Buckman Direct Diversion Board Thu, Feb 5, 2026 · Buckman Direct Diversion Board https://santafeminutes.space/meeting/1066 == Executive Summary == The Buckman Direct Diversion Board meeting focused heavily on the region's critical water resources, with updates on current snowpack, drought conditions, and collaborative planning efforts between Santa Fe City, County, and Los Alamos. A significant portion of the discussion revolved around the long-term Santa Fe 2100 Water Planning initiative and the ongoing operations of the Buckman Direct Diversion facility. Board members expressed concerns about their level of involvement and transparency in the procurement process for a major design-build project at the BDD, emphasizing the need for more high-level information and input on project goals and alternatives. Key decisions included the unanimous approval of the agenda, consent agenda, and amended minutes from the previous meeting. The board also elected new leadership, with Councilor Casset becoming the new Chair and Board Member Green elected as Vice Chair. Action items were assigned to staff to improve communication regarding project timelines and board involvement in the procurement process, and to explore collaboration between the city and board on comprehensive housing and water plans. == Key Decisions == - Approved the meeting agenda unanimously. - Approved the consent agenda unanimously. - Approved the minutes of January 8th as amended unanimously. - Councilor Casset was elected as the new Chair of the Buckman Direct Diversion Board unanimously (with Casset abstaining). - Board Member Green was elected as Vice Chair of the Buckman Direct Diversion Board (with Commissioner Hughes abstaining). == Motions & Votes == - Motion to approve the agenda — Approved (unanimous aye vote). - Motion to approve the consent agenda — Approved (unanimous aye vote). - Motion to approve the minutes of January 8th as amended — Approved (unanimous aye vote). - Nomination and election of Councilor Casset as Chair — Passed unanimously (Councilor Casset abstained). - Nomination and election of Board Member Green as Vice Chair — Passed (most members voted 'Aye', Commissioner Hughes abstained). == Public Comment == No public comments were made during the "Matters from the Public" section. However, board members themselves raised significant concerns and provided commentary throughout the meeting, particularly regarding the transparency and their involvement in the procurement process for the BDD design-build project. Mr. Chairman (Ralph) praised the water managers for their success in managing water resources despite drought conditions. Board members also discussed the qualifications and experience of potential vice-chair candidates. == Topics == - Water Resource Planning - Buckman Direct Diversion (BDD) Operations - Snow Water Equivalency & Forecasts - Water Storage & Reservoirs - Drought Monitoring & Management - BDD Facility Rebuild Project - Election of Chair and Vice Chair - Minutes Approval - Consent Agenda Approval - Water Resource Agreement - Caja del Rio - Pawake Basin Regional Water System - Meeting Procedures == Full Transcript == Commissioner Hank Hughes: Here. Councilor Patricia Fagali: Here. Councilor Jamie Cassett: Here. Chair Justin Green: Here. You have a quorum. Thank you. We have an agenda that's been presented. Are there any changes from staff? Seeing none, are there any from the board? We see none. All right. Can I get a motion to approve? Move to approve. Chair Justin Green: I got a motion from Councilor Cassett and a second from Member Schmidt Peterson. All in favor say aye. All: Aye. Chair Justin Green: Excellent. Thank you very much. We've gotten a consent agenda. There are two items on the consent agenda. Anybody have something they want to pull off or discuss? I see none. All right. Move to approve. Chair Justin Green: Excellent. Got a motion from Councilor Cassett. Second. Chair Justin Green: Second from Councilor Faggali. Thank you very much. You're first. You're on the record here. Here we are. Thank you very much. All in favor say aye. Aye. Excellent. And none opposed. Excellent. So, moving on to the minutes of January 8th. Member Schmidt Peterson, you had a comment. Member Schmidt Peterson: Yeah, thank you, Mr. Chairman. Apparently, I'm not very good at speaking into the mic, especially for doing the minutes. So, my apologies in that regard. I have reviewed them and I think there's just one area that I would like to clarify, and that is on item, the matters from the board, item number 10, page nine. And it is the bottom of the third paragraph. Oh, my last, well, let's see, one to third paragraph, where under Member Schmidt Peterson, and at the very end, the sentence that begins, "It was really interesting." I think that sentence should read, "It was really interesting to see the reaction on the lower basin side because they were saying they need hundreds of thousands of acre-feet, not tens, and what you're offering is way too small then. So that gap is huge." Chair Justin Green: Thank you. Are there any other changes or requests? Sorry, I didn't ask staff if there were changes either. So none. Hey, Karen, you're good with that? Okay. Move to approve as amended. Second. Chair Justin Green: I got a motion from Councilor Cassett, a second from Member Schmidt Peterson. All in favor say aye. All: Aye. Chair Justin Green: Any opposed? Hearing none. Matters from the public. Is there anybody here? Joanie, you're here. You're the public. Okay. Well, thanks for coming. Excellent. Is there anybody else from the public behind that big screen over there that wants to speak? No. Okay. Thank you very much. Moving on to item seven, presentations and informational items. We've got our regular, whoops, hold on. We've got somebody new coming up here for this. William Schneider, please introduce yourself. Joel Schneider: Thank you, Chair Green and members of the board. Thank you for the opportunity to sort of present a very preliminary status update on our water resource planning that is conducted jointly between the city, the county, and also includes Los Alamos. If I could just pull up my presentation, please. I should introduce myself as well. So, I'm Joel Schneider. I'm with the City of Santa Fe Water Division. I manage the Water Resource Group. And today I have a presentation that I just want to give a quick shout-out to Levi Newell, who's sitting in the back. He's a new strategic hire with the city. He just recently completed his graduate studies in atmospheric science and climate change. And so, a really integral player in terms of some of the new technologies that we've adopted and some of the new modeling tools that we're building. So, we'll touch on that a little bit today and be happy to come back and provide more detail if the board feels that brings