Thank you everyone for your patience.

We're now at a quorum.

So we're going to go ahead and call to order the Wednesday, October 15, 2025 trekking medical.

How about Western Regional Water Commission?

Meeting.

And start out with roll call, please.

Paula Anderson.

Here.

Alexis Hill.

Here.

Clara Andreola.

Naomi Dirt here.

Mary Louis Garcia here.

Miguel Martinez.

Susan Sever.

Kathleen Taylor.

Diane Vanderwell.

Here.

We have a quorum.

Great.

Thank you very much.

And we'll move on to Pledge of Agents.

Mr.

Martinus, would you mind leaving this pledge?

And to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God and liberty and justice for all.

Thank you, sir.

Moving on to item number three, public comment.

Do we have any public comment?

I have none.

Anyone in the room wishing to comment?

Great.

Then what we'll do is we'll move on to number four, approval of the agenda.

Motion to approve.

Second.

We have a motion and a second.

All those in favor signified by saying I.

All opposed.

Passes unanimously.

And move on to approval of men.

It's from the August 20th, 2025 meeting of the Western Regional Water Commission.

Move to approve.

Second.

Okay, we have a motion and a second.

All those in favor signify by saying aye.

All opposed.

And now we'll move on to Dr.

Perry on number six, a presentation on climatology.

Thank you, sir, for being here, and thank you for your patience with us this morning.

Thank you so much for the invitation.

It's wonderful to be here.

It's great to see some rain outside and some snow on the mountains.

And um that uh we all welcome, welcome that this time of year.

I've got the clicker, so is should I sit on the first second time?

Now I'm gonna just advance.

I think you have a patient.

Yeah, it's I mean, you have to bring up the power.

It's sharing the screen.

Is it not in the water?

There we go.

There we go.

Yeah, just yeah.

So my name's Baker Perry, and I'm uh I think I can still call myself the new state climatologist.

This is starting my second year.

I'm also a professor of climatology at the University of Nevada Reno, and it's really been fantastic to be here in Reno in Nevada and to learn more about this part of the world.

Uh, I'm gonna just give you a bit of background um on where I came from.

Some of my formative years as a child were spent at 13,000 feet in the Andes of Bolivia.

You can't guess who I am in this photo right here.

I I went to some of second, third and fourth grade in rural Bolivia, and we took family outings up as high as 18,000 feet on the on the peak.

That uh let's see, now I can't this fire's not going on the screen, but up is you know as high as those glaciers.

And so this is incredibly formative for me.

My family roots were all in North Carolina, but my parents are from the mountains of North Carolina, and so finished the rest of my schooling and did all of my um college and graduate school room in North Carolina as well, and that's where I really began to focus more on the meteorology and climatology of snowfall, of uh uh precipitation and instrumentation in particular.

So I had all kinds of things set up at our family farm, um, including vertically pointing radar, weighing precipitation gauges, manual observations, weather balloons, other sorts of weather stations, and this ended up being a really important test bed uh for me to then see what we might take to other places.

So wait a minute, how old are you in this period?

Okay, so this was post-HD.

So let me clarify.

This is uh fast forward and uh so after I finished my PhD, I really got into the instrumentation.

But I I will say that as a as a you know, as a young kid, whenever snow was in the forecast, I was camping out, and uh, much to my mother's uh consternation because I had a cheaper tent when I use days, one of these storms, and it actually collapsed on me uh due to heavy snow.

So I've always been interested in monitoring, and I got sent to the principal's office multiple times in high school for trying to listen to my Nova weather radio during class.

So anyway, uh, but this is yeah, this is starting out of my research career, these uh these slides right here, and then that led me back to Bolivia and the Andes, where of course we're seeing huge changes in glaciers and snow and and ice.

This is one glacier that we took students to in 1999 in the upper left, and by the time I went back in 2016, we're talking hundreds of feet of ice uh in this lake.

Lake Glacier Lake is the name of it that already uh disappeared as the glacier retreat.

So it's that's huge implications for water resources.

And in these communities uh downstream, we began to realize there was a major void in just basic understanding of columnological processes, especially around precipitation.

And so we started installing stations up in some of these higher locations above 16, 17,000 feet.

This is uh one of the highest permanent habitants in the world, 16,700 feet is alpaca farm and had a nice little island in the middle of his peak bog uh wetland there that we were able to put a weather station on.

And then we got some funding from the National Weather Service, sorry, from the National Science Foundation, NSF, and put in the highest precipitation station in the world.

This is going on 11 years now.

We have an incredible data record from near the top of the Calcutta ice cap, 18,500 feet.

Our Peruvian partners at the Peruvian National Meteorology and Hydrology Institute are now, they've they've been managing this station for the past four or five years, and so it's something we could hopefully we can continue to work on.

So I've been doing this work in the Andes when I got an unexpected call from National Geographic Society to join an expedition to Mount Everest in 2019.

And I had not really been looking to expand out of the Andes and um and I'd been to Nepal once before, but plenty to do just in North Carolina and the Andes.

And the invitation from National Geographic, it's hard to turn down, and the opportunity to work with just other top scientists.

And so I yeah, I accepted that and uh co-led the meteorology team that installed a network of weather stations on Mount Everest.

And so, why not Everest?

Well, again, the reason National Geographic and our other partners were very interested is water.

We fundamentally don't understand all the processes driving the change that we're seeing in the high mountains.

So this is a water security issue, and you know, these these, I mean, you all know this.

