Don't you want to hear them call your name when you're standing at the pearly gates? I told the preacher, yes I do, but I hope they don't call today. Hey, ready? Everybody wants to go to heaven, have a mansion high above the clouds. Everybody want to go to heaven, but nobody want to go now. Sad preacher, maybe you didn't see me Throw an extra twenty in the plate It's one for everything I did last night And one to get me through today Here's a tin to help you remember Next time you got the good Lord's ear Say I'm coming but there ain't no hurry I'm having fun down here Ladies and gentlemen, if I could have your attention, I'd like to welcome you to the March Board of Adjustment meeting. Thank you all so much for being here. A couple housekeeping items. Please turn off your cell phones. If you have one, make sure they're off. And if you do need to make a call, please do so out in the lobby. I'd like to go ahead and swear in everybody who's going to speak. If you're planning on speaking today, would you stand and raise your right hand? Do you agree to tell the truth and nothing but the truth? I do. Thank you. You can be seated. Before I read the agenda, Mr. Emmons, are there any withdrawals? The staff is unaware of any withdrawals. I do believe that there will be two postponement requests from applicants in the audience. Well, I'll go ahead and announce the agenda. Jim and Molly Sawyer, as the first case, is the applicant here. The applicant is here. You wish to proceed today, Mr. Sawyer? I see. I'm the architect on the project. I was going to ask for another 30 cases. Well, step up to the mic, and please, and if you would, introduce yourself for the record. I'm Jay Copley, the architect for Jim and Molly Sawyer, and we were going to ask for another 30-day extension. We're trying to discuss the design with the adjacent property owner, and if that doesn't work in the next 30 days, we're going to withdraw. Very good. Does any member of the board have a question? If not, the chair will entertain a motion. Our motion we approve for the postponement for Jim and Molly Sawyer. Thank you, Mr. Forster. Is there a second? I second the motion. Ms. Whitman, second. All in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Any opposed? You've got your 30 days. We'll see you next month. The second case is Bradley Day. Is the applicant here? Mr. Day. You don't need to come up right now, Mr. Day. Is there any opposition? Is there any opposition to item B, 2016-10? Any opposition to Mr. Day? Okay. Okay. Republic Services of Kentucky, the applicant. Mr. Chairman, I'm here. I'm Bruce Simpson on behalf of Republic Services. It may it please the board. We had filed a request to postpone this application back on the 15th of March a couple weeks ago. It gave notice to all the people that get legal notice of our application as well as some neighborhoods that we met with back on March the 8th. and so we would respectfully request that the board grant our postponement until the April 29th meeting. Thank you, Mr. Simpson. Does any member of the board have a question for Mr. Simpson? If not, she'll entertain a motion. I move we postpone to April 29th. Thank you, Ms. Meyer. Is there a second? Second. Mr. Glover, seconds. All in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Any opposed? Thank you, Ms. Simpson. Next item is Ironworks Farm, LLC. Is the applicant available here? Thank you. Is there any opposition? Is there any opposition to Ironworks Farm? Okay. We will actually be here in your case last, Mr. Lear, after we get through the agenda. Transylvania University. Is the applicant here? Is there any opposition? Is there any opposition to Transylvania? Okay. I think the last item on the agenda is Jason Elsia. Is Mr. Elsia here? Is there any opposition? Is there any opposition to item 2016-9, Jason Elsia? Mr. Chairman, if there's no opposition in the audience, the staff did receive one letter of opposition for this case. If you want, I could pass that out. If you would, go ahead and pass that out, Mr. Emmons. And as we usually do, we hear those cases first that have no opposition. And we'll give you a second, Mr. Emmons, to pass that out. I'd like to go ahead and call Bradley Day. Would you please come forward to the mic and state your name for the record, please? Mr. Bradley Day. Mr. Day, the staff has recommended approval for your variance to allow your existing porch, and we understand that there were some issues with your contractor. You were under the assumption that the contractor had actually pulled the permit, but had not. And normally, when we hear some of these cases, a lot of folks come to us and ask for forgiveness after it's already done, but I understand you have a very legitimate case in front of you and that your contractor was not forthright. Staff has recommended approval subject to three conditions. Do you agree to abide by those conditions? Yes, I do. Does anyone have any questions for Mr. Day? If not, do you want to entertain a motion? I move that we approve Bradley Day's request, or I'm sorry, V-2016-10 Bradley Day request of a variance to allow an existing porch to project nine feet instead of the maximum projection of eight feet into the required front yard in a single-family residential R1C zone at 906 Darley Drive, Council District 1. based on the staff's recommendations and subject to the following conditions. Thank you, Mr. Needham. Is there a second? No, a second. Mr. Forrester, second. So all in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Any opposed? Thank you, Mr. Day. Thank you. I believe the next case without any opposition is Transylvania University. Would the applicant please come forward and state your name for the record? All drinks. Good afternoon. I'm Mark Matthews, Vice President for Finance of Transylvania. Thank you, Mr. Matthews. The staff has actually recommended approval subject to four conditions. Does Transylvania agree to abide by those four conditions? Yes, those are fine. Thank you. Does any member of the Board have any questions for Mr. Matthews? I have a question. Yes, sir. So Back Circle no longer will have any car traffic? That's correct. And that is moving that entrance to a new parking lot behind, I guess, Lawn 4th existing Thompson Hall. I don't remember, but is there current parking behind the residence hall number three and number two and number one? In the new residence halls or in the past, I'm sorry? I guess the new ones. In the new ones, there will be parking behind number three. Okay. The road that runs behind 2 and 1 is really an access road, primarily for fire. I got you. And then, so no opposition? No one from, obviously, Hampton Court here? Okay. Well, I think that's going to be a nice improvement. Yeah. We're really moving to have that as green space. Yeah, I think it's great. Okay. Very good. Would you like to make a motion? Sure. I make a motion that we approve C-2016-7 Transylvania University, Inc., a request to amend a currently approved site plan for conditional use in a high-density apartment R4 zone at 331, 333, and 345 North Broadway and 456 West Fort Street, Council District 1, based on staff's recommendations and subject to the following conditions. Thank you, Mr. Dino. Is there a second? I'll second. Mr. Glover, seconds. All in favor, see if I was saying aye. Aye. Any opposed? Thanks very much. Thank you. Good luck with the project. The next case with no opposition is Jason Alcia. Would you please come up to the podium, state your name for the record. I know we have received one letter of opposition. I think everybody's had an opportunity to read that. Jason Elsie, Casual Pint. Mr. Elsie, the staff has recommended approval subject to five conditions. Do you agree to abide by those? Yes. Very good. Does any member of the board have a question for Mr. Elsie? Is this where the old Ramses used to be? It'll be right next door. Yeah. We'll be sharing the wall. So it's on the left side as you look at it? Yes, taking up the old jeweler space and the pedasocial. Okay. All right. I just wanted to make sure I knew exactly where it was. Yeah. All right. Thanks. Mr. Emmons, I know that there were some parking issues, available parking spots, so that is not the criteria. The staff's, in our staff report, the staff's number one concern was about the availability of parking. with our preliminary looking at this, we do believe that this use can meet the required parking, albeit in the overall shopping center the amount of surplus parking will be reduced. This will meet the minimum requirements and can be approved by the Board of Adjustment. Thank you, Mr. Ammons. Does anybody have any other questions? Jimmy, you mentioned that some of the business patrons parked in that apartment complex behind, this shopping area i apologize for any confusion but the in this particular shopping center there is a row of parking that is the shopping center's parking but it is actually it's behind the buildings and it's actually in a residential zone there was a conditional use for that parking to to be allowed there in addition for the use of the shopping center to my knowledge the the shopping that people are not parking in the residential apartment complex to visit this. I've not heard of any complaints of that nature. And you're talking about the parking behind the shopping center, you're talking about the service area? The service area behind the buildings. Okay. Is there any other questions? If not, would you want to entertain a motion? Mr. Chair, I move we approve C-2016-9, Jason Elsie's request for a conditional use permit to open a cocktail lounge in a neighborhood business zone at 3090 Helmsdale Place, Suite 265-270, based on the staff review and recommendations, and subject to the five conditions named. Thank you, Mr. Glover. Is there a second? Mr. Gross, seconds. All in favor, signify by saying aye. Aye. Any opposed? Good luck. Good luck with your restaurant. Our next case is Iron Works Farm, LLC. Before we begin, I'd like to discuss a couple of items, if I could. But I know that this case has got a lot of folks that are going to be speaking, and I would ask you, out of courtesy and efficiency, I'd like to ask Mr. Lear and any of the opposition if they would keep their presentation to about an hour or less, if possible. And anyone that speaks for the applicant, they will not be charged against the hour presentation. That goes the same for any of the opposition. We'd like to limit that. We don't want to hinder anyone from speaking, but I will say that oftentimes we have folks that come up here and it becomes very repetitious. So we would just ask out of respect for everyone's time here, if you have something new to add, we want to hear from it. But if it's repetitious, something that we've already heard prior to, I'll ask you to step down. We want to make sure that we get new information, but we want to make sure that everybody has an opportunity to be heard as well. I'd like to... If I may, Mr. Chairman and members of the board, I am recusing myself from this case because I have my husband and I buy and sell cattle through the Bluegrass Dockyard. So I'm recusing myself. Thank you, Ms. Meyer. Were you able to sign that? I did. Okay. Thanks very much. I'd like to go ahead and begin by asking the staff, if they would, Mr. Emmons, to start the presentation. Then we'll ask the applicant to come up after that and then anyone in support. Then we'll give the opposition an opportunity to respond. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, members of the board. This item appears on your agenda on page 2. At the bottom of page 2, it's item number D2, CV 2016-8. This is for Iron Works Farm, LLC. This is a conditional use and variance request for a property located at 4561 Iron Works Pike. A few housekeeping items before I begin my presentation. Obviously, in your packet, you have the normal conditional use application and variance application and site plan. Also, we have put out several things. There's a lot of paper here today. So we have also given you an aerial photograph of the subject property and surrounding area that has the zoning floodplains and PDR farms. We have received two letters in opposition, and we have put those together with a yellow sticker. We've received several letters of support for this application. We've put those together with the blue sticker on it. And then there is some additional information in a packet that was submitted with that that has a blue tab on it so that you can find that easily. Within that packet, there is a staff colorized version of the applicant's site plan, a letter from the Royal Spring Water Supply Protection Committee, a letter from Strand Associates that discusses an update to the traffic study, and a copy of the operational plan that was submitted by the applicant with this application. If I can run through, I've got a very quick presentation and much of an overview. This is obviously a very important use. The conditional use that they are asking for is for an agricultural market in the agricultural rural zone. Just to kind of look at the subject property, there is a copy of the colorized version of the applicant site plan. This overall site is about 100 acres inside Fayette County. It's about 120 acres total with about 20 acres in Scott County. Looking at the site plan, up top the smaller version shows the entire property, and then there's an inset looking at the developed area. The dark blue line that you see on there, that is the divide for the area that's on the Royal Spring Aquifer Recharge Area, which we will be talking about in more detail. The developed portion of the property is completely outside of the Royal Spring Aquifer Recharge Area. This was a major point that the staff, in reviewing this application, wanted to point out right from the start. If we can go on to the next slide, once again, looking at the aerials. The subject property is bounded. It's essentially a north-south long piece of property. It's right in the center of the photograph. It's bounded to the east by I-75. It's bounded to the west by a railroad tracks. To the north is Scott County, and to the south is Ironworks Pike. on the other side of i-75 you can see cane run creek and then if we can click the next slide also the dixie tributary i would like to take this moment if we can click to the next slide also the area that's shown up in the pink or purple however your eyes see it is the royal spring aquifer recharge area. The darker, the deeper pink is the main channel of that aquifer recharge area, and the lighter pink area is where the surface water drains toward that main channel. The subject property is partially within the royal spring aquifer. The developed portion of the property is proposed to be outside of the aquifer recharge area. There is one correction, one technical correction to something that was in our staff report. We had described this as water going either to Cane Run in the Cane Run watershed or outside of the Cane Run watershed. And if we can click through the next slides. With that topographic divide, portions of the property do go to Cane Run Creek. and portions of it go to the Dixie Tributary of the Cane Run Creek. So technically it's all in the Cane Run watershed. The area that's in the aquifer recharge area, the water that lands there goes directly into Royal Spring. The water that goes into the Dixie Tributary does not. So concept-wise, the staff report is not wrong, but it just wanted to make that technical correction. If we can click to the next one, the overall facility, they are asking for about six acres of building. The majority of that building will be used for the livestock and the agricultural market for the livestock market. They are proposing about a 40,000 square foot accessory use building, which can hold things such as a restaurant and things like restaurants, coffee shops, other types of uses that would be clearly incidental and accessory to the livestock market itself. The next slide. Zooming in just a little bit more, if we can click again. What I've done is I've just put the applicant's site plan on the overall aerial photograph, as you can see it. They are proposing to redevelop the access. There is an access point to Ironworks pipe. They're proposing to change that a little bit, straighten it out as you come back into the property. They are proposing a circular traffic pattern around the building. that will come in. And they will have, you cannot see it at this scale, but they will have areas for loading docks, loading and unloading of the animals. One of the big concerns addressed in the operational plan is the muck and the other types of animal waste and what will they do with that. All of that will be under roof, under the large building that's shown in the brown there. It will be kept dry. They will put it into bins that will also be covered, and then they will, through a contract carrier, haul those materials off to be composted elsewhere. also major feature you can see the two blue areas all of the surface water that falls on this site will go to one of those two retention areas which will also serve as their water quality control the there are two spots and they're highlighted on the one that you can probably see it in your handout. There are two spots under the railroad where the water discharges toward the Dixie tributary. And each one of those will discharge through those pipes that currently go underneath the railroad tracks. I'd like to address the variance very quickly. For this conditional use, there are many, you can see on the staff report, essentially the first page and a half is just repeating the many different regulations, the many different aspects of this regulation for the conditional use. As the staff was going through each and every one of those items, we found that this does comply with all but one requirement and that requirement would be that the facilities, the buildings itself, be 1,000 feet away from the nearest residence on another lot. In this particular instance, there are two residences that are close. Both of them are on the other side of the railroad tracks. Just to the northwest, you can see in the top left-hand side of that, there is a mobile home park. The proposed facility is more than 1,000 feet away from the closest residence, from the closest mobile home that is in that mobile home park. They are requesting a variance to the closest residence, though, that is just west of the subject property across the railroad tracks. That's about 890 feet away. the applicants have requested a variance from 1,000 feet to 850 feet for the subject property. In reality, it's going to measure out to be about 890 feet in distance. The staff is recommending approval of both the conditional use and the requested variance for reasons that are highlighted in our staff report and on the agenda. I'd like to go over and just briefly summarize those. First, for the conditional use, in the staff's review of this application, we found that it substantially complies with all of the conditions of the agricultural market conditional use in the AR zone. Provided that the dimensional variance that is requested has been granted, then it will meet all of those requirements. We do find that the proposed use is completely outside of the Royal Spring Aquifer Recharge Area and outside of other environmentally sensitive areas. We do believe that the anticipated traffic for this use can be accommodated on this site, and we noted that they will have an operational plan to handle this operation effectively. That will ensure that this use will not be a nuisance in either sight, sound, smell to the subject property or the surrounding neighborhood. Based on the location and design of this facility and the operational plan which was submitted, the staff does believe that this will not constitute an excessive amount of noise, water pollution, traffic, dust, or other public hazards. All of the necessary utilities and other public facilities will be provided for this site. And for those reasons, the staff is recommending approval of the conditional use. As far as the dimensional variance, we did find a unique circumstance that if you, because the regulations obviously can apply to multiple properties within the agricultural rural zone. and whenever you think about the 1,000 feet, that's kind of assuming a blank slate with the building 1,000 feet away from a residence. In this particular instance, there is a railroad track that is heavily vegetated on both sides of the tracks. The applicant is also proposing to put up a fence on their side to further buffer this use from that nearest residence. With those unique circumstances in mind, we do feel that the 850-foot dimension is justified, and we are recommending approval subject to the five reasons listed in your staff report in your agenda. The staff is recommending approval subject to, I forgot the number, nine conditions of approval. They are actually, some of them are fairly standard and ones that you would expect, such as that the facility shall operate at all times with the operational plan and other things as they have submitted it. We do have conditions in there that the overall design of the parking be approved by our traffic engineering department. And of course, any changes to the Ironworks Pike being a state road will have to require Kentucky Department of Transportation approval also. With that, on the last page of your agenda, item number five, the staff is recommending some traffic improvements that are spelled out there with right-turn lanes and left-turn lanes and access in and out of the site. The staff would note that these are the same traffic recommendations that we made for this site in 2005 whenever it came before the board about 11 years ago. Because at that time the applicants did submit a traffic study and that recommended those improvements, The staff felt that that was the best available information and that there has not been any major changes. After the staff recommendation was made, the applicants also had strand engineers, which is the letter that you've got before you. The applicant had them look at the traffic study, and they also concluded that the information in that traffic study was still valid and continued to recommend those same improvements. finally I'm trying to think look at this and also on the last one the last eight and nine that the proposed wastewater disposal system shall be subject to review and approval by the Fayette County Health Department or connected to an appropriate municipal sewer I believe that the applicants will address that in their primary presentation and then finally condition nine which is out of the ordinary but it's in accordance with Article 81D-7S of the zoning ordinance that the accessory uses shall be reviewed on an annual basis in order to ascertain that those accessory uses are truly accessory to the livestock market. I believe that concludes my prepared remarks. No, it doesn't. There is one last thing that I need to point out. The Royal Spring Aquifer Recharge Committee, I've given you a copy of this letter, they did review the Bluegrass Stockyards and voted to approve this use. They are recommending three additional conditions to be put on the subject property. Based off of the evidence, I'm sure you're going to hear a lot of different evidence today. Should you wish to adopt these recommendations or any other recommendations, the staff will be available throughout your hearing. Mr. Ammons, who was that? I'm sorry. In this packet? It's in the packet that had the blue tab. It's a fairly simple letter that says the Royal Springs Water Supply Protection Committee. Mr. Edmonds, would you reiterate exactly who makes up the Royal Spring Water Supply Protection Committee and what their purpose is? The purpose of the committee, and the chairman of that committee is here today, but the purpose of the committee is to protect— Do you know if he'll be speaking? Hmm? Do you know if he'll be speaking? I'm sure he wouldn't mind speaking if he wants to. Okay. In short, the purpose of that is that the Royal Spring is Georgetown's water supply. About 80% of that aquifer is in Fayette County and about 20% of its area is in Scott County. There is a joint Fayette County and Scott County Commission that reviews development proposals that are in and near the aquifer recharge area and makes recommendations to the appropriate bodies, be they the Planning Commission, Board of Adjustment, the Council. We make recommendations to that. And I say we because I also am actually one of the two Fayette County representatives on that committee. Because I am the primary staff member presenting for Lexington Fayette and Urban County Government, I abstained my vote on that committee, just for the record. Any other questions for Mr. Emmons? Jimmy, as the former water lawyer for the state of Kentucky, I have my own definition of the word aquifer, but define that for me, if you would, because I want to make sure we're comparing apples to apples. In layman's terms, it's the groundwater, the aquifer. It's the water that's in the ground. In Royal Spring, it works its way into a corridor and comes out at Royal Spring in Georgetown. But it's the groundwater. But the watershed extends into Fayette County. That's what we're concerned about. It does. the aquifer area, about 80% of its volume is in Fayette County. It actually reaches all the way from near downtown into Georgetown. Thank you. Any other questions for Mr. Emmons? Thank you, Mr. Emmons. We'd like to step forward, please. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, members of the board. My name for your record is Bill Lear with Stalky and Ogden. Nick Nicholson and I will be here today representing the applicant, Ironworks Farm, LLC, which, should this be approved, will do business as Bluegrass Stockyards. Some of the owners of the stockyards, which is a locally owned and operated business and has been for 70 years are here today. Gene and Joanne Barber are here, and I think Scott Butcher is supposed to be here. Their chief operating officer, Jim Akers, is here also assisting, and the presentation will be Doug Gooch with AGE Engineering, Mike Willem with Strand, whom I'm sure you know well, and Dr. Steve Higgins with the University College of Agriculture. And then I know there are a number of supporters for this project who are here, both from the economic development side of the House in Lexington and, frankly, representing the heart and soul of the ag industry, not just in central Kentucky, but in some respects the entire state. I'm just going to make a few preliminary comments before we ask Mr. Akers to come up and get into great detail because I want to both set the stage and provide the context for the application that you're going to hear today. January 30, 2016 was a fateful day in the life of bluegrass stockyards and in the life of our community. A 70-year-old corporate citizen, the largest stockyards east of the Mississippi, went up in flames. We all are well aware of that and ended up in ashes along with some of the surrounding businesses. It was a tragedy. What this represents is an opportunity for a rebirth from that tragedy. a newer, better, more appropriately located stockyards facility than was the old location, which was nestled in the very heart of downtown Lexington at a place where it was very difficult for the farmers to get to and from and which caused a certain amount of congestion, as you might expect with both the big trucks moving in and all the farmers with their goosenecks coming in. When I say bigger, better, or rather newer, better, more appropriate, the more appropriate is the real key here. Since the adoption in 2004 of the language of the ordinance that allowed this type of conditional use and the following year of an overlay, which is a different route, to accomplish the same thing, The notion that this type of market is appropriate in the ag area in Lexington is totally embedded in the public policy of this community. Now, that notion is where it's appropriate, and this application meets every one of the locational criteria and subject to certain conditions, and this application satisfies every one of those conditions. There is the request for a variance. However, I will tell you, we've got a picture of the nearest residential structure. It's abandoned and is not currently occupied and not likely to be in the future. I think you'll draw that conclusion when you see the picture. I'm not sure exactly how close the second closest is. And we also have a letter from the owner of that property in support of this application. This facility, which generates about $200 million a year in sales, is an anchor of our ag economy in central Kentucky, and it's an important cog in the overall economy. We all know of Lexington as horse country. We call ourselves the horse capital of the world. Whether that's accurate for all breeds, it's certainly accurate for the thoroughbred breed. What we're not as well aware of, at least a lot of us, is this is cattle country. In Fayette County and the surrounding six counties in 2015, the U.S. Department of Agriculture estimated there were about 250,000 cattle and calves. That's about six times the number of horses and more than that times the number of thoroughbreds. So when you hear people talk about cattle and where cattle country is, this is it, right here, and this is an important facility for the benefit of the cattle industry in central Kentucky and throughout the state. Our presentation is going to go like this. Mr. Akers will come up first, and we'll go in some detail through the operational plan. Nick and Doug Gooch will talk about zoning ordinance compliance, specifically with regard to infrastructure items. Dr. Higgins and Nick will go through issues relating to the Royal Springs, aquifer, the groundwater, the surface water. I just want to say one thing about that, just to be clear, and I think you may have picked up on some of those circumstances from the introductory remarks. This facility is not located within the aquifer recharge area of Royal Springs. A huge chunk of northern Lexington is. All of the horse park is. The other uses and other non-ag uses on Ironworks Pike. The entire Lexmark campus is. Much of north Lexington is. That's not to make light of the significance of protecting that aquifer recharge area, but the point of that is you may hear a lot about that concerning a facility that's not in it. We need to have a reality check and recognize what all is already in that aquifer recharge area, and it appears to be functioning fine for purposes of providing water for Georgetown. Now, Mr. Akers and Nick. I do want to be respectful of your all's time and I'll try to scoot through this as quickly as I can. Would you state your name for that? I'm sorry, Jim Akers. I'm the Chief Operations Officer for the Bluegrass Livestock Marketing Group. Thank you, Mr. Akers. A little bit of history to start with. Bill gave you a little of that, so I won't try not to run over the same ground twice. I've been located at the site of the fire on Lyle and Forbes Road for 70 years. This is our anniversary. In recent history, the market has been selling roughly 100,000 cattle a year on a two-day-a-week sale schedule, Mondays and Tuesdays. We also marketed, based out of that facility, about 50,000 head of cattle via our Internet marketing system. Those animals rarely come through the facility. They're generally delivered from the farm directly to the ultimate buyer. That specific location handled a little over $200 million worth of transactions for local and regional farmers last year. And probably one of the most important things about our business here in Lexington, because of the volume that went through there and because of the competitive nature of that marketplace, the number of buyers that frequented that market. It was recognized by USDA as a primary point of price discovery, which is extremely vital not only to farmers here in central Kentucky but to small markets scattered around the rest of the country, to people putting together contracts for production, valuable data that affects the futures market in Chicago. It was an extremely important body of data that was generated out of that market on a daily basis, and it would affect everybody in the cattle industry, whether they did business with us or not. Very, very important. Our company in general, born out of the Lexington operation, when the Lexington market didn't move 10 or 12 years ago, the owners took a different course to accomplish the goals that they had for the business. It's owned by 10 private stockholders that are all central Kentuckians. They live from Bardstown to Winchester and Paris to Lawrenceburg, Danville, Harrodsburg. They're all actively involved in our business on a daily basis in one form or another. We operate seven livestock auctions around the state of Kentucky, from Maysville in the north to Albany in the south, Mount Sterling to the east, and Campbellsville to the west. We average about 15 auction events weekly, roughly two per location. Our entire network sells a few over half a million cattle a year. We operate six days a week as we move around those different locations. And in totality, last year, we handled over $600 million for local and area farmers. We employ roughly 200 people, a little over that, and all of that is managed out of our business office here in Lexington with my staff. So what do we do? I used to assume everybody knew this. I now know that they don't, so I have a couple slides here just to talk about what we do. We're a heavily regulated sector of the livestock industry. We're licensed both by the state and federal government to provide many services and functions within the industry, but the most important one is we're licensed to clear those transactions between buyer and sellers, between those livestock producers here in central Kentucky, feedlots in the Midwest, and packers as well. Two or three misconceptions. One of them, only about between 5% and 10% of all the animals that we market through our facilities actually go directly to harvest. Most of those are mature cows and bulls that are at the end of their productive life. We don't market fat cattle or slaughter cattle through any of our markets. And I don't mean to insinuate that there is an issue or a problem with that. That's just not a piece of business that we do in our markets. Animals move in and out of our markets very quickly. It's a highly perishable product. Farmers like to get their animals in as close to the sale as possible. We operate our sales, as a lot of folks in the room experienced yesterday on our field trip. We sure operate our business very efficiently and move those animals through quickly, and obviously the buyers want to get them out and get them to their ultimate customers fast on the other side. We're not a slaughterhouse, and we're certainly not a feedlot. Slaughter's not allowed under our roof. It's not part of our licensing. It's not something that we're involved in, either in or out of our facilities. We market livestock. We don't warehouse animals for long periods of time like a feedlot would do and provide them with feed. If they are there overnight, they are on feed and water, but we don't warehouse them over long periods of time. Our buying base is mostly local farmers and Midwestern cattle feeders that, in general, or operating through brokerage companies or order buying firms, many of whom are from the region here as well. The best example that I can give folks is what we do for the cattle industry and cattle owners exactly what Keeneland and Fasig-Tipton do for the horse industry. We create a financially secure environment where buyer and seller can come together and do business, and we provide all the ancillary services that surround that. Our sales are social events, especially in the smaller rural communities. You see every sector of society there because lots and lots of people in Kentucky own cattle or own livestock. And so as well as being an economic driver for the community, there are social events as well. We've got a network of field people all over the state and region that are constantly visiting with our customer base, providing technical advice, marketing information, and also collecting information from those farmers to help us promote and market their product when they do decide to come to town with them. Kind of a thing we do in the background, but it's vitally important. It's part of our licensing agreement with the government agencies. We provide regulatory compliance to our customers. So a farmer here in central Kentucky doesn't have to worry about what they need to do to make their animals compliant with the rules of interstate commerce. The second they enter our roof, they're considered an interstate commerce. We pick up the baton at that point and provide all those functions and documentation that are required in that interstate commerce for those customers. It's just part of what we do. We provide the facilities and the infrastructure for all this business to take place. This happens to be a picture inside of our newest facility down in Albany, Kentucky. It's smaller than the one we're proposing here in Fayette County, but the type of design that you see there is very similar to what we're proposing to do in the barn here in Lexington. All pipe construction, seal superstructure, very orderly, neat, clean, and efficient, easy to maintain. That's what we're talking about, not necessarily what folks might have in their minds from 50 or 60 years ago. The fun part of what we do is conduct the auction. That's where that price discovery takes place. It's an extremely important function. It's one of the last bastions of free enterprise, unsubsidized free enterprise in agriculture today, and we're really, really proud of that. Then finally, we close out those transactions, but we pay the seller immediately. The stockyard does. We collect from the buyer according to how they're classified with USDA. different classifications define payment parameters that are a little different, but it's our responsibility to collect from those buyers. The farmer's already long gone home with his check. We maintain all the compliance records. We make a lot of shipping arrangements for customers on both sides. We resolve any disputes. And then finally, we facilitate any documentation that's required on those animals, whether it's regulatory for interstate movement or to pass along a value-added claim that a customer has made relative to health or genetics or any of those kind of things, we make sure all that paperwork moves with those animals or data so that we protect that value that was found there in our auction ring. The old facility on Lyle Road ranged in age from anywhere from 48 years old to over 100 years old. It was a wood structure, seven acres in totality under a leaky roof. We managed that. We worked through that over many, many years. We were bounded on the south the entire length of the property, over 1,200 feet, by the 54-inch forest main sewer coming out of downtown Lexington. There was an abandoned 39-inch sewer main that ran right down through the middle of the barn the entire length of the property. We had 1,200 feet of Town Branch Creek as our southern neighbor right on the other side of the big sewer main. And at points in history, that facility was marketing 275,000-plus cattle a year. Not in recent history, but back in the 70s and 80s, it was operating at that level with all of those challenges. I think it's important. I mean, there was a lot of history at the old location. It's an emotional soft spot for all of us that it's gone. But it was an antiquated facility. It was very efficiently run and amazing in how efficient it was operated and managed extremely well. But it was an old facility. It wasn't pretty to look at. And I think part of the problem 10 or 12 years ago was at that point in history, that was the only example that most folks in central Kentucky had of a stockyard. When you said that word, they saw that old facility in Lexington. In today's environment, we've built two of these things in the last 10 years. A lot of people have had the opportunity to see those and recognize the dramatic difference between how we operated 50 years ago and what we can do with technology and design today. Even with all those challenges that we had there in Lexington, we didn't have any documented complaints about air quality or odor. I'll show you some data here in just a minute. We had no documented complaints about water contamination. There's tons of data on Town Branch Creek. You all know that. None of that data has ever shown that we created any problems in that creek. In 2012, we did receive a stormwater systems improvement grant from Lexington. We implemented that plan. Part of it was structures. Part of it was a stormwater pollution protection plan. We ironically had just gone through our big five-year inspection just a little bit more than 30 days before the fire, and we got a clean bill of health on the management and maintenance of our facilities and our records. Just a quick snapshot here of some of the things that we had in place here at the Lexington location, and we know how to operate and we've done successfully for years. We've gone in and curbed the parking areas with storm inlets, with filtration systems in it in that upper left picture. We'd put in place a pretty extensive amount of vegetated filter strips along the railroad, over top of that 54-inch sewer main, to give us an added layer of protection as that water exited the property. And I might point out here, too, at the old location, we didn't just deal with the water that fell on our site. Because of a lack of city infrastructure in that part of town, we drained most of that into Lyle Road and a lot of Forbes Road through our property. In the lower left-hand corner is a fairly extensive and large stormwater structure on the west end of the property. You can see the new overflow tank there at the sewage treatment plant right next door. a two-stage system where the water immediately was collected off the parking areas into a large concrete basin where any solids could settle out. It was slowly released out into a sandbed filtration system and then over a period of time worked its way down into the town branch creek. In the lower right-hand corner was something that we did on our own, which was the implementation of the dry handling manure system. In Lexington, that was an outdoor facility. at the new one. It'll be under the same roof, but it's the same process. Waste was removed from the facility via truck, placed in that hoop structure you see there, and then removed off-site on a daily basis by a contractor. Some of the interesting things about these newer facilities, we don't have to use nearly the volume of bedding in them that we would in an old facility like Lexington. We had been able to reduce the volume of waste coming out of the Lexington facility by over 60 percent over the last 10 years. That's an economic thing for us, but it's also environmentally good. It's probably important to talk about who our neighbors were. They're in downtown Lexington, the stockyard in the upper left-hand corner right here, Providence Montessori School, 600 feet away. The Manchester Street corner, everybody knows bars, restaurants, event centers all up and down Manchester Street. The first one's right there at 1,200 feet. The event center right down here at 2,500 feet. The Lexington Cemetery, 2,400 feet away. All of them due east, by the way. There's what we just looked at. Here's a further view on into downtown Lexington. Stockyard back up here to the left. The Trancy Athletic Complex, brand new out on 4th Street there, 7,500 feet away. Jefferson Street with all the outdoor dining venues and craft stores and everything up and down through there, 7,000 feet. Rupp Arena, 6,200. And interestingly, Cheapside, very popular outdoor venue, as you all know through the warm summer months, exactly 8,000 feet away from the stockyard site. Just to give you some perspective, the white pen in the upper left-hand corner of this slide is the proximity of the proposed location. The trailer park, the closest structure in the trailer park is 1,065 feet away. That abandoned house that they talked about is roughly 875 to the southwest. Notable structures on the horse park, the Altec Arena is 3,500 feet away. The very dead center of the camping area on the horse park over to the right is 8,000 feet away, same as Cheapside. Down here at the bottom is the very northern end of Spindletop Estates. The closest house in Spindletop is a little over 6,500 feet away and is also due south or a little bit southeast of the property. This is a picture I took of the site of the fire. I would remind you that that fire was 55 days ago today. We've got green grass growing on that site as we speak. we undertook the cleanup of the site as emotional and as difficult as that has been we took that as an opportunity to demonstrate to the community the kind of people that we are and how we operate getting that project done over with cleaned up for the community was very important to me personally and our company and our owners and we took that as an opportunity to demonstrate folks how we're going to do things, and I hope it does. Here's our proposal. We want to create a regional livestock marketing center. That's what Lexington's always been and what we hope it continues to be. We want to surround it with a few businesses that we believe are complementary, that local farmers need from an efficiency and a convenience standpoint, and that also add to the nature and the look and the feel and the services that are available out in that area. We've got a strong educational component as part of this, not just about what we do, but where does your food come from? That's extremely important in today's world. A lot of folks don't have a clue where their food comes from. We think this creates a grand opportunity for us to help with that. We're going to design and operate it in a way