value. So, today's point, really, I want to touch on is a very preliminary presentation. It's January. It's early in the water season, but we are starting to get some information and most importantly, I want to just convey to the board the amount of work that goes on behind the scenes relative to planning and effort and data analysis, decision-making, as I mentioned, jointly between the city and the county. There's an incredible amount of uncertainty right now. We're watching the weather patterns hopefully develop into maybe getting some storms early next week, but things certainly are challenging and sort of setting up, as you'll see here in a minute, to be very similar to last year. And fortunately, and this is a real huge shout-out to Brad Prada and his team, is despite 2025 being one of the most challenging years on the Rio Grande, the BDD was operating throughout the year. There was no curtailment. And so that's really something we work closely as a collective effort to avoid. We certainly value the BDD as a critical, if not most important, component of our water supply water system and having it being able to utilize it in its design capacity under these extreme conditions certainly has proven to be very useful. And so with that said, I'm just going to walk through a couple quick slides and then stand for questions. This first slide is a 30-year record of the snow water equivalency recorded up in the San Juan Mountains, which is sort of, we'll call it a surrogate for the amount of water that will be available as runoff into the tributaries of the San Juan, which is where the San Juan Chama project diverts its water supply, which I think most everyone on the board is familiar with. And a thing to point out, like basically in 2026, again, early, we're tracking very similar to 2025. So, it's the information that we have at hand is sort of indicating that we're going to have another year of a lot of close conjunctive management between the city and county, how we utilize our water rights and divert them at the BDD. With that said, a little bit of a lag. One of the key things that we always emphasize with sort of our water management programs is the importance of storage, and with emphasis, San Juan Chama water has a permissible allowance to store that water over a calendar year with no penalty. There's a lot more restrictions on native water rights and the need to have both a reservoir that allows for that as well as a storage permit. So, the key takeaway here is that currently the city maintains about a little more than 10,000 acre-feet of storage in its three reservoirs that are upstream of the BDD, Aaron, AQ, El Vado. In addition, the county, I believe, and I'm going to approximate, I don't have this here, but roughly three years of their allotment of SJC. So, the county has 375 acre-feet a year of contract water. We have not been getting that firm yield that we've been getting reduced supply because of the drought. But I'm going to guesstimate they have about a thousand acre-feet in storage right now available to be diverted at the BDD at the discretion of the county. Then moving down to the Santa Fe River watershed. Similar again, it's a surrogate for the amount of water that exists up in the watershed right now. This is behaving a little bit differently than the San Juans, but similarly tracking very closely to 2026. I guess Levi, we just today, just this afternoon, we got the latest February NRCS forecast. Things are trending maybe even in the wrong direction in terms of what's being projected for flows. So, what I really want to convey to the board, the importance of all this sort of monitoring, tracking, and data analysis is conjunctive management. We, the city, does maintain groundwater wells in reserve. We have the water, the amended water resource agreement between the city and county that allows for the city to provide up to 1,350 acre-feet of water as backup supply. I'll touch on a little bit more on that in a moment. But right now, even with the reservoir repairs going on in Nichols, you still retain around 2,000 acre-feet of storage up in McClure. So, again, trying to build this sort of reserve given the uncertainty around river conditions for this year and to that point, forecasts are not looking favorable. There's an update came out, I think, just recently, but this is for February, March, April. Again, we're seeing below average with respect to precipitation and warmer conditions. So, trending in a direction that we do not prefer, and we were just having a side conversation regarding the Rio Grande. So, what's really key with respect to the Rio Grande is the Buckman Direct Diversion has, the city and county have the conversion permits, and there are triggers for curtailment in the case of very low flow conditions. One of the very creative solutions has been shared resources with respect to water rights where the city and the county have something as we title the shared pool agreement, and that allows us to navigate and maximize the resource. So, which again, as last year is a testament, we were able to maintain the BDD throughout the year, but the takeaway again, 2025 was pretty challenging, particularly for certain months, and 2026 is again tracking along that path. So, it's a pretty common theme throughout this presentation. We bring up the drought monitor. Again, it's just a form of information. We kind of like to use lines of evidence that what's available help inform our decision-making relative to what sources of supply we use, when and how. And so the drought monitor, you know, is, we did, as Ralph was sharing with me, did have a fairly favorable monsoon season last summer. Help sort of lift us a bit out of the drought dryness categories. So, we're more or less in the abnormally dry zone currently. And that feeds into something that's been brought to the board before, which is a tool that we developed. Jesse Roach was, I think, our primary sort of advocate for developing this technique, but it's a way to give us sort of an indicator for our sort of current status of our water resources. It's a score relative to water availability. And so it touches on, you know, three components, and what this ultimately is being designed to, and it's going to get rolled up eventually. It's part of our water conservation plan at the city. I presume the county will be adopting something similar, but ultimately we're going to be revamping our Chapter 25 ordinance if we can get through a code rewrite. So, we want to embed sort of the, it's really what it is, is a tool to help guide decision-making and policy relative to when we would declare a water emergency or various stages of drought and how we can imply, inform drought demand management concepts. So, something that we're evolving, it's been adopted and it's continuing to sort of be used. And so this is