Buckman Direct Diversion Board

MINUTES OF THE CITY OF SANTA FE & SANTA FE COUNTY BUCKMAN DIRECT DIVERSION BOARD MEETING January 8, 2026 1. Call to Order: This meeting of the City of Santa Fe & Santa Fe County Buckman Direct Diversion Board meeting was called to order by Commissioner Justin Greene, BDD Board Chair at approximately 4:00 p.m. in the Council Chambers, City Hall, 200 Lincoln Avenue, Santa Fe, New Mexico. 2. Roll Call: Roll was called and a quorum was present as shown: BDD Board Members Present: Member(s) Excused: Commissioner Justin Greene, Chair None Councilor Jamie Cassutt Councilor Pilar Faulkner Commissioner Hank Hughes Rolf Schmidt-Petersen, Citizen Member T. Egelhoff, The Club at Las Campanas, [non-voting member] Others Present: Bradley Prada Facilities Manager Nancy Long, BDD Board Consulting Attorney Kyle Harwood, BDD Board Consulting Attorney Bernardine Padilla, BDD Public Relations Coordinator Matt Sandoval, BDD Operations Superintendent Peter Hunt, Glorieta Geoscience John Sikora, AECOM 3. Approval of Agenda Councilor Cassutt moved to approve the agenda as published. Her motion was seconded by Councilor Faulkner. The motion passed by unanimous [5-0] voice vote. 4. Approval of Minutes a. Approval of the December 4, 2025 Buckman Direct Diversion Board Meeting Minutes Councilor Cassutt moved to approve the minutes and Member Schmidt-Petersen seconded. The motion passed by 4-0 voice vote with Councilor Faulkner abstaining. 1 4. Approval of Consent Agenda Councilor Faulkner moved to approve the Consent Agenda (8.a.). Commissioner Hughes seconded and the motion passed by unanimous [5-0] voice vote. 8 Consent Item a. Request for Approval to Purchase a Vehicle Replacement in the Amount of $69,763.60 from the MR&R Fund 5. Matters from the Public - None were offered. 7. Presentations and Informational Items a. Monthly Update on BDD Operations MATT SANDOVAL (BDD Operations Superintendent): Thank you, Chair Greene, members of the Board. I’ll be presenting the BDD operations report for the month of December 2025. BDD diversions and deliveries averaged a million gallons per day as follows: raw water diversion, 4.21 million gallons per day; drinking water deliveries through Booster Station 4A/5A, 1.08 million gallons per day; raw water delivered to Las Campanas at Booster Station 2A, was zero for the month of December. BDD contributed 59 percent of the water supply to the City and County for the month of December 2025. And I will stand for questions. CHAIR GREENE: Any questions from the Board? Yes, sir. COMMISSIONER HUGHES: Are we concerned at all about the lack of snowpack in the mountains – I’m sure we are – and how are we going to deal with that? MR. SANDOVAL: Thank you, Chair Greene and Member Hughes. We have a strategic partnership with the City’s Resource Team. And we’re looking into that. As of right now, because we do have reserves in San Juan-Chama, Abiquiu, it should factor in but as of right now we don’t have too many concerns. COMMISSIONER HUGHES: Okay, because we have reserves where? MR. SANDOVAL: In the Abiquiu Reservoir. COMMISSIONER HUGHES: Okay. CHAIR GREENE: Following onto that, if it’s possible at our next meeting to talk a little bit more about that. That will be in early February and hopefully we’ll have some more snow but if not we’ll be in worse shape, so if it’s possible to have some discussion about what some expectations and maybe we can start tracking that through February and March and April. So I’ll let Kyle answer to that because he’s standing up looking like he has something to say. KYLE HARWOOD (BDD Board Counsel): Chair Greene, I just wanted to add that the Bureau of Reclamation typically does its Rio Grande annual Operating Plan in April when the snowpack estimates are much more settled. So from the Bureau’s perspective that’s when that exercise is done. Not to diminish getting additional education in early meetings but that’s usually when we’re really taking stock of expecting – Rolf did a lot of this work a at the Interstate Stream Commission previously; do you agree with my answer Rolf? Just sharing that everybody loves to talk about it now – that’s usually when the water resource agencies tell us when – Buckman Direct Diversion Board January 8, 2026 2  CHAIR GREENE: And it’s just specifically San Juan-Chama? MR. HARWOOD: It’s the Rio Grande Operating Plan so it’s all the native flows plus all the San Juan-Chama projections. CHAIR GREENE: Yeah, that sounds like a definitive answer at the end of the season. But it would be good for us to know what our contingency plans are and to talk about if it’s this or if it’s that and, you know, we’ve