# Special Environmental Quality Committee - June 21, 2011 > Auto-transcribed civic record · June 21, 2011 - **Permalink**: https://meetings.lexingtonky.news/meeting/2060 - **Source video**: https://lfucg.granicus.com/player/clip/2060?view_id=14&redirect=true - **Date**: 2011-06-21 - **Last revised**: July 17, 2026 - **Length**: 12,748 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 June 21, 2011, at 11:00 AM under the direction of Chairman Blues. The committee addressed three agenda items during the meeting, taking two votes and hearing one public comment. The committee deferred action on a Remedial Measures Plan/Design Storm (Level of Service) Recommendation, postponing further consideration of this item. The committee approved scheduling a special committee meeting for Tuesday, August 23, 2011, at 11:00 AM. The meeting concluded with an informational discussion under Other Business. ## Attendance **Present:** - Blues - Stinnett - Gorton - Farmer - Martin - Vice Mayor Gordon - Charlie Martin - John Steinmetz - Mark York - Susan Bush - Ryan Barrow - Edward Cushy **Absent:** - Lane **Late:** None recorded ## Votes and Decisions **Motion to Schedule Special Committee Meeting** Vice Mayor Gorton moved to schedule a special committee meeting on August 23, 2011, to further discuss the remedial measures plan and make a recommendation to the full council. Council Member Martin seconded the motion. The motion passed by voice vote [timestamp: 1:19:03]. All council members present voted in favor: Blues, Stinnett, Gorton, Farmer, and Martin. **Motion to Amend to Committee of the Whole Meeting** Council Member Barton moved to amend the special committee meeting to a committee of the whole meeting on August 23, 2011, to include full council participation. Council Member Stinnett seconded the motion. The motion passed by voice vote [timestamp: 1:19:03]. All council members present voted in favor: Blues, Stinnett, Gorton, Farmer, and Martin. ## Public Comment [timestamp: 1:20:36] Edward Cushy addressed the council with concerns regarding proposed sewer fee increases. Mr. Cushy expressed strong opposition to the proposed fees, arguing that they are unfair and will disproportionately impact small businesses. He called on the council to ensure accountability and fairness in how fees are distributed and to hold polluters accountable for their contributions to sewer system costs. ## Contested Items **Public Opposition to Sewer Fee Increases** Edward Cushy delivered public comment expressing strong opposition to the proposed sewer fee increases. He argued that the increases are unfair and will disproportionately burden small businesses. Cushy raised concerns about accountability and the lack of enforcement on large polluters, questioning why smaller businesses should bear a greater financial burden when larger polluters were not being adequately regulated or penalized. **Design Storm Selection and Long-Term Financial Implications** Council members were divided on the selection of a design storm standard, with disagreement over whether to adopt a two-year, five-year, or ten-year design storm approach. The debate centered on the long-term financial and infrastructure implications of each option. Some council members advocated for a more aggressive approach, while others emphasized fiscal responsibility and legal risk considerations. Concerns were raised about long-term costs, revenue impacts, and the ability to scale up infrastructure in the future if a less aggressive standard were initially selected. ## Remedial Measures Plan/Design Storm (Level of Service) Recommendation [timestamp: 00:03:57] John Steinmetz presented updated cost estimates and design storm options for the remedial measures plan. The presentation outlined three design storm alternatives—two-year, five-year, and ten-year—along with associated cost breakdowns, rate impacts, and precedent comparisons from other municipalities. Construction management considerations were also included in the analysis. The committee discussion focused on the implications of selecting a design storm level, recognizing that this decision would have significant long-term financial and regulatory consequences for the municipality. Council members Charlie Martin, Vice Mayor Gordon, Council Member Martin, Council Member Stinnett, and Council Member Lane participated in the deliberation. Key topics addressed included: - Cost estimates for each design storm option - Projected rate impacts on residents and businesses - How other communities have approached similar decisions - Construction management and implementation logistics - Long-term financial obligations and regulatory requirements The committee weighed the trade-offs between different service levels and their respective costs and benefits. The discussion reflected the complexity of balancing infrastructure improvements with fiscal responsibility. **Outcome:** The committee deferred action on this item, indicating that additional time was needed for further consideration or analysis before making a final recommendation on which design storm level to adopt. ## Schedule Special Committee Meeting: Tuesday August 23, 2011, 11:00 AM [timestamp: 1:15:06] The council discussed scheduling a follow-up meeting for Tuesday, August 23, 2011, at 11:00 AM to continue analyzing financial data and develop a recommendation for the full council. **Key Participants** Vice Mayor Gorton, Council Member Barton, Council Member Stinnett, and Council Member Martin participated in this discussion. **Discussion and Outcome** During the discussion, the council determined that the initial plan for a special committee meeting required restructuring. Rather than proceeding as a limited committee meeting, the council decided to convert the gathering into a committee of the whole format. This restructuring was intended to broaden participation and include the full council membership in the analysis of financial data and recommendation preparation. The meeting was ultimately approved with this modified structure, allowing for more comprehensive council involvement in the follow-up work scheduled for August 23, 2011. ## Other Business During this agenda item, the committee discussed several financial and operational matters related to the sewer system and community engagement. [timestamp: 1:01:31] **Financial Overview and Planning** The committee emphasized the need for a comprehensive macro financial overview of the sewer system's long-term revenue and expenses. Key speakers Council Member Lane, Council Member Stinnett, Council Member Martin, and Vice Mayor Gordon participated in this discussion, along with Charlie Martin. **Key Topics Addressed** The discussion covered several interconnected financial considerations: - The impact of CPI (Consumer Price Index) adjustments on the system's finances - Current bond status and implications for future borrowing - Water usage trends and their effect on revenue projections **Public Education and Community Engagement** The committee also discussed strategies for public education and community engagement related to these financial matters. This reflected a broader interest in keeping the public informed about sewer system operations and financial planning. **Outcome** This agenda item was informational in nature, with no formal action taken. The discussion served to identify the need for more detailed financial analysis and to establish the importance of community communication regarding sewer system finances and operations. --- ## Decisions - **Motion** — passed: Motion to schedule a special committee meeting on August 23, 2011, to further discuss the remedial measures plan and make a recommendation to the full council. - **Motion** — passed: Motion to amend the special committee meeting to a committee of the whole meeting on August 23, 2011, to include full council participation. --- ## Full transcript The Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. We will need a more aggressive private property policy. That is, we will need to work on the responsibilities and access of private property. And to that end, as you may recall, the committee at our May meeting agreed to ask the Vice Mayor to appoint a task force on that subject and to bring back recommendations to the committee. Vice Mayor Gordon is working on that. Council members, Farmer, and I have agreed to serve, but more council members will be needed and welcomed. So council members on this committee or on the larger body who might be interested in working on this task should check in with the vice mayor. And we hope to have that task force up and running by the time that we come back from summer recess in August. Charlie Martin, who would have delivered this report, has grand jury duty and is obligated two days a week to the court system, and this is one of those days. And so John Steinmetz, who is the project manager for the remedial measures plan, will do today's presentation. Welcome, Mr. Steinmetz. Commissioner Taylor and I see Mark York and Susan Bush are here as backups. So committee members, if you're ready, I think Mr. Steinmetz is ready and we can begin. All right. Thank you, Chairman Blues. And I'm glad to be here to talk to you, taking Charlie's place. Unfortunately, he's out today. And this meeting is a, this presentation is a follow-up to the April presentation where several of you asked some very pointed and specific questions about the work we've conducted so far. So I'm here to present a little bit more additional information to you and answer any other questions you have. So just the agenda for today's discussion would include some specific details about the cost estimates that we put together previously and presented, and we will present them again here today for the three different