Public Works and Utilities Committee Mon, Sep 21, 2026 ยท Public Works and Utilities Committee https://santafeminutes.space/meeting/975-public-works-sep-21-2026 == Executive Summary == The Public Works and Utilities Committee met on 09/21/2026, recognizing David Vialpando as Employee of the Month and receiving a comprehensive presentation on the Parks and Open Space Division. Director McDonald detailed the division's structure, accomplishments, and challenges, including managing 86 parks and 170 trails with an understaffed team and facing $80 million in deferred maintenance. The committee acknowledged the significant workload and dedication of the Public Works staff, with councilors advocating for increased budget and support for the department. A major discussion point was a proposal from Supercool Earth for a pilot cloud seeding project in Santa Fe's water basins. The company plans to use drones to disperse a biodegradable protein to enhance snow production, aiming to generate approximately 200 acre-feet of water per month. The committee expressed strong support for this innovative project, contingent on securing necessary permits and favorable weather conditions. The meeting also addressed recent flooding at Tierra Rail Trailer Park, commending the Public Works team's rapid response, and discussed preparedness for an upcoming rain event, with sandbags available and departments on standby. == Key Decisions == - Approved the agenda. - Approved the consent agenda. - Agreed to move forward with the cloud seeding pilot program, contingent on weather conditions and securing necessary permits. == Public Comment == No public comment period. == Topics == - Cloud Seeding Project - Parks and Open Space Management - Flooding Preparedness & Response - Public Works Department Operations - Employee Recognition - Graffiti Removal - Watershed Management - Community Outreach & Partnerships - Integrated Pest Management == Full Transcript == Can you let me know when we're live? Jesse's excited. Madam Chair, Councilor Chavez, we are live. Thank you. I call to order this September 21st Public Works and Utilities Committee meeting. It is 5:00. Can I get a roll call, please? Absolutely. Chairperson Chavez? Here. Councilor Barrett? Here. Councilor Bustamante? Here. Councilor Faulkner? Here. And Councilor Feagali? Here. Alright. You have a quorum. Thank you. Next is approval of the agenda. Are there any changes from staff? No changes from Public Works. Can I get a motion, please? Motion to approve. Second. I have a motion. I have a second. All those in favor, signify by saying aye. Any opposed? Seeing none. Motion passes. Approval of the consent agenda. Any changes? Anything pulled? Chair, nothing was pulled and no changes from staff. Can I have a motion? I have a motion. Second. I have a motion. I have a second. All those in favor, signify by saying aye. Any opposed? Seeing none, motion passes. Next is public comment. Is there anyone in the chambers that would like to come and address the committee today? None. Alright. So next, presentations. We have multiple presentations. So starting with the first one, one of our favorites, Public Utilities Department Employee of the Month for August 2026: David Vialpando, Supply Inventory Supervisor, Wastewater Management Division. And we have Michael Dozier, Wastewater Management Division Director here. No. We don't. Okay. Thank you. Director Dozier is out today, and Manny Efren Morales will be taking it. Thank you so much, Manny. Chair, the committee, the Wastewater Management Division. Okay. So the Wastewater Management Division is pleased to recognize David Vialpando as our Employee of the Month for August. As our Wastewater Supply Supervisor, Mr. Vialpando, David here, oversees the procurement and stocking of all parts and equipment used throughout our facility. Mr. Vialpando has been a part of our city organization for over 20 years. He works diligently to ensure that our operations men can complete their assignments without any delay. Routine maintenance, preventive services, and emergency repairs simply couldn't proceed without his support. We recognize his dedication and consistent efforts. He is very much appreciated by everyone who depends on having the right parts, equipment, and tools for people when the job needs to be done. Thank you. Mr. Vialpando, we'd love to thank you by shaking your hand if that's okay with you. Thank you for everything you do for the city and how you serve us. We appreciate it. And Mr. Vialpando, I don't know if you want to say anything or committee members if you'd like anything to say to this great staff member. Alright. Well, I'd just like to echo, thank you for your work. I think we are very much aware that Santa Fe doesn't run well without people like you. So thank you for being here. Thank you. And Mr. Vialpando, in recognition of your being recognized as Employee of the Month, you'll get eight hours of administrative leave to take a day off and enjoy the fruits of your labor. Please enjoy a day off. Thank you. Next, we have Director McDonald here for a presentation on Serving Our City Through Parks and Open Space Management. Turn it over to you, Director. This works for me. Can you hear me? Is that better? Yes. Great. Right. I have a PowerPoint here. You're probably going to have to move it closer to you. The mic. Well, Madam Chair, members of the council, Director Burnett, and Director Roach, thank you. You're going to have to move the mic closer to your mouth. That was so. Okay. Just when you see, yeah, as you're, yeah, phone problems. Is that? There you go. That'll be better. Thank you. Okay. Great. Alright. Madam Chair, Councilors, Directors, thank you so much for inviting me here today to talk about my division. I know you know a lot of our responsibilities, but I'm going to recap some of that for some of our newer councilors, and I'm going to look back at what we achieved in fiscal year 2026 and really talk about some of the opportunities we have in fiscal year 2027. Our main goal is to create fun, family-friendly spaces where we bring our communities together, and we really believe that our parks are our backyards of our community in many ways. Looking through a few things here. And we do this through very targeted maintenance activities, KPIs, some