Title
Approval of the Long Range Water Supply Plan
Recommended Action
I move that the Board of Public Utilities approve the revised Long Range Water Supply Plan and forward to Council for approval.
Staff Recommendation
Staff recommends that the Board approve as presented.
Body
DPU contracted with Daniel B. Stephens & Associates, Inc. (DBS&A) to revise the Long-Range Water Supply Plan. Using the original format and data from the Council-adopted 2006 Long-Range Water Supply Plan as a starting point, DBS&A updated the Plan to:
- Reflect current population and water demand projections,
- Evaluate potential climate change impacts, and
- Assess various water supply options, including the timing for development of the County’s San Juan-Chama water rights.
The revised Long-Range Water Supply Plan was presented in a series of meetings with the public, Utility Board and Council in 2017. The current version of the plan incorporates input received from public comment received, Council recommendations and inclusion of 2015 and 2016 water use data. This plan revision was presented to the community in a public meeting held on November 13, 2017. No public input was received during the public meeting.
The recommendations made by Council are described in the following motion from the March 21, 2017 meeting; "correct the wording concerning LACWU which should be Incorporated County of Los Alamos and to revise the wording regarding use of San Juan Chama water rights to make clear that is a last contingency and where the actual well to be drilled is at a location to be determined in the future." These recommendations have been incorporated as follows:
- The use of the acronyn LACWU (Los Alamos County Water Utility) has been replaced with Department of Public Utilities (DPU) or Incorporated County of Los Alamos (County) as appropriate.
- Recommendation to initiate an Environment Assessment for development of the San Juan-Chama water development has been removed (page 100)
- A new recommendation added to update the water demand analysis in a few years to re-evaluate whether and/or when a San Juan Chama Water supply project will be needed (page 100)
- The plan states that alternatives to developing a San Juan-Chama Water project shall be revisited and further studied prior to a project moving forward (pages 5 & 43)
- To emphasize conservation and system efficiency as an alternative to developing new supply as means to meet future demands, a new conservation recommendation to "work to minimize system water loss" and "perform annual water audits" has been added (page 102)
- Uncertainty of the quantity of County water rights due to expiration of DOE/LANL water rights lease and DOE/LANL commitment of water rights towards groundwater remediation efforts, have delayed the finalization of the plan, which was originally scheduled in 2015. All of the analysis, figures and water audit have been revised to include 2015 and 2016 water data. This was required as the Office of the State Engineer would not accept a plan without current data.
In December of 2017 the new ski hill owner, Pajarito Recreation LP, made a presentation to the County Council. As part of the presentation, Pajarito Recreation LP stressed the importance of snow making to create a sustainable ski operation, and has committed to share cost with the County to install a new potable water pipeline to Pajarito Mountain to supplement the existing drinking water supply, fire protection and snow making. DPU is managing a contract to design and create the environmental documents for the proposed pipeline. Based on the information presented by Pajarito Recreation LP the demand from this line extension will be primarily for snow making in the near future. Details of the planned expansion and operation of the snow making effort were not known at the time of this plan revision, therefore the plan does not address this new demand on the County's system. Based solely on the pumping capacity of the new water system it will take 28 days of continuous pumping to fill the 10 million-gallon (30.7 acre-feet) snow making pond. Snow making could take place anytime between November and March depending on environmental conditions and the pond could be filled multiple times each year.
Alternatives
Should the Utility Board not approve the Long Range Water Supply Plan, the County continues to meet statutory requirements with the 2006 plan on file with the Office of the State Engineer.
Fiscal and Staff Impact
The plan is funded by the water production budget.
Attachments
A - Long Range Water Plan
B - Power Point Presentation