got this covered. And I wonder, and I do appreciate that you can say that you’re managing this with City things but we also have a County client and in the room here Las Campanas. So I don’t know what water resources might be potentially available in the County’s portfolio and to make sure that maybe there’s some opportunity to make sure that we’re doing that – all the way to, and I’m just thinking outside of the box, and I’m not sure it’s allowed but stuff from above Otowi, you know, we’ve got water that is going to go to the Pojoaque Basin Regional Water System that maybe if we need it – I don’t know if it’s allowed. But you guys know better than I do. But if there’s that resource for the County to start diverting through BDD just for low-flows and things, maybe that’s – just to hear for everybody at the table, every resource brought forward. MR. SANDOVAL: Thank you, Chair Greene. I’ll look into it and get you some information. CHAIR GREENE: Great. MEMBER SCHMIDT-PETERSEN: Could I, just for Matt, when I look at the numbers at least I think from last year BDD 3,800 acre-feet of San Juan-Chama water combined. And your graph that is here, actually the graphic shows almost 10,000 acre-feet of San Juan-Chama water in storage available for the City of Santa Fe. Which is 2.5 years worth of diversions at those same levels which I think is a great place to be in this situation. That question kind of follows on to Chair’s of where’s the County? Do they have water in storage also? And what does that look like? MR. SANDOVAL: Yes, I’ll look into it and get you some information. CHAIR GREENE: Thank you very much, Matt. b. Report from BDD Facilities Manager BRAD PRADA (Facilities Manager): Good afternoon, Chair Greene and members of the Board. First off I’d like to report that we have successfully submitted our audit on time. This was a team effort between us and the City. And we remain in good standing as we move forward into the new year. Moving on to the MR&R projects. Our PLC control system upgrade is moving exactly as planned. We issued the RFP and we expect formal proposals in the coming months. This is critical step for our operational reliability and we’re ready to begin the technical review as soon as those bids are ready. Our comprehensive feasibility study is currently underway involving staff from the City, the County alongside BDD and experts from AECOM and Wright Water Engineering. This collaborative effort approach ensures all stakeholders are aligned before we move forward. We expect to move into the 30 percent design phase within the next four to six months after vetting the most qualified firms through an RFQ. This is for the rebuild project, if you’re not catching that. Finally, regarding our workforce, while the written report in our packet was generated last week, since then there has been two significant updates. One is we made an offer to a Buckman Direct Diversion Board January 8, 2026 3 qualified chemist. I think Commissioner Hughes at one time brought up in one of the meetings his concern that we hadn’t filled that position. It’s just a process. But we are moving forward with that and have made a formal offer. And we’ll see how it pans out if he accepts. Second, we have received a list of eligibles for admin manager. There were 11 of them which is far greater than what we expected so we are excited about that. Between these milestones and a rapid hire event which I mentioned last month and which is happening this Saturday, the rapid hire event, so if anybody knows anybody that is looking for a job, this would be a good opportunity for them to come out and there’s lots of jobs through the public utilities. So we’re hopeful that this next year – we are looking forward to getting fully staffed. It has been a reoccurring program. But I am excited with some of these new hiring efforts that we’ll end up with somebody. I’ll stand for questions. COMMISSIONER HUGHES: Could you go into a little bit more about what the feasibility study is and how it relates to what we heard at the last meeting? Is it a feasibility of all of that stuff we heard at the last meeting? What is it a feasibility of? MR. PRADA: John, do you want to speak to this? CHAIR GREENE: It became a euphemism, if I may, for the alternatives analysis. So we have been talking and referring to it as an alternatives analysis for a long time and I guess internally the conversation said this is actually a feasibility analysis of different variables of how to proceed with the big fix. It that preempt you; do you have anything to add to it? COMMISSIONER HUGHES: Yeah, I’d like to hear a little bit more from them