Buckman Direct Diversion Board Thu, Jan 8, 2026 · Buckman Direct Diversion Board https://santafeminutes.space/meeting/1065 == Executive Summary == The Buckman Direct Diversion (BDD) board held its January regular meeting, focusing on operational reports, upcoming projects, and significant concerns about the region's water supply due to low snowpack. The board approved routine items like the agenda and previous meeting minutes, and authorized the purchase of a replacement vehicle. A major point of discussion revolved around the ongoing feasibility study for the BDD Rebuild Project, which is moving towards a 30% design phase. Staff also provided updates on workforce recruitment efforts, including an offer extended to a chemist and a rapid hire event planned to address staffing needs. A significant portion of the meeting was dedicated to the critical issue of water scarcity. Commissioner Hughes and Chair Green raised concerns about the low snowpack and requested staff to prepare contingency plans, including exploring the county's water resources. A board member who attended the Colorado River Water Users Association meeting reported on the severe tension and potential for litigation among states due to unprecedented water shortages in the Colorado River Basin. The board also discussed the scope of BDD's role in water rights acquisition, reaffirming its function to divert water rights provided by partners rather than acquiring its own. The meeting concluded with a motion to adjourn, and the chair hinted at a leadership transition for the upcoming term. == Key Decisions == - Approved the January 8th meeting agenda unanimously. - Approved the December 4th meeting minutes with one abstention from Councilor Faulkner. - Approved the consent agenda, including the purchase of a replacement vehicle for $69,763, unanimously. - Approved Resolution 2026-1 (Open Meetings Act) unanimously. == Motions & Votes == - Approval of the January 8th meeting agenda — Passed unanimously. - Approval of the December 4th meeting minutes — Passed with one abstention from Councilor Faulkner. - Approval of the consent agenda (including vehicle purchase) — Passed unanimously. - Approval of Resolution 2026-1 (Open Meetings Act) — Passed unanimously. - Motion to adjourn the meeting — Made and seconded. == Public Comment == No public comments were made during the "Matters from the Public" section. However, a board member questioned the scope of the feasibility study, suggesting alternative uses for project funds like acquiring water rights, which led to a discussion about BDD's established role and partner policies. == Full Transcript == We are live. Please join me. We are great. So, good afternoon, everybody. Today is January 8th. It is now 4:04 p.m., and today we are meeting for the Buckman Direct Diversion January regular board meeting. Call this meeting to order. Can I get a roll call? Is that who does that in case? Yes, I would be happy to do it. Chair Commissioner Green? I am here. Commissioner Hughes? Here. Councilor Cassid? Here. Councilor Faulkner? Here. Citizen member Schmidt Peterson? Here. And Los Companis member Mr. Agelhoff? And Mr. Chair, you do have a quorum. Thank you very much. Fabulous. Next on the agenda is the approval of the agenda. So, do we have any changes that need to be made? No, sir. Brad, thank you. Move to approve. Second. I got a motion from Councilor Cassid, a second from Councilor Faulkner. All in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Thank you. It passes unanimously. We have the minutes from the December 4th meeting. Did everybody get them and have time to review them? Anybody want to move these forward? Move to approve. Thank you. Second. I've got a motion from Councilor Cassid and a second from member Schmidt Peterson. All in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. And none opposed. Am I going to take you as an abstain because you weren't here? Thank you very much. That's right. I heard you didn't speak. So, thank you very much. So, an abstention from Councilor Faulkner. Okay. So, moving on to the consent agenda. The approval of the consent agenda, it appears as item number eight. It is a request for approval purchase of a replacement vehicle in the amount of $69,763 from the MRN fund. Anybody want to hear more about this, or are we okay? Anybody want to move the consent agenda forward? So moved. Second. We've got competitive seconds here. We got a motion from Councilor Cassid. I'm going to take a second from Commissioner Hughes here. All in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Competitive second. I believe that. Yeah. Thank you. So, we are past the consent agenda. So, matters from the public. We have some people in the gallery here. Anybody? No. Excellent. Anybody online? Okay, fabulous. Okay, we'll close that out. Matters from the public. We're done. Presentations and informational items. Our monthly BDD update from Matt. Thank you. Please come up. Thank you, Chair Green, members of the board. I'll be presenting the BDD operations report for the month of December 2025. BDD diversions and deliveries