Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. We'll be right back. for folks to come down oh we got fred we're good okay so i am going to call our meeting to order for the october 24th 2023 meeting of the environmental quality and public works committee our first item of the agenda is to approve the the September 12th, 2023 committee summary. I spoke with the council staff person for this committee. There are a couple minor edits that I asked her to make to the minutes, but does anyone else have any that they would like to bring up? Okay, so the changes that we discussed will be updated for the record, but I can take a motion to approve the summary. So moved. Second. I have a motion from Councilman Gray and a second from Councilmember Moneris. All in favor, say aye. Aye. Oh, sorry. Do we have any discussion on the motion? No? Okay. All in favor, say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Okay, that motion passes. Thank you, everyone. Our next item on our agenda today is the annual snow plan update, and we have our director of streets and roads, Rob Allen, for this presentation. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Council members, for the opportunity to present the annual snow and ice control plan update. For this overview, we'll talk about costs, how we look on salt, mention rankings, service levels, any changes we've made, how we're coordinating internally and externally. We'll touch upon how we do our sidewalk snow removal, staffing, and our projected schedule, how long the plan is going to take us. if you can see last year was kind of weird we had six full shifts and five partial you can see we're all over the map as far as the weather varies each event could last multiple days we did have a three-day snow around christmas last year we were stocked up very well on salt we have actually mr slayton got in on the reverse auction and got us an even better price on salt this year so we're We're pretty pleased with that. We also, and I'll touch on it, what we have in the barn and what we have budgeted. Currently we have 8,800 tons under roof. That's 7,000 at West Hickman, 1,800 at Old Frankfort Pike. You can see our salt cost is $90 and a quarter a ton. That would allow us right now to buy an additional 5,600 tons of salt if we need. So we're sitting pretty good. Route rankings, folks always have a question about this. What makes a route a particular ranking? And there are two things, traffic count and facilities. For example, we list Nicholasville Road. It's got two hospitals, a really high daily traffic count on down to, for example, Dunkirk which is a neighborhood collector has a lower traffic count and it's mostly residential but it is important to that neighborhood. This is just an example of a map that's in the snow and ice control plan, which is at lexingtonky.gov forward slash snow. This shows you the snow areas and the routes and the rankings on the roads. we have three different levels of service a typical snow is one to four inches followed by five to eight and you can see there what we do if we get five to eight inches of snow as we try to add residential streets that are additional connectors then we get to level three we will try to plow everything we can anything we can get to parking spaces downtown ADA ramps, that's when we call out contractors and it's all hands on deck. So we had one change for this year. We had Warnwood Wind, that neighborhood came into city service and we have added Warnwood Wind, which is the collector for that neighborhood, to the snow plan as a rank four. Coordination, we have an agreement with KYTC District 7 as far as sharing information, and if pandemic or anything like that should occur, we will share each other's responsibilities and try to complete the plans for both agencies, especially in the event of a staffing shortage or anything like that. We developed that a couple years ago. So worst case scenario, the commissioner will reallocate staff within divisions in the department to make sure we're fully staffed. Then for 2023, 2024, we have what's called rank 1E, which are hospitals, the jails, things like that, that just absolutely have to get done. Our goal is completion of the plan within 48 hours of the precipitation ending. Then our goal for sidewalks is within 96 hours of precipitation ending. I do need to point out here that most of the time our precipitation is gone within 48 to 72 hours. So sidewalks, no removal, and Director Carey's here for questions that I can't answer, but environmental services, parks, fire, and facilities take care of sidewalks, usually adjacent to their particular domain. And then we have over 84 miles of sidewalks within the plan that are LFUCG owned or maintained. Man of War is a good example. And then very similar to the roadways, we have a route ranking for sidewalks. That is also available as an appendix on the snow and ice control plan. That's just an example there. What they're doing for town branch, and then this is the overall map showing the rankings. and obviously it's based once again upon use, whether it's pedestrian, bicycle, school, things like that. Here's an example of the ranks and the mileage within each rank. And I know I'm going kind of fast. Staffing, we have 67 authorized CDL, which is commercial driver's license positions, which are the folks that run the plows we have 16 vacancies we have four folks hired two of them already have a cdl so that will help the critical employees are the loaders the folks that actually run the equipment that load the salt then we have five mechanics in addition to what fleet staffs the five mechanics work on snow plows and spreaders and snow equipment and this is 42 drivers split over two shifts water quality our partner division in snow removal has 29 cdl positions i'm going to quote charlie here toilets flush whether it snows or not so they have to be aware if they're helping us do stuff that they have to have people available on call to do emergency calls for sewer line maintenance but they are a big part you can see they they essentially do half the snow plan with with fewer folks than we do environmental services has five cdl positions eight general labor and those are focused on sidewalks they do have an employee that fills in for us cdl and that's fantastic the cooperation we get within the department and then we have folks that volunteer from water quality folks that aren't in sewer line maintenance parks maintenance waste management code enforcement and as i mentioned environmental services so we really appreciate those employees volunteering and helping us kind of overcome our driver shortage we had a meeting september 20th stakeholder meeting and invited lextran fayette county schools state department of transportation nobody showed up but that's not a bad thing we do have a lot of direct communication and have worked things out so we did not panic it became more of an internal stakeholders meeting which we were pretty pleased that there are no issues that our partners felt like they had to bring to us we work pretty closely for example with Lex Tran or Fayette County Schools busing communicate with them almost on a weekly basis during the winter here today doing the annual update and then tomorrow we will post the annual snow and ice control plan and as far as communications go i put out an internal email to the folks i mentioned just a bit ago directors police fayette county schools uk and the commissioner Puts out an email to a council and administration, public information for environmental quality, informs the public via socials, and then LexCol gathers the service requests and sends them to the streets and roads, and we parse them out to whichever area of operations, either water quality or streets and roads handles. As I've mentioned several times, the snow and ice control plan is on the city's website, lexingtonky.gov forward slash snow should take you there. And then what we're looking forward to, last year, was it fiscal year? Yeah. We were able to fund a route optimization study in conjunction with UK. They've already done this for the state. This is one of the applications we're looking at to help us with the lack of drivers is to become more efficient, doing more than less. And since I have been with the government almost 22 years, we have never re-examined our snow areas, our snow plan. The only thing we've really done is changed service levels. So we're really excited. They're supposed to deliver this sometime next spring, and it will be implemented next year. We're also running into an issue. Our original salt barn that was constructed in 1994 has been condemned, and instead of holding 3,000 tons of salt at our main facility, only holds 1,800. We were, in prior fiscal years, funded for design, and now with inflation, we do not have enough money to complete construction. And then, of course, a shout-out to our partners. I mentioned a bunch of them, but we couldn't pull this off. I don't think anyone realizes how many divisions and departments are involved in snow and ice control. It's as big a deal to us as a half-inch snow as, for example, a four-inch. We still have to get folks out. We still have to do night shifts and multiple things like that. But our partners, you know, code enforcement, environmental services, facilities, which is fleet, fire, GTV3, Lexcal, Parks and Rec, police, public information, both EQPW and greater public information, water quality and waste management. Thank you to you all. And I am ready for questions. Colleagues, if you have questions or comments, please sign in. Councilwoman Gray, you're up first. Thank you, Chair. Sir? On page 20, and you just mentioned the need for additional funds at this time, are you all aware of how much is needed? Commissioner or director? Yeah. It's been submitted for the fund balance conversation. The general fund portion, oh, I'll have to look it up. Thank you. Council member Savigny. Thank you, Chair. Thanks for the presentation. Sorry I was a bit late. Wasn't there another piece of technology that we approved that had something to do with