of which I'm going to talk about, and also community-focused stewardship that manages, enhances, protects our parks, our trails, our medians, our open spaces, and our watershed. Now when you look at our division by the numbers, I want you to see 89. That's the number of people we have working in our parks. Of those 89, we have 78 directly field crew, supported level of service. That's a really working operation. Almost everybody's in the field, and it's, and it's exciting. I want you also to know that includes the seven-person crew that this council gave to us at the end of this last fiscal year. And I'm happy to report that we have hired and are onboarding all seven of those members, and we expect them to be getting trained over the winter, and they're going to hit the ground running on our medians in the spring of 2027. So that's a very quick turnaround by our standards. I'm not going to have time to go through all of these things. I think you're aware of them. I've said these numbers over the past five years, but I've broken it out for you guys to kind of have those numbers at hand. I want to really also point to the assets, the signature assets, which are the more labor-intensive assets that we manage: the Dale Ball Trails, La Tierra Open Space, the Municipal Recreation Complex, and the Marty Sanchez Links de Santa Fe. Now we accomplished this work through the various sections, and I'm not going to spend a lot of time on here, but I've kind of named all the sections and put numbers in parentheses of the number of people that they, they house. I want to give you a snapshot of what these sections deliver for our constituents. The first one is our Parks and Operations. That is our largest section. That's 62 people. These are the hardworking folks that mow our lawns, pick up our litter, take out our trash, prune our trees, fix our irrigation, pretty much do it all and are really ready to do it on a dime and at their request. And, as I said, we have 62 members of that. We also have our River and Watershed section, which is a four-person section. They are in charge of our US EPA permit, our MS4, which is our stormwater permit, and they keep everybody in the city in compliance. They work across departments and make sure that permit gets signed and delivered to the EPA. They also manage all of our large-scale arroyo projects where we have flooding, and we, boy, have we had a lot of rain. Aren't we lucky? I hope that they're, they're obviously doing a good job. Let's see if they make it through this week. They also have launched this year a Runoff to Roots campaign, which is a very exciting new private-public partnership that really is looking at multi-beneficial landscapes and looking at our open spaces as a way to infiltrate in the local aquifer and be able to feed trees and other things in our community. We have our Capital Project Team, which is a two-person team. They bring in everything that we have with the capital planning, capital outlays. Every big project that comes through parks goes through this team, and they're responsible to make sure it keeps moving. We have our Park Ranger Team, which is our second most seen team in our parks. They are in the park every day, and they're just a big support of our community. They are ambassadors to the community. They serve everyone who uses our parks. They serve our crews. They do graffiti removal. They do data collection for our work order system and our capital asset planning. They help our homeless friends get the things that they need. They clean up encampments when things are left behind. We then have our MRC team, which is, of course, the team that manages our Soccer Valley, our softball fields, the rugby fields, the Marty Sanchez Links de Santa Fe Golf Course. They also manage all of the teams that go through our citywide park system. Of these teams, we also have a new thing that I'm calling our Community Outreach Initiative and Partnership. And that's not really a section, but it's a five-person group that comes from all of our sections to meet about the volunteers in our parks. We're understanding and hearing loudly, we want more people helping out in the parks. This section is really looking at that, and they meet quarterly. It deals with our adoption program, our community gardens, all of the things that I've just mentioned. We have the City Special Events Team and Permit Parks Permit Team. That's a three-person team that's now down to two because one of our key players graduated to be our Recreation Director, Tom Miller. But Barbara Lopez has just been outstanding, doing an outstanding job. She's really held it together, and we're very fortunate to have her. We are actively advertising that position, and we have some other things in the works to help support Barbara. We also have another gal named Angelia Sena who does an excellent job with our sports teams. We have 10,000 users come through the MRC and our city parks, and they just do a terrific job. Lastly, we have our Integrated Pest Management Team, which is a team of one. That's Ryan Pitchert, who is also an arborist, and he works across the city to help others understand how we can deal with pests, help our tree canopy, things like that, in the lowest toxicity way that we can do it. So now when I look at our fiscal year 2026 accomplishments, I really want to point to our KPIs. And I don't really have time to go through all of this. I know you guys are familiar with it, but I want to say huge congratulations to my team because we accomplished eight of the nine KPIs that we set out, and I want to talk about two in particular. The first one is a huge success for us, which is we wanted to bring 50% of our parks up to a level of service of 2.5, and this was a real stretch for my team. And we did this. We worked all the way through, and we didn't achieve it until the fourth quarter, but we did achieve it. And the really good news as we go into ending this first quarter, we're still achieving that number. And I'm just so proud of my team for working hard and staying committed to doing that. But it also says that these KPIs and these management tools are having, I believe, an effect to help us deliver even better service for our community. I also wanted to talk about the, the one we didn't achieve, and