Welcome back to this monthly meeting of the Parks Arts and Culture Committee of Denver City Council.

Join us and the Parts Arts and Culture Committee starting now.

Welcome to Parks Art and Culture Committee.

And I represent Lucky District number seven.

And I'll start introductions here on my left with council members.

Well, good morning.

Uh Darren Watson, hi.

Good morning, Diana Romero Campbell, Southeast Denver District 4.

Great.

Well, we are so excited to hear from Parks and Rec this morning and water conservation.

So if you all want to introduce your team and then go ahead and get started, that would be great.

Of course, Jill Kaufman, director of park operations.

Yeah, hi, my name's Damian Wetzel.

I'm the water conservation manager.

And I'm Lynn Fulton, I'm a crew lead in the water conservation department.

Awesome.

Take it away.

Your slides are now up there.

Great.

Well, thanks for having us.

Like I said, I'm the water conservation manager, water conservation.

Beautiful.

I love that.

Yeah, that's uh we got a few more drone pictures coming up later.

We have uh in-house drone pilot.

Oh, I was gonna say, how did you get that picture?

Three we have three licensed pilots in uh parks and rec.

Okay, awesome.

Sorry.

That was back in COVID when the civic center crew mowed the our names are over it, but they mowed the heart in the house.

So yeah, water conservation is a group that works uh throughout the whole city, and we're but we're housed under the park operations umbrella.

Um thanks for having us today.

We're here to talk about uh all things irrigation.

Irrigation um is basically the invisible lifeblood of the parks and rec system.

Unfortunately, uh you really only see it when something's wrong with it.

You know, you got a broken head or it's running when it's not supposed to, but for the majority of the time it's doing what it's supposed to, and it's what enables us to have our beautiful park system here in the high arid climate that that Denver is.

Um so we have a myriad of challenges.

Um, managing such a large system in Denver Parks.

Uh, we use over two billion gallons of water a year that costs the city uh a little over five million dollars a year.

Uh we are Denver Waters' largest customer um on a volume basis.

Um, and then a lot of the challenges recently is uh high temperatures, very unpredictable weather.

I mean, it was just 80 some degrees on Sunday in November.

Um, and then we also have uh increased our acreage recently, um acquiring a lot of new land, so that adds more work to uh the staff, and then the uh pressure on the system has increased quite a bit as well with the growing population and everyone getting outdoors in the parks.

That puts a lot of pressure on our on our park system and the and the irrigation system, and then recently the cost of doing business has gone up just like everything else.

Um, I started with Denver Parks 15 years ago as the irrigation tech in the Montbellow and Green Valley Ranch area, and back then uh an irrigation we use commercial quality like irrigation heads is about 20 bucks.

Now that that same sprinkler head costs about 80 dollars.

Wow.

Uh we also estimate that uh the pressure and vandalism has gone up by 50 percent uh since the COVID days.

So a lot of theft, uh copper theft, um, and then just you know kicking heads off and whatnot in the middle of the night.

So that's gone up quite a bit.

Um, but here in the water conservation department, we are achieving the game plan goal of adapting to our changing climate, and that's through a lot of different water efficiency um strategies, and a big one that we implemented is uh the central control build out, and I'm gonna go into that in quite a bit more depth.

Um, but just an overview of uh our infrastructure.

Uh right now our staffing levels, we have 38 irrigation maintenance technicians across the city, and that's managing 3,300 irrigated acres.

So that's all of our park land that has irrigation.

Doesn't include mountain parks or some areas in our metro parks that don't have irrigation.

We estimate that to contain a quarter million sprinkler heads.

So it's a massive system, and then if you break that down for each irrigation technician, they're responsible by themselves for around 87 acres, which would have 6,500 irrigation heads, and then everything associated with that maintenance throughout the year, which we uh the irrigation season is typically April 15th through October 15th.

Um so they're responsible for activating the system, uh running through inspections, zone checks, you know, if you find anything wrong, making timely repairs.

Um we adhere by the Denver water rules and making those pairs repairs within 10 days.

Um we get we usually get to them much quicker than that.

Um, and then uh winterization.

So you probably see them out there with the large air compressors blowing irrigation out as we speak.

Um, another challenge that we face, uh so we we have a little over 300 parks.

85 of those have irrigation infrastructure that's over 40 years old.

And if you dive a little deeper into those numbers, um actually 120 of those 300 parks have irrigation that's 35 years or older, and then around 40 actually have irrigation that's 50 years old.

So, I mean, you think about your house and the different things you have to do at your home.

They tell you your roof is usually good for 30 years.

Well, that's typical lifespan of irrigation too.

So we face a lot of challenges out there with um older older irrigation systems that we're trying to keep operational and efficient.

So the water conservation team was uh created within Denver Parks.

Originally it was just one person responsible for paying the water bill and implementing some efficiencies and doing some trainings, and it's now we now built up a team.

Um, we have a few crews all concentrating on you know water efficiencies and water quality and multiple things like that.

Um, today we're going to focus on irrigation and central control.

It's the tool that we identified that really helps us with all those challenges that I mentioned earlier.

Um, central control is uh what you can commonly hear refer to as smart irrigation.

So it's irrigation controller that's either connected to the internet here at the city, it's connected into the city network, and we communicate to it um via radios or the new ones now are cellular.

So central control is really a tool that we use to be efficient with our watering.

We have over 700 individual central control units, that's like an irrigation clock all throughout the city, making us one of the largest uh systems in the nation.

Um so water conservation, Lynn and the rest of the team.

We keep that infrastructure going, and we help all the staff train all the staff on it, make everyone be able to utilize this tool.

Uh, we also about eight years ago, uh, created an in-house team that does the build out.

So we go to an older irrigation controller that's not a smart irrigation controller connected to the network and swap it out for a central control unit.

So we've done a lot of that in-house and um we use proactive approach using utilizing technology to ensure that this system is reliable and works for everyone, all those maintenance techs and park operation managers out there.

We're conserving water, uh reducing operating costs.

We can help identify problems and direct people to where they're at to one of those 250,000 sprinkler heads out there.

Um, and also it's going to protect the long-term health of our parks.

Another big initiative with uh water conservation is we establish water budgets and then we track those through an irrigation uh consumption report, and we send that out on a monthly basis to park operations.

So here it is.

This is just two of the tables off of the consumption report.

Um, we send this out on the on a monthly basis during that irrigation season I was telling you from from April through October.

Um this is a couple charts from the latest one.

Um P9, the ninth month.

So this is through the September water bill from Denver Water, and you the top is the summary on water usage.

So uh we break it down for all of our districts.

So our park operations team is separated into maintenance districts, basically the four segments of the city.

