Music Thank you. I have a quorum now. Council Member Hanson, if you come up to the horseshoe, please. Thank you all for being here, and I'm sorry to keep you waiting. The meeting is scheduled to begin at 11 o'clock, and I'm sorry that we all couldn't be here on time. Maybe we'll do better at the next meeting. First item on the agenda is the March 13 summary. Committee members, I think they might want to recommend a correction on the last paragraph of the summary regarding the motion made by Council Member Lane on the Empower Lexington resolution. After the meeting, but before I reported out to the full counsel on April 10, we checked the tape, and I reported out as follows, and I would like to entertain a motion that the last paragraph of the summary read as follows. On a motion by Council Member Lane, second Council Member McCord, the Department of Environmental Quality will report annually to the Council the annual report to include efforts the urban county government has undertaken to reduce its energy costs. The amendment passed 7 to 2. So if I could hear a motion on that, and we can correct that aspect of the summary. Mr. Chair. Vice Mayor Gorton. I move that we approve the change to the final motion as stated by you. Thank you. Motion and second. Council Member Lane. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Also, I noticed the last paragraph in there that should have the word report after annual, an annual report from the Urban County Government on efforts to reduce energy costs. Can we make that change? I'm sorry. Would you repeat that? Yes, sir. In the minutes, the last paragraph, it says amending the resolution to include an annual report. Let's go ahead and add the word report in there. Council Member Lane, that was in my wording. The Department of Environmental Quality will report annually to the Council. So that's in the motion as made by Vice Mayor Gordon. Okay, that's what you're doing then. Okay, thank you. If no further discussion, can we have a motion on that correction? I'm sorry, vote on that correction. All in favor, please say aye. Thank you, opposed. and if there is no further discussion of the summary, may I have a motion on that? Thank you, Council Member Henson. Council Member Stinnett, all in favor, please say aye. Aye. And the summary is approved. Committee members, we have as our next agenda item an update on the Sanitary Sewer Capacity Assurance Program, which Director Martin will give. This is some important information coming now, because following this update, We need to discuss and with a view to recommending to the full Council how the Council wants to proceed with ultimately approving the plan that will be brought forward by the CAP task force. We are operating under a fairly tight timeline here because the Capacity Assurance Program has to be submitted to the Environmental Protection Agency on January 3rd of 2013. the council will recess on or about December 10 of this year. And so the council needs to sign off on this in advance of that. So we need to discuss a little bit about how we're going to recommend to the council that we handle the end game so that we get this plan not only made but also approved before we recess for the end of year holiday. So that's coming up for discussion after Charlie's presentation. It's all yours, sir. Thank you, Council Member Berlus. There's a presentation in your packet. That's not what I'm going to cover today. That is the presentation that was given to the task force at the kickoff meeting on May the 3rd. I wanted to try to hone in a little bit on what Council Member Blues had pointed out about decision making. But those of you, I guess, in the audience as much as anything else, it is a task force that was formed. Council Member Blues is the chair, and we held our first meeting on May the 3rd of this year. The first meeting was as much of a primer about the program elements as anything, but the discussion led to a considerable focus on what decisions Council will need to make and by what deadline, and along those deadlines that Council Member Blues just outlined. What we're suggesting as far as the staff and our consultants is that the Council decisions really kind of rest in two categories. One is that they are plan-related decisions, and they are ones that require EPA approval on top of Council's approval. The plan, as Council Member Blues mentioned, is due to EPA in January of next year. So those are some tight deadlines. And so those are going to be critical decisions. There's also implementation decisions, which are also critical decisions, but they don't require EPA approval, in our opinion. They're more about how you go about doing certain things, and since they are not prescribed in the consent decree as a deliverable to EPA, it would be mine and the staff's recommendation is that we not include those in the plan, instead leave those things up to local decision making. So I've got some examples here of what I believe are some of those decisions in those two different categories, and we'll talk a little bit about how the timing of that may occur. First of all, a plan-related decision is going to be about how will capacity credits be banked, in a broad area or in a specific location. We talked about this during the task force, is that Louisville, Cincinnati, and Knoxville or three of the benchmark communities that have a CAP system already in place, and so we're using them as benchmarks to model ours. Well, in this how they track or bank their credits, all three of them do it a different way. Louisville will do it as if they get a credit within a defined drainage area, they'd apply it across the whole drainage area. Knoxville does the extreme opposite of that, is that they kind of do model runs for each one of these particular locations. So not to get into the weeds of this right now, but it's a decision that will have to be made before that EPA deadline of January 3rd in order to be able to submit an adequate plan. Likewise, another decision that we believe is related to the plan is how will LFCCG deal with sewer taps that have already been issued or that were issued prior to 2013. I've got a little homework to do on this, but I think from my discussion with the tap-on desk previously is that we've got sewer tap-ons that were purchased by entities several years ago, and they still haven't used them yet. So how are we going to deal with those? Are we going to grandfather those or otherwise? Because I think EPA will expect us to describe in our plan how we're going to deal with the existing commitments that we've already made. Another issue that we're going to have to deal with as part of the plan is what is LFUCG's schedule for implementation of the plan. You'll see in a later slide is the plan has to include a schedule for implementation, and so we're going to at least have to agree at some level of how we're going to go about implementing the plan once EPA approves it. Now, there's other ones on there that I haven't identified. This is, I guess, a merging list, so you see that last bullet under council-related decisions is I've got a question mark. We're still developing that, and I think through the course of the initial task force meetings, we'll refine this list and finalize it and bring this back not only to this group but to the council as this thing evolves. On the implementation decisions, these don't require EPA approval, as I mentioned, and so I've got some examples of those. How will capacity credits be allocated? Do we give somebody an allocation and they get to keep it forever, or does it expire within some period of time? The consent decree is mute on that. And so, again, I would not recommend that we include that in the plan, that we leave that for a local decision-making, because even whatever decisions we make at the implementation stage, if it's not included in the plan and approved by EPA, we have the latitude to make adjustments later down the road if we feel that that's necessary. Likewise, will there be a fee for capacity determinations and credits? If a potential developer comes to us and wants capacity, and we have to go through a process in order to be able to determine that, is there a fee? Again, not in the consent decree. That's a local decision. Can credits be traded between private parties? If I own a block of property and I know that I'm not going to do certain things, but I already have my credits allocated to me, can I trade those to someone else? And again, this is an emerging list. These decisions, in my mind, do not have to be made in the sense of there needs to be enabling ordinances put in place by that January 3rd deadline. What I'm suggesting is this, is that because we have to do the plan by January 3, 2013, that we only include the things that are required by the consent decree, not the other things. Because the consent decree says implementation must commence within 30 days of approval based on the schedule submitted with the plan, I think that we can approach a solution that has an ordinance development and other implementation strategy that is a single resolution that we do prior to setting the plan that instructs us to do additional work sometime in 2013 after the plan is approved by EPA. So that's really the question I think that I have for the task force right now, is that if we've got to submit this plan in January of 2013, and we have to commence implementation within 30 days of EPA approval, the question that comes up is, how long will it take them to approve it? I don't know. We've been waiting for them to approve a lot of things already, and you'll see in the later presentations some of them we've been waiting quite a while. So what do we do in the interim? That's really a task force and council decision, and there's two options. We can implement as if it were approved. We can begin to put together the enabling ordinance that are necessary to get us ready for implementation, or we can simply wait until they approve it. But that is a decision that I think needs to be made in December because for the division, we need to kind of know what we