to make it a demonstrational project as well as a successful business. We are very serious about responsible animal handling, environmental stewardship, efficiency, and value-added marketing. We want to recreate all those things that we did in the old facility in Lexington in this new one, and it's pretty exciting to think about that. Everybody's seen the concept drawing that we've put out to hopefully send the message that beyond what most people envision as the stockyards, even in our new ones, we recognize the need to fit in, not only from an operational standpoint, but also from a look standpoint and add to and not detract from the horse park and the other things that are out there in that part of the world, and that we have every intention of doing that. This is a mock-up of our site plan. There are a couple minor changes relative to the one you have in front of you. Basically, the realignment of some parking spaces, but this one is probably the best visual. All the things that we've already talked about and will talk about in terms of improvements to the entrance. The placement of the facility completely off the aquifer. the ability to have a circular flow to the traffic in order to get everybody off of Ironworks Pike and provide ample opportunity to house a lot of vehicles and minimize the opportunity for any of those to have the least opportunity or the least reason to be backed up on Ironworks Pike. It's well over 1,500 feet once you're off the road around to the back end of the building where the unloading will take place. We've heard some concerns, and we're certainly not offended by people that have got legitimate concerns, questions about storm and groundwater stewardship, air quality, waste management, traffic, and are we good enough people, and do we operate the kind of business that needs to be in that area? So I'm going to run through those real quick here for you. There have been some groups that we anticipated would have legitimate questions, and we've gone directly to them and tried to sit down and have a conversation, I think that's been productive to help them understand what our proposal is and to make sure they really understand what we do. We've been working with the folks on the Royal Springs Committee since the very beginning, and obviously their concerns and questions about protecting the aquifer are significant to us. The Cane Run watershed, you know, what are we going to do to manage since that's where our water's going to go? We can take a horse park, Spentatop Estates, and others that we've reached out to and provided information to help them understand about what kind of neighbor we're going to be. We think we've got everything to be proud of and nothing to hide, and we've tried to be as transparent, available, open as we possibly could be through this whole process. We have gone out of our way to try to ferret out and address any concerns or questions that were out there and provide facts and science and historical performance records to answer those things. stormwater our old location had an impeccable record and i think that's vitally important because it was a real challenge in that in that facility because of the city infrastructure the age of the facility it was a challenge to operate but we did that very successfully our other locations are good responsible productive members of the communities they're in we're going to design this thing beyond the requirements it it's going to be a model facility that people are going to come from all over to look at. We want it to be that. We're segregating clean water coming off the roof from water that's coming off the parking areas. We hope to come up with some on-site uses for some of that clean water as part of our demonstrational and educational projects. We're going to capture every drop that falls. We did some water quality testing since that has been kind of the issue that questions have coming up out of we we commissioned a study at our stanford location which is exactly the same size as this facility is proposed to be it doesn't have all of the things in place that we're proposing for the lexington one but it does have a very extensive storm water management system we asked that the people that conducted this test to conduct it at the beginning of a rainfall event and they did. We also directed them to test the water coming directly out of the pipe, not half a mile down the creek or out in the creek. We've set ourselves up for the worst possible sample we could get. The first round of testing is back in and we do plan to continue that on an ongoing basis. The fecal coliform counts coming directly out of that detention basin in Stanford are less than half of the threshold levels for recreational water. Okay? So I think that's important. If you go up and down Cane Run Creek and you test outfalls or the creek water itself, you're going to get readings that are thousands of times above what's actually coming directly out of our detention basin. Groundwater. We've made significant improvements in understanding the geology of that area, and believe you me, there's tons of data out there. That must be one of the more studied areas geologically that exists. It's unbelievable how much money has been spent and how much time has gone into understanding the aquifer, where it is, where it's not, what's going on underground. It's incredible. We did dye testing 10, 12 years ago. Kentucky Geological Survey also did some. We've provided that information. It's been reviewed by the Kentucky Division of Water. It's been reviewed by the Royal Springs folks as well. We're not proposing to build anything on the Royal Springs recharge area. There are extensive design considerations, and we've got a lot of people working on this. Bob Wilhite actually is sitting on our planning committee for how we're going to manage and deal with water on this site, both ground and storm. The floor of the facility is impermeable. All of our new facilities are constructed that way. I don't want there to be a question about what's going on in the groundwater under our facilities. That impermeable floor is a workable solution that we can put in place. We do it out of clay. It doesn't impede us in terms of safety or comfort for the animals. And it's the right thing to do, and that's how we've built the others that we've built in the last decade. The parking and travel areas will be impermeable. There's a lot of neat things from a demonstrational standpoint we'd like to do with stormwater management, but the message we're hearing from the public is don't do those things. Capture all the water, treat it, and deal with it. with it. Air quality. The old facility didn't have any complaints or challenges, even with all those close neighbors, and our phone did not ring off the wall about air quality. The way we deal with that is through good operational protocols. You design the facility and you operate in a way to mitigate those problems. You do that by keeping things dry, not putting waste outside and allowing it to be exposed to rainwater. You remove it off-site on a daily basis. You provide very adequate ventilation and you supplement that if you need to and you design that floor properly. We did commission an air quality study in Stanford because it is a similar size location. We asked those people to look for ammonia, hydrogen sulfide, and methane, which would be the components of odor if they were coming out of a livestock facility. We also checked for CO2 levels. I just got this data back this morning that I'm going to show you. We set up stations at 500 feet and 1,000 feet away downwind of that facility on a day that we had 3,000 animals in the barn, 1,300 of those animals that arrived the night before. It was a very humid day and a day with not a lot of wind moving around. Ammonia levels, which would be the most common thing that one would think you would smell or detect out of a livestock facility. I'm giving you the numbers at the 500-foot location. obviously the ones a thousand feet away are lower the ammonia level that was detected over an eight hour period was 0.28 parts per million the osha threshold for workplace safety is 50 parts per million a couple other agencies up there that i that that do have some threshold levels for for workplace or other recommendations, the lowest possible threshold I could find was 25 parts per million. We're at 0.28. Hydrogen sulfide was not detected in these samples. 20 parts per million is the OSHA standard. There was no methane detected, and there is no OSHA standard for methane since it's not considered toxic. The CO2 level, which you all understand is in this room, it's a component of the air we all breathe, 440 parts per million. The OSHA threshold was 5,000 parts per million. So, again, we're trying to provide all the information we can to make folks comfortable that we understand how to do this right. Waste management. Mr. Akers, before you get too far away from the air quality, I assume we can ask questions as you go along because your presentation is pretty comprehensive. And I don't mean to interrupt it, but I lived in Louisville 35 years ago and drove past the stockyards on the east side of downtown many times on my way back and forth. And I remember driving past the stockyards. What have stockyards done in the past 35 years to decrease that ammonia level that I used to smell when I drove past the stockyards? Yeah, fair question. Because of infrastructure, the cattle move more rapidly through our facilities. They spend less time there. That's one component of it. The old barn there, and the old barn in Louisville, it was a real problem. multi-story you know all the the issues there uh different different protocols for cleaning uh different bedding materials um we just live in a different world today you know the commitment of folks in the industry to to to be better citizens to operate in a better cleaner fashion is a really really important part of the marketing of our product we just manage these things better and do a better job. So frequent maintenance is what you're talking about. Daily, okay? And I'm not going to tell you that over the period of 70 years that we operated the way we do today, we didn't, okay? There was outside manure storage at certain points in history. But as we've learned and as those things have become more important, we've changed those operational protocols. The design of these newer facilities is the real trick to the whole thing. Getting that floor built and engineered properly, maintaining the ventilation in these facilities, which was one of the major problems with the old Louisville facility. It was so enclosed and so tight and so big that it didn't have good ventilation. All those things go together. If it's dry, it doesn't smell. Facility design from the waste management standpoint. The impervious floor we've already talked about at length. Our buildings, our newer ones, are a very open-sided design to get natural airflow. There's a chimney effect designed into the roof with a very significant ridge cap and venting system that draws fresh air in from the outside up and out through the center of the barn. We also supplement that. We took the tour group to Stanford yesterday and showed that with big, low-speed, high-volume fans that give us the ability to manage the moisture content of that floor and the comfort level of the animals as well. We use very limited bedding in these new facilities because the animals do move rapidly. A project within our company is something that I'm really proud of. Most of the bedding we use in today's environment is actually recycled wood chips from local tree companies. It doesn't go into the landfill. We use it for bedding. It's then recycled either back out onto farmland for fertilizer or is composted by contractors that we use. We clean on a daily basis or as needed, if it's needed more often, with skid loaders. Remove that product. Once it's dried on that floor, we remove it, put it into a shipping area where it's removed off-site by that contractor. The contractor that we've used in Lexington for years is out of Bourbon County. they haul a large tractor trailer load at a time and don't necessarily get a full load each day in fact it's pretty rare for them to get a load they have a composting license they also go directly on some cropland with that product traffic, the old site was a huge challenge we only owned 13 acres there we had some little outlying parking lots on the other sides of the street but it was a real challenge Lexington grew up around us The original settlement home for Lexington is actually on that property, the old McConnell home. And, you know, when it was, that area was in the country not that many years ago in our recent history. But town grew up around us. Our peak days there are Monday and Tuesdays. Notably at the new location, the peak days for the horse park are obviously toward the end of the week and building up to mostly weekend events out there. We did ask Strand to update our traffic study. They've done that, and I think that's been provided to you all. We've placed the facility deep back into the property to give more than ample opportunity to get those trucks and trailers off the road and back onto the property before they fall into line to wait to unload. And we're making significant investments, as they mentioned, in that entrance improvement. The question about us not being good enough, to be perfectly honest with you, that one is pretty offensive. We're pretty proud of what we do. We think it's a part of why people like to live in central Kentucky. We create an economic reason for this beautiful grass to be here, along with the horse producers. We think without businesses like ours and the farmers that we serve as central Kentucky wouldn't be what it is. So we're proud of that, and we don't hide from it. Our businesses are profitable, sustainable. We've proven that over many decades. We've got a customer base of over 40,000 people, both in Kentucky and outside Kentucky. We did $600 million worth of business for those 40,000 customers last year. We have extensive operational plans in place. We're just different than a lot of people that are in this industry that we're in. We find ways to do things right. We write them down. We share them with our people. We document them, and we try to do it that way moving forward. I want you to think about this, and I've challenged every group that I've spoken to so far. This is a big business. It's a very important business. I've got six of them out there continuing operation, even though our flagship burned down. I can't afford to do anything right here in front of all of central Kentucky that's anything less than the best. I can't afford to damage those other businesses or this one. We've got to do this right. There have been questions about what could these other supporting businesses be, and I'm almost done here. Obviously, I'm just going to give you a potential list. Veterinary supplies and services. We have a museum designed into this new building. I mentioned the educational component for all ages and levels there. Commodity brokerage, insurance, ag lending, cattle brokerage. Restaurants are historically a part of stockyards and very important. We'll have one. Limited farm supply, workwear, western clothing. We've been approached about potential government services. There's been talk about other things that local farmers need, like a hay auction or a farmer's market. Those are potentials. We've actually been asked about putting a Kentucky Proud Market in there as well. Let's talk about a couple realities, and then I'm done. Things that already exist on the area were mentioned a little bit ago. The Kentucky Horse Park, extensive outdoor activity and human activity, indisputably on the aquifer. The Sexton Trailer Park is the top-rated environmental problem in the 17-county area development district and has been for years. It's right there. I-75, most of North Lexington farms, neighborhoods, and all that are in that same drainage basin that we're talking about. This is not the same proposal as 12 years ago from a multitude of standpoints. Different location on the property, different design, a lot of new technologies, a lot of new management skills that weren't in place back then. And very importantly, because the market didn't move the last time that this request was made, there's only about half the business that existed at that point in time being done here in Lexington that we're proposing to move. The rest of that business is gone somewhere else. In those other facilities we either acquired or built, that business has left Lexington. We don't want this half to leave Lexington. All of our activity that's being proposed is under roof. Everything. We've made ourselves available, open, transparent. For anybody that had legitimate questions and wanted to learn the facts, we've done everything we could to answer those questions. There's a lot of folks out there that are probably going to make some negative comments. I don't know of anybody that's going to speak negatively about our project that has actually given us an opportunity to sit down and answer their questions to show them what we're truly trying to do. And then that's it. Thank you. Does anybody have any questions for Mr. Akers? Mr. Akers, when you were talking about air quality, you were comparing the Stanford operation, one of your, I think you said, 15 operations around the Bluegrass or extended Bluegrass area. Is that right? Well, we have six other locations. We do 15 sales a week. Okay. I'm sorry. Maybe I misunderstood. Is Stanford the next largest operation compared to the domain? Yes, and the footprint of the Stanford operation is exactly the same square footage that we're proposing here. Okay. All right. Good. Thanks. The other thing that you mentioned, you showed a graphic of what I think we have a file copy of the site plan, And you said there were some minor changes, but you didn't detail what those minor changes were. The one you've got in front of you, which was submitted with the plan, there's minor realignment of some parking spaces that are a little different. The footprint, the placement, all that's exactly the same. Okay. Staff has seen those minor changes. They have not? I mean, you all have. Yeah. Excuse me, sir. Mr. Simmons, did you want to comment? Oh. I believe in the presentation over the aerial was the original submitted site plan and not the currently submitted site plan which you have in front of you, which the staff colored up and you have an 8.5 by 11. The reason I brought that up was the recommendation of staff is that the property be developed in accordance with the submitted application site plan operational plans. I just want to make sure we have the right one in front of us to consider. So the one we've got in front of us right here is the correct one. You're looking up the correct one. And I apologize for creating that confusion. That's just a little easier graphic to look at on the screen because it's colored. That's why we used that in the presentation. Thank you, Mr. Akers. Thank you. Good afternoon. Nick Nicholson. And I'm not going to take much of your all's time because, Mr. Akers, that's a presentation that I really want at the forefront of your all's minds. I just need to make sure that you all feel very comfortable with the fact that we are in full compliance with the comprehensive plan. This is not your typical conditional use where it just provides that that use is available upon a conditional use permit. There are several different kind of requirements that go along with that conditional use. Most of them are very general, but I do just want to make sure you all feel very comfortable about them. And I'm also going to detail our operational plan, which really gets at the heart of what your question was, Mr. Glover. From a locational standpoint and site-specific kind of requirements, the comprehensive plan requires us to be in the AR zone, have 40 acres, be within a mile of an interstate interchange with a state highway, and also to have 45% open space. Where this site is located, it's in the AR zone. It's 100 acres in just Fayette County. As Jimmy mentioned, it does extend into Scott County as well. But in just Fayette County, there's 100 acres. And we are proposing 72% of open space. That well exceeds the 45% minimum. And we are located with frontage on I-75 and Ironworks, and that's Kentucky State Highway. I believe it's 1973. That more than basically takes care of the locational access, frontage, and open space requirements. The only other issues stem from traffic, which, as Jimmy indicated, they've looked at it. The Kentucky Transportation Cabinet have looked at the traffic, and we also updated our traffic study. All three entities came to the same conclusion. Ironworks Pike can handle any traffic that is proposed. The only technical standard you all have to look at is if it can handle the size of trucks during all weather conditions. That's the exact quote. We know Ironworks can. Everybody that has looked at it has agreed that it can. Quite frankly, a lot of it is already occurring with the horse park's location and the animal trailers that already are coming onto the horse park, as well as the campers that are there on a weekly basis. basis. The last kind of issue as far as the site goes is the environmentally sensitive area. It's well established. We are outside the Royal Springs aquifer. I don't want to dwell on this because so many people have talked about it. I know we're going to talk about it at length again, but I do want to stress that when the interstate came in, the feds had a look at this aquifer. When the horse park was doing all of their work, they had a look at this aquifer. When in 2005, of the Bluegrass Stockyards was for you all, they had to look at the aquifer to really determine where this line is. It's been studied, as Jim said, more than probably any other area in the Commonwealth of Kentucky, and it's convincingly outside of the aquifer. With that in mind, tab three of the book that I gave you all for the exhibits is a recent letter in November from the Division of Water Quality and Public Works on LFUCG when they were looking at the Lyle Industrial Site. I bring this up because this was before the fire. This was before we ever considered bringing an application for Ironworks, and it could not be more favorable considering the very last line of that says, It is evident that bluegrass livestock and its staff are committed to a policy of environmental responsibility with regard to stormwater discharge. I couldn't have written a more conclusive statement if I tried. And again, we didn't rig it because it was in November. But with that in mind, it gets to the operational plan. What really matters is how are we going to keep this record that our public works has already told you all we had. It is that same mindset and it's that same dedication to environmental responsibility that's going to go into this new site. You heard about all the restraints in