Um, and then the middle is the DPO, that's the one on the bottom, uh stands for downtown park operation.

And if you look at the total on the bottom, through September, we've used 70% of our water budget.

So all our water managers are doing a good job this year.

Can I interject something?

So counts Councilman Heinz and Councilman Watson.

DPO would represent both of you in this slide.

And councilwoman, you would be under the East tab.

So if you're wondering, I was I could I could see it.

Um, so we have a map coming up a little later that'll it's it's kind of a busy map, but I mean it's pretty it's pretty well quadrant, you know, four quadrants of the city, and then DPO is kind of in the middle.

Um we count our water in thousand gallon units, so that one million uh year year to date consumption that's actually 1.14 billion gallons so far.

And this is just water from the Denver water bill.

Um we don't track, we have a couple other water sources.

We have some wells out there that like fill up uh lollipop lake at Garland, um, Cherry Creek has a well behind it, and then City Ditch, which uh flows through Wash Park and City Park is not part of this.

So that's what gets us to that two billion number that I mentioned earlier.

Um the bottom chart is uh some of the data that we gather.

Um, we really to be efficient with water, you want to apply the right amount of water to keep your park plant material healthy.

So we track that through ET, which stands for evapotranspiration.

That's uh kind of how much water the plant takes up, also how much evaporates.

So it's how much water you have to put back on the park to have healthy plant material.

So you look at the far right column, that's historical, so that's kind of 20 years all averaged.

Um so it's pretty interesting to see this year.

It was a pretty average um weather year.

Um, but it's interesting.

Other years, I mean it's irrigation usage is like a roller coaster, just with the weather, basically.

Um, so if you look at the far right, historically, at this time of year, um the ET is 32 inches of water, and then if you go down the blue line is precipitation, so that's rainfall.

So you take the ET, you minus rainfall, and you get how much water you have to put back on the park.

Um, then you look at system efficiency, that's 70 percent.

That's an industry standard.

Irrigation is about 70% efficient.

I mean, there's obviously some misting or or runoff or whatnot, and then so that's how we create our adjusted irrigation requirement.

So that's our IWR irrigation water requirement.

So we send out to all the park districts so they could see how much they've actually applied and how much they've actually needed to apply.

So that was kind of deep into the into the weeds there, but um, we're definitely a data um centric department.

So another step in being efficient with our water use is looking at all the different landscapes, how much water they actually need.

Um, parks has done a big study called landscape typologies, and that's the grid on the left there.

Um, that's got a few more um categories than our the in the gray is like our irrigation um water requirements.

So we break out areas and say how much uh water is needed for that certain landscape type.

So an event high use area example is Civic Center Park, has a lot of pressure, or like the meadow at City Park, or the meadows at Wash Park that are highly permitted and just have a lot of uh people out there, athletic fields, um, need 32 inches of water a year, those are you know, Kennedy soccer, Lowry Sports Complex, those type of fields.

Um, traditional park is kind of you know your normal neighborhood park, uh, like La Rossa Park or Schaefer, Daily Park.

Um the medians we we try to do apply less water out there, try to have Xeric uh plant material out there, or if there is grass out there that's a little drier, we're we're okay with that uh just to be efficient with our water, and then the last one is native areas.

Um, you see a lot of our new parks have quite a bit of native area in them, they require eight inches of water a year.

So if you remember the last slide, this year on average, we we have got 10 inches of water, so that's plenty of rainfall for these native areas.

So really those areas have irrigation just to establish um that plant material, but once that stuff's established, we can turn off irrigation in those areas.

So here's a couple pictures of what we go through for the central control build-out.

Um we're about 95% done.

Uh the only spots left are a few of our bigger uh median areas, and we'll try to you know leverage that conversion with projects and whatnot going forward.

Starting about eight years ago, uh the water conservation department has done a bunch of the installs in-house, saving us quite a bit of money.

We've installed 235 units, um, and of which 55 of those are uh the new cellular units.

So you probably recognize picture on the left is uh you got the old metal pole with the green box on top.

You see them around town are often rusty and leaning over.

We got to rip that out.

We pour a new concrete pad, and then on the right, it's one of our um central control units.

Um a big part of this build out was also um creating the city weather network.

And Lynn's gonna go into a little more detail with that, but that is also tied into our central control network so that we can really be proactive when programming with weather as a big factor.

So with that, I will turn it over to Lynn.

Thank you, Damien.

Uh so yeah, I uh we sat down as a group and we realized that we needed uh central control weather network because the old way of of what we used to have out there just wasn't working.

And we've all had that neighbor, right?

That neighbor that it's raining, and you look out your window, his sprinklers are running.

Yeah, and we didn't want to be that neighbor.

So we first found what we were looking for, the product we were looking for, um, which a full weather station is the one on the right, and then rain cups we have uh the one on the left.

We put them throughout the city to cover the entire city, and then we sat down with the districts and with individual users, and we asked them about the parameters that they wanted for these stations, which I didn't say there are 20 of them.

There's eight full weather stations and 12 rain cups.

And I'm gonna show you in the next slide how this kind of picks up.

But we sat down with our users and we said, What do you want these parameters to be?

And we made parameters for the entire city so that when we do have these weather events, they shut down our system.

They stop watering.

Central control stops watering.

And the potential on a full shutdown in the height of the season is 30 million gallons of water saved and 70,000 saved.

Now it's a it's a if I may say it's a very sexy number, doesn't always come out that way.

Last year in 2024, we had four full shutdowns.

But in 2024, we had 31 total shutdowns.

And if you're a weather nerd like me, you can I what I've seen is how these storms come into the city, and they come in through the southwest and they kind of wrap around the city and then go toward the northeast and they kind of die out.

So the southwest has seen a lot of rain shutdowns where the northeast hasn't seen quite as many.

So on the next slide, I'm gonna get into our very busy map, but you'll understand what we're talking about when we talk about our districts and how the city's split with us.

So we have our districts the northwest, southwest, east, that very small DPO in there, and then on the top right, the Northeast district.

And what this map represents is not only how our weather stations are out there in the city, but also our uh antenna network that talks to the older clocks, the older central control clocks that we have.

The newer stuff is all cellular based, there's never an issue, but the older stuff is all dependent on this antenna infrastructure.

And even though there are white gaps in there, that's all for our antennas.

Our weather network talks to every clock in the city, every central control clock in the city is tied to this network.

And if there's a rain shutdown, it talks to those units and it shuts them down.

Is also service calls.

So I deal with the hardware and software with our central control system.

And since 2018, I've had 1200 plus service calls that I've gone on to fix this equipment, and I am proud to say I have a 90% one-day success rate on this.

So when I first came to the city, I was a maintenance tech.

