state to people downstream and in 2008 the voters in Minnesota actually passed a constitutional amendment to tax themselves more to devote money to clean water and it's called the Clean Water Land and Legacy Amendment and that was a result of multiple years of trying to bring the science to the people and say we are not working at a pace that is going to reach the goals that we have so I think there's something to be said for just persisting and meeting people where they are talking about drinking water talking about where they like to recreate what the legacy that they want we did we did a survey with the Minnesota University of Minnesota recently of people post amendment and said you know how many of you think water is an important part of your identity and 80% said yes and then the question was how many of you think it's important to clean up the water before you send it downstream and almost 70% said yes so there are ways to bring people along and you just kind of connect where they are so somebody said impacts at the local level and I previously worked as the director of all the infrastructure underground for the city Minneapolis so this is near and near to my heart thinking about the impacts that we're seeing which are not unique to us the upper Mississippi states are all having shorter winters warmer summer temps much higher flows precipitation happening during times of the year when crops are not growing to take that water up or groundwater is already saturated or frozen and therefore you're not getting the infiltration that you would otherwise this picture was taken in 2014 in Duluth turns out this is in front of our staff people's house that's not her car but she said that when I showed her the slide this slide comes from the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources I give credit to Megan Moore this shows at the Lakanam 3 which is downstream of the confluence of the Mississippi and the Minnesota river basin the changes in flow over decades you can see that starting with the light blue line in the 60s you see a peak in April in the spring time so there was a flood of record in 1965 so that peak is higher than the 70s in 80s but still you see that bump in the spring to think about snow melt and spring time precipitation you go through the 90s 2000s and 10s and what you see is that and this was highlighted earlier that we are now seeing a peak that lasts all the way through the summer there is and you've heard this there is no downtime it is high flows all the time so I want to play this so I don't know if you could push that button this is paid for by money that we we generated through the clean water land and lakes change in river flow there are things we know other things we don't know in 1940 the USGS United States and what we know is that all those tributaries either to the Minnesota or Mississippi river some of them have not changed in the amount of flow the annual flow that they have we also know that about half of them have changed and that that change is very large they doubled the amount of flow they have per year in their rivers since 1940 so we we know there's a change it's measured it's not it's not a hypothesis it's a measured value then the question becomes well why have flows changed and we certainly know that we've we've done a lot of land use changes and some of those land use changes are consistent with increasing water flow like drainage we also know that the climate is a little different and I don't mean global climate warming I mean we have more rain now than we did in the past at least some of them we've we've been able to separate out and make estimations about how much that change in contribution from climate and land use and drainage is contributing to those changes in water flow and what we found is that the increase in rainfall can describe less than half of the increase in fall and that's really not a surprise because remember I told you that some watersheds do change and some don't change and yet they all have some change in rainfall so there's something else driving the change and flow beyond just an increase in rain and part of it is the crops we're growing and part of it is what we're doing to those depressional areas that used to hold water so here's the other thing that has changed dramatically since 1940 and if you have any any farmer friends who remember back to 1940 they'll all verify this change and that is in 1940 in Minnesota we grew almost no soybeans soybeans are now 50 percent of the row crop agriculture in the Minnesota River Basin and it isn't that we're farming more land we're farming about the same amount of land but we've replaced and changed the crops so a large portion of the land used to grow alfalfa rye oats winter wheat all of those crops are green and growing like this grass here early in the year green and growing crops suck up water and they transpire it or it gets evaporated back to the atmosphere soybeans aren't planted until mid-may and they're really not big and growing until June therefore there's no water being evapotranspated back to the atmosphere by soybeans that water then is available to either infiltrate into the ground or runoff so that's one change you know and the other is the drainage we know that since 19 well we know that over the last 950 years we've been installing artificial drainage and we continue to install artificial drainage and I think it's interesting that you can just held ponded water and evaporated it away and it just he's talking about not only is there a change to the river there's a change in land use with the change of the cropping system and it's significant the crop conversion and the drainage contribute to more flow in the rivers we got it and so we know that it's not just rain but it's rain plus changes in land use and changing in the way that we manage the land and we know that if you push water off the landscape faster and we know this through experience in urban environments when you build storm tunnels or you put in drainage in agricultural areas that it's great for that immediate relief but it does wreak havoc downstream and this is a problem not only in Minnesota but with our downstream partners and so what I want to highlight is the work that we're doing in partnership with the other Upper Mississippi River Basin States and the other states downstream related to nutrients because what I was asked to talk about is not only what agriculture how agriculture poses a challenge but also are there frameworks that exist across state boundaries that we could leverage or to look to and there are and others talked about this there are 31 states two provinces that drain to the Gulf and we have a dead zone the size of New Jersey and that is a problem locally and it is a problem downstream and again these are things that we need to talk about with people in a way that resonates with them do you recreate at a lake or stream and is there sometimes scummy algae there do you want your dogs or children to be able to play do you want safe drinking water for your family or downstream communities the Gulf of Mexico hypoxia task force is a good example of states coming together with federal leadership there were many federal agencies that came together in 2008 and representatives from all of the states that put together an action plan and said okay we know that there's a Gulf of Mexico hypoxia zone that's you know 15,000 square kilometers plus on any given year and we are going to set a goal of 5000 it's not nothing but it's actionable and it's less and that is what that group found to be a reasonable target and as a result all of the states including Minnesota put together a nutrient reduction strategy and there was a choice that was made you could get a 65 percent reduction in total nitrogen or you could do a 45 percent reduction in phosphorus and a 45 percent reduction in nitrogen and you could get to that 5000 square kilometer goal Minnesota's strategy was completed in 2014 and we're just completing a update to our so five years in how are we doing are we on trajectory to meet our goals and it addresses not only the downstream needs but the immediate needs as well because in order to get buy in again to the question of social science we needed a lot of state and regional and local partners to be on board because certainly at the pollution control agency we have Clean Water Act permitting authority but we do not have authority over drainage we do not have authority over agriculture and a lot of this comes down to what is the land use what crops are we growing where do people want their food to come from and what food are people buying and it turns out as we've looked back over five years we've done a pretty good job related to phosphorus and this is not a surprise for those of you who think about where large phosphorus sources are and we did there were changes in cropping systems that occur there were conservation practices that were adopted but the vast majority of our change came from wastewater and these are the levers that we have these are the permits that we can drive home and litigate to the nth degree and ultimately people have to make changes and we have met our milestone goal of 2025 for phosphorus so we we had a 20 percent reduction interim for both phosphorus and nitrogen by 2025 and then the 45 percent reduction by 2040 and we're already there for phosphorus but we are not there for nitrogen and this gets to something that others were saying about where water where we're seeing changes in precipitation again we have three large basins and the highlighted squares here are where that we have drainage to the Mississippi River Basin and those are the areas of the state where we're seeing not only the biggest changes but the biggest rate of changes in precipitation so it is not equal everywhere and because we have such increased flow it negates some of the benefits that we're seeing on the concentration side because load is concentration times flow and when you decrease your phosphorus by 45 percent but you increase your flow by 40 percent in the area where you're having contributing tributaries you get no reduction so the gulf is still seeing the same load and on the nitrate side where we've really done poorly and I can take responsibility because I'm in charge of this work for the state now we are not doing well on nitrate and we don't have a nitrate aquatic life standard whereas we have phosphorus standards or eutrophication standards that apply to all lakes and all rivers and all streams in Minnesota we have a drinking water standard for nitrate but that does not apply everywhere and we haven't driven home the changes that are necessary to get to the nitrate nor if we focused on wastewater treatment plants would we get there because we know that 85 plus percent comes from agriculture so to get the change that is required in Minnesota and in all the downstream states to get to the gulf we need leadership across states that talks about where the crops are grown what the crops are used for and what crops are we growing and then the other thing people were talking about sediment and there's a big concern within the state of Minnesota for Lake Peppin which is at Lake Lockendam number three and it's a widening of the river and it's filling in because there's too much sediment and this is a challenge that is common amongst our different parts of the country and here's a highlighted illustration that if you have the same amount of concentrated pollutant versus what it looks like if you have more flow