should be working on for 2013. So for a recommendation moving forward is that we're going to continue to develop and refine these two decision lists, One that is a decision that is critical to submission of the plan, along with a separate list that is critical for decisions for implementation of the plan. I want to discuss with the Department of Law how CAP implementation recommendations can be made by the task force and then adopted by a single resolution at the end of this year. For example, the resolution that says the task force recommendations are adopted, and they include no trading of credits, that there will be no fee for credits, and those different things that I just highlighted right there right now. And so by that resolution, then the division and the Department of Law could then begin the crafting of the ordinances that put those details in place, and that would come back to council sometime in 2013 for full adoption. Again, the timing of that is whether or not you want to implement while we're waiting for EPA's approval, or you just may say the task force recommends that upon approval by EPA, you begin to do these things. But that's going to be my recommendation, is that so you guys don't get bogged down, the council doesn't get bogged down, is that we simply approve decisions that are required by the plan and then adopt a second resolution that provides the framework necessary for implementation. Again, that will be something that the task force, I'm sure, will debate and go forward with that. That's what I have, Dr. Blues, as far as my update on the CAP right now. I've struggled with this a little bit because we've only had the kickoff meeting right now, I'm trying to get my, just like you and others, trying to get a tenor on where we are because this thing is very, very intricate. It's not what time it is. It's how do you build a watch. It's got a lot of layers to it, but you can take whatever questions. It is a complicated process because we're sort of trying to feel our way forward at the outset, Yet at the same time, we've got to be aware that we've got some firm dates, and we're going to have to conclude this, the entire process, before the council breaks for the holidays. We do have some questions. Council Member Lane. Okay. Vice Mayor Gordon, you're not left over. I'm not left over. At least I hope not. Thank you, Charlie. I guess you don't have any idea, or maybe you do, whether the EPA just kind of, well, let me step back. With the consent decree, we went ahead and started implementing before it was given its final blessing by the judge, correct? That's correct. Everything except CAP. Right. And we felt like it would be to our advantage to get going on it. And I wonder if the EPA has a history of approving these CAP programs. They simply want to see what we're doing, or would we be risking anything by going ahead once we've got the plan but not the approval? It's only 30 days, so it's not as critical, I guess, as the consent decree was. From my perspective is this, is that I think that there are enough other caps out there that are a model of which that if EPA were to turn their attention to this and do that comparison to what other communities in this region are doing, that they could approve this thing very quickly. It's like with anything. It's a matter of manpower and priorities. Personally, I think that they'll be more in a decision-making mode because the national elections will be behind us. And I think that right now on a federal level that they're somewhat quiet right now because of pending national elections and not sure which way the wind's going to blow with that. Because we've got a lot of things into them right now that you'll see, we'll talk about here in a few minutes. I mean, they've had them for a while, and they've already looked at them once already and commented on them. And I'm a little surprised that they have not returned them to us with an approval. But, again, I don't know what their priorities are or what the other things that are distracting them right now from doing that. My recommendation would be, though, is that, you know, if we get a firm handle on what the implementation steps are going to be and what those recommendations would be, it would be my recommendation that we move forward with the implementation because that eliminates the uncertainty for the stakeholders. That's the thing that concerns me the most right now, is that you're operating in somewhat of a vacuum of uncertainty about what the future holds. And the quicker you can call the question and say this is where we are moving forward, I think it's fairer for everybody. But that's my personal opinion. On those cities that we're looking at, Knoxville and the others that have already done this, do you know how long it took the EPA to return? I was told this. I haven't verified it myself, but I was told they approved Knoxville's about 10 years ago in 30 days. Okay. All right. Thank you. Are there any other questions for Charlie at this time? Committee members, I'd like your advice and input on how we should coordinate with the full council and what your thoughts on what the full Council will want to see as we develop the plan. My intention is, through a series of report outs, to keep the Council apprised of decisions that the task force is making on an ongoing basis, and also, of course, to keep this committee aware through our monthly meetings. But my question is, will the Council want to simply approve the ordinance that we would be drafting along with the plan? Will it want to see the plan in detail, or will it want to see its highlights, that is to say its critical decisions? Council Member Farmer. So this is a work product for May through September, according to the schedule that I see on page 9, May, June, July. A couple of July meetings, a couple of August, a couple of September meetings. So we're trying to be done specifically by the 20th of September. Is that it? I think we'll probably have to go beyond that date. Okay. Charlie, do you want to? No, I was just going to comment. I think that's the goal. And in response to just try to help a little bit here as far as this deliberation that the committee is making, is the plan, again, I think our responsibility is to put together a plan that's required by the consent decree, which the city has already signed off on we have already agreed to that their challenge for us is going to be is to point out to you what things in are that are in that plan that were not a previous commitment that are not required by the consent decree some of the three things that i i illustrated there and so rather than having the council read the whole plan our our recommendation is is that we prepare that synopsis that highlights the things that are not necessarily required by the consent decree, but we're sending to EPA for their approval. Because if they approve it, then you don't have any way, you have a much more difficult path to turn around and go back. All the implementation things that I don't want to include in the plan, if I can avoid it, then you guys can, as a council, as a body, can approve those things at your leisure based on whatever schedule we include, but also then allows you that despite all of our best wisdom and best efforts that we find a year into implementation, it didn't turn out the way we want to. It's a local ordinance, not an EPA-approved plan, and we can make adjustments as necessary. Does that answer your... It's always good to hear from Charlie. I guess you were asking how to keep the rest of the Council apprised of the work of this group. Yes, right. Will we be generating summaries from these meetings in any capacity? Yes. Why don't we just post those to the rest of the Council to make a part of their potential reading material, and if they want to come or give input, they or their aide, or via e-mail, they could give us input during the course of our deliberations. Is that the kind of linking that you're thinking of there? I think posting summaries is an excellent idea, but I want to make sure that council members know where we are as we go forward so we're not creating surprises toward the end of our work. Well, I could utter the term, you know, workshop, who we could bring people together in an ad hoc manner if so desired. Right. I suspect that there will be enough interest in it. I mean, this is a very, very important legislative work that we're about to take up here. And I think more will want to be involved. I believe there will be plenty of communication back and forth, and I would just, on a personal level, need to step back with you after this meeting or at some point to try to arbitrate the start time for these meetings, because it's a little early in relation to other types of jobs or occupations at that hour of the morning, and I think that we might get better participation from some members perhaps a little bit later than 9 a.m., We can work on that later, but I think communication between us first and the rest of the council second will provide for a great outcome for the entire community. Okay. Thank you, sir. If communication between the two of us is good for the community, then we'll see that it's done. Thank you. Vice Mayor. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I just, Charlie, wanted to ask you, Council Member Farmer brought up the time frame of this. Could you, I know in our first meeting we talked about when this had to go to the Planning Commission, and do we, the Council, have to have a public hearing on it, or should we? And so can you remind me of our discussion on... To the best of my knowledge, without the law department here telling me otherwise, is that this does not have to go to the Planning Commission, nor does it require a public hearing to submit the plan. What will require the Planning Commission and public hearings is the likelihood that we'll have to make modifications to the zoning ordinance in order to allow the capacity assurance allocation decision to be made at the appropriate time. What we talked about is like for a development plan or some other type of major investment. You know, I think it behooves on us to have an implementation plan that makes that capacity allocation commitment early in those stages because a potential developer or investor is not going to want to make that kind of investment in a potential development and then find out later in the game that they don't have capacity. So I think that the capacity allocation decision is going to have to be inserted somewhere in the zoning ordinance that makes it clear the workflow associated with that, and that would require public hearing and a planning commission. Right now, my plan was as far as the presentation of the planning commission, and I think actually I'm going to be talking to them Thursday as well at Chris's invitation, is just to keep them abreast of what's going on. Because as Council Member Farmer pointed out, this is an important thing. It's going to be a big change from the way we've done business in the past. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Council Member Henson. Thank you, Chair. Charlie, I think your plan to, with a target date of September 20th, correct, to bring the EPA plan, not the entire plan, what did you refer to it? A synopsis or summary that focuses on the key elements that are not specifically required by the consent decree but need to be included in the plan, such as the schedule for implementation and how we're banking credits and what fashion we're banking them in. And by doing that, then it would be more versatile as far as the implementation? Well, I think it makes it easier for you guys to make decisions and focus on what you have a decision on as opposed to getting potentially wrapped around the axle about how many credits, what the tradeoff on credits are in West Hickman. That's in the consent decree. That's a non-debatable issue. We've already committed to those trade ratios in the consent decree. So what I want to try to do is set aside the things that we're already committed to when we signed in March of 2008 and focused instead on the things that we have not committed to yet so the council has a clear understanding of what the end game is based on those commitments. Summary. So the summary, which I think that's a great plan and a good direction to go, and then as the implementation begins, each project would be approved by the council? No. Once the enabling ordinances and other policy procedure type of things would be enacted, it would be a staff situation where we would have to be able to provide capacity determinations for prospective developments, and it would flow through either building inspection or planning or even the tap-on desk, depending on what type of development it is or where it's inserting itself in here. As I pointed out during the kickoff meeting, my division's biggest role in this is to work our tails off to make sure that there are areas that always have either capacity or credits available, because then this whole thing doesn't become near the problem that it would be otherwise. And we've worked really hard to get ahead of that game, but we still have some work to get ahead of that as far as where we get credits at. But once this comes through and the implementation details are worked out from ordinances and operating policies, I don't expect that the council will be involved in any way, shape, or form moving forward. Would you share the progress with this committee like we have in the past? Oh, absolutely. Okay. Absolutely. What I was thinking to myself, though, as I finished saying that, is that my gauge of whether we're running the program successfully is if you're not asking me to come back. Because if you're asking me to come back, that tells me it's not working. Okay. And then one last question. As far as educating the public, you've already been out there, correct? To some extent. You know, the part of educating the public is advertising and inviting the stakeholders or who we've identified as stakeholders to the task force meetings. You know, I don't know if this is a general public type of information type of thing because, again, it's very confusing and there's a lot of layers to it. But I know that folks, you know, the Home Builders Association, Board of Realtors, neighborhood associations they've had each of them have representation that attended the first meeting and I'm likely that they will be attending regularly moving forward so we're going to get not speaking for the chair but we're encouraging their input because they're the end users and we've got to have something that's manageable for them Thank you Charlie Thank you Any other questions for for Charlie on this particular issue. Council Member Lane. Yes, sir. In looking over the presentation, there was a notice in here about established protocol for the operation of pump stations during power outages. That's the next presentation. I beg your pardon? That's the next one I'm getting. I'll try and cover that with detail. Thank you. If there are no other questions for Charlie, we can move on to agenda item three, which is the update on the capacity management operations and maintenance over the CMOM plan. That's the other Charlie Martin that you're going to get now, so I'll put my other hat on. when council member blues asked me to prepare something for today's meeting you know this is one i wanted to talk about for a while we've spent a lot of time talking about stormwater we've spent a lot of time talking about capital projects we've talked about cap here very recently and will continue to one of the remaining program elements in the consent decree that we haven't talked a lot about is the CMOM thing. It's capacity management, operation, and maintenance. And so I wanted to take the opportunity to talk a little bit about it today just to kind of introduce you to the whole concept. I mean, really what it is, is it's an operations program management structure to ensure whether or not that the system, the water quality operations unit is operating effectively, efficiently, and in an accountable way. So I'm going to talk a little bit about that. I'm going to try to talk a little bit about the implementation overview of what it is that we're required to do, give you some highlights on what some of the program components are, some of our goals associated with the implementation, what the customer impacts, how do your constituents may be able to see what the outcomes of these things and how they may benefit from them, how we're using information management systems to measure our progress in it and some critical success factors as well. Here's the whole thing in a nutshell as far as the consent decree and the different players that are involved in this, and this has been an evolving list over time. We tried to boil this down into the main categories, the capital projects on sanitary, capital projects on stormwater, the sanitary sewer capacity that we just talked about, stormwater operations like erosion and sediment control, and things like that that we've been going on for several years. The one we're focusing on here today is this CMOM thing. You can see that there's different individual staff members that are assigned to this, and in the box below the different consulting engineers that are essentially directing our implementation in these different categories. The original sheet of this is much larger because there's been a lot of other consultants that were involved in helping us develop the plans that were sent to EPA to even begin the implementation. I did a quick count. There have been nine different firms that have been involved in getting us to the point of implementing a lot of our CMOM program type of stuff. It's been a long haul with those of you who have sat in on a lot of our selection committees when we advertise for these selections. But we're boiled down to that group right now. And so if you hold on to any slides in the future, that might be one that you want to refer back to. because who's the lead people that are involved in implementing the consent decree requirements. But let's talk about CMOM for just a second. CMOM has 150 different implementation elements contained within the program. I talked earlier about trying to put together a watch. This is a lot like that as well. It's intricate, but it has a low financial impact relative to the things we've talked about before, and particularly the remedial measures. We've thrown numbers around like $550 million that's frightening to all of us. This is not the 800-pound gorilla in the room as far as cost. There are costs associated to it, but more of it's a burden of changing the character and the culture of the way we do business on the division level. It has a defined implementation schedule, and we report on this through our quarterly and annual reports that we have to send to EPA every year or regularly. So here are the individual components. We had an initial self-assessment that we had to do just to kind of an audit, a gut check, see where we are right now. There's a sewer overflow response plan or SORP. There's a FATS, oil, and grease, a FOG program. I know these are really attractive names. This is done by technical people. We have the pump station operations plan for power outages, and we have the gravity line maintenance plan. In a pure CMOM program, EPA also includes the CAP that we just talked about. That's the C in CMOM. We elected to separate CAP and make its own entity because of its significance to a lot of different other folks. And so even though it's a component of the CMOM program, it's not listed here. I'm not focusing on it because, again, these are more of the internal division level type of stuff. So let's talk about one of the elements in particular is the CMOM self-assessment. It's an overall roadmap to how we go about doing all of the things that are associated with the SORP and the pump station power outage plan, et cetera. You'll see this second bullet reoccurring through several slides here, and I mentioned this earlier. You know, we have sent plans to EPA previously. This was one of the earliest ones that we sent in 2008. The consent