measuring, it was something about measuring temperatures and different? Yes, RWIS, Road Weather Information System. Yeah, because I thought that was pretty cool. I don't know if you touched on it or not. We have yet to receive it. It's been a long and painful process of several months, but actually we're supposed to take delivery this week. And what is that supposed to do? It's actually three weather monitoring stations for roads, which will give us air temperatures, ground temperatures, road temperatures, relative humidity. It has the ability to do multiple things and hook into a bigger network. And we're going to take the first three units and put them in the West County, South County, and North Central. If folks remember the flash freeze last winter that came out of the West, this is a piece of technology that we hope will alert us earlier. We had folks in the problem areas of the North and South, but nobody to the West. We actually literally had drivers out, which is why Lexington as a whole did a little better than the rural areas and the main roads, because we were looking for snow. We just didn't know where it was. So this will help us. And once again, it overcomes the lack of drivers, you know, boots on the ground, whereas we can refer to technology. The commissioner could tap in if she needs to. But we're hoping to take delivery of that this week. Yeah, and how many drivers do you feel like we're down at this point? I can't speak for water quality, but we are down at least 12 drivers in streets and roads. Okay. Which would work out to six per shift. Okay. Thank you so much. That was great information. I appreciate your help. Council Member Lynch. Thank you, Chair. Thank you for your presentation. It was very informative. My question is regarding the ranking of streets. Do streets or roads ever change ranking based on how an area develops, and how often do you evaluate that? That's a really good question. We change rankings if facilities change or the traffic count changes. So, for example, if the extension of Citation Boulevard goes through and the traffic count that will happen there, we also work pretty closely with Fayette County Schools, and they're always trying to optimize their routes. And that's actually the difference between a rank three and a rank four. A little bit of traffic count, but mostly a rank three is a school bus route. So when they come to us, not real often, but as we add neighborhoods to the network, they say, hey, can you guys pick this street up? And then we work closely with them. We added several roads, for example, in the vicinity of Frederick Douglas a couple of years ago. But those neighborhoods are relatively new. Okay, awesome. Thank you so much. Thank you, Chair. I don't see anyone else. I just have a couple questions myself really quickly. Go ahead. First, looking at the price per ton for salt, it seems like it's fluctuated quite a bit over the last few years. Do you feel like that is stabilizing, or do you think it will just continue to see those fluctuations year to year? Well, we get our salt from Canada, and pretty much everybody south of us gets it from Texas. And what has impacted us greatly in the last couple of years has been the weather in the northeast, which buys it from the same place as us. I know in 2014, Canada was running 24-7 just trying to keep up, and municipalities were trying to buy salt. And that created, of course, a price increase. And as it goes up, you get less and less salt. We had to, if you look, we had to add rock one year because we couldn't get, well, it would only go forward. All right, sorry. But there we go. Thank you. Yeah. And you can see the price per ton. as low as $58 up to the $114. And that $114 was a reflection of the year before. And municipalities like Lexington trying to replenish their supplies or buy salt, we are fortunate to have pre-planned and have as much as we hope to need under roof. before 2014 i'd tell you we used 12 000 tons of salt a year but it varies you can see 2021 we only had two really big events and six half shifts so you know it's hard to predict um thank you and then another question is you mentioned having an informal agreement with district seven um is it typical to have like an informal agreement or to have a formalized agreement what are the pros and cons there well there are state roads within fayette county that they treat and then we our agreement with with the city county merger in 1974 was we agreed to treat all roads inside new circle road and what we did when covet came around is we said oh golly you know what do we do if if it runs through one facility or another and they said yeah we feel the same way they already share salt brine with us that we're familiar with each other's routes and we just thought it would be a good idea to informally you know that's a little bit above my head to formalize something like that or make a commitment because i'm really leery of having to do two interstates we just don't have the resources that the state does but if we had to pick up county roads for example to take the pressure off them we could do that really easily and at the same time if we ran into a pinch and needed nicholasville road or harrodsburg road or something like that they could help us easily i'll follow up just say like just to make sure that's clear um the the part where we do everything inside new circle is a formal agreement a lot of the other stuff is informal and the increase to the general fund for the completion of the construction of the salt barn is 825 000 that's what we're asking for in a week or two yeah the uh formal agreement is for snow maintenance and potholes inside new circle road the state likes to tell you it's a lot more but it's just those two things okay and then last i i like to make sure that we are acknowledging all the people that come down to attend our meetings from your team. You mentioned working with Director Carey. Is there anyone else here today you would like to introduce that is working with you? Is there anyone else here that you would like to introduce from your team? I can't always see in the back corner. Nope. Okay. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. Our next item on our agenda is the annual MS4 program update. This is going to be presented by Lindsay who is the MS4 section manager for the Division of Water Quality. Thank you, Lindsay. Thank you. All right, good afternoon everybody, thank you. As Chair Sheehan said, my name is Lindsay Nicholas, MS4 section manager for Division of Water Quality, and today I'll be giving you all an update on our MS4 Storm Water Quality program here at Division of Water Quality. Just to get started, what we're covered today, we're going to go through some definitions, talk about MS4 and why it matters. We'll go into our 2022 year in review. We'll talk a little bit about the watershed planning goals that we have and end with our vision for moving forward. On the screen, you'll see a watershed map of Lexington Fayette County. This map shows the nine watersheds, seven of which in Fayette County, seven of which fall within our urban service boundary, being Kane Run, North and South Elkhorn, East and West Hickman, Wolf Run, and Town Branch. Boone Creek and Kentucky River are both outside of our urban service boundary. Just for reference, the city of Lexington is situated in the middle of the county there, and all of our streams flow kind of downhill outside of the city. All right, so let's get into some definitions. MS4 stands for municipal separate storm sewer system. This means that our storm sewers in the city are separate from our sanitary sewers. Our sanitary sewers flow to our wastewater treatment plants, while our storm sewers flow straight into our creeks without treatment. In Lexington, we have an MS4 permit administered by the Kentucky Division of Water. This permit authorizes us to discharge our stormwater from our separate system, from our MS4 into waters of the commonwealth with a focus on water quality. Lexington and Louisville are the only larger phase one MS4s in Kentucky with individual permits. All of their communities, over 10,000 in the state of Kentucky, fall under the phase two general permitting. Just some background information. Our individual MS4 permit lasts five years. Our current permit expired on May 31, 2020, and it's currently administratively continued, but we are hopeful of a new permit in 2024. Within the permit, compliance revolves around meeting the objectives of 10 program elements, which are defined in our stormwater quality management program. We're continually optimizing how we manage stormwater for quality and quantity in Lexington, in reviewing policies and procedures for effectiveness and trying to implement those changes as necessary. So before we get into the meat of the program, I want to talk a little bit about why it matters. Before we get into the details, let's start with another definition. So a watershed is an area of land that drains to a common body of water. So there you can see on the map kind of an image of a watershed with the flow lines kind of moving down into that area. Remember that watershed map a few slides back of the city of Lexington. We have nine watersheds in the county. Anything on the ground in that watershed area, whether it be fertilizer, pet waste, litter, oil, grease, is susceptible to be picked up by the next rain event and carried off into our storm sewer system and eventually into our creeks and streams. Basically, if it's on the ground, it's in our water and in our streams. So the goal of the MS4 program is to reduce the quantity of pollutants that stormwater picks up and carries into our MS4 during those rain events with the hope of maintaining or even improving water quality in our waterways. So increases in runoff and pollutants can harm fish and wildlife, kill native vegetation, foul drinking water supplies downstream of us, and make recreation areas unsafe and even unpleasant. All right, so what does our MS4 program look like? Our stormwater quality management program has 10 program elements that you see