design storms we looked at, the two-year, the five-year, and the ten-year storms. We'll give you a little bit of background information about the decision-making process you'll have to go through regarding the cost you put into the system versus SSOs that may still occur in the future. We also, for your information, put together some precedents for sewer rates from other communities that may be of interest to you, along with some areas that will be addressed, some high-profile areas that are common sewer problem areas that will be addressed. He also asked questions about construction management and how the in-house capabilities compare to what might be needed for this program. And then we'll close out talking about some of the issues that have been addressed and have yet to be addressed. Now, first, I want to point out that we are preparing the remedial measures plan in accordance with the consent decree requirements. The first group, that's Wolf Run, West Hickman, and East Hickman, is due this fall. And a critical element to that, as Councilman Blues alluded to, is the selection of the design storm, the level of service. Now, we are proceeding with the two-year design storms until notified otherwise. We believe that is the least amount of level of service that the EPA will accept from our plan. We looked at the, besides the two-year storm, the five-year and ten-year storms, and the costs range from over $500 million to $800 million, just to summarize what we presented earlier. And I do want to point out that the decision that we're asking for you to make is necessary for us to finish our work, but it's also a necessary component of the report that we submit. And EPA, it will be something they consider in their approval of our documents. So we do need a decision from you as quickly as possible. not having it now we're proceeding with the two-year storm and we do need to document the decision that you make in the submission of the report. Again, a summary of what was presented previously. We looked at the two, five, and ten-year storms. The potential costs range from $540 million for the two, $718 million for the five, and $814 million for the ten. We have some potential rate impacts, and this is based on the 20-year payback period. And one thing that came up, I think Councilman Stenner brought it up at the last meeting, was that I want to point out that these increases would not be immediate. They would be gradually brought in over roughly a 10-year period. And the reason we say the 10-year period is that the overall compliance schedule for all these capital improvements, as you're aware, is 11 to 13 years starting this past January. Now, as a comparison, what we did not present at the last meeting was a comparison with a 30-year payback period. And you can see, let me bounce back. If you look at the right-hand column, I'll bounce back to the 20-year payoff. And now forward, where it ranges from $28 to $42 and change per month, to $21 and $32 plus change a month, and that's spread out over 30 years. So you can see that once this program proceeds further along, there'll have to be a lot of discussions with your finance people about how best to pay for the program and what the specific details are related to the work. Now, getting back to the program, I think Councilman Martin asked about it, was what exactly is in the cost estimates that we've put together so far. So to help you understand that, we've prepared some maps of the two-year upgrades for all seven watersheds throughout the city. And then for a representative watershed, we chose West Hickman because that showed the differences better than some of the other watersheds. we'll show the differences between two, five, and ten-year storms. And we'll have some tabulated costs so you can see some actual quantities, how many miles of pipe, et cetera. But we also want to point out that the work we've done so far is to give you an order of magnitude cost about the total program size. So it's an initial concept, initial estimates, and as we go through trying to finalize our plans, we'll be looking for more cost-effective means So these costs will change before the plan is finalized. These are just the initial estimates. All right, now first, I hope you can see the map okay, and I'll kind of highlight what the difference is there. This is the Wolf Run level of service, and the primary components are an equalization base, and it's basically a storage tank down near the bottom of the watershed, along with the blue lines that represent trunk sewer improvements that would take place. Now you see that a couple of the trunk sewers coming downstream of the Picadone pump station and upstream of the Picadone pump station, those are not shown to require capacity upgrades because the Picadone pump station diverts flow straight to the treatment plant And a second parallel line was put in in this area. So basically we're showing that the entire trunk sewer system, the backbone of the watershed, is undersized to handle the water we're expected to see. And the reason these gaps and the improvements are there is because of the past capital projects you've implemented. For the cane run improvements, again, the blue lines show significant trunk sewer upgrades. For this basin, we have a 12 million gallon equalization basin tank down near the pump station. And the pink lines, we want to point out that our costs include the implementation of the trunk sewer system for expansion area 3. That's required to eliminate some of the problem pump stations, so we've included that cost as a requirement of our consent decree compliance. Town Branch watershed includes an expansion. Now in this early concept, we showed an expansion of the wet weather capacity of Town Branch Treatment Plant from 64 million gallons per day to 100 million gallons per day. Besides that, we pretty much just have the trunk sewer upgrades that you see in the blue. Now South Elkhorn has the least amount of work proposed right now. You recently constructed the South Elkhorn pump station in Forest Main. According to our modeling, to handle the two-year storm in South Elkhorn, all we need to do is add an additional pump at the pump station. north elkhorn we have a little bit smaller eq basin it's down there at the pump station of 3.8 million gallons and some minor pump station and trunks are work the areas you see in the magenta or pink colors that's work in the expansion area 2a that's already being constructed or it's design being prepared for construction by your division. East Hickman Watershed, we would propose to eliminate the East Lake pump station, replace, upgrade the East Hickman pump station and its force main, taking it all the way to the treatment plant, similar to the concept that was done during the Picadome construction. We also show the implementation of Expansion Area 1 to take the problematic Heartland pump stations out of service and replace them with a system that's appropriate for the Expansion Area 1 development. I'm sorry, this watershed also included a PQ tank of about 3.8 million gallons, about the same size as North Elkhorn. Now in West Hickman, similar to Town Branch, we're showing a treatment plant expansion of the capacity to 100 million gallons per day and a much larger EQ tank at West Hickman for the two-year storm of 20 million gallons. Then all the blue that you see throughout the watershed would be trunk sewer capacity upgrades. Here's where we show a comparison between the five- and ten-year storms. This is the five-year storms. If you can see the yellow highlighted areas, those pipes that were not – let me go back to the two-year quickly so you can see the difference when it comes on. The yellow pipes would be required for the five-year storm. The blue pipes would also be required, but they happen to be the same size as was constructed in the two-year storm. But you can see that the equalization storage down there at the treatment plant grew from 20 million gallons to 31 million gallons. So in this watershed, and actually all the watersheds, the EQ volume is the most significant cost element. For the 10-year storm, again, you see the differences between the 5 and the 10. It's the red that got added to the system. Again, you're just extending the trunk sewers a little bit further into the upstream and the watershed. But the EQ for the 10-year storm grew to 43 million gallons per day. Now this is a tabulation. I'll leave this up for a few minutes in case you want to take a closer look at it. This is a tabulation of the primary construction items for each of the three storms. The total footage that we've got shown there, the two-year storm would be about 53 miles of pipelines. The five-year storm is about 64 miles of pipelines, and the 10-year storm is almost 67 miles of pipelines. Now, the EQ volume, again, shown in this row, goes from – now, this is system-wide. The EQ that I've been talking about before is for individual watersheds. The total EQ volume for the two-year storm would be 40 million gallons. For the five-year storm, 64 million gallons. And for the 10-year storm, 99 million gallons. And to just reinforce the reference on where the cost changes are, if you go from the two-year to five-year storm, you have about 20 percent more pipe footage. you have 60% more EQ volume. And going from the five to ten-year storms, you have only 4% additional pipe footage, but 55% more EQ volume. Now I'm going to back up a slide, and I'm going to reinforce another point, and this is the ten-year storm slide for West Hickman. It's very interesting to note that if you build, If you choose to construct the two-year storm system right now, that is all the pipes that are shown in blue. And as the storms got bigger, those pipe sizes didn't change. So