something that I really want to emphasize is that we meet, we, and when I say we, Brad and the BDD team, Matt as well as Santa Fe County and the city teams, and it's a large group. Tom joins as well. What we're essentially doing is making important decisions with the information we have available in terms of how to manage. Again, we're doing, we have reservoir repair, dam repairs happening at Nichols. We're going to be moving up to McClure. Buckman has some challenges, and then we have the well fields that we have to exercise and utilize to essentially establish the best compromise in terms of maximizing the resource. And so we do this, we build this, and so this is the first step in this process. And so coming before the board today, we already have 2026 projections on how we plan to use our water supply. It changes daily though. Again, these are just very preliminary forecasts. And so, one of the, I guess, key things again is we were able to successfully operate the BDD 2025. We're planning, with all hopes and intents, to have similar operations. I'm looking over at Brad, similarly in 2006. That's our goal and intent. Things deviate; we have plans relative to mitigating any changes of conditions. This is probably a most important step here. The first bullet is we're now in this early period planning cycle where we're basically, again, infrastructure has a really critical piece, obviously the hydrology as well. Then we start working with our federal partners, with all the stakeholders on the river. Now we're expanding our work to include the ISC, Albuquerque Water Authority, MRGCD, obviously the Bureau of Reclamation. I can just go down the list. A lot of data analysis, data sharing, and shared planning goes forward. Typically, April is the time period where a lot of that stuff's going to be rolled up, and we're going to be really firming up our projections. We'll be getting the final NRCS forecast. We're going to get the Bureau of Reclamation operating plan. Ultimately, at that point, at the same time, we have, under Chapter 25, a requirement to bring forth to the city manager and then to the governing body a declaration on the status of our water resources. We rolled that up into something called "What's Up With Water" for the past three years. Jesse Roach has presented that. We brought that to the Buckman board. So, I'm going to ask for permission to bring that back in. Beyond that, it's adaptive management and decision-making as we roll through the spring. Then, of course, all the challenges that we could have: low flow conditions, auto gauge, obviously sediment issues, and the list goes on. But we are certainly prepared for any challenges, and a key takeaway is that we feel very confident that we have the resources and the team available to meet the needs and the expectation that the BDD will operate as designed and planned. So, kind of closing remarks, and then I'll stand for questions for the board. We're kind of touching on a very short-term planning cycle. We're going on a weekly to monthly and an annual time step. Something that is also happening that's really important is something called Santa Fe 20, very rigorous water planning. It's done in conjunction through a grant and partnership with the Bureau of Reclamation under the WaterSMART program. We're using state-of-the-science in terms of climate hydrologies that are coming out of the University of Massachusetts through the Bureau of Reclamation. Recently, Santa Fe County joined an MOA to be partnered on this planning cycle. Obviously, the city's a bit ahead. We've been working on this for a while now. We're collectively working on how to manage this on parallel tracks and where it makes best sense to tie it all together. With that said, we actually have a meeting tomorrow to talk about backup scenarios above and beyond the water resource agreement. We will also be having some community outreach as part of Santa Fe 2100 this year. So, stay tuned and be able to bring more out in terms of where we are in the process. With that, I will stand for questions, Chair. Chair: Thank you very much. From the board, questions? Mr. Chairman: I have one kind of thought for Bill, and more than maybe one question. The first thing I want to say is, from my 35 years of being involved with water, what Bill Schneider was talking about today is a success story. It was essentially what Santa Fe and others were seeking to accomplish back in 2002 when there was basically no outdoor water. To get to this point and to see 26 years into a mega-drought, having three years of available water, I just want to acknowledge that and say thank you to all of the water managers that are here today. Then, just a suggestion, actually, well, it's a question. I think for the public, it doesn't seem like the NRCS has their snowmelt forecasts posted, but you're getting them. So, you have a volume for the... I did not bring them. They literally just came into my inbox. I was just wondering if you're aware of where those are because they're not on their websites anymore. I was just wondering if it was something the federal government wasn't providing anymore, but it sounds like they are. So that's great. No, no, in response, I will email you that when I'm done here. But also, they've ported over to a dashboard. There is a new site they're using, and they've created some new visualization tools, probabilities, and other things. Thank you. Okay. And then just one last suggestion. I think 2002 for the San Juan Chama project was the lowest inflow year on record, and I'm not quite sure where that sits compared to 2025 or 2026. I wonder if you have a feeling for that for the snow around. I haven't looked at it recently, but my recollection is 21% by last year for Santa Fe. For that matter, we got 39%. So, thank you. Certainly, to your point, we're adapting to shortages in terms of our allocation, but it's looking more like something in the 20% range if we get precipitation, not 6%. Thank you. Yeah. Is your committee that's looking at planning for water going to come up with an idea of how many people we can have in Santa Fe County? How many houses are allowed to be built? I know that's a rough question, but it also might be fairly important if there's a limit. Thank you. What we've done is, for that, we hired an economics expert, and we built an updated demand tool. So, we've done projections out into the future based on several variables, not just 2% population growth going out 40 years. We tried to attempt to put more rigor behind it relative to where the whole intention of the plan itself is to create what's called adaptation strategies or methods by which we could address potential shortages in the future under various climate hydrologies based on our estimated projections. Where those lines cross in the event where we can't meet demand, I