I mean, of course, just living here, just how important the snow melt is and sustaining the views downstream.

Same thing in the Himalaya, but even more of that is provided by melt from the glaciers, the glacier ice.

And then the other side of that coin, of course, is just the flood hazard.

Uh as the glaciers break up and we get lakes that form literally on top of the glaciers or near next to the glaciers, and we have avalanche activity and rock falls, we have heavy precipitation events.

We have more rain falling as opposed to snow up in these areas.

That can trigger some pretty massive flooding downstream.

And so that was the other major motivation for going here.

But before we went to Mount Everest, there was literally one station above about 19,645 feet in the entire world.

Okay, in the entire world.

This is despite the fact this is where the bulk of the nonpolar ice is found at above these elevations.

So in the Himalaya, the Kerakorum, Hindu Kush, what we call high mountain Asia, and of course in the Andes, and we just we knew more about the weather on Mars, weather and climbing on Mars than we did at the highest elevations of our own planet.

So that again is a motivation.

And so on Everest, we installed this network of five weather stations from the Sherpa community of Force all the way up to to just below the summit.

This is on the south side of Everest.

And I continue to serve as the PI, the principal investigator managing that network.

We're hopeful that next year we'll be able to formally pass this over to the government of Nepal and our partners at Tribond University there.

But since you know, since 2019, I've I've been going back just about every year.

And this is a this is a photo from our installation 2019 at the at the Bishop, sorry, at the left is on the balcony on the right is our 22 installation at the Bishop Rock just below the summit.

This is featured widely in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society and other scientific publications.

I was back last year.

Only had to go to base camp.

I were able to send our Nepali colleague and partner up to the higher stations, and so that was a that was um kind of I have to say nice not to have to go up to base camp.

I wouldn't be to do ice ball.

This is at our base camp station.

And I will point out that just last week, just over a week ago, this station recorded a near world record in 12-hour liquid equivalent snowfall.

We got 3.62 inches of liquid equivalent snow that's melted equivalent in this weighing precipitation gauge in 12 hours.

Okay, so that's equivalent to about 36, you know, three feet of snow in 12 hours, which you know we can come close to that around here, but we're pulling the data.

Blue Canyon, which is the highest quality ASAW station kind of in the in the Sierra, uh, so far from what we can tell is only at about three inches.

Um their maximum 12-hour look rope bullet.

So this is, I mean, this is in rare air, but again, we don't have enough observations.

There's there's plenty of places probably here in the Sierra, probably in the Himalaya that received more than this.

But this was this made this made headlines uh around the world because there were some trackers on the other side of the Chinese side that were trapped.

There's about a thousand people trapped in this.

But we're we're seeing data that we just never knew about, think would be possible.

And so that's one of the exciting things about this network, and it has huge implications, of course, for modeling for what we how we make future projections of of water resource availability, extreme events, et cetera, et cetera.

Um, so so that's a little bit about Everest.

Then earlier this year, I was on Acagua, which is the highest peak in uh Argentina and the highest peak in the Americas, uh, outside of Asia, and we worked with a number of organizations, including the regional department of irrigation uh and the snow and ice unit from uh Argentina, and we installed a network of weather stations from as low as um 14,000, well, 13,943 all the way up to the summit.

And again, two of those stations have comprehensive precipitation sensors.

And so this is a network again that's going to provide just some really important information for water resource planning in this part of the Andes because it's incredibly dry here.

There's so much of the water is coming from the glaciers, and of course, the snow up here as well.

So that that's a little bit about what I was up to this year.

And then I'm Nevada State Climatologists, that's 20% of my role.

So in some states, that's a full-time job, but uh, but here you know, that's just the reality of where we are.

So I do what do what I can.

And we're in the Department of Geography and the Mackey School of Earth Sciences and Engineering, which is in the College of Science.

And we are our primary responsibilities are to conduct research, Nevada's weather and climate.

We connect people with information, we do some public outreach and education, and try to translate science to to make it usable.

So I do go out, give presentations, I engage with the media, and probably most importantly, we produce quarterly climate reports for the state, and monthly drought updates and outlooks.

So here's just a quick view of our most recent quarterly climate report that covered June, July, August 2025.

Love to add whoever wants to be on our list, serve to receive these.

Uh, just uh you can send me an email.

There's a sign up on the on our website too.

But if you send me an email, make sure you get on the list.

And our monthly drought reports and outlooks are triggered if at least 50% of a county in the state is in drought designation.

So ever since I started for the past year, we've been doing these reports.

Okay, because as you can see in the top left right there, just about the entire state has uh some drought designation, abnormally dry to drought.

But I think we can you know we have twice monthly calls with the National Weather Service, the drought monitor authors to discuss the current state.

And I think next week we're gonna be able to make a stronger case that we can start pairing back, start improving some of those categories with the with the recent precipitation that we've been having.

So the water year is certainly off to the start.

And then we provide outlooks of um just from the um the national weather service maps, this the monthly and seasonal forecasts pass that along, reservoir storage information, incorporate a lot of snow tail uh observations just because we don't have a we don't have a state method that the state climate office manages.

So uh yeah, that's certainly a something I'd like to see more opportunities for is to look at enhancing and expanding some of the observational networks.

But until then, we're relying on SnowTel and whatever other National Weather Service and Federal agencies that we have.

And I did want to just briefly highlight this this report that my predecessor, Steph McAfee, and some of the folks at the Western Regional Climate Center prepared, which was a final report evaluating Nevada's drought monitoring network to improve drought early warning and response.