you are sending, if you go to a bigger storm, you're constructing a little further up into the system and you're building bigger EQ. But it's good to know that if you construct a two-year storm right now and then somewhere down the road decide to go with a bigger storm, you haven't wasted the money on the two-year pipes. You can expand the EQ at a later time. But, again, what's driving our schedule for a decision from you is that we have to make a commitment in our submission to the EPA this fall. And then they have to approve it. But this was a very interesting note that came out of our illustrations for you. I wanted to make sure you understood that. Okay, moving on, one factor that may influence your decisions is, you know, what happens if you build to a smaller storm and then you have a bigger storm and you have SSOs? This slide was included in our last presentation to you, and it highlights the fact that if you construct the improvements and then have an SSO at a location where it was eliminated for the two-year storm, you will have to pay a penalty, and the fines are defined in the consent decree. And they ranged from $1,000, the $1,000 is for an SSO where less than 5,000 gallons escapes from that point. The upper range is the $5,000, which would be a major SSO that allowed over 100,000 gallons to escape. And, you know, the second bullet there just shows a frame of reference that if you had a do-nothing alternative, you decided not to build anything and these fines took place, the community in a three- or four-year period averaged 480 SSOs, and depending on how much volume escaped, it could range from roughly half a million to roughly $2.5 million per year. Those penalties would be per year. Now, we also provided this information at the last presentation. I want to highlight some of these items again. Again, the two-year storm is the lowest we think we might be able to get by with. I want to also point out there at the bottom of the slide, we talk about if you build a two-year system and then a five-year storm hits, based on the modeling we've done, we'd have 13 SSOs. If you had to pay the fines on those 13 SSOs, the fines would range somewhere between $13,000 and $65,000. And that's not an annual cost. That's the cost for that one storm, a five-year storm, which obviously occurs fairly infrequently. If a 10-year storm hit and you built the two-year storm improvements, you could get approximately 53 SSOs, and the potential fines you'd be paying for those would range from $53,000 to $265,000. Now, moving on to some precedents, we did a little bit of research what some other communities in this part of the country are basing their work on. And several of them have gotten past this point already, and those mostly chose the two-year storm, as you can see. Winchester chose the five-year storm. Birmingham chose the ten-year storm. And the bottom two are currently, they're in the same boat you are right now, where they're evaluating and trying to decide somewhere between the two and ten-year storms. one other factor is how you're going to pay for these improvements what we've talked about so far in the earlier rate slides for if we spread the cost involved over the 106 000 sewer accounts that you've got now one community louisville has that type of a surcharge on each account although they have a separate part of their work that's being paid straight from water usage. The other cities we contacted, they just simply raised their sewer rates, so it's spread out across the board, which would have the major water users paying a higher percentage of the cost than the lower water users. A couple of slides on how your current sewer rates compare with some other communities. This is from the Bluegrass Area Development District data that's on their website. You can see you're pretty much in the middle. Your rates right now are $20.22, and all of these rates are based on an average residential usage of 4,000 gallons per month. I want to point out that some of the cities that are on the right-hand side that have sewer rates, they've had some major improvements or they're further along in their system. So it's more of a timing issue. I mean, your rates will end up rising. You're going to have to pay for some improvements, and at some time you're going to be sliding to the right here. Other communities that are lower than you may have to slide to the right. Now, based on some other – this graph shows some other cities nationwide. Lexington sits at the low end. I should point out the U.S. average is $28.71 right now. And then you see some of the other communities, including Louisville, Cincinnati, Knoxville, nearby. The two largest ones there on the right is Birmingham. You remember they chose the 10-year storm. And Atlanta, which is much farther along time-wise in their system, and they've already implemented most of their rate increases. We wanted to reinforce that this is a list of some of the high profile areas that the specific improvements that are included in our plan will address all of these areas. Now, the very bottom bullet, I want to emphasize that besides these improvements, these problem areas being resolved, the Division of Water Quality has a long-term I&I program and other rehabs. So it's not that the problem areas that are further up into the system and the collection system aren't being addressed. They are being addressed. And we will have part of our remedial measures plan will include some rehabilitation of existing systems. So the bottom bullet's there to reinforce the fact that these are not the only areas that are going to be improved by your overall program. We want to have a reminder of some of the consent decree required projects that you've already taken care of, the North and South Elkhorn ones, Dixie and Deep Springs are going on right now. The airport pump station is a current project. And then there's been quite a bit of other system work that DWQ has been implementing for the past several years to help get water out of the system, stormwater out of the system, so that the potential improvements that have to be constructed are reduced. these projects listed are in the works right now some activities going on that are for the most part not included in our now blue sky parkways included in the cost estimates we prepared wolf run pump station expansion area 2a those are already in the works budgeted projects you've got taken care of. The bottom two are just some general improvements that BWQ continues to work on. One of the questions that were posed at the last meeting was how are we going to handle all this construction from a construction management perspective. And right now it's all being handled, split between the design firms and your construction manager. And as frame of reference we're showing that in the last few years you've averaged about 12 million dollars worth of capital projects and if you chose the two-year storm and the cost remained as we currently estimated at 540 millions over a 10-year period you're looking at 54 million dollars a year so you're talking about a quadrupling of the current program as far from a capital dollar perspective now our cost estimates in the 540 million dollars they include the related costs such as inspection and that would be by the design engineer which is a little bit of change from your current your current process has the urban county government performing most of the construction inspection now we would be on board for overall program management to help monitor the construction schedule and the construction cost to make sure it stays within the limits of the defined program. But we're going to need some help, and this bottom bullet really reinforces something very important to us, is that the ways the Irving County Government has always conducted business in terms of procuring services for design and construction and acquiring easements and other real property need to be streamlined to a great degree or else this program that's on a very short time frame relatively from the EPA, the 11 to 13 years, that's going to be extremely difficult to meet if we don't streamline some of these issues. I know Chairman Blue's kind of alluded to the private property task force. That's another item that should be expedited to the degree practical because we need to know how effective it is trying to get the water out of the system before we're sizing some of these improvements. Now just in closing, just a reminder of the things we're asking of you is the selection of a design storm for us to proceed with, base our plan on and submit to the EPA, and then progress made on the private property task force. So with that, I'll take any questions you have. committee members our system is down so just raise your hand if you do have questions for Mr. Steinmetz or any of the other folks who are here Vice Mayor Gordon has some questions first and then Council Member Martin. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you very much, John, for your presentation. My first question is back on page four and five, and I know Commissioner Driscoll was here, so maybe I don't know if there's anybody in the room who wishes to answer it, But the 20-year versus 30-year loan are, I mean, just on the, you know, if you look at the surface on a two-year, for example, the rate that people will pay is lower. But we spread our loan out over a longer period of time. So have most cities, is there any consensus about 20-year versus 30-year bonds? I'm not an expert in financing, but the KIA loans are generally based on a 20-year payback period. And the reason we brought this out to 30 years is that if you have early projects, if you've got funding for the projects within the first few years at a 20-year period, and then compared to the later projects, at the end, the last projects you finance 10 years from now, With another 30-year loan, the total aggregate time from the acquisition of the first loan to the payoff of the last loan would be somewhere approaching 30 years. That's why we thought that was it. So it's not necessarily that each loan would be 30 years. It's just the overall. And this is order of magnitude cost just to give you an idea of what we're looking at. Okay. And then could you go on page 19 and page 22, you talked about the different cities. And Atlanta, of course, we're nothing like Atlanta, but Atlanta has high rates on page 22, but they've chosen a two-year storm, design storm of two years. So, and you said they're pretty far along. Do you know if they purposely chose a high rate to get done faster? To be honest, we didn't take our research to that level. We can find out if you'd like to know. It may be that they have implemented, rather than phasing in their rates, they may have jumped right in and started charging the higher rates. To be honest, I'm not even sure if this is the terminal rate for them, whether it may be getting even higher than that in the future. Okay. Well, Nashville, Louisville, on this page 22, Nashville, Louisville, Knoxville, Atlanta, and Birmingham. Well, not Birmingham, but those have all chosen a two-year storm but have very, you know, wide range of rates. So I'd be curious if you can find out anything about what that's about. We can. One other thing I'd point out is that Lexington is somewhat unique. It's a pretty good-sized city, but it's sitting on top of the watersheds. Most of these other cities are river cities, and they've got much bigger infrastructure. At the bottom of your watersheds, you have some 36 to 48-inch pipes, and they have tunnels that are maybe, I'm not going to guess the size. The ones I've seen, say, in Owensboro are 15 foot in diameter. Some of these cities as well, as John said, are combined sewers. Lexington also has, you know, we were fortunate in that we have two separate systems, although unfortunately for us they combine whether we like it or not. But in some cities, like Atlanta, they had a very difficult design. They had a lot of things that were designed to be together, and they had to completely separate those systems. So I believe their costs were pretty high partly for that reason. Okay, that helps. I had one more question. The equalization holding tanks, Do you all know, well, have you looked specifically at where all those tanks would be? And is there, is that going to be a big challenge for us in terms of location of those? Just talk a little bit about that, if you would. We have taken some early looks at where potential sites are for EQ that would work hydraulically as well as being in properties that may be available. But for the plans we're submitting so far right here, they're generally located at pump station sites and at West Hickman Treatment Plant. So right now the plans we're showing don't show any smaller tanks up in neighborhoods, things like that. However, I want to reinforce that this is an early concept to get an order of magnitude cost, and it may be that a preferred solution may have other EQ sites located within the city. Okay, and those are below ground or above ground? There's different types. There's different types. If they're below ground and it's gravity flow in, you have to pump it out. You have some issues with below ground tanks due to the high rock, the shallow rock, I should say, in this area. There's different types of EQ bases. Okay, thank you. Thank you. Council Member Martin. Thank you, Chair. John, thanks for coming, and this is just the information we needed, and I thought it was very enlightening and crucial to understand that the 10-year infrastructure uses the same core infrastructure as the two-year, and that by making this decision, we aren't, if we went with a two-year, we wouldn't have to dig it up to do the 10-year. 10-year is actually an extension of that, and I think that's a real key piece of information. And I'm sure Charlie said it to about 100 times, but sometimes you just need it one more time. I understand that this program is designed to address point of discharge problems at pump stations, such as the South Elkhorn pump station or other pump stations. Is that a fair assessment? Our scope is to eliminate the SSOs that are identified in the consent decree. However, the work that we've done so far was to, if we're going to upgrade the system, we upgrade it to a point where the capacity assurance program would be, the requirements of that would be met so that if you invest in this much money in your infrastructure, you have set it up to be appropriate for future development. Well, I guess where I'm leading is that if these, you know, we had a magic wand and make these improvements happen and they're done, this isn't necessarily going to keep sewer out of people's basements because I didn't see the work extending into neighborhoods. These are main branch type of upgrades. So when I've got, you know, a whole street full of neighbors with sewer in their basements, this isn't going to fix that, is it? There will be many that would be fixed for the properties that are located along the trunk sewers that get addressed. There's a lot of SSOs that you have in basements that are up into the system where DWQ's separate long-term, you could say permanent rehab program is going to be nicking away at that list. And so our work on getting the water out of the system, the projects we have over in Georgian Way and those types of things where we're identifying where rainwater intrudes into the sewer system, and then also this new grant program, which we're going to tinker with to see how we can address them and the media concerns with folks who are in this system, those things have to happen because this isn't going to fix those for the most part. Charlie, do you have? Absolutely. Thank you. Welcome back from jury duty. Yeah, we're on an extended lunch break, so I might have to leave here quickly. The analogy I would give on how it's going to benefit some of the neighborhoods will be is that it's like the U.K. game, letting out all at once. It ended at the last second. Vine Street's all choked up because there's too many cars, but it backs up into the neighborhood. So if you're trying to get out of your driveway and all that, the traffic jam is perceived to be over there. It's the same thing with the sewer system. In some of those neighborhoods where we have problems with disruptions in service and maybe water in basements, sometimes it's a situation you just can't get out of that neighborhood. It's stuck on the freeway. It's stuck on the freeway. And so making those pipes larger and being able to increase the size of the pump stations will help move that downstream water out of the way so the additional water that's getting in in the upstream areas has got some place to go. But that doesn't replace minimizing the amount of water that gets in there in the first place. So these are all part of the same thing, though. And will those other things get funded with this program? Yes. It's part of the ongoing rehabilitation both in the neighborhoods and making the downstream system large enough to where those two things will meet together and we will have a successful reduction in sanitary sewer overflows. I came in, John had already finished his presentation, so I may be repeating things that he's already said. But, you know, we're choosing a particular design storm. Folks shouldn't get confused that that means we'll never have SSOs again, because most people realize, including the regulatory community, we can't afford any type of circumstance. So if we're talking about a two-year storm, that's what we're going to design for, five, or ten. But if we have a 25-year storm, who knows? Chair, if you will give me the wink or the nod when I have to stop. Our timer is not working. So the 30-year bond rate, I guess my concern about having the length of the bond rate is this is going to be a significant new tax or certainly an increase in our fees to the rate-paying citizens. And what we have to remember is that people choose a community and how much it costs to be there, And this is going to add about, you know, when it's up and running, $300, $400, even at a two-year, to folks' monthly bills. And so I think we as a council have to consider how much are we willing to put on folks. Certainly a 30-year makes it about $20 a month. The 20-year bond would make a two-year storm facility upgrade about $28. And so I think that's one of our decisions, obviously, as to whether to go with $30 or $20. And obviously it would be great to hear from folks about what their thoughts on it are. I guess my last question, and I apologize if I have one more, will the tanks, the storage tanks, overwhelm neighborhoods with smell? Because that's $30 million. I don't know if you have the tank, but that's a – are these going to be underground or on top of the ground, overground or? It's premature to know that quite yet, but I should point out that they would be used infrequently, only during major events, and when they're used it's with mostly very highly diluted water. It's mostly storm water that's getting into them. Generally the EQ tanks have maintenance activities after the event where they get cleaned out. I'll add something anecdotally. A few years ago, Rod and I went up to Dayton, Ohio, Montgomery County Sanitary Engineering there. I used to work there. So they have storage tanks in their system about the last 10 years. So we were interested in that. They said they had invested a considerable amount of money into odor control equipment but never turned it on because it's not there long