. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . All right. Now the committee has not only on its agenda the item of selecting a chair, electing a chair and selecting a vice chair but it also has an item of business. And so once the chair is elected and the vice chair selected then the chair will take over and conduct the meeting. We will take nominations for the chair of this committee and then we'll have our vote. So I see Council Member Ed Lane wishes to speak. Thank you, Vice Mayor. I just want to say a couple words about Kevin Stennett. Kevin is the fourth term council member. He's excelled in every capacity in which he has served during his three prior terms on the council. I'm confident he will provide an excellent leadership for the Environmental Quality Committee and I was pleased to nominate him for that position. Thank you. Do I hear a second? Second. So the motion is to place up for nomination Council Member Stennett and it was seconded by Council Member Farmer. Is there any discussion? If not, those in favor of putting Mr. Stennett's name on the ballot, please say aye. Aye. Anyone opposed? Council Member Henson. Thank you, Vice Mayor. I would like to nominate Tom Blues as chair of this committee. I feel like he's very qualified due to the fact that he has chaired the Water Resources Committee and done a fabulous job since its existence, I believe. There's a motion to place Council Member Blues' name on the ballot. Is there a second? Well, I'll second it. Any discussion? Okay. Those in favor of placing Council Member Blues on the ballot, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Any other nominations? Okay. With that, I'd like to go ahead then and ask each of our candidates for chairmanship to say a few words about why they think they're best qualified. Council Member Stennett. Thank you, Vice Mayor. I may be able to make this a little easier. Earlier today, we've had a lot of committees select their chairs. And just so the folks watching, the chair of any committee serves also on the budget and finance. And folks out there know how passionate I have been the last couple of years about the budget as the past chairman. And obviously the chair of this committee would be on the budget and finance committee. And I appreciate my colleagues who have nominated me here to get me there. But at the same time, we need the best people as chairs of all of our committees. I said that earlier today, we need the best chairs. And we also need to do the right thing and make sure the right people in the right spots to be chairs. And this does mean if I don't get chair, I won't be on budget and finance. And I'm okay with that because this is not about budget and finance committee. It's about environmental quality and who's ready to lead us forward. So at this time, respectfully, Vice Mayor Gordon, I would draw my name from consideration and yield to Mr. Blues. He deserves it. Even though it means I won't be on budget and finance, it's the right thing to do. And I wish the rest of the council had done that today, but they haven't. But I will. Thank you, Vice Mayor. So Councilmember Stennett has withdrawn his name. Madam Vice Mayor, I'd like to withdraw my nomination. Okay. Well, that works. And let me say, if I might, is that I think Tom Blues is also very highly qualified and, you know, in the event that Councilmember Stennett is not running, then I would like to give my support to Councilmember Blues. Thank you. As seconder, I agree on all comments. All right. Thank you. All right. So we have Councilmember Blues, who is the only person nominated at this time for chair of the committee. Councilmember Blues, did you have any words to say? You're not required to, but do you have anything you want to say before we go? I think that Councilmember Stennett would make an excellent chair of this committee, and not only because he's competent in the area and has large experience, but because, as we've just seen, he appreciates what's good for, you know, for this Council in performing its various duties and functions. I appreciate his graciousness and am indeed humbled by that. So thank you, Vice Mayor. Is there any other comment before we vote? All those in favor of Councilmember Blues serving as chair of Environmental Quality Committee, please say aye. Aye. Anyone opposed? All right. Councilmember Blues, are you prepared at this time to select a vice chair? Well, I think I would like to ask Councilmember Stennett if he would accept that obligation. I would certainly appreciate it if you would. When I became chair of the Oversight Committee, Kevin agreed to serve there. I hope he'll continue in that role. It would be my pleasure. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Okay. Very good. So Councilmember Blues, chair, and Councilmember Stennett, vice chair, and Councilmember Blues, if you want to go ahead and take the chair, we do have a very important issue on the agenda. We do indeed. And I would call the committee's attention to the fact that Environmental Quality is the only standing committee thus far to actually have a full meeting and to have a rather demanding agenda. So we're getting off to a good and a fast start with this presentation on capacity assessment, which is a kind of more than a keystone of the consent decree. And Water Quality Director Martin is here to walk us through this very complex issue. Charlie? Thank you, Councilmember Blues. I'll offer my humblest apologies to coming up here at the very first meeting and giving you a lot of detailed information. Unfortunately, as all of you know, we've been drinking from the fire hose called the consent decree for quite some time now, and this is another one of those outcomes associated with that. Today we're going to be discussing consent decree requirements, excluding the limited to the sanitary sewer system. As many of you know, the stormwater is also a part of that consent decree, but today we are focusing exclusively on sanitary sewers. And specifically, the consent decree requires the whole basis of it from the sanitary aspect is to eliminate sanitary sewer overflows and bypasses. And this is really accomplished through two different ways. One of them is through effective management and operation, but secondly, it's about having adequate system