One of the key quotes I pulled from that is that a common and repetitive theme heard from partners was a need for more spatially and elevationally distributed precipitation gauges that measure frozen precipitation.

Okay, so these are we're talking about weighing precipitation gauges, just like the one I showed you at that we have at Everest Space Camp that can measure liquid and solid precipitation and that are very high quality.

So that is something I'm trying to again set up.

We've got one.

This is one I moved from North Carolina in Little Valley.

This UNR owns the Wittel Forest, and it's an incredible laboratory just between Tahoe and the Washoe Valley.

So we've got one precipitation station there, and then at the Little Valley Research Station, which is a 5500 feet, a little bit lower, more since in the main Washoe Valley.

I've got a we've got a micro rain radar that allows us to see the vertical structure of the of the storms and also can calculate the melting layer, the snow level in in real time as well.

And that's an operation.

That's something that we're almost we almost have worked out to provide in real time to our partners National Weather Service and others.

And then we've got some other sophisticated precipitation instrumentation there to really look at the processes here, especially with spillover, how much precipitation actually spills over the crest, and how does that vary from storm to storm?

What are the microphysical uh characteristics of that?

So that that's some local research that trying to spin up.

And again, hopefully we can begin to expand and enhance some of the observational networks across the state as well.

And then the last thing I'll just make a pitch for is that we we are looking for more citizen science precipitation observers.

There's a program called the Community Collaborative Rain, Hail and Snow Network, COCORAS, and we're in the midst of a fall recruitment drive right now to try to get more observers from across the state, especially in rural and higher elevation areas.

And so that's something we're working on that our office is working on with the National Weather Service.

And I'm I'm the state coordinator now for COCARAS.

And there's a lot of empty spaces in Nevada.

So that's something I'll just make a pitch, and I can I can send out some more information on if people are interested, or if you can help spread the word through your networks, uh that would be incredibly helpful.

So thank you very much.

I'm happy to entertain any questions or uh stay engaged, um connected with uh email or phone, happy to meet follow up as well.

And uh really appreciate you uh inviting me to come.

So thank you, Dr.

Perry.

We we appreciate that.

And what we'll do is we'll open it up to the board for questions.

Yeah, so I I think we all I think this is a great group to ask, make that ask because we represent people in a throughout Washoe County, you know, uh, or we know them.

And um I immediately thought of two a retired uh geology professor that lives way out in Red Rock, and then another one that uh another scientist that lives over near the border of uh the Valley California going upward Porter Town 395 area, but also probably others, and um so we could probably recruit them.

Um the other thing I wanted to say is when I you know I had two water jobs as one is state water planner and one as uh at the flood, and I I often struggled to get uh data for the public in an understandable format about our um status as one of the fastest warming cities throughout all that time.

And finally, they have now Climate Central, which is really I think a citizen uh Ryan group, our nonprofit type group that uh tracks heat and throughout the country.

Uh I don't know if they've expanded international, but um, I don't know.

I I've often called up to Western Regional Climate Center.

I've called to various people, and everyone there was no one that sort of was tracking this data or information that could share it with us, a reliable source, or they they just it wasn't part of their mission, or they didn't do it, or they didn't have funding to do it, or it just wasn't something they cared about.

I mean, have you thought about that and does your office plan to be involved in something like that?

Or do you understand my question?

Well, that's that's something I actually didn't mention that I could have is that my deputy director, deputy state climatologist Tom Aubrey, is he led the heat Reno heat mapping campaign.

Yeah, which I participated in our family.

I think a lot of people uh drove around and measured the temperature.

Yeah, absolutely.

That's one of the first things I did.

I I've been in town three days.

Tom recruited a driver out to Sparks.

But but that is something that certainly our office is involved with.

We hosted the Northern Nevada Heat Workshop in June of this year in on campus.

And uh so are there Tom now is Tom has some of those data.

We um I just wondered if they were compiled somewhere or we had a statement on where we are or any analysis of why we are like in Reno, technically the fastest warming.

Do do it.

So I had aggregated information from Colorado and other uh bureaus around the country that spoke this is years ago that spoke to why CRS and why Reno were in that top number.

And I think it'd be great to get.

I mean, I was just on TV yesterday and we were talking about trees.

We're talking about the uh heat here in Reno and how the trees help.

And I just um but it's just me talking as an elected official.

It's not I don't have a professional paper or something to offer people to back that up.

So I can tell you there's a paper in the works.

Uh and I've been brought on kind of late in this process, but uh it's on my, it's actually this week, it's on my to-do list.

This is came out of work that Western Regional Climate Center Tom Albright, my predecessor Steph McAfee started specifically looking at these trends, Reno and comparing that to both a reservoir, a rural area, and and so that's that's in the works right now.

So hopefully hopefully that'll you know get submitted in the near future and be published, and then we can have a more yeah formal record.

Because I think all of us, and I think Tom, we have the head of Tumwa here.

I I think all of us want to understand this more.

And is it really true and why is it true?

And Las Vegas is the second fastest, but there are many degrees behind us, like half a half the increase we've experienced here in Reno.

And we want to, you know, we need to understand it and implement it into our planning.

Yeah, and I mean, from again, from what I know and from what kind of we're seeing so far, the bulk of that, of course, is being driven just by growth.

Yeah, and use change.

That that's the port for us, I think.