If there was a clock issue, I had to go to my boss who went to his boss, who would then call the vendor to make the decision to call the vendor, hey, come out.

We need you to come look at this clock.

There may be an issue here.

So I could maybe get the vendor to come out the next day, the day after, and it was just basically it was a long process.

So what we've done in water conservations, we have made ourselves more self-sufficient, more efficient with this, and really we we've kind of taken that reliance on our vendors out of the equation.

We still use them, but we have enough parts and ability to keep our clocks running.

And then the other part is the training part.

Um we've developed a great training.

Our you know how technology is and how quickly technology moves.

We've developed training with our new cellular base system that we've kind of put out to all our techs in the city.

We've gone from guys using an old like handheld radio, like the police radios to get things going.

Now they can use their phones, not only to turn things on, but they can actually program clocks then and there with their phone where before they'd have to write down whatever they're trying to do, go back to their shop, put it in their database and get it out there.

So we're moving forward with this.

And I'm I'm really proud of what we've done and what's been accomplished in our department.

But and I want to talk to you about the future of what we're looking at and what we want to do.

But before I tell you that, I wanted to share some of the current uh challenges that we have.

And one of those is with our build out, we're coming through and we're taking that old clock out and we're putting a new clock in there.

But what we are doing is we're taking the old program that was in that clock and we're putting it in the new clock.

And while it fits in with park standards from historic, it's not quite what we're looking for.

And what you're seeing out there, what we're seeing out there is rotors, large turf rotors that are running for 30 minutes and small pop-up sprays that are running for 15 minutes because that's what the person before did and the person before them did and the person before them did.

And it doesn't take into account any of the park requirements, turf requirements, turf watering requirements.

And really it's just a reactive way to water, it's a one-size-fits-all approach.

So what we're coming in and doing with the changes we're making in central control is now I'm coming in, I'm going to these parks and I'm getting the specific data for these parks.

What are these heads?

What are these zones?

What are they doing?

And it allows us to change our watering time decisions.

It allows us to customize it by park, by turf type.

And it's really what we're what we're going for is a proactive approach to it.

And kind of the way we talk about it is you can buy off the rack, or you can get custom made.

This is custom made.

I think uh if I could just mention all of you probably hear this, but uh a common complaint is I'm walking early in the morning, and the paths are saturated with water, right?

Um we hear that too, and so one of my requests is to work with this group to identify or design a system or time that we can alleviate that.

It's not easy because as a park system, I kind of explained you also see those questions around my park's watering seven days a week.

I know you hear that.

I hear that too.

Ideally, that may be true in the optic, but it's not true in reality, as um, if you have 7,000 sprinkler heads, um, you have only a certain number of days to run those heads.

So it's things like that that Lynn and Damien can identify and resolve pretty quickly.

Pretty proud of that.

And and really, like Jill's saying, this is the future, this is what we're looking for.

Um, this is what we're heading toward as the build-out completes and we really start to get in this as a group, is programming of water conservation.

We're looking to refresh that outdated irrigation programming.

We're looking for data-driven results for the success of all parks.

You know, the new Damien had touched on the new hybrid parks coming that you know, have smaller irrigated bluegrass areas, larger uh native turf areas, maybe they have athletic fields that you know.

Maybe it's a combination of everything.

We're looking to do that right, and we're gonna assume the responsibility of running these databases, and we feel conservatively that we can save tech time and have them out in the field.

We feel 300 hours is kind of a low number, actually, but it's 300 hours that they're out in the field and they're fixing things, and maybe the constituent call isn't what are you doing over there, but maybe it's what you're doing over there is great, and it looks really good.

That's what we're hoping for on this with this program.

And sorry, I I forgot to say uh another thing we're very excited about is our open gov cartograph system where our work orders we can now we can use our phones, it's not you're not emailing somebody, you're not you know calling somebody up.

You are sending a specific work order to a specific group, and they see on their phone that they've got something that they need to get done, and they'll get to that, and then they send it back whenever they're done.

And it goes the same for me, they can go out.

I have an issue here, I'm getting that that day.

So we're we're really excited about uh open gov and and using it for our work order system.

So now we'll conclude the presentation with a few more cool uh drone photos.

Just for counseling watson.

No, it actually uh like I'm saying it's a it's a very uh uh it's a great tool.

We uh have the drone program housed in water conservation.

Like I said, we have three FAA licensed pilots in uh the whole parks department, um, but we can utilize it uh to monitor projects going on in parks, or when we make a change to a park as a team, we can see if it's successful or not successful.

So this is Greenway Park down in the central park area, and this park is irrigated by recycled water, and we went in to do um a couple different strategies.

We um added a magnetic uh device which helps um mitigate some of the um detriments of recycled water, so it actually makes the nutrients in the recycled water more bioavailable for the plant material, and it also reduces reduces uh the friction of the water molecules, helping the irrigation um spray a little bit further and more efficiently.

Um, and then Lynn stepped into this area and did some of his programming optimization.

So, probably should have done a before and after, but we were monitoring that big meadow in the front there.

You see, still has a couple um dry areas, but we actually reduced the water there and got the area to uh improve, be more uniformly green, healthier turf.

Um, so the drone was the tool so that we could see what we were doing was um actually working.

Great.

Well, thank you all so much.

This has been so informative.

I appreciate you digging in to some of the details and science, and I just want to before we go to council person questions.

Two things I want to welcome um Councilman Hines, Councilwoman Lewis, and Councilman Parity to the meeting.

And I also wanted to just let everyone know that I was talking to Jill before this, and she was saying that they take this presentation around to other municipalities and other governments that are looking to us because we are leading the way in our work in this area.

So kudos to the team in that, and I feel lucky to have you all here in your excellence.

So yes, we've been recognized at the um National Recreation Park Association where Damien and I presented on water conservation, and we're we're probably the leader.

Probably, yes, we're gonna go ahead and call you later.

I'm gonna own it.

Uh it it and I'll share a quick story if you don't mind.

But I was that person who would get that call back before this job, and we'd have to run around at three o'clock in the afternoon in hand turnoff controllers because it was gonna rain.

So uh think about that in 7,000 irrigation clocks now, right?

What we were at before.

700.

700, I'm sorry.

Yes, 7,000 of those little guys.

It was exhausting.

So we're we've really moved moved the needle.

So thank you.

Beautiful, thank you so much.

Well, we'll start with um uh councilman Watson from McKew.

Thank you, uh committee chair.

I've got a um chuckle a little bit.

Um my mom's not watching because we kept out too late last night, but our favorite TV show is Law and Order, and she loves the spin-offs.

Uh Law and Order, criminal intent.

She's it's her addiction.

She's got to watch it all.

I was thinking with parks and rack, we could have a spin-off, the water conservation.