too. JOHN SIKORA (AECOM): So these aren’t standard terms but a feasibility study is like a 15 percent level. Thirty percent is generally where you start doing cost estimates and some harder core engineering. Right now what we’re doing is all of those different components that I talked about last time, we’re talking about how those all fit together and work together. So certain aspects, as an example, we’ve got to exclude the silvery minnow. It’s easier to do that with certain components than others. We’re just talking through how all of those things fit together and we’re trying to get it to 10, 15 percent level. COMMISSIONER HUGHES: And will the results of the feasibility study be made public information or made available to proposers of the RFQ? MR. PRADA: I don’t believe that we’re going to move forward with presenting everyone of those ideas only the vetted ideas that come out of that feasibility study. COMMISSIONER HUGHES: Okay, but that will be presented through the RFQ? MR. PRADA: Yes. COMMISSIONER HUGHES: People who are responding to the RFQ? MR. PRADA: Absolutely. COMMISSIONER HUGHES: Okay, thank you. CHAIR GREENE: Okay, and – MEMBER SCHMIDT-PETERSEN: I think I know what yours is so I won’t take it. And maybe John could go back on this part two, because I’m thinking with the feasibility study there’s a couple other critical items that are having to go through the kind of guardrails and guidelines for a feasible alternative. Obviously, silvery minnow, I remember Buckman Direct Diversion Board January 8, 2026 4 eggs were a big thing back a number of years ago. I don’t know if they would be in a kind of critical design element but the idea of what’s a reasonable cost at least to look at something that is within the range of the – things like how much sediment are actually trying to remove? I’m wondering if those are other elements for evaluation. MR. SIKORA: So Brad mentioned our conversations with the City and County, and so our first step was to actually set that performance criteria: how much sediment we’re going to remove; how we’re going to measure it. And another aspect is how much water, should we plan for the future at all? Conversations like that. Thirty-thousand foot view was our first step. And then on the 14th we actually take the next step of trying to define all of the components. MEMBER SCHMIDT-PETERSEN: Would it be possible somewhere in this process to kind of just [inaudible] overall or would we be involved in the end? MR. PRADA: Thank you, Rolf. We’ll be doing most of the research ourselves and then we will vet those and bring those to you guys. And that will be through a presentation at a Board meeting. Before, obviously, you guys are going to have to approve a RFQ and different things like that. That will be part of the process in letting you guys know exactly what’s going on. CHAIR GREENE: I saw your brow furl there for a second – NANCY LONG (BDD Board Counsel): Mr. Chair, I’m just thinking of the steps that may come forward to the Board and the ones that won’t. So I think that is something that we need to outline for you all. CHAIR GREENE: I appreciate that. And that’s one of the things – and the question that I had which is I’m wondering if we can set out a critical path with the major milestones, how long we should expect them to be -- not so much about how much they cost, although the supportative magnitude is useful as well – but just to know, I think I heard from you, just so people understand expectations that the alternatives analysis or the feasibility study is a 30-day exercise. Yes, or maybe it gets done by the March meeting, right, not the next meeting, it’s a 60-day exercise but nonetheless and then from there when the RFI respondents and the RFQ would be prepared, when we could see sort of a work plan for this project. And – yes, go for it. MR. PRADA: Thank you, Chair Greene. As we move forward through these steps some of them, like Nancy said, aren’t going to be vetted through you guys. But the critical milestones will be and we are currently working on a timeline for you guys so that you can see that. We can definitely bring the timeline in March. CHAIR GREENE: That would be good. I mean, especially for the quote unquote foreseeable future. And then another conversation that was had was the idea that, you know, at one point we were talking about having AECOM or somebody do a 30 percent versus an engineering firm take this all the way to complete design and that that might be – if we’re going through this exercise to get an RFQ and then an RFP to get up to 30 percent, I’m wondering if we want to just get somebody under contract to go all the