have averaged a million gallons per day as follows: Raw water diversions 4.21 million gallons per day. Drinking water deliveries through booster station 4A and 5A 4.08 million gallons per day. Raw water delivery to Los Companas at booster station 2A was zero for the month of December. BDD contributed 59% of the water supply to the city and county for the month of December 2025, and I will stand for questions. Any questions from the board? Yes, sir. Are we concerned at all about the lack of snowpack in the mountains? I'm sure we are. And how are we going to deal with that? Thank you, Chair Green, and Member Hughes. Yeah, so we have a strategic partnership with the city, their resource team, and we're looking into that. As of right now, because we do have reserves in San Juan Chama Abiquiu, it should factor in, but as of right now, we don't have too many concerns. Okay. Because we have reserves in the, in where, in the? In Abiquiu Reservoir. In Abiquiu Reservoir. Okay. So, following on to that, if it's possible at our next meeting to talk a little bit more about that, we'll be in the middle of early February, and we'll know, hopefully we'll have some more snow, but if not, we will know that we're in worse shape. If it's possible to have some discussion about what some expectations are, and that we can start tracking that through February and March and April until we're, so I'll let Kyle answer something to that because he's standing up looking like he has something to say. Chair Green, I just wanted to add that Bureau of Reclamation typically does its Rio Grande annual operating in April when the snowpack estimates are much more settled. So, from the bureau's perspective, that's when that exercise is done. So, not to diminish getting additional education in earlier meetings, but that's usually the time where we're taking stock of what we're expecting out. Ralph did a lot of this work at the state stream commission previously. I don't know if you agree with my answer, Ralph, but that's just sharing that that's the, everyone loves to talk about it now. That's usually when the water resource agencies tell us when we... Get a handle on San Juan Chama yield. And that's just specifically San Juan Chama. Well, it's the Rio Grande operating plan. So, it's all the native flows plus all the San Juan projections, just for your... Yeah, that seems like a definitive answer like in sort of at the end of the season, but it'd be good for us to start to know what our contingency plans are and to talk about if it's this, if it's that, and you know, we've got this covered. And I wonder, you know, I do appreciate that you can say that you're managing this with city things, but we also have a county client in the room here and Los Companas. And so, I don't know what water resources might be potentially available in the county's portfolio. And to make sure that maybe there's some opportunity to make sure that we're, we're doing that all the way too. I'm just thinking outside of the box. I'm not sure if it's allowed, but stuff from above Otowi. You know, we've got water that is going to go to the Pawake Basin Regional Water System that maybe if we need it, I don't know if it's allowed, but you guys know better than I do. But if there's that resource for the county to start diverting through BDD just for low flows and things, maybe that's just to hear everybody at the table, every resource brought forward. Yeah. Thank you, Chair Green. I'll look into it and get you some information. Great. Could I add to that just a little bit? I, you know, when I look at the numbers at least, I think last year, BDD diverted around 3,800 acre-feet of San Juan Chama water combined. And your graph that's in here actually, the graphic shows almost 10,000 acre-feet of San Juan Chama water in storage available for the city of Santa Fe, which is two and a half years worth of, you know, full diversions at those same levels, which I think is a great place to be in this situation. The question kind of follows on to the chair's, like, well, where's the county? Do they have water in storage also? And what does that look like? Yeah, I'll look into that and get you guys some information as far. Thank you very much. Yep. Yep. Moving on. Report from facilities manager Brad. Please, you're up. Thank you, Chair Green. Good afternoon, members of the board. First off, I'm pleased to report that we have successfully submitted our audit on time. This was a team effort between us and the city, and we remain in good standing as we move forward into the new year. Moving on to the MRN projects, our PLC control systems upgrade is moving forward exactly as planned. We've issued the RFP, and we expect formal proposals in the coming months. This is a critical step for our operational reliability, and we are ready to begin the technical review as soon as those bids arrive. A comprehensive feasibility study is currently underway involving staff from the city, the county, alongside BDD, and experts from ACOM and Rightwater Engineering. This collaborative effort approach ensures all stakeholders are aligned before we