South Platte River Urban Waters Partnership (SPRUWP) Full Partners Meeting May 17, 2022,1:00PM to 3:00PM Meeting Summary ATTENDANCE Participants: Ryan Banta, Lauren Berent, Dana Coelho, Jim Dorsch, Stacey Eriksen, Sherry Fountain, Rachel Harrington, Amy King, Girija Kulkarni, Chloe Lewis, Sarah Maaz, Syndey McAndrew, Cathy McCague, Michael McHugh, Margaret McRoberts, Jon Novick, Mike Nye, Donny Roush, Shera Reems, Erickson Smith, Jessica Swindon, Melissa Toering, Kris Wahlers, Ben Wise, Alison Witheridge Facilitation: Samuel Wallace ACTION ITEMS Samuel Wallace Work with the SPRUWP Advisory Committee to setup working groups to implement the strategies identified in the SPRUWP Strategic Plan KEEP COLORADO WILD LEGISLATION PRESENTATION OVERVIEW Kris Wahlers, Chatfield State Park, provided an overview of the new Keep Colorado Wild Pass. His comments from the presentation are summarized below. • Colorado Parks and Wildlife (CPW) is an enterprise funded agency. CPW has a long list of deferred maintenance projects. The lowered price of the Keep Colorado Wild Pass allows for the access to outdoor recreation for more residents, under the jurisdiction of SB21-249. • There are ten key goals for the new pass system: o Goal #1: Provide an affordable, multi-agency pass that ensures that all users contribute to keep Colorado wild. o Goal #2: Ensure sufficient staffing and resources to manage and protect Colorado's existing state parks. o Goal #3: Provide Search and Rescue (SAR) teams and avalanche programs with the support needed to keep us and them safe. o Goal #4: Develop educational campaigns to promote responsible recreation and wildfire prevention. o Goal #5: Build new state parks in partnership with local governments, conservationists, and recreationists. o Goal #6: Increase capacity to address the impacts of outdoor recreation on public lands. o Goal #7: Increase funds for new trails, trail stewardship, and river recreation projects. o Goal #8: Dedicate resources for the State Wildlife Action Plan to conserve vulnerable species and habitats. o Goal #9: Support CPW initiatives focused on equity, diversity, and inclusion in the outdoors. o Goal #10: Fund Regional Outdoor Partnerships to support community driven planning and projects. • The logistics of the pass implementation include: o Pass availability will be effective beginning January 2023. By default, residents will pay for the Keep Colorado Wild Pass when they register their vehicle, but they have the option to opt out CPW will be conducting a large education campaign to inform Colorado residents that they have the option to opt out of the Keep Colorado Wild Pass. ------- o The projected revenue goal is at least $36M per year, with the first $32.5M going back into state park maintenance. The next $2.5M will go into building up and supporting the Search and Rescue teams. The following $1M will be given to the Colorado Avalanche Information Center. Any revenue generated beyond the anticipated $36M will be evenly split between wildlife cash and parks cash funds. • The pricing changes and the impacts from these changes include the price point per vehicle being $29. This is expected to generate $30-59M and 23-28M visits. This pass is correlated with the registration of the vehicle and can only be purchased while renewing the vehicle registration. Partner Discussion • Meeting participants discussed how to best educate the public about this new initiative, and what work was being done to foresee and address possible pitfalls. It was noted that marketing initiatives are already underway, such as promotions on social media, in print media, and working on radio as well as television advertisements. Michigan implemented a similar program, and CPW is using lessons learned from their program to work towards a balance between recreation and natural resource consumption. • After the Keep Colorado Wildlife Pass program is launched, there may be an opportunity for Kris to return to SPRUWP to talk about the success and challenges of implementing the program. If there is extra revenue beyond the $36M expected, SPRUWP partners could talk with CPW on how to align ongoing projects to improve water quality and watershed health. EPA RESES PROJECT IN SUN VALLEY PRESENTATION OVERVIEW Mike Nye, EPA Office of Research and Development, provided an overview of the Sun Valley project being done in conjunction with Denver Housing Development His comments are summarized below. • Sun Valley is located along the South Platte and is surrounded by gulches as well as industrial operations. This area is one of the youngest and poorest communities along the Front Range. The area has a large percentage of cultural minorities and is a low-income neighborhood. It was built in the 1950s and has since been managed by the Denver Housing Authority. o Nearly 22% of the population is under the age of five, and poverty levels continue to rise due to poor environmental quality and living conditions. • The Sun Valley Project was developed through a partnership between EPA Region 8 and the EPA Office of Research and Development. It follows up on the issues laid out by the Denver Housing Development to work on transferring the neighborhood into a more sustainable and green infrastructure-based