that is the graffiti removal. We went from 95%, actually, 98% for three consecutive quarters, the first, second, and third quarter, and went down in the fourth quarter. And you might say, what happened? Well, it's a really important thing for us to really start talking about, and that is what we call in the industry maintenance drift. And so what happened is that this two-person crew who does all the citywide graffiti removal is supported by our parks crews and our ranger team to achieve what we've been achieving. And they got pulled off to work on the Fourth of July event. Right? And so when that happened where we had them quickly move, our team had to quickly move too. And in maintenance drift, that's what you want to avoid. So this is a really good lesson for all of us, and we're working hard to get it up again. We have to, of course, work with the winter weather. We can't apply paints and things after 40 degrees. So we'll be working very diligently until it gets too cold for us to do it. I'm not going to have time to go through this whole list. I'm really glad you have it in the packet. I even missed a few, but these are the things that we accomplished in fiscal year 2026. I think some of the highlights for me is that we completed the Swan Park Phase 2 design. We have all of those amenities designed out so that we can seek out funding, and we'll talk more about that in a little bit. We also are just finishing up. We're substantially complete on the beautification on Airport Road. We work very closely with streets to make sure that's going to roll out nicely. We did the Resilana Totla, which is a very big thing for me. We also did things like completed our backflow inspections for Director Roach's team here. We're really proud of that because that's an ordinance that we just passed. So we've had lots and lots of accomplishments here, and thank you for taking a look at those. Now I want to kind of talk about our budget. Director Burnett said it would be a good idea to explain where some of the money has come from and what we're doing. I know you all know a lot about this, but for people who might be listening, I wanted to kind of break it down really simply. We have two budgets that we work within. The first one is our operations budget, and that's a 365-day budget we spend in one year. And that budget is $26 million. It is made up of three sources. It's the gross receipts tax, which is about $17 million. We have the special revenue funds, which is primarily our stormwater service facility charge, and that goes for repairing and doing maintenance within arroyos and stormwater and that type of thing. And then we have enterprise funds, which are monies collected and spent at the MRC and the golf course. Then we have our capital planning funds, capital project funds. And those funds aren't spent necessarily all in one year. They usually go between a two and four-year cycle. So these numbers change a bit too. This year's projection is that we have $11 million in capital outlay and legislative grants. We also have $8.75 million in a pending bond request. So that's not for sure until we have the bond, but we're hopeful that we'll be able to apply those monies to the MRC field expansion and the Swan Park Splash Pad project. Those projects are not $8,750,000 to build. The money from the capital outlay is also going to be supporting those projects as well as the next bucket of money, which is our capital impact park fees. And this year, it's going to be $1,800,000, which is going to also go to that Swan Park Splash Pad build-out. Lastly, we have FEMA hazard mitigation grants and clean water revolving loan funds. These funds are very hard to get. Our river and watershed team and our emergency management group have done an excellent job in really positioning us well, and we are finishing up some designs at Ashbaugh Park and Mark Brandt Park, and we have some other arroyo improvements through the capital or through the Clean Water Revolving Loan Fund. So what are our goals for fiscal year 2027? I want to go back to that 50% of our parks being at a 2.5 or better. That is a goal that we would like to maintain this year, and we're working really hard to do that. Most of our KPIs that we're developing are really geared toward that. So, we're doing a lot of work on turf improvements, making sure that mowing schedules are on time, that we're doing aeration so that we can have increased water infiltration and reduce some of our water usages. We are doing fertilization schedules. All of the things that you need to do, that's high on our list. We also are looking at our medians. We have a whole new median crew making sure that they have all the tools that they need, making sure they can hit the ground running, that they can take advantage of this 365-day work schedule to do the best possible job that they can do. We're also doing a lot of facility inspections, which really feeds right into the family-friendly parks because one of the things that we have succeeded in is through our KPIs last year, one of our goals was to get a person certified to do playground inspection in-house, and Carlos Saiz was able to achieve that. We're really excited about it. We used to have to contract out for a lot of that work, and it could cause some delays and turnaround times. Now, we have it in-house, and he can help us do that kind of work, and we're also really focusing a lot of our crews on identifying these problems so that he can get a lot done and hopefully speed up that process. So, that's a really crossover, one that we're really happy about. And again, I want to mention the Junior Rangers program. The Ranger team does all kinds of work in the park. This is one that they're particularly excited about. It's a really fun time for them because they get to reach out to the students of our community and get them inspired to want to help out in our parks and be stewards of our parks, and that's been going just exceptionally well. Dan Ault, who's our park ranger superintendent, has been putting a lot into it. And I even went and got certified in archery so that I could be part of some of their outreach efforts, which was just hugely fun. And then we're also doing a lot of work to make sure that our accounting and our record-keeping is on par and is