move forward. We expect to move into the 30% design phase within the next four to six months after vetting the most qualified firms through an RFQ. This is for the rebuild project if you're not catching on to that. Finally, regarding our workforce, while the written report in our packet was generated last week, since then there has been two significant updates. One is we made an offer to a qualified chemist. I think Commissioner Hughes at one time brought up in one of the meetings he was concerned why we hadn't filled that position. It's just a process, but we are moving forward with that, and we have made a formal offer, and we'll see how it pans out and he accepts. Second, we have received a list of eligibles for admin manager. There was 11 of them, which is far greater than what we expected. So, we're excited about that. Between these milestones and our rapid hire event that I mentioned last month, which is happening this Saturday, the rapid hire event. So, if anybody knows anybody that's looking for a job, this would be a good opportunity for them to come out. We have lots of jobs through all the public utilities department. So, we're hopeful that we're going to, this next year, we're looking forward to getting fully staffed. It has been a recurring problem, but we're excited with some of these new hiring efforts that we end up with somebody. I'll stand for questions. Yeah. Could you go into a little bit more about what the feasibility study is and how it relates to what we heard at the last meeting? Is it, is it a feasibility of all that stuff we heard at the last meeting, or what are your feasibility? John, do you want to speak to this? Would you like? It became a euphemism, if I may, for the alternatives analysis. So, we had been talking, referring to it as an alternatives analysis for a long time, but I guess internally the conversation said this is actually a feasibility analysis of different variables of how to proceed with the big fix. Did that preempt you? Do you have anything to add to it? Sure, please. If, yeah, I'd like to hear a little bit more from them too. You bet. So, these aren't standard terms, but a feasibility study is like a 15% level. 30% is generally like where you start doing cost estimates and some harder core engineering. Right now, what we're doing is all those different components I talked about last time. We're talking about how those all fit together and work together. So, you know, certain aspects don't work like, to as an example, we got to exclude the silvery minnow, and it's easier to do that with certain components than others. We're just talking through how all those things fit together, and we're trying to get it to a 10, 15% level thought process. And will the results of the feasibility study be made public information or made available to proposers to the RFQ? I don't believe that we're going to move forward with presenting every one of those ideas, only the vetted ideas that come out of that feasibility study. Okay. But that will be presented to the RFQ. Yeah. People who are responding to the RFQ. Absolutely. Okay. Thank you. And... So, I think I know what yours is, so I won't take it. You know, I was, and I maybe John would go back on this part too, because I'm thinking with the feasibility study that, you know, there's a couple of other critical items that kind of having to go through the, that side of kind of guardrails and guidelines for a feasible alternative. Obviously, silvery minnow, I remember right, eggs were a big thing back a number of years ago. I don't know if they would, were kind of a critical design element. But, you know, the idea of what, what's a reasonable cost at least to look at if something is within the range that we have or not, and things like how much sediment are we actually trying to remove. I'm wondering if those are other elements for evaluation. Brad mentioned our conversations with the city and county, and so our first step was to actually set that performance criteria. How much sediment are we going to remove? How are we going to measure it? Another aspect is how much water should we plan for the future at all? Conversations like that. A 30,000-foot view was our first step. And then on the 14th, we actually take the next step of trying to combine all the components. Would it be possible, somewhere in this process, to just get that list of the overall, or will we be involved kind of at the end? Thank you, Raul. We'll be doing most of the research ourselves, and then we will vet what comes from that to you guys in a presentation at a board meeting before, obviously, you guys are going to have to approve an RFQ and different things like that. So that will be all part of the process, letting you guys know what exactly is going on. I saw your brow furrowed there for a second, so you were thinking something that you want to say? No, Mr. Chair, I'm just thinking of the steps that may come forward to the board and the ones that won't. So, I think it's something we need to outline for you all. I appreciate that, and that's one of the things, the question that I had, which is