decree was still in limbo. As a matter of fact, that was about the time that it was rejected by Judge Forrester and entered into the appeal process. So EPA has seen this plan before, provided us with informal comments, and we responded to those comments and sent this back to them July 1 of last year. Have not yet heard back from them as far as an approval, which is a little bit surprising because they've already seen it once already. It shouldn't have been a surprise. But anyway, there's 84 implementation elements that have these different schedules that you see on the slide. Just to give you a flavor of what some of these implementation elements are, one is, as I just finished drafting this, is general and strategic goals as a division. What is it we're trying to accomplish? Right now those goals have been drafted and I've circulated them internally with our consultants and the internal team for refinement. We have to establish measurable performance standards. How many feet of pipe are we going to clean and inspect a year? How many inspections of restaurants are we going to do a year? So we can gauge whether or not that we're able to ring the bell and improve on a regular basis moving forward. And then lastly, and when I was preparing this slide, I was thinking of Don Blevins, because he's told me this in this room several years ago, is that a public awareness program that lets people know how are we doing, is that as we continue to have rate pressures, is that we've got to be communicating to the public what is it we're doing, how are we doing things better, not only to meet the consent decree, but to meet the customer's expectations. And Don's basic one was that as we move forward, telling people about the number of overflows that we get rid of on an annual basis, starting with that 111 that was in the consent decree. So those are just three of the examples of things that we have to do under the CMOM self-assessment plan. On the sewer overflow response plan, basically this is to establish a protocol for responding to and cleaning up sanitary sewer overflows. Those of you who have the unfortunate result, I guess, of having overflows that occur in your district, you're probably well aware of our folks going out and disinfecting and raking up some of the excess material. We need to improve in that area in a lot of different ways and have it as a defined protocol that is predictable and measurable on a constant basis. Again, this plan has already been submitted to EPA once, submitted to them second, and still waiting for approval. Some of the implementation elements that are of particular interest to you all is making sure that we're coordinating with the health department on particular sanitary sewer overflow situations. The whole idea is minimizing exposure to the public and making sure that we're protecting public health. Providing information to folks who are experiencing overflows, and you may not be aware of this, but we've developed a brochure that says, what should I do if I have a sanitary sewer backup? Each one of my staff members that go to respond to these calls have been provided with these, and they give these to the homeowner so they can have and make informed decisions about what to do if I did have sewage in my basement. This is also available on our website as well, but this was a requirement of the consent decree, and it's actually been a very helpful document. We have a similar one for a manhole overflow as well. Another component of these elements is public notification of sanitary sewer overflows. Several years ago when we had the overflow at Town Branch, we had a fish kill. It was right around Labor Day weekend. In the aftermath, meeting with some of the farm owners on Old Frankfort Pike, they were concerned about their inability to know this happened because they may have livestock or horses or something in or around the creek, and they wanted to know this. So we've worked with them, but we're trying to up that ante to have a notification system to folks who want to know whether or not there's an overflow that would be occurring that might necessarily impact their operations. So I've met with Pat Duggar on one occasion here, and what we're looking at is trying to piggyback on the tornado and wet weather notification situation that we do already. Some of you may get that on your smartphones or otherwise. But that's just some of the sample of the things that are required as part of the overflow response plan. The fat, soil, and grease plan, 19 program elements associated with this. It's the same model there as far as that we've submitted it and resubmitted it. This isn't really a lot different than things we've been doing already. We've had a grease program for institutional food preparation, restaurants, cafeterias, churches, hospitals, and the like. We've had that here in Lexington for several years. I think that most of the elements we have in this is more of a refinement to what we were doing and a better accountability to what we were doing, not necessarily dramatic or draconian changes associated with it. One thing that is of interest as far as to the council members, I would think, is that they do ask us to emphasize a residential program, not just the institutional. So through our public outreach and things, we try to focus a lot more on informing the average citizen what to do with their grease. And so during some of the neighborhood events we have, and you may have seen this, is that we provide these little handout. They're little caps that go on top of cans that people can pour their grease into a tin can, like a green bean can, and then they put this cap on top of it, and it says, No fog, no clog. And just a little reminder type of thing is about don't pour your bacon grease down the sink, pour it in a can and throw it into a trash can. And that improves the overall operation of the system. So everybody's got a stake in that. The pump station operation is planned for power outages. One of the things the EPA was really concerned about was that we did not have written protocols for when we lost power at a pump station. They were also concerned about the overall condition of some of our pump stations. And so one of the things that we're going to be required to do as these implementation elements is to install equipment that manage risks. And that may be as simple as checking the grounding resistance at every one of those pump stations to make sure they're grounded properly and not subject to lightning strikes. It may be as extreme as providing standby generators and or standby pumps that will kick on when we have a power failure. We already have that at our large pump stations, but in some of the smaller pump stations, that's not been the standard. And so we're looking at those type of things. Likewise, a hauling contract. Council Member Stennett, you know, when we were repairing the pipe out on Starshoot a month or so ago, we implemented a process to where when we shut the pump stations down in the middle of the night, we had a contractor that was hauling the sewage while those pump stations were down. In the old days, we'd have let them overflow, and we're not allowed to do that anymore. Instead, we use a contractor to suck them out, take them someplace else, dump them, and just make those return calls. We're going to be expanding that hauling contract to focus on a lot of our smaller pump stations because while EPA was arguing with us, saying you needed to have a backup generator at every pump station, I kept pointing out to them that during the ice storm of 2003, less than half of our pump stations even had an overflow. And I think that's because when you have a major power outage like that, sure, there's no power on at the pump station, but there's nobody home to generate any sewage either. And so why invest a huge amount of capital in backup power and backup pumps when you don't really need them? You can use a lower-cost type of alternative, such as a vendor, to come in and just haul what's necessary on an infrequent basis. But those are the kind of implementation steps that we have to do and decisions that we have to make on the pump station and operations plan for power outage. Last one, this one's pretty straightforward, is just clean sewers. There are eight implementation steps. For you all, the most important one is that we have committed to clean and televise at least 650,000 feet of pipeline every year. That's going to be one of our benchmarks. That $650,000 came from, that's basically a rotation throughout the city once every 13 years. That's the goal, is that we inspect every pipe that we're responsible for at least once every 13 years. Now, below that is a layer of ones that we know are problem pipes, and they're on our frequent preventive maintenance list. A second benchmark that I expect to come out of this is that I want to see our folks reducing the number of pipes on the preventive maintenance list on an annual basis, is that that shows progress, that we're not just going out and treating the symptom, and that we're actually getting into a root cause solution to make it go away. Okay, how are we going to do all this? Well, you know, information management system is obviously going to be a fundamental component of this, and I won't read all of these bullets to you, but I want to direct you to this second one, is it's critical for the Division of Water Quality to fully deploy these systems or employ these systems. Acela is an asset management system that we implemented last year. We went live in this in August of last year, and it is a work order tool. Work orders are assigned to particular assets like manholes and pipes. Rod, myself, and other management folks, we use the reports on that. I can go in and determine how many dig-ups we did in a period of time, how many feet of pipe did we clean within a period of time, how many outstanding work orders do we have, and how many of them are aged to a certain amount. This is how I'm going to be able to gauge whether or not we're meeting the benchmarks that we establish. And so fully using the