capacity, and today we're talking about adequate system capacity to the sanitary sewer system. I've got acronyms listed in your handout. You might want to refer back to these because they're sprinkled throughout the presentation, and again, for those of us who live in San Diego, we have a lot of acronyms listed in your handout. You might want to refer back to these because they're sprinkled throughout the presentation, and again, for those of us who live in San Diego, we have a lot of acronyms listed in your handout. And again, for those of us who live and breathe the consent decree, it's fairly common, and I'll apologize in advance if I use an acronym. Stop me if you don't understand what I'm saying, or maybe refer back to this sheet as far as to help you out remembering what that stood for. A little bit of background on the consent decree, as I just said, it's an enforcement action for violations of the Clean Water Act. Two significant dates now exist for us. The lodging date, which is March 14th, 2008. And the date of the construction, which is March 14th, 2008. And the date of the construction, which is March 14th, 2008. And the date of the construction, which is March 14th, 2008. That was the date at which that our settlement with EPA was given to the judge to sign. There was that long lag period that went on as far as a rejection of the consent decree, appeals, and subsequently, though, the judge finally signed it, or actually entered the consent decree on January 3rd of this year. Those are significant dates for us, because in the consent decree, many of our milestones are either todged to the lodging date or to the construction date. And the date of the construction, which is March 14th, 2008. And the date of the construction, which is March 14th, 2008. And the date of the construction, which is March 14th, 2008. Those are either lodging date or entry date. Most of them are lodging dates, so, to our advantage, we have continued to work ahead and continue to implement the consent decree, because if we hadn't, that that March 2008 date would've come back to haunt us, because we'd have lost all that time. Again, as I said, is that the real focus on this is about eliminating unpermitted bypasses and overflows. What do I mean by that is that this is a map of the toolbar that is available. There are a lot of list of tools that the EPA can give to you, and they're all on those lists, and this is a map of the West Hickman Sewer Shed. Just to kind of orient you a little bit, here's Richmond Road, here's Tate's Creek Road, New Circle, here's Nicholasville Road, and here's the county line, essentially the south part of the urban service area. CD means council district, so if you see your council district number on that map there, in particular, number five and number eight and number four are significant in this area. So, if you see your council district number on that map there, in particular, number five and number eight and number four are significant in this area, a little bit of twelve. Those red dots represent where we have sanitary sewer overflows during a rain event. West Hickman is one of the first of three areas where we have undertaken significant evaluations and are developing plans to remedy these SSO's because it has more SSO's in it than any other sewer shed that we have. Going into the consent decree, roughly 50 percent of the overflows that were in the urban service area were sanitary sewer overflows. So, if you see your council district number on that map there, in particular, number five and number eight and number four are significant in this area, a little bit of twelve. Those red dots represent where we have sanitary sewer overflows during a rain event. West Hickman is one of the first of three areas where we have undertaken significant evaluations and are developing plans to remedy these SSO's. Going into the consent decree, roughly 50 percent of the overflows that were in the urban service area were sanitary sewer overflows. West Hickman is one of the first of three areas where we have undertaken significant evaluations and are developing plans to remedy these SSO's. Not as many overflows out in the East Hickman areas are in West Hickman. The reason why East Hickman is in group one, though, is because sewage is collected at a major pump station at the dead end of Alumni Drive and it pumps into West Hickman. So, when we start talking about implementing solutions to make overflows go away, what happens in East Hickman impacts West Hickman because they all end up going together to the treatment plant. Last, sewer shortage. This is one of the areas where we have undertaken significant evaluations and are developing plans to remedy these SSO's. Last, sewer shed that is in group one, the first of three groups is the Wolf Run sewer shed. Here is Versailles Road. Here is Harrodsburg Road. Here is Nicholasville Road. And here is New Circle. Essentially a garden side area, also includes part of UK where the hospital is in those areas, Central Baptist, et cetera, et cetera. This has the second largest number of sanitary sewer overflows in the West Hickman area. This is the second largest number of sanitary sewer overflows going into the consent decree, thus why it is also in group one. The consent decree grouped our areas into three groups. Group one, which we just talked about a little bit, they were considered to be the most significant problems, and so EPA wanted all remedial actions to go forward post haste. The second group, which is Town Branch and Cane Run, which is essentially downtown and the old north side areas, not as many problems, so they weren't as worried about them being as accelerated. And then lastly is the two Elkhorns, south and north Elkhorn. Going into the consent decree, those were the fewest problem areas, and so they felt like they were okay with them going at a less accelerated schedule. Accelerated, though, means that starting from that lodging date of March of 2008, all evaluations had to be done in a three to four year period, essentially staggered six months apart. So even though they don't go as fast as some, they still go pretty fast as far as for us. Those studies were a big part of the requirements of the consent decree. We had some capital projects that many of you have heard about in