enough for it to stink. Essentially they recycle it, but within hours after the storm, as soon as the flows start dropping down, you start pumping it back out of the system. Are these above ground or below ground? A combination of both. They have one that is above ground 100% because it's located primarily in an industrial neighborhood, and so there's not an aesthetic issue. One they have partially above ground and partially below ground, and it's right at the entrance of Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, and it kind of blends in with the scenery there. We would take those same aesthetic considerations in as we cite storage tanks. As John pointed out, I mean, the depth of rock will add a significant cost to offline storage if we put below ground. And plus you've got to anchor it, you know, to keep it from floating in high groundwater conditions and all that. So what you need to recognize is that if we do put these things below ground, there will be an increased cost associated with doing that as opposed to above ground. Thank you, Chair. Council Member Stenet. Thank you, Chair. Mr. Steinmetz, thank you for coming today and pitch in, I guess, so to speak, for our directors on jury duty, and hopefully that's going well for you. My big concern is, and I saw our finance people leave here, but I believe maybe Council Member Lane asked this question, do we have a chart showing our past revenues for the last 10 years in terms of how much we've collected from the sanitary sewer fee and the projection? because I believe when we increased the fee three years ago, we put in a CPI index, and obviously we know what it's been the last couple years. This is all in addition to that CPI increase, et cetera, that's built into the current fee. That's correct. The CPI was put in, I believe, in the rate increase that was passed in 2008. Yes. And then the economy did its turn, and I think that the first year of it was negligible, like zero. And in this past year, I think it was somewhere between 1% to 2%. So, you know, in either case has it paid off dramatically for us. Director Barrow and I have had several conversations about engaging budgeting and finance into this. I know they've been trying to – they spent a lot of time getting you in a position to where you guys can approve an FY12 budget for the general fund. So now it's time for them to turn their attention to this issue. and what he's trying to get his arms around as far as what our current bonding situation is, what the status of those bonds are, when they will be retired, et cetera, et cetera, so we can have a clearer picture on you as far as how this will escalate up through the duration of the consent agreement. We're just beginning to start that process right now. I guess that's one piece of the information. I think we really need to make an educated decision because, one, is our bonding capacity, the bonds that will retire, et cetera. With the CPI, we will project it in terms of these numbers. I mean, if we project a 1% CPI for the next 10 years, that will have an impact versus 3% on our current revenue stream. As well, since this is based on water usage, I don't know if there's any data out there that shows you, has our consumption actually been going down? Thus, we would receive less revenue, and this number may be a little low going into the future. I don't know if you accounted for all those type of things when you gave us the numbers here on the chart, and that's what I'm concerned about. I'd like to see our financials. Right. And this is all based on an expense and a general projection of what it's going to mean to the average customer on a monthly basis. When we went out and did the neighborhood meetings through February and March, that was the resounding thing that I kept hearing from the average citizen, is what does this mean for me a month? and what they were interested in in particular is what's the difference between 2, 5, and 10. If I'm going to buy insurance, how much am I going to pay more for this much more level of insurance? And as we were characterizing then and now, for six inches more of rain over a 24-hour period, it's going to cost you $7 more a month. Okay, that helps me make a decision. The two-year storm is what I think John has said, and I know I've said it in the past, is EPA is not going to let us get away with anything less than that. So the 540 is really basically, based on what we know right now, is the starting point. And those other numbers are there for people to make a decision that, based on what we know right now, is it worth it to me to want a higher level of protection? How many dollars per inches of rain is this going to cost me? Well, and I appreciate this chart being put together. It gives you a good framework to work with him. But I think the real question for us up here is what you said at the beginning. That's based on the expenditure. But what about our revenue side? Will it be increasing in the future? Will it be decreasing? I mean, three years ago in 2008 we saw some projections about where it would be, you know, in 2011, 2012. I'd like to see those again and see compared to our expenditures. Is this number realistic? Is it low? Is it high? I mean, it could make a big difference. Well, like I said, Ryan and I talked a couple of times, and we're working on that right now, and that we'll get that post-haste. The, you know, anecdotally is that, you know, personally the 2150 is scary to me based on what I know about our current revenue situation. And so when you go to those higher numbers, it just gets scarier. Yeah, I think we talked about the stormwater side. We know what that annual revenue flow looks like, but I don't think as many people know about the sanitary suicide revenue streams. Certainly the big unknown to me, because I don't think the CPIs, you know, that's only going to buffer things, but that's not really going to help us. The real question is what the current bond situation is as far as at the point in time where we're retiring that debt service that it leaves us additional bonding capacity under our current revenue stream. And have you been using general obligation bonds to fund these projects? No, these are revenue bonds. I was hoping you'd say that. I just want to make sure that everyone knows the difference. We're using revenue bonds, and that's why it's important to look at our revenue stream. Thank you, Charlie. Council Member Lane, you have some questions? Well, I guess, Charlie, I guess you're going to be the whipping boy today. This is where John sits down, yeah. Well, I was going to follow up. You know, I strongly feel we need a macro overview of the long-term income and expenses that are going to be related to, And I guess this will be the sanitary sewer system if we're going to more or less put storm drainage, it's going to go in with sanitary sewers. I mean, that's the bottom line. I'm not so sure I understand your question. For us, it's separate. This is strictly for the sanitary sewer system, the collection of the dirty water, pumping it, and collecting it at the two treatment plants. But, I mean, I believe what the statement was in the previous meeting is that we have so many leaks from the storm system into the sanitary system plus inappropriate, I guess, tie-ins to the sanitary service system that essentially we're building the sanitary service system to handle a lot of the storm drainage issues that we have in our community? To some degree. I mean, anecdotally, I think that it's more of a groundwater situation, which clearly comes from a storm. So it's kind of the chicken or the egg situation. But honestly, I can't say that I know where there are leaking storm sewers that are pouring water into the sanitary sewer system. It's more subtle, you know, with 1,400 miles of pipeline underground that the groundwater levels that are coming from private property and that also are sitting around our existing pipes. When pipelines are put in, the sanitary sewers, they're bedded in stone. And a lot of times here, they're in a rock trench. So when the groundwater comes, it comes right along that trench. I mean, that's the conduit at which it moves along, and it follows that pipe and finds a place to come in, and as soon as you patch that hole, it moves to a different location. So, you know, yes, in some sense, but it's not necessarily entirely stormwater. But what we're proposing here is, yeah, that there's going to be a certain cost associated with managing that groundwater and that the existing piping system using it to its maximum potential is probably the most cost-effective way to do it. All right. Well, one of the policies for development in Fayette County is to not expand too much out of the urban service area to encourage infill, higher density real estate developments. If we continue to do that, save the next two decades as part of our development strategy, how will that impact the demand on the system? and are we taking into consideration that our community is a little bit different from some of the others that have more of a sprawl, and whether or not a two-year plan would be adequate 10 years from now? I mean, do we have enough capacity being put into the system that we know that in the future we can accommodate the growth we expect? John, you can step up here and correct me if I'm wrong, but the design that we're talking about on a two-year storm is not based on today. It's 2035. We do have a planning horizon that would consider full development in whatever watershed is. I think John said it earlier. I mean, we don't want to put ourselves in a box that doesn't allow future connections, future customers to connect onto the system. Thus is why we're choosing that two-year storm, because that's the threshold for