you're still getting the same load you're deluding it so maybe the fish are feeling better about it but in the interim and in the downstream though you're still getting eutrophication and algae that is harmful so our statewide strategy calls for all sorts of accelerated cover crops and soil health and changes in drainage and we are not doing very well with regards to these things and I think it comes down to the social science again what is the what is it that people want to do and what can we incentivize people to do and what do we have regulatory control over if two more slides the one other thing I would say is one thing that we like to talk about is if we meet these goals we also will meet some climate goals the state has aggressive like other states has aggressive climate goals we've called for an 80% reduction in greenhouse gases by 2050 we're not on the trajectory to get there and a quarter of our emissions of greenhouse gases come from agriculture so if we even meet that interim milestone we'll get we'll get it the equivalent of three million tons per year of greenhouse gases saved and then one other thing a shout out to the other Upper Mississippi River Basin Association group that we work with they are proposing with their state legislators so at the congressional level a Upper Mississippi Water Quality Improvement Act to bring additional resources to our multiple state efforts to improve health at the Gulf and it will it's targeted at bringing bridging some of these gaps bringing consistent funding bringing consistent leadership to this work and I think that that's a model that I think is important to think about our third speaker is Professor Reed Benson from University of New Mexico and we are very pleased to have him here you can't be a student of the Rio Grande River without reading your papers and your thoughts on water management the legal side of things and what the future may hold so Professor Benson thank you I appreciate the opportunity to be part of this program and really appreciate the board's interest in water management on the Rio Grande so you've already heard from Dagmar and Jack and Fred a number of salient points regarding the Rio Grande I'm going to focus on some of the legal dimensions that were to water management in this system here we just have what we call the upper basin above Fort Quitman, Texas it shows the transboundary nature of the Rio Grande and also some of the federal water projects that manage and control its flow for some for a variety of purposes and I'll be talking quite a bit about those so some of the features that you've heard about already the water reliable water supply in this basin has been over-allocated for about a century and here we get into state laws that have really encouraged and promoted that allocation it is shared by three U.S. states and also by two nations and also by a number of tribal nations most of whose water rights remain unquantified and there are unmet needs there we've got federal reservoirs that play important roles for water supply and flood control primarily but the actual water water delivery is primarily done at the local level and certainly irrigation districts municipal water suppliers play key roles throughout the basin so what you see here that is really common in western river systems is jurisdictional fragmentation in management and that is a big big part of the Rio Grande like others added to this and working at cross purposes to this system is the Endangered Species Act which introduces environmental concerns into a system that was engineered and developed without them in mind so in most so I'm not going to say much about the international piece or the local entities I'm mostly going to talk about the Tri-State Compact the Federal Reservoirs and the Endangered Species Act as they relate to the Rio Grande there's certainly more to say about all of those sovereigns and those levels and I know Melanie is going to say more in particular about about tribal water rights so state water laws and water rights here, Fred this morning talked earlier today talked about prior appropriation so I don't have much to add to what he said but it's worth remembering that this system was all about and remains all about putting water to work right irrigation municipal water supply industry mining and that required taking water out of its natural course some of the key features water rights based on beneficial use oldest right use is take priority in time of shortage although New Mexico doesn't actually manage water that way the thing I want to emphasize is that these rights last forever and there is no process or framework for periodic review so this is not like even hydropower licenses issued by FERC that are subject to periodic review every few decades these are a species of property right that last forever as long as the water is used so that means that when a system is over allocated it is really hard to undo that problem it's hard to make progress in solving over allocation and just to dramatize over allocation this is the dry river bed of the Rio Grande at Las Cruces in May of this year and we had a pretty good snowpack this year right the river was flowing well in the upper basin at this time but it was dry below elephant reservoir as it typically is outside the irrigation season so you heard today about how the upper Mississippi was declared by Congress to be a nationally significant ecosystem and a nationally significant transportation quarter this part of the Rio Grande is a regionally significant conveyor of irrigation period so the compact is an important feature here adopted by so so compacts are the preferred means of allocating interstate rivers in the west and what we have under the compacts is they start out as contractual agreements negotiated by the states they become state law and federal laws approved by the states in Congress so here we've got a compact that divides water among Colorado, Mexico, Texas it's entirely focused on ensuring water for consumptive uses there's really really no other purpose built into the compact its delivery obligations and its restrictions on upstream storage were established based on historical observation the 30s with the expectation that the future would look like the past right very quickly the future came to look different than it did in 1938 but these obligations are set for all time and they they impose like most compacts they impose limits on upstream states for the benefits of downstream states a key thing to remember about about compacts is while it is theoretically possible to change them in reality it's about like amending the U.S. Constitution it is extremely difficult politically speaking to change a compact once it comes into being so that the provisions established in 1938 in practice will probably never change the other thing about compacts generally in the Rio Grande Compact in particular dispute resolution is not what they do well so when there are disputes they land in the United States Supreme Court that's Texas v. New Mexico now and it is in litigation and so there is no good mechanism to keep these things out of litigation so the compact is a big feature you think why did the states ever think it was a good idea to impose these limits on themselves well there was a carrot and the carrot was federal dams compacts were the facilitating means of getting Congress to fund the big dams that the states wanted now elephant butte predated the compact and was sort of woven into the Rio Grande Compact but there was a desire for more reservoirs in New Mexico and in Colorado so that's why those states thought it was good to enter into this so a Bureau of Reclamation's elephant butte dam you might note the bathtub ring in the depleted elephant butte reservoir based on its low water conditions in recent years one of the economically successful reclamation projects but this is why the river is dry at Las Cruces for most of the year so this gets into the role of federal reservoirs the dams in the Rio Grande like most of the nationally are 50 years old and older based on the boom period of construction as authorized by Congress talked about reclamation focusing on water supply core of engineers having the flood control portfolio with some other purposes as well but those purposes are determined by project authorizing statutes Congress authorized these reservoirs to be built for certain purposes it's the agencies though that fill out the details of their operating regimes and I should also mention that with Bureau of Reclamation reservoirs their water supply contracts that play really important roles in how these projects are operated most of the plants are old decades old and it's not that it wouldn't make sense to update them there are a number of reasons why it would make a lot of sense to periodically update the operating plans why does it not happen bureaucratically there are great reasons why the agencies don't want to do it it would cost a lot of money to do the reviews you would have to do environmental compliance NEPA it would be controversial because many of the stakeholders would see risk to potential changes in operations and you improve you increase your chances of getting sued if you do something if you maintain the status quo you avoid all that all right so it's not that it doesn't make sense to update them it does but that's why they're reluctant the system we're talking about was intended to be rigid right flexibility is not what it was built for it was built to provide certainty because certainty in water rights certainty in available water supplies was viewed as promoting investment put water to work decisions whether they're state water rights or contracts or or interstate compacts involve once and for all time allocations and so unlike environmental law unlike most features of federal land management there is no periodic review there is no opportunity really to revisit re-engage these decisions this system was really set up to handle the kind of short-term variability we have always had in the Rio Grande it does not deal well with any kind of long-term change and that includes climate change but it also includes the kinds of what we think of today as new demands that were not built into the system originally that's unresolved tribal water claims and it's also environmental demands that nobody thought about in the 30s and before so which brings in the silvery minnow and the Endangered Species Act I should mention everybody talks about how ferocious and unyielding the Endangered Species Act is this species was listed in 1994 it would be extinct today if it weren't for aquariums okay the at least two I believe three years in the last decade the usual annual October sampling but none of these in the wild so it is in dire dire condition in the wild so the Endangered Species Act is the one law that makes environmental concerns relevant in managing the Rio Grande true of many interstate rivers in the west and it's the only law that really works at cross purposes to this allocation and management system that I laid out before so five years after the minnow was listed litigation required consultation by the Bureau on the core and their operation of the federal water projects huge controversy but it also led to some positive efforts for the minnow that are ongoing today but the risk to the species grows as available water shrinks partly due to climate change partly because Albuquerque now is using more of its surface water and less groundwater one other thing to note though is that