don't I don't even think it's fair to talk about the trout in past tense because from a hydrologic standpoint Sanjo is still in drought and it has been for decades and and let me point out real quick there is a there is a difference when we talk about drought it's important to put into context a lot of folks are familiar with the Palmer drought index the map of the state with the yellow and the orange colors that reference the severity of the drought that's a that's a that's a measurement based on in large part on soil conditions when we're talking about drought from a water management standpoint we're talking about drought as far as the reservoir capacities go and so reservoir is below the top of your conservation storage but you know below full your reservoir is in drought now maybe you're in drought for six weeks if you're over in East Texas and it rains again and now your reservoirs spilling and you're out of drought but for our purposes here Twin Buttes reservoir has been in drought for a long long time Evy Spence like see Fisher had been in droughts for a long long time then we're not out of it oh oh HIV the city's predominant source of surface water today remember all the series of reservoirs we had back in the severity of the drought in 2011-2012 we had zero yield out of those reservoirs and two points during that drought span lake IV as we've indicated here on the map got within less than twelve months of supply so if lake IV had actually dried up if it if it became functionally dry the city would have been without any surface water supplies

[0:20:42] talk about groundwater supplies here in a bit but at the same time sort of a parenthetical here the city was was pressing really hard to try to get the Hickory well-filled developed and plumbed in but it wasn't and so there was a period of time that you know I'm preaching to the choir here you folks lived it but there was a period of time where the city was in some our straights from a water supply standpoint and in rain the community was going to be in big trouble so what's important to talk about here with with Oh HIV the same thing with the other water rights we talked about we have a contractual relationship with CRA MWD that entitles us to 15,000 acre feet of year over the and by the way that's based on what cerium WD and our contract calls a safe yield okay over the course of the life of that contract the calculated safe yield of Ohi V has consistently gone down so today the Texas Water Development Board in the regional water plan for 2016 has recognized that Oh H IV has I'm sorry the city's portion of water that we've contracted for 5660 acre-feet that number is likely to be revised down in the next region four point four thousand eight hundred and twenty acre feet so from a reliability standpoint what we know we can depend on is a safe yield from Oh HIV it's gone from fifteen thousand acre-feet at the time we under the contract with the district down to just under five is that a conversation or is that just it almost a mandate you cannot have more than this oh that's a fair question

[0:22:43] if if you talk to folks from CRM WD which I haven't by the way in full disclosure but I've you know the city's consultants have CRM WD will remain I believe it's fair to say pretty steadfast that the city has rights to fifteen thousand acre-feet by golly we'll get them fifteen thousand acre feet from a hydrologic standpoint though that's not possible on a safe fuel basis and I think that's going to be tougher to escape because the Water Development Board is starting to accept those revised safe fuel numbers and so there'll be some probably some Congress follow-up conversations there may actually be kind of hard conversations about how much we can take that may not be 15,000 and so I skipped over a part here I've got that percentage our contract entitles the city to sixteen point five four percent of the total safe yield of lake IV that sixteen point five four comes to fifteen thousand acre feet that's whatever it's worth it's the same percentage of the city of Abilene has contracted for with HIV so we want to make sure we use it and so they can't use it is that the comment because yeah if we got equal I'd hate to be the one on the back rear end not taking advantage and the question mark is when you say contract supply versus safe yield what are dollars and cents when we talk about that if we're contract supply fifteen thousand acre feet a year what's the dollars attached to that how do how do we calculate dollars like that costs meaning if the dollars if the acre feet keeps going down the city's contract requires it to pay sixteen point five four percent of the debt service avoid ivy and sixteen point

[0:24:48] five four percent of the operation and maintenance costs of the report so that is at the 4820 acre feet that the debt service and the OEM doesn't reduce because the safe yield has changed it costs X number of dollars to pay off the debt and it costs X number of dollars to maintain you know because we're contracted for fifteen thousand acre feet a year we are obviously paying a lot more based off of what was initially contracted versus what we're actually been able to get off of it well we're actually since it's not fifteen thousand acre feet at sixteen point five four percent of the cost of construction of the reservoir and that dead-dead service has been paid so there's still a couple years of debt service remaining on the pipeline and then the annual om if you look at the cost of water based off of that sixteen point five four percent and we're only getting four thousand eight hundred acre feet a year what's the cost of water we are currently still getting fifteen thousand acre feet that is our primary water supply CR MWD has not changed what our take angel take can be so we're continuing to to rely completely on IV or the full fee to 15 or thirteen we're taking the fifteen thousand thirteen - yeah little over 13 yes ma'am Oh Brenda I think maybe to your point cutting to the chase it sounds to me like at some point we could still be paying the same but not getting near as much is what exactly this that's my point yes yes Tommy thank you just possibility let me so let me reiterate this point because I want to make sure there's no confusion about it when I'm when I'm talking about for example when I'm pointing to four thousand eight hundred and twenty acre feet here I don't want folks to misconstrue me to say that that's all we can get out of lake ivy today as bill said we can we're getting what our

[0:26:52] contract entitles us for we obviously are you know Twin Buttes isn't yielding zero acre feet today it has a yield today that the city is taking these are these are planning numbers these are the numbers that you look at as a planner or you don't look to your water right for planning necessarily you look hydrilla hydraulically to what you anticipate that water right yielding for you under your worst case drought conditions that under your guideposts that you use for water planning for water planning purposes safe yield that has been calculated by hydrologist for lake ivy it's not fifteen thousand acre feet it's down to forty eight hundred acre feet and change but we're not to a safe yield condition yet for like ivy we got pretty close but but we're not there so we need to we need to obviously be available to talk about the cost of that water because it's one thing to say fifteen thousand whatever that number is versus a forty eight twenty because when we start talking about the cost of water we want to know what the cost of water to us under the contract sixteen point five four percent dead versus the safe yield and only getting four thousand eight hundred twenty acre feet because we all look at what water costs us let me ask this question I mean and maybe it's for clarification from my standpoint from a planning stage we certainly you need to know what the cost of water is going to be so that the citizens know what that cost is but regardless of what that cost is as long as there's water in IV we're going to pay it to get the water is that fair fair statement we're going to pay it regardless we are committed contractually to pay that all right so obviously that is it currently

[0:28:55] that is our cheapest water even if a deal door our take was to drop below 15 pounds or below what we need we're still going to pay for that so at this point operationally that's our that's our first source that's where we're going to go I would soon because when we the debt was created for this and the pipe was laid the cost of laying pipe was cheaper than the cost of laying pipe today is so you're looking at the cost from decades ago versus current costs of being able to do that so that probably calculates out to a lower cost for the water than what it would be today if you had to lay that pipe oh absolutely yeah the other important point to note here is the debt source as I mentioned the debt service on the reservoir itself has been been paid so that almost a million dollars a year we don't pay anymore the pipe line which is about the same within a couple of years I believe 2019 2020 that debt service is paid as well what does that service right now about eight hundred eight hundred fifty thousand year thing and in the OM which is about the same amount which is what we will be paying in in the future on encourse any improvements that they have to make for the reservoir we share in those costs proportionately to our percentage of yield but it will remain as long as there's water in IV it will remain our cheapest supply and again the one that we would go to because we're paying for those costs are paying for that water right now anyway and it'll be less expensive in the future being beaten horse again to death Brenda if we're if we're getting less water at some point they mandate last water really our cost of water is going up because we're getting less water yes know and understand what that cost of water is at the lowest level of water that we can get out of it versus what it is at our highest level contractually absolutely and that's that's obviously important part of our whole portfolio is

[0:30:58] is and why right now Ivy is where I mean that's our go-to water it will become cheaper as even if the yield drops because we're paying off the debt but one thing I think it's important to note here in this discussion is while cost is very important we really wanted to look at the planning here how do we how do we plan how do we make this up I mean what happens when we begin to see these yields begin to drop and we don't have a slide on this I think it's important to note that we've seen Ivy pick up a little bit of water but in 2016 we had the third highest rainfall in history for this area and and if it does not contain any more in the right spot this summer with the heat that we're seeing we'll see most of that go away so this this reservoir is in the point here and looking at water supply planning is how do we deal with these this this issue of continuing drought and continuing drop in the levels in our legs yes certainly obviously availability supply is a number-one issue what we pay for it becomes secondary in some extent because it's expensive you can't have a community if you don't have water so we've got to make sure we have plenty of water for our community the question mark is which sources cost us what amount of money and how reliable and how much can we get out of that source reliably and and that and that's what we're talking about is what do we do to have a reliable source so we talk about reliability important again to compare how much water do we have a right to on paper versus how much water can we depend on on a safety basis for what we would consider to be or what stated another way how much water do we consider to be reliable we know what the st. Angelo system Twin Buttes knives were the NOC