previous committee work, particularly in the north and south Elkhorns. We were able to take care of major problems there through construction of new pump stations. But the sanitary sewer assessments, the pump station adequacies, and the capacity assessment and hydraulic model development has been ongoing and has reached a cumulative point for this group one set. Remedial measures plan is another requirement. We have to have three individual plans that takes the deficiencies that we find in the studies and then puts together a solution, a schedule, and a cost for remedying all of those problems. A couple of other requirements that I'm just going to brush over because we're not really talking about them today is the CMOM self assessment, which is more of operational management type of thing. And then also the supplemental environmental project that we're doing out at the Blue Sky wastewater treatment plant. We've made a lot of progress. The near-term capital projects, there were four of them going forward. Two of them are done. One, we have a bid in hand and we're breaking ground this month. The fourth one, the bid is in hand and we're working on acquiring a couple properties and doing the demolition for that. But essentially we're going to make, I believe, the deadlines associated with those near-term capital projects. The group one, West Hickman, East Hickman, and Wolf Run, all the field work is complete. Groups two and three, the field work is underway. This adequacy report for pump stations and the CAN. Most everything is in the CAN group one and it's time for us to transition into this remedial measures plan that again, as I said, puts forth what Lexington is going to do to solve its problems in those areas and at what schedule and ultimately at what cost. Here are some examples of some of the things that we have found during the course of our assessments. As you can see the movie that's running there on the right, that's essentially a shower going on inside of a sanitary sewer manhole. The one on the left is the main sewer that goes into the treatment plant at West Hickman. We actually drained that line and took all the sewage out of it because normally where these white lines are on the side of the pipe, that's where the normal flow level is. And so all that leaking in the pipe would have been under the water level and we would have not necessarily seen it. But the problems aren't limited to the public system. There are private problems as well. There's also smoke testing and that's leaks that are in the private lateral owned by that property owner. We found numerous types of circumstances of that type of situation. Here's another video. This one is particularly graphic. We're introducing a dye into the creek and standing on the sanitary sewer manhole. And as you can see, none of that dye goes down the creek. It all goes into the sanitary sewer manhole. So there's a lot of things for us to fix, by the way. But it was a pretty dramatic type of thing. The investment that we've made over the last couple of years in collecting all of this information about what needs to be fixed, I wanted to give you a flavor of what that entails. The near-term stuff for this year is that we're going to continue to work through the capacity assessment for the remaining areas. Downtown, north side, both of the areas that we are on group one, the first round of flow monitoring has already been done for those areas, and we're doing some additional monitoring, days like today are really good days for that, in order to make sure that we have a good calibration. Likewise, the field work and the reports. But for this year, the big thing, and I identified this to our transition team when we met with them in December, is this remedial program. It's going to be a pretty significant undertaking for us, and we need input from various folks in order to be able to develop that. A future outcome of some maps that we're going to talk about here in a few minutes is the capacity assurance program. We've done the assessment part of things so far. We've built the model, determined where the problems are, but moving forward, we have to have a program in place that where we certify that future connections to the system will not contribute to overflows. If we can't certify those under certain circumstances, essentially that property can't connect. So in particular areas where we're wanting to do infill and redevelopment and all that, that some of these maps that you're going to see here in future slides, that's going to have a fairly significant impact to that. I'm going to blast through this presentation of that schedule and that staggered aspect of the schedule for capacity assessment, sanitary sewer assessment, and remedial measures plan development. As you can see, it's aggressive and it's stair-stepped. The first group 1 SSA report, essentially the report is a statement of fact. Here's what we evaluated regarding the adequacy. Here's what we've evaluated versus the deficiencies. Here's what we found to be as far as capacity assessment, and we deliver that to EPA as a statement of fact. But they're going to use that information in evaluating our remedial measures plan because if we have defects in there that we've listed and our plan doesn't provide how we're going to address those things, they very well may reject our plan and say try again. Okay. You were provided separate handouts for these particular maps because I knew that this one would be really, really hard to see. And let me orient you a little bit on this map. This is the West Hickman Sewer Shed. I'm going to orient myself here a little bit too to make sure I get back to my notes. Again, referencing where we're at here, here is Richmond Road. Where I've got the pointer right now is the Lexington Mall property. That sewer goes across the reservoir, crosses it several times and then goes across the Alumni Drive through the Gainesway area. Here's New Circle Road and here's Tate's Creek Road. As you can see from this map, there's a lot of colors on here. And what do these colors really mean? And you can look at the legend and see that they mean different things. In particularly, this is a model run from a two-year 24-hour storm, which means roughly about three inches of rain over a 24-hour period. Any place