# Council Environmental Quality Committee - March 8, 2011 > Auto-transcribed civic record · March 8, 2011 - **Permalink**: https://meetings.lexingtonky.news/meeting/1906 - **Source video**: https://lfucg.granicus.com/player/clip/1906?view_id=14&redirect=true - **Date**: 2011-03-08 - **Last revised**: July 17, 2026 - **Length**: 15,025 words > ⚠️ **Auto-generated content.** Audio from the official Granicus video was auto-transcribed with OpenAI's open-source Whisper large-v3-turbo model, run locally by The Lexington Times. Structured facts were extracted with GPT-4o; the narrative summary was written by Anthropic Claude. Verbatim wording may contain errors. See [methodology](https://meetings.lexingtonky.news/about/methodology) or [report a correction](mailto:editor@lexingtonky.news). --- ## Meeting Overview The Environmental Quality Committee met on March 8, 2011, at 3:00 p.m., with the Chairman presiding. The committee addressed five agenda items during the session, which included four informational presentations and one item that was deferred to committee. The meeting included one motion and vote, and the committee heard three public comments. The presentations covered Environmental Policy Outreach & Education, the Environmental Policy Energy Management Program, the McConnell Springs Water Quality Report, and Monthly Financials. One matter was referred to committee for further consideration. ## Attendance The following individuals were present at the meeting on March 8, 2011: * Blues * Stinnett * Gorton * Farmer * Martin * Henson * Lane No absences or late arrivals were recorded. ## Votes and Decisions **Special Meeting for Environmental Quality Committee** The body approved a special meeting for the Environmental Quality Committee scheduled for April 19th at 11 a.m. Vice Mayor Gorton moved the measure, which passed by voice vote. [timestamp: 1:40:41] The following members voted in favor: - Blues - Stinnett - Gorton - Farmer - Martin - Henson - Lane No votes were cast against the measure, and there were no abstentions. ## Budget and Financial Actions The meeting included approval for a construction contract related to stormwater management infrastructure. **McConnell Springs Stormwater Quality Wetland Project** A contract valued at $360,000 was approved for the construction of the McConnell Springs Stormwater Quality Wetland Project. This project addresses stormwater quality management through the development of wetland infrastructure. ## Public Comment Three council members provided comments during the meeting. **Council Member Henson** [timestamp: 1:11:01] suggested Preston Cave as a potential site for a future stormwater project, noting its adjacency to McConnell Springs and its historical significance. **Council Member Martin** [timestamp: 1:27:22] emphasized the importance of public input in determining the storm frequency threshold for the remedial measures plan. Martin questioned the cost implications of different storm scenarios and noted that the public needs to understand the monthly cost impact of infrastructure decisions. **Council Member Lane** [timestamp: 1:36:44] requested that someone from budgeting or revenue be present at future meetings to address financial questions, citing the lack of representation during the current session. ## Contested Items **Cost and Scope of Remedial Measures Plan** A significant disagreement emerged regarding the financial and practical scope of a proposed remedial measures plan. The central dispute concerned whether infrastructure should be designed to address a two-year storm event or higher-frequency storm events, with substantial cost implications. Council members raised concerns about the affordability of the projected $270 million cost for the proposed approach. The debate centered on whether residents and the public could bear this financial burden, particularly given the scale of the investment required. Alternative approaches were discussed during the debate. Some council members questioned whether the city should pursue a phased implementation strategy or adopt a lower-threshold approach to infrastructure standards. These alternatives were proposed as potential ways to avoid overburdening residents while still addressing storm preparedness needs. The item resulted in a split vote among council members, indicating that the body was divided on how to proceed with the remedial measures plan. The disagreement reflected broader tensions between comprehensive infrastructure protection and fiscal responsibility to taxpayers. ## Environmental Policy Outreach & Education [timestamp: 00:03:45] Mark York presented on the Environmental Policy Division's outreach and education efforts. The presentation focused on the Live Green Lexington brand and the division's approach to promoting environmental awareness and behavior change in the community. **Key Initiatives** The presentation highlighted several ongoing programs: - Watershed festivals - Pet waste education campaigns - Rain barrel programs - School-based recycling outreach **Strategic Approach** York emphasized the importance of data-driven messaging and behavior change strategies. Research presented during the discussion revealed low public awareness of stormwater systems among community members. To address this gap, the division stressed the need for persistent, consistent messaging to effectively reach and educate the public about environmental policy issues. **Outcome** This agenda item was informational in nature, with no formal action or decision required. ## Environmental Policy Energy Management Program [timestamp: 00:30:21] James Bush presented the city's Energy Management Program, which focuses on reducing utility costs through systematic operational improvements and data-driven decision-making. **Program Components** The presentation covered several key elements of the program: - Utility billing review and analysis - Tariff optimization to secure better rates - Fuel purchase agreements - Energy budgeting processes **Monitoring and Benchmarking** Bush detailed the use of EnergyCap software as a central tool for the program. The software enables real-time monitoring of energy consumption across city facilities and allows for benchmarking to identify efficiency opportunities and track progress over time. **Future Initiatives** The presentation included discussion of upcoming government retrofits designed to improve energy efficiency in city buildings. Bush also addressed the Energy Improvement Fund, which appears to be a mechanism for financing energy-related upgrades and improvements. **Outcome** This agenda item was informational in nature, with no formal action or decision required. The presentation provided the governing body with an overview of the city's approach to energy management and the tools and strategies being employed to reduce utility expenses through improved operational efficiency. ## McConnell Springs Water Quality Report Charlie Martin and Dr. David Price presented on the McConnell Springs Stormwater Quality Wetland Project [timestamp: 00:51:05]. The project, funded through state and local matching funds, represents a $360,000 investment in water quality improvement. **Project Overview** The wetland system is designed to reduce pollutants through a series of settling ponds and natural filtration processes. This approach leverages natural mechanisms to improve water quality before discharge. **Water Quality Results** Preliminary water quality data from the project demonstrated measurable improvements across multiple pollutant categories: - Suspended solids reduction - Phosphorus reduction - Bacteria reduction - Metals reduction **Recognition** The McConnell Springs Stormwater Quality Wetland Project was recognized with an Outstanding Watershed Award, acknowledging the project's contribution to environmental protection and water quality management. **Outcome** This agenda item was presented for informational purposes. ## Monthly Financials The committee reviewed monthly financial statements during this agenda item [timestamp: 1:36:12]. Council Member Lane raised a concern about the absence of budgeting or revenue staff at the meeting. Lane noted that financial questions could not be adequately addressed without a representative from these departments present. In response, Council Member Lane requested that a budgeting or revenue staff representative be present at future meetings to ensure that financial inquiries can be properly discussed and answered. The outcome of this discussion was informational in nature, with no formal action taken at this time. ## Referred to Committee The committee discussed the status of a private working group on solid waste services. Vice Mayor Gorton noted that the working group had met several times but had become inactive. The group's progress stalled due to concerns about proprietary information that members were unable to share. Vice Mayor Gorton suggested following up with Council Member Crosby to determine the appropriate next steps for the working group and to clarify how to proceed given the proprietary information constraints. **Key Speakers:** Vice Mayor Gorton, Paul **Outcome:** The matter was deferred. [timestamp: 1:37:19] --- ## Decisions - **Motion** — passed: Approval of a special meeting for the Environmental Quality Committee on April 19th at 11 a.m. --- ## Full transcript Music Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. It's about three o'clock, so if we could gather around the horseshoe and get this committee meeting on the road. Thank you. We do have a quorum, so we can begin this meeting of the Environmental Quality Committee. We have three principal items on our agenda this afternoon, and the first one is the Environmental Policy Outreach and Education presentation. Mark York, who is the Environmental Policy Program Manager for Outreach and Education, will tell us a little bit about what his office does. One of the really important things related to the consent decree is informing, educating the public on not only on the whole community's obligations with reference to that commitment, but also the ways that the community can be actively involved in helping to resolve our water problems and to save us some money in doing so. So, Mark, if you could begin with your 15-minute presentation, and we'll have then questions from committee members after that. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It's good to be with you this afternoon. Again, we're with the Division of Environmental Policy. We're going to be talking a little bit about our outreach and education efforts. Last month, Susan Bush was here. She talked about the mission statement that we've developed for outreach. And what we want to do is inform and empower citizens to adopt sustainable practices that do several things, protect and enhance water quality, reduce landfill-bound waste through increased recycling and composting, and improve energy efficiency of homes and businesses. In order to be successful, I think there are several things that we want to be concerned with. We recognize that what we're talking about requires behavior changes on the part of citizens and businesses in Lexington. It also requires consistent messaging. We need to be concise and clear on the messages that we're delivering to the community, and it requires persistent messaging. If we're going to be increasing our recycling rates, for example, it's not something I don't believe can be accomplished with a very short three- or four-week campaign. It's something that needs to be persistent and ongoing. Everything that we do is united under our brand, Live Green Lexington. And green can mean a lot of things to a lot of different people. But again, what we're calling to mind is creating sustainable practices within our community. In energy efficiency, it may be installing CFL light bulbs. It may be getting a home energy kit from Bluegrass Pride. With water quality, it may be installing a rain barrel or putting a rain garden in your business. With waste reduction or recycling, it can be, if you're not recycling, call Lex Call and request a Rosie. or if you're a robust recycler, start a composting project at home or at work. We talk about behavior changes. We're talking about social marketing. Volumes have been written about this, but there are some very basic things to keep in mind. We want to base our outreach and education on research and data collection and analyzing that data. We also want to develop an audience. We want to target that audience with a very specific message, And I think any good program contains performance measures or evaluation. We want to make sure that the message is reaching the audience and that behavior change that we're looking for is actually taking place. In terms of water quality, we have some other things at play. We have a state MS4 permit that requires public education and outreach, and that portion of the permit runs several pages, and there are several tables related. It tells us we have to develop some messaging to the general public. We also have to target messaging to homeowners, to businesses, to builders and developers. Mark, if you could just take a slight detour and explain what MS4 is and what it means. Well, the MS4 permit, we have a separate storm sewer system. So it's separate. It's not combined with a sanitary sewer. So with that MS4 permit from the state, we have certain permit requirements, and there are several tables associated with public involvement in education. They identify specific audiences that we have to reach via that permit, and we have timetables that we have to meet. Development of web pages, development of brochures and information, again, to the general audience, but to homeowners, businesses, builders, and developers as well. Going back to the water quality data, I'm sure you're familiar with the map of impaired streams in Fayette County. This information tells us what pollutants do we have in our creeks and streams, what are the sources of those pollutants, and then again, how can we change that behavior that will reduce and or eliminate those pollutants that are showing up in our creeks and streams. And then we've also conducted some audience research. Back in 2009, we commissioned a stormwater baseline study through Preston Osborne here in Lexington, and we had target audiences, residential, business, and again, development and builders. That's just a direct reflection of our requirements under the state-issued MS4 permit. And we want to know several things, and these are some of the things we found out. Only 24% of residents, 27% of businesses could tell the difference between sanitary and storm sewers. To reverse that, approximately 75% of our community do not know that the stormwater that enters the storm drain on their street is not treated before it enters a creek or stream. That's very valuable information, knowing what our audience, in this case, does not know. We manage water quality through watersheds. And so we ask the question, do you live in a watershed? 56% of the people surveyed said they did not know. 29% said no, they don't live in a watershed. And 8% said yes, they live in a watershed, but they couldn't tell us which one. The fact is we all live in a watershed, and we all have daily activities that can impact the water quality within that watershed. We also asked their opinion. Rate the local government's performance in terms of the control of stormwater runoff and drainage. Very consistent results from all three audiences we surveyed. 68% of the residents, 69% of businesses, and 70% of builders all gave low ratings to the government's performance in terms of stormwater runoff and drainage. So again, looking at the data that we have, the research that's been done, we start doing outreach on water quality. We know we have a big uphill curve when it comes to watershed. One of the things we've done is last August we had the first ever watershed festival in Lexington. It was in the Cane Run watershed. We had approximately 300 residents show up. We had workshops that evening. We had live music. We gave away some prizes. We did a very non-scientific exit survey, and almost 60% of the people who left the watershed festival that night could correctly tell us what is a watershed. So by reaching out directly, we were able to educate these people. We've done outreach on proper lawn care practices. In your packets, I believe you'll see this brochure that's actually based on a US EPA stormwater brochure. The photograph was actually taken at Jacobson Park. This brochure was produced internally. We've got a photographer, Malcolm Stallings, who took the photo. We provide the content. We had a graphic artist who laid everything out. And you notice on the backside, this is the call to action. This is the sustainable practices I mentioned earlier. Find out if you even need to put fertilizer on your lawn. Get a soil test. And we gave them information on how to do that. So this whole backside is information on what a property owner, a homeowner can do. We've done outreach on rain barrels. The city has a Lily Rain Barrel Program. We've also produced brochures and manuals on rain gardens. And now I'm going to talk for a few minutes about pet waste. We've done a lot of outreach with regard to pet waste. Last February, February 2010, we did a news conference at the Lansdowne Veterinary Clinic with Dr. Pinkston. He talked about the health issues, not just for pets, but for humans as well, when Petway stays on the ground or it enters our waterways. We've also done outreach events in the community. We did two Bark in the Park events. These were at Lexington Legend and Ball Games last year. And then we were at the Dog Paddle event last September at Woodland Park. I know Vice Mayor Gorton was there. and we provided information materials to the people who came there about the importance of picking up after your pet. You have a copy of this as well. Again, on the back side, there's information about watersheds, about why it's important for pet owners to pick up after their pets. We've also done a variety of paid advertising. I mentioned consistency before, and some of the messages, the brochures that we've developed were consistent with that, and I now like to play a 30-second spot that was developed on PetWay. that first aired last year. That's the reaction we actually wanted people to have. Do your duty. It's a nice, cute way. It's a positive way of getting people to, again, take a sustainable action. help us improve water quality by simply picking up after your pet. I want to move on to the issue of waste reduction and recycling. Last year we contracted with Preston Osborne to conduct a survey. We wanted to find out what people's attitudes were with regard to recycling. And, again, there's a behavior change. We want to increase recycling participation in Lexington. And people may ask, well, why? Well, we're using our tax dollars to transport waste to a landfill, and then we're paying to put that money inside that landfill, and that money instead could be used for other purposes. If we increase our participation in recycling, we'll increase our recycling revenue. But very importantly, and I think sometimes this gets overlooked, is that we are supporting a regional economy through our recycling program. For example, you recycle a milk jug in Lexington that goes to a company in Somerset, Play Mart. They turn those milk jugs into playground equipment and benches. If you recycle a two-liter plastic bottle, it goes to a company called Signode in northern Kentucky, and they turn it into plastic strapping. If you recycle an aluminum can in Lexington, that goes to Berea, to the Novellis plant. Novellis is the largest recycler of aluminum in the world. The plant in Berea is the largest plant in the world devoted solely to recycling of aluminum cans. So when we recycle in Lexington, we're supporting good-paying jobs throughout the region. We did our survey last year, and we asked people to describe, tell us, how would you describe your recycling habits? 34% said, I'm an avid recycler. 31% said, I'm a frequent recycler. But if you look at the top of the graph there, 14% indicate they do not recycle at all. And 4% said they seldom recycle. Well, it's that top 18% that we really need to reach out and try to target and make a difference in. We want to know, okay, we've got some people who don't recycle at all. What are the barriers to recycling? 34% said, you know, I'm recycling everything that I can. Well, we know that that's not right because back in 2008 we did a waste stream analysis. Somewhere between 60% to 65% of the waste material in Herbis could actually be recycled. We've got 14% who say, you know, it's too much work to separate the materials. Well, last year we went single stream. You no longer have to separate your glass. We need to educate people about that. 11% say they don't know what is and isn't recyclable. Again, we need to target those folks with a message, make it very clear, very simple, very concise of what they can put inside their Rosie. And then we ask a performance measurement question. Whether school-aged children have shared a recycling message with their parents that they learned at school. Sixty-nine percent said yes. Now, we have a contract with Bluegrass Pride. They're doing waste reduction and water quality and energy efficiency outreach in our schools. They're in every public school in Fayette County, a lot of the private schools, preschool, daycares. And this chart right here shows us that school kids are learning about recycling and they're taking that message home. And we know a lot of times social behavior change can come about because a child tells the parent, you need to start doing this, you need to stop doing that. So this is a very good indicator this program is working. Continuing on with performance measurements, We've got several. Are we meeting the MS4 permit requirements? With our EcoArt Grants Program, do we have grant projects that are working in the community? The Pride Litter Grant, for example. Schools, churches, other organizations involved with Adopt-A-Spot. How many Great American Cleanups are we going to have this year? What about presentations to neighborhood meetings? And a simple one is LexCall getting calls to request for having a Rosie delivered to their home. So just to wrap up, our outreach and education, we want to center around a Live Green brand. We want to base it on good research and data, and we want to use a variety of ways to get that message out to the audiences. We want to make sure we evaluate and have performance measures in what we do. And that concludes the presentation, Mr. Chairman. I'd be happy to answer any questions. Thank you, Mark. Committee members, do you have questions? One, just to follow up a little bit on MS4, Mark, if you could just explain what that actually, what the 4 is and what the M and the S are. Charlie's here, he can correct me. Municipal Separate Storm Sewer System. That's a performance measurement. I got the question right. Thank you very much. Council Member Henson. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Mark, for being here. Can you give us some examples of MS4 in Lexington? Like the University of Kentucky is one, correct? Yeah, the university, I believe, has been seeking its own MS4 permit. So they're going to have some requirements to do outreach as well. Are there others? The state transportation cabinet has an MS4 permit, and sometimes you'll hear a radio spot that relates to water quality and it'll say paid for or brought to you by the state transportation cabinet. That's a requirement for their own permit, and so they're providing that messaging statewide. Okay. I know you all do a great job with your education, And I was just curious, you said the large number of folks that are not interested in recycling, or there's many, many reasons that they don't. Is it like a particular geographic area, a particular age group? Can that be narrowed down? Yes, we've got information from the survey that tells us which segments of the population are less likely to recycle. And then by our own look within our programs in Division of Waste Managed, we know that there are some areas, some neighborhoods in town where the recycling is not comparable to other areas. And with some electronic routing of trucks and some new electronic things we've got going in, we'll be able to track that even more closely. And we can target those areas for some specific outreach. Okay. And, you know, I would just like to say if there's any in the 11th District, I'd be more than happy to try to help promote that. Right. One thing we're doing, you may notice around town, as the Division of Waste Management takes possession of some more recycling trucks, we're starting to wrap those trucks with recycling messages. It's a way, again, we can get that message out within the neighborhoods that we're trying to encourage people to recycle. Okay. Thank you. Vice Mayor Gordon? Well, first of all, I want to thank you, and I see a lot of the people sitting out here, Charlie Martin, Susan Bush, Cheryl Taylor, James Bush, Tom Webb, lots of people who've worked on these water quality issues. And I just think we all appreciate everything that you do every day because once we can get our water quality to where it needs to be, we will be such a better community. And that's first. Now, the second is, has UK's MS4 permit been approved? I didn't realize it had been approved. I believe it has, yes. They have. They gave us the opportunity to review their stormwater quality management plan before they submitted it. We made comments on it. We're actually, we've been trading off a memorandum of understanding language as far as how we're going to cooperate with one another, not only in public education but also illicit discharges, construction sites, all those type of things, because they have their own, the same permit requirements with the state that we do, and we want to make sure that we're efficient in the way that we're able to be able to deal with their problems along with our own. So do you remember, Charlie, when did it get approval? I don't know exactly, but we started exchanging the Memorandum of Understanding text last summer, so I'm thinking it was probably late spring or early summer of last year, based on my recollection. Is there any impact on the city that we should know about? No, I don't think so. If anything, one of the things in this Memorandum of Understanding that we're trying to get to is to make sure that the university is obviously interested in the sovereignness of their border. We're interested in the sovereignness of the outfall that comes off of campus and comes into ours. And so we've had a pretty good meeting of the minds. We still have some details to it. But, you know, if they can effectively deal with the problems that originate on campus and eliminate them with us not having to expend our resources doing it, we can use our resources focusing on city-owned infrastructure and city-owned problems. So that's a good thing, I think. Okay. Thank you. Vice Chair Stinnett. Thank you, Chair. Just a quick question maybe for Susan or Commissioner Taylor. I know yesterday during the budget hearing in the FY12 budget, we're looking at recycling, actually revenue going down, but yet we hear about we're going to do the MRF, we're going to increase our recycling education and efforts, I mean, it's about a $620,000 drop. What was the rationale behind predicting it to go down on the revenue side? It's my understanding that that wasn't necessarily a prediction of it going down. That was actually what it was. That was the recycling revenues were less than projected. And what happened is, as you recall, when we upgraded the existing recycling center, We obviously kept collecting recyclables, but we couldn't put them through the center. So for three months, our recyclables had to be shipped to another place that we didn't get the revenue for. Okay. And so I think that explains that dip. Very good. I'm watching this wonderful presentation and seeing all the efforts. I saw the same thing and went, what happened? And then it occurred to me. I thought maybe our education is not working or our efforts aren't working, but we put a lot of money into the single stream system. So, you know, technically we should see it go up. Do we know what our real number will be this year? I mean, what we're averaging on recycling dollars? Have we seen that number yet? I haven't seen that yet for this year. I know we adopted, what, $2.6 million, so I didn't know if we're even going to come close. But that does explain that, Deb. Okay, thank you. That's a three-month period. Sorry. I guess I had a comment, too. I've just been across the street looking at the preliminary design for a new MRF. And, of course, to do anything like that, we have to have a very clear business case. But as Susan said, and I wasn't here during that period of time, but we did experience some downtime during that time, and we also experienced some soft markets and recycling that kind of fluctuates up and down. But because of the investment that we've made in the MRF, we're now able to run triple the capacity, and as we get our new trucks and our single stream and all that up and running and we'll have those residential routes ready to go later this month, Steve's already identified five routes that we don't need anymore, So that's five $300,000 trucks and five positions that we're constantly trying to fill, as well as the gas that now is about $4 a gallon. So there are a lot of savings going on in that arena. And as we get those trucks up and running and make recycling easier for people and more available, we expect the capacity for our MRF to go up. And are you tracking the demand for recycling service? We have the current demand, but I'm hoping over the next quarter we can give you some really strong numbers about seeing those increase. I think we're making it easier for people to recycle. I think I even had a fellow last night at the water quality meeting mention to me that he didn't put his glass in the rosy even though he knew he could, and I said, why? And he said, because I don't want people to get hurt. And I said, well, that actually makes it safer for people. And so I explained, you know, before we had people picking up those totes, back injuries, that kind of thing, those kinds of things we also expect to go down now that you don't have to pick the glass up and handle that separately. And I had explained to him how the glass was separated on the line so he wouldn't worry about people. That's why he wasn't recycling. So, I mean, there are very individual reasons why people don't, but the more we educate, the more I'm convinced that we'll have people recycling. I started recycling over 20 years ago because my daughter came home from school and said, just like Mark said, you're going to recycle. So I said, okay, and we did, and I have ever since. So we're hopeful that the investment that we've made, I know the council has been very supportive of the investments that we've made in the waste side of the house over the last 18 months. It's a lot of money that we've put in there, but we're very, very excited about the opportunities that we expect. Over the next quarter, I think you'll start to see improvement, and over the next year I think you'll see significant improvement. Thank you both for that explanation. I appreciate that. It explains a lot. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. Council Member Martin. Thank you, Chair. Charlie had one follow-up on the MS4 with UK. Does that impact our water quality management fee? No, it does not. To the best of my knowledge, they have been regular and consistent payers on a monthly basis. Excellent. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. Are there any other questions, Council Members? Dr. Bluze, I just meant to say that that is a good look on the brochure. The guy in the green socks and the shorts, that's a good look. Is that you, Charlie? Thank you, Chair. Committee members, in the light of the last few comments about the recycling center. I've talked to the commissioner about upcoming meetings. We have not, on our official schedule, we do not have a meeting scheduled for April, but I'm hoping that we can schedule one and that we can have a review have a review and an update on the recycling center from Waste Management Director Steve Fease and others. So I'm hoping we can schedule that meeting for April 12 or 19, and would like to hear from you on whether one date or the other would be most appropriate. So thank you. Next item on the agenda, Mr. I'm sorry, Mr. Farmer, I didn't see your name on the screen. That's all right. I was going to appreciate being called on. Thank you, sir. I was going to ask Mr. Martin, how many people attended last night? I wasn't able to get there at an overlapping meeting. Just wondered how many votes. We had 30 residents at the meeting last night regarding the remedial measures plan. And I think the Secretary is going to ask me to kind of comment on it here after we finish the presentations. Thank you. Thank you. Our second item on the agenda is another aspect of the Environmental Policy Division's work, and that is the Energy Management Program. And Mr. James Bush, who manages that program, is here to tell us how it works, what it does, and why it's so important to our efforts. Mr. Bush. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It was not quite two years ago when I was hired as the city's energy manager, and that term is relatively soft. It means different things to different people. So I did want to focus on elaborating on the roles and responsibilities I provide for the city, give you a better understanding of that. And one moment while I advance. Or are you working on my presentation? I'm not good. Okay. Okay. Okay. I sent that to Paul. It was a PDF file, but here you can load it up. While he's getting that loaded then, an important piece of my work then in the first year, even 18 months, as a new position was figuring out how do I work in this framework of city government, not wanting to be a redundant area, but how then do I complement what other people are doing, providing them information so that they can work smarter and more efficiently? And I think through some case examples, you'll largely see that this has been or is being accomplished. Now, when you're in the packet, do you have a copy of the slides in front of you? So on the second slide for utility billing review, the current process that we have for paying utility bills is very isolated. And the next slide. It's a very isolated process in that we don't have context of is a utility bill high or low compared to that period the previous year or even the previous month. And what I'm developing right now is a software program, it's enterprise level from the marketplace that uses electronic billing data to provide you trend history. And it can do all sorts of automated audits to know whether or not that particular bill in front of you might have an error in it or is it quite a bit, is it deviate from a normal pattern such that it would warrant further review. So what we have then is a triangle, if you can picture, between myself providing this type of information with General Services, who's in charge of coordinating with the utility companies to reconcile billing errors, and then lastly, accounts payable, who is the point of contact in the city for receiving and paying the bills. Tariff review is another area. We are a regulated market in the state of Kentucky for our electricity and largely in our natural gas. But within that, you have different rates, and one might be more applicable for a particular account. In other words, you can get a cheaper cost of service. And early on, an early success there was recognizing that there was a tariff that applied only for the control of traffic control devices on streets. So we were able to save nearly $8,000 a month by moving to a different rate. Then more recently, last August, KU hit us with a rate increase that was some accounts, our larger commercial building accounts were very susceptible to this rate. We saw a significant smike in the August-September billing, and then worked to move those that were no longer applicable into a better rate structure. And I don't have the numbers at the moment, but conservatives, I think we're looking at $200,000, maybe even $300,000 in savings across these larger accounts by moving them to a different rate tariff. On fuel purchase agreements, this is another area in the – and I should mention when I say fuel, I'm talking about natural gas for buildings. I don't work with the transportation and liquid fuels. But Columbia Gas does offer a choice marketer program where you can have competitive bids for your price of natural gas. And we are a large volume user, even though it's dispersed across about 80 different natural gas accounts. We bundled those, put those out for bid in October, secured a fixed low-cost contract that for the first two months, December and January, we're looking at over $100,000 in cost avoidance on those natural gas accounts. Energy budgeting is another area. Paul actually flagged me on this that I should use a lowercase b. I do not do budgets like Rick Codwell and General Services. They're doing the utility budgets, which takes a very accounting-centric approach. I'm talking about the budgets as it relates to a specific building or facility. So it's a different perspective, but one that's very much needed if you want to get down to what I'll call the cost of doing business. You know, how much does that building cost operate? And our accounting budgets don't always line up with that particular approach. So here by looking at utility bills in terms of what services do they provide, what building do they serve, you can get a better feel for metrics. Is it relatively efficient to its peers? Also, you can then run some what-if scenarios if you need to recognize what will the impact be from new rate increases or new loads as you change your operational behavior. On the reporting side, this might have been the most tedious part of what I was doing in 2009 and 2010, but also the most rewarding in finding out the end use points for our utilities and the activities and the properties in Lexington that we provide to the community. By aggregating this data, we can track it and compare it to benchmarks. These could be national benchmarks for property indexes, different building types like fire stations, office, public assembly areas. But also I become then the feedback that's missing today in terms of you really don't know the consequences of your actions when you're in the facilities turning lights on using computers or operating a fire station. The reporting tools that I can provide then give those end users some feedback as to how they're doing, again, relative to any number of baselines or benchmarks. Lastly, if we do operational changes or we make an improvement to a building, we have the ability to see that in the data and document. This one might be more appropriately titled operations management. I do work very closely with facilities and sit in on the weekly meetings with the buildings and maintenance groups. But it could as easily be Charlie's group at water with their pumping stations and wastewater treatment plants, the parks facilities, and traffic engineering. But the idea that we get down to a sub-meter level rather than a utility bill, which is a kind of high level from my standpoint, we get underneath that and see what within the building is using the energy and what changes can we make to make them more efficient. The bottom part with operational guidelines, there it becomes an outreach campaign. I call it here energy literacy, but working with purchasing and their procurement policies to make sure that we have some minimum thresholds for the equipment we buy. Also with facilities, if they're looking at choosing between different pieces of equipment, which one might have a best lifecycle cost for use. In consultation here, I do have a background in engineering, so I bring a fairly strong technical resources to the table that not all energy managers share. And so I am finding myself more and more at the table for providing independent review of technical documents, meeting with our consultants who are designing our new buildings and plans, doing energy modeling. As Commissioner Sherrill mentioned, the new MRF facility, they're doing that right now, and I can speak that language, so to speak. So it does, it offers one more component that I find myself more and more utilized within other departments. You are aware that we received an Energy Efficiency and Conservation Block Grant. This was Recovery Act dollars. I am the program manager for the first two items on our block grant. That would be the energy management technology. I'll talk about that's largely the tools I need to get my job done. And then government retrofits, which is where we'll be deploying some improvements to facilities. The old days, I wanted to give you a snapshot. As I was interviewing different parts of the government to figure out again where I fit, You can find, you know, everyone loves a spreadsheet. They've all got their personal ones. So here is a relational database that I developed in the fall of 2009. The center there is the properties. You know, what is using that energy, be it electric, be it gas, water, and what equipment is in there. Well, we moved that, essentially became the foundation for EnergyCap, which is a software purchased under the Recovery Act monies, to give us a graphical interface for the same database, in essence. So we have a dashboard here that gives me a number of metrics in terms of how any particular building is performing. On the left-hand side of that tree, then, you can navigate, and at any level, you get a dashboard specific to it. But digging deeper, here you would see like a trend line of utility data. This happens to be one of the meters that serves the building you're in today. And you see off where the arrow is indicating in the summer of 2008, the facilities group initiated a building controls program. And you see a steep decline in the use of energy, which was fantastic, but a feedback they were unaware of. They knew it was the right thing to do but couldn't quantify it. So here we can start quantifying the efforts from the operations groups. And largely until just last August, if you look at the far right, I have to point out that sharp spike, that was the rate increase that we were hit with in August, and it put us right back where we were three years ago with regards to the cost of our electricity, even though the energy use is down significantly. Benchmarking, you can do it, you know, compare a building to building, so you have a pure benchmark, but here what I'm looking at is a rate structure. You would think meters or accounts, I should say, that are on a similar rate should behave similarly. In this case, running just above $0.06 per kilowatt hour is that vertical line, but then at the very bottom, there's an outlier. We investigate that. Why is this account paying so much more for electricity on a similar rate? Most likely it was one we probably moved to a different rate for cost savings. Energy cap is also more sophisticated than a utility bill program. It can handle any interval data, whether you're talking daily, hourly, or down to five-minute level. I'm working with Bluegrass Energy right now who has more sophisticated utility meters on their grid, and we will receive then daily data into EnergyCap. And likewise, on the right-hand side, those are our buildings that have a building automation system, which I can tie those as well. The idea here is if you simply respond to a utility bill, it's water under the bridge. You probably used that energy weeks ago, if not months. And so we need to move more towards real time if we're going to be able to manage our energy and respond to price signals. The second project, government energy retrofits, will be using roughly $800,000 to improve the Dunbar and Black and Williams community centers. bids should be back in the may time frame and once we have that secure we'll know if if there's much of a balance to do some of the smaller projects and lastly i wanted to point out the energy improvement fund which was passed by council last year that is a important component of my programs and certainly significant for the city of Lexington in that we have a revolving fund where we, through programmatic areas like the rate structures I've been talking about or the improvements like we'll do to the community centers, when we have money that would have otherwise gone to a utility, we can put this into a fund to use for future energy improvements. And, you know, it's critical that this cycle be maintained. Any break in that link essentially kills an operating budget for what will only lower costs for the city. That concludes my presentation. Thank you very much. I think there are some questions. Vice Chair Stennett. Thank you, Chair. I'm just going to go back to a point you made. You met with the vision directors and, I guess, the building maintenance folks, the particular buildings. And have you documented the change in terms of percentage savings in each building? Have you put that on a spreadsheet? We have that capability now. What we need is essentially the project list, which ones have been. And during my tenure, the two larger projects I can think of, the geothermal system was put in at Fleet Services. I'm actually running. It's a special module, one that's used by the U.S. Department of Energy and ESCOs, if you're familiar with that term, of running that module on our fleet services project to see what its prediction is relative to what we know in the field. So that's one case study. Police, the police gymnasium on Old Frankfort Pike had an exterior wrap of insulation and the lighting upgrade. I'm curious as to how those were influenced. and after that it's largely been smaller projects, and within energy management, a