adapting to some of the systems that we're putting into place. Now it wouldn't be fair for me to just come here and say how great we are. We have our challenges, and I know every single one of you have heard me say, "Hey, we have $80 million worth of deferred maintenance." That's a huge amount of maintenance, and many divisions have that similar problem, and we're not alone to that issue. All across the country, people have that. I want to remind you that all the things that we do with these KPIs and the training and improving our services can't fix things that are broken. And so we have to be better about getting capital outlay, getting grants, getting help that we need. And so I just want to frame that realistically. At the same time, we also are growing. On the South Side, we have Terra Quintenta coming in, Los Prados Park coming in. We have trails opening up all the time. My team will not be able to keep that 2.5 level of service goal as all that unfolds. Are we going to be able to do it for this year? Probably. But as a group, we really have to start looking ahead how we're going to start chipping away at that deferred maintenance. I mean, you all know I've said that before, and you know, for our public, they have high expectations that we achieve these things, and that can be really hard to deal with sometimes. I think Salvador Perez is a perfect example. I know Councilor Barrett and Councilor Cimontano, I mean, you probably played on that playground, it's so old, growing up here. And it's a wonderful playground, and we had to decommission it because we didn't have the money to fix it. So, these are the types of challenges that we face, but we do lots of good things too. And I like the public to hear and know that we do know these are problems. Lastly, I want to end with some future focus. I'm not going to spend a lot of time on this, but I want you to know some of the planning that we're thinking about. Number one that I would love to see is us getting a citywide irrigation assessment. We've been working with Director Roach's group on the conservation and sustainability division to really look at grants that we can start to list out, do assessments, do the testing we need to do. So just like we have a stormwater list that outlines all the projects and we keep up to date, we would have that for irrigation. And it's a very difficult thing to manage irrigation because it's when it's buried, and then when it's 20 to 30 years old, it's often leaky and not water efficient, which we want to be. So that's really high on my list. My group has been picking away at it. Samuel Labari is our water resource superintendent, and my team is very educated on irrigation, but we really need to accomplish that. And that isn't funded, but we're hoping to get a grant. The next one is funded, and it's very exciting, and that's a technical assistance program, I guess you'd call it, it's not really a grant, that we got with the Army Corps. And our river and watershed section partnered up with the Army Corps. They're going to really help us look at some of our arroyos in open space. As many of you know and have called me about and have been frustrated with, we have built up to the edge of these arroyos, and we are having difficulty maintaining the banks. We have trails falling into the arroyos sometimes, and it takes a lot of effort to get them up. Working with the Army Corps, we're going to be able to really get a handle on our planning effort. That working with land use, we're hoping to make some significant changes in how we're engaging and what we've inherited and how we're going to move forward. The third priority is our parks maintenance, our parks master plan. That was done in 2018. So it's, what, eight years old. They recommend that you do update those every five years. We haven't officially updated it. We've had some playing around with it, updating certain things here and there, but we really need to focus on getting that updated and addressing some of the more modern challenges that we're having. They certainly encourage you to do it at 15 and 20 years to make sure that it's current. And with a lot of the development we're having on the South Side, I really want to encourage us to think about how we're going to get funds to do that. Lastly, Director Burnett's been running a capital assessment management idea and program that he's putting together. We're going to be part of that program. We do do capital assessment. It's very labor-intensive. We get quotes on projects. We have to go do inspections. We do prioritization. I think some of the efforts that Public Works is doing to modernizing that process is going to be hugely helpful to us, and we're really excited to keep working on that. And I do want to say that my team has made leaps and bounds in terms of our work order system. That, it's been translated into OpenGov. And, while it's not perfect, we've been getting great feedback from constituent services. And so we're moving in the right direction, and I'm just appreciative of the opportunity to share that with you, and I'm available to answer any questions. Thank you, Director. Are there any comments, questions from the committee? Councilor Faulkner? I just, great presentation, Director. I would like to thank you, though, for the back-to-school bash. Your team did a great job about getting the water fountains working, and Barbara was amazing through that entire process. So kudos to you guys. Thank you. Councilor Bustamante? I just want to say thank you and your division for everything you do. I mean, 86 parks plus all the other stuff you do is kind of just mind-blowing that that's a lot. So, yeah, just want to say that. Thank you. Anyone else? All right. Or do you have, all right. I do want to also kind of emphasize the magnitude of the work that comes with parks because I don't think people understand. And I will pretty confidently say, and I'm going to ask you to confirm, you are understaffed for the amount of work you do. I know I feel like you should have many more positions for the outcry of how important this is from the community and how you try to meet that demand with the little staff you have for as much as you manage. And I think it's very important that the community understand that. This is a lot of work. So