Meeting: October 3, 2022

The meeting started with a review of voting of Workgroup 1 & 2’s recommendations. Only 24 out of 29 task force members submitted votes.

Task Force members asked questions and facilitators clarified the voting process and outcome. Workgroup 3 will have more time to refine recommendations and then the task force will vote on them. The group discussed the language of one of the recommendations asking, “What does equity and sustainability mean”?

One task force member commented that rural communities need to be kept abreast of the nuances where there is no legal counsel to inform, on the other hand, fully appropriated regions are still participating in multiple protests, this takes resources away from professionals and legal resources. If there was an ombudsman to help applicants, this would ease the burden on the applicants.

Another recommendation which called for the creation of a new standalone, nonpartisan entity, was debated by the group. A reason for a new entity is due to the scope being larger than one agency can do alone. Another task force member asked if the new entity be a new source of funding and an umbrella for all the other agencies that help here?

Many task force members wanted clarification on the definition of Green infrastructure was important to define, as everyone uses it differently.

Feedback from the small groups and task force discussion would be consolidated and revisions made to the recommendations after the meeting, then sent to the task force for review along with a revised problem statement consistent to the framing and focus of the newly proposed recommendations.

A recommendation regarding regional planning was debated. Some task force members felt that without adequate planning risk of pursuing projects not adequately weighed against alternatives. Another member commented that there needs to be state-level oversight, make more project-driven, while a different member stated, “status quo regional water planning pursuant to the 1987 defensive statute must change!”

The group continued to revise recommendation. If new changes made the voter change to “no” from “yes”, they were asked to speak up and voice their grievances.

The meeting concluded with plans for the draft report from the Utton distributed on October 11th with comments submitted by Wednesday, before Oct. 13th meeting.

Meeting End: 2:00pm