the Endangered Species Act in practice has some real has one real negative perverse incentive feds are required to consult and to avoid jeopardy on any discretionary action they lighten their endangered species load by denying or shedding discretion so at a time when we need flexibility and discretion to solve problems they want to avoid it for it so as to minimize their burdens under the Endangered Species Act and and I that is particularly true of one of the federal agencies in the Rio Grande so just last slide here some of the things that climate change is going to make more difficult the laws are hard to change they aren't built to handle change what we are doing in the Rio Grande and some other basins is trying to find creative workarounds to keep this system in place but find little tiny points of flexibility where we can make progress in resolving problems climate change will exacerbate over allocation for some of the reasons that we've already heard about today compliance with compact rules those conditions in the 1930s on which the compact requirements were based no longer obtained and so compliance will become an even bigger constraint on the upper states reservoir operations as hydrographs change but also as values and needs change in the basin reservoir operations that operate under an old fixed plan are an ongoing problem and finally water to support aquatic and riparian ecosystems what we need is an adaptive and forward-looking system for water management that is not the system we have now thanks thank you that was it was very excellent Melanie do you need this our last speaker for this afternoon is Melanie Stansbury Melanie has a long history in working on water issues from a federal level and currently she's a state legislator from the great state of New Mexico and watching both in her campaign to be elected and what she's done since being elected has a keen interest in the waters of Mexico so Melanie all right congratulations you made it to the end of the day I'm the very last speaker how's everyone feeling out there today I see a lot of tired looking people so we only got 15 more minutes of people talking at you and hopefully I'm gonna deliver some information I know probably everyone's got information overload right now but I'm gonna actually ask you to do two things while you're listening which is to really think revolutionary and secondly to think about grounding this entire conversation locally and what does that mean so let's start first we're talking about our rivers and I want you to think for a moment about your river humans are innately wired to have a connection to water I happen to actually be a water sociologist a lot of people have been talking today about the need for social social scientists working in water and there's not very many of us out there but I've been working on water literally my entire career I grew up in a family that owned a irrigation company so I grew up digging ditches and laying pipe my first real job was teaching science to kids at the Natural History Museum in New Mexico and taking them out to do water quality monitoring I did my graduate research on water governance and then I had the extraordinary opportunity to go serve in federal government for almost seven years working first at the Council on Environmental Quality and then at the Office of Management and Budget in the White House where I worked on earth science and water programs and then I was the earth science and water staffer in the Senate Energy Committee before I moved back home and hung my shingle as a consultant and got recruited to run for office and so I've been serving in the New Mexico State Legislature since November so I have had a very long tenure so take what I have to say about the political process as you will but I want to talk a little bit about some why it's critical that we really think in a revolutionary manner and I think that Reed's talk really put an exclamation point on the reality that we've been talking about all day which is that we need revolutionary answers we're not going to solve this problem with old ways of thinking we need to fundamentally change the tools, technologies, and paradigms that we're using for management and policy so I'm going to start I was asked several times today to talk about the New Mexico Water Data Act and I think it's a perfect lead-in to talk about the revolutionary aspect of what we need to do to really change this paradigm so if you think about the one thing that has probably most fundamentally changed your life aside from your personal circumstances over the last 20 years what do you think it is? You don't actually have to say it because I'm going to tell you it's this it is the technology and data revolution that has happened in our world over the last 15 or 20 years and one of the things that we don't really think about anymore because it's completely normalized in our everyday life is that we use big data to do everything from figuring out how you got here this morning to figuring out what the weather is going to be for the rest of the week to finding a place to eat to online shopping and what data and communications revolutions have done is fundamentally transform the way that we solve collective social problems by crowdsourcing them and bringing data to your hand with tools that help you make decisions that are actually big giant social problems and that has fundamentally transformed our society in fact some of our biggest social problems have been fundamentally transformed by it think about transportation 20 years ago we were trying to figure out how to build more high speed trains more giant infrastructure more highways and what happened some dudes in Silicon Valley wrote some code called Uber and it fundamentally transformed the way we think about our public transportation system because it crowdsourced the solution so I'm going to make a case for why we need a new paradigm for water management and why we need to move away from the analog solutions of the past to the digital solutions of the future because the reality of the situation is is that we are living in a system that is extremely rigid and very difficult to change so this last year in the New Mexico State Legislature we passed the Water Data Act and the reason why we passed this Act was because we do not have the kinds of solutions in water management that we see in every other sector in our society partly because water is a public good and the private sector is not developing the tools and creating the demand and action to put the power of big data and technology in your hands when it comes to water management and that is why you need sometimes the government to intervene to provide frameworks to provide resources and so this year not only did we pass the Water Data Act we became the first state or the second state in the US to do so California was the first and we have garnered attention from all over the country and even from other countries around the world because people understand intuitively that we're not going to get ourselves out of this without making fundamental change to our fundamental systems so let's talk a little bit about I'm going to recap some of the things that we heard today and then talk about how that how that transforms and how we land this locally so for me the biggest challenges in the Rio Grande are these aging and outdated systems that includes our infrastructure and our policy and legal frameworks system change and the need for a whole new approach we need revolutionary thinking not only in our policy and management but in our science itself so we need a plan to develop new tools that are going to fundamentally change how we actually solve these problems and we need a roadmap to get there and that's actually one of my hopes for the outcome of this meeting because I think the academies can help drive a roadmap for the science piece so you've heard a lot today about the old paradigm but let me just recap it so the old paradigm and water management isn't actually very old it came into being in the late 1800s because it was imported as the United States was moving into western territories and that paradigm I would summarize as divide it the compacts capture it with dams and canals and things like that move it to where you want to actually develop something you use it put it to work as we said and then if you don't use it you lose it and it goes to somebody else but it's important that we put this in a historical context because one of the things that hasn't really been talked about today is that Americans were late on this scene so New Mexico has been home to many many native tribes for thousands of years and they're still there and they're sovereign nations and they continue the practices that they've been practicing for thousands of years and they are also practicing some of the most innovative water management in the United States and so these two things are happening simultaneously within these communities in the 1500s the Spanish came up the Camino Real from central Mexico and they established communities throughout the territory of the tribes that we call Pueblos and New Mexico there's 19 federally recognized Pueblos at this time and they established their own sort of quasi-indigenous Hispanic culture in the Southwest as well and they brought with them traditions from North Africa because Spain had been occupied by the Moors immediately before settlement they brought with them Spanish traditions and the traditions of Europeans who came from all over to help the Spanish settle the Southwest and they melded and brought their systems together with those of the tribes that they met and so when the United States showed up on the scene they tried to impose an entirely new structure this paradigm that we've been talking about onto the indigenous systems because they wanted to open the West to settlement and yet those systems are still practiced in the American Southwest and in New Mexico and continue to be impacted and we don't have sufficient time to talk about it here but one of the things that I want to impress upon you is the tribes continue to practice their political sovereignty over their lands and waters and continue to practice traditions that have been going on for millennia and our Hispanic communities have been practicing traditional Isekia culture for over 400 years in New Mexico and in many places those communities those Isekia institutions are the primary governance within entire towns and so our traditional systems are still there and still functioning and many would argue are among some of the most resilient systems right because they have weathered not only changes in climatic conditions but in a time before there were huge centralized control systems actually controlling the systems of water so we've seen a lot of change especially since the late 20th century we saw the rise of the large dam building movement in the 1930s and 40s up through the 1960s the environmental movement and urbanization of the west really transformed how we think about water and so the old paradigm was already beginning to experience stressors I would say significantly by the 1960s before we even really were conscious that climate change was impacting it and those stressors included changing demands so that's especially increasing urbanization and population growth ecological change the Endangered Species Act collapse of natural riparian habitats and other impacts and social and political change because there were a lot of people living in the west tribal