that's not green, that's not just basically green lines, is a problem area for us under that particular storm. Some of you who have been involved in the oversight committee for several years, even going back to the sanitary sewer oversight, are probably not surprised by some of these findings. I know I wasn't. Here around the Lexington Mall that we've had as many as 11 sanitary sewer manholes that will overflow at various times, even up to a half inch of rain, particularly the one right by the guardrail there by the reservoir. There was a photo of that in the earlier picture. Some of the things that are challenging are here. Essentially, what this map says, though, is that if we don't have enough capacity to prevent overflows, illegal overflows of the system during this two-year 24-hour storm, we're three inches of storm, three inches of rain on a 24-hour period. It also says that if we had a capacity assurance program in place right now, that we would not be able to connect parcels to that part of the sewer system. And that also plays out in some of these other areas as well. This is going up Wilson Downing, up towards the Reynolds Road area. This stem here is the one that goes up to Tate's Creek Road. This is the one that goes up to Tate's Creek Road about at Malibu. Ms. Gordon, I'll point out to you is that one of the good things is, as you remember, we did a project on Zandale Drive back in 2004. The modeling supports what we have found in the past is that that project made those overflows go away. So this can be done. The maps are there to verify the changes that are going on in the system because it's dynamic. We're fixing things all the time. So, for example, you see here coming into the treatment plant here that we show some capacity issues there. This is where the south Elkhorn force main used to pump into. We have now relocated that and sent that directly to the head of the plant. So that changes those dots from orange back to green, which would be obviously the objective. Here's East Hickman, similar map here. Again, back out Richmond Road. Here's Jacobson Park right here. Not as many problems. In particular, everything seems to be centralized around the East Hickman pump station, not surprising. I believe that is the number two sanitary sewer overflow we have in the state. And that's based on not only frequency but also duration. The pump station has been there since 1978. It's well past its prime and it behaves that way during a rainy day. But the fact that most of our problems are concentrated in this area, I'm optimistic that solutions can be arrived at that would be in a reasonable range. Third drainage area, Wolf Run. This is the one that probably worries me a little bit more than any others, or worries me a lot more. Orienting you again, here's outbound Nicholasville Road. Right here is University of Kentucky, the hospital construction. Right here is Alumni Drive and Nicholasville Road. And out there is a blue, orange, and red essentially again indicating that if we had a capacity assurance program in place right now, future connection to the system would not be permitted without meeting certain conditions. What you can't see under that building is the pipes. I'm not as concerned about that one as I am about some of the others. We need to go out there and find out that maybe one pipe wasn't connected where another one should have been and we're balancing the flow between those two parallel pipelines. We're going to have some challenges in that area. The main stem of the trunk sewer for Wolf Run, clearly a lot of challenges. I don't need to go into that. It's going to take some fairly major construction to be able to eliminate some areas out. I believe that is turf Lamal right there. When we think about redevelopment, infill and redevelopment, the capacity maps or the capacity findings for group one presents some challenges but I think it also presents us some opportunities. And that's what we're asking today is for some advice and guidance to the public. The remedial measures plan, again, group one, due in October. We've got a lot of work ahead of us because it has a lot of different components associated to it. We've got to analyze capital improvements that allow us to transport sewage, potentially store sewage at certain locations. We've got to go out into the system and find out where those leaks are occurring, whether they be on public property or on private property and deal with them effectively. Essentially, it's kind of like a transportation thing. If you've got too many cars going down the interstate, maybe you need to direct your car to a place where there's no traffic and no traffic at all. So, we've got to do a lot of that. We've got to do a lot of that. We've got to do a lot of that. We've got to do a lot of that. We've got to do a lot of that. I'm going to give you some examples of how we do  work. I'm going to give you six examples that can help you do your job. I also want to give you some examples of how we do our job. I'm going to give you six examples of how we do our job. I'm going to give you six examples of how we do our job. I'm going to give you six examples of how we do our job. I'm going to give you six examples of how we do our job. Thank you. I'm going to give you six examples of how we do our job. I'm going to give you six examples of how we do our job. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Good morning. I'm I'm going to be talking about what goes on at the treatment plant. What I'm asking of today is, like I said, this is more of an informational type of thing. I anticipate, because I've contacted these other folks who are here today or are at home watching, is that we're going to now have a series of meetings with different community stakeholders, briefing them on similar findings, and also try to get some feedback as far as what they want to see or what they would expect to see as far as a remedial measures plan. Work with the media out there as well, is that ultimately we're hopefully getting to a point in a very near term of being able to hopefully implement this plan without having too many people saying, well, I didn't know. And I know all of you can appreciate how difficult that is to do, but we're going to try to do our best, and what we would like is your assistance