guess, would be what you're inquiring about: what are those triggers where the city and/or county can't grow beyond that population? So, I guess inherently that will fall out of the analysis. But really, I would flip the equation to say what we're doing is working to be able to meet with additional supply or conservation and reuse or a combination thereof to meet future needs under various hydrologies. So, in other words, reuse the water if we have to, that sort of thing. Yeah, absolutely. That's something that was adopted through this whole process with the Bureau of Reclamation, going back to 2015 when the city and the county partnered on what was called the Santa Fe Basin Study. That was the first anywhere, as I'm told, to look at water supply demand under various climate hydrologies. Here we are 10 years later, revisiting it with more rigor, better models, better science. That's really what 2100 is designed to accomplish: making informed decisions and again trying to project when these sort of tripwires may happen to ensure that we're building out our supply needs. The point you're making is maybe additional water reuse above and beyond the San Juan Chama project adaptation, aquifer recharge, is certainly something that could be enhanced, various projects being another. So, we have a litany of about 40 adaptations that we're going to be modeling, exploring, and looking at the various forms of benefit that they may bring. So, we try to obviously take cost into consideration, but also green space and other forms of projects that could enhance the livability of Santa Fe. Okay, good. I'm glad you're looking at all that. And that's it. Thank you. No counselors. Yes, go for it. Thank you. Actually, I really appreciate, Ralph, your historical knowledge because as I'm looking at this, I start to get a little panicky because it's all these dry years. I know that the city's water department does an incredible job of this forecasting and has been really, really strategic and intelligent along with BDD. But I really appreciated that reminder from you about where we were when I was taking showers with buckets so my mom could water the garden with all the extra water as I was trying to get the temperature in my teenage years. I still do that. But I think that that is really important, and that a lot of Santa Fe is really a, we are a success story in the face of all the challenges, and I really do appreciate all the work that you all do and do a very good job of keeping us up to date on what's happening, both the governing body and here, so that we are able to make those decisions with that information. So, I just wanted to point that out because you definitely gave me a little bit of a level setting again that I needed. So, thank you. Excellent. Thanks. So, a couple, you know, I look at things at a micro level, right? What I would call a medium level, and then a macro level. Some of those things are quasi-geopolitical, like upper basin and lower basin allotments and state-to-state compacts and things like that. That's that super upper level. In that allotment, how do we either negotiate, or what's our, are we just subject to the whims of the water gods somewhere in Washington or somewhere in the West? You have a resident expert in the room. Ralph, his former career was an ISC through the Colorado Commissioner for a while. Yeah. But... I was an assistant commissioner. Okay. But to answer your question, Commissioner, I'm going to defer to Ralph to enhance anything. We are meeting regularly with the Colorado Commissioner right now. We have something, and we would certainly welcome the county to be a partner on this. I'll put in a plug. Thank you. We have something called the San Juan Chama Contractor Association. All the basic contractors, City Water Authority, Albuquerque, Metro Rio Grande Service District, many of the PBLO, including the Hickory Patch Nation. We've banded together, have a basically small dues, and we've built an organization that's chartered, led by our attorney, hired as a representative. So, we have a liaison which allows for us to work directly with the state of New Mexico at the governor level and then up through the various states to essentially weigh in. There's certainly a lot of uncertainty with potential post-2026, as you're implying, institutional shortages that could be coming. It's simply not a crystal ball. Things are optimistic that there's going to be a consensus solution in the seven states, but stay tuned. Thank you. Please advocate, tell us what we might be missing, where the county can step into this. Yeah. So, quick clarity, the county is a contract holder. They have 375 acre-feet of contract water, and so they're invited to participate. The fees are prorated based on how much water entitlement each group has. I think the county, for various reasons, has not joined the San Juan Chama Contractors Association. They're invited and attend a lot of meetings, but I've renewed that suggestion to Brian and Travis recently. Is that Brian and Travis, or is that John Utton? For this group, it is typically the water, the non-legal water managers that attend, and I serve as the administrator of the group, not really the lawyer. So, yeah, it'd be wonderful to have the county as a full network. Excellent. Well, we'll go back home and advocate for that a little bit. These are $175 a year. Oh my god. That's 50 cents an acre. Okay. Well, that's, we should buy more acre-feet. So, I guess, to Commissioner Hughes's point, and this is something that I'm going to be working through at the county, and I hope my comrades over at the city and even beyond that, from Los Alamos to Rio Bravo to Albuquerque and so on, that we start to look at a regional housing study. So that we start to look at, if we start to repatriate people that live in Rio Rancho to Santa Fe, that's moving their water burden to Santa Fe, right? And so there's some knock-on things in that while we want people to move back to where they work, right? It's like how do we look at housing really comprehensively? And so a housing study, but also plugged into that, the water resources of that big picture, right? And so it's everything from affordable housing, which is income-restricted, to workforce housing, to not-so-workforce housing, and second homes, and the whole spectrum in commuters and everybody. And so not looking at just the county, not looking at just the city, not looking at even just the city and the county, but bringing the PBLO in, bringing all the, and then adding in, it's not just BDD because the city has a very complex water portfolio. The county has a complex water portfolio. We've got the Pojoaque Basin regional water system. So, how do we, those two things seem linked very tightly, and finding a way to make sure that we look at these things comprehensively. So, you guys are working