Good afternoon. I'd like to call the October meeting of the Central Arizona Groundwater Replenishment
and Underground Storage Committee to order, and would like to welcome everybody to this
meeting, and it seems that you're paying attention. We just had a board meeting just last Thursday,
so this feels like a very short, and it is a very short turn around between board
and committee meetings. But anyway, Megan, would you please call the roll?
Karen Caesar. I'm here. Lisa Atkins. Rudy Fisher. Here. Pat Jacobs.
First one. Stephen Miller is not here. Barbara Siego. Here. You have a quorum, Madam Chair.
Great. Thank you very much. I'd like to remind all presenters to identify themselves for the record,
and we'll move on to our first item of business, which is the approval of our minutes of our last meeting,
which was September 18, 2025, and I will entertain a motion and recognize Board Member Atkins
for this. Madam Chair, I move to approve the minutes of the September 18, 2025 meeting.
Thank you. Do I have a second? Motion and second? All in favor? Any comments or questions?
Hearing none, all in favor, please say aye.
Aye.
Any opposed? Thank you. Board Member Jacobs online. Any opposed? All right.
then let the record reflect all members present and online voted in favor of the motion.
The next item we have on our agenda, and I will just say like I said, we do have a short
but very important agenda today.
So this item coming before us is a discussion and consideration of action to recommend
the Board approve a proposed long-term storage credit acquisition between the CAAWCD
and the Tana Otham Nation, and we have Chris Brooks here to give us a little bit more information
on this.
I'll remind everybody this is our step two.
We did hear about this, and we got some information on this at our last meeting.
At that meeting, the seller was not identified, in part because the seller was still working
through their process with their counsel.
That has since happened, so we are happy to share the seller's name now, and Chris
is here and I'll recognize you for any more information. Welcome.
Thank you, Chair Caesar, members of the committee for the record. My name is Chris Brooks, Senior
Policy Analyst with the CAGRD. And yes, so this will be a hopefully a successful vote
to recommend approval of this agreement. Just a reminder of the terms of the agreement.
These are 10,000 long-term storage credits that we will be acquiring.
5,000 of them are in the East Valley at the New Magma GSF.
5,000 of them are in the West Valley at the Hieroglyphic Mountain USF.
We are going to pay $550 per long-term storage credit,
so it's a total cost of $5.5 million for the 10,000 long-term storage credits.
As the Chair mentioned, the Thon Optimization Legislative Council did approve this agreement
earlier this week and with a recommendation from this committee today, this will go to the
CWCD board in November for their approval. Just to show what we, the data we have on recent
acquisitions in the Phoenix AMA, we think it demonstrates that this pricing is within the
current market for long-term storage credits in Phoenix which is going up all the time.
Again, some additional information on that, and that's pretty much what I have.
I will be happy to answer any questions that anybody has about this.
Great.
Thank you, Mr. Brooks.
Any questions for Mr. Brooks on this item?
All right.
Hearing none, I will recognize Board Member Jacobs.
Yes.
Thank you.
So, when you say governmental agencies, besides cadre, who else is behind governmentally?
Do we know?
The water bank would be one.
That would be us.
And then occasionally cities acquire credits?
And that's what I was looking at is our cities and, you know, the industry preparing
independently and with some of these. That's all. That was the intent of my question.
Okay, great. Thank you, Board Member Jacobs. All right.
Thank you.
Any other questions? If not, I will recognize Board Member Atkins for a motion.
I move that the CEGRD and Underground Storage Committee recommend that the Board approve
the agreement between CWCD and the Tahana Odom Nation for acquisition of long-term
storage credits. Great. Thank you. Do I have a second? Second. Second by Board Member Fisher.
All right. Thank you. Any other comments, questions? I don't know if we have any public comment on
this. You would have let me know. But just thought I'd ask. All right. Well, great. Very good. Then
all in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? All right. Great. Then let the
record reflect that all members present and online voted in favor of the motion. And this
This item will then go to the board for full approval at our November meeting.