the old site with regards to leaky roofs and old buildings in a cramped site. We now have a wide open site. We are going to be able to take all the information we have learned from building two new facilities in the past 10 years and basically the scientific upgrades that have occurred. The biggest thing to know is everything occurs under the one roof. The cattle come in. They're unloaded. They are basically held before the auction, they are auctioned off, and then they are reloaded. All of this occurs under one roof. Any animal waste that occurs is scooped, it is basically put into a pile in order to basically keep it out of the elements, and then it's transported off-site. Again, that all happens under one roof. There is not a situation where the elements can get to it. Where the odor comes from, where the issues that come from with this type of use comes when moisture gets in, that's the odor. The bedding that they have created, the floor that they have created makes sure that there is no moisture getting in. There's no runoff coming out. It's an impermeable surface. It's not getting down into the groundwater. That really is the key issue when it comes to odor. The reason why we're so confident to be able to stand here today is in the location on Lyle Industrial, the closest residential structure, and you saw the full neighborhood that was there, is 330 feet away. There was not a single complaint that was about the odor, about the noise, about any of these type of nuisance issues at 330 feet away. We're proposing to be well over 1,000 from the most active any type of residential use. And so that is why we can say without any hesitation that these odor issues are not going to be a problem. Mr. Nicholson, you've mentioned several times this impermeable floor, and I read it in the operational plan and referenced, I think, probably in the staff report as well. Is this a design that you've used other places? Is it used, for example, at the Stanford location? I believe it's used at the Stanford, correct? It is used at the Stanford location, and our engineer and Dr. Higgins with UK can give more specifics on the exact material. I know it is a clay material, and there is some kind of bedding the wood chips as well. Okay, thanks. The kind of last issue that we need to address on the operational plan is with regards to sewer. This site will be sewered. It will be tied into a municipal system. There is no package plant that occurs on site. There is no type of water treatment that's going to be occurring on site. We are tying into a municipal system. Right now, there are three possible ways we can do that. We can either go to the closest LFUCG pump station, we can go into Scott County to our north and tie in there, or we can go across I-75. We right now are looking at all three options. We are looking in order to make sure what is the best as far as efficiency goes, safety goes, the economics of the situation, and what is basically in the best interest for not just Fayette County citizens, but the Scott County citizens as well. We're on the border, and we do recognize that we owe obligations right to our north as well. As soon as we have come to that conclusion, LFUCG does have to approve all plans. We will submit those, but the key factor is we will be sewered. Right now, I would like to bring up Doug Gooch. He is the engineer at AGE. He's the designer of this facility. He also designed the Stanford facility. The reason why I stress that is because he lives in Stanford. He lives in the neighborhood right next door to the facility. So if anyone has an interest in this design, it's this man right here. He's going to talk to you about the groundwater and also the stormwater protection plans. I'm going back a little bit. Welcome to the school market here. Do you want the site plan? Yeah. Let's go. Let's go. This is the same site plan everybody has a copy of. If you would, state your name for the record, please. My name is Douglas Gooch with AGE Engineering. We're doing the civil work on this project. This particular project, from a civil standpoint, has been made easier for our part because the owners have committed themselves to staying out of the aquifer recharge area for the Royal Springs Aquifer. So what that did was put the stockyards in the most expensive, least engineering consideration spot on the farm. The first two hours we looked at this project, the young engineers on my team kept wanting to move it up onto a flat area where we wouldn't have so much earthwork. And it took some time to convince them that we're going to put the stockyards where we are proposing it now, which is nowhere near the aquifer. outside the aquifer line. So what that does for this site is that all the stormwater around the site runs toward the stockyards. All the rainwater that lands on the fields around it all run toward our site. So it's easy to contain the water that is landing on the farm. It's easy to contain the water that might get some kind of solids material or whatever in it from the stockyards. And so we're able to take all the water that lands on all the parking lots, the roof, and all structures, and we're taking 100 percent of that water to the detention basins that we've designed on either side. Now, we need fill material for the area underneath the stockyards, so we're able to make these detention basins large enough without a significant cost increase because we need the material anyway. We're allowed to, we're able to make these detention basins large enough that we can catch that summer cloudburst that called first flush that lands on that parking lot if it were an inch and a half to two inch summer cloudburst 100 of that water enters the detention basins on either side of the stockyards and we can hold that water we're not going to discharge that water through an opening that's not filtered we're going to catch that first flush which might have solid materials you know the animals themselves are under roof and so we don't worry about the rainwater washing that into the detention basin or the groundwater, but you all know tractor and trailers and goosenecks, hauling cattle, lose a little material occasionally. That might be in the parking lot. It may have dried, but it still may be there in the parking lot. This first flush that occurs when you have that summer rain or even a continued rain event, it will wash the parking lots clean, and we'll wash them into these detention basins. Now, the bottom of the detention basin is basically a sand bed filter. It's the same filtration systems used in drinking water applications and that nature. It is a filter system that will catch all the solid materials that are suspended in the water. They will lay on top of the sand. The water will percolate through the sand, inner perforated pipe through soft drains, and then out through a discharge system. Now, we have a couple concerns here. We want to, one, clean the water so we're not doing any damage to the groundwater, whether it's the Royal Springs Aquifer or the one to the south. We want to be good stewards of the groundwater, but we also have to be mindful of flooding issues downstream because we are taking a big area that was pasture, and we're now making it roofs and pavements, so we are also having a considerable increase in the runoff. So we have to size these the tension basin is large enough that we not only catch that first flush, we store it in a manner that we can let that out so that downstream it looks like the same rain event as it did when it was pasture-filled. If we've changed the immediate runoff from 100 cubic feet per second to 500 cubic feet per second, we have to store that additional water in these basins, maybe for hours, maybe for a day. We'll tune the openings to match the storm's conditions before this. But we will store that water and let it out over a period of time so that this storm downstream looks exactly like the storm did when it was a pasture field. Now, we have the ability to tune, since we're having two detention basins, we have the ability to tune the discharge water and make sure that we match the same discharge in both of the culverts that go into the railroad. We're going to match the flow that's currently going on the railroad by tuning the openings and putting the correct percentage of water through each of those out of the detention basins. Now, the roof water is very clean water. We also have the ability, if the designs come to fruition, and Dr. Higgins is going to talk to you a little bit about that, we have the ability to have clean roof water, which is about five and a half acres of roof water. we have the ability to have clean roof water in a separate detention pond that might be retained for demonstration projects and stuff like that. It will be clean. It will not have the ability to have material in it like the parking lots might, mud from the farm's material that might have fallen from the trailer. So these detention basins will be the key. They will be the filter. We're going to make them impervious. Typically, you try to get as much water back into the ground as you can out of these detention basins to alleviate flooding downstream. This situation, a little different. We're not going to let this water into the ground. We're going to line the detention basin so they actually hold all the water until we discharge it at the appropriate rate downstream. And this gives us the ability to mitigate flooding downstream. We will not make it any worse. They might already be having problems, but we will not make it worse. Yes. Anybody have any questions? I have a question. So the water from both of these detention ponds will be, at once they've gone through their filter system, will end up here and here? Is that correct? Yes, sir. Okay. And what's on the other side of this, the other side of the tracks? Well, the mobile home park is kind of directly across the track. Okay. And then a small stream heads down south toward Ironworks Pike from the south most. So this will enter into a small stream and head down? Yes. There's a, there's not a running. I guess where does it eventually end up? Yeah. Okay. And we're heading, the water's heading north. Is that correct? Please descend. Correct? Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. South. All right. Go south. It's going south. Yes. Okay. To the Dixie Aquifer. Right. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Gooch. Next, I want to bring up Dr. Steve Higgins. He's the one who helped draft the operational plan. He is with the university. He's the director of animal environmental compliance for the Agricultural Experiment Station at UK. One of his primary jobs is basically associated with dealing with waste management and livestock systems, and he's doing it all in the Cane Run watershed. At least most of his projects are. And so he's got a vested interest because he's basically downstream from what's going on. And so I thought you would appreciate being able to hear from him as well. Thank you. Mr. Chairman, the board, I'm Steve Higgins, Director of Animal and Environmental Compliance for the Kentucky Agricultural Service Center. So, yes, I'm a little nervous. This is my first time for this. Okay, so I've looked at, I've worked for the University of Kentucky for 34 years, and I've got agricultural experience for that amount of time. The last 10 years I've actually spent working in the Cane Run watershed. My team and I have actually received over $2 million to basically look and study the Cane Run watershed and try to improve water quality. Part of that process is basically designing and implementing best management practices to address agricultural water quality concerns. So some of those practices that we have developed in the Cane Run watershed and other watersheds as part of my studies have been adopted into state law as true traditional best management practices. Some of them have actually been practices that are eligible for cost share so that farmers might want to put them on their own property. They can use taxpayer dollars to actually implement these practices. I've also, since I've been working in the Cane Run watershed for about 10 years, I've got some history there. And so between the combination of things, I've got a vested interest in the water quality in the Cane Run. I'd like to see it improved. I've kind of adopted that watershed as part of my work. So when I had the opportunity to review the operational plan and design plan, I looked at it from a standpoint of agricultural best management practices, and as far as practices that I would implement, the plans basically cover everything. So it's been re-edited. It's been stressed several times, but basically everything is on the roof. All the animal unloading, where the animals are held, where the manure is stored, is all under a continuous same roof, which is about the best practice you can do. In addition, so the stormwater is being diverted. That's a great philosophy as far as keeping clean water clean. No water, no precipitation comes in contact with manure, so that's another good philosophy of keeping manure out of water. So the roof is all guttered, downspouts and gutters. The flooring for the animals is basically what we call an all-weather surface. It's basically six inches of dense grade aggregate over top of a compacted clay lining. So Mr. Glover, you brought up the question earlier about that clay lining. So essentially what you're doing is this all-weather surface with the gravel is what we would use outdoors for animals to not create mud in a situation like that. This is actually indoors. But that clay lining, as far as a design standpoint, when you look at the engineering, you could have seven or eight feet of liquid manure over top of this, and that's not going to permeate this flooring. It's actually used in lagoon systems or waste storage pond systems. So this application is actually used for the flooring, so you don't have any permeating liquids going into the groundwater. You also have a great ventilation system because I mentioned the liquid system, but basically Stockyards is managing a solid system, which is actually a best management practice over the liquid, so you're not having to retain all this liquid manure. So it's actually using a solid system, which is ideal. You're able to attain that solid system because of the sidewall elevations of the side of the building, the structure itself, the pitch of the roof, and also this enormous ridge vent that they're going to have is going to have this natural airflow ventilation that's going to come up through the building, and it's actually going to dry out the manure, And as it was stated earlier, if you don't have a wet manure, then you don't have any odor. You also don't have any flies being created. So that's a great thing there. And then also, let's see what else. Oh, and also we also have additional fans as far as additional fans that we can use to basically provide additional ventilation during seasonal times of the year. So when you look and combine basically the design of the facility and the operational plan, it basically covers all the best management practices that we would stress and indicate for agricultural use, and it has the potential basically of protecting the groundwater and surface water for that particular area. From an education and outreach standpoint, since I'm with the College of Agriculture, I've received a lot of grants to do education and outreach. With this type of facility, with the farmers that come in there, we basically have an opportunity of demonstrating some of the practices that we might do on the property so that these farmers might actually take some of these practices home with them and implement them on their own property since it is a meeting point for farmers. It also offers an opportunity for students as well as other visitors to view the facility. So there's been a lot of negative stuff brought up about this particular facility, but when I look back and step back and look at it from like 10,000 feet up, the new designs that we're using for livestock marketing facilities, especially this one. This facility actually has the potential to be the benchmark design facility for this particular area, and there could be designers coming from states away to basically come in to see this facility because of how it can coexist with the neighbors, with the watershed, and with this sensitive aquifer that's nearby. As part of the studies, I also looked at the Kentucky Geological Survey that was done in 2003, and Kentucky Geological Survey, or KGS, was actually a partner with us on our cane-run projects. I looked at their dye tracing studies. I also looked at the SHIELD environmental studies that were conducted in 2004 and 2005. Those studies basically indicate what we already know is that the Royal Spring delineation line is very set. We know exactly where that is. It also indicates that this facility is not in the Royal Spring aquifer recharge basin. Any questions and comments? Yes, sir. Mr. Higgins, or is it Dr. Higgins? Steve will work. Okay. Mr. Akers talked about the waste management and the bedding. Yes. I didn't see those on the site plan. Maybe I'm just overlooking them. He showed a picture of what looked like a Quonset hut coverage. That was the actual old Lyle Row facility. That was the Quonset hut that they used there. That was actually an addition that was made later on. This new facility, everything is all underneath the same roof. So the animal waste and the bedding storage is all under the same roof line? Yes, sir. So there's no movement of that manure from, say, that facility to an adjacent facility. Nothing's going to drop out of the manure, out of the bucket or out of the truck. It's coming from that facility, and then it's moved off-site to a vendor that composts that manure in Bourbon County. Gotcha. So that's another best management practice. This is what we would do. Put everything on the roof, manage the manures as solid, divert the clean water. And then also, too, the parking lot is also impermeable as well. I mean, it's all in asphalt with some curbing. And as it's been indicated, all that runoff is basically going to go through sand bed infiltration basins. And so that's a very innovative thing that can be done. We've done some of those on the horse park as well to capture some of this runoff. But all innovative practices, all best management practices. All right. You talked about best management practices. I noticed, and, of course, the site plan shows the railroad that goes right next to the facility on the south side or the west side. Does the facility plan to use the railroad to bring animals in and out? I mean, you know, everything's done nowadays by truck, but it sure is convenient to have a railroad right next door. You may not be the best person to answer that. Well, historically, back in the 1950s, we were in that area. Jim can tell you that basically that's where they actually herded cattle up to that point, and they built a facility right there to load cattle onto the train right there. That's what that spur was for back in the day. Interesting little piece of history. Thank you. Yes, sir. Thank you, Dr. Higgins. Thank you all very much. Very good. We're coming up on our – we actually built in a little extra time, Mr. Leader, because we did ask some questions. Would you like to wrap up? I do want Nick to touch on the variants real quickly and then a lot of what we have. If we need to respond to questions, we can do it later. I do want to say one thing about the odor issue. I've been to the Stanford facility. I visited it, and I could have saved, Jim, a lot of money because I took my wife with me. That's what passes for a good date when you're 65 years old. We walked the entire perimeter, and I will tell you that the situation you described from Louisville 35 years ago is a historical footnote. I've walked the barn area at Keeneland many times and have never been offended by the odor there, and this wasn't any stronger than that. And that's right next door to it, not 250, 500, 1,000 feet away. At least from our sample, there was no problem with odor at Stanford, and it was a sale day. Tell Vange we're very sorry that you took her to Stanford. She already knows. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Leader. I won't take but a minute. We do need to specifically address the variance that we're requesting. As I'm sure you all have noticed, this entire presentation has basically been framed around that this is not creating any type of adverse impact or public safety or health or welfare concern. Those are two of the most important factors with not only a conditional use permit, but also with a variance. The key situation with a variance is by reducing the 1,000-foot setback to 850 feet, that that doesn't change the equation, that suddenly there would be some type of adverse impact And I can say definitively that is not the case. If you all would look at the two pictures that are in tab 6 of your exhibit book, these are pictures, one that was taken yesterday and then also from the PVA site of the existing residents that we are asking for the variance, the 850 feet away. It is clearly vacant, and it looks like it has been vacant for quite some time and will remain that so. So we are 1,000 feet away from any all existing residential use. In order to give you a kind of feel for what 850 feet are from this building right here, you can get down to the 21C Gallery. You can get up to the corner of North Limestone and Bar past all of the courthouses. You can get to the back parking lot at Sayre on Martin Luther King. You can get to the PNC building at the corner of Elm Tree, and you can get all the way to the back of the Calvary Baptist Church on MLK. That's what 850 feet are. And now in the middle of that 850 feet, picture a railroad track with substantial trees and hedges that are additionally buffering it. I want to ask you a question about that railroad track. Is it an elevated railroad track, or is it surface? It is slightly elevated. On the front part of the property, it's considerably higher than ground elevation. And on top of that, I'm assuming it's full of honeysuckle? Yeah, it's brushed galore. Okay. And the trains run anywhere about 50 times a day. So this is not an unused railroad track by any means or shape or form. But I just wanted to give you kind of a quick picture. Is that the same track that runs by Kearney Hills Golf Course? I believe so. Is it? Is it not? Yes. The Kearney Hills? I believe so, yes. Yeah, I'm pretty sure. Okay. But it's a southern railroad track. I know that. But I'm pretty sure it's the southern hills. So to say that basically dropping from 1,000 to 850 feet, it's certainly not an unreasonable circumvention of the zoning ordinance, which is another one of the requirements. Who owns this piece of property that you've got depicted here? The Sexton's. Is this the letter of support we received? It is. Okay. And basically also to just point out that the use is now allowed in the AR zone, in the overlay zone, within 300 feet. and also at our previous facility, we already were at 330 feet. The final kind of characteristic you all have to look at is, would this alter the essential characteristic in the general area? This is an ag zone. This is an ag use. We are putting animals and livestock through an auction ring. It's the exact same as Keeneland. It's the exact same as Fasic-Tipton. And I might want to point out that Fasic-Tipton is fully in the Royal Springs Aquifer discharge, or recharge basin, excuse me. the only property that you would pass coming from or to the interstate is a gas station. That's it. Everything else is ours. If anyone stands to benefit from this stockyard going in, you better believe it's that gas station. We'll take any questions. The poll team's here to ask. Thank you, Mr. Nicholson, and we're right at an hour. I appreciate you all staying on time, and does anybody have any questions? I have one question. Go ahead, I'll wait. Jimmy mentioned something about the traffic flow coming in and out, recommending a change from what was planned. Is that right, Jimmy? Yes, there were three recommendations. Something about left-hand turns from Ironworks into the property, right-hand turns. Yes. I didn't really understand what the difference was from what you planned. It's exactly what we planned. We're incorporating their recommendations into it. Okay. What we're talking about here is just having a right turn lane into the facility and a left turn lane where you can see there's already a median break. Here's the exact entrance. And then there are three entrances, or three basically lanes of traffic in the entrance, two exiting for a right turn and a left turn in straight, and then one entry straight into the property. We are proposing that on our development plan. I'm in with the Department of Transportation, and this is kind of their recommendation as a starting point for applying for the encroachment permit. And you've got a fair amount of property for backup of trucks coming in and going out as well, but there's no, of course, there's no traffic control signal for trucks coming out of the property turning left. There is not right now. I do believe that we would have to look at that once the site plan got kind of reviewed by the KTC, but there is not one planned right now. Okay, just checking. Thanks. Thank you, gentlemen. Mr. Channes, I have a question. This is a question for staff. Mr. Emmons, this is on the dimensional variance. I know this isn't a property that would need a buffer because it's not two zones bump adjoining each other, But if it did need a buffer, if one was a residential zone and the other one was ag, would the brush in the railroad track, would that act as an appropriate buffer without them putting a fence up or anything else? the existing vegetation that is along the railroad tracks I'm positive that that would meet our minimum requirements if it were say from an industrial to a residential zone without getting out and looking at every single tree species but what is there I do have some pictures on site that kind of show looking at the existing entrance toward that railroad track, and you can just kind of see that amount of vegetation that is there if you want me to put that on the list. Yeah, I'd like to see those because I think that, at least on the variance issue, we can't have it both ways. We can't expect them to comply with the setback and then also stay out of the aquifer. And so to the extent that there is appropriate barrier, I think that the setback is appropriate. We also are proposing a 10-foot solid wood fence along this residential stretch as well. So that's going to run parallel with the railroad track across the property? Okay. Yes, right there by basically where the residence is. Is that on the site plan? I believe it is. That we'll be approving or not approving today? It's also a part of the operational plan as well. Right. Any other questions? Oh, I'm sorry. This is a photograph that I took standing at the existing gate on the property. This is the main drive back into the farm. On the left-hand side, you can see the extensive vegetation that's running along the railroad tracks. And you can kind of see the utility pole there, the silhouette of that. That runs fairly close to where those tracks are. And I've got one more. this is looking to the left more towards ironworks pike there is a utility substation on the other side of the railroad tracks that you can see and you can see how much vegetation there is between those two uses so the staff is very confident in the in the amount of buffer that's there and even more confident with the applicants installation of their fence Thank you, Mr. Emmons. Out of fairness, I think it's going to anyone who wants to who is voicing their support for the for the conditional use permit and the variance. We're going to give you an opportunity to speak. But but out of the sense of fairness, I'd like for the opposition to have an opportunity to come up and address the board at this time. If you come up, please, and state your name for the record. We have this gentleman right here, and then, sir, we'll... My name is J.R. Williamson. I'm from Scott County. My concern is not against the project. My concern is about water contamination. And you asked us if we were going to say some truths today. And you all showed what I'm trying to do is the undo or the pressure that's on that area. These gentlemen have had time to talk about off-site and this, that, and the other. Am I allowed to do the same? Yes, sir. I've given Mr. Lear and the applicant an hour to make their presentation. You have the floor, and I want to make sure that if you all have an organized presentation, you have up to an hour to make it. I'll try to be as brief as I can. Okay. Who puts the pictures up here? Who allows the pictures? Jim? Right here. Can you do some of these? What I'm concerned about is the pressure out there, and I want to ask you all. Well, the Clean Water Act was passed in 1948. It was upgraded in 1972, I think. I think we as a society were asked to protect public drinking water. And I don't know if you're all aware of what's going on in Flint and Michigan. Nobody wants to take credit for the mishaps that's happened there. Could I agree everybody's aware of that? I would think so, sir. All right. So the reason I'm here, I'm a retired Scott County Solid Waste Coordinator, and I'm now here as a concerned citizen and a grandfather. The picture you're looking at right here is I want to... Do you mind if I ask the doctor or Steve? You said you were involved at the... Mr. Williamson, you need to be addressing us. Can we ask him a question? No, sir. You're right now. Well, I was heard that impervious parking lots were supposed to have retention ponds and some things like that. So to their side, I'd ask in the minutes or so So that when those ponds are there for a decade or so, could they be refurbished? You know, it's just like an oil filter on a car or something, you know. After it sits there and catches all the non-point source pollution, could it be put in the records that they'd be upgraded at a period of time? That was one of my concerns. Okay, and after you get done with your presentation, we'll have them address your concerns. All right, so that's what I was thinking. I was just wanting to know if an imperbriable parking lot should have retention ponds and containment. because this site right here as you see is at the horse park and i called and talked to them that's supposed to have an impervious parking lot and i've got another picture here it's being this one's being constructed now that i just took pictures of last week and this is as he showed the picture earlier that the horse parker is no question the horse park is directly over top of the aquifer so what i'm saying is the pressure of the horse park and if they go by all the rules and regulations that's fine but if the horse park's not that means there's a lot of undue pressure it's being done i've talked to some people uh talked to some board members from the wellhead committee they're not required to come in front of that committee i'm talking about the horse park you are planning zoning are they required to come in front of you all for any kind of task force here or the group here to, you know, that's my concern as a citizen. Why is a state government not required to go through the same procedures as these gentlemen right here? You know, as a citizen, I think that groups of people like this that review this, is this what you all do, review plans? That's, I think the state horse park ought to have the same pressure put on them to protect our drinking water. Mr. Wilson, let me, let me set the record straight here. We are the Board of Adjustment. We're not planning and zoning, number one. Number two, we have a conditional use permit and we have a variance before us for this project. I can't speak for the Clean Water Act. I can't speak for the Kentucky Horse Park. We're here for this issue and that's what we want to stay focused on. Well, I'm just trying to take this platform to bring attention to drinking water and I can't find anybody that says the state government has to go forward to anybody. I talked to a gentleman out there today who said that Division of Water had been involved, Division of Transportation had been involved. The reason I was going to ask this gentleman to talk and say if an impervival parking lot should have containment, I think the horse park should do as well. Thank you, sir. Gentlemen in the back, did you want to come up here and have something? Go ahead. come on up please and state your name for the record okay my name is Danny Burkhead I have the property on the Scott County part of the proposed site form there and it's directly across the railroad tracks from where they previously wanted this back in 2005 and 6. Now they've moved it up, well they've actually moved it south on their property, so it's not presenting as much of a problem on my property, because like say there's a 24 inch drain pipe coming underneath the railroad track from their property right on to mine. Back in 2005 and 6, I was going to have a major problem with water, even though you're trying to slow it down you can't slow it down completely and stop it but anyway they've moved it up there in in a few hundred feet which will eliminate where they're at now it'll eliminate the runoff water from crossing over my property and i'm thankful for that part of it but i'm still opposed to their new building site so therefore i'm opposed to their appeal under conditions use under conditional uses in your rules and regulations for an agricultural use in an AR zone. Number 7E says improvements such as buildings, barns, other structures, including stormwater detention basins, truck parking and loading areas, shall be located outside of any environmental sensitive area, including any wellhead protection area. I've been trying since I got my letter stating that this was going to happen, I've been trying to get in touch with somebody from the wellhead protection. I've called the Georgetown Water Company numerous times, and I can't get anybody to even return my calls. The way it stands right now, there are three wells that are downstream from this property. And when I'm saying downstream, one of them, if you look at your picture of your brown building there, they're showing a blue, what's going to be a drain going underneath of the railroad track. If you go about another 200 to 300 feet straight on down, and it's in a little valley, is a well. The well's been there for years. If it's on any wellhead protection committee, I don't know nothing about it, you know, because I've never heard nothing about it if it's on one. that well i cannot say absolutely for sure because it's a vein fed well the vein goes from that one my property is north of that well and i've got a well my well right now has got water within three foot of the top of the ground it had it has had water there never has been any lower than that and i know as water's coming in water's got to be going out and the vein has been traced on over the top of the hill towards the aquifer. Now, if these wells are not checked and they're talking about doing some dye testing, I don't know where they've done it before. If they've done it in this well, they haven't done it in mine. And if these wells, you know, if they haven't been checked, they should be checked because they can very easily fall into this wellhead protection area. Jim Akers I was in his presentation the other night at Spinaltop he's supposed to be getting in touch with me next week and I would like for somebody from the Wellhead Protection Committee to be there too I'd like to show them or explain my concerns as to why these wells and I'm going to say it I cannot say absolutely for sure because they've never been checked but I'm going to say these wells wind up draining into the aquifer. Now, they keep saying that there's none of this that's going to be on, you know, none of this is, you know, pertaining to the aquifer. It's all outside of it. I don't believe it. And until these are checked, there's no way you can actually know for sure. When you've got an open well, and one of these wells is a drilled well, I have no idea how deep it's drilled. It may be drilled right into the aquifer, all I know. I mean, it's a drilled well. I looked at it just a few days ago, and you can look right down the pipe and see water in the bottom of it. About 30 feet down, you can see water. My well, like I said, it is water within three feet of the top of the ground. So I'd love for somebody from this wellhead protection to come check my wells and tell me where the water from my well, when it's full, the extra water goes someplace. Mr. Burkhead, I appreciate your concern, and obviously I can't speak to one of the committee members coming in and checking out your wells. And again, I wanted to restate that that's not what we're here for today. And so I certainly understand your concern, and I hope that you get your questions answered. And Mr. Akers is nodding his head, and I'm sure that that will be addressed. But that's not what this body is here for today. That's what I'm here to voice my concern over, because like I say, accidents happen. Yes. You know, the stockyard's burning. That proves that accidents happen, you know. And all it would take is with all this water that they're talking about having, catching in these basins, somebody come in with a truck. They've got a can of some kind of chemical sitting on the back of their truck, and it falls over and spills. Who's to say that this water is not going to wind up going into one of those wells and then wind up going into the aquifer? Now, I know the same thing could happen, you know, truck going down the interstate. Because like they're saying, the interstate's in part of the aquifer, but here's something that's going to be permanent. A truck going down the interstate, you're not going to have something that's going to be there all the time. So my concern is these wells need to be checked out. And in my opinion, if they're not checked out, somebody's not doing their job. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Bershaw. My name is Charlie Dannem. I live in Spindletop Estates. And I'm here today to talk about groundwater a little bit. I'm an old man. I'm going to be moving pretty soon. So I don't care about a lot of these things. But I do care about the groundwater here. A friend of mine, well, first I'll tell you why I'm glad to be here today. There was a storm, and we had to leave where we were sailing in the Caribbean, and I got in a day early. But before I left, I went over to the geologic survey, and a friend of mine that I sailed with used to work there. And he told me about some research that they had done on the groundwater in the Royal Springs Aquifer. and so I went over there and the gentleman gave me a map that showed the Royal Springs aquifer on the other side of the railroad track well that's a little different from this line we've got here and so I sent a copy to Tom Prather and I sent a copy to the mayor's office and it was supposed to go to you fellas did you get a copy of a letter from me evidently not and also he showed me some information on the horse park and the ground the aquifer over there and he said don't make a definite argument about this but it showed that when they had an event over there that the e coli in the ground the aquifer shot up and he said it may be from what goes on at the horse park, it may not be. And they did, incidentally, discover one of the main conduits for the Royal Springs Aquifer. It's over near the arena. They hit water at about 40 feet, and they hit rock again at 60 feet. So this line is, I'm not trying to say that the edge of the aquifer is on the other side of the railroad track. I'm just trying to tell you that this line is not necessarily right. Somebody said one time, if you say something that's wrong enough, people will believe it. And Mr. Lear emphatically said, it's below the line. He said, it's below the line. What is this line? Well, if you know anything about karst topography, that area over top of the sinkholes is called epicarst. And it's sort of like, it's hard to make a comparison, but maybe it's like a sponge or a washcloth. And you put water in it, and some of it goes down, and some of it comes out the sides, just like it did in the spring where they got the dye test. And it'll also tell you that this is sometimes caused by perched water tables within the aquifer. I didn't hear anybody say anything about that. And if you look just down from that map a little bit, it shows the line running down the interstate. Well, you know, I helped build that interstate, and I didn't see any darn line there. so I'm here to question that line and I would appeal to you to have an in-depth survey done to better determine the location of the Royal Springs aquifer and I'll be glad to show you the drawing that I obtained from the Kentucky Geological Survey So I'd just like for you to take a serious look at it. Is this something we can put on the screen, Mr. Dillon? I don't know whether that would help you much or not. There's so many lines on it. Can you do anything with that? Okay, maybe you can here. It's going to be hard to show you. You got it. Well, you need a pointer. He's got a pointer for you if that would help. See, what can I point? I'll just point it to the screen. What do you do, push? There's a button near the silver button near the tip. Yeah, I got it. Okay. Here we go. Here's the railroad. Here's the interstate. You have to excuse my shake, and I'm not a public speaker. In fact, it's hard for me not to curse. Here's the intersection. Here's the two holes that the Kentucky Geologic Survey dug, and here's where the spring was that they came out. This green line is what is possibly the limits of the Royal Springs aquifer. You see how it's along the railroad? Well, that's all I wanted to show you is just where the limits of that aquifer is. It's along that railroad track. It may be like the gentleman just said to you that his wells may well be in that aquifer. The gentleman from the university, evidently he talked to the wrong guy over at the geologic survey because it's on file over there, and if somebody would take the trouble to go look at it and talk to somebody that's an expert on karst topography and on the material over karst topography, they'd learn a little more that that line up that you had up there is not necessarily correct. I'm not arguing that that's it, but I'm just telling you, you cannot draw an exact line and say that is the limit of the Royal Spring aquifer, and you certainly can't do it on the basis of the exploration that they did. Thank you, Mr. Dunn. I would like to add just a little comical note to all this talking, and the farmers here will agree with me that you can put a lot of lipstick on a pig. It's still going to be a pig. We're going to have a lot of noise. We're going to have a lot of dust. but I would congratulate them on they're doing a lot of fine things here. So that's the end of what I have to say. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Denham. Well, Dr. Higgins, you're right there. Can you speak to this line that Mr. Denham was referring to and the accuracy of it and so forth? And we're going to give... There's two people from the Kentucky Division of Water. I defer to their judgment on this. Okay. If somebody, if you want to come up and answer Mr. Denham's question regarding the lines, state your name for the record, please. My name is Rob Blair. I'm a geologist with Kentucky Division of Water. I'm Pete Goodman. I'm the director of Division of Water. I'm also a geologist and very familiar with the zoctopher. I just the question about the delineation of the wellhead the wellhead protection area and the aquifer is settled. That decision is provided by the Division of Water based on data that's submitted to us over the years and the wellhead protection plan that's submitted by the Royal Springs Wellhead Protection Committee. That delineation and that of that wellhead protection area has been settled for a number of years. And there has been recent data that Rob will speak to that confirms that that delineation is accurate and appropriate. So there's a lot of opinions that may vary on that, but the fact of the matter is this question is a settled question because the Division of Water has the authority under the Safe Drinking Water Act, Section 1428, to make that determination, and that determination has been made. And the data will support it that Rob will show you. So I'm not speaking for or against anything. I'm just basically saying the fact of the matter is you have to depend on what's in the wellhead protection plan, the approved wellhead protection plan. And if we thought that that needed to be changed, we would talk to the wellhead protection committee at Georgetown and say we think there's other data that would change your delineation. The most recent data that we have confirms the delineation, And I think that we need to stand behind the way it is and the way it's been settled. You want to speak to that, Rob? Thank you. So what we're looking at here, first I'll say I've been with Division for 16 years. The last 12 years specifically, I've focused on car systems, groundwater tracing. I've conducted probably 100 groundwater traces myself. I've been involved with maybe as many more as an assistant. And so what we're looking at here, you can see it doesn't stand out quite as well, but that black dashed line with the Royal Springs Aquifer off to the east. There have been a couple dozen dye traces, mainly done by students at the University of Kentucky and Dr. John Threlkeld, who was at the University of Kentucky in the 70s and 80s, that established that boundary, that basin for the Royal Springs Aquifer. In about 2003, 2004, the Kentucky Geological Survey conducted the traces that you see here on the property that's the orange hatched area is the rough property boundary. Those diatraces were shown to drain away from the Royal Springs Aquifer or that spring system. And so really, without a doubt, that entire area most definitely does not drain to the Royal Spring and is not a threat to that water supply. But it does go to the Cane Run watershed. It does go into the cane run. It hits that spring, is on a tributary to cane run, and eventually it will drain to cane run itself. Thank you, sir. Any other questions for that? How long ago were those dye tests taken? The original dye tests that were done to delineate the main part of the aquifer started in the late 70s and were probably completed. I think they were published in 1982. and then the two that you see up on the screen right now were 2003-2004. Thank you. Excuse me. While he's got that map of... Excuse me. Come on up. First of all, Mr. Buckhead, hold on. Hold on just a second. Are you finished? Is there any other questions for this gentleman right here? Any other questions for me? Okay. We have a little decorum here, Mr. Buckhead. That's fine. I understand that. But while I've got a picture, because I don't have a picture showing that, and his where his dotted line, if you look up towards the top, and I don't have a pointer, you can see two slight red spots just to the left of the railroad track. Those are my barns. And the vein that's feeding my well goes straight north. And if you go past those two barns just about another couple, 300 feet, his dotted line, my veins would probably go right over into the aquifer. Thank you, sir. I finally got something that shows you what I'm saying. You can have a seat if you all can. Mr. Denham, because you all still have the floor. The opposition has a floor for a little bit longer, so come up, respond. They've talked to you about tests that were run several years ago. There are new technologies that are better used. One of them is ground-penetrating radar. You could use radioactive isotopes. There are a lot of things that could be done, that should be done, to establish this. While I was doing a little research, I read that a dairy operation in Wisconsin contaminated the water, and over 100 people died, and several thousand were ill because of this. So I think this is something that shouldn't be settled on something that was decided by somebody 20 years ago or something that was decided by four back holes on the top of the hill. There should be a lot more research done on it, and I would suggest that somebody go see these people in the Kentucky Geologic Survey that did this work. And I think it was done about five years ago. So that's probably the latest thing that we have. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Gentleman. Mr. Williamson, we'll give you one more shot, and then we'll – this gentleman has been waiting very patiently and would like to hear him. Just like getting my question answered about impermanent parking lots, should it not have catch basins and filter to protect non-point source pollution coming off the parking lots, oil, antifreeze, all the types of things that come out of these trucks, and that somebody would just verify if you should or shouldn't. Dr. Higgins can speak to that. Okay, so at the horse park we did some pervious pavements. Pervious meaning water infiltrates through the pavement. We did some pervious concrete, demonstrated some of that. There's also some pervious pavers that were done. No offense to Doug Gooch or any civil engineer here, but see, that's why we're doing this agricultural stuff. When you move into an agricultural situation, you can't just take a civil engineering idea like pervious pavement and just put it in like it's in a parking lot. When it's in an agricultural system, like what horses are, so on and so forth, you've got to modify it slightly. So yes, there were some pervious pavements that were done at the horse park that actually clogged up because of class I sand got into it. There was a lack of maintenance. and that type of thing that was done to it. We've also indicated that we might do some demonstrations, small sites of pervious pavement, but not pavement itself. We were actually looking at pervious pavers, which drain better. We were looking at doing some of those as a demonstration, small in some of the visitor area parking lot of the stockyards. It's not set in stone. It's something we may do. Regarding the issue of renovating a basin coming off of an impervious area, as far as the stockyards design goes, there is a settling basin that is planned which will catch the solids. The large particles that will be cleaned out with a backhoe on a periodic basis, that's part of the maintenance. As far as the sand bed infiltration systems, yes, there is some maintenance that's associated with that that needs to be done depending on what kind of solids goes into it. Since you have a settling basin prior to the sand bed filters, that will take care of and alleviate a lot of that long-term maintenance. Does that make sense? It does. I want to make sure it makes sense to Mr. Williamson over there. I'm trying to get him to put the picture of him. These right here, you see those drains? Should they have... Mr. Williamson, if you want to come up to the mic and ask the question, please do so. If you've got something specific, but not from out there, please. This is the horse park. The reason I'm doing this is a water issue. Those are coming off the main parking lot. Should that have a catch basin is my question. These people here are being required to put all these catch bases to protect the drinking water, and they're not even in, according to you, are not in the watershed. This is right over top of the aquifer. And my question for public drinking water, Ben's were here, and you've got these experts. In my opinion, there should be some kind of catch base. I think that's outside of the scope of this meeting. It is outside of the scope of this meeting. It's about the horse park, and it's not germane to what we're doing here today, Mr. Williamson. So I can't speak to the drinking water at Kentucky. If you have something specific to this case, state it, and we'll be happy to try to get your answer for it. But I want you to stick to the case that's in front of us right now, please. Okay. The case is that these people have talked about how far it went downtown, about their activity. It's about all this about protecting drinking water. Can you answer that? Well, I think they've answered that pretty well, and they can respond to that if you'd like for them to. They've already – what exactly, Mr. Williamson – I'm a little confused. I guess I'm asking, why is the Kentucky State Horse Park, which is a state park, doesn't have to come in front of this body? I can't answer that. Why doesn't it have to come in front of the whale head protection? I can't answer that. I can't answer that. This gentleman has been – sir, did you want to say something? Please come to the mic and introduce yourself for the record. My name is Stephen Price. I'm a horticulturist. Some mention has been made here today of the University of Kentucky as a credential. I studied horticulture at the University of Kentucky. I've been working in horticulture all my life. Horticulture obviously has a market competitor in meat. and that's why I'm here today. I'm protecting my sector of the food market, which is horticulture produce. And I'd like to ask you before I continue, do you have any policy about taking breaks? We've been here now over two hours. I'll tell you, why don't you finish your comments? How long are you going to be here, Mr. Price? And we do take breaks from time to time. Do you want to continue? Well, if you wouldn't mind, I would like you to, if we could take a five-minute recess. We can certainly. I need to phone my job and tell them that I'm not going to make it to work. Well, I'll tell you what we'll do, Mr. Price. We'll take a five-minute break, and we'll come back here at about 3.55. How about that? Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, if I could ask you to take your seats, please. Very good. If I could have your attention, I'd like to make a comment, and that is that thus far I've not heard any organized opposition. I've heard no valid point that's germane to this case. And I just want to, Mr. Price, I just want to make sure that if you are in opposition to this project, you're welcome to say whatever you like. But I also want to caution the other speakers that I've not heard anything that is relevant to opposing the case that's in front of you. And I want to stick to the case. I don't want to talk about the horse park. I don't want to talk about other wells. I want to talk about this case specifically because that's not been addressed by anybody from the opposition. So with that said, please proceed, Mr. Price. Thank you. I'm looking at this agenda for the Board of Adjustment meeting that I received when I came in. I'm looking at item 3, sub-item C. It says that variance appeals, as required by CARES 100-243, in consideration of variance appeals before the granting or denying of such variance, the Board must find that the granting of the variance will not adversely affect public health. and on page 3 of the same agenda, your staff wrote here into this agenda that there would be no adverse public health hazard. This is item D, sub-item 2, sub-item 3. It says it will not constitute a nuisance by creating, among other things, a public health hazard. And I want to call your attention, I'd like to call the attention of Mr. Akers, if he's still here, or maybe left. Your attention to a study that's required by federal law every five years. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, in conjunction with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, is required by federal law to update the national standards for nutrition. The current 215 to 220 standards were just issued last year, and they've been issuing this, as I say, every five years for, I don't know, maybe, I don't know how many years, but every time it comes out, the recommendation for healthy nutrition has been repeatedly the reduction of meat and dairy products and an augmentation or an increase of fruit, vegetables, and cereals, or grain products in the American diet. And I'm going to read to you from the current... This is available. If you want to see it, you can see it online. That's where I got it. Mr. Price, again, what does this have to do with this conditional use permit and this variance that we're talking about today? If the federal experts on nutrition recommend less meat and more vegetables. We're not here to discuss nutritional values and what the federal government says. That is not pertaining to this issue. then there are plenty of other nutritional authorities, all of whom concur that the American population is beset with obesity and the American population needs to not only consume more vegetables, fruit, and grains, but if I may continue, the same study that I just cited links public health in the United States to physical activity. The physical activity that it takes to produce vegetable crops, fruit crops, and grain crops on a small domestic homestead scale provides not only a superior health product, a food product, to what Mr. Akers wants us to consume. Mr. Price, are you trying to say that one of the things we have to find is that this does not harm the health and welfare to prove the conditional use, and that somehow that beef automatically precludes us from finding that condition satisfied? I'm saying that all health authorities that I know of warn against fact. I understand that, sir. What I'm trying to ask is, is the point you're making that we need to deny this petition because beef cattle is bad for people to eat, and by doing this we're encouraging the unhealth welfare of the citizenry? One more time. I don't want to make a mistake. Please repeat the question. I guess if you could nail down your point a little bit more concisely so we can put it on the record and then let other people speak is what I'm asking. Are you saying that one of the conditions of us approving this use, conditional use permit, is for us to find there is not going to be an adverse public health and that somehow by the fact that they process the sale of cattle, we're encouraging bad public health and that's why we should deny this permit? Yeah, your staff recommends approval. No, I understand that. Your staff said there will be no health adverse health consequences, but your staff is not an expert on health. And I'm saying yes, that any commerce promoting meat and dairy and eggs, chicken, any animal product that contains fat is less than the optimum food and is less than what... Mr. Price, I understand what you're saying. I'm trying to help. I just want to get it on the record concisely of what your point is. Because we have how many more minutes left for the opposition? We actually have about ten. We have ten more minutes for the opposition, and I want to give an opportunity for other people to speak. In addition, if anyone else wants to speak in opposition. Mr. Price, Mr. Price, you address us. You don't address the crowd. Do you have anything else that you'd like to add? Yes, sir. I sure do. Do you want to speak in opposition? Mr. Price, I'm going to give you the opportunity to sum up your comment, because, again, I can't speak to the nutritional value. You're talking about your point is that beef is an adverse effect to the public health, is what is basically the point that Mr. Gross is trying to get you to agree with. Is that what you're— He's got it right. That's my point. Furthermore, I would say—let me just say this. Mr. Akers told me, I talked to him on the phone the other day he was very generous with his time he let me talk with him and he explained to me as a Red and the Herald Leader he has obtained a promise of tax subsidies from the town of Lexington and I think already has been granted tax incentives from the state of Kentucky and the point I'm trying to make is that such tax incentives, public tax incentives or inducements to the meat industry is unfair to vegetarians, vegans. I don't know if you know what a vegan is. A vegan is somebody who eats no animal products. Unfair to vegetarians, vegans, not least of all, animal lovers. If we love animals, do we want to confine them, force them to breed, and to be slaughtered? No thanks. So I'm saying to you that this tax subsidies and tax incentives and inducements for this project are unfair to vegetarians, vegans, animal lovers, fruitivores like me, people who eat a lot of fruit, horticulturists who market horticulture products, fruit growers like me who market a lot of fruit products, who try to, truck farmers, small-scale, self-sufficient homesteaders. This stockyard, the meat industry, the commercial meat industry in general, competes against us. And to support it with tax incentives, public tax incentives, either whether it be from the town of Lexington or from the state of Kentucky, is unfair to this population. And I would say that Mr. Akers is apparently gone. Oh, here he is. Okay, I'm sorry. May I ask Mr. Akers a question quickly? Certainly, Mr. Rice. Mr. Akers, you spoke about the clean roof water. Is any of that roof water intended for consumption by livestock? We haven't planned that, no. Well, that is typical. That is one potential use of some of that water. I'm sorry? That is one potential use of some of that water. Yeah, it sure is. And the fact that they have not considered that clean, potable water for livestock is an example of inefficient planning. And this whole project is inefficient on a grand scale. If I understand it correctly, this stockyard will ship beef to processors or to feedlots in the Midwest. You tell me if I'm wrong. But if these beef animals go to feedlots in other locations and from there to slaughterhouses and from slaughterhouses. Mr. Price, look over here at us. Address us, please. Okay, I'm sorry. I know someone else wants to have an opportunity to speak in opposition to this, and I'd like for you to sum up your remarks because we've allowed you to speak. And, again, it's not really germane of what we're talking about here as far as the opposition to this case. And I can understand the nutritional value of what you're trying to do. One of the things that I think that Bluegrass Stockyards is doing, They're even talking about having a farmer's market out there. You might have an opportunity to sell vegetables and fruit and all kinds of things. I think that what they're doing is very comprehensive. But, Mr. Price, sum up your point, please. To answer your suggestion, Mr. Stumbo, I walk my products to market. I don't drive, and the reliance of this program, this project on motor transport, is going to increase the noise, as one gentleman said. It's going to increase, as Wendell Berry says, and I don't know if you know Wendell Berry, but he writes a lot of books about farming. He says, right now we have to have gasoline to eat. I don't want to need gasoline to eat. I can produce what I consume on my own property and everybody else can do the same. And this project defeats that purpose. Thank you, Mr. Price. Thank you. Thank you. Yes, sir. State your name for the record, please. Yes. My name is Tom Dugan. I'm a professional geologist. I operate here in the state. I own and operate a company, Bluestone Geologic, and we specialize in mapping in karst. So that's really where my interest begins. And I've got quite an extensive experience out at the horse park. We've done a number of geophysical studies to try to understand better the karst that's out there. And granted, we can all understand that that blue line that's drawn on – how do we advance this? Are you going to advance it for me? Okay. Okay. This is a map that we've all seen, and I think now the big question, And the question in my mind is whether or not the facility is located within the Royal Springs Drainage Basin. And what I've shown here is, and this is based on a topographic map that often we geologists use as sort of our reference maps. And I show there in the black sort of house-shaped, the bluegrass stockyards property and where they're proposing both the building and the parking facilities off to the east. But more importantly, I show in that green line the basinal divide, at least based on what die tracing has been done to date. And again, referring to some of the die traces, these were done in 2004 or 2005, so they're at least 11 or 12 years old. Whether or not that's significant is part of maybe the questioning I have, is maybe we need a more current die trace. It is the industry standard to define groundwater flow, but there's another industry standard that I utilize, and that's called geophysics. And within the geophysics, there's a technique called electric resistivity. This is a case of a profile we ran at the horse park just in the fall of last year to better define the Royal Springs Aquifer. In this case, it's about an 800-foot profile, and what it does and is designed to do is map what is really a very complex network, being the karst at the Royal Springs or some of the other basins that have been mapped geophysically and with the die tracing techniques that have been used to better understand flow. So we all understand that the flow, and I think it was talked about before, it's really been researched extensively starting in the mid-'70s with Dr. Threlkill at UK. Dye tracing has shown it to be a very extensive, I think it's over 11 or 12 miles long, the extent of the Royal Springs Basin beginning in Lexington, as I think people have already talked about, and extending and discharging at Royal Springs, where we all know Georgetown gets its drinking water from, or a good portion of it. And basically, what my expertise is, is to define what I always call the good and the bad. And typically, clients I work for either hire me to map a car system for the good part of it being potential, groundwater source for irrigation, livestock watering, a number of reasons that they would utilize the water that actually pumps through these underground flow systems. But the negative side of it is the sinkholes. I think we're all pretty familiar with what happened down at the Bowling Green Corvette Museum. We've all seen that video. But basically, I try to get in front of projects, be it something like the one here we're talking about, designed to be placed in a karst environment. And I try to map and find the bad aspects of karst, which are sinkhole potential sites. Basically, nobody really wants to invest the money and build over top of a cave system that's close to collapsing. So getting back to the specifics of the property here, this is another map. We use the geologic quadrangles, which are another way to represent, in this case, the geology at the surface mapped by geologists over the course of 30 years in the 60s and 70s primarily. But here it shows, again, the site, the bluegrass stockyard, that black box and triangle. and the two things to really look at here are the fault which is that black dashed line i don't know if this has got a pointer or not i suppose it does do you know what the pointer is this little red one oh you got this okay gotcha Right by the chair. Oh, I've got to hold it. Okay, well, this is a fault that's been mapped through the area. It's dashed because it's inferred, which basically means they have, it's suggested based on the outcropping that they looked at and also by the offsetting of the bedrock itself. So a fault is, in layman's terms, a place where the bedrock has been broken naturally. but associated with folding typically is fracturing. And all of these make for avenues. And back to the point, again, at hand is the geology in the area of the bluegrass stockyards is limestone. It's karst, but it's also folded and fractured. So given that scenario, the need to understand subsurface flow, underground movement, is even more important, I think. so back to some of the other images i got now this i took just two days ago and it's ironworks pike here in the foreground on the very upper left is the railroad spur that's been talked about so i'm looking north essentially at the outcropping here of the bedrock on the south side of of the property there at the bluegrass stockyard so So the point of interest, and the reason I took the picture is it was just taken two days ago, is we're seeing, and this is a close-up of the same area, where we've got a couple of karst indicators or erosional evidences for karst. And in this case, what we see are a horizontal bedding plane with water leaching out of it, and there's also a vertical fracture here. So the darker area here is water, water that's moved along the bedding planes and along vertically, along the fractures, to say that just two days ago, you know, the subsurface was active. There were things going on and do go on and change the conditions periodically over time. Another reason I'm thinking we probably need to update the data on the die tracing. It's 12, 13, 14 years late or historical here. So this is the same