[0:33:04] Fisher we we know that the reliability of those reservoirs are zero because they went dry expense we know the reliability of Li expenses zero because they went dry so lake IV is our last bastion here and when we look to what hydrologically we consider to be the reliable yield of lake IV under a safe yield calculation we have just under five thousand acre feet of reliable surface water rights now again that doesn't mean we only have five thousand acre feet of supply today that means from a planning standpoint you don't look to your paper writes to plan you look to what hydrologically the data tells you you can depend on under certain assumptions again surface right is what we're talking about now it's not total water this is surface water rights right that's exactly right that's actually a perfect transition now to the next plug let me interrupt you one question before we go to ground water on surface what other that factors other than evaporation are we researching such as vegetation or leakage or anything like that that could be sucking up the water excessively you know there's been a quite a bit of study and there's been quite a bit of money spent on vegetation control both in aviary between buttes watershed it's a very difficult thing to do because most of the land is private land that would be in the in the watershed and so it's also very expensive and we've actually had some conversations with the soil and water conservation service and looking at grants and programs that they've been doing and there's just really not a there is there's some money that's being given to private landowners for brush control but it's again it's very difficult to do on a very large scale

[0:35:08] basis as far as other issues within the reservoir you know I'm not sure what can be done about evaporation unfortunately in less Texas it's a it's a big problem I know in California there's people who tried putting you know plastic balls on the reservoir and there's chemicals that you can put in most of those have proven not to to pan out real well and it's it's a lot of expense that hasn't that hasn't worked well so unfortunately in a lot of cases it is what it is in West Texas reservoirs right there any other questions that bill and I can can field for you on the surface water part of our discussion here mayor to your point we're going to get back here in just a minute after we get through the groundwater discussion and sort of tally everything up and then have a discussion from that point going forward about what we have to work with what we need or what we anticipate needing and what we're going to need to bridge the gap all right I'm going to talk preliminary here up at the front about a source of groundwater supply because there is a as as you all know there's a colorful legal history to the city's groundwater rights out in the Hickory well field just for y'all's benefit again for the benefit of the folks watching on TV or listening in the audience here the water right into the Hickory well field were purchased were acquired by the city San Angelo in two different phases back in the early 70s 71 transaction in 71 a transaction in 72 gave the city a lot of times I've seen it referred to as seen it referred to in the paper as a as a water lease and that that's not at all what the case was the city owned the groundwater underneath the Ford ranch in the Hickory

[0:37:13] aquifer so the conveyance was from an illegal term we call that a severance the the groundwater estate was severed from the Ford Ranch the groundwater state in the hickory aquifer was severed from the Ford Ranch in the city owned it the Ford Ranch was is 32,000 acres and size and there was at the time and to this day have been it's been an active cow calf operation out there very very large as you might imagine cow calf operation and so the ranch needed water so when the city negotiated the sale for the purchase of the ground water rights in hickory well field in the 70s the language in those conveyances and that and that sale that allowed the landowners at the time to make use of any water that the city developed from its well field the way those conveyances were written a lot of ambiguity about exactly what rights that the landowners had to water that the city produced versus the city's rights to cut the landowners off or to curb water usage and all that was well and good and it wasn't a problem at all until the ranch came up for sale and there was a real risk there from the city standpoint that even if it was purchased outright as a thirty-two thousand acre piece of property and owned as a thirty-two thousand acre piece of property you've got a new owner that you have to establish new relationships with that may not be interested in a very narrow interpretation of those conveniences and they want a broader interpretation of the rights that they have to that water but probably more likely scenario is that the ranch gets broken up into smaller pieces and sold and now the city has multiple landowners to deal with with multiple interpretations of what their rights might be under that

[0:39:15] conveyance from a legal standpoint that created some issues the city's invested 120 million dollars in the well field out there and there's a potential that we talked about it before the the bucket of Rights out there that the city has to have some big holes in the bottom of it the city couldn't afford to allow that to happen given its investment in the chicory and as we've seen by based on our surface water discussion the incredible importance that the chicory has as a hedge against the absence of surface water supplies for the city so it was relatively perhaps some might say in or unorthodox decision at first blush for the city to go out and buy the ranch but there was a lot of thought put into it and it was clear from the outset that the only way to really lock this issue down or that the city's water rights in the chicory were fully protected was to go acquire the ranch go acquire the entire property and that gave the city then the opportunity to shore up its ground water rights make a determination of what it wanted to do with the balance of the surface of the property for subsequent sale that led to the decision and and I think it's been widely recognized now particularly from folks outside the community looking in is one of the wisest decisions that that this community could have made to invest to lock up those water rights but the story goes on from there as we've known the second bullet point when the city finally started to decide to move forward with the active development and reliance on the Hickory ground water rights back in the mid 1990s the city got involved in some litigation between

[0:41:22] the city of Brady and the groundwater district that manages and oversees that agree water rights that the Hickory underground water conservation district without belaboring the issue too much Brady sued the district because they didn't believe that the disc should authorize the permits to the city Brady then brought the city into the lawsuit and so there was a lawsuit between three different parties over what rights the city could have what permits the city could have to produce water out of the agree well field that litigation resulted in a settlement that was then memorialized in a court order and the court order required the ground water district to issue the city 22 well permits permits for 22 individual wells each individual well had to have no more production capacity of no more than 500 gallons per minute so from a regulatory standpoint the city is not authorized to produce more than 500 gallons a minute from any of the wells that it drills and completes under those permits today there are 15 groundwater wells completed and plumbed into the city system each of which are capable of producing 500 gallons per minute on their own all right does any other city have the opportunity to do more than 500 gallons per minute if they drill wells and pipe I think the answer to that question is yes I'm I'm making an assumption but the only reason the city is limited to 500 gallons a minute under its permits is because that was part of the negotiated settlement of the litigation I don't know how the High Plains are I'm sorry the Hickory underground water

[0:43:24] conservation district would would process an application from another city for for groundwater well permit I suspect if the hydrology the hydrogeology supported the application then they probably would get a permit no applications right now I don't know I don't know it would be notified if there was probably not because of our oscillation you know the you know the communities to look at really a Brady Eden Melvin those three communities all rely well I know Brady does I'm pretty sure Eden does and I'm pretty sure Melvin all rely on the Hickory for their water supply so there's really from a municipal standpoint and unless somebody comes in and tries to export water outside of the district there's really nobody else out there to produce and there's no requirement that they notify other permanent holders in application so that's the the permitted authorizations we have from the district we've got fifteen completed Wells we have permits to install up to 22 but with I'm going to let bill take over from here to talk about this allocation but along with the permits and along with the production cap on the capacity of each of the wells came a production authorization schedule it is limited regulatorily on how much water it can produce from the Hickory each year not just mechanically from the wells but total from the system under the schedule and regardless of whether we have 15 wells or 22 wells the total amount of allocation remains the same that's exactly right and and Lenny it's important to emphasize this point -

[0:45:25] before I let it go one of the perhaps most important components of that of that court order is a prohibition on the city ever going back to the groundwater district ever again for an application for anymore groundwater so as far as the Hickory groundwater District is concerned we have what we have and the court order says that we can't go back and ask for more even though we're permitted for 22 it's just additional expense that we went and put 7 more Wells out there if the allocation is the same regardless of how many wells you have so the the a grade order as Jason pointed out had a schedule for how we were allowed to to take water over the years which begin in 1996 and it began at a pretty low amount of 1,500 acre feet a year and then that began to increase in 2006 and went to twenty seven hundred and fifty which is where we currently are this through 2021 however our maximum production increased to fifteen thousand acre feet during that time and that continues up into 2026 and then it begins to drop back down for 26 to 36 but our annual allocation goes up or max allocation goes back down to ultimately a twelve thousand acre foot a year allocation it's also important to point out that one one thing that they did recognize in the agreed order is that it's beginning at the time in 1996 any water amount of our annual allocation that we did not use we were able to bank the important thing about that was is that in the event and what they