general rule, you want to approach about a 20% reduction where it does get difficult to pull out of the noise and just general variation in occupant behavior. That's one of the things we struggle with. The energy team that I'm chair of this year meets monthly, and we kind of review those nuances. Okay, so can you give us a copy of the benchmarking? that you're using? You're using some kind of benchmarking to measure that 20% reduction? I can. I think it might be a little more detailed than what you're expecting, but I can provide examples of... I'm just curious how it's broken down. Is it broken down per person usage of energy or per square footage? No, it's typically per square foot is the normal indice for building. As you said, human behavior, which is a big indicator of that, you know, terminal thermostat down to 72, whatever, or having a programmable thermostat, things like that, that you can do minor things. But there's a larger scale that you mentioned, geothermal, new systems. I mean, we have those opportunities, too. I'm just trying to see, you know, if we invest as a council in our next budget into those systems that save us energy on our utility bills, you know, that may be a worthy investment in going ahead and bonding something to get a system in there that we can save several hundred thousand dollars a year on down the road. Yes, the common indice, then, is per square foot. That usually accounts for 80 percent of energy use, and the additional 20 percent is where you get in the nuances of how many occupants are in there and lighting levels and such. Okay. And then I saw that we're hosting the Midwest Regional Energy Star Conference here in Lexington. Will we be there at that conference, I assume? I sit on the steering committee for that particular conference. I do not believe that we have a booth ourselves. The market is for builders, which isn't quite our demographic, but I will be there personally. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. Just to follow up a little bit with Council Member Stanton's questions, How much further do we need to go in really getting the word out to, you know, throughout government to all of our employees on how we can all participate in, you know, in this management program and in these savings? It's my belief we're starting about from zero, so we have a long way to go. I mean, it was evident early on that we had really no feedback, and our loop is almost a pass-through system that the utility bills are processed and paid, but that information was not given back to the end user. So for me, it's finding the stakeholders, getting down to an operations level of who can actually influence that, because there are a lot of things that are beyond the control of your typical employee. who merely needs an office space and another who's in charge of nighttime setbacks or weekend setbacks or whether or not we need additional insulation or a lighting upgrade on a facility. And that's where the stakeholder's facility was an early and obvious target that I've been working with, but reaching out to the parks. And I had conversations with the maintenance staff for the pumping stations just recently, and as well as traffic engineering in our, you know, what do we need from a, or what are we required to provide for safety and security to navigate streets? Because it's certainly a large, cost-wise, a large component of our utility bill is just lighting up streets that obviously aren't always used. Well, we have a long way to go, but it looks to me like in your two years you've made some important progress. Thank you. It's been rewarding. Other questions from committee members? Mr. Bush, thank you so much. This has been very informative, very helpful. You're welcome. Our third major agenda item on today's docket for the committee is a report from Charlie Martin and Dr. David Price of the Division of Water Quality on the McConnell Springs Pond Project. So, Charlie? Okay. While we're getting the electronics up there, I want to make an editorial comment. James' work helps us tremendously, and we've just begun to scratch the surface as far as energy consumption. I think in water quality, I think our energy bill, utility-wise, is about 17% of our overall budget. It's fairly tremendous. I mean, we have four 1,250-horsepower motors that run out there pretty much all the time, so big energy consumption. So looking forward to working on them as we move forward with plant upgrades. I think we can see some savings there. What I'm here to talk about today, though, is the McConnell Springs Stormwater Quality Wetland Project. This is a project that had been going on for the last couple of years, and we were asked to come and kind of report, follow up as far as what happened. Where we started out at, those of you who are familiar with McConnell Springs, there used to be this swamp, essentially. It was a pond, lake, what have you. This is what it looked like. Those of you who go to McConnell Springs or used to go there, maybe you're familiar with the infamous mosquito meter that they had a meter that said up there was when it was really bad, and this was the reason why the mosquitoes were so bad. A project, the concept came up in 2004 by former staff members, and essentially they went after a grant that was administered by the state but provided by US EPA. But the project, it kind of languished for a while because there wasn't a commitment on the part locally to be able to provide the appropriate matching funds. But in 2008, council had the wisdom to fund that unfunded gap, which allowed us then to proceed with the project. And essentially this is kind of a walkthrough here as far as what the layout of it is. In the very beginning here, you have essentially what this is is a trash rack. It's like a bunch of little teeth sticking up. It catches trash that overflows into this area. Normally it flows in through this inlet here and into what is essentially almost like a septic tank, but it's a nutrient separator. It catches large debris. So down in the lower heart you see where you pick up trash, and then it goes in, and then the finer particles settle out. It goes further into the system, and it works its way through a series of small ponds that settle the water out, slow it down, and allow more particles to settle to the bottom. And then finally it ends up into the main lake part of it, what is probably the most eye-catching feature of this for people who go to McConnell Springs now. And further treatment goes on before it goes out of the system. So here's kind of the aerial view. This first arrow shows where it crosses that trash rack. And then it works its way around through these series of ponds, kind of meandering, such as that, again, you're getting treatment, you're getting removal as it goes through. and then it enters into the main pond and exits out towards the cave areas. And so all through this, upstream from there, just to kind of orient you, the Welcome Center is located up here. Right along here is the tobacco warehouses that are on Forbes Road. And at the bottom of this would be the railroad tracks. On the other side of those railroad tracks is Pepsi-Cola. So you've got a fairly large industrial area that is draining to essentially the founding location for Lexington. And so we've had water quality issues there in the past and the primary intention of this project was to be able to address those things. Let's see here. Did I miss one? I'm good. The construction finally started in 2009. We had to hustle up on this thing because the deadline for completing the project was December of 2009. Because it languished, we were in danger of losing the funding, but we were able to pull our act together and get this thing built at a cost of about $360,000. We still have some additional work that's planned. We've got some artwork and some plantings that are scheduled for this spring. The artwork is particularly unique in the sense that the water level of this thing raises and lowers, and the way the artwork is set up is that at different water levels, you'll see different things like cranes or fish or these other type of animals. And so if you go there, like I said, you want to note that, varying water levels. All right, we started out with this muck-de-muck pond, essentially, and here's where they start under construction. Essentially, they removed all the vegetation, took out everything that was there. This next photo here is where they're actually putting the liner in. There is a liner that is under the main pond, and they backfill that and compact that with clay in order to make sure it holds water all the time. Now here you see the boardwalk being under construction, and finally what the site looks like today. Outcomes. One of the main things that was an outcome for me, and this was one of the great things about this project, it was a successful collaboration between two different divisions, because parks, obviously, they're the long-time maintenance folks associated with this operation up there. But to develop an amenity for a place that has 20,000 visitors a year, it was a really, really good thing. And we worked so well with the Division of Parks and Recreation and being able to pull this thing off. It went so well as you see in the second bullet, we won an award for the Outstanding Watershed Award for the Kentucky-Tennessee Water Environmental Association. So we were really, really pleased about that. The last thing that really needed to be confirmed, though, was whether or not it's removing pollutants in the way that it was designed or intended to. So, you know, the division then turned to volunteers, the Friends of the Wolf Run, along with its existing laboratory expertise in order to be able to make that confirmation. So at this point, I'm going to turn it over to Dr. Price, who's our laboratory supervisor, and he's going to walk you through the water quality part of it. That advances you in that center. Okay. Okay. All right. Thanks, Charlie. Like Charlie said, you know, once they constructed the whole unit, we wanted to make sure it's actually working the way it's supposed to. So we went ahead, and the first thing we did, which would be the top right slide there, is we went ahead and selected what are going to be our sampling sites. And we, you know, talked with the Nature Center folks, and we talked to some of the Wolfram folks, and eventually we selected all the different sites we're going to do. In addition, one of our goals was to use middle school, high school, college level students to do some of the sampling. So what we did is we actually trained the Nature Center staff on how to use the kits, the water quality testing kits. And then eventually we'll integrate that with the students coming in. They can help with some of the sampling and take some of the load off of us. So here's the sampling locations. M1 would be the Sun Tree Unit, the unit that Charlie was talking about that removes all the debris. And then M2, M3 would be the two settling ponds. And then we have M4 and M5, which would be the big lake, big lagoon area. Again, we try to select these sites so that it would be easy access, not only for the lab technicians, but any students that might be coming in and trying to get some water samples there. Here in these, we've got some action photos here. This is the town branch lab personnel actually collecting the samples. We also have on-site meters that we can do some of the water quality testing on-site. And then we took some of the samples back to our lab and did the