I'm wondering if we can set out a critical path. What are the major milestones? How long should we expect them to be? Not so much about how much they cost, although that order of magnitude is useful as well, but just to know the, I think I heard from you, just so people understand expectations, that the alternatives analysis or feasibility study is a 30-day exercise. Yes. Maybe it gets done by the March meeting. Right, not the next meeting, that's a 60-day exercise, but nonetheless. And then from there, when the RFI respondents and the RFQ would be prepared, when what we could see as sort of a work plan for this project, right? Go for it. Thank you, Chair Green. As we move forward through these steps, some of them, like Nancy said, aren't going to be vetted to you guys, but the critical milestones will be. And we are currently working on a timeline for you guys so you can see that. And we could definitely bring a timeline in March. That'd be great. I mean, especially for the quote-unquote foreseeable future. And then another conversation that was had was the idea of, at one point, we were talking about having AECOM or somebody do a 30% versus an engineering firm take this all the way to complete design. And that might be, if we're going through this exercise to get an RFQ and then an RFP to get to 30%, I'm wondering if we want to just get somebody under contract to go all the way. Let's not do two steps when most likely it's going to be one organization, and we shouldn't get two so they start pointing at each other and saying, "I don't agree." Let's get them all the way through the process. Through the process of the RFQ, we will be generating the top qualifier, and that person will offer it to, and outlined in the RFQ, it will have an off-ramp. That's why it's 30%. An off-ramp if we were unhappy, if we're moving forward with that, after we're moving forward with that company, and the option to go to 100%. Okay, great. So it does have the option, but it does have the benefit of an off-ramp, but that's even better. And then I want to bring up a concept that was brought up. If we have a pool of money to do this, and depending on the amount of money that we have and the ability to actually solve everything on this feasibility study, I'm wondering, is there everything, you know, we have all sorts of levels of fix. And I just want to make sure that we're doing the, would the $70 million be of better benefit buying water rights? Is there the $10 million fix and a $60 million water rights fix to increase our available water instead of going all fix, because we're actually operating relatively well at this point? From the issues that we have right now, I don't believe that there's going to be $70 million, or excuse me, there's not going to be money left over. Well, yeah. Kyle. Chair Green, some of the basic DNA of the BDD project and the BDD board is that the three receiving partners take responsibility for their own water right portfolios, and the project board only diverts that which is made available by state law. So, it's not that we couldn't look to creative edits to the DNA, so to speak, of the project, but it would be a very significant change from how the board was initially established, what its scope was, what it's set up to manage. And there are some other nuances to the way the permitting has been done in the past. Again, none of these things are necessarily set in stone, but they were established at the time for good reasons, and changes would be significant, potentially to court documents. So, I totally appreciate the creativity, and we should always be evaluating the models that we're using to see if they're the right fit for what we're trying to accomplish going forward. But for the board to acquire its own water rights would be a pretty significant deviation from at least how we've done it the last 20 years. Okay. I just think trying to be creative solutions to maybe the real problem at hand may be less about actually the fix as it might be availability of water. So, Yeah, and there are other nuances. Again, a little bit like my last comment about having a look at the snowpack early. It's not that I don't mean to steer you away from the creative thinking. I just wanted to provide. Yeah. Oh, thank you. See, did you have? Yes, ma'am. On that point, thank you, Mr. Chair. I know the City of Santa Fe, as a policy, we are doing our best to move away from acquiring new water rights. So that would, you know, of course, continue to look at all options, but that would be not in congruence with where the city is trying to go, both in terms of how we utilize conservation credits, or I really wish Jesse were here. He's so good with all the technical, or Carol for that matter. You know, how we use our conservation credits, but also the return flow pipeline and our work there. So that would be a very interesting conversation in terms of how the city is working to proceed with our own water portal. But to that point, I appreciate that because it may not be that the solution is in fact more water rights. Maybe the best solution to this is plugging money