on a general plan update. We're working on a general plan update. Water is actually, it's not just land use and housing, it's actually water is one of those major inputs, and I hope you're working in as an input into the city's general plan update, and that we get the same resources into our general plan update over at the county. I don't know if there was a question in there, but I hope... No. Yeah. Yes, ma'am. And on that note, the other thing, general plan coming, and we had this discussion at governing body the other day about all of our various plans that need to align. The city also has our green building code update coming forward finally. Unfortunately, Councilor Marworth, who carried this thing the entire way, was not here to carry it over the finish line. So she left me to do that one. But that has a lot of conversation around how we're changing some of our regulations around water and when developments need to bring water and what does this start to look like. So, fun preview for things to come. That's great. I know that in the case of the county, we did system requirements for all units over 2500, and that's turned into a burden for a lot of houses. So there's great ideas out there that can suddenly restrict a bunch of housing out there. So yeah, great. Thank you very much. Thanks. So we've got our, now we're on to our regularly scheduled votes. Matt, with our monthly update on BDD operations, please take it away. Thank you. Thank you, Chair Green, members of the board. I'll be presenting the BDD operations report for the month of January 2026. The BDD diversions and deliveries have averaged in million gallons per day as follows: Raw water diversions, 5.08 million gallons per day. Drinking water deliveries through booster station 4A and 5A, 5.03 million gallons per day. And raw water delivery to Los Campanas at booster station 2A was zero million gallons per day for the month of January 2026. BDD contributed 47.4% of the drinking water to the city and county for the month of January 2026. I will stand for questions. Are your reservoirs, this is more of a city, are your reservoirs back up and running or are they still under, and maybe there's no water to put in the reservoirs? Oh, thank you, Chair Green. Yes, on page two, I believe I have an update for Canyon Road. So, Nichols Reservoir is at 97.39% capacity, and McClure is at 37.6, and that's going while they're doing their construction and work over there. So, McClure's almost full, right? Forgive me if everyone else already knows this, but why is Los Campanas at zero? Is that usual? That's pretty typical for this time of year during the winter. I'm sure they don't water their grass. Mom could probably speak to that better, but... And actually, there is kind of a little bit of an interesting thing to potentially this graph that shows year-over-year could almost be broken into a graph for each of the deliveries, right? So we could compare city deliveries, county deliveries, Los Campanas deliveries, and year-over-year so that we could see. Yes, it's typical. So, right. And... Yeah, thank you, Trigger. I can add that to the report going forward. Yeah. Great. Thank you. Anything else? No, Matt. Thank you very much. Thank you. Moving on. Item C, report from the BCD facilities manager. Brad, you are up. Thank you, Chair Green. First off, I want to say thank you to Bill and the water resources team coming, stepping up to the plate here and trying to bring some clarification to some of these questions that we've had repeatedly in the last couple board meetings. So, I want to thank Bill. Members of the board, for today, for the month of February 2026, I'd like to provide an update on the key facility projects, procurement, and staffing. First, regarding legislation and external affairs, Senator Heinrich's office is introducing legislation to permanently protect the Caja del Rio area. Since our Buckman facility sits within this corridor, we have been contacted from the Senator's team. We have provided them with all the necessary facility information, locations, and will continue to cooperate with them. We are monitoring the progress closely, though we do not anticipate any impact on our operations. Moving on to the repair and replacement fund. The RFP for the control system upgrade is progressing as expected. We have reviewed the proposals and anticipate selecting a vendor within the next month. Additionally, our cyclical replacement for granular activated carbon is on track to begin on February 23rd this month. Regarding the design-build project, the request for information was posted on January 21st, and we will now be in a 60-day posting period. Simultaneously, our project team, including AECOM, Rightwater, and staff from BDD, city, and county, is moving forward with a feasibility study. We are also drafting the RFQ now so that when the RFI is complete, we can post it immediately after. Finally, an update on staffing. Our current rapid, our recent rapid hire event was highly successful, resulting in three offers extended to operators. We are also in the final processing stages for our chemist and administrative manager. Notably, since this report was finalized a week ago, we have concluded interviews and extended an offer to a qualified journeyman electrician. Thank you. And with Alan for questions. Thank you. Any guest? Mr. Chairman, thank you. I have a couple of questions, Brad. Could you not even remind me, but make me aware of what a PLC control system upgrade is? Thank you, Chair Green. Ralph Schmidt Peterson, that is a programmable logic control unit. And used for? Controls. This specific one controls our membrane feed. Okay, thank you. That's helpful. And then I had a question about next steps with design-build project. So, and I just want to see if I'm getting this right. So, you have the request for information out, continuing the internal feasibility study, and then once that's completed, looking to go to RFQ. And I'm wondering within that, if, maybe this is a question more for Nancy, is, so with the RFQ come to the board for kind of review and approval, go forward? That's my experience with other boards and commissions for request for proposals and so on. If I could, thank you, Ralph Peterson. It's going to be a suggestion that we bring to you guys. So, you're not going to necessarily be making the selection. It'll be our recommendation. Yeah. Apologize. I'm not asking the question correctly. At least when I was director of the ISC and I was looking to put forward requests for proposals, I needed to bring those drafts to the commission before I could actually put them out and then get them approved. And I don't know if those are policies here. And so I was trying to understand that timeline and then what our feed of information. Yeah, Mr. Chairman and member Schmidt Peterson, that is not