fracture, which is now shown on the south side of Ironworks Pike, again, where the railroad crosses over top. So it's very pertinent in that it's site-specific. It shows that this fracture is a preferred flow path, which I've found. Typically, it's very, very common that karst and groundwater flow is controlled either by fracturing, falding, and or solutioning. So, again, getting back to some of these examples, my company has done in mapping karst. In this case, it was a site over near Fort Knox at Radcliffe where I wanted to show this one because it's an example of groundwater flow that does not necessarily match the surface slope. So again, that green line, the line that everybody's talking about, the watershed boundary, that was the blue line that was on the planning diagram. This is based on primarily some older dye tracing, but it also conforms to the topographic ridgeline, which at times, karst movement does indeed do that. You have movement especially at the surface of the contact between the soil and the bedrock. Very typically, that surface will follow the slope of the ground. a downhill slope of the ground, often you'll have that bedding plane or that plane between the soil and the bedrock, which I've indicated here by this black line, will be a straight line that conforms to the slope of the surface. But in this case, I wanted to throw this up here because basically it shows that the groundwater or the surface slope is off to the right, these black arrows, But instead, we have groundwater, which are the blue arrows, that at times conform to that same, in this case, southeasterly, I think, but essentially slope and groundwater movement, so subsurface movement, off to the right. But then here we see that there is a disruptance in that overall right flow direction, in this case by a sinkhole throat. I wanted to go back to that other diagram, which was, this is the one from the Radcliffe property. But basically, the slope to the right, and here you've got the groundwater moving at a depth of about 20 feet, plus or minus. And then it enters a fractured portion of the limestone, and then starts moving back in the opposite direction. So the main point of this slide is to say that not always do we have a conforming nature of surface water movement to the subsurface or the karst groundwater flow. and just to get back to this topographic map that I started with, the point here is that the majority of the basinal divide or the green line that's shown drawn across this map is based on the surface water divide. So water on the right side of this green line moves to the right to the Royal Springs Basin on the left side of the line, moves to the west. And basically, this is a surface water divide with unknown, really, underground flow directions in the specific area of the Bluegrass stockyards. So the reason I've come here today is it's not in opposition. It's not as a proponent for the stockyards. is basically in search of more information. I've seen too many cases where, and I'll move ahead to, I've seen too many cases where after the fact, a feature like the sinkhole collapse at the Corvette Museum happened, and everybody wants to know why did it happen. Well, I'm being hired by clients who want to know ahead of time. So proactively wanting to assure that their investment in whatever the construction may be is going to be a sound one. Not to be too humorous there, but basically this is an example of a school building down in Oakland, another karst environment, highly karst, fairly close to actually the Bowling Green Corvette Museum, where this corner of the building was suffering a good bit of subsidence. The floor was cracking. The walls were dropping. and in our mapping right next to the wall we picked up on a huge air pocket. So again, another aspect of Karst is you have really active systems. A dye trace that was done 12 years ago said something, but I think number one, we need a more current one, and number two, I think we need to utilize some equipment like this Sting, and that's what all these were. These were profiles generated from electric resistivity, and the method in the system is called a super sting. And it would allow, I think, the stockyards, owner-operators, and or anybody else who wants to do this proactive mapping, some information to either base groundwater flow or the stability of a potential building they're going to build. Does anyone have any questions for the speaker? Thank you very much. You're welcome. Mr. Lear, we've given the opposition their time, and would you like to respond? Mr. Price, you're going to have to hold on to that thought. Mr. Lear? Ask for support. Yes, sir. What I'd like to do is have them go first. If you have some folks in support, I know the mayor wanted to make some comments, too. I would rather let them go, and then I'll wrap up. Is that all right? That'd be fine, Mr. Lear. Would you please come up and state your name for the record? Sir. Good afternoon, Mr. Chairman, members of the commission. My name is Tom Prather. I'm the mayor of Georgetown. I want to thank you for this hearing opportunity, and also thank you for your remarkable patience today. These public processes are important, but sometimes they do take a little while. Mr. Chairman, just in case you need it for the record, I do have a copy of Mr. Denham's letter that he referenced. If you all would like it for your record, I'd be glad to provide it for you. Sure. first off i'd like to say that i'm not here by myself i've got some folks with me scott county judge executive george lesby is with me as is our director of georgetown municipal water and sewer service bob willhite and i think ever since we saw the smoke from the stockyards back on january the 30th we've been working together in scott county because we thought we would probably be coming to this day and we come to you today as your neighbors from the north our primary concern is that of our aquifer and of course the aquifer recharge area and that's that's our responsibility to make sure that we passionately protect that environmental resource that's been so important to our community for this is our 225th birthday so we've relied on that source for quite some time i also want to make make clear up front mr chairman that that we understand how important our agricultural heritage is in scott county and in central kentucky we enjoy a very strong agricultural heritage it's who we are much like Faheya County we have an emerging manufacturing base we have other emerging business types and sectors but at our core at our heart we're still an agricultural community so I want to preface all my remarks with with an acknowledgement of how important our agricultural community is the fact that Georgetown and Scott County would have concerns about the condition of the Royal Spring and its aquifer is actually a long-established precedent for us. Going all the way back to the time that the University of Kentucky created the Coldstream Research Park, we've been aware that even that acreage was directly over our aquifer. Given our concerns at that time, just for historical reference, Mr. Chairman, we worked closely with the University of Kentucky all the way up to the President's office. to get our concerns addressed about the Coldstream. They put in place design requirements for Coldstream that eventually addressed our concerns, and it allowed us to appear before the Urban County government and actually endorse the zone change that was required for the Coldstream Research Park. So we've been at this for a very long time. We were actively engaged 10 or 11 years ago at the first effort for the stockyards to move to this proposed site. And what a difference 10 years makes. What I can say is that the effort 10 years ago appeared to be ill-conceived and very clumsily presented. It, in our opinion, wasn't handled very well. If I contrast that to today's approach and our experience with Bluegrass Stockyards in terms of us doing our required due diligence, I'd like to point out that Mr. Akers and his staff have been absolutely professional and transparent in their dealings with us. So it's been a real assist to us doing the due diligence that we think is required. We've been focused solely on that due diligence to ensure the protection of the aquifer and to make sure that we don't trade an economic opportunity for an environmental problem. And as a good neighbor, we want to be in that role. We've also encouraged our citizens, and we appear here today, not driven by fear or emotion on this issue. And it's clear from the speakers you've heard from that people feel very passionately about this. We share that same depth of passion, but we want to underpin our passion for protecting our Royal Spring by focusing on the facts, on the science, on the engineering, and the technology involved. And that's what we've been doing. We wanted you to know that we started our due diligence with evaluating water quality data from the town branch. and your urban county government provided that data to us. It turns out that that data is completely inconclusive. We just couldn't tell that much from it, other than the town branch has a few problems, but that's the neighborhood that it lies in. We saw no evidence that the stockyards contributed to any ills of the town branch. the important thing for us there was that that your government here in lexington was completely transparent with us and provided us the test data so the the transparency was important even though the data itself turned out to be not that helpful since we couldn't look backwards uh and and and get uh assurance about the operation of the stockyards we've looked forward we've looked at we've looked at the site plan, and we're very appreciative that the site plan now shifts that proposed facility to an area that is much less likely to impact our aquifer. As has been referenced by others, we've spent a lot of time looking at the operational plan, the dry manure handling procedures that they put in place. uh... we've worked with the division of water and understood uh... what needs to be in place from a groundwater protection point of view uh... and have gotten assurances from the stockyard management that they will meet those division of water requirements for groundwater protection uh... it's it's been referenced but we're also delighted that bob will height the director of our water and sewer company has been invited to sit on the design team that will ultimately review all of the design drawings, the construction drawings, and how this facility is eventually built. So we get an ongoing seat at that table beyond just the approval of this particular board. And finally, yesterday, we took a field trip to Stanford. uh kevin atkins and and commerce lexington uh worked with mr acres uh we took about 20 people from scott county and about 20 people from fayette county we actually met at the old stockyard location so that we could see the scope of that operation we loaded the bus and drove around that facility then went to stanford where we we first drove around the perimeter of the facility to get another idea of the scope since it's almost exactly the site or the size of what's proposed for the new location. We then spent about an hour and a half or two hours in the stockyard facility both watching the sales operation and having a tour of the holding pins, the sale area, and the eventual loading for departure. What I can tell you is if you have a chance to visit that facility. I'm not sure I'd take my wife on a date, Bill, but it is amazing in its operational complexity and how smoothly it works. It was very impressive. The fact that immediately outside of the barn area, you didn't hear noise. Underneath of the roof area, there was plenty of noise. We didn't get much odor even when we were inside of the barn. You saw very little manure. The dry handling method seems to work. So it was very helpful for us to visit the site to see the operations as they would be done here at a new location in Fayette County. I also want to just mention that while that field trip was beneficial from a technical point of view, it also had immense benefit from a regional point of view. I can never remember a time that the citizens of Scott County and Fayette County joined together to spend a business day going to evaluate a business opportunity and address environmental concerns. So I'm delighted that we had that opportunity, and hopefully we can mirror that going into the future. The due diligence that we've done, that we think it's our responsibility to do, leads me to our conclusion today. That I'll get to the point with you, Mr. Chairman. Our conclusions make a couple of very important assumptions. that I want to give to you first. And also one caveat that I think will be very important for our future conversations about this project. First off, I'm assuming that the site will not be expanded in the future into the recharge area, as has been identified by long existing sites. That's not the operational plans for the stockyard, but I just feel as though I need to say that. Number two, we assume that the design and construction will be completed as has been assured and shown to us in the construction plans and the operational plan. I believe that will be the case. I've seen that this company does what they say they're going to do. But it's important to us that the plans be built as we're approving them. And finally, will be something that I've had a chance to talk to Mr. Akers about in real detail, and that is the continued maintenance, the cleaning, the monitoring. The checklist that's in their operational plan that you all have a copy of shows activities that have to be done daily, weekly, monthly, annually. And I know those tasks will be handled well in the first year or the first couple of years. What I've challenged Mr. Akers about is the discipline to make sure that that type of operational efficiency and operational discipline will be the case in five years and ten years down the road. So I want you to know that we've had those conversations, we've gotten those reassurances, but I just want to state them for the record as well. That's a part of this. with those important assumptions i can tell you today that it is my belief and judge lesby i think will will back me here we've operated hand in glove on this that the bluegrass stockyards can be rebuilt on the proposed site without negative consequences for the royal spring and its aquifer. It took me a long time, Barry, to get to the point where I could make that statement with confidence. But from everything I've seen, everything that the stockyards have worked with us toward indicates that we believe it can be built without negative consequences. The caveat that I'd like to add. It may not be a part of your consideration, but it is absolutely critical to this development is how we address the need for sanitary sewer. And you've heard in the staff's presentation that there are three options under consideration for the sanitary sewer to be handled. Frankly, it's my opinion that the horse park is probably the least attractive of those three options. once we decide once you decide that the stockyards can be built in this location without adverse effect to the neighbors or the horse park or the environment then our attention shifts to this sanitary sewer question and it frankly becomes the issue capital t-h-e issue We have an existing environmental problem with the Ponderosa and Spindletop trailer parks that are immediately adjacent to the proposed site. I'm trying to make sure this is germane. 479 units that operate off of a package plant that is failing, frequently inoperable, and dumps raw sewage into the Cane Run watershed. One-third of those 479 units are in Fayette County. The balance are in Scott County. However, all of that watershed comes to Scott County. I believe it has been ranked by the Bluegrass Area Development District as the single worst environmental concern in 17 counties for the last three years. I believe if we'll look closely at that scenario, it also represents a real humanitarian crisis that exists on the county line between two of Kentucky's most prosperous counties in the year 2016. We've got to find a solution. The ultimate solution, Mr. Chairman, can be if we work out the sanitary sewer, if that line can come toward Georgetown, we might end up jointly, Fayette and Scott County, solving our greatest environmental problem at the same time we facilitate a new development that will be important economically. Mr. Mayor, what would that take? Would it take a bigger line? What would have to transpire to make that happen? There are just some fascinating public policy questions around the sewer line consideration and the way the stockyards will handle their sanitary sewer needs. Georgetown and Scott County are committed to maintaining a green belt between ourselves and Lexington. We think it's good planning. We think it's what makes us a unique place. So we're committed to that green belt. So we're very concerned about how we size that line so we don't inadvertently promote development in the green belt we're trying to protect. We have long said from a public policy perspective that to solve the trailer park environmental issue, that we would only size the sewer line to address only the existing environmental problem so that we don't promote other development in the green belt. We would, however, be willing to have discussions about slightly increasing that possible flow to take the minimal amount of human waste that the stockyards will generate. And their operational plan calls for them, rather than having two spiky days of sewage and then a dry period, that makes for a bad sewer customer. The ideal sewer customer is one like the stockyards plan is to hold that solid waste and then release it at a consistent rate over seven days a week. That becomes the ideal sewer customer. The reason we haven't solved this problem yet, Mr. Chairman, is purely funding. We've got a state grant for about $1,075,000. Mr. Wilhite has calculated the actuarial value of the future customer base from the trailer park, and that will enable us to probably make another million-dollar contribution to this project. All in all, it's probably a $3.5 to $4 million project. We're still trying to put the pieces in place to raise the necessary capital. If we can work with the stockyards and the city of Lexington, since a third of this trailer park issue resides in Fayette County, If we can talk about some formula of capital contributions to the sewer line expansion, then we might have a regional solution that not only takes care of an existing business opportunity, but addresses our gravest environmental concern. Thank you, Mayor. Does anybody have any questions for Mayor Prather? Thank you very much. I'd like to ask anybody else who wants to speak in favor, if you'd please come up. State your name for the record. Good afternoon. My name is Kathleen Burke. I am the Director of Education and Outreach at Fayette Alliance, and I am here on behalf of Fayette Alliance, our Chair, Don Robinson, who regrettably could not be here today, its Board of Directors, and our 21,000 constituents countywide. In furtherance of our mission to grow our city and promote our farms in Lexington, we are here to support the Bluegrass Stockyards application for a conditional use permit to construct and operate an agricultural market and a variance to reduce the required setback distance from a residence on another property. We applaud Bluegrass Stockyards for creating a site development plan that not only adheres to quality design, but also sets the standard for environmental stewardship for stockyards across the country. Bluegrass Stockyards has a proven track record of environmental stewardship. At its previous site on Lyle Avenue, the Bluegrass Stockyards was located right on the banks of Town Branch Stream. Despite challenges presented by the 100-year-old facility and its close proximity to our city's founding waterway, Bluegrass Stockyards complied with all local and state ground and stormwater requirements. Not once did the site have a water quality violation. We are confident that Bluegrass Stockyards will create a facility that is state-of-the-art in its use of green technology and environmental safeguards, and our support rests in part on the expectation that the level of environmental stewardship shown at the prior site will continue at the new facility. It is also important to note the economic benefits Bluegrass Stockyards brings to Lexington-Fayette County. In 2015, the Lexington site of Bluegrass Stockyards sold approximately 106,000 animals for a total of 204 million gross sales receipts. Bluegrass Stockyards is to the cattle industry what Keeneland and Fasic Tipton are to our equine industry. The USDA named the Lexington market as a primary point of price discovery, meaning that the stockyard right here in Lexington sets the price of cattle across the entire eastern seaboard. Continuing to have bluegrass stockyards located in Bayek County is key to the economic health of our signature agricultural industry and a testament to the quality of livestock that is raised right here in the bluegrass. With this in mind, we respectfully request that you grant the bluegrass stockyards application for a conditional use permit to construct and operate an agricultural market and a variance to reduce the required setback distance from a residence on another property. Thank you. Thank you. Any questions? Good afternoon, Mr. Chair, members of the board. I'm Jacob Wahlberg, and I'm here today on behalf of the Sexton family. We had provided a letter in support. I certainly will not rehash that, as I know we've had a long day. One thing that my letter did not address that I just wanted to bring the board's attention to and get into the record is we did not realize, literally until the start of this meeting, that we were the closest residential property and one of the structures that would necessitate the variance. I just wanted to unequivocally let you know that that knowledge does not change our support, and while I know the board has to make findings beyond does the neighbor object, the neighbors do not object to the variance request. Very good. Thank you, Mr. Waller. Actually, there's a line back there if you want to join it. Sir, go ahead and state your name for the record. I'm Warren Beeler, the Executive Director of the Governor Bevin's Office of Agricultural Policy. We will tell you we got all the calls, too, in terms of things that people were concerned about. Senator Parkinson's been to the Richmond stockyards in terms of checking it out, and we strongly support the rebuilding of this stockyard. It's an economic engine. We feel like they've jumped through every hurdle and done everything that they can possibly do to be a good neighbor environmentally. We think that not only will they build themselves a show place that we can all be proud of, but on top of that, I think they will enhance the horse park rather than hinder the horse