here on that. Each one has a slice of that pie. They fall under three main categories. Public education would be that first category. This update today falls under one of the measurable goals for public education to update the committee. Pollution prevention houses five of our program elements and then monitoring reporting for the last three. Each element has a series of objectives and milestones that we need to meet to remain in compliance with our permit. In all, we have 186 measurable goals as part of this program. I would like to point out that back in August of this year, we underwent an inspection by the state for six of these ten program elements, and we passed with flying colors with no identified deficiencies or violations. So great news there and definitely a joint effort across several divisions of our EQPW department. So the MS4 program is funded through the water quality management fee. Approximately $7.7 million was spent in 2022 to meet the goals and objectives of our stormwater quality management program. The reporting period for the MS4 program is by calendar year, including the budget reporting. So as you can see here, pollution prevention elements, so that would be the gray, illicit discharge detection elimination, construction sites, our post-construction program, our pollution prevention within municipal operations, and our industrial facilities account for over 80% of the pie when it comes to funding. So a lot of that pollution prevention is where the cost is going in this program. All right, switching gears just for the second half of our presentation, just to talk about our 2022 year and kind of moving forward from there. So one of our program elements is public involvement, and our Stormwater Stakeholder Advisory Committee is one of our main tools for engaging and involving the public in our program. We've held four quarterly meetings in 2022, and we're on track to hold four in 2023. This is a very active committee with participation from watershed and neighborhood groups, public agencies like UK, Fayette County Public Schools, Kentucky Transportation Cabinet, Commerce Lex, Kentucky American Water, and others, as well as folks from the urban county government. The committee allows for transparency and an opportunity for the public to inform and support stormwater policy. We have a great lineup of presentations that really spur discussions that need to be had about stormwater in our community. We use this committee as a sounding board when we get new permits, stormwater manual updates, updates to our management program, as well as other issues in the community. And this is just a picture from our last meeting in September over at the Phoenix Building. You'll see Mark Sanders from our stormwater section, Division of Water Quality, giving an update on the Southland basins. We also had presentations on West Hickman Management Plan that day, which was recently approved by the state, very exciting, and UK Alumni Drive stream restoration efforts. The breadth of the MS4 program is apparent through the number of inspections completed on a yearly basis. Here you see the number of inspections completed in 2022 across five of our 10 program elements reaches over 13,000. These inspections are the key to program implementation and compliance, and it takes a team across several divisions. Most of these inspections are proactive towards maintaining and improving water quality in Lexington, such as our construction site and post-construction control inspections, critical culvert and outfall screening, as well as our industrial and municipal operation inspections. And then some are reactive, like our illicit discharge and spill investigations. All right, so what is the state of water quality in Lexington? As part of our MS4 monitoring, we complete quarterly wet weather and dry weather sampling across seven watershed sites along the edge of the urban service boundary. Those red dots on the map, probably a little hard to see. The table shows the percentage of 2022 water quality results that met regulatory benchmarks and non-regulatory reference points. So this data reflects our urban presence. And top takeaways are we're seeing some improvements in areas like phosphorus, but we're still seeing the presence of E. coli or bacteria and nutrients in our streams, as well as some increases in sediment or TSS, as it says up there. We're also seeing some stream impacts, especially in Town Branch, which had exceedances in 48 of the 56 samples, followed by Cane Run and West Hickman, East Hickman having the least number of exceedances. In addition, habitat impacts and stream bank erosion from urban stormwater is still a problem. We check the biology in our streams. It's an indicator of water quality in our waterways, so that would be like the bugs and the fish. And they really struggle in urban streams with high flows, and we're definitely seeing decreases in macro and fish scores as well. So just something to note. Part of our water quality monitoring and IDDE program elements is the watershed focused monitoring program. This is another proactive and much more comprehensive monitoring program that we've had since 2016. This program has been a massive data collection and public engagement effort with volunteer samplers that have participated since 2016 through today. You can see here in 2022, we finished up work in Town Branch, we monitored North Elkhorn, and we started screening Wolf Run. We're now wrapping up our final watershed of this program with Wolf Run, and we'll soon have baseline water quality data for all seven urban watersheds in LFUCG. This data will help move the ball forward with water quality improvement by identifying needs and hot spots, priority areas, as well as pollutants of concern. It allows us to check on the success of our MS4 program to fine-tune BMP implementation and future programming, and it also helps us direct capital investment like within our incentive grant program. All right, watershed planning. As we zoom out and kind of look towards the future of the MS4 program post-consent decree, our objective is to improve on the wins that we've had and start gaining a watershed perspective and vision. We kind of touched on this last year when I gave this update, and I want to dive into this a little bit more. In Fayette County, we have approved watershed plans in Cane Run, West Tickman, and Wolf Run, but we still do not have any for East Hickman, North Elkhorn, South Elkhorn or Town Branch. As part of the larger picture, watershed planning opens the door for federal funding opportunities and allows us to focus our efforts to improve water quality and direct that capital investment like we talked about on the previous side. So what's next? You know, we have, we've touched on what's in the water, but we also need to consider the stream itself and restoring our urban streams on a watershed scale and what that looks like. This is another piece of the puzzle when looking at moving the needle on our impaired waterways in the city. So we're going to touch a little bit on hydraulic restoration and do a little lesson on using that as an approach to watershed planning. I'll try to move quick. But this picture is a fairly typical picture of an urban stream in Lexington. This is an unnamed tributary or stream in Shilatoe Park, downstream of one of our detention basins that drains part of Fayette Mall. You can see there three to five foot vertical banks, evidence of erosion, silted in stream bed, honeysuckle along the edge. You'll see this all across town if you make your way through the honeysuckle. This type of stream bank erosion leads to stream deepening and widening, water quality and biological disturbances, loss of land, and even damaged infrastructure. So what do we do? Well, we look at how the water moves or the hydrology in our urban system as a basis for healthy streams. So let's focus on the flow of water running off our developed land and into our MS4 and waters of the Commonwealth. Flow is a measure of volume over time, and so that critical flow that we're going to be talking about is the flow that moves particles in the stream bed or that causes erosion. The stream bed threshold, or Q-critical as we call it in this field, is a key metric for managing the hydrology of the system and mitigating stream degradation. So on this, there's a lot on this slide, but I want you to focus on the table. Currently, or the chart, currently in Lexington we have quality and quantity requirements that mirror what is displayed on this chart. I don't know what this is going to do if I click it, but we require runoff reduction and treatment for smaller events over here. And then flood protection during larger events. But this middle section of flows is where channel erosion often begins. And those rainfall depths are typically between the two sets of regulations in place. So by reducing the frequency, magnitude, and durations of discharges that exceed critical or our erosion threshold, as we talked about in the previous slide, through stormwater interventions and retrofits, we can mitigate excess streambed erosion. So really the goal, since we're slow on time, the goal is to move from this situation, de-degradation of our streams, into more of an equilibrium situation from stage 3 to 5, where our streams are meandering low flows with vegetated benches and stable banks again. The goal is to get back. You know, stage 3 is going to look fairly similar to that picture you saw of the stream in Shiltoe Park. So how do we get to this? basin retrofits as we look at updating existing policies for new development we also want to investigate retrofitting our existing basins. We have over 1,200 detention basins in Lexington with opportunities everywhere to improve how we manage stormwater. When we talk about basin retrofits we're talking about modifying an existing stormwater control or detention basin that we have. Like I said we have 1,200 of those plus in our city. You know, we're adding risers to outlet structures, simple retrofits all the way to earth-moving activity to make space. I'm almost done. I