through your legislative aides in helping us set up at least a couple of meetings in these particular drainage areas in group one, so we can have one at Taste Creek High School or some appropriate venue to cover West Hickman that would deal with 5, 8, 4, and 12. Another is for 10 and 11. I can't remember the numbers all the time, but you get what I mean. Is that giving the citizens the opportunity to come and hear a similar, shorter presentation, but also have the opportunity to ask what kind of questions that they want to have and give us whatever feedback they want. Because, again, we're going to come back to you guys and say, this is what we're recommending to do, and here's what we believe the estimated cost is, move forward or not. So just an example of what that website is going to be, and the intent is that it's going to be interactive, that hopefully folks are a little bit more social or electronic media savvy than I am, because I'm not. I'm pretty much I'll show up at the meeting type of person. In summary, we're on track with all of our implementation of the consent decree, especially in the sanitary sewer area, which is good, because we would have lost valuable time if we would have sat on the sidelines. But there are particular decisions that need to be made by LFQCG. Any advice or input that you have individually regarding how we can ramp up this public involvement, I'm all ears. Again, the goal is to try to be the town crier, because this is probably the most significant thing that I will be involved in probably for the remainder of my career here. By the time we implement group one, group two, and group three, essentially it's going to be a refurbishment of our sewer system, our sanitary sewer system. Equal importance is this level of protection. What design storm are we going to choose? Aaron Redd is the probably scary part for you, because we need to do this quickly. Unfortunately, the consent decree gives you no grace in as far as the amount of time that we have to do things. The overall consent decree, we have 11 to 13 years to implement the whole thing. And that was always the biggest concern of mine, is that that's a whole lot to do in a really, really short time. And in that context, I have some other issues there that I just want to throw out for you to be thinking about, is that one has to do with operational changes, in particular procuring engineering firms and construction firms. Right now, on the average, it takes us three and a half months from the time we develop an RFP to the point to where we actually get somebody to work. And we have a lot of work to do in these selection committees. We struggle with it at the level we have right now and with the staff we have. If we double the amount of work that we put out there on the street, I don't think we're going to make 11 to 13 years. It would be a miracle. My suggestion is that we give serious consideration, and I might ask the chair to consider that for a future meeting, about how we can also take into consideration the accelerated time associated with the consent decree. The other issue that I'll just bring up is the willingness to enforce sump pumps and downspout disconnects, the private property issue. Based on my analysis of the overall pipe that's underground in Fayette County, nearly 45 percent of it is privately owned. So if we have significant defects in the public system, the likelihood of there being equal amount of defects in the private system are pretty good. They're both the same age. And so are we willing to invest public money on private property in order to save ourselves larger investments downstream, either through storage tanks or treatment plants or the others? That's not a unique question for us. Many cities have dealt with that. And I think ten years later after I left there, they started doing it because they had to. With that, I guess I didn't do too bad. I kept under a half hour, I think. So I can take whatever questions that you may have. Charlie, thank you very much. We need to, you know, to develop a plan for, you know, for attaining public input and for putting out to the public, you know, some very specific fact-based questions and some, you know, some absorbable information so that, you know, so that the advice coming back is, you know, is based on all of the facts that we can present. We've got some real priorities in terms of issues and deadlines, and I think we all look forward to working with you to address them. Councilmembers, do you have questions at this time? If you would log in. Vice Mayor. Councilmember Lane. Could you, by the sea of your pants, perhaps say what is our number one reason for overflows? It's inflow and infiltration. It's groundwater and stormwater getting into the system through cracks in the pipe, manholes, all these different locations. That's where it is, is it's kind of an incessant type of thing. It's not, you can't put your finger on one thing or the other thing. What about sump pumps and discharges from residential and commercial properties directly into sanitary sewer lines? Do we have an idea of how serious that is? No, because we're not allowed to go on private property. We send out questionnaires and we ask for voluntary participation in the program. I have a question about where the, they're noted on here, are these showing where we're actually having overflows, or is this showing where we're having infiltration issues? It is showing, all of it is showing where there are infiltration or inflow problems. The red dots would represent what is flooded or is an overflow. The orange dots means that the pipe is so full that it would not meet the connection criteria under a capacity assurance program. The yellow dots means it's pretty marginal. A lot of these are near the lake that Kentucky American uses as a water reservoir. Does that mean that a lot of sanitary sewage is discharging into the reservoir? It has been in the past, yes. Okay. Do you think it's very, very serious as it appears? It is very, very serious. But for us, I'll be honest with you, I've been here 12 years, it doesn't surprise me. It's been like this for quite a while. The sanitary sewer lines that are having capacity issues, do we have records to indicate whether there was a professional engineer who designed those