having a capacity assurance program. But it's not two years based on today. It's 2035. I just got the knot behind me. Right. We used the year 2035, and we coordinated with the Division of Planning and acquired some data from them. The most pertinent and useful data seemed to be their traffic analysis zones where they had projected future populations throughout the community, either in redevelopment, densification of the urban areas, plus whatever expansion areas have been approved. Are there other cities that are more similar to Lexington where we're going to have most of our population in the urban service area where they've already been doing some of the improvements to the sanitary service system? Or maybe they've already done a study to determine, you know, do we need to have a little bit more capacity because of the way we're not growing in a sprawl but more in a concentrated area? Because we're sort of like somebody asked me about this. It reminds me of being in Manhattan, surrounded by the rivers. We're in Lexington. The urban service area is surrounded by horse farms. And I don't see us really moving out of the urban service area that much. So we're going to have higher and higher density as time goes by. I'm not aware of anybody that has the same unique situation we do. And Knoxville is the one I'm most familiar with. I've talked with them many, many times over the last couple years. they use it actually to drive their growth, their capacity assurance program. So I think we are unique in that sense in that it will be difficult for us to benchmark with other folks. The infill and redevelopment will put a pressure on our oldest infrastructure, whether it be sewers or roads or anything else. And I think you're right on target as far as making sure that we amply consider that, in particular in areas where we maybe want to encourage infill and redevelopment. development is again we're giving you these baseline numbers here in order for you to try to make a decision but that doesn't mean during the course of the plan that we can elect as a community to make it bigger if we want to. You know there's the difference between what you have to do under the consent decree versus what you want to do. It would be my recommendation to the council is that we in this plan we set ourselves a benchmark but we set ourselves a benchmark that we can meet and if we choose to exceed that that's on us as opposed to a something that if we fail to do it, that they could go back to the Department of Justice and claim that we violated the consent decree. Well, you know, of course my concern is if our council votes to do a two-year plan, a five-year plan, or a ten-year plan, and then ten years from now the two-year plan is inadequate, then, you know, we've probably made a bad decision. We're talking between a half a billion and three-quarters of a billion dollars in investment over that period of time. So I'm thinking maybe we need to be more considerate of our situation, and maybe we should go for a larger storm system. That's certainly the will of the council. It's all a risky proposition. In the late 80s, everybody thought man of war was big enough. I mean, it just is. It's a risky proposition in that we have to take what we best know right now and try to make an informed decision. But I think you're right. I mean, this is something I know I personally have tussled with quite a bit as far as are we going to make this big enough, particularly in the areas that maybe we want to change the character of who we are. I think my closing comment is that I would like, I think that the administration and your division probably should make a recommendation to us as to what you think is the best plan because I don't believe that council members are adequately knowledgeable about the engineering, the cost, the construction timelines, the EPA agreement, and the micro detail that you all would be involved in. And I think it would be better to have a recommendation if you say of all the plans we think the five-year plan under our circumstances is best or the two-year plan, and then maybe make a presentation on that and the cost so that, you know, then we can make a judgment based on your recommendation. We can do that. In previous meetings, though, I've gone on record to say that we're pursuing a two-year plan unless directed by the committee to do otherwise. So there's my preliminary recommendation as well. So I think that based on what Council Member Lane has said is that maybe the appropriate thing is to come back in front of full council with a little bit more detail, some of the revenue information that the council extended to ask for, and essentially memorialize that in front of the whole group. That's the pleasure of the committee. Okay, well then, and I think that would be terrific then if you could take the two-year plan and do your 10-year, you know, revenue estimates, your cost estimates, and, you know, the debt service and operational expenses so we could look at sort of a long-term plan, what it would cost. Related to that, I mean, just so I can again go on record for this, this won't be the last time you folks see this, is that as we develop this plan, you know, we'll be putting the meat on the bones as far as the specific projects, the specific schedules, because the council, the committee, you want to weigh in on those as well, because that's going to be the indicator of when dirt is flying in your particular council district. And you're going to want to know that and have the opportunity to weigh in on that before we send that to EPA. But duly noted, we will do that. Thank you very much. I appreciate your input today. And, Mr. Chairman, thank you. Thank you. Vice Mayor Gorton has another question or two, and then Council Member Stinnett. Thank you, Mr. Chair. My questions sort of are along the same line as Council Member Lane. And I guess first I wonder if, do you know if Portland, Oregon is under an EPA consent decree? Because they have a tight growth boundary like we do. No, we can check that. When we were looking to benchmark with other communities in preparing this presentation, we tried to look around, obviously, at Region 4. One of the things that you'll find is with different EPA regions act somewhat autonomously from headquarters. Oh, okay. And so, you know, trying to apply Region 4 rules in Region 10 is sometimes challenging. Okay. Well, I was just curious. I know that, and I don't know if they have combined sewers or separate, but I know they have a very tight growth boundary, which would be somewhat similar to us. We'll look at that. Just out of curiosity. I can't say that when I think about Portland, you know, there's their issues more on the stormwater and how they manage stormwater. I've never heard anything negative about their sanitary sewer system. So for all I know, they don't even have a consent decree, but we'll check. Okay. Okay. And then, John, this also goes a little bit to some previous questions. You said, I believe, that the pipes are sized for future development. and that the plan is for, was it 2035? Is that correct? And then in your maps, you pointed out the expansion areas, EA-1 and East Hickman, EA-2A and North Elkhorn and EA-3 and Kane Run. And so my question is, when you said that the pipes are sized for future development, can you just tell me exactly what future development that is? And I don't mean specifically projects, but is it the expansion areas? Is it the infill downtown? What exactly is it? Well, specifically it's based on the traffic analysis zones, and so they would have accounted for land use and growth. The expansion areas had certain planned uses for those areas that would have been accounted for out to the year 2035. As far as the infill and redevelopment goes, I guess I don't know the specifics other than whatever your division of planning has for that proposed changes between now and 2035, that's in our plan. Okay, so it sounds like it's the future development of areas that are already in the expansion area. It would not be speculating on anything beyond that. Is that your understanding? Right, yes. Charlie, is that your understanding? Yes, it is. The benchmark would be what was in the facilities plan to start with, and the 201 facilities plan approved by the Council in 1999. We'd have specific sizing for those particular ones. What I would do is obviously compare that with the traffic analysis stuff that John has. If there was some major deviation, then we'd have to kind of try to figure out why that is. I would expect that it hasn't because, particularly in expansion area one and three, nothing's happened out there. So there really shouldn't have been any significant changes. Now, in the expansion area twos, because a larger part of that has been developed, the projections of the facilities plan versus the reality of what happened, we obviously have to design for reality, and so we may have to look at those closely. But none of this is to project additions to the urban service boundary. Okay. That was what I was wondering. I still have my 201 plan. Excuse me, I could add one follow-up statement there is that recently the North Elkhorn pump station in Forest Main was constructed, and that was based on numbers out of the facilities plan. Okay. And we went through our exercises, prepared models, and it was good to see that our numbers were very, very close to what the pump station was designed for. Okay, very good. All right, thank you very much. Council Member Stemmett. Thank you, Chair. I just wanted to follow up on Councilman Elaine's request to present this information to council. You know, the ironic thing is we spent last Tuesday in here eight hours debating on a budget, a little bit about $1.5 million we debated for