♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ It is one o'clock, so I would like to welcome everyone to the Environmental Quality and Public Works Committee. I will now call the December 3rd meeting to order. Thank you all for being here. The first item on our agenda is approval of the October 22nd, 2024 Committee Summary. Are there any additions or corrections? Okay, seeing none, can I have a motion to approve? I hear a motion from Councilmember Savigny. I heard a second from Councilmember Fogel. Any discussion on the motion? She also did. Well, she had actually set a motion to approve way before that, so I was acknowledging that. Okay, so any discussion on the motion? All in favor say aye. Any opposed? That motion passes. Our first presentation on the agenda today, we have Director Martin from the Division of Water Quality here to present the Annual Consent Decree and Remedial Measures Plan. Thank you, Director Martin, for being here. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. Good to see everybody. This is an annual update, so I'm going to jump right into it. A very typical agenda that we've followed in the past, kind of covering the overall consent decree status, talk about the remaining obligation, what's still ahead, and then begin to focus more on what's going on right now or getting ready to happen in calendar year 2025, and then leave some time for some questions. This is a little bit of a departure from what I've done before, and the message is this, is that this map was created years ago to represent where we had sanitary sewer overflows. This was where the whole consent decree kind of started with me, and all of those green dots were red because they were reoccurring sanitary sewer overflows. So I felt like this was a really good snapshot to represent we've come a long way in this consent decree. We've been able to solve a lot of problems, and there are red dots that still remain in certain clustered areas and stuff like that, and there's still challenges ahead. But I think that we can be—we get a lot of satisfaction when we look at this and realize just how far that we have come. Looking back, I mean, I cover this every time, and I probably should drop these bullets out in the future. The stormwater and the supplemental environmental projects, those are done. They've been done for the longest time. Capacity management operation and maintenance, which is really about how do we run our day-to-day operations to make sure that not only wet weather problems don't exist, but also dry weather problems don't exist. That's an ongoing obligation that will last well past the consent decree and all the rest of us. The real focus today is to talk about the remedial measures plan, which is the capital construction program for the sanitary sewer system, and talk a little bit about the final approval of the revised schedule. You got an email from me back in September, kind of cryptic, I guess, a little bit. A lot of things were going on at that time, and I don't know if you fully embraced it. We've got an extension of four years, basically due to COVID and supply chain issues. It took us two years to get that approval. I wish I had gotten two more years on top of it, but we can take what we can get. Now the new full compliance deadline is December 31, 2030, which seems like a long time, but it's not, and with the projects that we still have ahead of ourselves. Playing catch up from the post-pandemic world, we've been doing a lot of that. I really feel like we're beginning to hit our stride, and I'll cover some of that in the current projects, but it is a relief to have an extra four years. The second change that came from the consent decree modification was the quarterly reports got changed to semi-annual. Unless you look at our website very often and see those reports and stuff like it, it wouldn't be something you really notice, but it cut our workload in half. And especially since we're only doing capital construction projects, to update them every three months, I felt like they agreed that that was probably really unnecessary. A big win for us, though, is any submission that we have to make to them, the original consent decree was everything was in paper. That was back in the time where everything was in paper, and we would send 12 copies of things that were this thick, and huge mailing costs. Now everything is done electronically. So that was a win for me, so that I can post everything on the website and not have to make a bazillion copies of those. The remaining thing that needs to be done is that we need to have a project-specific schedule, what we call the red and blue schedule. We can't have all of the projects having a deadline of 2030. You know, you can't track things that way. So we'll be working on that in the next couple of months that break down the remaining projects and have more specific completion deadlines for those. And these are the projects I'm talking about in a summary standpoint. There were 117 capital construction projects related to the sanitary sewer system in order to be able to change those red dots to green dots. 76 of them are done, in the can, behind us. We have another 24 that are active, and active is kind of a broad container. That's everything from design going on to easement, or it's actual physical construction. But we're physically working on those right now to bring them towards completion. And then we have the 17 remaining pending projects. These are ones that we really haven't spent any time right now on. And there may be some of those projects that I'm hoping to be able to make a compelling argument with EPA and the state that those aren't necessary anymore. The original red-blue schedule was developed in 2014. The world has changed a lot since then. A lot of the work that we've done that have not been part of the consent decree has actually corrected some of the problems that were identified when the consent decree first started. So I'm hoping to be able to talk with them and convince them that some of those other 17 projects aren't necessarily required or necessary to achieve the compliance goal for the consent decree. You see one footnote that I've added a project in there. One project that there were overflows that existed that weren't identified in the original schedule. We agree. They agree. And we're working on that project right now as if it were a consent decree project. I think that you all as a body have approved the award for that project. We're hoping to start that one in January. We'll hopefully have it done before we have a final schedule. This is a different slide for me from previous discussions because we really haven't talked very much about this. The city was recipient of cleaner water grant funds that came through the state. It was a bipartisan agreement, I guess, between the legislature and the governor's office to provide money for counties for water and sewer projects. Since we're the only city in Fayette County, we were obviously a great