think you only have a couple more slides. I do, yeah. So go ahead. Okay, thank you. Can you finish in five? I definitely can finish. Maybe three. So all that to say, retrofits can accelerate that habitat recovery going from that stage three to five that we showed on the previous slide. And I just want to point out that we're pursuing this. I just wanted to mention the word Q-critical and that we're investigating how that can improve our streams in the city. And we hopefully will have a pilot project on that basin in Shilato Park to really show, you know, we're hopeful of a future for these types of projects in the city that they can make an impact on our streams. And then just switching gears, kind of the last update of this presentation on our stormwater quality projects incentive grant program. This program is funded through our water quality management fee. 10% of the annual water quality management fee revenue is earmarked for this program specifically. So that's $1.5 to $1.6 million in projects a year. This is another opportunity for public engagement. This program provides the private industry with the opportunity to decrease its impervious footprint and have an impact on water quality in our community. The watershed-based plans would be an asset to this program as well. It would help direct the private sector in priority areas or target pollutants that we have, or even preferred best management practices that would help improve water quality. These are a lot of great projects, all the way from stream buffer stewardship programs to permeable paver parking lot retrofits. This slide shows the number of projects that were awarded for partial funding in 2022 and the total budget for those. Pictured on this slide as well at the bottom there is the 900 block of North Limestone. This was a retrofit project that recently won the American Society of Landscape Architecture's National Design Award of Excellence for Residential Design. So very exciting to have a national award on one of our projects. And then you also see UK's Alumni Drive's Dream Restoration Bioswell Project. With this program we have anywhere from 40 to 50 active projects at any given time. Our team has been working on ways to improve grant and program implementation. We recently completed our grant tracker application to streamline the grant management and kind of increase access to project details. And then we've also completed a project to map all of these projects from 2011 all the way to present just to help create that continuation and have an annual inspection of these projects to make sure that we're paying attention to things we're putting in the ground. So I think that these needed advances in the program are really a testament to the years and dedication and success that's gone into this program. And then last but not least, moving forward, we want to continue to hone that watershed vision. Again, we talked about this last year, and now we're trying to further define that. So continue compliance within the program element categories per MS4 permit with the state. Continue to promote and administer the storm water quality projects incentive grant program, which is again funded by the water quality management fee. Focus on methods to further transition that comprehensive watershed focused monitoring program from data collection to action. Explore critical flow in Lexington and how we can protect our streams from further degradation. And then maintain our partnerships with storm water management stakeholders across town. We work with, again, partnerships from local watershed neighborhood groups as well as the business and development community as we look to improve water quality in Lexington. And with that, questions. Sorry for going over a little. It's okay. Thank you, Ms. Nicholas. Colleagues, if you have questions or comments, please sign in. Council Member Sipigni. Thank you, Chair. Thank you for the presentation. And as someone who's done several of the water quality projects and grants, I think that's a great program. I've got my first question is about your you've kind of done this series of testing and reporting out from 16 to basically next year. Like is there a plan to just continue that cycle so that we're just constantly updating the data and seeing how our performance is? So the 2016 through 2023, we did a watershed a year. And so now we have that comprehensive data. I think the steps that we're hoping to take is instead of just copy and pasting and doing it again is to look at the data that we collected and review that and understand what was valuable to us in our program and what wasn't. How can we tailor and retrofit that program into something that's helpful to us in the future, where we can continue monitoring but maybe update different parts of our program based on that data. So we always have monitoring in Lexington as part of our MS4 permit, but what it looks like I think will change, especially with this program ending and being able to kind of change that and make it work for us in the future. Okay, thank you. And then you had a slide that was kind of tiny and at the bottom. Which one? Just explain the fair, fair, fair, poor. Oh, yeah. Sorry about that. It helps to have things in yellow and red, but I don't know what the heck that stuff is. Yeah. So I could spend probably 15 minutes just on this slide. But try to do it in 30 seconds. Yeah. So the scores at the bottom are for the biology portion that I mentioned briefly at the end. So those are specifically our macro scores or the bugs that we find in our streams. So basically some bugs are more resilient to pollution in our waterways than others. And so based on how many and the types that we find in our water, we're able to really get an idea of how healthy that stream is. And so on this, you'll see it's listed all of the seven urban watersheds are listed across from Cane Run to Wolf Run. And then the scores, the colors are indicative of the scores they got for that. So very poor is red. The rest are poor and fair, except for East Hickman, which got good in green. Okay. Yeah. And then my last question is, you know, we have, so we've been into basically redevelopment, you know, and infill and all that kind of jazz. How are we monitoring that piece, like our success, basically? And I think we give some sort of credits or we give some sort of something on water quality when someone is doing a project like that. Yeah, so within our stormwater manual, we account for redevelopment by either asking them to reduce their impervious area by 20 percent. So in that way, we're getting less pavement, less runoff through redevelopment, or we're asking them to treat 20% and 100% of any additional impervious that they add in a retrofitted lot. So we're still asking for that treatment in there. As far as a credit system, the only thing we have is our incentive grant program, which is mostly in fill because you're asking someone to kind of retrofit a lot that they already have and turn it into something that is nicer and kinder to water quality. Okay. Thank you. That's all I have. Thank you, Chair. Vice Mayor, will. Thank you, Chair. Thank you for this presentation. It's very, very informative, and actually this was the page I wanted to go on because I wanted to get a little more information on that big graph as well. Can you tell us on that top row what special conductance is? And I'm noting it because that has a lot of low scores across the board. Yeah, so specific conductance is the measure of the ability of water to pass an electric current. Really, it's kind of used as the yellow canary. It's a good indicator of pollution being in our waterways. And so it's, and a lot of times you'll see it being really low in the winter months because salt, there's a lot of salt and it increases the specific conductance of our water. And so it increases its ability to pass that. So you'll see that that drops a lot just because, you know, no matter what the other parameters are, your specific conductance will almost always reflect that one of those is in there. So, you know, if there's an issue on any of those other parameters, it will most likely be reflected in that specific conductance, that indicator. Is there a number that, like, all I see is numbers, so what do those numbers say to you? in terms of if you had to rate them in terms of like good, fair, bad? So this table is specifically showing the percentage of samples that were taken at those watershed sites for that parameter, how many times it exceeded the kind of benchmarks that are either set by the state or that we set for ourselves as kind of to monitor it. So this table is kind of answering your question in a way because it's showing kind of the percent that we exceeded that. So specific conductance, for instance, in Cane Run exceeded, or I'm sorry, it shows the percent that we met those benchmarks. Apologies. And so you can see specific conductance in Cane Run only met the benchmark for specific conductance 11% of the time. Or, you know, in town branch, 30% or 20% of the time we met that benchmark. So not as often as you'd like to see from, like, you can see dissolved oxygen, water temperature, pH. We met those benchmarks 100% of the time. So those aren't necessarily pollutants of concern or issues that we're focused on. You know, we're going to be focusing on E. coli and nitrogen and total suspended solids where we're seeing numbers drop a little bit. Gotcha. And then looking at it kind of in terms of the columns, one that jumped out at me was the town branch had several low scores. What does that tell you? Yeah, for me, it definitely shows out of the 50, I don't even remember, I had it written down, out of the 56 samples that were taken for that watershed for this specific monitoring effort, 48 of them exceeded benchmarks. And so it shows that town branch is definitely one of our poorly, you know, it's not functioning as well. Or, you know, we have a lot more impact from an urban standpoint on that stream than we do in other watersheds. And it's not just one thing. You know, it's across the board, whether it's