So parks and rec WCU.

This is exciting work that you're doing, and I could see the enthusiasm that you display for not just the technology, but the outcomes for our neighborhood.

So I'm uh really appreciate the presentation.

I was curious on the technology.

You shared uh the central command um center that you're uh programming all of the irrigation through.

You're programming new pipes and old pipes.

How are, I mean, what's the uh life cycle or the uh or the impacts of programming one technology for that entire kind of old and the new.

Are there is there breakages?

Do we have to um replace um some of those old irrigation faster so that the central command can really work at the highest level?

I'm just curious how with old and new.

What are the the what breakages are you seeing?

So one of the um pieces of equipment that we install whenever we do uh central control conversion, so going into an old park that has uh the old old controllers or couple controllers, um, usually has one point of connection for the water.

So we put uh what's called a master valve and a flow sensor at the point of connection, uh, the water source, and the master valve and flow sensor is wired to the controller.

So you then learn, um, and that's the controller learning how many gallons per minute is normal operating range for that irrigation system.

So while a park's irrigating at night, the controller's talking with this flow sensor throughout the night, and all of a sudden the flow sensor spike you got a broken head or or old pipe broke.

The flow sensors like you're running at 300 gallons a minute when you should be at 50, there's a problem.

The master valve is one singular valve on the entire irrigation system that it'll go into a little testing like got a high flow alarm.

Let's turn it off, turn it back on.

Okay.

Still got a high flow.

So the third time it'll shut the whole system.

It's intelligent enough to know to calibrate based on the old and new system.

Yeah, we tell the controller to do that.

We put it in learn mode and say, um, you know, we know the system is looking good.

This is a normal operating range, but if some something triggers it at night, it'll shut it down.

Two other quick questions.

I know golf it's its own authority.

Um, how are we evaluating or sharing information with your irrigation process for parks um with golf?

Um, I would assume golf has um they are a top user for Denver water.

There are some triggers that you all are using a similar.

I'm curious on that.

Yes, so we collaborate with golf.

Actually, that chart I did on the consumption report, that irrigation water requirement.

Uh we shared that with them.

So we we do the similar calculations.

Um golf systems are different than parks, and they they are their separate uh entity, but yeah, we collaborate.

We're talking with them um next week on some some of these new technologies that we're trying.

So we you know bounce stuff back and forth.

Are you aware they are integrating any of this technology?

Not I mean they're not here to speak for themselves.

Yes, they do have the same technology, and actually, even like a step above us.

But if you go to a golf headquarters, their superintendent has a big big screen TV with their entire irrigation system uh across it.

So they actually and they'll actually adjust on the daily for that ET.

Oh, you know, where us showing you we send it out monthly, so um, because they're a little more, you know, manageable more intensely than us.

You know, they got the one golf course too that the superintendent is in charge of where a district uh manager has 40 50 parks, so um they do have similar technology for sure.

And the last question committee shared uh purple piping, you shared a little bit about that with the park in um Central Park.

Are we still leveraging the purple piping for the non-faltable portable uh recycled water um throughout the system, or we are just um using it in specific parks like maybe City Park and others?

We um have to partner with Denver Water on that because that's their system.

Um, so whenever Denver water is they've slowed down recently on expanding that, but about 25% of our parks are irrigated with the um recycled water from the purple pipe.

Um, but we still do um partner with them on uh converting parks to recycled water.

So we are limited by wherever that infrastructure is, which is really in the northeast, northwest, um a little bit in the east district.

They're looking at expanding to Fairmount Cemetery.

So we're looking at picking up a couple parks along that, so yeah, we have some um great partnerships with Denver Water, and we'll work with them on that.

Um it's just moving a little slower these days.

Park Hill, uh, the new park is going to be irrigated by the Purple Pike.

Yep, so the recycled water fills a pond uh that's kind of on the uh north-east side of the park, and then a pump station pulls from that pond to irrigate that park.

So park hill will have um recycled water.

Um actually, this picture right here is Veterans Park.

Yes.

You know, down by South High and I-25, and this little building up by the highway there, in between the two ball fields, that's the declorination station.

Okay.

And then they fill City Ditch.

So back when they did T-Rex, um, City Ditch used to flow underneath I-25.

They didn't want that anymore.

So City Ditch comes from Chatfield.

So they cut it off, and Denver Water uh resupplied City Ditch with recycled water.

So that's what fills Wash Park, City Park, and Denver Country Club.

Okay, thank you, sir.

Thank you.

Awesome, wonderful.

Um, thank you for your questions, Councilman Heights.

Thank you, Committee Chair.

You're a native.

You are you from Denver?

Uh no.

Where are you guys from?

I'm from Alaska originally, but I moved to Colorado in 1992.

Which is because you called it City Ditch.

I just figured you were right.

That is.

Yeah.

Anyway, um, so central control.

I I mean, I think that's awesome.

Also, your presentation, I kept coming up with questions and you kept answering them.

It's really frustrating for me.

I just use it on it.

Uh in case um people don't understand the automation that's possible, like I can from my phone control my lights, my air conditioning, my wines, cameras, the fans, and more using my phone at home.

I can change the brightness and color of my lights using my phone.

Um, it automatically raises the blinds when um when the sun rises, automatically lowers the blinds when it gets 80 degrees um in my home.

I set my uh particularly in the summer, um, I set it so that I it gets really warm as I'm trying to save.

Uh, you know, save save power, save the planet.

So um, so my question was I sure hope that it uh saves water when it rains, and you've already answered that.

So I think that's fabulous that you're leaning into technology.

I think that um, you know, the technology for me as someone with a disability, it's harder for me to operate the blinds of behind a couch or you know, whatever.

But um, uh, but there's also an economic payoff, too.

As you say, it's uh it's you know, save lots of water.

Um, it saved uh staff time going, you know, manually turning off the um uh the the spigots uh but it also um it's the there's you know the perception as well like when it's raining and the and the parks uh you know sprinklers are still going so um so yeah so I just I want to thank you for leaning into technology and um uh and it's awesome that we're a national leader.

That's um it's incredible.

Yeah.

Uh can we say leadist?

We're the leadest of the no, I don't know, it's uh maybe I'll tell I'll call it what you tell me to call it, but I think we are probably the leadest in the nation.

Okay, um I've seen water trucks in Cheesman Park.

I know that's not as related to technology, but is that what is that do we just is it reclaimed water or um most likely um forestry uh uses those trucks to supplementally water trees?

Um it's generally potable, so depending on where they get the water from.

You know, they have a uh tremendous amount of trees that they've planted.

So while we work with them in its entirety to supply the correct amount of water, depending on the element, you know, right now it's really dry, right?

Um, and most of our irrigation systems are down.

