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Council Member Joan Peck said at the beginning of the June 6th City Council session that she had a statement she wanted to make. That statement was as follows: "The city has spent time and money engineering union reservoir to hold more than the current 12000-acre feet of water for untreated domestic use with a proposed 10,000-acre feet of water in the Windy Gap project that gives us 22,000 acre-feet of water that the city will be purchasing. We don't need this amount of water capacity and it puts unnecessary financial stress on our residents. Therefore I move that we direct the water board to revisit the windy gap project at the next water board meeting and to work hand in hand with the city staff to find an equitable water participation rate or level."
She is looking at the water we're accumulating in the future and feels that it's more than the city really needs and the associated costs aren't justifiable.
Mayor Coombs mentioned he'd rather not expand the Union Reservoir more, but the decision's already been made on the 10,000 acre-feet level.
Council Member Bagley is vehemently opposed to allowing development on our borders and providing them water and that we have an ordinance in place that prohibits selling water to other municipalities on our borders. He thinks we need the water for agriculture, for our citizens to drink/bath, water our lawns and that we have 56 million dollars in it and that walking away from it at this point would be foolish. He thinks at some point the citizen of Longmont will look back and go 'golly I'm really glad we've got Windy Gap'. We also don't know when Union Reservoir will be done. It's possible we won't see it done for 30-50 years because the last few houses in the area may choose not to sell. He then said he was going to vote against Peck's motion because we aren't hedging for growth, but that we're saving for an unrainy dry day.
Peck than responded to Bagley's comment by saying it's not about selling water or pulling out of Windy Gap it's about the fact that we have 12,000 acre-feet now and we're looking at doing 22,000 acre-feet of water. Do we really need 22,000?
Council Member Jeff Moore said Windy Gap is our future and that our population is supposed to build out to another 30,000 people and we may not have the water sources we have today and we need to take a position to protect us 50 years from now, not tomorrow or not today so he's voting against her proposal as well.
Council voted, 5 to 2 against. Moore, Bagley Coombs, Santos Finley were all against.
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