the fact that it's so urbanized. We have our wastewater treatment plant. We've got older neighborhoods. It has a lot going against it. You know, it's not just one thing, but it's definitely seeing the impact from urbanization more than the other streams. And then do you all use these kind of studies and these kind of results as a driver of which areas to focus on? I think so, yeah. That's kind of, that's the goal. And as we continue to define and understand what our program is going to look like as we get our new permit, The hope is to take this information and all that massive data collection from the Watership Focused Monitoring Program that was on this slide and take all that and use it to tailor our next program, our next permit, and use it, like I said, to help direct capital investment or, you know, come up with priority pollutants that we want to focus on to try to put stuff on the ground that's helping to remove or prevent those pollutants from hitting the ground in the first place. So, yeah, the goal is for that information to help. Great. Thank you so much. Thank you, Chair. I don't see anyone else sign in, so I just have a couple quick things. For the permit, could you explain the delay there? And I see the renewal is pending. Is that the typical time to get a permit renewed? Is there usually a gap in the timing like that? Historically, yes. As far as recent permits that the state's putting out, it seems to be pretty usual to have a delay, but it's definitely not desired. We've been working with the state and trying to stay in touch to make sure that they know we're ready. It's just delays that they've had with staffing issues. And so we've been maintaining constant communication and saying, hey, this is how we plan on operating in the next years until we get our new permit. and they say yay or nay. Mostly they say yay. That sounds great. So I think mostly just staffing issues. A new person that was in that role started right as our permit expired, and so that led to some delays. And then the general permit that I briefly mentioned for the rest of the state and their communities expired earlier this year, and so they got shifted off of writing our permit and went to write that general permit. So hopefully next year they'll be coming back to us and getting us a new permit. Then will that be five years from the date it's approved rather than, yeah, okay. Yeah. Because it's the last one expired in 2020. Do it all over again. In January 2015 or 2025, and it just seems rapid. Okay, and then I wanted to highlight on page 33 of our packet, I think it's the slide right before this one, actually, of all of the inspections that have been done. And over 13,000 within a year, that is a huge undertaking. So I want to applaud you and your staff and all the folks in water quality that work on completing all of these inspections. It's a lot of work. Yeah. It's exciting to see it all on one table. Yeah. And then I have a question about the stormwater grants because I don't remember this information. So I know that in our stormwater grants there is a matching component from the applicant. Is that correct, where they have to either match some of the time or volunteer hours? Yeah. In some of our other community grants, there is kind of a scaling of how much that match has to be based on the area mean income of that neighborhood. Is that taken into account here on the matching or the contributions from the organizations? All of our grants from Class A to B education and infrastructure are all 20% match, 80% grant funded. So there's no scaling in regards to location. But with our Class B education grants, the first $3,000 is no match required. So the match starts after that. So if someone was wanting to do a smaller education project, there'd be no match component there. That would be the only variation to that 80-20. Okay, and then do you have any other colleagues from your team that you would like to acknowledge today? I forget who's here now. We got Greg Luback, Deputy Director, but other than that, Denise is here. She's one of the admins with our staff and helps us a lot, but I don't think no one else is here. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, and our last presentation on our schedule for today is the waste digester feasibility study. This item is co-sponsored by me and council members Savigny. My interest in this item was that some of our council members took a field trip in 2021 to see a model for treating waste in severe county Tennessee which kind of piques our interest in other ways to handle waste but then also we are currently in an update to our empower lexington plan and that is based on the leads for cities and communities and part of the scoring that they do which i'm expecting might be in some of our empower lexington update is around sorting of waste and then diversion from landfills which some of this is related to as well. Councilmember Sivigny do you have any comments you'd like to make before the presentation? No thank you chair. I'm just I did review the presentation and I've talked a little bit with you about it and I look forward to having you share it and I do think that this reducing the overall amount of garbage that goes into a landfill is something that is green and kind of will also help us with our comprehensive plan overall goals. So I look forward to hearing what you got to say. Thank you so much. And so I'll turn it over to Commissioner Albright, our Commissioner of EQPW, for the presentation. Thank you. Thank you, Chair, and thank you, Councilmembers. I am excited to get to deliver this presentation today. It's been a long time in the making, and I appreciate your all's patience as we've worked through the draft report and all of the phases that we've experienced over the last couple of years, including working through the pandemic at the same time was all of our excitement about this. Just, of course, our normal kickoff routine, this is kind of what I'm going to talk about. And then I will dive really quickly into the introduction of why we're studying it. And Council Members, Savigny and She-Han did a great job of kind of laying, setting the table here of why this has been important to us for a while. There are some solid, no pun intended, reasons for why we would want to pursue this opportunity, or something along these lines of reducing the amount that goes into the landfill from Fayette County every year. Again, these are summarized here. Costs continue to increase every year on every angle of waste management, both the landfill costs. We've all been through the experience of another community closing the landfill we were using and having to figure out very quickly how we were going to address that problem. The conversation around our closed landfills and the conversations that continue to happen around just landfills in general. So the fact that this will not go away and that there can be beneficial reuses of a lot of the material in our waste stream. keeps the solution local which is another idea that's been kind of interesting and enticing i think for a lot of us and as council member sheehan pointed out we all went down to severeville we actually went twice as a community we went once back in 2015 director martin back here i believe was on that first trip and i got to go on the second trip so several of us over the years have seen the Sevierville model and been able to talk about it and see it in motion. And it does present a really interesting opportunity. So we came back from that, presented our experience, and then moved forward with this feasibility study last spring. And just quickly to kind of walk through, this is what we came out of the May 2022 recommendation of. The purpose of the feasibility had a couple of major focuses, specifically looking at the Sevierville digester, but not necessarily limiting ourselves to that. What else might be options that we're not aware of? And then how does it look specifically for our waste stream? Because our waste stream doesn't look like Dollywood. So we have to kind of make sure that it's appropriate for where we are in geography. And then one last thing, I'll just go back real quickly, at the end where it says, and yard waste. Of course, that's always been a big component of the conversation is that we do already collect yard waste separately and how do we want to integrate that into the solution? So again, our objectives kind of modeled on the purpose of this study. We did determine there were at least three different types of landfill diversion options. call them in the broader context that we wanted to look at to see what they presented as far as opportunities and challenges for our community. So again, this was the consultant process. GT Environmental was the selected consultant. Coker was, I forgot to mention earlier, one of our previous, in addition to the two trips to Sevierville, We've had two different RFI or RFP processes, again, focused on landfill diversion in the last few years. In 2018, we did an organics study specifically about what could our community, you know, what's our waste stream look like and how could we repurpose that. Coincidentally, in 2022, we also had to do a waste stream characterization study as part of our solid waste permit renewal. So we had an opportunity to take some samples from the transfer station and identify what the percentages of different types of components make up our solid waste stream. And that was very valuable input to this process. So, and then our proposed site has always kind of historically centered on where do we own a big lot of land that wouldn't be necessarily maybe a huge disturbance on the rest of the community. And Haley Pike Landfill Complex, as you can see on there, most of what's out there is actually permitted but not used landfill. But there is a piece that is a closed landfill, and then there is just additional acreage out there. So there is an opportunity potentially out there, we've always known, for something to be cited out there. So we could modify our existing permit to include this process at Haley Pike. It wouldn't be