You'll see them more prolifically across the city because they're adding that water over winter.

So it's generally potable and it's generally forestry, adding supplemental water.

Is it possible that um at some point the technology will uh will be, you know, the I think you mentioned Toro, a brand name, but uh uh that the technology will uh be able to differentiate turf grass.

I think you were saying that you can um spot areas that are uh native vegetation versus you know western European vegetation, um, and I'm assuming at some point you'll also be able to detect your you know, spot trees that need more water or less water.

So we call that um hydrozoning.

So uh newer irrigation systems are hydrozoned, and so that's a separate zone for um a different landscape type or a different type of plant material that requires a different amount of water.

So you can do exactly what you're saying.

So uh something that we've done in water conservation is try to establish a universal uh labeling um for all of our units.

So you can go in and say zone one is uh turf with trees, and zone two is just trees, and so new irrigation systems out, you know, where they're doing them in Northfield and all that, that'll have an irrigation zone just for trees, so you know we can't avoid that supplemental watering, but in our older parks where you just have big rotors, just kind of spraying everything.

So we can actually save water by dispatching those water trucks, and they're just watering uh new trees for establishment, and we're not blasting water over a big area.

But yes, you're right.

The new systems are hydrozoned for specific landscape types, it's labeled in the system.

Um, and we can then we can group them together and program them all the same.

And then when Lynn talked about the rain shutdowns, say we get a half inch of rain, and we have a group of uh zones all for native vegetation.

We could shut those down for two weeks, but if it's an athletic field and we get a half inch of rain, we're only gonna shut it down for like two days.

So that's that's the next evolution of fine-tuning the uh the programming.

We do have areas like that, but it's just you know the next step.

So now that we're almost done with the center control build out, now it's this next evolution of really um leveraging our efficiencies.

We have to, if I may nerd out a little more on the weather.

Um I've I've really pushed, and we started doing this year like a shoulder season rain holds, so less rain, longer shutdown.

Because you know, in April, we don't need the amount of water in a park that we need in June or July.

So we have, you know, I've pushed out the shoulder season April, October, where you get a little bit of rain and we're shut off for a little bit longer.

And and I just that's one of my favorite things to do because you know, you don't want to be driving to work, you don't need a constituent colonie April 17th.

Why is this park watering?

It's raining.

You know, it might not be a uh quarter inch of rain, and and you know, in in the high season we want to water to that quarter inch of rain, but in the low season we don't need that, so that's one of the fun things we can do with our weather system.

Yeah, and making sure that we have uh microclimate accessibility as in the 20 different uh stations, knowing uh you know that Denver's Denver's got some uh square mileage and um, and there are you know um thunderstorms that happen in very localized areas, so may not may not rain for the entire city or maybe right.

I mean might rain hard in one spot and not so much the other.

We had uh Sloan's van, and it slums, they got an inch in August, I think, start of August.

It was Sloan's and Berkeley inch rain, nobody else got that.

We used to have a controller at I-25 in the Steel Street.

About every rainstorm, the lightning would knock that controller out.

Nowhere else, just that one.

So that'd be crazy.

So, um, so you're working with forestry as well, or I mean, they don't have to come up with our own set of technology.

Yeah, super.

Yeah, thank you so much.

Thank you.

Awesome.

Thank you for your questions.

Um, um councilwoman Romero Campbell.

Thank you.

Council Power Time Romero.

Thank you, committee chair.

Um, so I'm interested a little bit, and great to know that I'm in east, um, it covers a little bit further up, and so I can dig down and maybe um offline ask you more about um what that covers and how you're thinking about that for Southeast Denver.

But those are also areas that have I think it still covers the Kennedy golf course, but I've got a few larger parks that aren't covered in that area.

So just it was more of a curiosity of how that's being covered.

So those are so we have 32 antennas across the city called base station antennas, because the um the majority of our central control are have uh 450 megahertz radios.

So they speak to an antenna, and then the antennas tied to the city network.

So the shading on this map is um estimated antenna communication ranges.

Okay.

Um that we conserved as conservatively say is a mile and a half.

So um that area is covered by central control.

The shaded area is our is our antenna communication range, which is estimated, which a lot of them go further um than that.

So that doesn't um even though an area of a district isn't shaded, it's um covered.

We like we test and communicate with all of our controllers out there.

So really sorry that's a little misleading.

Like we're not covering outside city boundaries, that's just where an antenna can communicate to.

Um, so parks in those areas do are tied into the central control network.

Okay, great.

Um, that's good to know.

Uh, which kind of leads me to my next question, um, so when a resident calls, it what will change for them now in the new system?

Uh, because I do get calls, we get emails, people text me with the open gov cartograph.

Quicker.

Yeah.

So I'm just wondering like what does that look like on the user experience?

Is it still 311 or is it I or what's the open?

I think cartographs to be important, uh, we still have a water line, if you would, say it's Saturday and one of your constituents' uh sprinkler going on for 15 hours if that happened.

Um, there's still that availability just to call 311, which would dispatch somebody within the district to go address that on a weekend.

But I think to uh Lynn's point with cartograph, we're gonna have that much quicker response.

Um, a work order is gonna be put into the technician's um uh I guess work assignment, where that may be delayed in in yesterday's form till the next day.

So what the user will see is the response time is gonna increase and with central control.

Our ability to maybe even be in front of that before the 311 could happen as well.

So what you might see is reduced complaints, but increase response time if you do receive a complaint.

Okay, so still tell people 311 behind the scenes saying it's yeah, cartograph rolled out to us late June, so we're still in the implementation phase, and then this winter is we're gonna start developing those standard operating procedures on, you know, with 311 calls and right now it's an internal work order system, but how it's gonna be rolled out to the public is um to be determined.

Awesome.

Um the central control build out, you said it's still in process.

Can is it um is it still in process?

Is it funded?

Are there other like what else needs to happen?

Because it sounds like you have that build out and then the technology that is at I'm thinking like uh the chart of what it looks like of what it looks like on the ground.

That's a great question.

The build out is about 95% complete.

Literally, every park in the city is on central control, and the only spots remaining are some of our bigger median stretches, like Spear Boulevard has about 40 controllers on it.

So some of them have like one or two zones, so we're kind of um waiting to leverage that with say irrigation improvements.

Then we'll do the central control.

Doesn't make sense to go out and do like 40 units on spear that won't have as much of an impact.

So the rest of the build out um is gonna kind of be phased.

We have big sections of Monaco, Spear, Alameda, where we literally just have a bunch of different water taps and controllers to do.

Um so we're trying to just leverage that with other projects so that um it's beneficial and efficient.

Great.

Um you mentioned Monaco um and in the parks.

I know that we were having an issue there for a while of people handle uh vandalization.