who certified the capacities? And is there any potential of going back and meeting with those professionals to see how the design, how we missed the design so much? No, because they'll design it for a particular area and then subsequent oftentimes rezoning happens to where the density gets changed from what the original design is. I think you've heard me say that more than a couple of occasions, is that, you know, rezoning requests on the face value of the individual thing, but when it gets into the capacity and how it fits into the overall planning scheme, sometimes it has a pretty negative impact. We have, over the last several years, increased the charges for sanitary sewer fees. And I might add that, based on my recollection, that we were, at the time we raised the fees, we were charging only about 50% of what all the surrounding counties were charging for service for sanitary sewers. So even though we've raised our rates, we're still pretty much in line with the fees in the surrounding areas. My question, though, is do you feel that we have adequate revenue at this time to fund all the necessary improvements we're going to need in the future? Or is it too early for you really to make an assessment on that? I think it's too early to tell that. Certainly the rate increases that we did in 08 and 09 will not be a wasted effort. You're right, is that we were the lowest in central Kentucky and now we're the middle range. We'll have to sit down with the new commissioner of finance and the administration to try to work through those. It's hard to work through there to find out what our bonding capacity truly is for the duration of that. I just have two more questions. I guess the issue is, will we pay for improvements to private property where property owners are discharging into the sanitary sewer system? Or will we require the homeowner to do that? Is there a mechanism for doing that? We have to pass legislation on that, or how would we approach that? I think I'd have to refer that to the law department. I honestly believe that we have the legislation in place to do that. The devil's always in the details because the prosecution of folks is a little bit more challenging. We can't continue to force somebody to do it if they didn't do it willingly, because we don't really have any other mechanism. And then I guess the other question, do you feel that looking back in retrospect over several decades, maybe three decades or so, that basically the government failed to properly manage and engineer and develop our sanitary sewer system? Do you think that's a fair statement? I think we have to monitor it adequately as well. EPA was shocked that we would allow service connections to be made to a system that we didn't have a model for. Honestly, I was shocked when I came here as well. You hate to say this, it sounds harsh, but for many years we elected low rates over a well-run utility. And now it's time to pay for that. As I said, would it be a methodology where the discharge from a person's residence would be measured into a sanitary sewer system and the fee would then be based on the discharge? Because if it's set up now where you're only basing your rate on the amount of water you're purchasing from Kentucky American Water, you could be discharging all your storm drainage water into there, and we really don't know because we don't have a way to monitor that. Do you feel that there might be a way to do that, or has anybody ever done that anywhere else? I'm not, because I think the technology is very, very difficult because you've got such a wide variation of flow, and plus because it's gravity as opposed to pressurized when it comes in your building. The meter works very well under pressure. When it's not under pressure, it's subject to wide variations. So it's a good idea to team up with somebody that would be marketing that concept. Okay. That's my last question. Thank you. You did a great job on answering, and of course some of the answers were not very exciting because of the circumstances we're in. And I wish you a lot of good luck, and I know you're going to be very busy working on this because it's a major problem. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chair. It may take a little more than good luck on this one. Charlie, I just had a follow-up question on the financial piece. Did you say that there will be someone who will bring back a financial model or some proposal of cost and project the cost out to do the work? As quickly as possible, because I know that's the number one question. It's the number one question for me is that, you know, for the bare minimum level of service, which is that two-year, 24-hour storm, that's the same storm that's tied to a capacity assurance program, what's the cost of doing the bare minimum? Because that will give me the ability. It's like buying a car. You're going to go look at the baseline and see what you can really afford if you can go beyond that. As soon as possible, and I can hear John back here sweating because he's the one who's doing it. And just in case the public is seeing this, our sanitary sewer fees and our water quality fee are tied to the CPI, correct? They get a bump every year. It's tied to the CPI, but based on what I've understood from Bill O'Mara, that hasn't been very rewarding in this economy. That would make sense. And so funding would come from both sources, I would presume, depending on if it's water, storm water? No, the only way that storm or water quality management fee money, in my mind, should be involved in this, is that if we did take a different approach on sump pump redirections, you know, it's not lost to many of you, you see a lot of the problems that we have that are at the top of the hill. And I suspect that in some cases those folks have sump pumps and there's no storm sewer for them to discharge their sump pumps to. You've heard me say this before. I think that I would like to look at a pilot project where we put a storm sewer system in a neighborhood where we haven't had one in the past. But part of the caveat of that is that people would have mandatory disconnection of their sump pumps from the sanitary sewer into the storm sewer system. Because I think at the top of the hill you've got high ground water, and if you have a basement and you have