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Economic Development Alan Hamel, Executive Director Pueblo Board of Water Works It is certainly a pleasure to be here this afternoon and have an opportunity to talk. I was sitting at lunch today hearing Judge Tracey speak, and it made me reflect back to exactly a year ago today, and it happened to be that the Pueblo Water Board was in Judge Tracey's court. We had before him a lawn-water irrigation return flow case. There were several people that were trying to attend this Forum along with some of our staff and we were bouncing back and forth between Judge Tracey's court and here at USC. We actually had that trial continued and this August, through stipulation, we were able to settle that case. That case was one of seven cases that we have been involved with since 1982. Carl Genova was here earlier, Frank Milenski is out here now, and there were many others who were objectors in the case, but they were good neighbors and I haven't had a chance to thank them. It took us about 13 years to go through this process - enhancing, securing and protecting Pueblo's water rights and we were able to deal with issues and cnntinue on in a professional friendship that I appreciate. I haven't had an opportunity to publicly thank Frank and others and I would like to do that at this time. I think it is really a given that no community can really have a good quality of life, or prosper or hope to grow without good utilities, particularly water. Instead of spending much time with that, I thought I would try to do three things today. One, talk about how the Board of Water Works of Pueblo has been directly involved in economic development in Pueblo. J think many of you realize that Pueblo has been very aggressive in economic development back to about 1980. And it was out ofneed: with CF&I's cutbacks and unemployment at close to 20%, we had no choice. We've been able to lower that employment down to the 4-5% range. so over the last 15 years we've worked hard at it. The Board of Water Works of Pueblo has been part of that. Today I'm going to give you a little overview of our system and what we needed to do to be a partner in that. I will also talk about a new project where we're going to use water even more aggressively to go out and seek business, and then in closing, Bob mentioned our Historic Arkansas Riverwa1k Project. It is something that we, as a community, have worked hard on. I think Pueblo was very positive in this last election by approving an extension of our ~ cent sales tax for our economic development, the expenditure of some additional revenues we had over our Amendment One cap, and also put in place the funding for this Historic Arkansas Riverwalk Project. I would like to take some time and use it as an example, because all of these are related to water and a community's economic development.. The Board of Water Works' role in economic development goes back many years, and to really have success you have to have a failure. Back in the late '50s and early '60s Pueblo lost a couple of very big industries because it didn't have the water or the water system to provide dependable service to those companies. One was Kodak, which moved to the north -- we were in the final running for that company. We realized then that we had to, as a community, turn things around. We're kind of unique in that we are the only municipal water system in the State of Colorado that has an elected board. We are autonomous from city government, work closely with city governm~nt, but live totally off water revenues. The community elected some very aggressive, long-range thinking directors for the board. We worked very aggressively in the '60s, '70s and early' 80s in acquiring water and renewing our systems. Today we are in what I think is a very enviable position -- to be able to say that we can attract or serve in a drought year some 360,000 people and associated business and industry. We have also developed a water treatment plant that will serve our needs through at least the year 2010. You must be able to produce high-quality water to attract industry. We have a modem delivery system, we're sound financially, and we're proud of the fact that we have one of the lowest water rates along the Front Range compared to the major utilities. I think we're right close to second from the bottom at this point. From a water perspective, I think the first thing that a community must do is look forward 40 to 50 years. When you talk about water and economic development, developing a good system is the first step.. In 1984, our board decided to take it a step further. We put in place a moratorium that waived front-end fees for new businesses that moved to Pueblo. Once they're here, they pay the same fees and rates, and all the same rules and regulations apply. But we wanted to attract them to Pueblo. We would put a water connection right up to their property line. In addition, we found that certain industries want certain types of systems; they may be high fire demand systems, so we spent quite a few dollars Arkansas River Basin Water Forum 37 itA River of Dreams and Realities"