Yeah, they said the right.

I'm glad people were vandalizing, and taking some um some of those pipes and other things.

Uh are there new protections in place to be able to prevent that moving forward, or so not with not with the technology we're talking about, but we're trying different things like we're uh this year we just did plastic backflows, so they're not valuable.

That's great.

Um we um Jill started initiative two years ago.

We put unions on every backflow, so we take them all off in the winter.

Problem is this year, the thieves are going out with like literally like Denver water tools to shut water off and then steal the backflow.

Usually once we had a backflow on and the systems activated, some people rip them out like with trucks and whatnot, but then water's spraying.

Well, now they're going in and turning the water off and stealing the backflows.

So we're switching to plastic.

Um we work closely with Denver Water to come up with an approved um setup to use plastic backflows, so you start seeing a lot of those out on the median areas.

Um, but yeah, the backflow theft is just a constant uh uh struggle.

And the devices are usually um targeted in a small setting, so medians um small small drinking fountains, different things that require something around two inches, fair to say.

Um so that would be those medians that you're referring to are the the targets.

Um they're quick, yeah.

So any backflow three inches and above is made with uh ductile iron, which isn't worth anything.

Uh it's not worth anything at the recycle areas either.

So parks are pretty pretty safe.

Okay, great.

That's really good to know.

Um, because I know that was a little bit of an issue there for us.

Um the other question I had is um you had talked about you know 85 parks, um 40 years old, or you know, our infrastructure is 40 years old.

What are the plans to update um the infrastructure moving forward?

Like, do we have is that part of a master plan?

Is that it's a must-have, not a nice to have.

Like, can you talk to us a little bit more about plans moving forward for um the maintenance?

So um, we redo irrigation with a lot of different projects to do a playground, they'll do irrigation new irrigation around the playground.

There is a lack of just replacing full systems all at once.

Um, they're looking at City Park.

Obviously, that's our largest park.

They started out, it was gonna be oh, it's gonna be 10 million dollars to redo city park, and then the next year later, I think it's gonna be 20 million dollars to redo City Park.

Now they're upwards of like 200 million dollars to redo.

It's wild.

Um, but we uh have created uh in-house irrigation construction crew that is focusing on brand new irrigation for parks, uh, five acres and less um with this irrigation that's 35 years or older.

So that just started this year, another in-house um investment because you crunch the numbers on brand new irrigation install, and it's just it's very expensive.

And we have 3,300 acres of it out there, so that's part of the challenges I was talking about in the beginning.

We have just a such a huge system.

Um, you know, there's pipes and in Wash Park and City Park that are still made with um, you know, we still have lead pipe in the ground and and asbestos concrete pipe, and um, you start talking about all the challenges of pulling that out or replacing that.

Um, so it is very challenging, but um parks is very committed to uh to as much as we can.

And I might add we have a great relationship with planning design and construction.

Um this consumption report that Damien referred to back shows what we're using, but it doesn't show the number of breaks, correct?

Um, or the amount of labor time in what park it and why.

Cartographs can allow us to match or mirror that.

Um we did a real-time exercise or uh a cost analysis on where we're putting all our parts.

Um I believe very wholeheartedly that if you buy it, it's not on the shelf, it's in the ground.

So there's three different methods the water management piece, the amount of labor cost, and then why are we continually repairing the same place?

And so along with planning design and construction, we have a great relationship to provide that information, and then leverage just like Damien said down the road, a full project.

That's great.

Um, I just think about you know, in Southeast Denver, we have uh we have a lot of parks, which is great, um, very highly used because of athletics.

I think they're like prioritized um athletic, a lot of athletic fields, highest number of B fields.

Yeah, a lot of fun and very highly used all the time, all day long.

Um, and two golf courses.

So there, and with I think fortunately, there's a tree canopy that has you know matured.

Um, and it sounds like that is all factored in as far as like the water usage, what's needed.

Um, we've talked a lot about turf, but it am I correct in the in the assumption that you're working closely with forestry to also be able to maintain that um tree canopy that's in the parks.

Yeah.

Yeah, forestry has a lot of rules um to protect existing tree canopy for installing new irrigation.

So if we have a lot of tree canopy in the area, we'll have to directionally board, and that's a big reason for like the city park irrigation cost estimate going up.

Almost the whole thing has to be um directionally bored to protect trees.

So um yeah, we're close.

Um, and then a lot of the new irrigation projects are doing like what we talked about earlier with the hydro zoning, where we'll go run zones just to the trees.

So if we ever have drought conditions in the future, you can apply less water to the grass, it can go dormant, it can bounce back the next year, but we can keep watering just the trees.

Um so we do that in our central control as well.

We label zones, turf with trees, turf with no trees.

So as a drought response plan, we can cut back water on just turf areas, but keep water going to uh the irrigation zones that have trees.

So yeah, definitely a huge priority in parks.

Very cool every yeah.

I I appreciate that.

Um it's kudos to you for the work that you do and maintaining it.

Um, I'm really excited that you're using technology in new and innovative ways.

It's very cool.

Um, and it's you know, you're you're taking what is it?

Own it, you're you're the best in the region.

You're the best.

What am I the um leadest?

Yeah.

Thank you, Councilman, for that.

So thank you.

I appreciate that.

Thank you.

This is such a great presentation.

Everyone has some questions.

So we have a couple more people on the queue.

Councilwoman Parody, you're up next.

Yeah, Madam Chair.

I'm so sorry for being late.

This has been really great.

Um, and I um I was lucky enough to sit on the parks related committee for the bond.

Um, and so that obviously had like a huge scope.

Um, but there were some irrigation projects in there that I think our committee had really hoped to see in the bond package, and the bond being what it was, didn't make it through.

Um, but I was um interested in tuned into those just because of the degree of potential water conservation.

So was curious um to hear a little bit more about the bullet point about the um, and I apologize if I miss a little bit about this by being late, but the bullet point on how many of the systems are um what is like 40 years old or more, 85 parks with four-year-old systems, um, and how those just a little more about like what would be um the biggest opportunities for water savings among those systems, like but you know, more around that and whether any of those are budgeted for through CIP dollars anytime soon, um, knowing that uh City Park did not make it into the bond and um i at least would have hoped that it would have but you know too many things so um do you mean do you have the um in your mind the 40 year old water savings and then if it's fine if it's not in your mind to be clear but if possible um if we need to we will come back with the CIP dollars for you yeah I'm super curious about that like yes what's actually probably need to confirm with um planning design yeah I don't have specific answers but I what I can say is we generally estimate so if we convert an old park to central control so we can save almost 20% well right just the really old system so it's still old infrastructure that's you know in the pipes are gonna break more often than a newer park um and it's almost similar savings if we do modern irrigation compared to the old irrigation um then we can almost save 20% as well so that's just that's just blanket numbers like if you do both things um no they don't add we don't say 40% because we still have to put down water um but we can kind of do you know it definitely does help save a little bit more interesting um and whenever we do it is park standard so if they go in and do a brand new irrigation system it's gonna have central control and flow sensing right and and those um I gotcha modern tools um but it's also going to be designed in a way where it sprays over sidewalks less um it has separate irrigation for flower beds where old system just spray over grass yeah flower beds.