Chris, thank you so much.
Thank you.
Next item on our agenda is a discussion on the revised CAGRD annual membership dues policy.
And we have a CAGRD manager, Laura Grignano, to talk a little bit more about this.
And welcome.
Thank you.
And good afternoon, Madam Chair.
For the record, my name is Lara Grignano, CAGRD Manager.
Today, this item is step one for discussion of proposed minor modifications to CAGRD's policy of the collection of our annual membership dues.
And you may recall that earlier this year,
CWCD was successful in amending CAGRD's annual membership dues calculation for member lands
through the passage of House Bill 2191.
And this amendment decoupled the member land reliance from projections in the plan of operation
and based the calculation on projected groundwater use per lot
and the total number of lots enrolled in the GRD.
And if you recall, we did this to prevent AMD
or annual membership due rate shock and inequities between AMAs
when moving from one plan of operation to the next.
So moving into the 2025 plan as statutes were written
would have caused great instability in those rates.
So that was done successfully.
So today we just are bringing our board policy on the collection of AMDs to the committee to just make sure that that policy now aligns with what was changed in statute earlier this year.
So most aspects of the methodology that staff uses to implement the collection of AMDs are specified in statute.
It's very prescriptive.
Our policy just adds some additional description of the supporting data that we will use to carry out implementation.
So, there are in your packets, there's a red line version of the revisions in the policy.
Again, they're very minor, but the first proposed revision outlines how CAGRD staff will calculate the projected groundwater use per lot.
and that's a new term in statute.
And we talk in the, if you refer to the red line version,
it reads, staff will calculate the projected groundwater use per lot
by using the five year rolling average of groundwater use
of all member land constructed lots.
So that's just setting out to our staff
and to our stakeholders how we will be calculating that.
And then the second revision, and that's on the last page of the policy.
The second revision just clarifies when a newly enrolled member service area must begin paying annual membership dues,
and that will be based on the timing of its enrollment.
So the revision, again, in red line reads,
if a member's service area is newly enrolled before December 31 of a given year,
it will be responsible for paying annual membership dues the following year
when the MSA invoices are sent out in mid-August.
So next year, for example, EBCOR is just recently become a new member's service area
for its West Valley system.
Next August in 2026, we will be invoicing EBCOR for their new MSA for 2025 annual membership dues.
So we just wanted to make sure that that was clear to our members when those dues would be collected.
And with that, I'm happy to answer any questions.
Great. Thank you, Ms. Grignano.
Any questions for Laura, for a member of CIEGO?
So, okay, so.
So, what happens? So, I guess I'm confused. Is it because the water year is from?
So, the annual reports are sent out for the previous water year.
Okay.
So, when we, we don't receive annual use reports until March of the year after water has been delivered.
Okay.
So, we're always just one year past.
Okay.
We just collected the, in 2025 we were looking at the water use in 2024.
We have to wait until that year ends, until we're given that data by the water providers
on how much water they delivered to their customers in the previous year.
Okay.
All right.
Thank you.
And just for clarification, this is a calendar year, because we talk about water years
and calendar years.
Which is this?
Yes, Madam Chair.
It is calendar year.
Calendar year.
Okay, all right.
Great.
Madam Chair?
Yes.
Dr. Jacob?
Yes.
Go ahead.
I'll do what?
They have 30 days to make payment?
Or some?
Or do they pay in January?
So our member service areas are invoiced in the middle of August and they have approximately
two months until the middle of October to submit their payment.
Thank you.
Great. Any other questions? And then this is our first look at this, and we will then,
it will come back to us at our next meeting where this is our step one in the committee,
step two in committee in November. And at that point in time, we will be asked to recommend
that the board adopt the policy, and if everything goes according to plan, that should be at
our December meeting, which should set you up to have it all done this year, this calendar
year.
Good timing.
Great.
Okay.
Thank you very much.
And like I said, this is just a very good result of getting that legislation passed
and everything kind of trued up and sorted out with the membership dues.