It's just you know, going to concrete.

And I just think that the more we can get the information out and that that would support different types of planning and development with different techniques and these developments, whether it's grassy roofs or solar or uh you know, LID uh uh infiltration or how we handle stormwater or any of these things, it would be great to have kind of have the information and be able to both do better planning and have that integrated into the planning community, the development community, so we could start mitigating it and do better, but without you know, part of a center or information or some scientific support, it's hard to just say we should do this without the data back in it up.

we can get the information out and that that would support different types of planning and development with different techniques and these developments whether it's grassy roofs or solar or uh you know LID air uh infiltration or how we handle stormwater or any of these things it would be great to have kind of have the information and be able to both do better planning and have that integrated into the planning community the development community so we could start mitigating it and do better but without you know part of a center or information or some scientific support it's hard to just say we should do this without the the data back kind of yeah absolutely and then there's a there's a modeler at DRI John Bahia has he and his students he presented this work at the heat workshop in June that is fascinating just just and they're able to do controlled model experiments showing which impacts have the greatest net benefit and it depends on what you're you know if you're we're trying to reduce the overall temperature of the urban area that's one thing if we're trying to reduce sense of just that what we feel and and you know the heat of the day of course trees and shade are important for that and so it depends on what metric and so I think he could be a really interesting person to maybe invite for saying okay thank you.

Are you with the federal if the changes of federal funding just across the board what are you concerned about your work um and our hope for is uh this type of work something that's still supported by the federal government no there's some real concerns our work in Argentina our expedition was funded originally funded by a grant from the US State Department and three days before we left it's frozen yeah and they they eventually unfrozen but we didn't we only got some of that funding but we have a diverse funding source we have private sector partners that provided we had you know 1500 worth of instrumentation that was donated by our rival second part for the expedition National Geographic was a partner on Alpha Goggle too so we're still able to run things with the big concerns about future proposals I um I I competed for our internal slot UNR gets one slot to submit to the this major research instrumentation with solicitation from the National Science Foundation so I had written an internal proposal for that competition to develop the top one we call the next generation integrated weather station to really focus on the snowiest coldest windiest places in the world and we were going to submit this year but then they canceled the competition and so we are hopeful it's gonna it's gonna happen next year but uh so there's this huge uncertainty with uh the federal funding um we are starting to look more at the private foundations we've just received a a grant to host a pile of Asian climate science workshop at our UNR Lake taco campus in June that's going to bring international experts from around the world here that's through private foundation so it's yeah it's it's really uncertain federal level and is the state climatology um uh position funded through the the general fund at the state or is it it's yeah it's through the through the state through our appropriation to you and our that's how that's how the funding any other questions I I would just like to ask one so in the relatively short time that you've been in this position if you were to drill down to a a local level here um observations data that you've seen so far that um you would see um between river flows upstream storage things like that that you think would be valuable or informative for us yeah so you're talking specifically about the truck E correct basin yeah I mean I think again just snowtel is is a good source especially for the suite uh but there's some deficiencies with the precipitation measurements either through this 1970s technology we're still using it so higher quality precipitation observations uh especially higher up you know in those that seven to nine 1000 foot range those are very hard to come by so important because the the differences you all know are just so stark between what's falling lower down and you know gauges do pretty well measuring rain okay when we're talking about snow it's a different it's much more complicated so higher quality precipitation and especially and also not just the amount of precipitation but what type is falling so we have these sensors called the strometers that are present weather sensors that can tell us whether it's rain or snow that's falling at a given time period and that that is so important flooding especially talk about rain on snow events so those those in my

So higher quality precipitation, and especially and also not just the amount of precipitation, but what type is falling.

So we have these sensors called distrometers that are present weather sensors that can tell us whether it's rain or snow that's falling at a given time period, and that that is so important.

Uh flooding, especially talking about rain on snow events.

So those in my view, those are the figures that are we can agree.

One more follow-up.

Are you?

I know over at the since you mentioned the flood over at the um flood authority, which a number of us serve on.

Um they have a monitoring program for all the USGS gauges and flood is for just you know, it's multi-uh funded gauge network.

Uh when I was there, we moved the person into their their shop that's funded out of there.

But I didn't know if you have much contact with this market.

Yes, they hired a new and we we met up with Snigel uh at the uh Wadsworth Bridge meeting.

Yeah, I'm forgetting the name, yeah.

His name DC came from Montana.

He's a really good experienced guy.

We yeah, we're we're certainly with God should um I've shared some perspectives with them, yes, advice on best practices.

So yeah, they're they're trying, he's trying to upgrade their pages to more weight precip.

And so yeah, that that's that's really promising.

Yeah, there's progress being made.

Okay, good.

Yeah.

Great.

All right, I think that's it.

Um actually let me check with um member Garcia.

No questions for me.

Great presentation.

All right.

Well, Dr.

Perry, thank you very much for your time.

Thank you again for your patience.

We we truly appreciate the information you provide.

Thank you so much for the invitation, and don't hesitate to reach out if you have other questions or anything else, maybe.

I just subscribed to your newsletter.

Okay.

Wonderful.

Thank you very much.

Appreciate it.

All right, we'll move on to item number seven.

And it looks like uh can we see you in and briefly?

Thank you, Chairman.

Good to see everybody this morning, member of the commission.

Can we make it with a record?

I will give Dr.

Perry a minute to transition out of our present presenters to have that to come up and join us.

So as you all know, as a local government agency, we're required.