eight hours. This problem is a $540 million at the minimum problem that we have maybe five council members here and a handful of people in the audience, and the public just doesn't know about it. This problem is bigger than our entire government budget annually. It's a big problem. It's a huge problem. So my concern is getting into council as soon as possible. The second is how are we going to educate the public so that everyone understands the situation? I mean, because obviously some of us have been through this several times, but what are we going to do to educate people? Because I don't think they really understand the grasp of how bad our sewer situation really is. And if you come in here talking about another $21, yes, most people can assume on your water bill that that's going to be impacted, how they're going to feel about that. But what's the real problem, and how are we going to address that to education, to the community, Charlie? Yeah, that's a good question because you can invite people to come to the public meetings, but, you know, unless you have the real hook, it's hard to get the people that are not the normal people who pay attention to this stuff. We had three public meetings, one in Wolf Run, one in East Tickman, one in West Tickman. We advertised that through the newspaper, through GTV3. We've met with the home builders. We've met with Commerce of Lexington. We've met with Fayette County Public Schools. I'm sure there were other individual meetings that I've – so, you know, it's just like doing construction projects. We try to invite people, but when you go out and start putting X's on their trees, then now they're paying attention. You're saying put an X on the water bill. Yeah, it's going to be a real challenge, and I'm hoping that, you know, the Herald Leader and other media outlets will continue to help us with this as far as getting people to recognize that you're right. this is an immediate, to me it is the biggest concern. I live and breathe this every day and that's a substantial investment in our infrastructure more so than I think anything we've done previously. And I would agree with you and that's why I bring that up and we spend a lot of time debating over pennies compared to what problem this really presents to our community and I think everyone needs to be educated especially on this council as to what impact it's going to have for future generation. So whatever we can do to collaborate on getting, one, the message to Council, but two, to the public is very important. I'm sure that Mark York's sitting behind me taking notes on this as far as coming up with ideas. And I've said this before, but also too, as daunting as this seems to be from a cost and a implementation standpoint, hopefully we as a community will be able to keep our minds around the opportunity that it presents as well. As Council Member Lane pointed out here a few minutes ago about infill and redevelopment. You know, trying to find the bright side of that is if you can put in new infrastructure in the places where you are targeting for infill and redevelopment to change who you are, you know, in the end, even though we've spent a lot of money, that we maybe got a lot more bang for our buck out of it than just a plain new sewer. Thank you, Charlie. Thank you, Chair. If there are no questions, I would ask if I could ask a couple of questions first, and then I'll come back to you, Council Member Martin. Appreciate your patience, but I do want to go back for a moment. John, you said earlier on one of your slides that, and I'm just taking this as an example, that if we ready ourselves for a two-year storm, we're likely to have 13 SSOs in a five-year storm. And then my question is, is that estimate predicated on our illicit connections situation as it now exists, or upon the notion that we'd have a much more aggressive private property policy and program and would be eliminating much of that problem. The modeling that we have done was based on flow metering done. Is the current situation an amount of I&I getting in the system? And then we ran the model based on building these improvements, which right now for this model, for that order of magnitude cost, does not include any I&I removal. So everything that you do in the future that would eliminate I&I would be additional benefits to the program. So you could have reductions. I think the numbers were 13 for the five-year storm and 53 for the 10-year storm. Those would potentially be reduced if you had an expanded public and private property INI elimination program. So it's possible, let's say that we prepared for a five-year, and that's, what, $718 million estimate. But if we had a more aggressive private property program eliminating I and I's much more aggressively, then that number might go down somewhat. It may go down, but as part of our work, we're looking at estimates of rehab compared to the percent, the likelihood of success. In other words, in areas like the Wolf Run 2 area near Gardenside that was recently rehabbed, we're trying to assess how much water actually was removed from the system by those improvements. So it will be a cost-benefit analysis with rehab in an area versus constructing larger pipes to transport that flow. So there will be areas that we will target for rehab as part of this program to help us either eliminate having to construct any pipes or possibly reducing the size of pump stations and EQ. And one final question. On page 26, you referred to the immediate issues related to streamlining the process. Am I right to assume that there will be some recommendations coming to the committee for council to do that in the near term? I think you're referring to the list of near-term work that is really separate from, is this the slide you're referring to? No, it's page 26. The immediate issue slide. I'm not sure which slide 26 is. Right there. Okay. Okay. Yeah, the bottom bullet here, is that the one you're referring to? That's it. Okay. Okay. The issue I was trying to make, and I'm not sure exactly what your question was on this, but Charlie has already taken some initiatives to try to streamline procurement of services, either design and construction. But I'm familiar with, in past projects with the Irvin County government, on the bottleneck that occurs for property acquisition, easement acquisitions, et cetera. So there needs to be a process where that is, well, first it's recognized as a bottleneck, so any efforts to acquire property gets done much earlier in the process rather than waiting until a design is done. But the second part of that is taking a look at your procedures, the way you do it now with the pre- and post-appraisals, et cetera. It's a fairly cumbersome way to go about doing that business. So we hope that there will be changes to the process that will help expedite these projects. I think your question, though, was will there be recommendations coming forward? Yes. I've had one meeting with the administration, the mayor, and the CAO. There will be another meeting here, I think, tomorrow. I mean, we're having pretty extensive discussions on how to make sure that we're able to meet the deadlines that we're going to be committing to in these remedial measures plans. You know, we talked about big dollars there, but there's a lot of projects to do in 11 to 13 years. And I know that Council Member Lane has expressed that concern about making sure that there's somebody that's got their hand on the wheel, that we can make sure we can get those things done and get them done efficiently. We've identified these things as being the potential bottlenecks. Getting to construction sometimes is the hardest part. Building it's the easiest part, but managing the stakeholders. As someone asked about, well, what about storage tanks and what about property acquisition? Those things that the mayor is very focused on. I know some of the council members are. As we develop recommendations to how to manage those things, you will be made aware of them. Okay. We'll look forward to that. Council Member Martin. Thank you, Chair. I just go back. I thought it was a real good point that, and I'm addressing in some way Council Member Lane's comment about whether it's a good decision or not to go with a two or a five. We can always add on to the system and increase it from a two-year to a five-year system by lengthening the areas and expanding into the areas that we go on. So as I understood the presentation, the core two-year system is the same core system as we will use for the five and ten years. So we can continue to monitor this in the coming years and still make good, valid decisions that, based on new information and the latest information, that we could still go with a five-year system or a ten-year system by expanding what we're doing. We have to make an election and tell the EPA what we're doing, but that won't limit us, I think, in the future from actually moving to a five- or a ten-year system because it's going to take us a little while to build out there anyway. Is that fair? That's true. I mean, it's really a question about is that, you know, where do you set the bar as far as from an enforcement action expectation versus what you want to do? You know, my recommendation would be is you set the bar as manageably as you can, then as conditions change, you can go beyond that as much as you want. As John pointed out, we're going through this exercise right now trying to figure out how much water we can really get out of the system. The likelihood of building it for a two-year and find out we really do have five-year capacity is pretty good if we go after that water aggressively that's coming into the system to start with. Yeah, and we're going to continue to monitor this. So I think personally