purely simple. there'd be a lot of refiling of that permit and going through some changes out there to add a larger composting activity. Right now, of course, we just do yard waste, which is a lot different than adding organics and potentially sludge and things like that. So moving into the three types of composting operations that we looked at, Again, the rotary drum is the Sevierville model. It is the one that we've all kind of visited, or several of us visited. The Sevierville model is sized at 550 tons per day, and because several of us can kind of visualize that, that's kind of part of the reason I think that it was chosen as the baseline for when we talked about these things and how would it compare with what Lexington would need. So, and again, you can just see kind of the basics of how this system works. So it's a little different. This one is the one, you know, it rotates all the time. It kind of cooks everything for about three days, and then it moves into kind of a wind row program for a few more, for several more days. The second option is the tunnel reactor, which is kind of like a big sealed garage bay. It has just a long tunnel that is filled with solid waste, and then it kind of, again, it kind of cooks it, and then it blows air through it so it doesn't turn the whole time. It just kind of sits and cooks, and then you pull it back out of that, you unload it, and add it to a windrow system. And then the third alternative that they looked at for us was an aerated static pile, which is a little different than our current windrow system where they turn it all the time. This one has air kind of forced up through it to help it break down more quickly rather than relying on getting the whole thing mixed all the time. This one also is a little different. I'll make sure and add because this one focuses on organics, whereas the other one focuses on everything that would be compostable. So that is a little different. So the sizing of it is a little different as we move through the rest of the presentation. So in the summary of findings, as you can see right up there off the bat, we bring in over twice as much of what would be kind of considered compostable material every day as severe county, the severe solid waste system. So that's a little more of a challenge because ours would be a little bigger. It means we would both bring in and produce a lot more. And so figuring out what we want to do with that. They did, I believe in Sevierville, have a model of removing bulky items through a couple of different methods, but it relies on a lot of education. It relies on drop-off spots and recycling programs. And then what we affectionately call down in our current recycling center pickers, which are people who manually go through and pull out things that are unsuitable to go through the system. So there is a lot of, there's still a lot of labor involved in getting the mix right for this. And because our waste analysis is a little different than Sevier County, where they have a much higher tourism and much lower residential, our waste stream would be a much lower diversion from the landfill than what severe has been able to achieve. They achieve like 70% diversion from the landfill and we would be at 50% diversion. So, and again, that is both all the bulky items and the things that can't go through the system and then also the things that go through the system and then end up in the landfill anyway. So, and again, what the consultant recommended was ultimately we would need three of the Sevierville-sized facilities, whether of the first two alternatives. The phase one would address everything that our Division of Waste Management collects. But to get to all of Fayette County would require slightly more than two of those. And then to get, you know, so if you built the third one, then you may start looking at some partnerships by the time you're ready to build phase three. And, again, in all of these, we've always talked a lot about yard waste as a part of the conversation and the reason that we were looking at it so hard over the years. And in every system that the consultant came back with is unprocessed yard waste actually degrades your system substantially. So you want to continue to collect your yard waste separately and then kind of chew it up and let it break down a little bit and then put it back in on your process at the end. And if those of us who went on the field trip remember, that's kind of what they did there. They recommended having all of your yard waste come in separately and they ground it up and then they added it into the system after the wind rose. and so again this was just the this is how much we collect every day that we would still collect and process separately and mix it back in at the end and then we specifically asked them to put together what what they saw as some of the challenges the things that they saw that are our biggest components that would have to be collected separately still. We do see a lot of construction material at the transfer station, so figuring out a way to remove lumber and drywall and those things from our waste stream along with mattresses and small equipment that all ends up in the garbage, that's fine, but those are things we would have to address. Again, that would all be really important as we look for what this product is at the end. So those of us, again, those of us who went to Sevierville saw that the material at the end was really cool. It also had some little bitty specks of stuff in it. So there are a lot of farming and agriculture opportunities. It would have to get better for them to want to use this material. So having it at a high enough quality that it would be something we can move forward with. And then what do you do with that? As a community, we're not necessarily in competition. So how would we want to integrate that into the outcome of this system? So, and again, in all these systems, a maintenance plan is critical, specifically the rotary drums. The severe model actually has a spare drum that they only use four of the five drums at any one time because one of them is always in a preventive maintenance model. So we would, they would recommend that we always have something like that if we were to pursue it. And then again, they have a lot of, we didn't go look at one of those. They have a lot of drop-off centers for things that shouldn't go in the system. I couldn't tell how successful that was. I know in Lexington that's a constant, education is a constant effort. and this is the summary of the different systems that they looked at, the initial cost, the ultimate cost, and then the operating cost because that's not anything to sneeze at, and the number of tons per day we could divert. And again, the source-separated organics is lower probably in both cost and volume because it is not everything that's compostable. It's just the organics. The consultant specifically, I hate to be the bearer of this news, but the consultant specifically recommended that we not move forward with the rotary drum system, that the cost plus the maintenance and the volumes that we have make it untenable. They recommend that we move forward. If we choose as a community to move forward, that we would move forward with the source-separated organics system with an education component to it. So I don't want to breeze through that, but with that, I'm happy to provide additional information. Colleagues, go ahead and sign in if you have questions or comments. Vice Mayor. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Commissioner, for that report. I've been eagerly awaiting this one as well. I've never been this excited about trash before. I understand. So with these three models that were studied, how common are the three models in terms of other cities? Thank you. That's a great comment. The rotary system, when these first came online, there were 14 at their peak in the country. There are four today. I asked our consultant why, and the reasons are pretty all over the map, just like the systems are, I guess, of whether it's just the maintenance, the cost, the availability to contract this work out has all fluctuated enough over time that those have dropped in numbers. They only found one tunnel reactor in the country. There are about 300 of the source-separated organics, so that is a much more common system. Okay. My next question was, you know, do the cities that have these different models like them, but I think the numbers, I think, probably speak for themselves. You talked a little bit about the idea of, like, that finished product. Does Sevierville sell its finished compost, or you said the quality is not good enough? They give it away, and then they also will sometimes use it as landfill cover. If we created a quality enough product, is there a market for selling it in terms of getting some revenue back? There is. That would get into the dynamics of competition. So that would be a slightly different conversation. But there is potential for there to be a market for it. Okay. Because I asked that, obviously, like cost is the big glaring thing on all of this stuff. So if there's the potential for getting some of it back with that. And sort of similar to that, if there isn't necessarily a market or we don't want to get into a competitive market selling this stuff, I'm sure we as a city also use plenty of compost. And so there's the thought there that we could use obviously some of that for our own city as well. Can you, I feel like either my brain just breezed over it, but the ultimate recommendation of the study on the separated organics static pile. Can you kind of go back to that slide and run that down for me again? Well, actually, you know, my question is, on the cost estimate page, it says the ultimate tons per day diverted is 100 from the aerated static pile. Does that mean that if we were to try to get up to handling the full volume of Fayette County that we would need 12 sites? What's the math here? No, what that means is that actually, if I remember correctly, is the maximum expected. If everybody separated all of their food waste, that would