and otherwise who thought that building big dam systems wasn't actually a pretty good idea and it only benefited a small group of people and of course as we've been talking today the big change now is of course climate change and Dagmar showed you several outputs of models earlier this morning but just to really drive the point home this is actually a temperature model it's an output model from the current work that the Bureau of Reclamation and USGS are doing to downscale global climate models for the upper real grand and as you can see under every single carbon scenario in every single global circulation model we have an increase in temperature in the real grand but when you land that into communities and you'll see here this is Chama in Espanola and if you're from New Mexico those are tiny little villages Espanola was settled in the 1500s by Spanish settlers we're going to have significant changes no matter what happens with our carbon scenarios in the growing seasons temperature and precipitation within these communities and that means these communities are going to be impacted and are going to have to do things to change so many of you have probably read Thomas Kuhn's work he wrote a famous book called The Structure of Scientific Revolutions and basically he's one of the people who helped coin the idea of paradigm shift and tipping points and if you haven't ever read this book and you're interested in science history it's a wonderful read and one of his major points is that paradigm shifts often take generations to take hold it's not like you just thought up a new idea one day and then everything changed and his overarching argument is that old ways persist until a credible alternative is viable and so you always have kind of the old paradigm and the new paradigm happening simultaneously and I would argue that is the exact moment that we're living in right now so what is the new paradigm if you've been educated in water management in the last 25 years you won't think this is particularly interesting but if you work in policy or other places this is actually very revolutionary so I say there are five major components of the paradigm shift of the new paradigm that's happening in water management first we believe that watersheds should be managed at scale basin and watershed scale we believe they need to be integrated across sectors we believe that they need to be science-based increasingly we understand that we have to restore natural capital and I would argue also our social relationships reconciliation we did a lot of things when we managed and constructed the large infrastructure of the west that severely impacted communities that were already there one of the data that was alluded to today was Cochiti Dam which was a dam that was built for sediment control on the railground and it struck the most sacred place for the Cochiti Pueblo people and finally we understand that our systems need to be redesigned for resilience so the system is tipping we know that but we need to tip in our responses there's a mismatch between what we know and what we do so here are the challenges and here is the imperative and then I'll wrap it up so we can have some Q&A so the challenges that I see in tipping into the new paradigm are along these five lines there are huge gaps in our knowledge that we don't know about how these systems work and especially how they work across different kinds of systems we have a pretty good hydrologic model of the railground but we don't have very good integrated models with other parts of the bio and social systems we need to develop tools we need to fundamentally redesign our entire infrastructure now this is like literally the biggest single thing that we should be thinking about in public policy because it's going to cost us trillions of dollars to redesign and redevelop these aging pieces of infrastructure and we have very little public money to do that so how are we going to do that into the future we're going to have to change our policy and management we're going to have to change our cultures and our thinking and our habits and we're going to have to respond to new challenges New Mexico is having the largest oil and gas boom ever in recorded history right now which is not only causing challenges and fresh water it's creating massive quantities of produced water and waste and we don't know what to do with it so there's always new challenges that come up as well so the opportunity and the imperative the fundamental most important things I think we need to do to really help bring this new paradigm is innovation and translation of our data and science and this is where I say how do you touch it down locally at the end of the day it's farmers utilities irrigation districts people turning on their taps that are going to have to change their behavior how do we provide tools to water managers and water users that actually change what they're doing there's a revolution right now happening in the energy sector a lot of people don't realize this but the grid has been fundamentally transformed over the last 10 to 15 years and it comes under the rubric of grid modernization and that is the transformation that we've been talking about in telecommunications and in electronics is fundamentally changing how we think about the grid how it's managed and the drive to switch to renewables I would argue we need to come up with the same kind of concept in water management how do we modernize our water grid and use new tools to do so in a revolutionary fashion the future is collaboration people love to say in the west the water is for fighting for no the future is for collaborating over and finally we're going to need to touch these changes down in our communities and lift up their solutions into our policy making because many of our communities have extremely wise answers because many of them have been around for hundreds and thousands of years and we're going to have to undertake brave policy making so one of the things that I was also asked to talk about is the work that we're doing in New Mexico right now to rethink our water policy at the state level and I've been traveling all over the state for the last six months and just listening and I want to tell you guys something I've been working in water for 20 years and it turns out I had it all wrong because what it was very important is to actually get out and listen to people and listen to the things that they care about and when you think about how communities think about water and how their needs can be met it really changes the way you think about what the solution set is it's not top down governance answers it's about how do we empower people in communities to solve collective action problems and finally it's going to take leadership because this ain't going to happen on its own we need leadership at the highest levels in federal policy making we needed in every federal agency we needed in every state every local utility every local water manager and we need it in the research community because we need your leadership to change and develop the new ideas the new tools the new technologies that are going to actually change our system and so with that I think I'll leave it for questions and I really just want to say thank you so much for having us and it's really an honor to be here today have another social scientist in the room that's the thing about it so I'm an economist and so all day long I've been hearing about the call need for more social science and I've been hearing a lot about a lot about need for change and how to induce change and actually we know great be a deal about things like how to make get people to change you have to give them the incentive to change and those can be negative incentives or they can be positive things and psychologists economists sociologists all put a lot on on these these different things so I we don't have all the answers I certainly don't mean to suggest that but we know a heck of a lot so for example when we're talking about the nitrate nitrogen problem in the in the golf and the golf hypoxia task force that they haven't achieved anything except for making some very broad useful plans they haven't achieved any reductions because they haven't done anything that changes the incentives in a scale large enough to make change so we need to be saying that we need to be bringing this the the science and evidence we have of that likewise how to get people to reduce water use how to all of those things it has to do with incentives and it needs to be bottom up ideas it needs to be shared governance but economists and psychologists and social scientists actually have some answers but just like climate scientists sometimes people don't like our answers and so they don't want to listen and so I just urge people to remember that we actually have basis on which some of these things are that's not really a question it was going to be but so are you done Kathy? okay all right I'm Melanie I have a question for you related to the one of the last points you made you said in the last six months you've spent time traveling around New Mexico talking to people seeing what was important to them and that it changed your way of thinking and I'm just curious if you could summarize some of the things you learned and some of the changes in your thought process? Absolutely so going back to the Water Data Act specifically one of the things that I think is so interesting about it is like all good pieces of public policy it started over a happy hour at a local brewery that actually somebody in this room was at and we thought we thought it was a pretty good idea and then I got a call the next day from Stacy Timmons in your office and she said so you're gonna write that bill and I said okay let's do it and because the Bureau of Geology has wonderful relationships with all kinds of different stakeholders including a lot of work that Stacy and others have been doing with the ranching and farming communities we were able to share that bill widely as part of the vetting process and it turns out one of the things that every single person can agree on is that we need more and better data on water to actually help us solve problems and for me that was a huge eye-opener and people actually were incredibly surprised because water is known as being one of the sort of like core things that causes conflict not only did the Water Data Act pass it passed unanimously in the House and Senate and went from being a happy hour idea to being signed by the Governor in less than three months yeah so what that taught me is that if you have good ideas that people can agree with and you can actually go out into communities and talk to people and understand where they're coming from that you can actually do revolutionary things and I think that one of our big challenges is that we don't spend enough time listening to each other and so part of what I learned from the Water Data Act experience was that we really needed to get out into communities and listen and so I would say one of the biggest things that I've heard being out and about and it's across the board is that our state agencies in particular are not doing a very good job in providing customer service if you will to our to our local communities we literally have hundreds of small communities in New Mexico that are not able to develop clean drinking water systems and we just don't have the capacity to provide technical assistance that actually helps people solve problems in a way that would be affordable and sustainable