into the return flow pipeline and finding ways to get that expedited and get it to where we're just fixing our water and understanding that the three partners here have money that might be able to go to some solution that BDD ultimately affects by where the water's being processed. But let's. So, Thank you, Chair Green, for that. Just so that we can draw a line in the sand, because this board sometimes messes that up, to say the least, you know, I just want to say that Buckman's direct diversion only treats individual water rights from our partners. We don't have any water rights. And I don't know, like Kyle said, Yeah, yeah. I understand that now, but ultimately it is the treatment facility for the water rights of the three partners. So if the board decided that we wanted to go to each of these organizations and say, "Would you like this money for water rights?" In theory, we could facilitate that. "Would you like the money to help with the thing? We don't, we think the best use of this money would be in conservation or reclamation or whatever the process is." We can be part of that solution as opposed to dividing the line. I understand we may not want to go buy the water rights, but we have that opportunity as partners sitting at a table together. Okay. Again, creative thinking because we're not in a vacuum. Yes, there we go. Below the microphone, but thanks. Anybody else? Yes, sir. Just a follow on the chair's comment there. I just was wondering about the, you know, the kind of like a no action under a NEPA analysis, but in this case, you know, the reality of the operations of BDD is even with the problems that have been identified and occurring, the operators have found workarounds for those, right? And so we're, we're able to, they are able to operate today and produce a really good product, right? So we know that, but that seems like a baseline to be comparing against, looking at the feasibility, wouldn't meet any of the performance criteria, of course, but it's something to compare against and say, if we did this, what would you, what would change in those existing operations? Might be just worthwhile looking at as a, say, yeah, does this make sense? Is the, is the cost really? Thank you, board. Thank you, board member Smith Peterson. I think that, you know, it's most important to get 360 days a year that we can produce water. The RI liabilities aspect of it. And so if we were to do zero and end up with $70 plus million in the bank, I don't know if a partner like Los Companas could be able to produce the water that they need all the time. It's right in the paper with blocking, right? The Amit project that the construction cost estimate that came back, it's almost double cost estimate of engineer. That's why, that's why I'm assuming that there is not going to be money left over if we move forward with any of these alternatives. And I would just add to that, I agree with that. But it also says, are there incremental pieces here that because you might be able to layer different things in where individually you do one piece makes a marginal positive difference for that and additional other thing. To speak to John Sakor's point, you know, that's why we're doing this feasibility study so that we can see what meshes in and what is actually going to fix the issues. Great. Thank you. Nothing else. Excellent. We are moving on to action items. Consideration and possible action on Resolution 2026-1 relating to the Open Meetings Act and adopting annual Open Meetings Act notice requirements. Please. Mr. Chair and members of the board, we typically present the Open Meetings Act resolution to you at our January meeting. I know the memo says that the changes from last year are highlighted in yellow, but I don't think that version made it in here. However, I can tell you what they are. There was a little bit of rearranging, non-substantive, and really the only substantive change was noting our meetings that are not on the first Thursday. So we recite in our resolution that our meetings are always on the first Thursday and where they are, except for this meeting, because last the first Thursday was January 1st. So our meeting is noted as January 8th, and then the July meeting is moved from the first Thursday to July 9th. So with that, I would recommend that we pass our Open Meetings Act resolution for the year. Fabulous. Let me, do you have a question or you're going to, so I'm just going to ask a question. Does this roll over to the first meeting of 2027? Because it seems like we should address that based on where we know it's going to be in 2027. This resolution only addresses this calendar year in terms of meeting dates because that is all that we know about right now. But the requirement under the law is that you pass it once a year. It just seems like, so we should go a year and a meeting or a year including past this meeting, but. Or we could pass it. I know the county does theirs, I think, in December for the next year. I don't know that the city does, but you're saying just to handle the first meeting where it may not be. I mean, we can look at