[0:47:28] recognized is that in the event that we did need water in in excess of what was allocated we had the opportunity to do that on a limited amount based on how much we had saved if you will or had not pumped previously ill could you tell how tell us how much banked water we have today yes sir it's around 42,000 acre feet but it's currently banked one also it's important to understand that is and when we think about that in a water planning process and we will talk about that a little bit more as we begin to look at how much water we have collectively is that it's it's really not like there's a pool of water out there that we lose in the future if we don't use it's really an insurance policy in the event that we do need to be able to pump more than what our allocation is of 2,750 acre feet right now we have the opportunity to do that for some time before we use up that bank water if we don't use it then it doesn't go away the water still sitting there in the aquifer and as our allocation increases we have the opportunity to produce that water on an annual basis we don't lose it the water is still there we and as our allocation increases it begins to your the the use of bank water and an allocation that line comes together pretty soon and so you just are able to pump through the increased allocation the amount that we need so that the banked water recognized that during this time where our allocation was not much annually there might be a time that we needed to produce in excess of what our allocation was so it provided a mechanism that if we didn't use it to allow us to do that on a limited basis and that's basically what that was about well of course the ability to continue to bank water in at a certain point on credit that's correct after 20 2026 in the end of when we can thank it we can't Bank it after that and the reason was the ability to Bank it

[0:49:34] goes away but as your allocation increases you don't need the banked water anymore because our allocation begins to match what our annual capability is so there's not any need for for the banked water or the ability to pump additional water so it will use the Hickory for our sole water support supply how many years based on our usage now would we get through well the the only answer I have to that claim is that the hydrological model that was done for the Hickory aquifer for the for the state for developing the mag or the managed available groundwater on an annual basis was completed by the water government board recently what they put in that model is beginning now our maximum allocation of 12,000 acre feet okay and at in 2070 there's we're still pumping water so it is a read at our maximum production yes ma'am so my answer to that would be it's a very sustainable aquifer properly managed it will be there for a long time what's the recharge rate i I don't know that off top ahead how much the recharge is obviously depends on rainfall in the up in the in the same watershed as as Ohi Vince Benson or actually we're a or the chicory is south and what's called the Llano uplift where the sand mines are that's actually the recharge area for the hick'ry offer so that's that's the area that you would want and they get no arraignment get more rain and we do yes after sure what what is their annual rainfall amount do you know that off okay I know if you go out to the Hickory well field it doesn't look like it's a lot more than here muscle Rams so based on that 2070 calculation and the recharge of the

[0:51:38] rainfall that they get there we won't exceed it or past 2070 I would think that's a very fair statement I think that the aquifer is not sustainable for a very long time I mean let me jump here in here and just add this point I you know the 2070 threshold is under geologists are very good at their job and certainly the hydrogeologists that the city has working for them as consultants are very good at their job but there's only so far that folks will go out into the future to make a prediction and so 2070 probably reaches that threshold I don't know that it's correct to assume that in 2070 there will be no more water and a curry to produce I think a better way to consider that is is that was just as far out as the scientists are willing to predict about what the Hickory aquifer might do yeah I mean I would agree with that completely and in the planning that's done for developing the groundwater supplies is is a 50-year window just like we do this this water so I think you're right that's just as far as they look looking at the the groundwater project and exactly what the well field and how much water that we can anticipate under the current project the the well field is was designed to be twelve be able to produce twelve thousand acre feet a year or ten point seven course that was our ultimate maximum allocation the current physical capacity if you will of the well field is about nine thousand acre feet or 80 mg D and let me kind of explain how what how that works and why it's that way each one of the wells was designed and constructed to produce the maximum of 500 GPM as Jason pointed out which was are within our permit such a maximum amount if you take 15 Wells at 500 gpn and GPM and you ran those 24/7 365 you

[0:53:43] would be able to produce 12,000 acre feet however when you do that there becomes some interaction between those wells and so as that happens and water levels decline and that's a pressure reduction not actual water going away it's just the impact that wells have on each other in a that type of confined aquifer the actual production of those wells drops somewhat so the current configuration of those wells it can produce about nine thousand acre feet the pipeline was constructed to be able to push 12 million gallons a day from the well field into the city and the treatment plant has an ultimate capacity of 8 mg d I mean of 12 mg D but it's currently constructed to treat 8 million gallons a day so that is the the you know the well field and under current configuration in the treatment plant or the shortfall I guess if you will currently of the groundwater system that kind of limits what our available water is bill when we we put that treatment plant together we made arrangements that we could we could expand that treatment for whatever that cost is is that correct it is correct it was it was constructed to expand to more treatment trains if you will at 2 million to many gallons they each so ultimately youngster why didn't we do that from the beginning I can't answer that it was before bills time marry it was a decision like a lot of decisions are at the time is it was probably some financial considerations there were certainly considerations made for the expansion that will limit some of the some of the future cost I mean there was a lot done at the time of the the construction of that facility there was a decision made on how many additions was there were nine original wells at

[0:55:45] the in the well field so six additional wells were constructed with this project and and I'm sure there was a lot of that was how much water do we need right now and that was based on probably you know the mindset of how much surface water would be available but five years down the road we're still looking at that and saying okay maybe you know it probably needs to be twelve and that's one of the decisions is it we need to make is what is the cost of doing that and what's the value of doing them do you have a number on what putting the other four on would cost at the treatment plant yes ma'am I do that number would be it is actually part of this presentation I'll wait till you get to it then you don't have to jump after so to kind of finish up the the the groundwater portion here before we get into looking at everything combined we just kind of recap here so from a safe yield and surface water we are looking at the just shy of five thousand acre feet and in the water that's about eight mg d which is a little about nine thousand acre feet so again the limiting factor there is the is the treatment facility so with that let make sure that we don't have any additional questions on groundwater and then we will almost said each of the wells cost us to drill the good average number is about four million dollars each and that's not just drilling a well that is complete equipping of those wells in the piping necessary to connect those and those wells what that means 4.2 means it connected well well I mean yeah well one - well - - well three - well full the the collection system within the well field they can't really see it over there but another issue that was in the agreed order was those in in the

[0:57:47] district permits as those wells are required to be out of one mile spacing so just by virtue of that there's several miles of piping system in the well field and so that obviously when you fold that into the cost it's about four million dollars - yeah because that's a significant larger than like if you go out and drill an oil well today it wouldn't cost you four point two million but then you're not talking about the pipeline is that what you're saying that's correct as wells of the wells in Hickory well field are drilled in rock and they're about 2,500 feet deep so they're and they're about 20 inch diameter and larger that in some cases the upper part of the casing so they're significant wells they're not just your normal household we'll bill from a planning standpoint are you going to talk to us about you know the current status of this the what we need to be looking at from a future planning standpoint with respect to Hickory we're going to be talking about other ground groundwater sources as that's part of this presentation there's at another day another story it is well as we move in that direction of one of the considerations is in looking for future water and how we bridge the gap is is what do we need to do with Hickory we've got some cost estimates for that and and what they've taken and also some of the other things that we've been looking at in the water advisory board has looked at and and kind of take a look at some of the options that we have and what I guess the whole collective picture is for not only our treatment infrastructure but also where those supplies would come from good thank you so moving into the next piece of this we want to begin to look at what our water inventory and what our demand is so that we can begin to put those two pieces together as we

[0:59:50] look at what our water needs are what our water needs are is what our demands are and and what we would need to be looking at so again just kind of a recap I think I already did that is what when we put our total surface water in our groundwater together we've got about thirteen thousand eight hundred acre feet available when we begin to look at our demands we see that that's good for now but as we move out into the future we begin to exceed that pretty quickly now I just want to take a minute to kind of talk about what these numbers actually mean the reason that the state water plan is a process that is overseen by the Texas Water Development Board that the state was divided up into 16 regions and those each one of those regions has a Regional Planning group made up of about 20-23 or so people from different areas represent the public the city's different water systems agriculture and they come together and just work out a five-year plan that looks at what the water supply needs are within that area and how they're going to meet those needs and discount as a side note if you're going to have a water supply project that you are going to want state funding for it has to be a project that's in that state water plan so as we go through that process as we look out five years and and we want to make sure that if we the process that we're going through now that is we work with the state water plan that any project that we have ends up in that state water plan we might not ask for state funding but if we do we want to make sure that that project is in the plan one of the things that they do real