we're talking about 89 employees. Developed parks is 77, but this doesn't include the 170 maintained trails, 590 medians. And then when we're looking at parks, how that breaks out into all the recreational areas such as the basketball courts, the soccer fields, the tennis and pickleball courts, the playgrounds, all of that is huge. And I feel like you do that with a very minimal staff. Would that be accurate to say? Madam Chair, councilors, we are definitely at the lower end of the national standards for a city of our size, depending how you look at it. And I want to be very careful because there are lots of different ways that we look at facilities and how we maintain them. But the national standards are more around 110. And I want to say that when I work with your staff, they're amazing every time. They're knowledgeable, and they're very dedicated to their work. I think that says a lot about your leadership as well, so thank you. But I think as councilors, we have to keep in mind that this is an under-resourced area, that we really do have to advocate better for moving forward, especially around budget. Santa Fe is a place where people want to exist outdoors. They want to exist in these spaces, and they can have high demands, and they can also be very much so not nice about those demands. And I feel like Melissa and her team do an amazing job in staying calm and professional and responding as quickly as possible. But I feel like we have to be better at setting them up for success. So I just really want to emphasize that and shine light on that reality, and see if we can put our minds together, especially as a committee, on how we could better support this department. But I really want to thank you for being here, Melissa. Thank you for everything you do. Yes, I remembered my question. Sorry. What is the level of service 2.5 out of what? Oh, yes. Councilor Fagali, it's a scale of five to one. So we were at a three, and now it's a C+ or a low B. So it goes backwards. One is the best, and 2.5 is heading toward one. Thank you. And we have to support you, so we will put our heads together to see how we could support you. So thank you, Director. Thank you. Y'all have a great night. Oh, yes, Melissa. Oh, wait. We have one more. Oh, sorry. About the ICIP list, since you guys are both here and we gave you district priorities, when do we hear back about that? Because we did actually put Sal Perez Park on that. So, Chair, Councilor Barrett, we are finalizing the resolution this week for the city priorities and the district priorities. So in the very near future, it will be coming to one of the next governing body meetings to be introduced and then the committee approval process moving forward from there, so very soon. And it may, if you are extremely interested, I think you could reach out to the City Manager's office and see if they're ready to share it more broadly. Yep. Absolutely. Thank you, everyone. Let's move on to our next presentation, which I'm excited to hear about. Supercool Earth, potential cloud seeding to enhance Santa Fe water resource availability. And I will turn it over to Director Roach. Madam Chair, members of the committee, thank you. We actually have Dasha Leon from Supercool Earth joining us by Zoom. So I'm hoping if she hasn't already been promoted to panelist, she can be promoted now so that she can share her screen and present. And I will also say, I apologize that I didn't catch this, but this will be the last presentation of the night. The fourth presentation has been pushed until next month, and I'm sorry. I didn't see that that had still been on the agenda. Thank you, Director. Can y'all see me? Yes. I'm going to go ahead and share my screen. Excited to chat with y'all today and tell you about this project that we're working on with Director Roach's team. So my name is Dasia. I am a biologist, and I'm co-founder and CEO of Supercool Earth. And at Supercool, we're building a future of reliable precipitation. And what we are doing more explicitly is that we're doing cloud seeding, but we're not doing it with silver iodide. As biologists, we like to take inspiration from nature and solutions from nature and deploy them for impact. And we have a protein that we are using for cloud seeding to deliver rain and snow on demand. Our protein is found in nature. It is biodegradable and non-toxic, and we are not only developing or have developed this protein for cloud seeding, but we're also doing the full delivery platform. So we're working with Jesse's team on a project. This is the first time it would ever be deployed at the City of Santa Fe water basins. There's a true marriage here between the technology that we're developing, the fact that y'all are leaders in water innovation, and the need also that exists for y'all for water. So what we're doing at Supercool is very simple. Our mission is to make water supply more predictable. Our protein, not only is it already found in nature and biodegrades, but it is also two times more active than the traditional cloud seeding agent, which is silver iodide. We can target warmer clouds and essentially get more water out of clouds than traditional silver iodide-based technology. We are, we're not using a persistent chemical like silver iodide. We're using a biodegradable protein, and we're doing this because weather is becoming more and more less predictable, and certain areas get more water, certain areas get less water, and we feel that by tweaking the amounts of this protein that are already found in clouds, we can deliver water to folks that need it. I'll tell you two very important things about our protein. As I mentioned, it is naturally found. It occurs in snowpack, rain, and soil. And here I have a picture of a paper that demonstrates that this protein is actually already found in rainfall. It's found all over the world, in the US, and anywhere where this protein has been, how do I say this, looked for, it has been found. So it's ubiquitous in the environment. And the way that this works is you're probably wondering why the hell are there proteins in the soil or in all of these places that can deliver water? Well, they're produced by soil microbes. So these proteins are produced by microbes in the soil, and then they get released by these microbes. And