high ground water, then you've probably got water in your basement and you're going to find a pipe someplace to connect it to and there's only one there, sanitary sewer. As we're developing our priority list in the storm water, if a project under the storm water list, which will be paid for through the water quality fee, is tied in with a sanitary sewer overflow area, can that not be a joint project with joint fees applying to it? Or how is that going to get coordinated? Yes, there would be a case where we would leverage the costs of the two different funds appropriately and defensively. When we were meeting to discuss how to rework the storm water priority list, that was one of the things I was insistent on, and that we look at is if we're going to be over here doing sanitary sewer work, is that that might cause a storm water project to have higher points and you might escalate it, because you only want to get in there one time, you save money, and also minimize the disruption for the citizens. We've talked about this in the implementation part of it. We're going to have to sit down with the other underground utilities like Kentucky or wherever else it may be, because again, you can take the negative associated with these maps, but look at ways that you can turn them into a positive, is that we can replace aging infrastructure all at the same time, that despite all the disruption, that it becomes a win in the end, and there's the silver lining, at least one of them. Well, and the good example of that is that Zandale project. It was about a million dollar project, and I'm so happy that that whole line is green, as are the neighbors. So, well, I thank you very much for your work in bringing this to us. Council Member Stender, but before you ask your question, I just wanted to inform you that Council Member Lane has a meeting in Frankfurt, and that's why he departed a bit early. Council Member Stender. Thank you, Chair. Just a couple of follow-up questions in regards to what Council Member Gorton was asking about the relationship between the stormwater and the sewers. Obviously there is a, as we found out, there is a true relationship there when we have a rain event. And projects like the Anniston pump station, the Dixie pump station that were number two and number three, I think, on our list that we filed with the consent decree are underway. And you mentioned briefly about there are times when we're going to sit down and develop a policy. How soon do you want to sit down and look at that? Because we're getting ready to obviously redo Anniston probably as soon as we get the easements or the properties, and then obviously Dixie has already started. But there's also a major stormwater property in that area. Obviously we're working on that project as well, parallel. How are we going to coordinate those, and what's going to be our policy to pull monies together when we need them? Because obviously the priority list on each side is different. Well, as you know, you shared the work group that helped us put together the RFP to reprioritize those projects. We've already reprioritized the existing list. Actually, I believe that hit the street today. If not, it's going to hit the street tomorrow. We're still going to be playing some catch-up on it. The other part of it is that the stormwater or the water quality management fee, as you recall, it's got to get a couple years of history under its belt. It has no ability, I think, right now to go to the bond market because it has no debt service coverage reserves. So it's going to take a little time for that to get caught up. But ultimately, in the end, I think that the priority list is going to follow these remedial measures plan because it's one of those criteria that says we need to be working in this area as opposed to working in this other area. And there will be enough time to sequence those projects. The other thing that I think will be an advantage, and I'll make sure I word this carefully, is that, you know, sometimes acquiring the right-of-way necessary for a stormwater project has been difficult. If we can work those in with the sanitary project that has a clear mandated deadline and fines associated with failure to meet that deadline, that might help us as far as driving those projects in a more expeditious manner than we have in the past. So, you know, long and short, I assume then that the consultant will be looking at it. I don't know if that's the RFP that went out today, but hopefully we can get some good policy language from that. Sequencing projects for me was huge, and so, yeah, it is in there. I always relate it back to when we tear up a road to put a sewer line in and we come back in and, you know, well, we pave it right before we tear it up. Yes. We usually don't coordinate. The other thing I was going to ask you on the capacity assessments, I guess there was a rhyme or reason as to what part of town you started the project. I'm just trying to figure out the timeline to get to those areas because I didn't see the maps, any of those properties on the maps, which we know about already, but I guess what is the timeline to get to those and how do we start the current? If you'll indulge me, I'll go back to something I kind of maybe glossed over a little bit. There were three different groups. Group one was the biggest because based on documented overflows, it was the biggest. And group two, which included large portions of your district, was considered to be the second most significant. It's six months behind this group. So the capacity, the first round of modeling and flow monitoring is done. All we're doing right now, essentially it's in the can, but we're doing some additional flow monitoring to make sure that that model is calibrated correctly. Modeling is a mathematical representation of a hugely complex system and the likelihood of it being challenged by individuals or groups is pretty good. So we want to try to make sure it's as right as it can be. Within the next six months, you're going to see those same ones for those areas. Within six months for everybody, okay. Essentially, like I said, other than the tweaking that is now and going to be ongoing in the future, it's done. Good. Thank you, sir. Two years from now, two years from January 3rd, we have to have the