the calendar right now and decide when the first meeting in January is. Is it on the-- That seems like it would work. So maybe nothing. It's Thursday. It's fine. Yes. So, perfect. Just to make sure that we're not changing something, right? Okay. Please to approve. Second. We got a motion from Councilor Faulkner, a second from Councilor Cassett. All in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Thank you very much. Hearing none and none opposed. Moving on to matters from the board. Council Cass. Excellent. Happy New Year. Enjoyed my tenure. Excellent. Well, I hope you stick around. Please join us next meeting or get appointed, whatever that is. I have one item I wanted to mention to the board that I was in Las Vegas in December for the Colorado River Water Users Association meeting, which is this annual meeting of a lot of the water users, not the management agencies necessarily, although they're there, but just the water users that come forward. This year was the biggest conference of any, over 1,400 people attended. I guess I would remark to this board, and although we aren't the holders of the water rights, that my experience, the tension on the river, and you've probably seen this in the paper too, for the lower basin to kind of suffer some significant shortages. They were looking for the upper basin to provide more water. Upper basin, so Mexico, Colorado, Wyoming, Utah are saying, "Hey, we're dry. We don't have any water." San Juan Chama project, by the way, the most dry water project of any that I heard there for last year with a 60% reduction. Most other parties, 10% would be abhorrent to them, right? I would just add to that, that looking at that situation and seeing the stress that was going on, I think the states, including New Mexico, are working really hard to see if they can find solutions. The gap is huge. I just have one example for that, that within New Mexico on the San Juan River out of Navajo Reservoir, if you know where that is, New Mexico has been doing a water operation there with the Jicarilla Apache Tribe now for four years, 20,000 acre-feet of water moved from Navajo Reservoir, that's New Mexico water, and then routed down to Lake Powell to help prop. That's a huge lift for an upper basin state. A large amount of water for a state like ours with what our total consumptive use is. It was really interesting to see the reaction on the lower basin side because it was like, "But we need hundreds of thousands or millions of acre-feet, and you're offering 20?" No. So that gap is huge. I think what I experienced or saw there, all the parties were still at the table. They were still working to engage to find solutions. But with that large of a gap and with some of the triggers that are now there that weren't there when I was working, there's nothing that stops any party from deciding they want litigation rather than just continue to try to talk. So I know New Mexico's trying to be prepared for that and others. I think just right now it's the most tense situation I think that's probably occurred. I wish I had better news, but that was... I would also say Jesse Roach, Bill Schneider were there, John was there, a number of others, a lot of good representation from New Mexico describing what New Mexico's been doing and how we've been trying to deal with shortages. But again, it's the amount of water that's big to us is minuscule to them. So that's the gap. Fabulous. Thank you. I guess. Commissioner Hughes. Okay. But you're up next for my matters from the board. You're good. Good. Excellent. For me, two things. First one, I'm not going to let Peter leave the room without saying goodbye. We're going to get to, we have to say goodbye to Peter now. He is moving on from GGI, and this is sad because I've watched him grow over the last few years and really appreciated his filling big shoes. And yet he's taken those boots and not boots, but boots and walking. And we will have some new representation over the next, next meeting, I guess. And so we wish you the best of luck. Please don't be a stranger. And congratulations on whatever is next for you. We're really excited to have gotten to work with you. And so, thank you very much, Peter. Thanks. As for me, I've really enjoyed being chair. I guess I'll get to sit in this chair for a few minutes at the next meeting, but I wanted to thank everybody here for the support and and really teaching me a lot about water. There's a lot of work to do in 2026, and hopefully we will have a new chair, wink wink, over here with a lot of institutional knowledge that will sit in this chair very well. I will hopefully be appointed to continue in my term here, but I will have to take a more supportive role. But this has been great, and I really want to thank everybody here, both board members and staff and folks, folks in the supporting group. This has been really great. So, thank you very much, everybody. All right. Thank you. Next meeting is Thursday, February 5th. Can I get a motion to adjourn? I know we don't do that, but I do. So moved. Second. Excellent. We're done. Thank you very much, everybody.