what they do is that they form ice in clouds, and that and they contribute to natural precipitation patterns within a cloud. So what we're doing at Supercool, as I mentioned, we take inspiration from nature, is we're leveraging this mechanism, and we're delivering these proteins into clouds, nudging clouds to precipitate that wouldn't have precipitated, or getting more precipitation out of clouds that were already going to precipitate. As I mentioned, it's a natural mechanism. And if you ski or snowboard and you've fallen and eaten a bit of snow, you've already eaten some of this protein that we're using. The other really important part about our protein is that it rapidly degrades in the soil and in the environment once it's done what it needs to do. So it will make ice and clouds, and it will fall as rainfall or as snow. And then it gets, the proteins get broken down by two main methods. One is that microbes in the soil will eat them and inactivate them. The microbes chew up these proteins because it's food for them. The proteins break down to amino acids. And then the other mechanism is through chemical processes. So the sun will break it down, the pH. And these two pieces of our technology were really important for us as we were building Supercool because as biologists and, frankly, just as people, it was really important for us to develop a tech where we're releasing something into the environment, and then it has no effect, no detrimental effect on the environment. So, really, the question is about so Supercool's proteins are safe for the environment. And the true question, and one that no one has answered yet, and we want to answer and do this for the first time in Santa Fe, is ask how much snow can we make with our proteins, using this as a novel cloud seeding agent. So the plan is to use small drones. I have the picture here of the drones that we have purchased. The drones will contain a dispersal system in them, and here's a picture of our Supercool protein powder. And we will do short missions between February and March because those are the best times for us to cloud seed. Thirty-minute maximum mission with a single flight line, and we will release a very small amount of this protein. We don't need to release very much for these types of missions. And so this is, yeah, this is really exciting that we can be, we can test for the very first time whether this protein can work to generate snow and also figure out how much snow we can generate. And I believe that this will truly unlock cloud seeding because silver iodide has held cloud seeding back for 70 years or so, because you don't want to release something like silver iodide, especially if cloud seeding will be the next sort of layer for infrastructure. These are assessments that we did for the Nichols and McClure Basins in Santa Fe. So what we did is we took a 40-year historical dataset of weather and asked what are the best times for us to cloud seed and also how much water do we predict that we can generate. And this is truly to be able to better map to match our levels of water that we can generate with the expectations. And we were able to generate these, the this climate analysis. And on the left here, we're showing sort of the basis of the analysis where we can see where, and blue is where we would want to target, where the supercooled liquid water and purple is where the supercooled liquid water is, and then in blue is where the precipitation is. And using these types of data, we figured out that February, March are the best months to target the basins and that we could generate about 200 acre-feet per month of water with an 80% chance. And, really, what the trial this coming March and February is meant to do is determine whether these estimates are accurate enough. Of course, you know, we can get data and generate predictions, but truly, there's nothing to replace, there's nothing to replace doing this actually in real life. So the proposed trial that we have that we've been discussing with Director Roach's team is to cloud seed in February or March, as I mentioned, and to do about five to 10 missions throughout that month where we can generate, sort of the where the best opportunities are to cloud seed. And, essentially, what we would do is be able to measure how much precipitation we've generated using equipment on the field between radar and rain gauges, and then be able to give a report as to how much precipitation we generated with our cloud seeding technology. And then in terms of actually doing this, it's obviously very important for us to talk to the right people. And so here's a list of what the permits are that we need in order to actually do this mission, and then all of this is underway. Our protein, because it is not engineered and because we're not really seeing a live microbe, does not require any permits from the EPA for R&D use, but for commercial use, it does. We are going through all of the necessary paperwork that we need to do to get FAA approvals, to do our missions. And then on the New Mexico side, chatting with, making sure we're talking directly with the Interstate Stream Commission for cloud seeding permits, the Forest Service. And so, it's important for us to make sure we check all the boxes, talk to all the right people, not just from the permitting side, but also socialize what we're doing and make people aware of our plans. I'll tell you briefly about our team. We're a small team of five. We started the company about a year ago, and we're a team of biologists and atmospheric scientists and a hardware engineer. As I mentioned, it's truly important for us to develop a technology that's compatible with the environment, but that also works at the same time. Our trials with the city of Santa Fe would be key in figuring out how much snow we can generate and whether this is something valuable for folks. These are a bunch of references. I'm happy to take questions. Thank you so much for all the information. Any questions or comments? I have questions or comments, but I'll let you go first, Director. Thank you. If I could just make one quick comment. I think there are a couple of things about this that have suddenly brought it from being fringe to being very interesting for us. Those are, one, as Josh mentioned, the fact