way. Like, let’s not do two steps when most likely it’s going to be one organization and we shouldn’t get two so they start pointing at each other and saying, I don’t agree. Agree, move and let’s get them all the way through. MR. PRADA: Within the process of the RFQ we will be generating the top qualifier and that person we’ll offer it to. And outlined in the RFQ it’ll have an off-ramp, that’s why it’s 30 percent, an off-ramp if we are unhappy after we’re moving forward with Buckman Direct Diversion Board January 8, 2026 5 that company. And the option to go to 100 percent. CHAIR GREENE: Okay, great. So it does have the option but it does have the benefit of an off-ramp; that’s even better. And then I want to bring up a concept that was brought up. You know, if we have a pool of money to do this and depending on the amount of money that we have and the ability to actually solve everything, on this feasibility study I’m wondering is there everything – we have all sorts of levels of fix and I just want to make sure that we’re doing the – would the $70 million be a better benefit buying water rights; right. Is there the $10 million fix and a $60 million water rights fix to increase our available water instead of going all fix because we’re actually operating relatively well at this point. MR. PRADA: One of the issues that we have right now, I don’t believe that there’s going to be more than, excuse me – there’s not going to be money left over. CHAIR GREENE: Okay. Kyle. MR. HARWOOD: Chair Greene, some of the basic DNA of the BDD project and the BDD Board is that the three receiving partners take responsibility for water right portfolios and the project’s Board only diverts that which is made available per state law. So it’s not that we couldn’t look to creative edits of the DNA, sort of speak, of the project but it would be a very significant change from how the Board was initially established, what its scope was, what it’s set up to manage and there are some other nuances to the way the committing has been done in the past. Again, none of these things are necessarily set in stone but they were established at the time for good reasons and changes would be significant essentially to the Board documents. I fully appreciate the creativity and we should always be evaluating the models that we are using to see if they’re the right fit for what we’re trying to accomplish going forward but for the Board to acquire its water rights would be a pretty significant deviation from at least how we have done it in the last 20 years. CHAIR GREENE: Okay. I just feel that creative solutions that maybe the real problem at hand may be less about actually the fix as it might be availability of water, so. MR. HARWOOD: And there are other nuances, again, a little bit like my last comment about having a look at the snowpack early, I don’t mean to steer you away from the creative thinking I just wanted to provide some information. CHAIR GREENE: Thank you. Yes, ma’am. COUNCILOR CASSUTT: On that point and thank you, Mr. Chair, I know the City of Santa Fe as a policy we are doing our best to move away from acquiring new water rights. Of course, we continue to look at all options. But would be not in congruence with where the City is trying to go in terms of how we utilize conservation credits – I really wish Jesse Roach were here, he’s so good with all the technical – how we use our conservation credits but also the return-flow pipeline and our work there. So that would be a very interesting conversation in terms of how the City is working to proceed with our own water portfolio. CHAIR GREENE: But to that point and I appreciate that because it may not be that solution is in fact more water rights. Maybe the best solution to this is putting money into the return-flow pipeline and finding ways to get that expedited and get it to where we’re just fixing our water and understanding that the three partners here have money that might be able to go to some solution that BDD ultimately effects by where the water is being processed but – Buckman Direct Diversion Board January 8, 2026 6  MR. PRADA: Thank you, Chair Greene for that. Just so we can draw a line in the sand because this Board sometimes messes that up to say the least. I just want to say that Buckman Direct Diversion only treats individual water rights from our partners. We don’t have any water rights. And like Kyle said – CHAIR GREENE: Yeah, I understand that now but ultimately it is the treatment facility for the water rights of the three partners. So if the Board decided that we wanted to go to each of these organizations and say, Would you like this money