Yeah, okay.

Oh, there we go.

I think we're required to have an external audit of our financial statements every year.

And we the board selected their main scene associates last October to engage in our audit for fiscal year 25 and Zeth NC is here to present the audit.

Or that or that's official.

We got engaged in the happy.

Okay.

Um, all right.

Well, hopefully some of you can still at least glance over the uh final statements.

Um again this year, smooth, no hitches.

Um thanks to them and their teams.

Um I think if you want to flip through it, uh here on page one for the class the table contents.

This is the independent auditors report the main report to the audit.

Um at the top here, you'll see the opinions.

Uh second paragraph that's really here is um in our opinion, the financial statements uh referred to above, present fairly in all material respects the financial position.

Um this essentially is what's known as a clean opinion for the commission.

Um then turn a couple pages over to the management discussion and analysis, few financial highlights, commission's government-wide net position by 473,000 to 3.06 million, and the general fund report and then increased the fund balance of 464,000 to 3.07 billion.

Uh general revenues increased by nearly 259,000 or 14% the prior year, while expenses increased by 85,000 or 5% prior years.

Economic factors.

The last paragraph I thought I'd read.

Unrestricted net position as of June 30th, 2025 was 3.06 million, whereas operating expenses, the 20 June 30th, 2026 budget are only 563,000 for 16% of the total budget.

All other budgeted expenses relate to products can be managed in a way that applies with company resources and expected picture of the fact there's one more report.

Independent audit report on internal control over financial reporting and our compliance.

During our audit, we did not identify any deficiencies in internal control that we consider to be a material weakness.

And results of our testing.

And for audit recommendations, we do not have any financial weaknesses of attitude to justify inclusion within our report.

So overall very clean audit report.

Jim, did you want to add anything before we open up the questions?

No, I I think the audit speaks first off, but I also wanted to recognize Susan Deusender.

She's a Wash-up County financial manager, and this audit would look this clean without your help.

So I just wanted to recognize her.

And if there's any questions that she you have for her, she's also available.

First, I'm just no questions.

I just want to say thank you to the leadership, the the auditors, but everyone who was involved in this.

And I think this this proves out right there.

Any yes, member help.

Thank you, Mr.

Chairman.

And I I agree, especially as a granting organization, I you can get in some troubles with audits.

Um even large-scale organizations like Washoe County, we had an issue recently.

So I I just uh commend you.

I can the Washa County team, so thank you for your hard work on this.

And so good job, team.

All right.

I think if that's it, we're uh ready in this one.

Um we need to take a motion to approve.

I'll move to approve.

Second.

All right, we have a motion and second.

All those in favor signify by saying aye for theye.

Aye.

All opposed.

Passes unanimously.

All right, then we'll move on to number nine.

Action uh presentation discussion possible approval of pass-through funding of 60.

Sorry, thank you very much.

Trying to speed us along too.

How about item number eight?

Action discussion possible, a designation of uh Shetler Macy and Associates LLC as external auditors for fiscal year 2026 WRWC financial statement audit, um, and authorizing the chair to execute engagement letter and direct staff to file the required documents with the state of Nevada.

Ms.

Reekdown.

Thank you, Chairman.

Members of the commission convicted for the record.

I know some of these are mathfuls, um these items to read, but for our other pay law and legal purposes, we just try to be as detailed as possible.

Um well per statute, we have to designate an auditor for the fiscal year 26 uh financial statement review, and we designate that each year after we have the existing audit complete.

That has to be submitted to the state by March 30th each year, so we have time to look at that.

Um Chev MAC and Associates has already provided uh an engagement letter that's in your board packet, item 88 for your review.

They've been performing our audits since 2009 and they are consistently performing well.

Their ongoing relationship with us creates an initial process.

Uh Mr.

Macy is wonderful to work with, and he performs a tight and professional audit and knows our Washoe County staff very well, which is very helpful.

Um, so staff is recommending to designate Shenom Easy Associates as our auditors for fiscal year 23.

Thank you, Janet.

Any dis open it up to discussion?

Um, I I actually um uh really in favor of moving forward.

I think that it speaks a lot to having the experience for the organization, and I think the additional oversight with Washoe County helps to ensure that um with all due respect you're doing your job as well, and I think that that's a really unique position.

You don't usually have that kind of situation, right?

Washer County that also has some statutory compliance requirements and standards they have to follow.

So I'm going to support this, and when the chair is ready, I'm going to make a motion to a group.

Any other questions, comments?

Thank you, Mr.

Chairman.

Um, are we do we ever just make sure that we're could have competitive pricing and can we do that for the next round if we haven't done it this round of just I know it's a professional contract, but yeah, that's a good question.

So, what we've done is that we reviewed um in 2009 when we agree as I say they came in at half the cost of the other other uh dinner proposals, and they have raised their rates minimally over the years, and probably in a lane that went the constantly being increased with the parts, but we have not got a formal solicitation to do.

So I would just say, you know, okay moving forward, it's just maybe that's something we do next year just to make sure that we're the best price.

I'm willing to amend the motion to include uh accepting this for this year and to look at the timeliness because there is a plan when you're going out to bed.

Uh all of in my motion to include based on the timeliness that needs to be met because there's statutory filing requirements as well that they go out for second up.

Okay, so then what we're doing is approving for this coming year and then requesting that go to RFP following.

Yeah.

Okay.

Any other questions or comments?

Right.