that they have figured out, or are proposing to do cloud tuning with a naturally occurring protein, changed the sort of interest level for us. Then the fact that they, amongst other companies now, are looking at this targeted delivery into clouds when they're either about to precipitate or precipitating. Those two pieces that have occurred in the last couple of years have really taken this from being a fringe technology that we kind of smiled at to something that I think is really worth looking at. I think one thing that I'll just mention is that they're proposing doing a pilot for us for about $5,000. If they're able to get 200 acre-feet of snow on the ground for that, and if half of that melts and ends up in our reservoir, that's 100 acre-feet for $5,000, so about $50 an acre-foot. The value of that water for us in those reservoirs is between $104 and $100 an acre-foot when you compare it to what it would cost us to pump water from BDD, just energy costs. So if we can get water up into our upper watershed at a cost of below $100 an acre-foot, it's a no-brainer for us. Trying to figure out how much extra snowpack this could actually create and how much extra water in our reservoirs this would actually end up with is an important tool, we feel, to put into our toolbox. Yes. Councilor Faulkner? I have a couple of questions. One, have you done any virtual models? Has this been tested in other spaces? Has AI been used at all to test it, as close as you can get to the real thing? So when you test it in Santa Fe, you can tell what might happen. Yeah. So the test that we've done, or the climate analysis that we have done, is what I was showing in the slides where we estimate the amount of precipitation that we could generate. That is all computational modeling. What we will do before going to Santa Fe, because Santa Fe will not be the first place that we deploy this, is we'll have some internal testing at a site that we've identified where we're going to do some internal testing for us before we go out to Santa Fe to do this for the very first time. We're not going to do this the very first time when we go to Santa Fe, but the weather has to cooperate for us to do this. So we can't start testing until November of this year, and it gives us plenty of time to do some of our own internal testing before we go to Santa Fe in February or March. Yeah. I think this is really interesting. As far as the drones go, because Councilor Bustamante and I are drone defense. Do you have all the licensing to fly above a certain zone, all that stuff? Yeah. So we're working through that right now with our drone partner. Applied Aeronautics is helping us with the FAA application. So we need to get the online of sight and altitude waivers, and we're working through that right now. We'll submit in the next couple of weeks for the FAA waivers and then go from there. But we should be in time to be able to do our internal flights and then also do the flights in Santa Fe. Yeah. Because I know the elevation you'd have to be flying at is a pretty tricky elevation to get permits for or licensed for. Yeah. We're going at 10,000 feet AGL. And then in addition to the online of sight, both of those are complex. But there are other folks in the cloud seeding space that have gotten similar approvals to fly. So we are, while it is difficult, I think we're well-positioned with our drone partner to be able to get the approvals. They've flown the drones under these conditions themselves, and so that helps having test data for the specific drone that you want to use for the waivers. Great. And has this been tested? I think I asked this earlier, but has this approach been tested in other real spaces? Which approach? You mean using the proteins for cloud seeding? Yeah. No. This is it's never been tested for cloud seeding, but I will tell you something exciting that happened over the weekend. So the proteins that I talk about have lots of different applications to them. And one application we're looking at, we're talking to some ski resorts in New Mexico for this, is putting them inside of snowmaking machines to allow ski resorts to make snow at higher temperatures. And we recently did a field trial in New Zealand, actually. So I should mention that our proteins are approved to be used in New Zealand, imported, and released. And we just did a field trial there and demonstrated that we can make snow under conditions where you wouldn't be able to make snow. So what I'm trying to say along with the way is that we were able to make snow from the ground first, and we've demonstrated that just a couple of days ago. And then it helps derisk being able to make snow from the sky. Yeah. I think this is super exciting. It's, I don't know, sci-fi-ish, but I like it a lot. So, anyway, thank you so much. Yeah. I appreciate it. Is there any other, yes. Councilor Figalli? Thank you. I see on the side that it does say, if there's a super wet winter and we're expected to have the reservoirs full, that this will get pushed back. Jesse, is that your call? Who decides that? Madam Chair, Councilor Figalli. Yeah. That would be, I guess, my call in conjunction with our team. We usually start looking at the snowpack in January. And by February, we start to have a sense of whether we're going to be managing our reservoirs. We think we may fill our reservoirs. And if we're at a point where, at that point, we're at above, you know, 50% chance of filling our reservoirs, then I think we wouldn't go forward with it. This is a small amount of water, so it wouldn't change operations a lot, but it just wouldn't, we wouldn't want to be trying to explain why we did cloud seeding when we already have more water than we can hold. But it would just, like, push back. Right? Yeah. We could just, sorry. I'll add to that. It wouldn't make sense for us to do it either. We want to make sure we're deploying it at a spot that needs it. So I think, yeah, Director Roach and I are aligned in that. Okay. But so it would just get delayed was my other question. That's right. We would push it off to another year. And I will say, historically, since I've been here, about one every five years, we end up with enough snow that we're managing the reservoirs, trying to fill them, but not spill them. Under those conditions, we