[1:01:52] well is project population they've been working at it for a while through this process and they do a pretty accurate job across the state of projecting what we think the growth will be so with that they also project what the water demands will be when we look at this this chart on the column there that has the the small amount the shorter column of numbers there thank you those are the water demands that are in the state water plan that the was done of as part of that process and by the consultants in the in the water government board in that those numbers are based on the per capita use and combined with the population so that is the number that they came up with the per capita use that they actually used within the state water plan is considerably more than what ours actually is I'm going to jump forward here just a minute and look at this slide because I think this is a very significant thing to see and understand you can see on the this at least the state average for the total use is about 167 gallons per capita per day residential is about 85 but if sua st. Angelo's is our total is 116 gallons per day per capita per capita per day and our residential is 65 that's one of the lowest per capita uses in the state of Texas to give you kind of a comparison of that Austin is somewhere in the in the 190 range San Antonio which as you know is you know touted for being a very conservation minded larger City and has done a lot of things to implement reuse of water in and conservation initiatives is just under 150 gallons per capita so it's important to understand that the significance of this I think that when

[1:03:54] we talk about conservation this city has clearly embraced it but it also means that we're not going to get a whole lot more from conservation the challenge will be to keep it at this level but we're not going to make up a whole lot of water through conservation because it's just going to be almost impossible to get a whole lot lower than this so backing up as we begin to look at what our demands would be what we did is we took the population projections that had been developed through this reasonable planning process and we applied what our per capita uses and came up with in the the right hand column what we think is probably a little bit more realistic demand projections for our water supply we look at 2016 the 13,000 a little over 13,000 does actual our actual use so we know that that number is pretty accurate and we projected that out through the years looking at population so when you get out to 2070 those two numbers come back together pretty close so I would say that to be conservative that our actual demands projected demands are probably somewhere a little higher than what I've projected there but probably a little lower than what is in the regional plan so that gives us kind of a target as we begin to look out how much water we're going to need what we need to be looking for and what we can expect to we're going to if we're going to look 50 years out and that was actually one of my campaign promises so that my granddaughters grandchildren would have water then we got a hit we got to find 10,000 more acre feet per year approximately and that's the very point of that exercise right there was to to begin to understand what it is that we're up against here what are we talking about if our current surface water supplies if we cannot rely on them to the extent

[1:05:56] that we have been able to and and unfortunately it looks like we can't and the Hickory has a limited amount then we need to be in the process of figuring out how we how we what we do I mean what are the options that we have and how do we move forward so that takes us into the next Pete's piece of this which is what our water planning efforts have been so as I mentioned of the Advisory Board has over the past couple years have looked at a quite a few options and have we went through a process of a SWAT process where we looked at a lot of the things that were of the projects that were in the state water plan things that had been identified as possible water supply options and begin to go through the process of elimination if you will what was a feasible project and what was not and so we want to talk about those a little bit and so the first thing on the list is the Hickory ground water project expansion the I don't know if we break that down a little bit more yeah I think we do but just on the surface that's that's a that's a feasible project we know that we can do that project in this case it's just money and that's to completely expand that project to be able to produce on a sustainable basis 12,000 acre feet a year is about an additional 31 million dollars I thought you said earlier that having 22 wells wouldn't give us any more water than the 15 so why would we spend 31 million more dollars if it doesn't give us any more gallons of water I'm going to move forward to this slide and talk about that a little bit to upgrade the existing well-filled to be able to

[1:07:59] actually produce the 12,000 acre feet would be approximate another million and a half dollars what that involves is lowering pumps and some of the that have a lower transmissivity that wells that don't produce quite as prolifically as some of the others they're the ones that are impacted if you had all 15 wells run at one time so to overcome that you would lower the pumps increase some of the pump sizes so that they would actually be able to pump under those conditions the 5000 GPM so to do that again it would it would cost about 1.5 million dollars at that point you have a well-filled with 15 wells that can actually produce 12,000 acre feet it's it's not feasible to think that you could if you needed 12,000 acre feet that you could run those 15 wells for 24/7 365 it's just it's just not going to happen so in order to do that we have to have some redundancy we have to have some additional Wells to be able to sustain that production okay so on the Hickory ground water project on a previous slide it said the well-filled the design capacity was 12,000 acre feet but the current physical capacity is 9,000 acre feet that's correct so we knew we needed to get to 12,000 so when we drew when we drilled these wells initially why didn't we spend the money then to ensure that 12,000 acre feet instead of having to come back to it at a later date because it would seem to be more expensive to have to come back at a later date than it would have been to do it from the on-site there I can't argue with that at all only answer answer I can give you on that is there was a decision made at that time whether it was financial whether it was the amount of water that was needed to produce the well field under those conditions that's the way it is so what we're looking at is what does it take to get it to the 12,000 acre feet so in anticipated at least two maybe three additional wells

[1:10:02] would be needed if you were actually needing to sustain the 12,000 acre feet over a longer period of time and so that's at the estimated four million dollars well an additional 12 main dollars so to get the well field to be able to produce the 12,000 acre feet and sustain that would be another 13 to 14 million dollars the treatment plant upgrade is that for the additional two trains there to be an additional four million gallons a day treatment capacity is estimated about additional 17 million making the total project to bring the the groundwater system up to sustained 12,000 acre feet a year would be about 31 million dollars in terms of priority which would you do first the treatment facility or the well that's a very good question since the well field will currently not produce any more than what the treatment plan is now then I think they go together well but you can only treat 8,000 you can get 9,000 so you're still a thousand short with your current treatment facility that's running those wells all 15 wells and and that's not feasible that would it would not sustain itself you would have I mean they're mechanical you know machines they break down so if you needed to be able to do that you could not and so I think it's if we're going to expand the project then I think that they get expanded together and this money for the thirty one thousand three one million dollars the money would be projected to come from reach and those rates are already calculated into what we're paying today in the five-year escalation of rates II what we included in the five-year plan

[1:12:08] was financing for additional water supply it could be used for this as a priority absolutely this is the priority right yes ma'am it is well to avoid the mistake well it seems in in light of 31 million a million and a half dollar situation or call it a mistake if that's what it was or not not planning to avoid those things in the future you know we're going to have to have more water in the future based on what you saw this a couple slides ago based on grow population growth should we be talking about things that we should do today that may be far more expensive than a million and a half dollars when they must be done or is that just not good planning from a from our standpoint as a city based on the cost of those things I guess it would depend on what those things are I guess it would - we can't define what those things are it's pretty hard to put a dollar amount we know what some of those what some of those items could be if we didn't do them today do we have any idea what some of those things might be something here you talk you're talking about any additional water supply options that we might be looking at right well right now we're talking about Hickory let's look let's just for this sake of this conversation let's just right now focus on Hickory to get it to the point is business 31 million get us to which I'm hearing that it does - to the absolute maximum capacity that we have is that what the 31 million gets us - that's correct that's what we know we have that's correct so a priority would be attached to what we know we have is your best

[1:14:12] investment that's the forward and I think that's absolutely correct mayor one of the things though that I think is important that we do is we don't just stop there because I don't believe we should but I think you know steel you know egg before the chicken chicken before the egg we got the scrambled eggs already absolutely but I think as we look at that I mean I agree with you I think that is something that that's water that we know we have as we know that we can go get and we know pretty closely what it cost us to do that but at the same time and I'm kind of back up just a little bit and kind of set the stage for my thoughts anyway as we move forward and in this discussion when we look at what's happened to ivy which has been our main source of supply and the reality that that lake came with in less than a year of doing what the other reservoirs has done is not be available to us it's probably not realistic to think that that bigger pond on that bigger watershed on the Colorado River would dry up and go away but it caused the fact that it almost happened I think that it's very reasonable to think that it could happen and there could be a short time or a time that that reservoir of that water from that resort is not available to us so I think from from the perspective that we need to look at today is even if we if that happened and the chicory was at full capacity it does not meet our full needs so not only do we need to develop the chicory we need to look at what other options we have to bridge that gap if you will if we have a time where we have none of our surface water supplies available to us so I think we need to look at the whole picture because it's not that's it's 31 million dollars for the chicory but it might be that much or more to be able to do to do something else that bridges