So this is actually then I mean that that's actually what you just said to me makes me really happy because in fact then this system is um taking out a like creating a huge amount of um water savings that I mean the fact that it's actually equivalent to replacing old system with a new system is pretty amazing.

Correct yeah you're you're kind of you're not changing the field conditions but you're helping um direct a tech to the problem quicker because it can tell you what zone has an issue what zone has a high flow um so it does help yeah can you answer a really silly question for me which is um if you look at one of the oldest systems versus what would be included with the new system what's actually different so um are the pipes made of different material like is it just that they're old so they're worn out you mentioned that it would be more um like maybe the sensors and things like that are better I've no idea but what would actually be different like in a really technical sense yeah so pipe material um a lot of our uh so I was saying the older main lines in parks we have asbestos concrete pipe we have lead pipe um or even if it is PVC a little bit PVC pipe you know on 90 degree um turns like in a system those are the points that weaken so nowadays in a new system we have a a mechanical fitting there that like clamps onto the pipe and allows it to move a little bit without breaking where an old system um with that pipe weakens and the ground settles a little bit something like that your your pipes crack you have a main you have a main break and you're digging down um that's the other thing the old old uh irrigation systems in wash park some of the irrigation mains are eight feet deep like they they install them almost like city walls in the road they're 10 feet yeah it's wild where new systems have standards and main line is three feet deep the the uh called lateral zones are the the ones that have the sprinklers those are like 20 inches deep so much more accessible easy to work on um the new nozzles are more efficient you've probably seen the new irrigation ads out there called MP rotators where it looks like kind of little fingers of water those are very they're very efficient they have a lower precipitation rate so you run them longer but it uh you have less runoff and more fluctuations that operates so you're using more modern equipment um the valves the old uh sprinkler valves that we have out there on those these 40 year old systems are brass, um, those are really expensive and have plastic valves, but they're just as strong, easier to work on.

Um, so yeah, there's advancements in the uh controls, the control technology plus the equipment as well.

All right, well, I would love to know if any of the any of the um really old equipment is like what's slated for a replacement from whatever funding sources.

I'll get that information to Hayesus for you.

Yeah, but this is actually great.

I feel much better about actually the fewer parts that are not making it to the pond because of this.

So thank you for that.

I uh I also brett, in my mind, you were on my mind for some reason, but there are places um just because I know your passion for you know, like forward thinking and and resiliency and all that.

We have areas that we run valves that don't have electricity, which I thought would be of interest to you by solar.

So um it's it's not if you could elaborate just a little bit or um, it has improved greatly um as well with the lithium-ion batteries, so you do uh uh the same box, but we'll do like a double door one.

So the solar equipment's on in one side of the box, the central control is on the front side, and then um you'll see a pole with a solar panel.

If you're uh walk between the web and the post, we just did Macintosh plaza with solar.

We'll go on a little filter.

It feels like it's the web's you know backyard, but for some reason the the wire was cut, and to get new power there, we had to come from like two blocks down 14th.

And so it's just like costs ridiculous.

Yeah, so we just went solar.

We have another area north federal, same way.

Um, not able to get power to the center mediums where those historic trees are.

And uh, so we've resorted to sort of battery powered or then if it's solar, so you were on my mind.

I don't know why.

Well, and that's like one of these things where I mean that's such a good example of um it's the solar transition, it's not just about the energy savings, right?

It's also about the like um if that's like a little microgrid, you know, like it's just being um getting the power right at the source and not having to worry about all the connectivity.

Um, well, thank you for that.

I love that fact.

And I was thinking about with the pipes when I used to work in a mine when I was very young.

One of my many jobs in the pine.

It wasn't usually underground.

If I was underground, it was usually because that's where we stored extra files.

But usually, I'm gonna divert this in air meeting.

Um, I was I was 17, 18, it was fine.

But um, we did one of our jobs in the environmental department was to test all the airflow in the pipes to make sure that they weren't corroding at the corners or getting too much swept in them, and so we we would say we go up on the catwalks and like having tests the airflow for the pipe to make sure that um when I did it was going through at the right rate so the pipe is very kind of worn out anyway.

Um, I had to say our pipe knowledge.

I'm just gonna love this work.

Gotta visit it.

That's all I know about pipes.

I'm done now.

We're here very late.

We were here very early.

One of the conversations was about having a council roast.

Now we know what happened.

Let's take into it.

Um uh councilwoman Lewis has some questions as well.

Actually, I didn't know.

I just have one quick question.

I um have been reading about water conservation and been looking at articles that have had discussions about the upper basin and the lower basin and the concerns about how we are um looking at water deficits in the future.

And so I'm I'm just curious if any of that plays into how you all are planning long term in terms of water usage, um, and your long-term strategy.

So I think that's reflected in kind of what we're talking about is the modern park design.

Uh-huh.

So looking at you know, a new park, um uh Central Park or or some of the um prairie basin parks in Northfield where we're shifting um the ratio of intensely irrigated um gluegrass areas to now that's only about 30% of the park and 70% of the park is native vegetation.

Got it, you know, where you compare it to um uh cheese men or wash park, where it's literally, you know, the whole thing is grass and trees.

So definitely that's that's a big focus is shifting that.

We're looking at landscape conversions as well.

So going into um some of these traditional parks and picking out, you know, underutilized areas and converting them from a bluegrass uh landscape to a native landscape.

Um and then just things like this right here, um, irrigation technology.

Um, you know, we partnered with Denver Water from the get-go on this extra control build-out.

Um they helped fund some of it with like cost-sharing things, so they're they're uh on board with that as well.

Um so with the with the new park that is coming on board for the park you'll, I mean what we're calling the park you're park for now.

Are there um technologies or designs, or even the native um that you all are discussing that are a part of the renderings or the proposals or the questions that we are asking communities in order to be able to have those be a part of the long-term design?

I believe there's a large um native area.

I think the whole areas, I think they're trying to create like mimic a um natural stream through the middle of it, utilizing native vegetation.

There's that big um detention pond out on the uh northeast corner of it that's all already all native um grass.

So I think that's a very large component of uh that park design, which I think is right now in the whole public process.