park as they're talking about a viewing demonstration area, which will be great for field trips and for kids that could go and understand about the livestock industry. We will tell you the Bluegrass folks are high-quality businessmen. They're folks who, when they tell you something, that's the way it'll be. And they've been in business a long time and been an asset to Fayette County in Kentucky. And I don't know if you understand, but the people sitting in this room are who's who of agriculture in the state of Kentucky. And so just to give you a point of how valuable this facility is to agriculture is off the charts. So we strongly support and we encourage the board to approve this permit so that we can basically start history and economics and education all over again there in the edge of Fayette County. Thank you. Thank you very much. Always good to give preference to the governor's office. Members of the board, my name is Bob Barton. I am a resident of Fayette County, but I'm also with my brother, have a farm adjoining Ironworks Farm. Our farm relies entirely in Scott County, where as the mayor has just explained to you, we're the green belt. We join the property on their northern side. As an adjoining neighbor and as someone downwind, I wanted to make sure I made a public statement saying that we support this site very much. Agricultural markets need to be in the rural area, not only for the transportation purposes, but also certainly for the safety and security of the animals. It hasn't been brought up, but every once in a while an animal might get loose either loading or unloading, be it a cow or a horse or someone will leave a gate open. It's a whole lot easier to corral that animal safely and return it to its pens if you're on a 120-acre fenced-in farm than if you're downtown. So I think that's, again, that'll happen here at this site. I farm in the Royal Springs discharge area. I know how important that is. I have a well in the area. It's 47 feet to the water, so it's not that far down before you get to the drinking water. There's a big stream down there. I've seen pictures. We've put cameras down the well, and there's a lot of water there. I think they pointed out that they're outside the discharge area. I would like to pinpoint, though, one similar situation that's only a quarter of a mile away that is in the aquifer that's done an excellent job, and that's Hagrid-Davis-McGee Clinic. You're all aware of that. the stockyards is mirroring their defense against runoff and waste. Hager Davis and McGee have a water basin down next to Ironworks Row where they collect all the discharge water before it goes into the mainstream there in front of the horse park. They keep their manure dry. They stockpile it but then haul it off at least weekly where it's put back on the soil. You know, I'm using the wrong term here. manure, it's actually organic fertilizer. If we mix it with a little bit of wood chips, we can sell it to you as consumers mulch. So, I mean, actually, this is what the stockyards does. They make mulch or they put it back on the soil. It was pointed out earlier that how important Fasig, Tipton, and Kingland are to the horsemen. Let me assure you that Bluegrass Stockyards is just as important to the livestock families in Fayette and all of Central Kentucky. So I urge you to vote favorably for this permit. Thank you. Hello, Chairman Stumbo and members of the board. I'm Nancy Cox. I'm dean of the College of Agriculture, Food, and Environment at the University of Kentucky. And I represent a college that tries to provide comprehensive research and education efforts for all aspects of beef production and food production as well. We see our role in forums like this to advise policymakers with the best scientific and technological information. And we've heard a lot today about the best management practices that Dr. Higgins and others have demonstrated across the state. I myself have, in fact, been on several governmental task forces concerning animal production systems and the environment. So the University of Kentucky College of Ag tries to meet our role to serve this industry with the best practices and to serve the producers and consumers with a safe, affordable food product. I'm not going to repeat a lot of the earlier testimony about the best management practices involved in this project for Bluegrass Stockyard that's being proposed here, but they're state-of-the-art, and we have a lot of confidence that there's none better anywhere. I'd like to talk about one thing that hasn't been talked about quite as much, and that is that the Bluegrass Stockyards Project, as a part of Fayette County, is contributing to what we have come to call a land-based economic cluster, with the core businesses, such as the stockyards and our equine industries, serving as a cluster for all kinds of support businesses, and recently the Farm Bureau of Fayette County supported a study by Allison Davis in the Department of Ag Econ at UK where we showed that one in nine jobs in Fayette County can trace back to ag and equine, so support businesses that rise around food production and that has about a $2 billion impact on the economy. So the central location that is being proposed, remaining in Fayette County, keeps this standard of agribusiness and standard of our pasture-based landscape. And the central location and the better roads also afford safer transport for the cattle that are coming in. They don't have to travel as far. There are about 250,000 cattle in six counties around us. and so this location provides them with a better trip to market as well. So I'll conclude there in the interest of time, but to say again that the University of Kentucky team believes this Bluegrass Stockyards project is a state-of-the-art facility and very crucial to the economy of this county and the state. Thank you. Thank you, Dean Cox. Good afternoon, Chairman Stumbo and members of the board. My name is Carrie McIntosh. I'm the executive director for Fayette County Farm Bureau. I'm going to keep this short and sweet. You all have had a long day. We have submitted a letter of support. I hope that you all have that in your packets already. And for all the conditions presented by Mr. Akers and Mr. Lear and Mr. Nicholson already, we would just like to reiterate for the record that we are in support of this conditional use for the bluegrass stockyards to really relocate on onto ironworks pike thank you thank you very much i like short and sweet that's very good how about short sweet and quick that would be my name is bob quick i'm uh president ceo of cop sorry about that president ceo of commerce lexington and i too will be uh to the point um you have a letter from us stating our support of this project and we support it fully, strongly, and our whole goal is this is a huge retention project for Central Kentucky, especially Fayette County. But I do want to point out, and I said this to Jean and Joanne Barber and their owners back behind here in the room, this is historic in the sense of how many people are coming together from throughout the region, how the regions work together, not to say we haven't had our cuts and bruises along the way, but that's normal, that's healthy, and how we've all come to this position to support this project. Cattle is a a signature industry and if we want to keep that epicenter here and keep it growing keep it thriving to help the consumer then we feel this project needs to get your support and we hope it will and move it to the next step so that we can have a rebirth of something that's historic and something that's significant and if there's anything we can do in this process to help you with any additional information or support we'll be more than happy to do that and again i'm very honored to work with with these folks and to make this project, to rebirth it. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Quick. Hello. My name is Jeremy Wiles. I'm a third-generation farmer in Fayette County, and I want to take the moment to thank you guys for working on this. as the ability, the responsibility and the pride of owning the same farm that my grandfather owned, I have the ability to do that because of cattle. I could do that with cattle because there's a market for cattle, and that's because of the bluegrass stockyards. Without a market for these cattle, we could not protect the green space that brings in the thousands of tourist dollars into Fayette County every year. And I just want to urge you guys to approve this. We need a market for cattle. You see bumper stickers that say, growth destroys bluegrass forever. Not this kind of growth. This kind of growth saves our bluegrass. Because without a market for our livestock, we can't have these farms. And I urge you guys to vote for this, and I appreciate your time. Thanks for your time, sir. Good afternoon, Chairman. I'm Kyle Kelly with the Kentucky Department of Agriculture. and I just wanted to speak on behalf of Commissioner Corals. I wanted to apologize. He was not able to be here. He wanted to say thank you all for your time. He wanted to say thank you to the mayor and to the judge of Scott County and Georgetown for all the hard work and a special thank you to Jim Akers for all the time he's put in on this project. He stood with Bluegrass and Jim Akers since day one. I believe everyone's aware of that. He just wanted me to come and reiterate that he is supportive of the relocation to the Ironworks farm and he looks forward to moving forward and working with the producers and advancing agriculture. So thank you all. We appreciate that very much. Thank you. Yes, sir. I'm Dave Maples. I'm the executive director of the Kentucky Cattlemen Association here in Lexington. I've also got my vice president, Bobby Forrey, beef producer from Henry County, as well as David LeMaster, our president from Clark County, both beef producers. And short and quick, we're here wholeheartedly to support this. It's like Jeremy said a while ago, we've got to have a market for our cattle, and we've got that. You know, there's 38,000 beef producers in this state, the largest beef-producing state in the eastern United States and one of the largest in the country. And, you know, my job as an exec at the Cattlemen's Association, it is an honor and a privilege to be the head of an organization that's got so much to offer here in this state. We've got the green grass and we've got the wonderful market. And Bluegrass Stockyard is really the head of that. And I think we've got to take the opportunity to thank these people back here, Scott Butcher and Eric Barber and Austin Paul and especially my friend Gene Barber right there. I mean, guys, that guy has taken it on his shoulders. And for many, many years, he's taken the Kentucky cattle industry to a whole other level. And it's amazing what he's done and with his team. And then, of course, my buddy Jim Akers right here. You're investing in people and you're investing in farmers, but you're also going to do it with these guys that are putting their money, their time and their vision into something better for our commonwealth and i sure hope you'll go forward and and let us have a state-of-the-art educational center as well as an economic driver for rural kentucky thank you thank you mr lear i think we've i i think we've heard enough testimony and and i'd like for you to come on up and if you would sum it up and we'll give any opposition One last opportunity to make a comment, but I'd like to give you the opportunity to... I'm not going to dwell on this. I don't even have a stand for it. Just to put it in the record, but I told you at the outset, we're not in the aquifer. It's outlined in yellow. So that line, by the way, as the gentleman from the Division of Water said, is studied, researched, dietested, going back to Dr. Threlkold. And I will tell you from the first time I got involved in planning and zoning, I heard that name. He was the guru. But we're doing a state-of-the-art facility that captures all of the water. Our record speaks for itself. our record of being right next to the cane run tributary that goes through downtown and not having any negative impact on it i wish you would think about everything that's in the aquifer in lexington the vast majority of which was built many many years ago not according to best practices as we know them in 2016 they didn't know what first flush of a Rainstorm was when most of this was built, even the newer things. And even with that, the drinking water in Georgetown has apparently been preserved and protected. And congratulations to them. My point is not, gosh, look what we're already doing and we're not going to hurt it. My point is we're adopting best practices. We're not even in the aquifer. we're capturing every drop of rainwater. So I think it's important, and the gentleman before he left, I think he may have left, told me to reemphasize there is a process for establishing lines like the boundary of this aquifer. That process ends by action of the Kentucky Division of Water, and it doesn't end as a one-time event. It's studied over and over again. The most recent dye tests were not that long ago, and they confirm that from this site the water does not go into the Royal Springs aquifer recharge area. Where it will go is under the railroad tracks after it's retained, after it's filtered, after it's treated the same as the water that was before the fire leaving the site. That's best practices today. I think if you go back far enough, my first zoning case was in 1976. Believe it or not, I've got that much, I don't have any hair that I can call gray, but I've got that much history. And I would say that in about half of the cases where there have been objectors, there's been something about karst topography. If we couldn't build on karst topography in Fayette County, we should have stopped when it was just McConnell Springs. We're all on karst topography. If you take care of it, if you use best practices, it's not an issue. If it were, this whole town would have caved in not years ago but decades ago. The geology, the research, the study that underlies where that line is drawn and the wellhead protection plan, which is already in place, is solid. Nobody's really disputed that. Somebody going to some gentleman, I think he said, in some agency and getting a map that's not the official map and presenting it to you doesn't change that. A fellow across the railroad tracks that's got a well that's worried about what we'll do. And by the way, his property is north of our property and the water, when it leaves this property, flows south. We can do a lot. We can't repeal the law of gravity. Our water goes away from his well. I don't know what water comes into his well, but it's not water currently off this site, nor will it be after the development. To return to what the real issues are in this case, they are do we meet the locational criteria? Nick went through them. We do meet every one of those locational criteria. Do we meet the conditions that are in the zoning ordinance for the location of an agricultural market? We meet every single one of them to the nth degree, save the separation. Instead of 1,000 feet, we're asking for 850 feet. The people from whom we're asking for that variance have been here both by letter earlier and represented by their lawyer to say we support this. And as it happens, it doesn't appear to be an occupied nor occupiable residential structure in any event. And Mr. Gross, I wasn't checking my emails at the office. When I was on my iPhone, I was trying to find a picture that I took from the other side of the railroad tracks to show what kind of a barrier it is. If you look at the topo maps that are in the evidence, you'll see that from where the residences are that are closest, it's uphill to the railroad tracks. It's 10, 12 feet. So not only is there a railroad tracks, but they're actually looking uphill. So I'd say, and of course the trains go by, but there's an enormous amount of vegetation, so there is more than adequate barrier there, probably a better barrier than if you had 2,000 feet and nothing in between. Based on all of that and the great support we've gotten from the agricultural community, the governmental entities that you've heard from. We request that you approve this for the reasons stated by the staff in their report and subject to the conditions as enumerated by the staff in their report with which we agree. Thank you, Mr. Lear. Does anybody have any questions for Mr. Lear? I do, Mr. Lear. Another name for retention basins are silt ponds. And the purpose of silt ponds are to slow down the flow of water and collect suspended solids so that they precipitate out and collect at the bottom. Over time, those silt ponds tend to decrease in area because they build up with the solids that were collected. I heard somebody mention, and it might have been Higgins, that said that included in the plan, and I didn't notice it in the plan, but I know best practices include cleaning out those silt ponds or retention basins. So I just want to make sure on the record that it's the intent and purpose of the applicant to clean out those so that they maintain their effective purpose. May I simply adopt it as you stated it? Yes, that is the expressed intent. Thank you. Any other questions for Mr. Lear? Thank you, Mr. Lear. I think we've heard enough testimony today. Does anybody have anything to add from the opposition? Mr. Price? Mr. Price is going to give you an opportunity to respond to the case. Thank you. Excuse me. The urban Fayette County government, fortunately, Lexington Fayette County government, has an office that calls itself Reforest the Bluegrass. I wish we had such an office in Georgetown. Reforest the Bluegrass, the mission is obvious in the title of the office. They want to reforest the Bluegrass region. And the assertion that we can only preserve green space with beef and horse farming is wrong. We could have a forested bluegrass and a timber industry that would complement our historic horse industry and the liability of a relatively unhealthy food product, beef. And so to say that this project is necessary to preserve the green space we all cherish is not true. And I would urge this body to table this matter to consider all of the evidence that it has heard. And finally, I would say this. There have been a lot of verbal descriptions of what the aquifer is. And if I set up a card table here. Mr. Price, speak to the mic, please. I'm sorry. If I set up a card table here and put a bottomless aquarium on that card table and put a layer of sponge at the bottom, say a six-inch layer of sponge, and poured water on it slowly, that sponge would absorb the water to a point. But at some point, the sponge fills, and the water would begin to move laterally across the card table. And I know enough, having worked with water all my life in horticulture, I know that water, when it reaches an impervious surface, moves laterally, and unless this line that depicts the so-called aquifer discharge area, unless someone could sink an iron or a masonry curtain to below the water table, which is an infinite distance, no one can contend that water will not move laterally from any point to any other point on the water table. Thank you, Mr. Price. I appreciate that. Before it comes to it, make it very quick, and if you have something new, bring it on. Basically, and I'm Tom Dugan again, but to disagree again, to not understand exactly where that magical blue line is. And I know Mr. Lear has relied on some older documentation, but basically I do this for a living. I reestablish lines like that all the time. And what it requires is very site-specific information. And what I'm suggesting for this client to do is to basically redraw that line, because that typically is what happens when you reintroduce dye on preferential flow paths. That means identify these fractures, conduits, and faults that I referred to, and that is where the dye goes. Right there is a surficial divide that has possibly nothing to do with the groundwater or subsurface movement. So basically, I don't know, and basically, you don't know, and you don't know. So it's the facts that, again, can still be brought to bear with a little bit of science. Thank you, Mr. Dugan. I want to say we appreciate everybody's patience here today. It's been a long afternoon. We're a volunteer body up here, and we like to listen to the applicant and the opposition and certainly the staff and try to make a decision based on the information that is presented to us. I will have to say I've been, I think this is my 10th year on this board, and I don't think that I've had a more professional presentation made before the Board of Adjustment until today. Mr. Akers, I want to applaud the Bluegrass Stockyards for your work and your due diligence and echoing some of the Mayor Prather's comments. I think the cooperation, the transparency, I think being able to take this tour that you did yesterday. Mr. Quick is talking about regionalism, and I think that this is a spirit of regionalism at its highest level. And I just want to applaud Mr. Akers and Mr. Barber and the folks at Bluegrass Stockyards, Mr. Lear, and the city of Georgetown and Judge Lesby here today. It's nice to have you here. But I think that oftentimes it's very difficult to balance the economic and the environmental part of this project. And I think that you all have done a wonderful job. It's a very difficult decision because you want to make sure that the environment is going to be protected and safeguards are in place to do this. And I think that the spirit of cooperation and collaboration is probably as high as I've ever seen it in my experience here on the board. With that said, I can't speak for my colleagues, but I think that we've heard enough this afternoon from the applicant and really not very organized opposition today. I think that this has been very well done, very well thought out, very well researched, and I applaud all the efforts of all the parties that are here today. With that said, I'd like to – does anybody else have any other comment? If not, the Chair will entertain a motion. Mr. Chair, I move we approve C-2016-8 Ironworks Farms LLC requests a conditional use permit to construct and operate an agricultural market and a variance to reduce the required setback distance from a residence on another property from 1,000 feet to 800 feet in the AR zone at 4561 Ironworks Pike. based on both of staff recommendations for the conditional use permit and the divisional variance and the nine conditions. Second the motion. Mr. Forrester makes a motion and Ms. Whitman makes seconds. All in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Any opposed? Thank you all very much for your time and efforts, and good luck with the new building. Thank you. Is there any other business to come before the Board of Adjustment? I do want to mention, Mr. Glover, that our next meeting is April 29th, and we look forward to having you there. And if there is no other business, we stand adjourned. Thank you. you