for water rights? In theory we could facilitate that. Would you like the money to help – we think the best use of this money would be in conservation or reclamation or whatever the process is, we can be part of that solution as opposed to dividing the line – and I understand that we may not want to go buy those water rights but we have that opportunity as partners sitting at a table together. Again, creative thinking because we’re not in a vacuum. Anybody else? Yes, sir. MEMBER SCHMIDT-PETERSEN: So following up the Chair’s comment there. I just was wondering about a kind of like a no action under NEPA analysis but in this case in the reality of the operations at BDD because even with the problems that happened identified and occurring, the operators have found work-arounds for those, right? And so if we’re able to – if they are able to operate today and produce a really good project, right. So we know that. But that seems like a base line that we’re comparing against. [speaks away from microphone] But it’s something to compare against, say if we did this what would change in the existing operation. It’s worthwhile looking at as a let’s say, yeah, does this make sense? Does the cost really make sense? MR. PRADA: Thank you, Board Member Schmidt-Petersen. I think that it’s most important to get 360 days a year that we can produce water. The raw water ability aspect of it. And if we were to do zero and end up with $70+ million in the bank, I don’t know that a partner like Las Campanas would be able to produce the water that they need all the time. MEMBER SCHMIDT-PETERSEN: I just read in the paper about the Pojoaque/Aamodt project that the construction cost estimate that came back was almost double of the cost estimate of the previous year. MR. PRADA: That’s why I’m assuming that there’s not going to be money left over if we move forward with any of these alternatives. MEMBER SCHMIDT-PETERSEN: I would just add to that, I agree with that but it also says are there incremental pieces here that you might be able to layer [away from microphone] incrementally make some more positive difference if you have needs for that. [away from microphone] MR. PRADA: To speak to John Sikora’s point, that’s why we’re doing this feasibility study so that we can see what meshes it in and what is actually going to fix the issues. CHAIR GREENE: Thank you. Nothing else? Thank you. 9. Action Items: Discussion Agenda a. Consideration and Possible Action on Resolution 2026-1, Relating to the Open Meetings Act and Adopting Annual Open Meetings Act Notice Requirements Buckman Direct Diversion Board January 8, 2026 7  MS. LONG: Mr. Chair and members of the Board, we typically present the Open Meeting Act resolution to you at our January meeting. I know the memo says that the changes from last year are highlighted in yellow but I don’t think that version made it in here. However, I can tell you what they are. There was a little bit of rearranging non-substantive and really the only substantive change was noting our meetings that are not on the first Thursday. So we recite in our resolution that our meetings are always on the first Thursday and where they are, except for this meeting because the first Thursday was January 1st so our meeting is noted as January 8th and then the July meeting is moved from the first Thursday to July 9th. So with that I would recommend that we pass our Open Meeting Act resolution for the year. CHAIR GREENE: Fabulous. Do you have a question? I’m just going to ask a question, does this roll over to the first meeting of 2027 because it seems like we should address that based on where we know it’s going to be in 2027. MS. LONG: This resolution only addresses this calendar year in terms of meeting dates because that is all that we know about right now. But the requirement under the law is that you pass it once a year. CHAIR GREENE: It just seems that we should go a year end of meetingS or a year including past this meeting. MS. LONG: We could pass it. I know the County does theirs I think in December for the next year. I don’t know that the City does. But you’re saying just to handle the first meeting. CHAIR GREENE: I mean, we can look at the calendar right now and decide when the first meeting in January is; is it on the – that seems like it would work. So maybe nothing has to be done. MS. LONG: The first Thursday is fine. CHAIR GREENE: Yes, so, perfect, just to make sure that we’re not changing something. MS. LONG: Right. CHAIR GREENE: Please. Councilor Faulkner moved to approve Resolution 2026-1. Councilor Cassutt seconded and the motion passed by unanimous [5-0] voice vote. 10. Matters