So thank you very much.
But if you would please stay up there for the next agenda item, and that is going
to be a report out on the CAGRD 2025 plan of operation public hearings that were conducted
last week. So recognize you again.
Great. Thank you again. And for the record, Laura Grignano, CAGRD manager. Yes, as I
reported at the last committee, the public hearings for the 2025 plan of operation were
going to be scheduled and held and they were held last week both the Tucson and
Pinal AMA public hearings were held on October 9th on last Thursday the same day
as the CWCD board meeting and then the following day on Friday October 10th we
held ADWR held the public hearing for the Phoenix AMA on at 9 30 on Friday
morning. There were no comments received at any of the public hearings.
There have been
two written comments submitted to the ADWR docket supervisor, and they've then sent those
to CAGRD. Those two comments, all of the comments will be posted on ADWR's website,
but those two comments that were received both are in support of the approval of the 2025 plan of operation.
One letter came from the Arizona Municipal Water Users Association, or AMWA,
and the other just came today from Maricopa Standfield Irrigation and Drainage District.
So good news on that front.
The public comment period goes until tomorrow at 5 p.m.
So we could still receive additional written comments.
And I will put a link in next month's committee's packet
so that you can see all of those comments
once they're posted on ADWR's website.
But so far, good news in support of the plan.
So very good news to report.
That's fantastic. Yeah. No, that's that is that is the best result that we can hope for and so
appreciate that and we'll look forward to you know the you know I guess ultimately finally just
remind us again after this what are what are where where when do we get to say it's done it's approved
and so we're getting close madam chair if we have received any comments that we need to respond
on to. We will, we have, are given 30 days by the department. So we have until November
18th to write, make written response to those comments. And then once that, that timeline
is done, then the department begins its determination as to whether or not we have shown that
that we can make our members pumping consistent with the management goal in each AMA.
So the department expects before the end of this year to make its final decision and issue
their decision and order.
Great.
All right.
Excellent.
Well, like I said, it's been a multi-year effort and it will be so nice to have this
in the done column, not the to-do column.
Certainly will.
Anyway.
All right.
Great.
Great. Thank you very much. All right. Again, this has been, like I said, it's been a short
meeting. I do want to move on to our future agenda items and remind that everybody that
our next meeting will be November 20th. That will be here at headquarters. That's the
week right before Thanksgiving. And it will be, obviously, the usual time at 12.30.
And at that time, we will consider a recommendation to the board policy that we just discussed
We'll also have some reports on recovery planning and implementation and the 2024 annual operations reports, as well as a quarterly update on member land and member service area enrollment activity.
This will be our final meeting of the year of this committee, hard to believe.
And I think I just want to note that it's really nice that we can end it with a lot of this information because last year we had so much other stuff going on.
And I think a lot of these regularly occurring items got pushed out to our first meeting
in January.
So it would be kind of nice to at least look forward to completing all of our 2025 business
in 2025 and looking forward to starting off the new year with our whole new set of
issues that we will be tackling.
I'm also going to say, and I'm just going to take a moment just to, before public
comment, before I turn to Ms. Casey and say, do we have any public comments?
And she says.
No, Madam Chair.
No comments.
I want to take a moment to acknowledge and recognize Ms. Casey for an upcoming award
and recognition very well deserved that she will be receiving.
And that's the Arizona Capitol Times.
She's been named a woman achiever in Arizona.
And it's a very elite group.
And those of us that know you and work with you are not surprised, of course.
But it's really neat when someone gets recognized on that bigger stage and gets honored
recognized for the work you've done. And again, all of us that work with Megan know, she does a lot of work.
I mean, besides running kind of the front of the house on these meetings, she does a lot of policy work,
and a lot of technical work, and a lot of support work for many of the different departments,
especially obviously her department. So I'm going to just take a minute and say congratulations again,
and we're very, very proud of you. And with that and no other business to come before the meeting,
I think we are in record time, I think, adjourned.