Um, if you uh member Andrea, would you put that into an actual formal motion?

You bet.

So I move, oh.

Don't look at the screen.

Sure.

I'll do the follow this and then I would so I'll move to approve the fiscal year 2025 WRWC financial statements.

No, that's not right.

I was going to say, is that we're sorry.

Try again.

Move to designate Shetler, Macy and Associates LLC as the WRWC's external auditors for the fiscal year ending June 30th, 2026, and then authorize the chair to execute the related engagement letter and direct staff to report the designation to the state of Nevada by the statutory deadline and include an RFP for the following year in order to meet the timeliness as required.

Lovely.

All right.

We have a motion and a second.

All in favor signify by saying I.

All opposed.

And it passes unanimously.

Now to item number nine.

Action presentation discussion possible approval of pass-through funding of 60,000 from the Nevada Division of Environmental Protection 604B, Clean Water Act to the Turkey River Foundation for a Professional Services Agreement with Idawal River Bank Repair Project 30% design.

And thank you, Chairman, members of the commission, you're getting what you're gonna do for the record.

And what we're bringing before you is a proposal of pass-through funding from the Nevada Division of Environmental Protection.

They receive the money from the Environmental Protection Agency, and they receive it every year, and they rotate around the state, the agencies that do water quality planning to receive it.

And this year WRWC has been selected.

So staff then went out and talked to regional stakeholders regarding eligible projects, and one came with one direction over basically looking at restoration work on the Truckee River in Idaho Park.

And the $60,000 would be utilized to create a 30% engineering design for this project.

And here to present about the project is Iris J Late Bart, and she is the executive director of One Truck River.

So Iris.

Okay.

Thank you for the opportunity to present today.

One Trucky River and Nevada Land Trust coordinated vegetation management planning efforts that started in 2020 with regional discussions taking place focused on improving the riverbank of the Trekkie River in Nevada.

The effort started a steering committee in a regional technical working group that is active today.

Here are agencies and groups that are a part of this regional technical working group or are a stakeholder who we interviewed and is available to me for further input.

They include local, state, and federal levels of government locally.

This includes City Reno, City of Sparks, Washington County, and Tricky Meadows Water Authority.

The work is focused on the middle urbanized reach of the river from Crystal Peak Park to Vista Narrows, as this map shows.

In 2022, working together, we completed framework vegetation management and restoration plan with tools that you can see on the left and the right that I won't get into in this uh presentation.

And then we moved to an in-depth conditions assessment assessment that was conducted.

And from that assessment, a project prioritization tool was developed.

From all of that, a online map that the planning agency hosts was created that you can go to to access all of this data.

And uh there's also um all of the plans and tools on One Trucky River's website, along with a link to this map.

So through these five years of planning and assessment work, many areas were identified in need of improvement.

Recent discussions with City Areno staff led us to focus on a river stretch at Idawal Park and requesting support to do more specific planning and design work through the NDF uh 304B funding.

And uh thank you for the opportunity to present.

This is a really short version.

Some of you I've been able to have the opportunity to do a longer presentation about this work.

And for those that I haven't, I really welcome uh that opportunity in the future.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Just real quick question.

Um, the previous slide.

Well, actually, I guess you can even use that one.

So all the different colors, could you let us know what the color designations represent?

Yeah, yellow is not good, yellow and orange, and then purple and blue is pretty good.

Okay.

Yeah.

So in their polygons, you know, so they really went out there inch by inch.

And so if you go on to this uh link, you can you know zoom in or out and uh get to the specific polygon for each section of the river in this area.

Awesome.

Thank you.

Any other questions?

Okay, yes, go and answer.

Thank you.

Yeah, thank you for the presentation.

When you say go, you're talking specifically about the riverbank, or what do you what did you mean by that?

Yeah, about the the river bank.

The conditions of the river bank.

Yeah, but then or the vegetation on the bank.

The vegetation on the bank, but it does also do um erosion was considered.

So bare soil, um, yeah, the level of vegetation, and then it also considers social factors.

Um, so there's a lot of different ways to use this data.

Um, and so cost was also a consideration.

And this section that you're looking at at Idaho Park, is that where folks to like they sometimes I just think if I remember correctly, people can access the river from that parking lot?

They can, yeah.

Okay.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, I would say in the urban stretch of the river in general, people access the river in a lot of different places.

And that one of the biggest problems is that there's not controlled access.

So, you know, it's not been designed in a way uh to say, hey, here's where you go, here's where you don't go.

So everyone just goes everywhere.

So, like what we're doing at uh Broadhead, uh, that's moving to 90% design and fully funded.

We're having a lot of paths so that we have that access for people, but then it's very specific.

So, you know, really strong uh vegetation and then a path, strong vegetation path to really stop people from uh just going everywhere.

Thank you for the two.

Is that supplemented by signage at all?

It could be.

Yeah.

Is it fenced?

We haven't um no, we haven't considered fencing.

Oh, I was just thinking about what it reminds me of is like at the ocean with the dunes and they're protecting certain dun areas and then they're making a path, and then they usually put a modest fence, some indicator to the chair's point about don't go here, go there.

So whether it's a simple, not not a complex map, not a fence meant to be keep people out, but just to more inform them.

This is not where you go.

Yeah, and I am I feel like I need to double confirm this, but I believe we haven't gone in that direction because it would trigger 40A permits that would have you know the design need to go to the core of engineers that has two years and a hundred thousand dollars at least is what have been told.