area. • Outdoor environmental changes have been directly linked to the health benefits and beneficiaries in Sun Valley, and these points are being flushed out by asking: o What is changing outdoors? And how much? o Who might benefit from those changes? o How might they benefit in terms of their health (overall or in specific ways?) o How might resident behavior change health benefits? o And what data should we use to measure that? • The first step in addressing this issue is to develop a baseline of information and project what types of ecosystem services might be occurring at Sun Valley throughout the course of the redevelopment. ------- • A research team worked with community members in Sun Valley to develop the Basic Health Endpoints Model: o This model shows the hypothesized relationships between Sun Valley land cover changes and health endpoints based on the weight of scientific evidence within the area. o It also displays the potential health outcomes of the Sun Valley transformation as described through the lens of ecosystem services, o Finally, it shows the pathways to health benefits. While some may be shorter than others, there will be a mix of direct (passive/equitable) and indirect (active/potentially inequitable) benefits. • The next step is to determine how the Denver Housing Authority can work with the residents of Sun Valley to help "activate" key or desirable benefit pathways. Clarify Questions Meeting participants asked clarifying questions about the EPA RESES project Their questions are indicated in italics below, with the corresponding response in plain text. Will the residents have access to the neighboring canal, and retroactively\ how will the benefits for the residents be quantified? Residents have been involved in the planning of the redevelopment from the beginning. They are particularly interested in access to outdoor amenities such as parks. Programs, like iTree, are an excellent way to access data about various types of land cover and to model the tree cover percentage. The iTree application has high-resolution data for the Sun Valley census tract in particular. STRATEGIC PLANNING PRESENTATION OVERVIEW Samuel Wallace, Peak Facilitation Group, provided an overview of the strategic planning process. His comments are summarized below. • The partners were last notified about the strategic planning efforts in the Fall of 2021 when SPRUWP partners were asked to volunteer their knowledge to help develop a strategic plan. The Strategic Planning Committee included representatives from: o Barr Lake and Milton Watershed Association o Environmental Protection Agency o Colorado State Forest Services o United States Forest Services o Colorado Watershed Assembly o One World One Water Center - MSU Denver o Westervelt Ecological Services • The purpose of the strategic plan is to provide SPRUWP with clear direction while leaving space for partners to have the autonomy to implement projects. The strategic plan should provide a roadmap but not be a detailed itinerary. • The Strategic Planning Committee worked on five key tasks:: o Review the mission, vision, and governance structure of SPRUWP. o Assess the internal strengths and weaknesses and external opportunities and threats (SWOT) that should be addressed in the effort, o Identify goals for SPRUWP that are consistent with the vision, o Develop critical cross-cutting strategies or projects to advance the multiple goals, o Create actions that will help partners implement the strategies and develop measurable outputs to track progress. • The Strategic Planning Committee identified goals: ------- o Collaborate, educate, and engage o Connect people with water o Protect and restore through leveraging resources o Communicate achievements and share technical information • The Strategic Planning Committee identified strategies and actions associated with each of the goals. Before the full partners meeting, SPRUWP partners received a survey to prioritize which strategies they would like to implement first The top five strategies identified by partners were: o Promote educational efforts that help the public understand the source of their water supply. o Identify, consolidate, and compile existing public opinion survey data to create a comprehensive picture of public opinion in the South Platte Watershed, o Connect groups that are applying for funding to better leverage grant opportunities, o Identify and amplify partners' programs and initiatives based on what they need from partners. o Track partner projects and initiatives across the watershed in an inventory. • The next steps in the process is to form task-oriented, topic-specific work groups that will tackle the highest priority strategies. These groups will work with existing committees to work on the strategies that are relevant to that group. All feedback from the partners at this time was positive and in favor of moving forward. NEXT STEPS • Samuel Wallace will work with the SPRUWP Advisory Committee to form working groups to begin to implement the highest priority strategies identified by SPRUWP partners. The next meeting of the Full Partners will take place on August 16th from 1:00PM to 3:00PM. There is a possibility that this meeting will take place in person. ------- |