Um, yeah, we'll absolutely councilwoman Lewis incorporate the hybrid approach in Park Hill Park, yeah.

Um, you know, we'll have uh turf-driven fields or those things for those amenities, but it'll have that hybrid approach.

Is that a part of the conversation that you all are having with communities?

Just to I just find that most folks aren't thinking about water conservation probably as often as you all are, or maybe as often as I am, and are worried about how long we might really need to start thinking and utilizing water differently.

And so I'm just curious as how are you all approaching the conversations with community to say the reason that we're doing this is in order to be able to conserve water because you know we have several states are in who are in fight right now about water, um, 100%.

Um we hold ourselves as the leader in this, and we expect ourselves to be that entity that's providing that communication and example to the communities.

Um we have a uh project right now, it's called In Denver's Nature, where um, you know, we're using that media platform to uh exhibit just what Damien said, this hybrid approach where we had historically, you know, large flower bed displays and uh massive turf areas, and so we're mindful that um we can still provide an aesthetic appeal, but with a more water conservation-minded approach, lovely um the native landscapes and uh pollinator gardens and the type of plants that we can use now, um are mostly perennial-based, they're year after year, so we're not pulling them out and replanting them.

And it should be an example to these communities that they can have that too.

Thank you so much.

Is there anything that you all have that I might be able to share with my constituents?

Because I just want people to use less water.

So, um, and we've thought of that.

I mean, you know, even myself, I've looked at well, I'm not a good example.

Sorry, I have horses, so I allow them to eat anything because I only want to mow just like a really small patch.

But um, yeah, certainly provide um information through Pazus.

Thank you for it in Denver's nature, and uh some of the projects, especially around you that maybe they could visit or see, but um again, we hold ourselves as that entity, it should be set in the example, yeah.

Thank you so much.

Um you all did give us some information about the native vegetation in the um along Quebec, and folks were like complaining right real heavy about it until I told them what it was, and you all gave me information, and then I didn't get a call from another constituent after that.

And so, like the more we can, the more you know, the more I can proactively get that information out.

I just would dearly appreciate it.

Of course.

And thanks for you all's work.

Thank you.

Thanks for having us.

For example, Quebec, they only turn the irrigation on for about three weeks in July.

Right out there.

So normally uh saying from April to October when we need to irrigate, Quebec, they just turned it on in July.

And that was just because it's a new conversion.

Yeah.

Um, so it would probably be less.

Could turn it off completely.

See, that those are those are so helpful for me to know.

I'd love to share those types of gyms with my community so they understand like these are valuable in many ways in terms of like cost savings for the city, but also great for the bugs and things.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, exactly.

So thank you.

All right.

That's a great point.

Water conservation too.

I'm sorry, no.

Can you send the water conservation information to everybody?

Yeah.

For just different things, that's a great idea to continue putting out there.

Awesome.

Thank you all so much.

I did have one question.

Um that didn't get or maybe two that didn't get asked already.

Um, you mentioned that we are Denver Waters number one customer.

So I'm curious if they stakeholder us when they're making these rate changes and how the rate changes in January will affect your plan.

So yeah, they involve us.

Um they inform us before they actually get approved by their council.

Um, but we actually do have very favorable municipal rates.

So we pay um about $2.75 for a thousand gallons of potable irrigation water.

And for the recycled water, we only pay 30 cents for a thousand gallons of recycled water.

So um, but they still affect us very much the rate the rate increases, um, especially since COVID.

Um, before that, they'd usually only go up one to two percent a year, but since COVID and the different supply chain issues and all that, um they've gone up, you know, four or five percent, usually on average five percent.

Yeah, interesting.

Involve us might be the wrong word, but they do inform us before our budgeting, so that we can you know speak with the parts.

We should tell them we're the leaderist, leaders, they do so.

Actually, Denver Water did reach out to us, forget what year it was where it's really rainy all the way through like late June, and they said no other municipality reduced their water use as much as Denver Parks did.

So we work really closely with Denver Water.

Um, they've been a good partner with all this.

That's great.

I'm glad they do at least communicate, but it would be great to know a little bit more about or for them to work a little bit closer, it sounds like.

But um my other question, you had the different types of parks or different types of landscaping, including like forestry, and I was curious.

How do we look at dog parks?

Dog parks uh don't have irrigation unless it's um there's like sometimes there's those fenced-off trees in there, but that's on efficient like drip irrigation for those areas.

Um, so dog parks are just have usually the new ones have a drinking fountain with the doggy drinking fountain on there, but zero water use.

Yeah, they're not turf um minded, that's not our our desired scape to put in a dog park, it's usually not sustainable at all.

So when I um had that stat of 3,300 irrigated acres, um the GIS staff downtown, they'll go on GIS and they'll highlight areas of the park that's irrigated.

So they'll exclude pathways and dog parks and playgrounds.

So when I say 3,300 acres, that doesn't include any parking lots and all that, or dog parks that are non-irrigated, or the infields, the infields of ball fields.

I think one thing that I do hear from constituents is they want to go to dog parks, but then when there's no nothing for their dogs to run on, so they prefer.

So that's why they end up at like the nice grass parks, and then have their dog running around.

But um, yeah, that's something I guess just to think about a little bit more.

But I appreciate you all.

It makes me very proud and us as a council very proud, and I'm sure our constituents very proud when they hear about the great work that we're doing because we don't know where our water supply will be in the future.

And um, thank you to my colleagues for their great questions as well.

Thank you.

We appreciate you having us and letting us display something that we're really proud of too.

And I owe a couple follow-ups through Hazus.

So, Councilwoman Perity, I'll be happy to get you the CIP.

Thank you.

And Councilwoman Lewis, um, your question as well, more about in Denver's nature and how your community can be you know receptive to maybe um exploring that in their own yards.

So thank you.

And probably Jesus, if you could send to the whole council, and then hi Councilman Heinz wanted to say one more thing.

Yeah, just to um just to put it on your reader.

I've mentioned this before.

Um we want the entire city to be part of the transition to native vegetation, and so uh, you know, Councilmember Lois, um part of most of her areas outside of the Abertedale like achievement park.

I think there's there are spots outside of the jogging pads, which makes a lot of sense to convert to native vegetables.

So we obliged that.

We're ready to be coming along, take the nasty emails that might happen, help with some education as well as to why it's happening.

Yeah, it's a really valid point.

Um, we want water here for not only my grandchildren, but theirs.

Correct.

And so it's probably in Denver, it's like you just have to push that button.

Like everybody has that value in this town.

And then they're like, oh, maybe not everybody.

Well, yes, let's say everybody does.

Let's hope and dream that.

And um, again, I just want to let everyone know nothing's on consent, so we are adjourned.

Thank you.

Thank you guys.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.