for them to me that's one of most fundamental things that's a totally solvable problem but I didn't even know it was a problem until we went and started talking to people and it turns out it's like the number one problem I would say the second thing that I've just heard over and over and over again which won't take probably any of you and by surprise but in the west water management of supply and water quality are completely vulcanized and have virtually nothing to do with each other water is not treated as a single resource within our state agencies water is treated as a commodity that's managed as a supply issue by two agencies in New Mexico and then our water quality standards are handled in our environment department and everywhere I've traveled in the state every stakeholder of every stripe has told me we need to recombine these and really work on these issues together so those are several of the things and then finally I would just say you know all of these challenges are hyper local and that's partly why we need new tools because there is no possible way that any centralized government at any scale can solve all of the problems that everyone has and so that's why I think it's very important that we develop new tools that people can really harness their own creativity to solve their own problems Do we have any other questions out there? Yes So I'm going to address this question to read which is that you very eloquently laid out all of the deficiencies of the current system with regard to dealing with our contemporary situation but you didn't actually say anything about alternatives that might be explored and I'd like to hear a little about that So I would say there's a lot that needs to change but if I'm going to just three things quickly one is I think we really do need a program for reviewing and revising federal reservoir operating plans not just from a technical standpoint not just in terms of integrating better data into short-term decision making but really engaging people in what they want to see with reservoir operations because climate change isn't the only thing that is changing in these basins needs and values are changing as well two is um we need to have some way some system of modernizing management imperatives on interstate rivers so that it's not all driven by compacts that will never change that are rooted in historical assumptions and observations and that we're never designed with anything more than surface water management for consumptive uses in mind we've got to have something that tries to provide at least an overlay to to get some constructive engagement on on interstate water management and three we need to have something that is a more holistic approach to environmental protection and restoration in western rivers and just the endangered species act most western rivers that is all there is and and i think it it's it's not it's both under inclusive because there's a lot more environmental values that people care about than just endangered species themselves and it's also it doesn't it it does have some certain perverse incentives built into it so if i were going to name three things i would i would name those three held it you have another up so i was really intrigued um Katrina and Mike you you made reference to the state of Minnesota and its citizens being able to think out of the box to care about water quality delivered downstream to care about hypoxia way down in the Gulf efforts to think broadly within the piece yet when we talk about the Rio Grande for all of the nice words we talked about how to work together within New Mexico I never heard anybody say we need to get new Mexicans to really care about the flight of a forgotten river we need to really get more water to reconnect the river we need to stop what they're doing in Colorado to get more water we have two and a half million however many people there are in Juarez they don't have enough water we in New Mexico have to care about their water down there and so I'm wondering is it easier to think out of the box about other people's problems when the problem is too much water but when we're talking about the pain of drought it's a whole different deal and whether that's one of the fundamental problems that it's always going to be easier to think about large river management when it's the problem too much water but we're really going to struggle to think way out of the box when it comes to the pain of drought you know I'm just going to say one thing I think to another point we have been organized by watershed in Minnesota for 50 plus years so there are watershed districts all over the state there are local units that plan for water and get support from the state so there's a lot of layers which makes it complicated but also people are very civically engaged and involved that doesn't mean yes people will tell you they want change that they want water quality but when it comes to it as highlighted we aren't seeing the trajectory of change that we need in terms of the nutrient example you can we're having way less phosphorus and that's primarily the success of wastewater treatment plans but we are not seeing the agriculture changes that are called for even though people say they want to send cleaner water downstream there's definitely a disconnect so if people have answers to fix that problem to get motivated people who don't want the government in their life to find other ways to incentivize that I mean we're working on agarban partnerships we're looking at since we've got oaks of data that show we know where the lands use changes could occur that would drive the biggest change those people don't want to talk to us so how do you get to that place is still a disconnect in Minnesota so if there are social scientists who have the answer you know we would love to hear from them I saw a political poll last year I think I'm good and it was a poll about what is the most important environmental issue to you and the top issue across New Mexico and nationwide was rivers people care about rivers and so how you get people involved in caring about other people on other parts of the rivers is by building campaigns and stories and ways of connecting people I think you know for example you look at these catastrophic floods that have been happening in places like Houston and you know the islands and the Caribbean and the huge outpouring humanitarian outpouring of people making personal donations who don't even have money to help families in need is because those stories were presented to us as people in need of help so I think part of what we need to do to reconnect our river systems not just hydrologically and sedimentarily is also through story and by highlighting those things in in the public face one of one of that challenges just you know on the in the west and it's not just drought it's the it's the mentality of entitlements that are set up by water rights and also by compacts and so we get in the mindset that so all three of the Rio Grande Compact states want the same thing that is to get every drop of water they're entitled to and not have the bastions in the other state get any of those drops and and I think that that too works defeats the collaborative enterprise reach the end of our public question and answer period I think I speak for the the panelists here they'd be willing to take questions individually afterwards please join me in thanking okay so Jeff Rubin must have been behind us finishing 10 minutes earlier than I thought we were going to he told me that happy hour officially started at five downstairs and that was officially the end of today's meeting so that gives me a couple of minutes to again on behalf of my co-chair in this joint boards meeting Catherine Kling would like to say thank you again to our speakers to our panelists to our guests I think we've really heard a great set of very informative presentations lots to think about we would like to pass on that we plan over the next couple of months to individually the each board as well as collectively ruminate a bit on what we've heard what we've learned and try to assimilate and synthesize some of these ideas and most importantly we're going to work towards defining the next steps because we would really like to see where the boards and the academy can contribute to these discussions and action on that note we have some other people to thank we really really want to shout out for Courtney's thing where I don't know what Courtney is sitting she's oh she stepped out okay Courtney Eric Edgins and Brendan McGovern these are staff members who have put an awful lot into the background work into making this happen and to make sure that today really came off without a hitch so we could give them a round of applause that would be great okay Jeff if you walk slowly you'll make it exactly at 5 p.m. for your free glass of wine


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Good morning everyone on this Friday the 21st of April we're looking at the Dow which tried to rally was earlier this morning the futures were down quite sharply it tried to rally it acted quite nicely actually went positive but I think this is kind of a shaky day look I'll explain in my show coming up the importance of this nine-period moving average over the 14 and still very strong it's just telling me that it's going to be a process and it's using up a lot of time but if at 33,767 right now down 17 it'll be a close underneath 33,500 this okay the trend is on the short-term change the weekly chart is still bumping up against resistance looking at the S&P which also tried to rally earlier on it's now down 8 at 4120 and it's made a peak after the chaplain methodology four days ago I'm looking at the 40,093-ish area I'd say 486, 486 below that says yep we're going to have more of a pullback but in mean time the resistance is just a little bit above and there's a lot of resistance QQQ the index 100 trading down a dollar 80 at 314.46 making the h-pattern the dreaded h I'll talk about these patents when I return and And you can see this left side, how 321.63 made the beginning of April and then mid-April we went to four days ago, 321.42 had much weaker technicals. This is just to pull back a bit and if it starts to close under 309 by Tuesday of next week that's going to be a short-term problem looking at the IWM, the IWM is trading down 61 and 176.72 just trying to hold on to the 40-period moving average and now we're going to go to gold. Gold is downsharping, that goes down 36 in 1982. I believe this is going to be a peak G in the Chapman Way methodology and it's going to pull back quite a bit more but the fact is that the dollar is attempting to rally but it can't hold any rallies even they try to move up and down 12 ticks at 101.72. What it's saying is it doesn't have to have that the mirror image, it doesn't have to have that counterpoint where gold pulls back on the dollar rallies but it does give the dollar support. That's important we'll talk about that as well when I return for the Tiger Technicians Hour. Crude Oil is down sharpie from the most recent time in 1982. It's at 77, it's up 44 cents today but it really looks like it's just stuck in a range just as the TLT, as I was discussing a moment ago, TLT is stuck in a range just down 52 cents at 104.48. Check out my opening call, my daily newsletter, we discuss all of these things in detail. I'll be back for the Tiger Technicians Hour in a few moments. Full time great programming here at TFN in all day. See you in a moment. Have a great day.