So uh, but that would definitely let me uh revisit that conversation with Carson Turkey Water Conservation District.

But I mean, to the chair's point, I mean, are they signed to like go here?

That's just a sign saying this is an official trail.

Are you doing that?

Uh we don't have that in the planning, but if you you know, if we have very structured paths, and then strong vegetation on each side, I think it can be visibly, you know, realized.

And I think that you know, we could maybe put a sign on the other side of the path outside of the 14,000 CSF.

A lot of things that have been, yeah.

Yeah, for something as simple as please stay on the path or something like that that might even help with that.

But yeah, great.

Yeah.

Any other questions?

I guess go ahead.

Oh, uh, thank you, Mr.

Chairman.

I just I'm sad that it's just $16,000.

There's so much work to do.

That's not gonna ditto you very fine.

Um, but I'm so glad that you're doing it.

And so I I think that's the great partnership.

I just want to comment staff.

Yeah, it's wonderful.

I was just wondering specifically at Idaho.

What is is it the path of vegetation that you're doing, or is there taking out vases?

I mean, what what are you doing?

Well, that will be determined through the design work.

Oh, but yeah, in general, there's uh a lot of tree of heaven that limits the native trees from growing.

We've observed that.

Um, and then there's a lot of places that would be great for people to access, but it's just bare or you know, steep soil when we could put a really beautiful flat boulder, stabilize it, and provide a peak a place for people to enjoy it.

So it's it's really yeah.

So it's more of an assessment of what needs to be done at Iowa, this project.

Yes, it's only getting to 30% design, so that will be um going into it.

But yeah, it I would say from our experience so far with broad head, uh, you know, it's a lot of the subjects throughout the whole urban corridor.

All right.

With that, I think we can go ahead and move to a motion if we don't have any other questions.

I would make a motion, Mr.

Chair, uh, to approve the pass-through clean water act grant funds from NDEP not to exceed $60,000 to the Chucky River Foundation for the Ottawa River Bank Repair Project, an authorized program manager to execute the agreement.

Right.

We have a second.

And I have a question.

Is the Chucky River Foundation?

How is that separate from one Truckbee River?

We are um One Chucky River was the initiative started in 2013.

Right.

Parallel was Chruckee River Foundation was created as a nonprofit.

Okay.

And then we had a prioritized action item to find a long-term home for one truckie river, and the president of the Trucking River Foundation gave over that organization to One Truck E River.

So we didn't need to go through all the work and become another nonprofit.

So technically we are Truckee River Foundation now doing business as one Truckee River.

Gotcha.

And so that has a separate board, the Chucky River Foundation or Trucky River.

The only thing Truckee River Foundation does now is one Truckee River.

So it's one board.

Gotcha.

Thank you, Iris.

Okay, we have a motion and a second.

Uh we'll go to vote.

All those in favor signify by saying aye.

Aye.

All opposed.

Passes unanimously.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Moving on to number 10.

Action discussion, possible direction of the staff regarding approval to amend the city of Reno stormwater permit coordinating committee near a local agreement budget not to exceed 312,000, 305.50 cents for fiscal year 2026.

Thank you, Chairman.

Members of the commission, here you have what it's for the factory.

The city of Reno provides substantial staff support to the stormwater free.

Uh inadvertently due to an uh clerical error.

An invoice at the end of fiscal year 2025 was not submitted in the amount, and I need to read this virtually.

So staff is requesting to include this amount in fiscal year 26 in that budget, and the amount not to exceed it we would change the budget to make an amount not to exceed 312,305.57.

The funding is available in our contingency budget in 2026.

And the invoice and the professional services budget are both as attachments in your pocket English school.

So I have Chris Polman here who has agreed to come.

He is a senior enter excuse me, engineer at the C of Reno, and he is also the coordinator for the stormwater committee.

In case you had any questions about that.

All right, thank you very much.

And we'll open it up.

Do we have any questions, comments?

All right.

Um, do we have a motion?

If someone willing to sure I'll make a motion uh to approve the amendment of the fiscal year 2026 in our local agreement with City Arena to add 49,805 and 57 cents for the fiscal year 2025 stormwater management program.

Or administration back in.

Motion made by member Dewar, second by Hill.

All those in favor signify by saying aye.

Aye.

Aye.

All opposed.

Passes unanimously.

Moving on to help item number 11, program manager update.

Thank you, Chairman.

Members of the commission can bring in for the record.

I'll go through this pretty quickly since we got a little bit of a late start, and I know you're gonna want to take a five at least a five-minute break before you get to the town wall workshop.

So just a quick update, myself and director Smith from the Washer County Community Services Department Engineering and Capital Projects gave us, we both gave a presentation to the Regional Planning Commission and the Regional Planning Governing Board on the Cold Springs Valley uh water balance analysis that we're performing, and that was a really wonderful way for us to share with those planning, you know, with the planning agency leadership on what we're doing and why we're doing that analysis, and then it's part of this larger project that we're going to be expanding into some of the other closed bases to make sure we understand what you know water in, water out balance in those basins.

So that was really helpful.

Dwayne, Director Smith did a fantastic job.

So with the wastewater regionalization feasibility study, I just wanted to let you know.

I think we last met in August.

I reported we had staff meetings in July in the end of September or mid-September.

I also met with many of the public officials to give Rap Talis an idea of what the vision is and what you were looking to get out of the feasibility study and the administrative and governance um planning that is expected, and a lot of the feedback we received.