[1:16:15] that gap and so those are the things that we've been looking at that we that we need to continue to explore and that you need to see and we as we make some decisions and we get back to what you were just saying is we prioritize that process you know what is number one but then when do we think the next pieces can fall in place as well and and be ready to move forward with that next piece if in fact we haven't identified what that next piece is really not and so right now one would say that what we've got to do is invest in what we know we have because it could be five more years before we know what we don't know today or do you or whatever but what we do know is this that's correct one of the places that I want to bring you today is how we we could set the hick'ry aside we could say we know we know what we want to do there we know what that entails and you can make the decision to pull the trigger on that or not but there's a lot of other pieces that we can't do that there's there's a lot of options there's a lot of things we need to look at so what we need to do is go take a look at that we need to pull all those pieces together and understand what they are the feasibility of those and how they would fit into our long-range needs or short range needs to bridge that gap and what they would cost and win and how does that impact our current infrastructure that we have some severe needs in those areas as well and how does all of that work together so if we continue to look down this list there are several other things that that fall into that category that we were just talking about first is of course our what wastewater treatment facility the cost of the rehab rehabilitation of the upgrades that we need there improvements that we need there is undetermined and the feasibility of that is undetermined

[1:18:17] and one of the reasons that the feasibility is under terms because we don't necessarily know yet without beginning to do this planning of what are we going to need that facility for it if we move farther down the list a little bit one of the things that we have looked at in the past and we continue to need to need to look at is is there a possibility of using our wastewater effluent as a source water and how does that fit into our our needs and how is what's the possibility of that as far as bridging that gap there's several options there thank you very much unfortunately from a citizens perspective that's way down on the list of what we want to do so the issue is is what other options are there is a merit but we want direct potable reuse is but there's a lot of options and possibilities of using wastewater effluent to shore up and augment our surface water supplies that are not direct potable reuse and and those are the possibility is is putting it in the river taking it out augmenting it because that goes to Lake ivy and I've actually got I think some slides on this discussion maybe but putting it in the river taking it out downstream in a process called riverbank filtration all of those providing a natural environmental buffers to the effluent so I think that before we just say that we don't want that I think we need to really take a look at what those possibilities are because that's real water yeah well absolutely absolutely but it's real water and it's a I think part of the overall discussion that we need to have but in saying that I think we need to

[1:20:23] understand what the feasibility of that is and for you to have the opportunity to make a decision is that one of our options before we move forward with any treatment plant upgrades because if it is if we're going to dump it into the the river then then we need to understand that we need to know that and any upgrades need to take that into consideration as far as what we do I think bill one of the things you're saying is this council needs to be forward-thinking enough to be able to understand the upgrades to the treatment wastewater treatment plan as well as to the water treatment area and all of those things that that we may need to look at to get us to that 2070 you your amount that we're looking at so we don't want to be short-sighted enough that as we look at some of these things that we don't we do we plan for them in such a way that we don't be short like we are under 30 1 million dollars to to get the chicory field up to the capacity I think that's a very very true very fair statement one of the things that I think that we have to consider here is we might not have something readily available to us today that takes us to 2070 we might have to put processes in place and water supplies in place that don't want to overuse the term but the bridges that gap when we don't have water in lake ivy and as we continue to and as we do that because any long-term supply might not be close and that takes us into another discussion probably another day which would be the West Texas water partnership and our role in that and what that means for us for the long term all right sorry to have a conversation about this if we're not

[1:22:26] having a total conversation about other options because that then that means we're talking about this specifically as our only option and not taking a look at other potential water resources it's the combination of the two that we need to understand is a vision and a strategic concept going down the road this is right here but what else is right here there's a several things that we take a look at and I certainly didn't mean to insinuate it at all that the only option that we had to look at is the use of our effluent but I'll be completely forthcoming in my thoughts I think it would be short-sighted not to include that in the options the whole picture yeah absolutely that's all I'm saying is I'm not short-sighted and looking at this but I don't want to have this conversation if I don't know what the big picture is an other option and that's absolutely correct and that's what we need to be looking at is what all of our options are but I think I think we do have two issues here we have for lack of a better word we have a short-term issue and we have a long-term issue we have the potential within thirty five months of not having any surface water available to us that is a that is what the calculation is today if we had zero inflow into any of our reservoirs with our with the use from it and evaporation maybe thirty five have about thirty five months of supply what would the timeframe be to spend the 31 million dollars and get the program we talked about a minute ago because if you if you say we have thirty five months the only thing that looks like it's in our sight line is the hick'ry aquifer 31 million dollars that's in our sight line there's nothing else in our sight line in thirty five months really is there

[1:24:34] probably not however there are some things that I think need to be considered but i knowwe want to say to you at this point that i think we shouldn't go do the chicory i think that is a a priority i think and i guess in my mind mayor I'm kind of setting that aside as we need to go do that that's all I'm saying is that seems like it's like get on it another thing but at the same time that even if we had that available in 35 minutes it's not enough I agree so so so we set that aside and we say what are we going to what else can we do that's feasible that's reasonable that that meets our short-term needs in the event we have to bridge that gap and then the next piece of that that we certainly don't want to to leave out of this is what do we do for the long term unfortunately there's not any cheap water left in this state or country so in order to for us to look out the the 30 years we're going to need to do that with other something we're going to need that's that's a bigger project and so from my perspective we continue to work with the West Texas water partnership and and look for and identify and develop and secure long-term supply selfish about our water so the question mark for me on this partnership is if I was Midland and Abilene and found something you know out there closer to them how much do I want to give San Angelo well that's always difficult when you have a marriage like that not every since everything benefits everybody equally but I think from my perspective and the time that I've been working with the partnership that's been recognized and there's been an awful lot

[1:26:36] done to understand that and overcome that one thing about working with an entity like that is when you make the commitment to to go do something you make the commitment and and you go as a as a an entity at that point right now what have we been how have we benefited from this partnership well I could let Jason take that that and talk a little bit more in detail but I think I will answer it like this water planning on that level is never short term it's it's years decades in the making I think the chicory project is a classic example of that some very folks with a lot of foresight went out and secured the water rights almost 50 years ago and they might have taken some heat from that for that at the time but today the same thing is taking place it takes a long time to go to put a project together it takes a long time to find water the partnership has spent a lot of time searching for water resources that are not only affordable but viable and it takes time to do that and it has in in my opinion has done a lot of work and a lot of good legwork that will benefit this community and the other two communities way into the future and sometimes I understand it's hard to stay the course when you're not seeing anything but it's important to do so it's back to the discussion of pulling all of this together and having having a plan is one of the things that we talked at the advisory board about we can talk about whether we're going to use our

[1:28:45] effluent is some sort of augment surface supplies we can talk about whether there's brackish water we can talk about how we you know what we need to do within our reservoirs we can talk about whether this there's a possibility of of purchasing water from the city of Abilene on an interim basis and let me just stop and talk about that for a minute that is one of the options that we've taken a look at what we need to understand about that though is that that only happens if there's no water in IV and that's a not a cheap endeavor either to be able to turn water from the city of Abilene and bring it back to Saint Angelo that's probably a 50 million dollar city of Aden well mayor let me speak to that Eden has three water wells that will produce a maximum amount about 1.2 million gallons a day prior to need ma'am all combined yes ma'am and that's that's again that's their maximum production prior to the prison closing they were using about a half a million gallons a day so that with what they were using that gave them the buffer that that they needed I don't know how much the the prison was using how much they have that has decreased but the amount of water that would be available that they could actually sell would be relatively insignificant at a very high cost the shortest pipeline route from where those wells are to get into our pipeline is over four miles and then there would be pump stations required there would be storage tanks required again for a very minimal amount of water and to not get into too much just if even sold water to San Angelo they would be exporting water out of the ground water district their current permits I feel certain to not allow that that would trigger an issue