be about where we could get. the big difference is you would just have a lot of material that wouldn't be eligible for this program and would either go to the landfill or the recycling center. So a lot of the paper, there's some categories of paper that you can put in the composting system that you couldn't put in this one. Okay, so this third solution and the recommended solution for this study then is a much smaller solution in that sense. then, right? And is that mainly based on cost? If, you know, pie in the sky that we had the budget to do it, like, am I thinking of the math correctly in terms of, you know, if we're paying, you know, $10 for a 10% solution and $80 for an 80% solution, am I thinking of that correctly? I would say to a certain extent, potentially, yes. If you're willing to make a bigger investment, you can remove more from the waste stream. So, yes, that's true. The difference would just be the magnitude of the increase. It's not an incremental step up. The jump gets higher. Yeah, because, I mean, our minimum, it sounds like, to even build one, that initial is $76 million. And then that 228 is for three. Right. To handle everything. Okay. Well, thank you so much. You're welcome. Thanks, Chair. I'm going to go with committee members first and then call on the non-committee members. So, Council Member Fred Brown, you're next. Thank you, Chair. I went on that trip that week, saw the rotary drum. Have you visited any of the other sites that had the tunnel reactor or the storage? I have not. I can turn in my travel request if you would like. I think the tunnel system is in Delaware. I can't really remember, but I feel like one of them is in Delaware. So I think you mentioned something that the rotary drum system, there's not that many now? Correct. There are four in the country. How many were there when we were two years ago? I don't know how many there were two years ago. I think that is actually in the report and I can dig that out. Okay. Back like 10 to 15 years ago there were 14. Okay, so obviously some of them have disbanded. Correct. Communities have either a maintenance problem or whatever because. Then going back to this slide right here, the rotary drum, the 76 million, how many drums is that? That's the five drum system that Sevier has. We talked about on the trip a little bit of maybe just doing more of a pilot program and having one drum or two drums on the site to see how well we could do it. So am I thinking that one drum would do 100 tons a day? Is my calculation? I don't know that I think that that math is right, because I think the ultimate tons per day might be the full build out of what is actually 15 drums. 15 drums? Yeah, because eventually we will need, that $76 million is for one of the Sevierville models, and we would need more than two of those, so technically three of those. Yeah, because we weren't sure about the cost, and that was one of the things that we were certainly involved in. and the source-separated organics aerated static pile. That's a lot of words, yeah. How many of those are across the country, do we know? About 300. So that seems to be the popular one? That's the more common, yes. So shouldn't we visit one of those sites? We could, and somebody suggested that I look into where those might be, and so I have a couple of suggestions of the closest ones. Well, I'm just saying if we're going to invest this type of money that we need to at least get a little bit more background because the group that went down there, we just saw the rotary drum. So we saw the fact that it could work. But if you've got something more efficient cost wise, and even though you got the hundred ultimate tons a day, I guess the source separated. How much acreage would you need on that to do two of those or three of them? I can't remember if it's, I don't have that on here. I apologize. It is a smaller footprint, but I did not write down how many acres is for the aerated static piles. So, I mean, we could always do a project or start out and expand on it if we found it was working and we could afford it, right? Yes, sir. I did find it in my notes. It's eight acres. You need eight acres. Okay. So that's not, we've got plenty of that, plenty of acreage there. Another question on this one right here. Let's see. Let me back up. What type of monies do we have that we can put to this? What is our fund balance in the program or in our fund? Because this would come out, it wouldn't come out of general fund at all. No, this would likely largely hit the landfill fund balance. Yeah. We currently have almost $36 million in that fund. we have to hold $13 million in reserve to maintain our closed landfills. So funding for that last one that they recommended, we could start pretty quick on that because we do have some reserve money and fund balance. Correct. Okay. All right, my time's up. Thank you. Council Member Savigny. Thank you, Chair, and thanks so much for the presentation. So I just had a few. I am struggling with math, so definitely I would like to see the full report at some point to try to understand it better. Because, like, I don't really understand the aerated static pile sized for this. I kind of don't get the math. So could we just jump to the dollars page? and what I'm seeing is that you believe what we have to actually process in a static pile is probably about 100 tons a day of acceptable material. Right. Is that right? Okay. I don't know what diverting 100 tons a day, you don't see the whole revenue expense picture here. So I don't know what the savings piece of that is. Right, I appreciate that, yeah. Yeah, so my guess is there's some, is it $5 million a year? I'd have to do the math. I feel like that would be a lot. Is it $35 million a year? Can we pay for it in one year? I have to look. Okay, all right. So I am kind of interested in that math at some point. Okay. And then, yeah, I asked you to kind of look at a few of the sites that would have the static pile. The three that are closest to us, there is one kind of northwest of Nashville. Again, just for context, they process 2,500 to 5,000 tons per year. so a little smaller. There's Manassas, Virginia. Theirs is about twice that size, but three times as far away if we want to drive to D.C. And then Athens, Ohio, which is even smaller than the one in Nashville. We'd probably want to see a bigger one because we'd probably want to smell it, to be honest with you. Yes, the odor was a comment about all of these. Yeah, yeah. And I had another question that kind of escaped me, but I'm going to try to conjure it back up. How does dealing with source-separated organics change the process of the homeowner? Or what changes for the homeowner in that situation? It's pretty substantial, actually, because we would be asking potentially for them to have another commodity, right? And we had a conversation with a consultant about what it looks like. Your food waste and your yard waste could be collected together in your gray cart. Or you could, if you don't, not everybody in Lexington has a gray cart. You could keep it separated, but you can't use the yard waste bags or you shouldn't use the yard waste bags for food waste. Because it won't take long for you to have friends overnight. So however we ask them to dispose of their food waste separately from their garbage stream would have to be one of those education efforts. Okay. All right. Yeah, not that it's impossible because there's a lot of places that do that, and there's a lot. And it almost seems like backyard composting in a, I mean, it's really, we're basically trying to do a larger organic composting. Yes, sir. Style. Okay. That's all I have. Thank you, Chair. Council Member Baxter. Thank you, Chair, and thank you for, wow, that's really loud. Thank you for recognizing me since I'm not on a committee. So I too attended our fun field trip that smelled very interesting. I have to say that I really appreciate the report and I'm really glad that we did the feasibility study. I am super disappointed though. I was very hopeful that this would be a good long-term solution for our community and wish that our results were a little bit better. But the numbers that we have here, are they based on only those customers who receive city services now, or is this based on all waste that comes to the transfer station? It is based on all waste that comes to the transfer station, if I understand correctly. Okay, and so if we were to go to some type of overhauled system, do you foresee that being an all-in participation from the community, or do you see that only staying with those who are receiving city services? Well, I feel like it could possibly be a policy decision, But right now, a lot of what we get at the transfer station, most of what we get is still Fayette County residential garbage or commercial garbage. It's just not collected by the Division of Waste Management. So we get a lot of, you know, a lot of the apartments and restaurants and things like that, stores, need servicing more frequently than our division can provide. And so they contract that additional out. And then, of course, I'm one of the unlucky few that live without the divisional waste management in my world. So, yeah, right, so it's our garbage that also goes there. So it's still Fayette County trash. It's just not collected by the city. Okay. Okay. So I am interested in getting a little more information about the source of organics because that seems to be our only option for any diversion at all. However, with the onus being on our population to kind of be the first line of defense as far as separation is concerned, I don't know what the buy-in would be from the community on that. And I mean, initial numbers, like I don't know at this point if it would be worth the investment. I'm interested, you know, like Council Member Civigni, to kind of see the numbers a little more in depth. I think it's still worth investigating and looking into. I guess it's, like I said before, I'm just a little disappointed that it's not better news for us. But I really do appreciate it. And like I said, I'm really glad we did this