They've created a few memos that are going to be going out to the working group first for review, and then RAF Talus is planning to kind of give a presentation on their findings and phase 1A at our November 5th concurrent meeting with both boards.

So that meeting is also on a Wednesday at 1.30 in the afternoon.

That'll be a really interesting presentation.

They'll be presenting what every all the different agencies' views are, what's important to them, what they think the challenges are, and how they might see uh this moving forward.

So there'll be a really important meeting to attend.

Um save one more water reuse symposium.

So last March, a few of you came to Tampa with staff to attend the water reuse symposium.

It is scheduled for uh Los Angeles, the Trinity Intercontinental Hotel in Los Angeles, March 8th, March March, March 8th through 11th.

Um, and this year they scheduled all the tours that we took last year on Sunday.

So that I thought was a great way to start off the conference.

Then we'll be traveling in on Saturday, do tours on Sunday, and then there's an elected official workshop scheduled for that Tuesday.

So if any of the elected officials want to attend with staff, we're we included that in our budget to pay for your registration and your travel to come to that conference if you're interested in and can attend.

And that's what I have as far as manager updates.

If you have any questions, I'm happy.

All right, thank you.

Any questions for the director?

Ooh, you're getting off easy, can we?

Yeah, I don't have any questions, but I do want to commend you and Director Smith for a great presentation that I um know several of us in that meeting as well.

I I thought it was really really helpful to actually differentiate the bigger picture even though it was one particular area, but differentiate the bigger picture to also really put it in perspective that um there's a bigger plan of this project of your analysis.

So I just want to say I did have a question too on that same presentation.

I appreciated it as well.

I what there was a disappointing aspect of it, and that's what that we don't have the information at this time.

And when do you think we will?

That's a great question.

We just had a meeting last week with staff to come up with scenarios.

So the model's been created and it's been calibrated.

And we've been meeting recently to come up with well, what is the best what are the best scenarios that we need to enter and create in the model to calibrate it or test it, kind of break the model so that we can make sure that we can look at a variety of different growth situations out there.

We just had a meeting with Director Smith so that he could help us there.

Fantastic.

I have to tell you, Director Smith is just an amazing reading person.

It's amazing.

But he has his GIS staff helping us to look at well, what could the growth patterns look like out there?

So we can say, okay, well, maybe the first step is to what would full build out potentially look like.

And that's so hard to predict, you know, as well as I do that, you know, try to predict what commercial business will end up out there residential.

So we're in the process of looking at what data we have to be able to make those predictions, and then we're gonna have seven scenarios to start, and once we get those scenarios done, then we'll be able to fund some more and move into some of the other.

And then did we hear from that is a DRI is a reevaluating the USGS analysis?

Or you know, in the 60s, the USTS went out and analyzed all these basins in the back, but um over time they've updated different ones.

But for some reason, I thought I heard recently a different agency.

I was gonna take another look at the parental yield out of the space.

Oh, interesting, yes.

I think you though you're talking about the reconsence reports that they did a second days and they established the perennial yield.

My understanding at the last state water plan meeting that we went to, they haven't picked it back up because our staff wasn't what had left the agency and they were able to continue moving that forward.

But the last um meeting that we had with them is that they were the division of water resources that was hiring.

Um I thought it was the USGS to select specific basins to re-evaluate remote.

I thought we heard it was something that DRI, I don't know why.

Yeah, I'll I'll try to remember, but anyway, okay.

Yeah, I just thought that would be good info for you guys in the study that you're doing.

Yeah, I don't think I don't I don't know if it's been moving already, Staffici.

Got it.

Okay.

Anything else for okay, then we'll close that item, move on to number 12.

Discussion possible direction to staff regarding an agenda items and dates for future WRWC meetings.

Is there anything that you all would like to see addressed?

Chairman, if I need real quick.

I just wanted to let you know.

I normally put this back at the beginning of January, but because of the holiday season and the conference, I wanted to get this on everybody's calendars early enough.

So I went ahead and took my best stab at the 2026 meeting outlook.

Uh we normally do our tentative budget approval in March, but due to the conference, it's kind of the water reuse conference in Los Angeles and uh vacation schedules for staff.

Where we would like to get the tentative budget approval early in February.

So we'll be bringing that to the Northern Nevada Water Planning Commission in January to make a recommendation to the Western Regional Commission.

So this is our meeting schedule with milestones.

We'll still put an outlook calendar invite for each month to hold spots in case we need to hold the meeting in the interim, but this is what's planned for 2026.

Perfect.

Thank you, Chair.

Under this item, I just wanted to thank you for having um Dr.

Perry come.

Um I hope you know I had seen a presentation in another venue, and I I thought this would be so germane to hear both here in POMWA.

So I'm glad that I was able to come together.

So thank you.

Okay, then we'll move on to item number 13, public comment.

Do we have a public comment?

Anyone here wishing to speak?

All right, close that.

Commission comments.

Nope.

All right.

Staff comments.

Did we have one comment, Chairman?

Um, I was just notified by Sonia that for our concurrent meeting on the 5th of November.

There is overflow parking available at with Rogers in case you show up and it's and where is that if that will be here?

No, but we're across streamers meeting.

Perfect.

I I do appreciate a little more parking out front.

I noticed that, but uh, but yeah, having a concurrent meeting would be nice to have a little extra.

Thank you.

Any others?

And with that, we'll move on to item number 16, adjournment.

Good job, Mr.

Chairman.