[1:30:47] with our permit so that's really not efficient impact our kick we will aquifer right there I think them actually could impact our prohibition about going back to the district and asking for any more water is there water comes from the Hickey aquifer as well right so again with the city of Abilene the the project there is a lot of money could be significant water but again would only be available if there was not water from Ivy so that investment would not produce any additional water during normal normal times there's other possibilities of aquifer storage and recovery that's something that ought to be explored where we have the opportunity to bring water from the Hickory aquifer or other sources put it into the ground take it out when we need it unregulated is that viable in this area I don't have a clue at this point but it's certainly something that's not necessarily uncommon and for example the city of El Paso is taking their wastewater effluent treating it and putting it into the ground and so aquifer storage and recovery is something that we ought we ought to take a look at are there any brackish or other fresh groundwater sources in the area that we can tap the water Velma Board recently completed the brackish water study for Tom Green County basically the Lipan aquifer commissioner bacon was very instrumental in getting that moved up on the list and for them to to take a look at that what they found was what I think has been known for some time is there's a lot of water in the Lipan aquifer unfortunately getting it would be very cost prohibitive in their words it would literally take thousands of wells I mean

[1:32:49] the water is confined in a rock that is the transmissivity is very very low it's it's good for the agricultural irrigation that it supports and and that's about the extent of that so in order to produce that we would probably have to own Tom Green County and all of the agricultural operations so but things like that continue to need to be explored bill just real quick if we found a brackish supply we would still need upgrade the treatment plant to be able to utilize that water is that is that a fair statement that's absolutely fair statement Commission of councilman Thomas and I think that goes right back to what I was saying before as we look at this whole picture and make decisions on what how we do those upgrades we need to understand or you know is that we might not have to say today that that is a source water but we want to be prepared for that if it is and so we want to make sure that those upgrades accommodate that in some fashion it might not be that we would have an RO system clearly but the pretreatment or the the initial treatment would currently and part of that whole thing is citizens need to understand that city of San Angelo has a 1920s era water treatment plant and at some point in time in the not-too-distant future we're going to have to get in to the 21st century that is correct this is a very conventional process and and I can't have that discussion without saying this about our folks that maintain that and operate that plant they do a tremendous job we haven't talked about the red Arroyo project which has come up on many occasions in terms of looking at that as well as the Val Verde water option the Val Verde water option would be part of the West Texas water partnership purview would that's that's um one of the sources that has been looked at the red

[1:34:52] Arroyo was has been explored extensively there's been several studies the last work that was done on that and this information was presented to the Advisory Board and at that time they basically took that off the list the what reason well several one is very expensive it's a very expensive project and the firm yield of that water is very very low in fact it's basically zero and so that did not that alone do not make that a viable project the other issue and in one of big concern is the water quality would be very very bad in fact it would be something that could very possibly require an advanced treatment process like what would be required for direct potable reuse is you can imagine the water that enters the red Arroyo is runoff from the city and so there are oil and gas and trash and stuff from a dog park and a lot of things that are in in that water it would be extensive treatment requirements for so at this time it was just kind of thing there might be some possibility for that in the future but the the cost of that and the lack of any real confidence of firm firm yield just made that not a viable project at this time so before I leave this I think that we've identified that there and all understand that there are several issues out there that we need to look at in and from my perspective we're just kind of we've just kind of been

[1:36:55] laying these out and we've just kind of been talking about one of the things that we talked about at the advisory board was to develop a scope for a project and Entering enter into a contract with someone to begin to pull all this together and to do some preliminary engineering and evaluation of these options and see which ones were viable which ones are not viable and and help us to develop a path forward complete with some timelines we talked about and cost estimates so that we can you have the information that you can make some good decisions on how we how we move forward both with the hick'ry and this is focusing on again bridging the gap not long-term supply so you don't think that city of San Angelo should be in the business of selling water selling water mr. country I've been in the water utility business for a long time and that's exactly what I think we ought to be doing and I think we need to be able to develop a water supply so that we can do that let me let me ask sue mountain may be here a little bit I'm not sure this is all gloom and doom I don't I don't really hear it that way but I do hear you know I would say some some concerns that you have expressed what can we do or maybe we're not where work somehow I have in my mind where I think we are that we find ourself where we are today because we didn't do some hard things or ask some hard questions or make some hard decisions five years ago 10 years ago 20 years ago that we really ought to be had and maybe maybe

[1:38:59] you're maybe you're leading us down that path to get to that point but should we be asking more difficult questions about again maybe we're in that discussion right now but I'm wondering well if that's what we find ourselves what what can we do if we're going to be doing the right thing for a long-term sustainable water supply and having all the necessary ability to deal with that treat it use it so forth are we not asking some hard questions that we ought to be asking achieve it I I think that that's where I think we need to be and that's and the problem is a lot of those answers we don't have I mean there's a lot of hard questions to ask what do we need to be doing okay and so from my perspective the next step is trying to figure out what the answers to those questions are and again I feel like we've done we've talked about lot of issues and a lot of possibilities but we've not done anything to pull all of those together to really understand how they interact and what we really the next step we really need to take and I think we need to do that I think we've got we begin we've got two issues I think we have a short term I think we have a long term and we need to to understand how those work together as well as far as asking the hard questions historically I don't think it would be fair for me to answer that one way or the other I can tell you this in the early 90s when lake ivy was constructed it filled up almost immediately and there were a lot of really smart people at that time that was a tremendous decision unfortunately it's been in decline almost ever since it's just difficult and when I look at look at Lake Spence it's a big lake beautiful lake that's never been full so you have to recognize that where we are that

[1:41:04] that's just the nature of the beast so how do we how do we work around that development of the Hickory was one good smart way to to help with that to go a long ways and solving that problem unfortunately it doesn't get all the way there is ground water run water does it is not subject to evaporation so how do we you know unfortunately there's not a lot of ground water close that solves that problem so in order to to go find ground water we've got to go a long ways off and that brings me back to you know the long term that's just not there's no way today that I think it would be feasible for Santangelo to go do that alone but there are some things we can do alone just as an example over the last few years even while the partnerships been going on all three cities have had some short-term issues they've had to overcome aveline spent about two hundred nine million dollars to treat their effluent and put it into Lake Fork fountain and then they take it out at the other end of the lake they built a pipeline to and treatment plant to take water out of Possum Kingdom Midland has developed the t-bar you bar well field and another well fielding they spend about the same amount of money those were both of those were to bring them back to pre drought conditions I mean it's just - it's no new water we're in the same same position so we're going to need to figure out how to what do we have you know we spend 120 million in the Hickory and that again went a long way but did it get us all the way there doesn't look like it did I should how long does it take these projects like the one that Abilene did the one that that you're talking about when they went in to go do these water projects to take care of the problem how long does it take you know I don't know the exact number of months

[1:43:08] that the Abilene project took I know that they did that in a very fast time line I mean they were they were very much under the gun very concerned about their supplies and they they've employed a process where they were under design and construction at the same time and they pulled that together and it turned out to be a very good project for him they were kind of doing the same thing with the project to Possum Kingdom and it rained in their lakes filled up so one they were looking real smart and local lakes filled up and maybe that wasn't so smart anymore but that's just kind of in Aveline when the reuse project was done and we from contract initiating contract until completion of that project was one year and they were on a tight yeah good work with you know I was told at one point we had a contract for some water off of a ranch south of on 277 south and that not knowingly we let the lease expire and that the city of San Antonio came in and offered a hundred million dollars to get that water and the rancher decided he didn't want anybody messing on as ranch and chose not to you know about that no ma'am I'd have taken 100 million I don't know was it I remember the conversation I don't believe head of the river ranch came up as the name but supposedly we had a contract for a couple decades on that water and somehow we forgot about it and I've never heard anything even remotely like that you know I can't help but think I don't know what everybody else is thinking but we're here to prioritize what our next step is to be and all of these future