powers that we have available to us is really critical. Acela has an interface with Lexmark. I mean, what Lexmark? Where did that come from? Lexcall. Where Lexcalls that come in, it automatically populates our Acela program and vice versa. That way we don't have differing counts about how many service calls that we had in a period of time. Another great thing about Acela is that it has the ability to attach documents to it, fairly large documents. One of the things I've always complained about is that we would hire somebody to go study something, and then 10 years later, the people who were responsible for that all left, and it's sitting on a shelf someplace, and we hire somebody to go study the same thing again. When we study a pump station, that report would be assigned to that asset and through a cello. When you want to, 10 years down the road, find out the history of that pump station, all those documents would be attached as a library that would be searchable. Okay, one slide here that is the complimentary sample schedule. I know we had to have that in here, and I put it in here, or I had them put it in there, but it doesn't really tell the tale. This is the implementation schedule that I keep on my door that I look at every day. Obviously, pretty lengthy, 150 items. But I consult that thing every day because there are so many different parts and pieces that we try to make progress on it each and every day to be able to meet our milestones. Okay, goals. Obviously, the first two are obvious, that they're EPA and Division of Water-driven, regulatory compliance, environmental protection. The improved customer service and the increased efficiency is, I think, a critical component of implementing a good CMOM program. Moving from reactive to proactive, such as reducing our preventive maintenance list, improving our pump stations to where they are more reliable instead of us reacting to power failures because we don't have a suitable grounding rod in place, Those are the things I think that the citizens are going to see a long-term benefit out of. The increased accountability, measurable goals, so I can report to you or to whoever what is it we are accomplishing, what is it that the citizens are investing their fees in, and what are they getting them in return. In the overall increased system reliability, it's measured against sanitary sewer overflows. I want to be able to see and show you that five years down the road that we have a curve that shows that we have diminishing number of sanitary sewer overflow events over time. That's the measuring stick or the ultimate measuring stick of whether we're doing what we should be doing. There we go. Customer impacts. I'm going to highlight a couple of things, and we're working on developing this right now. One of the consent decree requirements for the SORP is that we have permanent signage next to where an overflow occurs. If it's a regular overflow, and I'll pick on the one by the Lexington Mall entrance there, it has overflowed for 25 years when it rains, although it didn't overflow on Sunday. We are going to be required to attempt to put permanent signage there to warn the public. Rod and I are working through that right now about how we would do this because some of the property is not owned by us. And so in the plan, we have asked EPA and are awaiting that approval, is that we're going to ask permission, but if we can't get permission from the property owner, then they sign a release that basically says we're not going to put the sign there. But in other places, that if it's public property, and where this is probably really going to come up as a big pressure point is in parks because we do have overflows that occur in parks. There may be some concern about folks about having a sign there that says this manhole is subject to overflowing. The converse of that is that we are warning the public that that's not something that kids should be playing in. The other customer impact is just the overall presence. If we're going to clean 650,000 linear feet of pipe a year, people are going to know about it. We're going to be in their front yards. We're going to be in their backyards. We're going to be closing the street for short periods of time. So there's going to be traffic disruptions and impact to private property. But that's unfortunately, I guess, the price of doing business. Again, I think the benefits are the most important part of this, and you can see this. I've already talked about these things already. But my folks, when they're trying to adjust to the change that's going to occur to this, I keep trying to point out to them as far as the benefit in the long haul for the folks that we work for, is that people are going to have a greater value, I think, once we are able to implement these things and realize the importance of what we're doing. Last slide, and I want to make sure that this is not just all about us, because it's not. No, this is the second to last slide. I'm sorry. I got ahead of myself. Critical success factors. We meet on a biweekly basis with our consultant in order to begin to implement this five-page, 150-piece CMOM program. We've also, some of the consultant, we've actually integrated him with field staff because I don't want people to show up once every two weeks for the meeting. I actually want them working in the field with our people and getting a more hands-on experience about what we're dealing with and what we're not because we can write all the great plans we want to, but if the field people can't implement it, I feel like we have failed. Strong project management is really important, and then the change to standard practices within LFUCG, not just the division of water quality, is critical to the success. And this is the slide I thought I was going to because it doesn't involve just water quality. These are some sample requirements that are in those CMOM reports, is to work with human resources to expedite the selection of new hires. I know HR's got a lot on their plate a lot of times, like a lot of us do, but if we're going to continue to meet benchmarks and meet measurable goals, having vacancies for extended periods of time will undermine our ability to do that. The customary comment about rate increases, I guess that's all on all of our backs. improve the enforcement of installation testing and inspection requirements for new sanitary sewers. That involves the Division of Engineering as much as it does us, and also analyzing fleet requirements, making sure that we have the right kind of equipment that we need in order to be able to do the job that we need to do. So the point of this whole slide is that while it's a Division of Water Quality CMOM program, there are other partners that are involved that we need to make sure that they are involved. In summary, 150 program elements. Low financial impact relative to remedial measures. It's not free, but it is considerably lower, and that's why we haven't really talked that much about it before. We need to get our other partners involved, HR, finance, fleet services, division of engineering, all these different folks, in order to be able to make this thing work seamlessly. But the outcome of this thing is going to be improved customer service, increased system reliability and consent to create compliance. I tried to get through that as quickly as I possibly could. Thank you, Charlie. Committee members, do you have any questions for Charlie on the CMOM program? Apparently you've covered... Whoops. Council Member Hanson. It is. In those events? It is. Pride, Bluegrass Pride has taken the lead on our multifamily outreach efforts for FOG. Okay. And you're right, environmental policy has taken a considerable role, and we continue to expand that. You know, getting to the residents are hard to get to, whether it be multifamily or single family. And so utilizing Pride and multifamily and folding that into the recycling program and the other environmental programs we did, it seemed like a good entry point in with them because they don't typically always show up to neighborhood events such as what you had last week and otherwise. You know, I missed, I had so many presentations. This is the fifth presentation I've had in the last eight days. So I'm a little bit off kilter here because when I came to your thing, I have a big box of stuff that I take with me that I sit on the table and hand out, and I completely missed that when I was with you guys in Gardenside a week ago because that's how we reach out to the average residential citizen is providing these handouts and this information and talking it up. Our website, compared to where it was in 2008 versus where we are today versus the information that's available to citizens, businesses, and otherwise, whether it be fog or sanitary sewer overflows or anything we do in the environmental program, It's light years from where it was. Light years in New Orleans. Oh, I agree completely. I just wanted to make sure that that was something that we're getting the word out of, you know, that I think it's easy to educate, it's easy to explain. Now, another question I had about the fog is, can you identify areas in our city where it might be greater than other areas worse? Well, without naming names, but yeah, we do have the ability to do that. And this is where these programs tie into one another. The gravity line maintenance program where we're out inspecting sewers, where we see areas that there are heavy accumulations of grease in the pipe, that we can create through a cella a sister work order, essentially, to have target inspections done in that area relative to folks who have grease trap permits. We can do the same thing when we have an overflow as well, and it's still an evolving thing. But like in the fog program, we don't want to just say we're going to inspect every one once every three years because there's a percentage of those that aren't the problem. I'd rather re-inspect the problems more frequently than just inspect them all just because I can. So your absolute, that's a very good point, and I didn't really touch on that during the presentation, is that we have the ability and are continuing to refine the ability to target our efforts on fog reduction in the areas that we have the biggest problems. Okay. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you, Charlie. It becomes increasingly apparent how complicated the entire enterprise is in improving our system, eliminating the problems with our sanitary sewers and stormwater, and providing clean water and alerting our community and getting the whole Lexington community involved is going to be critical because the government can't do it alone. You've got to have that buy-in and that cooperation and the input so that whether you're clearing the dishes after supper or mowing the lawn, You're conscious of where the grass goes or where the grease goes and so on, and that we are, as a whole community, we are interrelated. I think that as council members, at least speaking for myself, I increasingly realize how what really matters is all underground until it comes roaring up after a heavy storm. We view ourselves as if we're the Maytag men, we're doing okay because it's out of sight, out of mind. But, you know, one anecdotal comment before I leave here is that, you know, from the sanitary sewer part of it, I think it's very easy people to engage because they can relate directly to that if it goes flush down the toilet, it's not supposed to come out someplace else. It's supposed to disappear like magic and never to be seen again. I was with the Eidol Hour folks yesterday in Councilmember Farmer's District, and it is amazing to me how much more engaged people are and how informed they are. because we talked about pending capital projects in the idle hour area, and they were right on it. And so you're right. I think a lot of people recognize how much of a community effort that this is and is going to be, and they also appreciate probably more than they used to that this is a marathon, that it's not a sprint. It's a long haul to improve the system, but they're willing to roll their sleeves up. Well, we appreciate what you're doing and what your whole team is doing in this effort. So thank you so much. Council members, I think we can move on to our next agenda item, which is an update on the Emerald Ash Barber infestation, which, as I understand it now, the bugs are inside New Circle Road. And we've got some problems. I think Mr. Saylor is coming forward. Yes, I have some issues. My name is John Saylor. Thanks for having me here today. I am a forestry grad from the U.K. I also have a degree in environmental science. and I am an International Society of Arboriculture certified arborist and also a municipal specialist. And also I'd like to borrow from the guy a few doors down. I'm not a musician, but I'm a tree hugger. Thanks for letting me come talk to you about EAB, Emerald Ash Borer. This is a problem that we have found here in Fayette County since 2009. Basically, the issue is with our ash trees, if you treat the trees or you remove the trees, basically, that's pretty clear cut. No pun intended. In the U.S., we have about 7.5 billion ash trees. We have over 500,000 in Fayette County. and approximately 6,000 of those ash trees are street trees. So we did a windshield survey back in 2005, and we have approximately 53,000 to 55,000 street trees, of which about 10%, 11% of those were ash. So that's where we're getting those numbers from. The question is, why should we be concerned? Mr. Saylor, if I can interrupt for just a second, but your presentation is not on the screen. Did you intend for it to be? No, no. We just handed it out. I'm just going. You have a hard copy of it, so I don't. Do you want us to, for today? If you want. I think it would be for the audience outside chambers would be helpful to have this. According to the USDA, statewide urban communities forests average less than 18%, while the rest of the statewide tree canopy coverage averages about 42% across the state. So in regards to Fayette County, we're the second largest populated county in the state as far as humans, but we have very little urban forestry canopy. So that becomes an issue when we take over 500,000 ash trees into account. What do trees do for us? Einstein is attributed with saying the most powerful thing in the world is compound interest. You go to a financial planner, they'll quote that for you. I see that when we plant a tree. I just planted a tree for my mother's day. and so as that tree matures and grows, she's going to get more value to her property. She's going to get the stormwater. We have Charlie in here talking about stormwater. We've got the trees that act as biofilters. They aid in stormwater retention. They don't let as much runoff from the rain events flow into our creeks and streams. They reduce energy costs. Dr. Kathleen Wolfe from the University of Washington has done tons of research on the impact of trees on humans. And some of her findings are that people walk along green streets with trees. It increases their wellness and physical health. Well-care-for trees may decrease crime in neighborhoods. High-quality canopy in business districts is associated with higher. The patrons visit and frequent those establishments more. They stay longer, and they're willing to pay more. So there's a value to our retail folks that if we have trees out in the landscape, Basically, that results in more dollars for their product. Things citizens need to know, do I have an ash tree? Basically, after last week's article, that's been the number one question I've received in my office. And speaking of that article, we've had an increase of phone calls regarding the Emerald Ash War, and that's part of why I'm here today. If those trickle into your all's office, to kind of aid you guys in some info so you can handle those, or also you can direct them to us or to our website. We have a great website. I'll mention that a little bit later, what we have on our website. But do I have an ash tree? What do ash trees look like? They have compound leaves. They are arranged opposite on the stems. The branches are also opposite. That's why the ash was so popular. It's a beautiful tree. It's very symmetrical in shape. and so it was a highly sought-after tree to plant. The leaflets are serrated. There's between five and nine, usually seven leaflets on an entire compound leaf, and they're ovate to ovate lancellate in shape. And then the bark on the ash tree is described as diamond lace. It looks like little meeting diamond shapes that are furrowed into and separated by interlaced ridges. So it just looks like a diamond bark pattern when you just look at the ash trees. So those are some tools to help identify what ash trees look like. The history of the EAB, the emerald ash borer was discovered. It was identified in southeast Michigan in 2002. It is, I guess they believe it came over on a palate. The beetle is native to Asia. It was discovered in Jessamine County in 2009. It was the first positive identification of the beetle in the state. And that's from 2002, Michigan, to 2009, spring of 2009. That information is good to know just because the adult doesn't fly more than a mile, but basically it's kind of spread by human interaction. We have the Do Not Move Firewood campaign, which that's good for a number of reasons. But most insects travel in firewood, especially bark beetles. And so that's why you see the billboards out, don't move firewood. It also was found in plant material. I guess when folks realized that the ash trees were getting hit, sometimes they would sell their products south. And so that's how it basically was distributed and progressed. Those guys don't fly, again, but a mile, but they're transported with human interaction. The EAB as an adult, it's a pretty green. You guys have some of our brochures that we hand out. I handed one of these out to a lady last week. And the first thing she said, oh, it's a very pretty bug. And it is. It's a beautiful emerald green. And it's very small and insignificant. It will fit on the head of a penny. That picture is kind of blown up just so you can kind of get the idea of just the shape and what it looks like. but they're very indiscriminate adults. And that's part of the problem here is that by the time it's noticed, by the time the damage is noticed, and by the time people realize that there's a D-shaped exit hole, which is another characteristic and sign that you have an infested tree, it's too late. Basically, by the time the homeowner sees that at eye level, the tree is already too late to treat in most cases. But right now what we're seeing is the emerald ash borer adults, they're flying up into the top of the trees. They spend their entire life on the ash trees. They're host-specific. There's a lot of insects that will go to one tree or multiple trees. But in this case, this is why it's such a huge impact because it's host-specific. It just spends its entire life on those ash trees, and it hits all ash trees. So it's not a white ash over a green ash. Basically, it hits white, green, black, blue. It hits them all. But right now, they're up on the tops of the trees. As adults, they're feeding, and they're going to mate and then come down and inject eggs into the barks of the ash tree. And so they do their damage as larvae. As the larvae are feeding on the phloem of the tree, it disrupts the nutrient flow from the top, from the foliage to the roots. and then you'll see basically die back each year and as the paper suggested we are seeing more and more, it's obvious when you drive down streets with ash trees you can see who's treated and who's not the ones that have treated have been passed over the ones that have not treated it's just free food for emerald ash borer So basically, as I mentioned, the dieback in the crown, you see cracks, splits, and barks. These are signs that your tree has emerald ash borer. You might notice woodpeckers drilling in the tree looking for the larvae. And then also epicormic sprouts. And then the big one that I mentioned earlier, the D-shape exit holes. That's the adult emerging and flying up to the top of