capacity assurance program submitted to EPA. The capacity assurance program is another near term issue for us. Very good. Thank you. Charlie, I just have one more question. Would you not necessarily today to take meeting time, but I'm just curious, for example, on the West Hickman map, you know, some of the lines in the same area are totally green. And I personally would like to know if those are lines like Zandale that have been replaced. I know some of them are newer development out toward the Jessamine County line, but just sometime can we talk about that, unless it's a simple answer. For example, up here near Jacobson Lake, one of the lines is all green and everything else isn't. So at some point I would be interested to know if those are replaced lines so that they're new or how they didn't deteriorate as much as the others in the area. It's not a simple answer, so we probably should have an individual discussion. And again, I'd like to do that because, again, I need your help in helping set up some of these district watershed level type of meetings. And so having an individual briefing regarding your district would be very appropriate because then we could roll out with that. Thank you. Committee members, are there any other questions? Council Member Henson. Don't run off, George. I was headed for the door. The capacity assessment, which is developing the model with all the measurements associated with that and also putting flow monitors in the sewer system, you can simulate any type of storm. So what you see there is the two-year, 24-hour storm, but they could do a five-year, they could do a 10-year. It's all about model runs. The capacity assurance program, it's very detailed in the consent decree. It's probably 10 pages long, but it defines what is adequate capacity. This will maybe be a future presentation that I'll give to this group, but adequate capacity is defined as around a two-year, 24-hour storm. They were specific about how future connections could go. What the EPA wasn't specific about is when you get to remedial measures, you as a community can choose whatever you wanted to. They didn't want to set a bar for you, because different communities choose different things, depending on how difficult the problem is and how much money they got, I guess. I was just thinking, if we're going to correct the problem, we need to do it adequately. And that is addressed in the consent decree? Yes, one of the challenges going to be is that in areas where you want to do, let's say we choose a two-year, 24-hour storm, that if you do that level of work in areas that we maybe have pegged for future redevelopment, you may find yourself painted into the corner further down the road because you didn't build enough extra in there because of changing conditions. Somebody came in with a new idea that wasn't on the table before that is a higher density than what was originally for that area. In other areas that are fully developed, have some problems, but there's not really any inclination that they're going to change their character, it would be more my recommendation is that you look at establishing a level of service and staying with that and not over-sizing that, because it won't pay you back. Some communities have used kind of almost what is a reverse exactions program, which is that if you're going to build a, have to replace a new sewer, that you over-size it enough for future connections to go into it as part of infill and redevelopment, and impact fees are used to help recover that cost. It's an option. Thank you. I think that's going to be the will of the council and the will of the funding. I think that's something that we're going to certainly have to look at. We've copied on these letters in the past, essentially we send them a letter that says that, what, your connection is illegal. We've sent out hundreds and hundreds of these letters to various folks, and I've turned my slide thing off, but, you know, there was an apartment complex out at Woodhill and Idle Hour area, abandoned, nobody living there, no water turned on, but an eight-inch pipe was half full during a rainstorm, because it was draining all these broken areas they had inside the system. We had a car lot that was half their parking lot drained into the sanitary sewer system. We've been pretty effective, especially on the commercial folks, because they recognize that's part of the cost of doing business, but when you get into individual homes, that that's the way they were built. Their driveway goes under their house, their garage is under their house, as many designs are, but they have a drain at the bottom of that, and that drain is connected to the sanitary sewer system. It was built that way. And directing it to the storm sewer system at their expense is going to be pretty difficult for that property owner, because they're fixed income. Committee members, if there are no further questions, our next agenda item is items referred to committee. I believe there is one left, and that's one, Vice Mayor, that you put into committee earlier, I think into, I can't remember what, into services. That's the private solid waste providers. Did you want to bring that forward at a certain point? There was supposed to be ongoing work by a working group, and I don't know if that group is working. We would need to find out if they're working to bring us back the issue. Well, I will check that out and communicate with you on that, and we'll see where we go from here. Committee members, are there other items you want to refer to committee at this time? Last chance. I think there will probably be some added. There are no time constraints since council members Stennett and Vice Mayor Gorton and I have a meeting at 430, but I notice that there are a number of people from the public, and since the public has some interest in this, I wonder if there are any of you out there who would like to address the committee at this time. I do hope to make public comment a period of time in each of the meetings. Each meeting to the extent possible. Going once, going twice. Well, thank you for being here. Look forward to your presence in the future. Thank you, members of the Environmental Quality Department, 15th. Thank you so much. Do I hear a motion? Second. We are adjourned. Thank you. Thank you.