[1:45:10] water discussions in my mind I always keep reverting back to the chicken-and-egg concept it all comes back to our water treatment facility and no matter what we do that facility right there is so degra dated that it's not going to it's not going to fit anything so if I had to vote right now to do anything it's going to upgrade that facility within the back of our minds keep in mind of where that next water is but I mean step one we need a state-of-the-art facility to where our next water source coming in can handle it plus them and I very much appreciate those comments what I would say to you though is that I don't think that's the first step I think the first step is understanding what our next water source might be because our source water is knowing that changes how we would upgrade that plant or potentially good so I think we can't we have to do them together I mean to me the first thing is understanding what our next source water would be and then we'll fit the groundwater is it's an upgraded water treatment plant of kind of a similar of what we already have if we do effluent then to put it back into the Contra River for the the bank filtration that's a different type what if they're a hybrid there's something that can be compatible for every time I could save a possibility there I could say we could go build a water treatment plant that would treat water clean there's there's technology out there it would be some sort of membrane filtration plant and it would be a great state-of-the-art facility for no matter what water so right now we can round surface yes right now though we can treat the water the source waters

[1:47:13] that we have with the plant that we have we can make good water at a limited capacity no actually we that plant is sized to treat about 42 million gallons is that okay that that oh the plant will treat the water so to me the first priority is finding water okay and I didn't know that 42 million thank you for if the plant needs to be upgraded right no doubt about that has to be part of the discussion part of the plan I just don't put it at the priority the wastewater treatment plant has some serious limitations has some failures those failures you know could result in you know I mean it's right on the river we can't leave that out of the discussion either it has to have you know and if all things equal today if if we have water to treat that our plant watering plant would treat it our priority would be we need to do some of that wastewater treatment plant again we also that has to be part of the bigger picture as well as if we're going to want to put ourselves in position being able to use the effluent then we have to design a plant that treats at effluent that we can then put it into the river if that's the option so we need to know those things we need to have that plan developed so we can then make those decisions I'm glad another 42 million number so the only thing we do know hardcore do know is 31 million dollars your Cree walk refer hard core that's what we know that's an only thing we know for sure yes ma'am let me make sure I say that's an estimate I hope 31 mesh okay yeah but if the only thing is the Hardcore in terms of strategic plan right now there is a this is what needs to happen this is approximately what it costs and this is the yield on it everything else is that's correct and I'm going to be bringing to you probably in July an option to to move forward with with developing a plan for the bringing all

[1:49:17] this other information together whatever we decide to do and whenever we decide to do it at the wastewater treatment plant and also at the at the water treatment plant we need to have a vision wide enough broad enough that we can do we can do anything that is necessary to be done over the next 50 years so if we design this the right way we should be able to do whatever we need to from effluent however that needs to be done and on the treatment plant we should be able to do anything including desalinization brackish water whatever you want to call it let's not be short-sighted enough that we not be able to do what's necessary even if this council doesn't have that opportunity to do it but we if we're going to do those things it needs to be in such a way that future councils can commune and in that's that stuff is already there it's available one of the greatest things of course we have is this thing called technology and with time technology changes and improves and so we also need to take I mean we can make a decision today by the time we implemented it 10 years and today the technology could dynamically change and so what we want to do is to make sure we're aware of future thinking because technology will dynamically change and better for better not for worse for better and so moving somewhat slow right now allows us the opportunity to look at what technology can add to the conversation well you know Allison was reminding me is that part of the developing this plan and doing the preliminary engineering is

[1:51:24] something that we also have to do instead of just rather than just making the decision there's a whole part of this process that we have to do to get financing and so we have to basically yeah imagine that and so what I'll be bringing to you is that part of that is doing that preliminary engineering so that as we begin to move forward with something we have that in place where it's either state funding or however we move forward so that's just part of these you know one of the things that I think that we all ought to be very aware of and really focus on is the fact that because so many communities water is becoming an issue and if there is ongoing conversations about the need for waste the flood water that today the technology the information available on it is minimal minimal and what we want to make sure we do we let enough time go by that we're not the guinea pigs for treatment and that we really have a game plan that is forward-thinking financially and that we let technology help cases there instead of us struggling with how to make it happen you know you know experience and which tough off how long have they had that project of women project big brains has been in operation for several years now because Wichita Falls you know that was they were running out of water but they have they're not actually it's not a DPR project anymore their teeth so they're taking it back to the lake similar to what Abilene is doing right not the same but whatever we do we got to make sure that we don't exceed our debt load as a city that they may exceed it when I exceed it know we know I know I know the rest of us couldn't hear that don't you agree Darlene I also know let's go doing this not thank you our

[1:53:34] heavy on with not yes not in OT well and that can take us into the next part of this discussion we want and I wanted to just take just a few minutes and talk about our financial planning and the five-year rate plan and so I wanted to just this is a presentation that we did about a year and a half ago that when we begin talking about the need for the improvement of the financial position of the utility and what was actually taking place and so I thought that was kind of a good place to start and discuss that and then we can look at some of the changes that we've made since then and most of that has to do with debt needs and debt requirements and the timing of those you know what was important was to four things and that was you know first off just to meet the annual revenue requirements as we had for the utility and then to meet our financial targets days of cash on hand debt service coverage in those things look at any future water supply and then and being able to move forward with that and then look at our aging infrastructure you know it's been quite a bit of discussion and rightfully so a lot of the water and sewer lines in the city are very old and and they need to be replaced and I'm not going to get into that too much tonight but you know we are moving forward with with the street plan and one thing we don't want to do and you've all heard this and you're very aware of the need to not do this and that's put a new street over an old some old infrastructure and then be out there digging unfortunately or the reality of that is it costs a lot of money and so but it needs to be done and so we're doing our

[1:55:39] best to figure out how to do that in the most efficient manner so as we begin to look at what the challenges are for for the utility is we looked at what our expenses were and this is a you know looking over the last three or four years and this this particular slides ended at the end of 2015 as you can see that our actual revenue was considerably less than what our revenue needs were and so that created some pretty extensive challenges we had our budget which was based on obviously our maintenance needs and other you know capital and rehabilitation needs and our we were not able to meet those just because of the lack of revenue you know and we've had this conversation a lot unfortunately we need to conserve water the community did conserve water but that obviously hurts your revenue stream but it doesn't change your expenses verification for me the water that the city uses is it included in the revenue the city uses like for parks etc is that inclusive or when you talk those numbers that we're talking only residential commercial but not the city there are some city some of the parks those are included in they budget to pay for that water use for irrigation you should show these numbers that those numbers are being cluesive of the water used by the city for parks etc that's correct so where we where we came to over up into about the end of 2015 as we were seeing are the fund balance dropped considerably and by the time we got into the end of 2015 or this slide shows that that

[1:57:41] we were at about $300,000 they actually we were in a deficit at that time of about that much so the bottom line was the utility was virtually going bankrupt I mean it could not sustain itself and certainly could not afford any additional you know capital for any development of any water supply so something needed to be done and so we begin to look at how we could implement a rate plan that would meet the financial targets again those meeting our just operating expenditure needs our financial targets have cash on hand which we chose a 75 day which is a minimum what we would want to have cash on hand which it for the utility is about just under five million for the for the water fund and then meet our debt service coverage ma'am cities have us 75 would be very minimum Maggie 90 days is normally with 90 plus yes sir you know talking to Midland and Abilene recently and what their fund balances are and I won't tell you the numbers but they were a lot and they were you know concerned about it and so you know it's important to be in and clearly one of the major issues with that is if we are borrowing money you know if we're not in a good financial condition it costs a lot of money so it's very important it is important as any any part of this and so looking at what the key assumptions were obviously from water and sewer both was you know our infrastructure water and sewer lines the treatment plant improvements that we've talked about the probably the biggest driver was any future capital for water supply that was

[1:59:44] going to drive the biggest thing that we had to look at now there's been a lot of discussion about this but we anticipated that the DPR project was going to cost around 136 million dollars it's important to understand that that included upgrades to the treatment facilities that was not something separate for just a and ro treatment process it did a lot of other things that still need to be done let me ask you a question is relate to Hickory offered that was paid through by half cent sales tax money right not the water fund the Hickory never higher branch purchase or the original no I'm talking about one hundred and twenty million dollars for the wells and the pipeline that money came from what source there is a portion of the debt service that is paid from the half cent sales tax and I don't recall offhand like I think it you I think it used to be in the neighborhood of one point six million but that may have changed as that may have been what it started at but I think it may have changed since then as planning as rate planning has taken over but that that's where it started and the rest of that came from water rates and the debt service alone on that was just shy of seven million dollars a year for 20 years and the the half cent sales tax currently that's transferred to debt service is about double that now it's I think a little over three is what it is now this and that was done as part of the the rate plan that we put in place so we had included in the rate plan one hundred and thirty six million and we had that 80 million in the water fund and fifty six million and the sewer fund but when the council decided that we're not going to move forward that project we didn't pull that out because we knew that there was going to need to be the finance the funds available for some