our process here, nor the city's process through procurement. So procurement will have a strong hand in it and have to approve everything that goes out, but it's being drafted by AECOM and Brad, and I'm doing a legal review. And so not until the committee makes a recommendation, the selection committee makes a recommendation as to that engineer, then that contract would for award would come to the board, but the board does not typically get involved in RFPs. In my experience, drafts. My experience, they never did. But at least with state personnel office and things like that, we had to have a resolution or a decision signed by the chair that there, you know, that the of obligation of funding, so on, towards an engineer. And so for any RFP that went out, there was something that came to the board. Here's our draft request for proposals. We're seeking approval of that. And you know, and here's essentially what it's going to be, and then discussion, approval, and for... That has not been our process here, the city's process. So what is the process? Where does the board get involved? The board gets involved when there's a recommendation for award of the contract by the selection committee, not in the actual RFP document itself. I'm disturbed by parts of that, at least from what the chair had brought up before, of this aspect of from a public perspective, which is my role as member, is like what exactly are we trying to achieve with this engineer and where are we involved in that process? Because right now we don't know, right? And my understanding from the last meeting is before we went out to request for qualifications, there would be a basically a charrette, essentially an evaluation of alternatives, and we would hear something that before moving forward. Now the, the charrette that was discussed, I think, was more of an internal meeting of the, of the engineer, of our consulting engineer, our owner's representative, city and county representatives, but not with the technical and engineering people. And I understood that, but I understood also that the intent was come forward with the results of that summary level and say, here's the alternatives we looked at, here's kind of the pathway we're proposing to go forward, this is what we think option, and that seems to be going away, and I'm really frustrated with that. If I'm perceiving it correctly. If I may, you know, you have a unique role in this on this board here. One, you're the public, but more importantly, you're kind of an expert playing in a room full of policy makers. And so there is a true value to have you here to really look at this at the formation of the RFP. And so I don't know if that's, if that has a viable way that that can come forward and be like, help you, one other set of eyes on the RFP. I would just be dangerous, and I bet you the other four of us here... I back up. I'm not really concerned about the legal aspects of the RFP, but it's the what, right? I mean, because we've been going on for over a year with a failed process, right? And I don't want to get into a new failed process. At least for the two years that I've been here, it's not the RFP so much, but it's what is the goal? Where are we heading? Absolutely. So, whether it's the scope, it's the direction of how the RFP is going to be made to do this. And I would defer to Nancy as to at what point somebody can be involved from this board or, um, but my point is before they even go into that closed process, there should be a presentation to the board saying, given everything we looked at and the fact that we're changing how we're moving forward with looking at engineering design and what we want constructed, what did we look at? And based upon the things that were looked at, what's the approach going forward? What are the risk factors with that? What's the likely money pieces to that? That they frame policy is where I'm trying to go, and we don't have any of that. Member Schmidt Peterson, thank you for that. Kind of to reiterate what Justin was saying, excuse me, Chair Green was saying, is you have a very vast knowledge of how these functions work other places. That's not necessarily the case here. Also to add to that, in your respective board member position, it's really not in your best interest or our best interest or the board's for that matter to dive into the super details of all this. It'll be shared with you when we come up with our recommendation, and then you can make your selection on saying yes or no at that point. And to speak a little bit more for the direction we're going to be going, after the RFQ, we're going to be looking for an engineer for 30% design. That's the, that's the no RFQ. Yeah, excuse me. So, let me be clear. I'm not looking to understand anything about details. I'm trying to just understand what the planned engineering design and construction process is, what the alternatives we looked at, and what the results of that alternative review were with just simple performance criteria. Everybody at this could understand those things. There's no technical expertise that's required. And but I don't even hear we're getting that. That really concerns me. So, I'm going to go to you, Jamie, in a second, but I'm going to say at the last meeting, we had a comment about sort of an expected pathway forward, right? Milestones, when we're going to get it, what it's going to be, and at what point we have some input in this, right? So, I agree that to give you some backup and some guidance in this, we can be that group to do that, to say, here's the timeline. In the next eight to ten months, we're going to be doing this, this, this, and this. Maybe it's 14 months, whatever it is. And here are the touch points that the board is going to have on this. And so, the feasibility study is something that we've discussed both in here and in private, and as a key aspect to this. And I think that that's maybe one of those touch points that we should all be involved in. And then in building the scope of making sure that the scope of the RFQ has all of those details that all of us, including you most importantly, to be, and maybe not most importantly, but equally, to make sure that that is all comprehensively looked at. One, to get the best bang for the buck, right? Some of it is process and engineering and specifics, but really, I think that maybe that's where you want to be involved. I mean, I could help to provide some clarity to it. I'm just a little bit confused whether, from a board standpoint, with regards to such a large potential expenditure of dollars, right? And basically understanding what the staff are trying to achieve with their process before we go into a closed process that went into before where we couldn't hear anything, right? So, I just want to basically say, we understand 100%, this is where staff is heading with