Hello, in this video we are going to digitize polygons. Go in the menu to layer, create layer, new geopackage layer, choose the existing geopackage that we've used in previous videos, choose lakes as the table name, polygon geometry type and the projection of the project. We're going to digitize lakes and we only add the name as an attribute. So we click also that we add this as an additional layer to the geopackage. I toggle on the editing and then I can start digitizing. It works the same way as digitizing lines. It will however always indicate the link between the last and the first node. And at the end of the polygon you click right to close the polygon and then you will get the pop-up to fill in the attribute. Here the name of the lake, elk lake. Click OK and it uses a random fill and that's our polygon. Now when we are digitizing the lake we also notice that there are some islands in the lake. So let's see how we can cut out those islands from the lake polygon. Click right on the toolbar to add the advanced digitizing toolbar. There you will find add ring. Our polygon however is covering the whole lake including the islands. So I have unchecked the layer so I can simply add this ring here on the topographical background. Well it's still part of the unchecked lakes layer. So I check it again now and then I see that the island is nicely cut out of the polygon. In a later video we will learn how to style the lake. So we'll off the editing and save the edits. Now in the attribute table we see our one lake feature which has the lake island nicely cut out. So in this video you've learned how to digitize polygons and how to remove islands from a polygon.


ing this, because I would like to have more, more buffering, like a fence. And I believe Alex is probably going to do that. But I also want to make sure that it's, it's a binding thing. So I'm asking that the DRV makes it a part of the conditions. And maybe Alex would be supportive of this. Because I know that things happen. And, you know, just because he's applied for fence, that doesn't necessarily mean that the fence is going to happen. He's not bound to do it. You know, there's all kinds of things that happen. And so I guess on, and that's, that's my ultimate goal. I think also the neighbors agree with this, and I'll let them speak on their own accord. And I think it should be noted too. And I, we talked about this at the previous meeting about the necessity for changes.  So there's, you know, I don't, I don't really think your process is is really consistent with what the bylaws say. And I'll leave it, I'll leave it at that. If you have any, actually, I do have one question for staff. I'd like to know, as far as a CC goes, is that something that you would need to actually occupy a new building? So for projects that require a CC, yeah, you at least need a temporary CC to occupy a building. So if, if a CC is being appealed, it okay to occupy that building? Yes. Why? Because until the DRB makes a decision, it still stands. The CC still stands unless the DRB overturns the decision. Oh, is that, that's, that's something that I really wasn't aware of. It certainly doesn't seem like that is worked the way I understand it. I understand that with an appeal and process that usually move forward on project work, whatever, you know, issuance you have isn't considered granted. I don't believe that's true. I think it's just whoever the appellee is, you know, of course, they're at risk that if that appeal were to prevail, then they would not be able to have whatever was being appealed. So if I'm not mistaken, the bylaws do state that it is something that you can be if there's an appeal and something is not being complied with that there are courses of action that can be taken. So yeah, well, let's just hope that it doesn't come to that. So just to clarify, probably, you to clarify, probably my largest complaint is that there has been additional parking along the side of the building, and also towards the cherry tree. There's three additional spots that are being used for parking. And there is garbage containers outside of the building, building that's right right in my view, I get to look at it every day. So these are the issues that may not seem like a big deal to you all. But to me, it is. And like I said, protected by a privacy fence that is solid. And I'd like to have it become part of the temporary certificate of compliance. Mr. Brochure, are you going to build the fence or do you want Mr. Pintire to build the fence? I think that it's his responsibility. Okay. The fence part of the approved. And I'm sorry. Was was the fence included as part of the final approved plans? He has an approved permit from town to build a fence. That wasn't my question. Well, no one was answering it. So I gave you the best answer I could give you. Staff was the fence included as part of the final approved plans. No, it was not. Thank you. Can can staff provide any insight into this alleged additional parking? Um, I have not personally visited the site. However, if there is additional parking, that was not designated on the final plans, we would require that to be removed and restored prior to issuing a final certificate. Okay. What's the process for, you know, for putting a buried, I assume it's an LP tank? Is is an LP tank? What's the process of of doing that? If it's not shown on the plans? So Alex did contact Matt and ask if he needed, you know, if he needed additional permitting for for that. Matt determined that that he didn't because it was under the threshold of 120 square feet, which is, you know, when we require administrative permits, and also determined it was a minor change to the DP. Okay, other DRP members, what questions do you have? I'm sorry. It's late here. Um, I'm trying to I'm trying to find out I'm trying to figure out exactly what is being appealed. The appeal is for the issuance of the certificate of compliance for unit 79 99. Is that correct?  As far as I'm concerned, this isn't a staged project. This is this is all one project. There's not like one was going to be completed than the other was going to be completed. So why there was a temporary and a CC issued? I have no idea for for the two of them. I don't that that's that makes no sense to me. I don't know why that happened. My appeal is because there's driveways. There's additional parking in the driveway. The buffering is insufficient to protect the headlights that are going into my house. And and and and that's those are the two biggest ones. Oh, and and I'd just like to say that the the prospect of actually removing that gravel, we've seen we've seen the developer do do something similar in the past where the driveway for the house out front was switched from one side to the other. And there was about an inch of topsoil put over the pavement. And now that is still being used as a driveway. So I can appreciate staff saying that they're just going to, you know, have him remove it. But anyway, my appeal is is is that there's additional drive, there's additional parking. There's inadequate buffering. And but I guess I'm sorry to interrupt. I'm trying to just make sure I understand exactly what you're asking us to to rule on the there are there's a certificate of compliance that's been issued for the interior work on one half. And I think you have a legitimate question that we probably should try to define as to why there's two certificates here. My understanding though, is that there's a temporary certificate for the exterior work on this building, which appears to be all of the issues that you are bringing up that I believe you're appealing it because you're saying that those items are not done according to the approved plans. And as my understanding is, is that that certificate, the temporary certificate of compliance lists the that in some specific items plus anything else that doesn't meet the originally approved plans needs to be done by was it June 30th, Moinda June. Yeah, I believe so. If all of those things are finished by June 30th, then that temporary certificate of compliance will be replaced by a final one. Is that correct? At which point? Mr. Brochure would have no complaint because the project would have been completed per the submitted and approved plans. Am I am I am I getting this right? And whatever our this is. So I'm trying to understand what it is about the certificate of compliance that was issued for the interior work on one of these units that requires the exterior work to be finished. Somebody help me out here. And I can chime in on this. So usually when units are closing out, there's their building, if they're going to be sold separately, where they have individual parcel ID numbers, and they'll have separate owners, we usually do a separate six certificate of compliance. So in this case, there is one certificate issued for that interior unit, and then the temporary issued for the other unit and all of the exterior things that are still pending completion, such as the driveway tree removal, the egress window railing, exterior staining paint and painting and landscaping. And I'll add to that, that it's typical practice that the town uses when issuing certificates of compliance. This is no different from like Creek's Edge or any other development. We would not wait until every last house was built and the site were completed to issue all the certificates of compliance. We would issue them as the individual units were completed. And then at the very end for the site. So the typically the site work and exterior items are included with the final unit that's that's finished. Yes. So what a question. Go ahead, Paul. So in other words, you're telling me, I think I'm leaning the way you are, John. I'm not leaning anyway. Let's be clear about the question is, should the appeal actually have been done against CC 21-25 rather than the interior CC 21-24? Thank you for phrasing my question for me, Paul. That's what that's what you're asking, right? I think I think that's where I was headed, Jess. OK, that's I just want to make sure. So we're on the same page. I think the appeals against the wrong wrong. CC, but that but that aside, there's there's really two primary issues here. One is the the additional the the additional parking area, which is going to be reviewed and there'll be a requirement to to repair to repair the area to to a to a natural state or a land state. If, in fact, that parking area is beyond the limits shown on the final plan, that's that's that's a and then B is Kevin, you brought up this fence, but that's not part of the original approved plan. And so you're you're trying to, at least from my lens, maybe I'm missing