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Presenter offers Pueblo West parcel-level vegetation map to inform water rates and conservation
Summary
A Colorado Rural Water presenter offered a parcel-level green-space dataset for Pueblo West that identifies trees and irrigable acreage, proposing it as an additional layer for rate-setting and targeted outreach; board members raised privacy and implementation questions and asked staff to review integration and ethics safeguards.
Josiah, representing Colorado Rural Water, presented a parcel-level geospatial vegetation map for Pueblo West on Nov. 7, showing buildings, canopy and groundcover derived from 2023 National Agricultural Imagery Program (NAIP) aerial imagery and a tree-detection layer. "It's a geospatial digital map within the bounds of Pueblo West," he said, and described analytics the district could derive from the dataset, including parcel-scale canopy statistics, irrigation-efficiency scoring and targeted outreach to high-consuming parcels.
Josiah said his team counted roughly 23,049 trees taller than 10 feet across the district and estimated about 2,224 acres of irrigable land, representing approximately 8.5% of Pueblo West’s area above the chosen vegetation threshold. He said the NAIP data used are current to 2023 and noted a scheduled NAIP update in 2026.
Board members pressed on how the map would be used with billing data and whether it risks exposing private information. One director asked, "Do you would you seem to think that it might be a violation of, privacy?" Josiah replied that parcel boundaries and imagery are publicly available but that private usage data (utility bills) would require careful handling and that he had drafted an ethics statement describing data sources, who can see them and how usage-linked information would be protected. Staff emphasized the map is intended as an information layer to complement meters and billing, not as a replacement for metering.
Josiah offered the dataset to the district and its engineering firm at no charge so staff could test operational uses such as leak indicators, conservation outreach and refining rate tiers. Directors asked staff to evaluate integration, including whether RevPlan (the district's rate tool) could use parcel irrigation statistics, and to return with recommendations on data governance and privacy protections before any operational rollout.
Next steps: staff will vet the dataset, ethics statement and possible integration with utility billing systems and report back with recommendations prior to the next rate-season decisions.