study so that we have that information going forward as we renew contracts and look at all of our other waste management practices. Was there anything else in the feasibility study that stood out with the consultant, things that we could improve overall that weren't related to this process? I don't feel like there was something that was beyond necessarily what we asked them for. Okay, perfect. Thank you. That's all. Thank you, Chair. Councilwoman Gray. Thank you, Chair. Commissioner. My question is as follows. I wrote it down so I would get it correct. Does the static pile create another carbon problem? Does it create a lot of methane? I'm going to look at Charlie and see if he has any better idea of what gas it gives off. I'm not entirely sure. It does give off a gas. So it would be something we would have to consider one way or another. Thank you, Commissioner. You're welcome. Thank you, Chair. Council Member Reynolds. Thank you, Chair. I have a lot. I'm going to try to be succinct. Thank you for this presentation, and I'm glad we got to this point. I guess I am honestly a little disappointed because after visiting Sevierville, What I really liked about their process was that it wasn't just organic material they were breaking down. They were literally breaking down the trash. And we had talked about we could continue recycling and separating the recyclables, maybe separate yard waste. But this was a way to literally break down the trash, cut down on landfill, and all of that. And that's what was impressive to me about it. So I feel like at this point we've taken most of that away. So help me understand why they came up with it. We couldn't break down our trash and it just had to be organic material. A lot of it goes all the way back to this, which is the part that is somewhat different than the severe area. Only 32% of our waste stream is organic, and that includes yard waste. A lot of what we get are things that are neither organic or compostable. So, you know, tires, as you can see up there, rubber, the things that shouldn't go into your waste stream to begin with. And I don't know for sure, but a lot of it I kind of took away as where we're more residential and there are more tourism. There's just maybe a lot of things in our world that are just a fact of being here every day. We go through, we change tires, and we change mattresses, and we change, you know, we throw away old T-shirts, and we, you know, throw away a lot of things that if you're a tourist, you don't throw away your bed when you leave. I remember distinctly looking at the trash that they were processing, And there was paper and there was some types of plastic. They were trying to get the plastic bottles out. There was glass because there was actual little pieces of glass that was softened down. But in the mulch. And the mulch had a little bit of all kinds of things in it. So I know that they were not just processing. Right. It's just that their percentages are a lot different than ours. Do you have a pie chart for what they break down? I don't. By any chance? Okay. Because I guess when we look at this, do you know why it was said that the source-separated organics was better versus the tunnel reactor? Because maybe the tunnel reactor would be less maintenance than the... It's just a different maintenance. There's still a lot of... Garbage is actually corrosive. So whatever system you use to process it and contain it and break it down, it gives off a lot of gases and it gives off a lot of liquid. And you have to just build in a lot of maintenance for whichever system things are going to corrode. So both systems require a lot of maintenance. The tunnel reactor isn't quite as much as the rotary drum. And so, right, I guess that's my question is why they recommended the source-separated organics versus the tunnel reactor, which isn't as heavy as the drum that we've seen, many of us, but that is more contained. It's not as bad as the rotary, but it's still not good, is the reason it wasn't advanced as a recommendation. It's still a lot of work and a lot of money. It's just not quite as much money as the rotary drum. Okay, but could possibly more things be processed in there than in the source-separated organic one? Yes, you still achieve. The tunnel reactor still gets the volume because you still throw almost everything in there, like the rotary drum system. It just isn't quite as expensive as the rotary drum. Okay. I guess I would be interested, and I think some of my colleagues would too, to see the full report if we could have that sent to us. As I mentioned to Chair Sheehan and Council Member Savigny, it's still in draft stage is the main reason. I just haven't shared it, but I'm happy to share. A lot of what's left in the moving from draft to final is minor edits, and there's just been some delays in getting it from draft to final. but I'm happy to share either the draft or the final one when we get it. Okay, and then if any private collectors, would they have to take their stuff there as well? I don't know if have to. That probably depends on the permitting. I don't know enough about the permitting process for the solid waste permit to know, and the cost, if they would. For instance, in my part of the county, which is Tax District 4, if it's cheaper for them to then truck my garbage to Frankfurt or Lincoln County instead of taking it to Haley Pike. That would be a part of it, and then we could either, by policy, make a decision one way or another. Okay, thank you. Thank you, Chair. Vice Mayor Wu. Thank you, Chair. If we can go back to or forward to the cost estimate page again. So I understand, and actually a couple pages before in the feasibility study summary of findings, when we talked about 1,200 tons a day collected, that is 1,200 tons a day collected is what we could potentially process through a drum or a tunnel, or is that the total total? It would still be at that about 1,000 tons a day. It's like 1,050. It starts at 1,200, and you take out the bulky and the things that shouldn't be in there, and then you add back in the sludge, and I think that even includes the yard waste coming in at the end. Okay, but none of that would include the metals, the plastics? Correct. That's what's been removed. Okay. So I'm kind of, with that cost estimate page, with the three options, I'm kind of attempting to compare apples to apples as much as possible. So the two, the rotary drum and the tunnel reactor, that total, that ultimate construction cost basically will get us up to about 1,500 tons a day, right? Because that's triple that. No, it gets you to the 1,000 tons a day. Even though those two ultimate construction figures. Well, I'm sorry. It gets us to, we have 1,000 tons and then we would have capacity beyond that. So yes, I'm sorry. And so when I did the same numbers, I'm kind of doing a dollar per ton. So the rotary drum gets us to about 152,000 per 100 tons. The tunnel is 112,000 for 100 tons. And then the source separated is 80,000 for 100 tons. So that one of the three, bang for your buck is the best. But it seems like that one totals out, instead of the 1,500 tons, giving us that extra capacity, this one totals out to 437.5 tons. So are we looking at that source-separated organics will never get us to the maximum of the other two? Is that correct? It will not get you the same diversion. Okay, so that will max out at some point, but it will not cover as much as the other two options. Right, the difference between organics and compostable. Okay, and then what I would love to see kind of subtracted against these costs is what our current costs are for what we're doing right now in terms of landfill. Do you have any ballparks on that? I don't. Okay. I don't think I do. We can get that to us. That's fine. And then my last, I guess, comment is I'm hopeful that whatever we do with this, we can hopefully find some federal grants out there, especially when it has in relation to the Infrastructure Act. Hopefully we can pull some money from any place we can possibly pull it. But I appreciate all this info. Thank you. Okay. Thank you, Chair. Seeing no one else sign in, I think what I'm seeing here is that this is a lot of information to digest. But considering the complexity of this issue, I'm kind of considering this conversation a starting place. And I think this would be a good place to have a subcommittee. So after this meeting, if you are interested in serving on that subcommittee, please let me know in the next day or so. and i will work on a formation of that so then we could process all this information dig into the report a little bit more and then make some recommendations back to the full committee and then the later council so again if you're interested in that let me know um that and thank you commissioner did you have anybody to acknowledge from your team i think we've gotten most of the people yeah no the people on our team who were the most helpful were at the division of Division of Waste Management, Tracy Thurman and Lauren Monahan. Thank you. Mm-hm. Okay, so our last item on our agenda is items referred to committee. Are there any updates or removals that anyone would like to make? Council Member Gray? Councilwoman Gray? Chair. That's what I'm saying. So I sent you an email about a potential item to add to our list regarding naturalization or I forgot the city's name for it. The Bring Back the Bluegrass? Yes, Bring Back the Bluegrass. But I know that's under Park and Recs, I believe. Yes. So maybe that's better for that other committee. And I'll speak with that chair of that committee soon. Okay. Thank you. Council Member Savigny. Thank you. I think we've done our process for road closures. So I'd move to, or do we? I thought we removed that one at the last meeting. Yeah, it looks like it's still on it. Okay. We'll make that update. I move to remove that if I need to. Any other edits? Okay. I think it's my duty as chair to award best Halloween jacket to Evan Thompson. Best Halloween jacket. And now that is the end of our official duties for our committee, so I will adjourn us now. Thank you, everyone. Thank you.