the tree. So what are we doing to get the word out to citizens? In 2009, we had volunteers from the tree board and citizens in the community put out flagging tape on all ash trees just to raise awareness about emerald ash borer. and then also directed people to our website, lextonky.gov, and they could see what they needed to do. There's a lot of confusion when it comes to street trees, who's responsible for them, who takes care of them. And so that was just to get ahead of the game and let people know that, and that's their responsibility to maintain just as if it was a private tree in their own yard. Basically, those street trees are theirs to manage and maintain. So that at least got people aware that they had an ash tree and also that got them in the mindset, you know, what do I need to do? Do I need to treat or do I need to remove? And so that just kind of gave them a tool to decide what management they were going to do. So what we're seeing now as we're driving throughout the community is a lot of dead trees. It's progressing. The trees that haven't been treated are dead. And so what we're doing from our office is basically focusing on these areas that have, because it's a public safety issue. Limbs are falling down from these dead trees, dropping into the right-of-way and along the sidewalk. So I'm basically the guy who has to deal with the street tree enforcement of Chapter 17B. So we're going in areas and we're taking note of which trees and which properties need to remove those trees and then sending them a notice of violation for trees that can be saved. And we're seeing that in some areas that haven't been hit as hard or not yet. We're trying to get the info, these door hangers, and just give them the info that they need so they can make the decision again to treat or to go ahead and remove. So citizens, if their trees are dead, they can take them down themselves and haul off the debris to Haley Pike Yard Waste Composting Facility, or they can hire a professional. Again, we don't want them to move that firewood around. It's not a good idea if they have an ash tree to cut that wood up and haul it off to the gorge or anywhere for that matter. But the silver lining that we see in all this is diversity. We've preached for years, plant a different, with each street, go with a different species. That way when we have an exotic pest like this or a disease that comes through our neighborhoods that we don't get completely wiped out. We want diversity in our urban forest canopy. And so that's, I guess, I'm a pretty optimistic guy. So if there is a good thing about the EAB that hopefully for the futures to come will have some diversity in our forest canopy. So, let's see if I have any questions. We do have some council members who would like to follow up. Council Member Lane. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Do we have any blue ash virgin forest areas within Fayette County that maybe have large or important or high-density tree areas? we don't we have some blue ash that uh and as far as the city is we are treating blue ash in our parks some of the significant you know 300 plus year old blue ash but there's not uh and there's and that's one of the one of the beautiful trees that kind of drape the landscape and and our horse paddocks and so um you know i know out at kentucky horse park they've they've got several blue ash and they've treated over the past six years or so, even before they knew that it was here. But yes, we have some at Woodland. There's some out at Castlewood Park. But those have been, we have treated those with the, there's several methods and several products to treat. Anything that's greater than 15 inches in diameter, that's something that you want a professional to treat. There's products that homeowners could treat with that you can get at garden centers, hardware stores, but on the bigger trees, you can't get enough product into that tree when you do a soil drench and the stuff that the homeowner could use. So we have treated those, a number of the big blue ash that we have on our property. and the other what I've noticed a lot of citizens that have been calling they're wanting to treat if there are trees anywhere most of the calls have been I have this iconic ash tree how can I save it and so we direct them to our website and I direct them to the best way that they can take care of that well my reason for asking if we have any significant trees on our property. Do you feel that we are taking adequate care? Are we treating all of those trees, or are we doing any treatment at all? We're treating a percentage, and basically it's, I think, I think the total is like, I think 12, about 12 of the big blue ash that we have. We're hoping that once the food source is gone, those insects will move on, and hopefully by that, there's going to come a time when we won't have to continue to treat. Basically, it's a treatment that's for every two years is what we have to do for those guys right now. But eventually, there's going to come a point in time where those insects will, there won't be either everybody is treated or they've consumed all the ash trees, and so they'll have to move on to a food source. So after that time, it's not that we're going to have to treat indefinitely. So, yes, we've treated about 12, and we're hoping to keep those big blue ash, keep some seed source for the future years. Well, do you feel that we should provide additional funding to treat some additional trees on our park land and other properties that we own? or do you feel like we're adequately covering the basis on that? Well, personally, I think, yes, I mean, any additional funds, there's some massive white ash that we've looked past just because that was, the tree board decided that they were wanting to focus on the blue ash, and that's our heritage tree that we have, but there's several white ash that we've seen in Woodland Park that could be treated that we'd walk past them just to treat a blue ash. So we do have some other significant trees that could be treated if the funding was there. How much per tree are we talking about for treatment? Well, just if a homeowner calls some. Well, let's assume this is for the Oregon County government and we're dealing with some of our bigger, more important trees and we've got a commercial farm or either somebody on our staff doing it. Could you focus on that? On average, we're seeing anywhere from $10 to $16 an inch to treat those trees. So if you had on the low end a 30-inch tree, that would be $300 to treat, and that gets you two years of control. So $150 compared to removing a tree that size is relatively... And you feel that if they're treated for a couple of years, that additional treatment might not be required. So if we had a large tree, it would be like $400 or $500 per tree over a two-year period, and then we may not have to treat after that. Well, we're looking at probably 10 years from now, like that being the time when we could say, okay, we can pull back on treatment, or maybe it doesn't have to be treated every two, maybe every three. but it's not like a it's kind of like back in the 80's when everybody was running into the cars because Japanese beetles were just swarming everyone and then now we have Japanese beetles and it's not as big of an issue so that's basically we're in the throes of the big epidemic population of these guys because basically they're here, they've got unlimited food supply but eventually the trees that are going to be treated that have been treated they'll move on because they've consumed all the food. So, yes, it won't be indefinite. Okay. Well, just a conclusion of my comment is that the neighborhood I live in, our neighborhood association actually treated all the blue ash trees in our neighborhood, and so far I haven't seen any dead trees, so that's a pretty good indicator. But I would hate for us to lose some really wonderful trees in our parks, or they're very large or 100 years old because we didn't spend a little bit of money to take care of them. So I would encourage you if you see, like, we need to spend some money. We don't have a lot of money, but replacing trees is expensive too, so like an insurance policy. But you might want to consider submitting something to council for consideration. Thank you for your presentation. Thank you. And just to follow up, we do have basically it's a joint effort. We've got folks from the outside, a guy named Mike Canfield, who's treated basically free of charge. We just paid for the product, and Corridors, I think, paid for the money. So there's different groups trying to do what they can, and then there's a potential for a grant from Kentucky Division of Forestry, too, but that's going to be for next year. If somebody wanted to volunteer to provide free service, whoever provides the chemical treatment, could they call you and maybe you could refer them to somebody in that regard? Sure. Do you want to say what your phone number is? Yes, 258-3405, and that's my direct line. But, yeah, we will take any help we can get saving these trees. Thank you again. Thank you. Councilmember Henson. Thank you, Chair. I had some very quick questions. As far as if an ash tree is gone and it needs to be replaced, hopefully a small one, not one of our bigger ones, would you recommend replacing it with another ash? No. Ash trees are actually, in regards to street trees, they're banned, so you can no longer plant an ash tree at this time. but even in your yard I wouldn't recommend that because basically you're just putting more food for the emerald ash borer at this time so we have great resources online that even folks that are planting in their yards we tell them to look at our street tree planting list and you can glance at that and advise folks to maybe pick a tree from there and also the Arboretum has a great website. They also have the walk across Kentucky, but they also have street trees. It's kind of hard to just look at a piece of paper and say, well, I want that street tree, but they actually planted these street trees so that people can walk through and see what