remaining of the analysis there. This gives you an idea of some of the testing we did. We actually looked at several of these items. A lot of these we did on-site, stuff like PHDO and that kind of thing. and then a lot of the stuff we took back to the Town Branch Lab and did the testing there. In addition to all the parameters we did here, we also teamed up with the Kentucky Geological Survey, and they did some of the metal analysis for us. And these are some of the examples of some of the metals they tested for us. We actually did two sampling events where they looked at all the metals coming out of the water there. we went ahead and did nine sampling collections in 2010 we tried to correlate it when there was a heavy rainfall so soon after we had a really heavy rainfall we were monitoring the rain gauges we went out there and took a sample the only exception would be in August and December by the time we got into a drought condition and the levels were fairly low but we tried to do it at least once every other month for the sampling Now I know this slide kind of looks like a tangle of spaghetti here, but I'll walk you through it. What we're looking here is at the amount of solids that are suspended in the water column itself, just the stuff floating in the water column. This is for the entire year of 2010. And what I did is I actually broke it down to looking at spring and summer. And what we can see here, M1 is the filter trap, and as it moves down M3 through M4 and 5, which then M4 and 5 would be the lagoon itself, we can actually see a decrease of the stuff floating in the water. It's actually decreasing. It's actually settling out, which is what we expected to see. Now, in the summer-wintertime, again, we had low flow conditions, not as much water coming in. It kind of stabilized, but we are seeing a downward trend in the low flow conditions. I just selected a few of the numbers we looked at. Here's another one that was of interest, was total phosphorus. And again, we're seeing a reduction of phosphorus from the entrance of the water all the way to the lagoon. This is specifically important in the lagoon because we want to make sure the phosphorus doesn't go too high. What happens if we get too high of a phosphorus, then we end up with algae growing and we end up with green scum across the lagoon. So that's one we're actually monitoring. And then another one I'm showing you here, this is actually bacterial counts, specifically E. coli. E. coli tends to be present if there's any kind of sewage around. And again, we see a reduction in the number of colonies that we see. This is going towards the lagoon for the entire year. Now this is really interesting. When we looked at the metals, we did two sampling dates for the metals. The top one is aluminum, the bottom one is iron. We actually see a reduction in the levels of metals in the water column as it goes through the system. If we look at different metals, these are more important metals, the metals of concern, which would be copper and nickel. They tend to be toxic to wildlife. We actually see a decrease up to the point there's no detection at the lagoon. And we also looked at sulfur and zinc, and a couple more metals are concerned, especially zinc. And again, we're seeing a reduction of metals through the stormwater facility. So just to kind of sum it up together, when we looked at the general water quality parameters, everything was within expected parameters. Again, the amount of suspended stuff in the water actually decreased as it went through the facility. Another thing we saw, we saw ammonia levels decreasing. Nitrate and nitride levels, which would be common with fertilizer inputs, they were fairly low. We're keeping an eye on those. Again, phosphorus decreased over time. We'll keep an eye on that one. And the bacterial counts decreased. We didn't detect any of the metals you see above there. but we do see reductions in the specific metals that I showed in the graphs there. So based on this preliminary data, again, this is just a year's worth of data, it appears that the structure is actually working as we expected it to do, and it's actually reducing the load of pollutants. So our plan is to continue monitoring the system at least every other month, include some of the students in the sampling, and specifically we want to make sure that we keep an eye on phosphorus and the metals. We don't want to make sure that those go up too crazy on us. So with that, if there's any questions. Let me add one comment to conclude here. Thanks, Dave. Stay close if they have a technical question. The tie-in for this is he kept talking about phosphorus. It goes back to Mark's comments and presentation earlier in that folder. You know, he's on the front end trying to educate folks about not adding fertilizers excessively to their lawns. We're on the back end building water quality devices that even when those things do happen is that we're able to minimize the impact on the receiving streams by being able to remove it using a naturally engineered system. And in my other comment, I'm glad to have been able to bring somebody along with me for a change. We have five laboratory technicians that work at Town Branch. They do all the analysis for both treatment plans. They've now expanded themselves out into the stormwater stuff. I wanted to make a comment about some unsung heroes, people who work in the background that people don't always necessarily know about. Dave and his staff do a tremendous job, and I wanted to make sure that I made that point. Thank you very much, Dr. Price, Charlie. McConnell Springs is really a remarkable story because, as you know, when several years ago, it was just a dump. And it was rescued by people like Jim Rebman in environmental quality, by former Vice Mayor Isabel Yates, by a very large number of community volunteers who turned out to dig tires out of the springs and old pipes and junk and to redeem what had been just a place to dump stuff in an industrial area and to rescue it as a major historical site, the legendary founding site of the city of Lexington. So it's a victory for our history, for those of the public who have been to McConnell Springs, who have walked the grounds and have seen that it's a wildlife center now, a great place for birding and aesthetic delight. And with this wetland project, a major scientific enterprise brought in at fairly low cost and under deadline, it's simply a major triumph for a lot of entities in our city. And I'm certainly pretty proud to have it in the second council district as well. The really remarkable thing is that it shows that even in a heavily industrialized area, a natural site can not only survive, but it can thrive, and it can, as well, it can educate and involve. So I encourage as many Lexingtonians as possible to, you know, now that the weather is finally coming around to something approximating spring, to visit McConnell Springs and to really appreciate one of the great gems in our city. I do have a question, and that is, can this project be a model similar for other projects throughout our community? I believe so. The beauty of this project was because we already owned the property, it made it much easier. Because when you try to do water quality stuff, especially if it involves private property, getting everybody to kind of buy in on that. In our supplemental environmental projects associated with the consent decree, we have a stream restoration project at Coldstream right along the edge of the legacy trail segment between Citation Boulevard and the interstate. I think that's probably going to be our next ground. The great thing about projects like those is, again, we can control our own destiny because we are the only property owner. But also, again, tying back into Mark York's presentation is that when you've got a captive audience that is coming there for recreational purposes, that they have physical recreation and they also have environmental recreation in the same place. We're getting as much bang for our buck as we possibly can out of that. So, yes, I think there's tremendous opportunities, and Coldstream is probably going to be our next one. Great. Thank you so much. Council Member Martin. Thank you, Chair. It is the prerogative of the chair to sometimes beat council members to the punch. And Dr. Blue said exactly what I was going to ask is, first of all, thank you for coming and thank you for the great work that you do. My interest is, can this be used as a template? My first question was, how did you get the land? And so there are other places in Lexington. I mean, these kind of places make Lexington unique and special and contribute to placemaking. I have a little thing in the 10th District called the Springs that is currently on the market. And so it's all privately owned. And so one of my questions is how difficult would that be to either pick up the land or to look at some other way to save that site because it, too, is an old historical site. Well, I think that we certainly would like to talk to you about that offline here. as far as because we're not always necessarily aware of it. The great thing about working with the council members is that you guys are more, you know, focused on the particular areas that you're representing, and you may be able to present or get us hooked up with opportunities that we had not necessarily thought about. The, you know, the other part of the other struggle right now of doing more of these kind of projects that we'd like to is this big thing called the consent decree that seems to sometimes distract us from doing some of the other things that we would really like to do. But I'd love to talk to you about that as far as seeing whether or not there is an opportunity for a public-private partnership in a way that it makes it an amenity for whoever that property owner is. We definitely would be interested in that. Thank you, Chair. Council Member Henson. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Charlie. Dr. Price, I was going to suggest Preston Cave. for your next project. But, you know, and it adjoins McConnell Springs. Sure. So. Yeah, that has been talked about in the past. Don't you think it's a great idea? I think it's a great idea. Right. Sure, it is. Thank you. So at what point should we talk about staffing and funding? Oh, no, I'm sorry. I couldn't resist that. I'll find some volunteers. Okay. I was curious. It's page 37 in our packet, and the picture on the left that you said it collects waste and prevents it from, is it debris? I'm trying to get back to it here. Let's see if we can get back to it. The very first part of that slide, I've got to get rid of my arrows here. Yes, the thing with the teeth, that. You're talking about this thing right here? Right. Right. During low flows, it comes in through this pipe and goes into this tank, and that's where these particles get settled out. That would be leaves and sticks and bottles and cans. There's a roadway that leads back to there. Streets and roads will pull back there with their Vactor truck on a regular basis and pop those lids off and suck all the junk that comes into those. Essentially, it removes the larger particles. When we get a really high flow, though, not all of that water can make it into that tank. Instead, it tops over the top. Right. It's caught by that trash rack, essentially, what it's called, is that it will catch all the stuff as well, and then you have to rake all the stuff off the trash rack to be able to. But the whole idea is the pond itself and these smaller ponds are for smaller particle removal and even micro particle removal, which is a lot of the stuff that Dr. Price was talking about, is that stuff is not even visible to the naked eye. Exactly. Right. But I was just curious, you know, because we have so much trash in our watersheds, if something like that would work in some areas? It will definitely work. Obviously, the million-dollar question is the maintenance obligation that's associated with it. It does require a lot of maintenance work. We have a similar project that's down at Gainesway Pond that's on Appian Way, similar kind of thing, but we're out there weekly cleaning that thing up. Okay. So that's something we just need to be cognizant of, is that while it is an outstanding and excellent idea to have more of those type of things, putting them in is really the first part of it, is continuing to maintain them over the long haul, is what's the cost and are we willing to accept that burden and that obligation moving forward. Okay, thank you. Committee members, any other questions? Thank you. segments, so to speak, and the first plan, first segment of that plan will involve three public meetings with regard to the east and west Hickman and Wolf Run water sheds. We had pretty good turnout last night, a very interesting discussion, but if you can give us some of the highlights and the important points. Sure. and maybe advertise the next two meetings would be a big help. We had a fairly good turnout for our first meeting. I'm optimistic that the buzz that's created out of yesterday's meeting, not only through the Herald-Leader but through other news media outlets, will help as far as turnout in the next two meetings. We had about 30 people, and we went through this presentation. Much of this presentation you have already seen when we gave this to you back in January. We've actually added to it and augmented it as more information comes about. Starting off here, I mean, just to remind everybody of what our schedule is, is that we have these SSA reports due. The first one is due in April of this year. That's the collection of facts, the capacity assessment, and where are the defects. And they're staggered six months apart. We also have the plans, which is the implementation or what we're recommending to fix those defects. What are we going to do about all these things that are in the SSA reports? They are going to be the list of projects, the schedule associated with them, and the estimated cost of those projects. So RMP is the remedial measures plan is where the rubber hits the road. The first one is due in October of this year. That's why we're having these meetings, because we're required to get input from the community, and we recognize that what this committee and also the council as a whole are going to want us to do is go out in the community and inform them as much as we can about what's going on. I'm going to skim through many of these slides because you've seen these maps, you were provided these maps already, and we'll get to the cost slide because that was also a fairly lengthy discussion. Basically what we have done is that we have come up with what is a general solution. That's to collect and convey all of the water that has been measured that gets in in this three inches of rain we've been talking about, the two-year, 24-hour storm. If we don't get anywhere out into the collection system and remove inflow and infiltration, essentially you've got to collect and convey all that water to a point where you can control it, such as at the bottom of the hill. And you see some fairly beefy numbers associated with that for just group one, the elephant in the room being West Hickman. If you'll remember that map, I mean, essentially we've got capacity problems, major capacity problems all the way at the top of the hill at Lexington Mall. And as you move further down the hill, it doesn't get any better. But Lexington Mall is seven miles away from the treatment plant. So if you've got major capacity problems and you can't get the water, excess water that's getting into the system out of it, you've got a long way to convey a whole bunch of water, and it just accumulates on one another. Now, we presented these numbers based on these are planning level numbers to collect and convey and not get rid of any water. We're not going to pursue a plan that does not attempt to eliminate inflow and infiltration from the collection system. I think in Councilmember Martin's district, also partly in Ms. Henson's district, we're doing a rehab project right now around Georgian Way, around Beaumont Middle School. That's what that whole project is geared towards. We sent out sump pump redirection letters and also are making repairs in that area, and we are monitoring that to see what the drop is based on before work and after work, and we're going to use that as a benchmark to try to predict how much water we can get out of the system. If we get more water out of the system, these numbers are going to get better, basically speaking. Now, the other problem with these numbers is it does not deal with treatment plant capacity. there's a lot of different ways to do this and there'll be further discussions about things such as offline storage which is going to have an impact on whether or not we're going to majorly expand treatment plants but I'll throw something out here right now that to me that was really shocking when I was told this is that West Hickman right now the treatment plant is rated for about 33.8 million gallons a day That's its permitted capacity hydraulically or for wastewater. During this two-year storm, two-year, 24-hour storm, which is about three inches of rain over a 24-hour period, if we convey all the water that gets into West Hickman to the bottom of the hill to the treatment plant, a storage tank equivalent to the size of the treatment plant would need to be built there, 33 million gallons. that just isn't I can't fathom how that would possibly happen it's mind boggling to me I suspected that Wes Tickman would be a major challenge based on information that we had collected 10 years ago but I didn't really honestly expect a 208 million dollar number but that's the number that we're facing so we presented this information to the public yesterday We will be doing so again next Monday and the following Monday. Next Monday is at Victory Baptist Church on Armstrong Mill Road. The following Monday will be at Tates Creek Christian Church on Tates Creek Road. Both of those meetings start at 6 o'clock. So please share that with your neighborhood presidents or any other folks that you engage with. I can take questions. Thank you for that update, Council Member Martin. Charlie, so these are still in the planning process. And so as far as the decision yet been made that we're going to base it on a two-year storm? No, we have not. That's what this is all about. Yes, that's partly what this is all about, is to be able to try to put some numbers to what is going to be perceived to be the baseline. The two-year, 24-hour storm, it is mentioned in the consent decree only associated with the Capacity Assurance Program, which means basically is that unless we meet certain conditions, if a pipeline is under capacity based on that storm, somebody can't connect to it, whether it be a retail establishment or a restaurant or anything else. So we've definitely got to get to the two-year, 24-hour storm. I don't think EPA will approve anything less than that. Just for folks watching, that's a very low threshold because obviously a 100-year storm would be a much rarer occasion. Absolutely, yes. The two-year to 24-hour storm, that three inches of rain, is basically what we've gone through over the last week or so. I didn't get all of my information together. We're in the process of moving offices, and so things are a little bit in disarray back in my shop. But the last data I saw is that we had about 16 pump stations that overflowed during the course of that rain event that we had through last weekend. In the consent decree, it lists 22 priority pump stations, essentially 16 of them overflowed. The good news is that South Elkhorn, which was the worst one we had in the system, did not because we fixed it. So there are success stories. But let me expand on this, Councilman Martin, a little bit here. You are correct, is that that is setting the bar somewhat low. But you can see here is that for that two-year storm in Wolf Run, it's about 3.2 inches of rain, but it's $39 million in cost. This is the green bar is represented in tens of millions of dollars. But as you move up this, that for a five-year storm, you're only handling a half of an inch of rain more, but it's costing you another $12 million. dollars. Likewise, if you move to the 10-year storm, you're handling 4.3 inches of rain, so you're about a little bit more than an inch more than you were at the two-year storm. Now you're at $65 million. What this really shows, though, is that the blue, you know, it's a gentle slope as you increase the duration or frequency of that storm. The slope between the green lines is much, much greater. I think that's what I was trying to convey to this committee back in January is that we want to aim as high as we can responsibly, but we also have to be cognizant is that it's not a linear relationship when you start talking about costs. And, of course, those costs would have to be borne by the public. Right. And that is why it's so very important that the public be involved in these meetings and in helping to make that decision. That's correct. You know, I'm glad you brought that up as well. I mean, that's the message that I have to share with everybody is that, you know, when we get down in, I think, in the community, if we look at our number of calls, our service situation and all that, you know, I think that you'd find that there is a steady percentage of folks who have sewer problems, and nobody deserves to have sewer problems. And it's our goal to make sure that nobody ever has sewer problems. But when you compare the number of sewer problems to the number of customers, and I think you all recognize this very clearly, is that where we may have 1,000 sewer problems, we have 95,000 people who get a sewer bill. And so that $95,000 plus has got a stake in this decision that we make because of the impact of their bills. Mr. Furmer. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Charlie, just for everybody's consumption, give the date, time, and place for the next two meetings. The date, time, and place. Again, so I'm going to make sure I do my math here, is that the 14th of March at 6 o'clock at the Victory Baptist Church on Armstrong Mill Road. I do not have that address. This will be about the time maybe Mark comes to my rescue. It's near the back entrance of Harland. I think it's between Kennesaw and Man of War on Armstrong Mill. Yes, sir. And then the following Monday, which is the 21st of March, at Tate's Creek Christian Church, which is next to Emanuel Baptist as you're heading on outbound Tate's Creek Road, 6 o'clock on Monday, the 21st. We'll try to turn you out of crowd for that one. Uh-oh. Okay. So is this presentation material what you used last night? Yes, it is. Do you have it in a format? And you could forward it or you have it printed in any way? Right now I believe it is available via a PDF via the Live Green Lexington website that Mr. York mentioned before. It looks very interesting to me. It is very interesting. And we're hoping to expand on this bar graph as it applies to East Hickman because East Hickman is the primary focus next week. That's why we're at Armstrong Mill. Right. And then when we arrive at Tate's Creek Christian, it's going to be about West Hickman. And that's going to be the big one. And we're probably going to struggle with trying to get the graph to match out. Another thing that a property owner made a very good point is that we're going to at least try to benchmark-wise, how much are we talking about per person, per household, if we're talking about right now $270 million with still Group 2 and Group 3 to be able to cost those out. It will be a year before we have the complete cost because that earlier slide, that first slide I showed you, it's between now and this time next year that we'll be finishing Groups 2 and 3. Those numbers will become available. We expect they won't be as large as the ones we've seen here because the known problems aren't as widespread, but they still add to the total. But what this property you are asking, it was a really legitimate question, is can you somehow articulate this into how much a month is this going to cost me, and I can make a decision on whether a two-year storm or a five-year storm is worth it to me. If it's a buck a month, I might decide, you know, that I want to go to the next one. If it's $50 a month, that's a whole different story. And it was a really very good, probably the best comment that I got the whole night in the fact that it was a very legitimate way to be able to try to explain a really complex situation to people. Well, that's kind of input you're looking for. Exactly. It's a different way to view it and kind of merchandise it a little bit. So it sounds like this presentation is dynamic based on where you are. Yes. Well, I look forward to the third one then because that was where I am. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Council Member Hanson. Thank you, Chair. Charlie, I have a couple of questions that maybe I should have asked last night. But do you know what the average rain event, the number of precipitation? Well, you know, they express these things in this frequency situation, a one-year storm, a two-year storm. Essentially what that's supposed to mean is that you've got a 1% chance or a 2% chance or a 5% chance. When you get into the average rainfall, they more or less express that in average totals. And so it doesn't necessarily equate to this. I think Lexington averages about 45 inches of rain a year. I think I've read that someplace. what's changing, and we see this, I think, as we all get older, it seems like that we have more intense durations of rain followed by widespread things of dry periods of time. Maybe climate change, it could be a lot of different things. So I don't think there really is a way to really articulate the average rainfall based on intensity. Okay. And my other question was some of the areas need, they're in much more shape, correct? The problems are more widespread. See more occurrence of, yeah, of problems. So does it have to be like a two-year storm or a five-year storm across the board? could we correct some areas at a higher level and some at a lower level? I think everything's on the table right now. I mean, I can't say that I would be opposed to that or supportive of it. I think you've got to look at that. I have thought about that in the sense that in some of the older areas where you're wanting to do or emphasize infill and redevelopment is that, you know, we don't want to set our bar low and then put ourselves in a box further down the road. I remember I think I said in January is that as much as this seems like a huge and terrible obligation, in somewhere in this there is also opportunity, is that if you're going to be replacing your lead infrastructure in key places and your emphasis is still on infill and redevelopment, This is a good way to help drive that. And I'd be very curious to hear what, you know, from Robert, the gentleman last night that asked the question, which I thought was fantastic, just to see what those numbers would be. And then, you know, with something like a sunset clause that we talked about. Thank you, Charlie. Just one more comment about that number. I mean, it's going to be a planning level number because one of the things I know that we won't be able to figure out, we're not going to be able to figure out the cost of the actual cost associated with debt service and things like that. I mean, we're going to do it at a level that at least gives somebody some range. But when you start talking about this kind of money and borrowing money over periods of time, staging it to match your construction and all that, it starts getting complicated, especially when you're starting to try to figure in debt service and those kind of things like that. Council Member Martin. Thank you, Chair. I just have a couple follow-ups. Does the project change if it's spread over time cost-wise or whether it's compressed? I would guess it would get more expensive over time, but that's why I'm asking. Honestly, I don't think I have a really good feel for that right now. I mean, it certainly is that, you know, depending on what selections that we choose, you know, as soon as we let the genie out of the bottle as far as particular property or thought we wanted to deal with, that's kind of problematic because you almost kind of cast yourself into a particular location. That would impact costs. I would think that, you know, over a long period of time is that cost would stabilize more because we'll continue to do those rehabilitation projects, like I mentioned before, on Georgian Way and what have you. And if we can legitimately reduce the amount of water that's getting into the system, some of those pipes don't need to be as big as what they would be otherwise, and we'll be able to save ourselves some money on the back end. I think there needs to be a lot of time, but realizing we only have 11 to 13 years, that's all the consent decree gives you. That was the biggest concern of mine in resolving the consent decree is that I felt like it was a super aggressive schedule, and it still worries me to death how we're going to manage a mega project like this over the long haul. Like 10 years because you've got a couple years of planning. And then I guess my second follow-up question is if we, you know, if the community sort of comes around, comes together around the two-inch solution, I guess the two-year rainfall solution, and you sort of alluded to this, I think, in passing, would we have to come back and fix it again? That would be a mix. Yeah, hopefully not. I mean, there's always that risk associated with it. You set the bar too low. But, again, you fix it for the two-year storm. Let's say that is the will of the community. You know, we're going to be out here reducing the amount of water that's coming into the system, but we're building it for a two-year thing. Hopefully those two things are going to converge in such a way as that we've reclaimed more capacity. We're leveraging ourselves in both areas. And so now it has more capacity, but we've reduced the amount of flow that was there. And likewise is that we may find in certain circumstances that the difference between a two-year and a five-year in smaller segments, the cost differential isn't that great. When you get into building things like storage tank, your big costs are in the front end of it, that first couple of million gallons. And once you get past that, you're just adding to that. So all your underground and all your piping and all those things, those are going to be your big costs up front. Likewise, though, in the converse of that, the cost difference between installing a 21-inch pipe and a 24-inch pipe really isn't all that great in the larger scale of things. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Chair. Committee members, are there any other questions? Thank you, Charlie. Thank you, Dr. Price. Thank you, Mr. Bush. we've we have a lot of challenges ahead and I think we're also preparing a great team I forgot to say thank you Mark as well in environmental quality environmental policy and water quality I think we can meet this challenge and Charlie please don't worry to death about these things. We need you over the next decade or so to get these things done. Committee members, we do have for informational purposes the financial statements. I don't see anybody here from budgeting or revenue, so if you do have questions about those, we'll probably have to hold them off until we can get answers. But they are here for your information. Any comment on items referred to I'm sorry? Council Member Lane. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Yes, I did have some questions on the financials, and perhaps it would be appropriate for the next meeting that we have someone here prepared to address the financials. We will do that. Thank you, sir. Thank you. We have any question about items referred to committee? Councilmember Vice Mayor Gorton, you have the private collection item. Is that something that would be, as you see it, coming up in the near future? Dr. Chair, this was supposed to have been worked on by a small group of people, including some private solid waste providers, and I have not heard whether that group has been meeting. I don't know who's on that group. I didn't know about this group. Is this some sub-trainian group? Quite some time ago, and it was agreed to in committee that a group would work together, a group of private solid waste providers and our city folks to, I don't, Paul, do you have any input on this? I mean, does anyone know what happened to the working group? I was not on it, so. They did meet a few times. I believe the chair was Council Member Crosby, and I sat in on at least two meetings. There were some private operators at those meetings. They had solicited some information from them, which they was considered proprietary, so that kind of held up the proceedings, and then another meeting had not been called at some time. As I recall, I think the gist of the meetings was to determine whether we could get to some point where the private haulers were offering a higher level of service to meet our goals and expectations if we intend to be a zero-waste community, which we've said we're going to be. Let me follow up with Council Member Crosby, see where we are on that, and whether we can bring it in for discussion at a future meeting. Committee members, any other further business? I would like to have a motion then. Sorry? It said something about the meeting. An April meeting? Or did you just want to try to schedule that now? We can schedule it now. I said either the 12th or the 19th. Is there a preference? Council Member, Ms. Williams reminded me that in 12th, the mayor is going to have the budget address, obviously. And the 19th, there's already meetings at 1 and 3. We could do 11 on the 19th. Could we also have it maybe at the MRF out there? Can we see the new system going? We have to tell about the special meeting. That's possible. Can it be put on GTV3 at that site? Mr. Chair, do we have any members of the Social Services Committee that are on this committee? Yeah, okay. Well, let me, Vice Mayor. Vice Mayor M. I was just going to make a motion that we approve having a special meeting of the Environmental Quality Committee on Tuesday, April 19th at 11 a.m. Do I hear a second? All in favor? Opposed? So we will schedule that meeting. And I'll look at the possibility of having it on site, if that might work out. Any other business? Motion to adjourn. Hmm?