something, you're you're trying to settle a dispute with your neighbor on something that is outside of the scope of the approved plans. Hey, you know, it's it's it's a it's a process, right? And if you want to, yeah, however you want to cut it, I guess you can cut it. But the fact of the matter is that the buffering that that is in place is insufficient. So I believe that that buffering is part of the plan, that it needs to be addressed. You know, OK, DRB members, are there any other questions for Kevin? Yeah, one question. These vehicles that are parked there, are they there for doing the work on the house or are they resident? Are they vehicles that are part of the residents? They're all it's all residential now. There's they all there's like six cars there. So all the cars are there 24 seven. I mean, you know, I'm trying to say, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. That's what they need to know. So OK, that's what that that answers. Yeah, yeah, I mean, I was perfectly fine with a hedge going to be there. But there's no hedge. There's I can show you pictures or you can go visit whatever. There's there's two pine trees and there's about 15 feet between each one of them. And the headlights go right into right into wherever I am outside. So I just wanted to differentiate whether these were vehicles that were part of the people working on construction or whether they were resident vehicles. Yeah, no, I understand. I was just reiterating my case. That's all. OK, so it's it's understood. And I would state that it is important to me as a DRB member that the plans that are approved be followed and that the project when it is completed needs to follow those approved plans. So if there are components, as we have been mentioned tonight, that are truly not in compliance, they need to be fixed prior to. Prior to that being declared finished, right, we're modified. I would I would suggest that staff take a stroll over and take a look. Well, I agree. I think that's a great idea. Also, the hedges that have been put in place are they're yellow, they're dying, they're not going to survive. So we issued the temporary certificate with the expiration on June 30th to give time for the applicant to make sure all their landscaping is installed, put the fence around the egress window at the site inspection. Tim, Gary from the fire department came out with us and marched the trees along the driveway that would need to be removed for the fire trucks and emergency access to have clearance. So we'll be looking into all of that when the final certificate is issued I do want to make a point of clarification on the parking. There is some state base between the parking area shown on the final plan and the side buffer. So if there is additional parking area that we see at the final certificate, the applicant could probably get an administrative permit for that because parking outside of setbacks is allowed. Expanding the parking would require an administrative permit. So it wouldn't necessarily have to be removed. It would just need to comply with these setbacks approved in the final plans. Yeah, I'm good with that. And I'll ask for a fence when that administrative permit gets applied for. But that's not the process that was brought about. I do want to note that Don Lubee has commented in the chat, both Don and Andrea, master in attendance tonight, and they co-signed on the appeal application. He does have a couple of questions in the chat. I don't know if you want me to read them or Don? Yeah, why don't you read them, please? One, how many additional parking space are allowed off of the original town of Lubee? Plans, the additional parking space added to the side of the garage adjacent to the compressor, which was not on the approved plans. Car headlight shine directly into the groceries property. So parking is allowed outside of the setbacks, as long as it complies with the nine foot buffer. I think the compressors that are mentioned here are the the heat pumps. Vermont Agency of Natural Resources prohibitions on public transient noncommunity water source. So that's a different standard that's not administered by the town planning and zoning office. I understand the property lines have changed from five feet to 10 feet for the property line for the underground tank. However, the original plans do not state a propane gas tank underground next to a property line. Maybe Matt can provide some clarification on his determination about the propane tank not needing a permit. And then number three is about to allow or authorize for commercial use or business, not at this time, but commercial uses are allowed in the zoning district. So so before Matt weighs in on the LP tank, can staff provide some insight into a final plan that doesn't show a compressor and the ability of of placement of a compressor when not shown on the plants? Yeah, so I think it would be allowed. It's not as long as it's screened by the landscaping. I mean, the lot is shown as being having landscaping screening around it, utilities need to be screened. Again, it's I think it was considered a change that was minor from the final plan. OK, thank you, Matt. Were you going to comment on the LP tank installation? I can hang on a second. So a couple of things I want to note. One is the request by Mr. Pinter about the tank and my response were both done in writing via email. And I'd rather just defer to the to the written record of what was said. But I but I did tell Mr. Pinter that I did not believe he needed a permit for that due to the permit thresholds stated in the bylaw as Melinda quoted earlier. So under 120 square feet, not having a height of anything because it's below grade, etc. In and what I'd like to say is more generally each time each time a you know, a change has been requested for this project or or or some piece of development has been proposed on this site. I've analyzed it for does it require a permit? Is that permit administrative or discretionary? Does it require an amendment to the final plans for the project that was approved under the discretionary permit? So there's a point where accessory elements to a site may not in my opinion and this is an opinion and this is why my determinations are available. There is a point where not everything somebody does is an amendment to the approved site plan anymore. It's just a thing that's either allowed or not under zoning. I don't I don't worry about whether a proposed backyard shed in Southridge is an amendment to the approved final plans of the Southridge development or not. I simply review it for compliance with the bylaw and ask whether it meets or does not meet the threshold required for the issuance of a permit. So in in each case of each change that has occurred on this project or each piece of development that's been a request on this project, that's in general the analysis I have attempted to navigate. I've attempted to do all of that in writing and with with clear disclosure to all the parties involved of what I'm doing and and emphasis that those decisions are appealable. The one element of this project where I found that I did not believe a permit was required was the installation of the below ground propane tank. Thank you, Matt. Any members of the DRB with additional questions? Any members of the audience with additional questions? Alex. Hi, everybody. Thanks for being here this late. So, you know, I have a lot of things I could say. I'm just going to keep it short because it's pretty late at night. You know, we've been at a simple two lot substance vision for seven years. That's a that's a long time. And throughout the whole process, we've followed the rules. We follow the bylaws. We've done everything by the books. That hasn't stopped the appeals. That hasn't stopped two trips to the court. Every decision the DRB is made. Every decision the administrator has made has been upheld. You know, we're doing things correctly. Specifically, I will, you know, everyone's talking about the parking area to the side of the garages. That's gravel that was put in because the contractors trucks were getting stuck in the mud. We haven't finished the site work yet. The excavators will be here this week. They'll pull that out. They have all the driveways been measured to scale. It'll be put exactly the way it was supposed to be put. The fire chief came out. He marked all the trees that he wanted us to cut down. Within a week, they were cut down. So that's been taken care of. We've really been completely compliant with everything. You know, we got a fence permit. We have a contract with a fence company. We're spending almost $25,000 putting in a solid six foot cedar fence that's gonna be put in in May. We're doing everything that we're supposed to be doing. I really don't know what else needs to be said. But I'm happy to answer any specific questions that you guys may have. Alex, thank you. So where is this fence going? And is it located in a place where the headlights are gonna be screened? Yeah, it's going right along the property line all along the west side, along the south, or you know, Slate Barn, six foot high the entire way. Then it'll switch to a four foot picket fence along the northern side. So you can see, you can actually see, so the red line on the east side, that's all six foot solid privacy fence where it switches to purple is four foot picket fence. So there's no reason to screen. That's just meadow and woods. No reason to screen that. Then when it gets over to the months house it switches back to a six foot privacy fence. The area, and then you can see there's two little purple lines going straight over from, you know, the fence there. That's gonna be picket fence just so that, you know, the dogs can go out and run around and we have to worry about them getting out. The area just to the left of those purple lines is where there's gravel right now. Yeah, right in there. There's gravel right now where the trucks, the contractors were using as extra parking space. I mean, anybody who's built before knows that there's often, you know, 10 different trucks of subcontractors at the same time. There's not a lot of parking here. So we put that in to make that easier. That'll be pulled back. The driveway is gonna be exactly like it's shown. They've measured it to scale. It's all marked out. They'll be taking care of that. Anybody's welcome to stop by at any point and take a look. You know, like I said, we've already cut down the trees. What other questions do you have? As a point of clarification, I'm sorry this is probably a redundant question, but the fence that you just showed us, that was not on the original plan, correct? It was