the proposed engineering design. Here's what they're proposing at engineer design for construction, because from all of the experience of the last year, what I understand from that, relative particular with Brad's becoming the overall manager facility, he knows what's not working and what is working and what they potentially need. It's a very different place than two years ago, and that's great. It's actually a very positive thing. But before diving into a closed process where the review of engineers, which can take huge amounts of time, like, okay, this is where we sit today. Here's what we're proposing be constructed and be designed, and let's just have that out there so we all know what it is. Then if we have questions about it, we can ask those questions. That's even before you go into any RFQ process or anything. Yeah, thank you, Chair. Are we, we have to follow the city's procurement process, and I think that is my question is, I know the city's procurement process is not fun for any of us involved. And so, part with part of this conversation, where are the avenues through that procurement process? Because I know it is, it is, we get pretty blocked out for until the end. I'm, we've experienced this frustration many times. I'm very used to this frustration. But I am curious, as we are looking at it from the point of BDD and what this starts to look like. That's my understanding is that we have to follow city procurement. We have a lot of regulations from the state. And so, Nancy, maybe or Brad, either of you, if you could provide a little bit more insight into how all of these things are lining up. That would be, I think, helpful for me. Chair Green and Councilor Casset, you are correct that we do follow the city's procurement process, which largely follows the state procurement process, and they set the rules and provide the parameters for what we can do and what we can share. And there's also the overlay of, we don't want, just like you don't want city councilors drafting RFPs that then they're eventually they're going to award on. It just would probably be a conflict and could create some other problems. So, we're not going to have you do that. We're not going to have you step into that kind of that kind of risk or that kind of role. Not that some of it wouldn't be valuable, but we do have to kind of follow those guardrails. That doesn't mean that we can't provide overall information and time frames of how we expect things to go. We are, as Brad said, in the midst of working on the RFQ now, and we've got some proposed timelines for that. So, I'd be happy to visit with Brad about this and see if perhaps our owner's rep could provide an overall timeline and the steps that we can anticipate with this project going forward. But it's on a good path, and I think we've got some very good people working on it, and I'm feeling a lot more hopeful about this process going forward that we're going to find someone good for the engineering. Wonderful. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And I would just ask maybe and put it out as a proposal, right? Two things. One is, let's just get a summary level presentation, maybe AECOM or whoever. Here's the results of the evaluation. This 50% evaluation that would give us a good handle of what was looked at, and we're, you know, basically this entire group of experts are suggesting to, that's great. Then separate from that, this kind of procurement process by Florida. I would just like to have that discussion about, you know, the evaluation to date before that procurement process begins and the door starts slamming. We'll have to see what we can do. We've had some discussions internally about the kinds of information and data that we have that we are going to share with potential with respondents, potential contractors. So, we'd have to thread that needle because we don't want to have discussion coming out at a meeting that we have decided for certain strategic reasons not to include in the in the RFQ, right? Because then those minutes would be available and it could impact the procurement. So, we're going to have to think about that because we just had a discussion about that last week. Others bring that up again too. I understand that pass, but I'm saying things that were in that evaluation probably should be in your RFQ or your contractor because we cannot be in the same risk profile with the potential engineer as we were previously. Staff are not in the same position that you were previously. The burden of the risk is going to have to be shared, and so all cards on the table, I think, is the way to go forward given the history of what, you know, kind of what happened with that last. That's just my opinion. So, what I think I would ask is that, and taking a step back to last week or last month, I think we discussed the idea that the feasibility study would be coming to us this meeting or March, maybe. So, that would be great to get an assessment of that. Of course, trying to thread that needle. I get it. I think we all get it, right? Um, but to understand the full scope, you all looked at 50 different options, narrowed it down to 10, narrowed it down to five because of this, and you're going to let it out for that. That was one of the more important things for us to sort of assess here. Then the timeline for all of those other pieces, and just to give us some sort of something that we can see the future coming, and instead of just a surprise, here's, here's what we've, what we've got. Thank you, Chair Green. We shared that pathway last month. So, if you look back into the minutes from last month, it was in my presentation. On that note, I would be happy to come up with a presentation, or the team, I should say, would be happy to come up and present something when we're ready at that milestone. Okay. And so, it's the March meeting, so just to keep us on track for that. But that's there. Anything else on this subject? Okay. I do want to thank you for taking the time to start looking at the Caja del Rio stuff. We have a letter in our agenda for next Tuesday, and I think there was a conversation being had as to whether BDD wanted to tie those letters together. But let's make sure that BDD is at the table for this and not on the menu, as they say. I'm also going to be going to DC at the end of this month and speaking to USDA and Interior in regards to things not related, well, one things related to Caja del Rio, but to other things. And if there's anything that is of value for me to be briefed on to take to any to our delegation or to any of the administration partners, I'm happy to make some time there. Yeah, if we move any more in that direction or get any more feedback from Senator Heinrich's office, we'll be in touch with you. Thank you. Anything else? No, sir. Excellent. So, that is the end of that. We are