don't need extra snowpack. But the other four out of five years, we would love to have a couple hundred extra acre-feet. Then my other question is, is this only doable in the winter? Sounds like yes. But is that? Right now, yes. But in the future, no. So we're working to be able to seed any cloud. But right now, because this is the easiest place, all air quotes because science is never easy, is the easiest place to start is in the winter. But in the future, we're building towards being able to do it in the summer as well. Cool. Thank you. Any other questions, comments? I just want to say this would be something incredible for Santa Fe to be part of. So, I hope Public Works and Utilities could support this work, as long as the weather allows, because I think it would be great to be part of this journey that could have a huge impact on communities across the nation. So thank you for the presentation. This is really exciting and interesting, and we're, I think, all supportive of it. So just keep us posted as we move closer and closer to launching this really exciting experiment. Thank you. Madam Chair. Alright. So we are moving, and do we have to amend the agenda because we're moving this? Or no. Pat's saying no. So we agree with Director Roach that we are moving that. Next is discussion. And on that, no executive session. Matters from staff, we'll start with you, Director Burnett. No matters from staff, Chair. Director Roach? Just one reminder, so that the whole committee knows, next, the next meeting in October will be at the Wastewater Treatment Plant, and we will have one presentation before we then tour the plant. Great. Thank you, Director. Matters from the community? Committee? Okay. So, Jesse and Sam, you might have to help me. On Friday, the Tierra Rail Trailer Park got flooded horribly, and the Public Works team was incredible, as was the emergency response team. So I'm going to try to remember everybody, but it was Sam and Jesse, Zoe, Kyle, Marcos. Who else was involved? So that I don't know the names of all the employees, but certainly, Wastewater, I think BDD, Streets Division, Parks Division. So quite a few people across all those divisions. And so Public Works just pulled together at the last minute, and I have a feeling people worked some overtime and put in some incredible hours, but people in that community could not get into their homes. Their parks were flooded. So there was some damage to some of the homes, and this team was phenomenal and responded very quickly. And we had to think outside of the box in a couple of spaces, and they did that amazingly. So I just want to say thank you guys so much. I cannot thank you enough because it really lives were being impacted. And so in a very real and tangible way, and your team was phenomenal. So thank you guys so much. Awesome job. Also, though, I want to, since flooding was brought up, there's been tons of social media posts about the risk for flood over the next three days. Do you have anything to share for community members? I know people are saying to prepare for flooding, four to six inches of constant rain through Tuesday and Wednesday. I don't know what's real or what's fake, but I've seen a lot of people message me and a lot of posts coming through about a fear around flooding with the rain that's coming, I think, within, like, the next 24 hours or so. Yeah. Absolutely. Chair, Councilors, definitely a lot happening behind the scenes. Of course, I always want to call him, is it Kyle Mason? Morgan. Thank you. Kyle Morgan in the Emergency Management Office has been communicating with all the departments regularly and keeping us up to date. The Public Works divisions are all putting certain amounts of staff on standby, so we'll have staff ready to deploy after hours if public infrastructure or public works infrastructure is impacted. And just, again, I think Fire Department and Emergency Management have a large deposit of sandbags down at Fire Station 5. And we know throughout the Public Works divisions what our vulnerable locations are and are keeping an eye on those and, again, are just ready to deploy staff to take advantage of or take care of what impacts may come up. If residents do have flooding or immediate need, should they just call an emergency for support, or have you guys discussed how they should contact, or who they should contact in situations like that? That's a great question. I think the first point of contact when there is an emergency is always 911. I wouldn't want to get in between the public and that number. So that's if anybody finds themselves in a difficult or unsafe situation, 911 is a great place to start. Communicating with the city's constituent services department is a great place to quickly disseminate information throughout the various departments in the city and get a fast response that's tracked. I think it's a great conversation. I'll bring it up tomorrow morning in our senior staff meeting, and maybe Peter Olson, our Communications Director, will want to issue some sort of public statement. And we might have some numbers that we could put out to the public for kind of after-hour emergencies. That would be great. I'll reach out to the City Manager as well. I know that there is a high alert to that. I know at my school, we discussed some flooding points in our facility. So I would want communication out, so I'll mention it to the City Manager. But yes, there are supposed to be pretty significant high rains. And I feel like we have this sometimes, and then the rains don't come. But I feel like we've had a lot of rain, so I get why the community is concerned. But there are a lot of constituents in all of our districts that are really concerned about what's to come right now, just because we've had issues with flooding in a lot of districts, especially, I would say, District 4 and 3. So, just listen to constituents. I will advocate if you all can as well to the City Manager or Peter about how we can make sure that everyone knows who to call when there is a need, because we will have that shift over the next day or so. Any other matters from the committee? I think I just did my matters. The next meeting will be Monday, October 5, a field trip to the Wastewater Treatment Plant. With that, we're adjourned. Thank you.