not. No, there's been a fence there for about 50 years that the old owners used to have horses back there in the 70s and 80s. So parts of that fence are still there. We'll be taking that down and replacing that exact same spot for this new fence. You know, that wasn't a requirement. That's something we're adding on. Okay. Okay. Any questions from the audience? It looks like there's 11 chat inputs. Is there anything in there? Yeah. Andrea Mast sent a photo of the parking and what's the compressors or the heat pump units on the side of the house here? So can you guys hear me? Yep. Yeah. So Andrew, can you? I know Alex says that this was, this is the parking leftover from construction, but I'm definitely calling shenanigans on that. There's gravel laid there. That's his car park there. This is taken from the Munn's fence. Yeah, we're using it where it'll be gone. Yeah, you're parking in it and it's a parking lot. Well, it is now and then it'll be gone. The whole area is a parking lot. You can drive everywhere. It's all just there. Yeah, there's about six cars parked in gravel defined parking spots. And that will be addressed when the site works finished. So I think the thing that we're finding frustrating is, so we're hearing, oh, Alex can park wherever he wants. Alex can add parking. He just needs to go and file a motion to have parking added. Yet we're supposed to be holding him to a buffer and there's no buffer. That's the view from the Munn's fence. So what we're struggling with is what is approved doesn't actually get put in place, but then Alex can kind of do all these other things to kind of, you know, still get his parking or still do whatever it is he wants to do. Yeah, we planted all of the exact plants in the exact spots, 138 I think around the property. But as you know, landscaping when it first goes in, it's smaller. Would you call that a buffer? Would you, you would walk through? I did exactly what the town required me to do. But I'm asking you, do you consider that a reasonable buffer for the two houses that are right next to your house? We actually have some. So guys, hold on a minute, okay? So Andrea, you should address your questions to the board, to me specifically. And if it's appropriate to have Alex respond, then I will, I will authorize him to do it. Okay, sure. So I guess my question then is the same to you. Do you think that that picture conveys an adequate buffer that the town would have expected given that there's two properties? It's pretty much sandwiched between two backyards. Pete, we need an address. My question to the DRB is, do you find that picture, which was just a few weeks ago an adequate buffer of what you intended? So I'm going to ask staff to, to talk about, to talk about the creation of the concept of a buffer and, you know, buffer definition being at maturity of plants or is it immediate? And so if you could add some plan or principle context here that would be helpful. Because I don't think it's the intent day one for a buffer to fully screen at maturity, but I would really like staff to answer that. Yeah, sure. No, it's the expectation that when a buffer first goes in it's not going to fully screen that it's going to take, you know, years to fully mature and screen the development. It's not, it's definitely not something that you can expect right away. And there are requirements for the caliper of plants that get planted and those were specified in the final plans as well. And they're not, you know we don't require mature trees to be planted. Right? The other thing that I would like to note here is that this agenda item is to talk about the appeal and in the appeal has some limits of scope. And we're starting to get not even into a gray area we're getting into an area that is, is drawing outside of the lines.  I just, I'm trying to be fair to the process here that the agenda item on tonight's agenda is to talk about the appeal. And in the appeal is really about two topics. Okay, one is an expanded parking area which I personally have, I feel comfortable with the response of the applicant and in the process in which there'll be verification before a final certificate of compliance is issued. And then the other component to this is about a screening of a fence and which wasn't even shown on the original plans and yet the applicant is outside of the scope of the plans installing. And so I'm a little bit befuddled as to why, why are we continuing to talk about this right now? I mean, those are the two topics and they're both gonna be satisfactory dealt with. Well, I can answer that because they weren't part of the temporary CC or part of the CC at all that were issued. There was no mention of the parking lot, okay? So that's the answer to your first question. And the answer to your second question, I believe is something along the lines of that it's great and I really, I appreciate that Alex has come forth and agreed to put a fence up and but he has not really communicated to clearly as to what the fence is gonna be I mean, we've got nuances of it through some emails but I feel that to ask that there's a modification of the buffer that added to this CC or the other CC that the buffer be modified so that includes a six foot privacy fence is not unreasonable. I don't think there's anybody would think that that's unreasonable considering the changes that have occurred. There's a large compressor with a roof on it that's clearly visible. It puts out noise, it's not extremely loud but you can hear it. So I don't think it's unreasonable to ask for that. I was initially going along with the fact that the buffer is probably gonna be fine but it's not. So I'm just asking for a modification. It peels the only way I can do it. Okay, and so I want some, I want to be binding. That's what I'm asking, a modification to the buffer. Okay, and those are the answers here. Okay, anyone have anything else? Two points. One, I believe you had asked Andrea to state her address earlier and I don't think she did. One, six, Slate Barn. Thank you. And it's late enough. I can't remember the second. Hi Pete and Kelly. Hi, can you hear me Pete Kelly? My name is Karen Fragnoli-Munn and I live at 67 Lambert Lane and I am the abutter on the other side of the Pinter property. And so I've been listening and of course I'm trying to be in support of all the facts. And I do want to state that the parking has been an issue and I hope that that can be rectified. I also want to state that I think the intent of the buffering was great on paper and sounded good. Unfortunately, I don't think it's going to grow and be a strong enough buffer in the short term to protect the headlights that do shine onto our property on both sides of the properties. And I have also been, and I know this is not part of the appeal. So I just want to also state that I have also been trying to coordinate with Alex on a privacy fence because it's hard when you build a property in the backyard of three homes and everybody's quality of life changes when that happens and the nature that you once saw is now not there anymore. And we all want to protect our privacy. And I would like if that's the way to go that a privacy fence be put up along both borders, the east and west side of the property so that all of the neighbors have their property protected because good fences, we know, make great neighbors. And so it is late, but I've been listening and so I just felt that I wanted to put in my two cents. Thank you. Thank you, Karen, that was well stated. I appreciate that. Anyone else out there in the audience? I'm seeing no chats and no raised hands. Okay, DRB members, last chance. Alex, do you have some final comments? Looks like you might. Yeah, I just, we've owned this property for nine years and for seven years, we've been working on this property. It's not that we built something in anyone's backyard. We built something in our yard. And when you live in a neighborhood, there's going to be adjustments. Getting used to a new building. The buffering between the different houses on slate barn is far less than the buffering we put up around our property because they had different development requirements at the time. I am putting in the fence, paying for the fence that was not part of the process, but I do recognize the fact that headlights do spill over. The buffer, the trees and the plants aren't going to be grown enough for years to do that. So this is something we're willing to do. Yeah, I, it's late. That's it. Thank you. Kevin, any final words anymore? He looks like he dropped off. Yeah. We're going to close APP 21-01 at 1050. Thank you for all that participated in that. Okay. So that concludes tonight's agenda. We are now going to go into deliberative session at 1050. If staff would please put everybody in the waiting room, please, and just have DRB members go into deliberations, I would be appreciated. I'm still wondering whether we should approve the minutes because that's going to be the approval of the previous growth management. So. Well, nobody's waiting breathlessly to find out if their giant subdivision gets to move forward or not, right? Exactly. I finally figured that one out. Tom meeting TVs back in. So if you want to move on the minutes, we can do that. Okay. Welcome, everybody. We're back. Wilson, DRP, April 13, 2021. We're going to approve the minutes. So we're going to do, we're going to approve the minutes from March 23, 2021. And we are going to continue our deliberation of the four hearings that were held tonight at a later date. We are going to meet tomorrow night and continue the deliberative session. So this part of the public meeting will be approval of the minutes of the date that I just referenced and conclude tonight's business. So with that being said, is there a motion to approve the minutes as written dated March 23, 2021? I so move. Steve, motion from Steve. Is there a second? I'll second it. Dave Turner seconds it. Is there any further discussion? Indicate by saying yay or nay, please, Paul. Yay. John. Yay. Steve. Yay. Scott. Yay. Dave Turner. Yay. And the chair is a yay. That's six in favor, none opposed. Motion carries. The minutes are approved of March 23, 2021. Is there a motion to adjourn? Just one second. Just to confirm, Emily, you're going to send out a meeting invite for tomorrow at 7.30. Yep. Calendar invites going out right now. Great. Thank you very much. Sorry, Pete. No problem. Motion to adjourn, please. I just move. OK, Steve. Second? Second. That's fine. We'll go with John Hamilton on that discussion. All those in favor? Aye. Aye. Thank you, everybody. Appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you very much. Good night.