I'm sort of leaning toward the two-year system and getting started on that, moving aggressively on it, and coming back, you know, regularly to monitor where we are and how it's going and how the fees are adding up. I just want to reemphasize it's a very important point that Charlie made and you're now bringing back up is from a business perspective, I know in my past life as a business you would choose to take the least onerous legal burden. And so to choose a two-year storm puts us in the least onerous legal burden, but does not preclude us from doing better than that. So it's, as he said, where do you want to set the bar? If we set it at five, we will be held accountable for that. So that's a choice we make as a community. Thank you. And committee members, if there are no more questions, we might look at agenda item number two and think about how we want to go forward toward bringing a recommendation to the council. What I would recommend is that we have another special committee meeting on Tuesday, August 23rd at 11 a.m. and bring forward some of the information that can be sort of accumulated around what we learned today. Council Member Stinnett and Lane's points in particular about the financials that we're going to need so that we can then at that meeting make a recommendation to the full council. So I would, if that seems like a feasible way of moving forward, I'd certainly entertain a motion on scheduling a special committee meeting to further discuss the remedial measures plan and to make a recommendation to the full council. Council Member Gorton. Okay, I agree with you. I move that the Environmental Quality Committee hold a special meeting on August 23rd at 11 a.m. to further discuss the remedial measures issues. Second. Thank you for the motion and for the second discussion. Council Member Martin. Thank you, Chair. I'm just wondering whether we need to have a cow. This is an enormous amount of money, and I think the sooner we bring the rest of the council into these discussions and to hear the same information, I mean, we're looking $540 million. It's an enormous amount of money. And, you know, I think that I'm just wondering whether we should have a committee of the whole meeting, because this is going to be a big decision, and I think that the sooner we bring the rest of the council in to hear this, the easier we will be able to form a consensus. So that's my thought and question. Further discussion? I would just follow up, and I agree with that sentiment. Maybe we can go ahead and have a presentation from Charlie in the division prior to break or the first Tuesday after break and get them cop speed before we make a final recommendation as well. So either or would work. The item I want to make sure we have at all of our next meetings after we come back from break is I want to go back to having the financials on both sanitary and stormwater included in our meeting packets for discussion as well as I kind of miss Charlie's construction management and where we're at on projects guide that we used to include on the oversight committee. If we can start having that back as well so the public can kind of understand a little bit more of what our progress has been and having those financials in there are very important. So if we can get that included in that meeting as well, that would be great. I think that's what we want to do. Go back to the old information way. Yes. Thank you. Mr. Chair, if I may. Mr. Gordon. I'm sorry. If I may, I just wanted to comment on Mr. Stendens. It will not be until after the break. Between my obligation over at the courthouse, we have two major deliverables due to EPA July 1. That is taking up a lot of our time. So in order for us to be able to prepare a meaningful and content-filled presentation, it will have to be after break. No problem with that at all. Then I would maybe make it a cow on that Tuesday. And, you know, I know these meetings are open to all the council members, but you can see, you know, not a lot would want to show up. You're making that cow. I wouldn't make it mandatory. Council Member Barton? That was going to be my recommendation is on August 23rd, instead of having a special environmental committee meeting, just make it a committee of the whole meeting. And they would have the new information also to bring with the presentation. So I move to amend my motion and recommend a special committee of the whole to hear the Environmental Committee's issue of the remedial measures plan on August 23rd. Council Member Stennett, any further discussion? All right. I would just like to reiterate, I think at this meeting we need to have that macro overview of the financial issues, revenue, expenses, operating costs, capital investment, cash flow analysis that we've requested before. So we should have adequate time to put that together by that meeting. Thank you. Very good. All in favor of the motion, say aye, please. Aye. That motion passes. And we shall go forward with preparations for that committee of the whole meeting on August the 23rd. One further item, and as you know, we tried to leave some time toward the end of our meetings for public comment, And I think we do have one speaker who wanted to make a public comment at the end of our meeting today, Mr. Cushy. If you would come up to the podium, sir, and give us your name and address for the record, and you'll have three minutes. Welcome. Good morning. I hope that everyone is having a good first day of summer. Thank you for the opportunity to offer an opinion. My name is Edward Cushy. I am half owner and operator of Hillcrest Memorial Park at 2089 Bracilles Road. I am all for clean water and completely agree with the ads in the present campaign by the Department of Environmental Quality, and try to live and operate my business accordingly. I agree, I appreciate, and agree with most of the information, I can't read my writing here, presented by the Division of Water Quality at these meetings. I am against the high and unfair and over taxation and fees of the LFUCG. I stand here before you angry at myself for standing idly by while the hugely unfair water quality management fee was concocted by the LFUCG under the direction of the Department of Environmental Quality, Division of Water Quality. The unfairness of the water quality management fee cannot be explained in this short time. I'll skip that. However, based on this example of the very unfair water quality management fee, I stand here before you afraid that the Division of Water Quality is going to again mislead the council into another catastrophic failure of unfairness and again unfairly overcharge only certain groups of their choosing, like my small business. I am afraid that the LFUCG is going to destroy my small business once and for all with their astronomical unfair fees and exempt the big polluters and culprits for no good reason and let them go free again. I believe that the Division of Water Quality will not follow the mission of the remedial measures plan and will not have sufficient accountability on what they will do with the taxpayers' money. I beg and plead that you, the LFUCG, will stop inventing new taxes and fees to unfair place on my small company. We pay you more than enough already while you let the culprits go. Be fair and make the culprits and polluters pay. We can take no more. I am not here to antagonize. Rather, I am here today with an attitude of listening and learning about this very serious issue of the remedial measures plan. I am very serious and concerned about clean water and natural resources. I am also very serious and concerned about paying too much in taxes and fees to the LFUCG, which are unfair. Perhaps in the future, I can offer two cents worth of opinion to this committee and hopefully not be charged in return another grand fortune in taxes and fees invented by the LFUCG. To help me, a concerned citizen, understand, I have some relevant questions for Mr. Martin or the Division of Water Quality. These questions do not have to be answered now because of time constraints. Perhaps later I will email these questions to him. I'm sure that he will be glad to communicate back with me when he has time. Who or what groups will be suggested to pay the tax fee resulting from the remedial measures plan? Who will be suggested to be exempted or not paying this tax and fee? Who will be suggested to receive reduced rates while the others pay this tax and fee? What role can plumbers play in preventing or terminating illicit connections? Can plumbers be obligated by the LFUCG to rectify and or report illicit connections when they encounter them? I presume plumbers are not allowed to install new illicit connections? Okay. Does the LFUCG pay for the redirection of illicit connections on private property? Does the LFUCG do the work for these redirections? To where are the illicit connections redirected? And one more thing. Point number 22 from the Environmental Quality Committee meeting agenda May 3, 2011. Concept. Green infrastructure best management practices. Description, adopt green infrastructure, best management practices, and building development practices, and identify retrofit opportunities that will result in water quality improvements. Action taken, send recommendations to SSOC that engineering manuals should be updated to include best management practices for green infrastructure, example, rain gardens, et cetera. My final question. Does this not mean that the LFU suggests that green space does lower runoff and pollution and improve water quality? That's all I have to say. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Cushing. Second. Thank you. All in favor? Aye. And we are adjourned, and we will gather again as committee of the whole on August 23rd. Thank you.