they look like at maturity, and that kind of helps them decide which one to pick. I guess I would have a concern about the pesticides' effect on the environment. Do you see that as being a risk at all? As of now, no. I did. I was a guy who sprayed with, there's a treatment called, it's a basal treatment, and the product's Safari, and Ken Cook, who's friends in Wolf Run, he wanted to, as I was spraying the trees along Southland, and he wanted to take samples and submit them to the state and see if there were any pesticides showing up in our waterways. And basically from that year that I did that, he found nothing that showed up, nothing of significance that even showed up as far as these pesticides. The stuff that the homeowners can get, you know, most homeowners are, you know, If they're garden savvy and they know their way in the outdoors and with their trees and shrubs, they're going to follow the label and not just dump a bunch of stuff in the environment. And so we're seeing the folks that can handle that treatment and doing it themselves, they're following the labels and doing a good job. But if they're not, they just hire a professional. So we're not seeing at this point in time that the homeowner product was labeled as Merit and then put across the lawns for grub control. And so there was so much of that going on that they pulled it. But when we're talking about just individual trees, we're not seeing that show up in the environment. But we do want to caution folks to, you know, anytime you use pesticides, Just follow the label and wear your personal protective equipment. Does Parks and Rec contract that out, the treatment, or do they have someone that's licensed? Yes. Most of those products can be, they're not restrictive use. And so that was done in-house. the basal treatments, the injections. We didn't buy the equipment because we wanted to buy more product. And so the stuff, the big blue ashes that were treated, those were done by a contractor, I guess, but it was basically in kind labor. Okay. Thank you. Okay. Council Member Beard. Thank you, Chair. I've got a whole series of questions. I'm sorry, but I do. Can a tree recover? Yes, if it gets, I guess the good news is if it has emerald ash borer, you can treat it and it will come out of that. But the kicker is depending on how much dieback is in the tree. If it's greater than 30%, it's probably, some of the research, and there's a great research paper that was done by Ohio State, Michigan State, I think Purdue, and then Illinois that's on our website. It's one of the links if you search EAB on our website. But they show even if a tree was 50% dead that you could treat it, and if you're willing to give it time to re-sprout, then it will. But most folks, if it's 50% dead, they're not even going to attempt to treat it. They're going to probably take it out because aesthetically they're not willing to wait that long. But yes, you can. You mentioned woodpeckers. after treating a tree, is the substance, whatever it is, the various sundry pesticides, is it harmful to woodpeckers or other birds? I've not seen any studies or research on that, but if it is, I would say it's insignificant. There's not been any studies that show the effect of that, but I would assume that there probably is trace amounts of it that could get into the woodpeckers. We don't have a lot of woodpeckers anyway, but we can't cat on them to fix this problem. Yeah. And I think you answered the question about do you continue to treat forever, and you mentioned that, yes, at some point you can either slow down or stop. Right. There should be some reprieve here. You know, we're telling folks 10, 15 years, you know, we should, you know, we'll have an idea what the population's at and then, you know, if it is time to kind of slack up on the treatments. Another thing I'd like to mention, there is what's called biological control, which is parasitic wasps that they actually will parasitize the larvae by laying their eggs on it, and then the eggs of the wasp will grow and consume and kill the larvae of the emerald ash borer. And that's kind of how they're kept in check over in Asia. and the entomologists over here, once the Emerald Ashmore was discovered and they knew about the parasitic wass, they couldn't just release that without doing their due diligence and so they studied these guys, but now they're at the level where APHIS, who's the national folks over the insects and bringing things in and out of our shores, they okayed the use of these parasitic wasps. So just last fall, the entomologist at UK has released that over in Shilatoe, which as those populations grow and they parasitize the emerald ash borer, that's going to help in addition to any chemical treatment products that we use. You mentioned that they first were discovered, I guess, in southern Michigan. Yes. are they resistant to super cold weather where they go north or do they always move south? Yeah, no, they've showed, the study, research has shown that, I mean, they're there and then they've even gone up into territory in Canada. So the cold weather doesn't really affect them. Last question. we're focusing on big the big biggest of trees which at some point are going to die a natural death so shouldn't we also be working on medium size and smaller trees too so that 100 years from now we'll have ash trees that's one of the main focuses of that grant that I mentioned that Kentucky Division Forestry I think that's kind of their, basically in-house, what we focused on were the big historic trees, which you're right. All trees eventually are going to die. The Kentucky Division of Forestry, that's going to be their focus next year. They're not going to go for the big ones. They're going to go for the trees, kind of give them a chance to live a long life. Well, but if they aren't going to be in our parks, are they? Well, yeah, yes, that's going to be, you know, if that grant goes through and we get that assistance, then they will be treating in our parks. Okay, thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, John. Thank you very much for that presentation. Would you say your phone number again in case members of the public have some questions, if they could give you a call or send you an e-mail if you could also impart your e-mail address. That might be helpful. Sure. The number is 258-3405. And then my email address is jsaylor, S-A-Y-L-O-R, at lexingtonky.gov. Okay, again, that email address, jsaylor, J-S-A-L-Y-E-R. S-A-Y-L-O-R at lexingtonky.gov. Okay, thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. Next item on the agenda is public comment. I have one member of the public, Mr. Cushy, signed up to speak for three minutes. Welcome. And if for the record you would give your name and address. Sure, thank you. My name is Edward Cushy from 2089 Bursells Road. Thank you for allowing me to offer an opinion. In reference to the last presentation, I agree with the concern about the emerald ash borer. However, I beg to suggest that the LFUCG should not be giving notices of violation to citizens, as the gentleman said, just because they have a grub in their tree. At your last two committee meetings, I brought this recent front-page Sunday newspaper article and asked about the huge exemptions that this and similar properties received from the most important water quality management fee, which is invented to make citizens pay for the failures and mismanagements of the LFUCG and is supposed to be based on ERUs. No one from this committee will explain to me why these properties receive huge exemptions, even though, according to your data, they are major contributors to runoff pollution. I have also specifically asked the same question in writing to your committee chair, the Water Quality Management Feed Task Force chair, two different commissioners of the Department of Environmental Quality, not including the one present here, and even Mayor Newberry when he was in office. All have ignored the question, and most have responded to me by saying that all ERUs are equal regarding our factors, including how rich or how poor one may be or how much green space a property may have. Your committee chair errantly advised me that no one is exempted from the water quality management fee. Yet, not one single LFUCG official has explained to me, mere unexempted taxpaying citizen concerned about clean water, why this and other similar properties received special exemptions from the water quality management fee. I continue to speculate on your silence on this issue. I have with me another recent newspaper article about another local company that has graciously given huge exemptions from the water quality management fee by the LFUCG. This article explains that this company receives millions of dollars in government grants and is encouraged by the LFUCG to construct more of their specially exempted ERUs in downtown Lexington right by Town Branch. If you, the LFUCG, continue to say that all ERUs are equal and no one receives exemptions from the water quality management fee, then please explain your special exemptions to me, an expert, so that I may better understand. Mayor Gray was recently quoted as saying, I am against discrimination, period. According to my handy little pocket dictionary and Webster's Third International Dictionary, Unabridged, the water quality management fee is discriminatory, period. The most important water quality management fee needs to be revisited by you, the LFUCG, and made fair and non-discriminatory to all. Thank you, Mr. Coochie. Council members, the last item on the agenda is items in committee for referral. Are there any recommendations on that? Seeing none, and given that we have 11 minutes to our 1 o'clock, a motion to adjourn might be in order. Yeah, we do. Bill, was... Motion to... There's two people in the caucus room if you need to vote to close this meeting. I think we're okay. So, council members, we are adjourned. Bicycle! Bicycle! Bicycle! I want to ride my bicycle, I want to ride my bike I want to ride my bicycle, I want to ride it where I like This song lives in ways too long