Water Planning

During their regular meeting on Tuesday, February 14th, the Board of Trustees unanimously approved a Water Allocation Policy which creates a framework and 'buckets', or categories, into which water is allocated for development.

The adopted Water Allocation Policy can be found at this link, or in the Documents section on the right side of this page.

As you may know, the Town of Buena Vista has been studying our water rights and water infrastructure over the past few years in a far more detailed way than had previously been done.

One result of this work was the publication of the 2021 Water Resource Master Plan, which identified the total number of SFEs (single family equivalents of water - or one, 3/4" water meter) our current usable water rights can supply in a dry year as 2,511. Backing out of this number with the number of homes and businesses currently drawing water, together with already approved projects that have water obligated to them, we currently have 474 SFEs of usable water left. The Town Board of Trustees, earlier this year, created a few set asides bringing the total available SFEs down to 280.

This is shocking when you think about it - our community has a very finite number of new taps we can serve with water (unless or until we get more usable water rights). The attached documents were drafted at the direction of the Board of Trustees to try to answer the question - what do we build with our remaining taps?

1. The Ordinance- is a draft of proposed code changes which would do three primary things.
   • First, it would create an expiration of three years for the water dedication reservation if that dedication is from a fee-in-lieu (as opposed to the dedication of a water right). So in other words, if you pay a dedication fee-in-lieu (currently $4,500/SFE), you'd have three years to pull a building permit or risk there not being enough water to service your project.
   • The second primary thing the ordinance does is set an expiration on the length of time you have from pulling a building permit to installing a water meter at 18 months. So either your project needs to have a meter installed (not a CO, just a meter) in this time, or you risk there not being enough water to service your project.
   • The third primary thing the ordinance does is clearly charge the Board of Trustees with creating and reviewing/updating/amending a policy which allocates available SFEs based on various characteristics, types of developments, geographic areas, etc.
2. The Policy - this is the document that will actually allocate specific numbers of SFEs to certain types of development/land. As stated in the draft, this policy can and should be revisited and updated by the Board in its discretion. The specific numbers of SFEs to be allocated to each category is still in drafting and we'd like your input to inform what those numbers end up at.

We are seeking your comment and feedback on these draft documents. You can provide your feedback by completing this survey (survey closes 12/31/22).

At a November 8th work session, the Board of Trustees discussed water allocation policy and water dedication related code changes. No decisions were made but the Trustees did provide Town staff direction to draft a water allocation policy which creates more 'buckets' by which to allocate remaining Single Family Equivalents (SFEs) of water rights. These buckets include affordable housing, commercial development, schools & nonprofit facilities, and more.

An example of a current bucket that exists is 'Infill', which the board created via Resolution earlier in 2022. This bucket allocated 125 SFEs to a geographic area around historic downtown (click here to see a map). The intent of this bucket is to ensure that there are water rights sufficient to serve infill development in this area.

A draft ordinance that would modify the Municipal Code related to water rights dedications was also discussed. The draft ordinance is available here.

On February 22nd, the Board of Trustees, in a work session, heard a presentation from Wright Water Engineers on the draft water rate study. This study is available in the documents section on the right of this page, as well as the presentation itself.

The recording of the work session is available in the video library on the right of this page.

On February 8th, in a work session, the Board of Trustees considered several questions and topics aimed at long-range water planning for the community. As it was a work session, no decisions were made, though direction was given to staff to investigate various options regarding establishing a reserve for our SFE 'bank' as well as options to tie development to water availability.

Watch the full Board work session in the video library on the right of this page!