[2:01:48] water supply and so we left that in there and it look like could that was a councils direction and so they said we want we want the placeholder but we don't necessarily want to commit to DPR so they did say keep the placeholder that is correct which made a lot of sense because otherwise we weren't planning for the future there recently we did an update to the to the plan which basically what we did was just move that that amount of money to two different years because we knew that those expenditures were not going to take place all in one year they originally were planned to take place in 2017 with the first debt payments in 2018 we knew that was not going to happen so we we did the purchase of the ranch this year and then we pushed the additional monies out to 2018 I believe 2019 and 2020 again that that's not with any specific project in mind it's just keeping that money in the rate plan so that we have the ability to fund any additional water supply or projects including the chicory that you might need yes ma'am in the wastewater that that's when we pushed that out to 2018 and 2019 and just to kind of show you what that did in the in our financial planning as far as debt service in the original plan we had in 2017 we see that we have about an additional 1.3 million in debt service that's associated with the Ford Ranch purchase but then the out-years in 18 and 19 was just based on the current plan where we've plugged the potential debt service in we would see not quite as much of an impact in our

[2:03:53] debt service in both 2018 and 2019 again those are obviously subject to change depending on decisions that are made on any water supply project including the hick'ry estimate does the debt service for 2017 includes the debt service for the full range and then wastewater is the same since we we push that out we would see that we would lower overall lower the debt service on an annual basis through the through the five-year plan just to kind of show you where we are in the how how we are tracking as far as the rate plan we current fund balance at the end of May and the water fund is about 1.6 million dollars our estimated fund balance at the end of the year is still around 3 million and our target is four point seven million as you know the way the way these things work is it's not the same every year our expensive expenses and revenues vary and so throughout the year and each year so the target is not it's not a linear line of improvement but it's intended that over the five-year period we would end up in being much more financially stable in meeting our financial targets the wastewater is currently in better condition this is a little bit skewed at the nine million current fund balance because there was an older bond sale that was intended to for a sewer line improvements that kind of set on the books for a while and that's going to fund that money is going to fund the project that in the Santa ritas sewer project so in order to get that out of that old bond fund that money was moved into a capital fund to to fund that project so it's somewhat skews what our our fund balance is once

[2:05:59] that is moved to the to the fund that will fund that project when we kick that off we're anticipating that our estimated fund balance at the end of this year about 4.1 which exceeds our 75 day and that's that's good again since our revenues and expenditures don't track perfectly all year again at the end of the five year period we would anticipate being where we need to be just to show you this again this is what the plan that was adopted by council and these are not actual actual rates this is what the estimated monthly bill would be based on a four million gallon I'm sorry four thousand gallon a month there's four million let those revenues up with me yeah you got a bill four thousand gallon a month usage and so you can just see what the what the increases are per month based on the projected rate increases and those take place January 1st of each years how the plan was adopted I think for the most part that was the prepared presentation that that we have hope that was beneficial I think that it will be for us oh you got to bring to us a plan next month or sometime in August that we could start to look at for where we are today what what anticipated we're direction we may move yes sir okay at this point I'm anticipating bringing it to you at the July meeting I believe that's towards the end is I think that I thought maybe we might also be discussing that $25 late fee conversation err thank you for bringing that up I know no

[2:08:05] one wanted me to say that but actually we've given that we've been we've been spend a lot of time looking at what the options are there and anticipating bringing back some ideas to do in the not-too-distant future what I would like to say to you though is that I don't think I think looking at that requires us to look at a bigger picture we have a lot of fees that four tap fees and things that you know we services that we provide that are we're not getting near what it's actually costing us to to provide those services I think it's important to look at those at the same time so there's some there's several things like that that I think we just need to look at the bigger picture and understand what what's appropriate and what's reasonable and then give you some some thoughts say that you can make some decisions moving forward you know there's this constituent that got a hold of herring and I and I know I just want you to explain it real quick about the fire hydrants and why they're having to be flashed in the water and their concern that we're wasting all that water in the streets and stuff once a year during the month of June we change our disinfection process and go to a free chlorine instead of the chloramines and that's done just to kind of clean things out it's it's it's an important process and almost all surface water systems do that annually when we do that we need to flush a little bit more it brings that chlorine through the system disinfects the lines and we as we do that we need to get that out and so we flush more during that time to make sure that we have the proper chlorine residuals and it's unfortunate but there's a couple things and I've mentioned this to mr. Thomas and that

[2:10:07] we've heard this a lot people asking you know couldn't we collect that water and do something with it that would be very difficult to do it would not really be feasible to be able to put that in and flow it at that rate and drive it somewhere the other thing and probably most importantly is while it looks like a whole lot of water it's really not a lot of water and so in the big scheme of things it's not and it's an unfortunate thing that we have to do the state requires us to flush every day in Maine on a regular basis we don't like to do it we try to minimize that as much as possible by making sure we have you know proper chlorine residuals in those those areas but sometimes and more than we would like we just have to do it we do it a little bit more during this time of doing call the burnout I want to go to free chlorine and hopefully we'll be done with that at the end of this month and that will be into the girls that didn't think I will tell you the talk of the town at Market Street a couple Sundays ago was how bad the chlorine smell was and a very disgruntled citizen because they felt like their whole home it turned into like a Clorox bottle with a lid off of it it's very interesting to me because you know in most groundwater systems use pre chlorine it is affected and most of my life I've been on groundwater and so I'm used to that and I like that the chloramines has a flavor that I don't I don't care for if you used to drink in the car means you don't like the Clorox so but it all smells like clean water we're quite sure it smells like chlorine Clorox I thought it was the pool coming back yeah they described it as it felt like they were living in a very high chlorinated well I got down on bleach during that time did we at least run that water into citizens yards to water at that time I mean

[2:12:09] that's a serious question big big old garden house on man out there that's good no yeah that everybody want us to flush on their cornhole dead a night and then we can okay any other questions comments from anybody concerning this presentation it was well done very well communicated most informative and so thank you very much I feel like I'm walking out of here much more knowledgeable than when I walked in and I greatly appreciate that thank you for taking my questions and for dragging the meeting out there and counsel if I could just beg your indulgence for just a couple minutes more I I feel like I need to say this because I'm not sure that I didn't lift your mic oh I'm not sure that that municipal governments get commended enough about the work that goes into keeping the city alive and keeping the city growing but councilman you you asked earlier whether or not the city had made you know didn't make the tough decisions five or ten years ago and is that why we're where we're at and is now where we're making the tough decisions you know when streets fall apart go to you know curbs break you know downtown's crumble it's it's easy to identify and it's easy to see that there's a problem and there needs to be an investment to fix it and just as an observation as a community I think San Angel has done a remarkable job investing back in the community from your downtown to your your museums in your park space and whatnot and I think that's important what what folks don't often understand on the water side of the equation is that as a society in North America we really become victims of our own success we've been so good at developing reliable clean water that now

[2:14:17] folks just expect when they turn on the tap water is going to come out and they don't even think for a second about whether or not it's going to make them sick when they drink it but that was the goal but out of that had come has come complacency from all of us I want to say just from looking into this community I think the city has made the tough decisions and there are folks across the state that have come to recognize the the hard decisions that San Angelo is made in the forward thinking that you've done as a community starting back in the 70s continuing up through today and so I think it's a hopefully your constituents can appreciate that even though water supply development isn't as visible and apparent as a pothole or you know dilapidated building that needs attention it's every bit as important to the ability of a community to thrive and grow and I just want to tell you from from looking in that eye from as far as West Texas communities go I think San Angelo has led the pack in your in making those tough decisions there are all dollars and cents decisions no doubt water isn't cheap this bill said all the cheap water is gone and so there will be more tough decisions for you to make but as a you need to know your staff and then I think as a council you guys have made the tough decisions and it put the city in a great position thank you and this meeting is adjourned

Captured 2026-07-26 · source: youtube.com/watch?v=dcMfqd7-aCM