now on to action items, discussion agenda, election of the chair and vice chair of the Buckman Direct Diversion Board. I'm just going to start off by saying, this has been a blast, everybody. Thank you very much. This has been great to work with you all. I've great counselors and commissioners and and, you know, support team. Being chair has really been an honor. I love this. I've learned a lot. I hope I've contributed a bunch too and helped navigate some things here. I don't know if there's a different way of doing this here for BDD, but I will take nominations for chair. I'm going to nominate Councilor Casset to be chair for this next year. Like to second. Great. So we have a motion and a second, but I just to allow everybody else, just so you know, we alternate between city and county. And so it's the city's year. Are there any other nominations out there? Okay. Well, we have a motion and a second for Councilor Cassid to be the chair. All in favor say "Aye." Aye. Aye. Oh, you don't have to abstain, but okay. Let the record show that Councilor Cassid abstained. Excellent. Do I pass the gavel now or do we wait until the next meeting? We usually wait until the next meeting. All right. Thank you very much. Excellent. So, moving on to vice chair. I'm going to make a little statement right now based on some conversations that I had had over the past few months of asking me to be vice chair in this alternating situation here, both from some of our experts in the room, because there's a lot of big decisions as we know this year. I know there's someone to my right that also would like to be vice chair. So I will let us both sit for this and allow debate to happen here. If somebody would like to nominate myself or Commissioner Hughes, I stand open to the conversation. We have a question, please. Thank you. So what we've frequently done at the city is we usually have, we usually kind of do two rotations, or two years. So a rotation as chair and rotations as vice chair before we swap to the next councilor. Last year was a bit of an anomaly. Carol took it because she's Carol and she's amazing. Chair Green, have you done a vice chair and chair or just chair? No, I was last, prior to my chairmanship, I was alternate and I did attend, I think, every meeting just to get up to speed so I would be ready to be potentially chair because the two Annas, Anna Hamilton and Anna Hansen, were chair and vice chair for successive years. Got it. And do you guys tend to do that pattern or is that just an us thing? We do it at the commission level. We hadn't done it at the BDD level. It had been the two honors for a long time. Okay. Okay. Thank you. I appreciate that knowledge. Yeah. Well, we don't even necessarily do vice chair and chair. You were elected chair, but you weren't vice chair commission this year. That is correct. Yeah. So, we tend to do whatever. Okay. Being vice chair doesn't mean you're automatically in line for chair. That is. I'll continue to make my case and I'll invite Commissioner Hughes to make his case. But in this past two years, I've spent a lot of time learning about what's going on at BDD. One as an alternate and spending the time even though I was an alternate and sitting down in the gallery down here. But then as chair this past year, I had a lot of offline meetings to navigate this contract. We've got a pretty important contract to rebuild the facility. I've spent two and a half hours with my constituents up in the north talking about the Pawake Basin Regional Water System and the interconnect. And so I've over the past few years have become an expert on water policy and construction of these projects like this. And so everything from using the things that BDD does, or that the Pawake Basin Regional Water System is using and bringing them over here, such as a rainy well and the interconnect. These are all big picture things. And so I stand to see where people want this to go. I don't see how not being vice chair means you don't have a chance to continue learning and having influence on this. I have a degree in environmental engineering, so I feel like I'm very familiar with water issues. I studied water many years. I worked five years in groundwater pollution, and so I think I will be easily up to speed in anything. I think that we should bring a lot of issues to the whole board to decide on, not just the chair and the vice chair. And since you're chair of the county commission, I think that's a lot of work, and I think that I would like to share your workload by being vice chair of this committee. It's not that big a deal, but I would like to do it. I apologize. This is a, we just do this a little differently at the city. We normally have discussed it amongst ourselves. So, that's... We did not. I'm figuring this out. Nope. Yep. Mr. Schmidt Peterson. Oh, I'm not even there yet. Go ahead. Mr. Chair and Councilor, I think there's a number of different pathways to go on this, but thinking about it just in the way that the board has operated in the two years I've been on, the aspect of the continuity with the chair and vice chair is really important. And in reality, there's a lot that does happen with staff that the chair advised you, and so in thinking about that, and nothing in this regards to your experience and so on, but that two years of carried over history relative to, let's say, the rebuild of tracking peril was a big part of it. Just you were a big part of it too and carried on. Sure, I think that's still very important. I'll just do that because the public member, I'll just propose that board member Green be vice chair again. I appreciate that perspective again. And I will go ahead and second. Thank you. Are there any other nominations for vice chair? No. Well, I don't know. It's not that big a deal. I'm not going to nominate myself when there's two votes for you. Well, I mean, but thank you, folks. Well, we have a nomination from member M. Peterson, pardon me, and a second from Councilor Cassid. All in favor say "Aye." Aye. Any opposed? I abstain again. And an abstention from Commissioner Hughes. Thank you very much, everybody. I appreciate that and will work hard as a vice chair in this next year, and so I look forward to the honor and the work. We are, we got items from the board. Anything from the board, folks? No matters, folks? No. I do want to ask our friends over at the city to start working together on this housing plan and potentially a water plan and looking comprehensively as how it fits. And so I would hope that that especially at the water level, this can work together for us. Our next meeting is Thursday, March 5th. Anything else we need to know, folks? Thank you. Excellent. A motion to adjourn. Sorry, it's the old I'll do it style for a minute. One more meeting. Move to adjourn. Thank you. Second. Excellent. All in favor say "Aye."