from the Board MEMBER SCHMIDT-PETERSEN: I have one items I wanted to mention to the Board. I was in Las Vegas in December for the Colorado River Water Users Association meeting which is this annual meeting of a lot of the water users, not the management agencies necessarily, although they’re there, but just the water users. This year was the biggest conference with over 1,400 people attending. I guess I would remark to this Board although we aren’t the holders of the water right, that my experience – the tension on the river and obviously seen this in the paper too, for the lower basin to suffer some significant shortages, they’re looking for the upper basin to provide more water. Upper basin, so New Mexico, Colorado, Wyoming and Utah are saying, Hey, we’re dry. We don’t have any Buckman Direct Diversion Board January 8, 2026 8 water. San Juan-Chama -- the most dry water project of any that I’ve heard there for the last year was a 60 percent reduction. Most other parties, 10 would be abhorrent to them, right. And I would just add to that that looking at that situation and seeing up stream that was going and the stress, I think that the states including New Mexico are working really hard to see if they can find solutions. The gap is huge. I just have one example for that within New Mexico on the San Juan River out of Navajo Reservoir, New Mexico has been doing a water operation there with the Jicarilla Apache Tribe now for four years, so 20,000 acre-feet of water moved from Navajo Reservoir, that’s New Mexico water, and then route it down to Lake Powell to help – and that’s a huge lift for an upper basin state. To move a large amount of water for a state like ours with what our total consumptive use is. It was really interesting to see the reaction in the lower basin side because it was like we need hundreds of dollars, you know, a thousand million acre-feet, and you’re offering [away from microphone]. So that gap is huge. So what I experienced or saw there was all the parties were still at the table. They were still working to engage to find solutions but with that large of a gap and with some of the triggers that are down there, that weren’t there when I was working, there is nothing that stops anyone party from deciding [inaudible] rather than just to continue to talk. And so I know that New Mexico is trying to be prepared for that and others. I think just right now it is the most tense situation that has probably occurred. I wish I had better news but I would also say that Jesse Roach, Bill Schneider, John over there and others, a lot of good representation from New Mexico describing what New Mexico has been doing and how we’ve been trying to deal with shortages. But again, the amount of water that is big to us is minuscule to them. That’s the gap. CHAIR GREENE: Fabulous. Thank you, I guess. Commissioner Hughes, you’re up next for matters from the Board, you good? COMMISSIONER HUGHES: Good. CHAIR GREENE: For me, two things. I’m not going to let Peter leave the room without saying goodbye. We have to say goodbye to Peter now. He is moving on from GGI and this is sad because I’ve watched him grow over the last few years and really appreciated his filling big shoes and yet he’s taken those boots and he’s walking. And we will have some new representation over the next – the next meeting, I guess. And we wish you the best of luck. Please don’t be a stranger and congratulations on whatever is next for you. And I was really excited to have gotten to work with you, so thank you very much, Peter. As for me, I’ve really enjoyed being chair. I guess I’ll get to sit in this chair for a few minutes at the next meeting but I wanted to thank everybody here for the support and really teaching me a lot about water. There’s a lot of work to do in 2026 and hopefully we will have a new chair – wink-wink – with a lot of institutional knowledge that will sit in this chair very well. I will hopefully be appointed to continue in my term here but I will have to take a more supportive role but this has been great. I really want to thank everybody here both Board members and staff and the folks in the supporting groups. This has been really great so thank you very much everybody. 11. New Meeting: Thursday, February 5, 2026 Buckman Direct Diversion Board January 8, 2026 9 12. Adjourn Upon motion by Councilor Faulkner and second by Councilor Cassutt, Chair Greene declared this meeting adjourned at 4:40 p.m. Approved by: ____________________________ Justin Greene, Board Chair Respectfully submitted: Wordswork ATTEST TO KATHARINE E. CLARK Santa Fe County Clerk Buckman Direct Diversion Board January 8, 2026 10