benefiter of that. Likewise, the fact that Kentucky American is a private entity, they weren't eligible to get any of this grant money. So we basically got it all, $37.8 million worth of grant money through the cleaner water Kentucky program. The red projects, the ones in red font, those are consent decree projects. And so I wanted to have this in here to show that where the consent decree is benefiting from this grant program. We also had put in some of the stormwater projects. We wanted to have some balance there to where we were trying to serve both of the programs that Water Quality tries to support. This is important because you see a version of this graph every time I do this. The bar on the left in black is what we should have spent for the projects that we have either completed or that are under contract right now. The one on the right in the green is what we've actually spent. We're still doing pretty good from what the original cost perspectives were. And obviously that grant money is going to help make that stay that way into the coming year. I worry about this one all the time because it said the original cost projections were put together in 2014. And we all know how inflation and all that have impacted our world in the last 10 to 12 years. But my goal was, and our goal continues to be, is that when we get to the finish line of this, that that green bar is less than what the black bar is. Because if we get it done and we spent less than what we planned on, we'll consider the whole thing to be a success. So let's transition into what some of the active projects are right now. Hopefully I'll be able to use the pointer correctly since I don't use this one here very often. You probably see a lot about these projects in the weekly updates that you get. So this might look somewhat familiar to you. This is the East Hickman force main. Mostly on the south side of town, mostly in Council Member Worley and Council Member Fred Brown's district. This is a pipeline that we put through the neighborhood to avoid some really high costs that we were facing to go across to Overbrook Farm. You might remember that conversation is that basically we felt like we could do this for 50% of the cost of going across the farm. And we have, $22 million. The farm option was approaching $50 million and continued to escalate. This project's gone fairly well. Like anything, it didn't go perfectly. We had a really hard time getting fittings that came from overseas, from Turkey actually. And so we had to put a lot of pipe in the ground and then come back and put the fittings in later. That's kind of undermined some of our paving schedule on Kennesaw and on Buckhorn. But we're finally getting that done. I think you might have seen some paving going on over the last week or so. The one part that still remains and won't be paved in time before the asphalt plants close basically is within that orange box. That's basically from Heartland Parkway up to Trent Boulevard where the Millward's Funeral Home is. I know it well because I live inside that yellow box. And so I get to see firsthand what goes on every day. But in the end, we'll have this one wrapped up sometime in the spring of next year. Get everything paved. Get everything back to normal. And again, a really good project. It's important in order to be able to make this next project work as well. This is the DeLong Road pump station. If you go all the way out Armstrong Mill Road and get in into DeLong and look over to your right in the field, you'll see heavy construction going on there. That is a pump station that is replacing the pump station. I keep wanting to turn around. There's an existing pump station located right there that is one of the red dots on the map that you saw earlier. So we're replacing that pump station by moving it further downstream where the red star is. And then it pumps back up and joins in up here at Squires Hill Road in the new pipeline that you just saw on the previous slide. So those two projects kind of support one another. The pipeline in the previous slide has to be done before this one is done and gets worked out. But we're on schedule to have both of those things operable by the end of 2025. And this one is a grant-funded project. Switching over to the other side of town, this is the Wolf Run Trunk F project. Basically, Harrodsburg Road, where you see me pointing there, Clay's Mill right here. And this is a pipeline that goes across both of those and works its way over towards Lafayette High School, which is about roughly where the Blue Horse would be. Nearly done with that project. The neighbors have been fabulous. I mean, we've been in their backyards and stuff like that. And what a great cooperative bunch of folks they really have been. It has been amazing, because I worried to death about this project to begin with. The yellow box, when I put this map together, that's where they were still working. I was out there a couple days ago, and it looks like to me they've kind of wrapped up for right now and stuff. But what is important is that in that yellow box, there's a couple of vacant lots that we use as a lay-down area where we store materials. It's owned by Irving County Government. They desperately like us to get that lay-down area back. Unfortunately, the next leg of this project starts where that yellow box is, and we'll have to continue to use it. We'll talk about that in a slide here coming up. This is a project that has been ready to go for quite some time and got held up because of easements. We're now just going to go ahead with it and see what happens when we get to that property in question, I guess. This is New Circle Road, basically from IBM area up here, working its way off-road. We're not going to be in New Circle itself. We're going to be off in easements and on side roads, crossing over. Here is the former Kmart building, which is the new water quality facility that we're working on right now. We'll be coming up in front of that and basically tying into the existing system. This is one of those ones that caught my attention when I worry about the cost graph. I think we had allocated $9 million to this. The bids came in at 12. A little bit concerning on that. Hopefully, that's not a trend. This is the project that I mentioned before about that we're adding to the consent decree but not really adding it. We're going ahead and doing it. Hopefully, when we do the schedule, we'll be able to declare it as done. This is Man O' War over here. This is the dead end of Sidney Blair. You're in the Stonewall area. Council Member Savigne's area, I think his district is up there. Your folks will have a front row seat as we dig up the sewer and replace it here through the middle of that field. We did something unique with this. When you remember this from a prior council action, those folks used that to store their horses. Trying to work around the horses with heavy highway construction just didn't make any sense. What we've agreed to as part of the easement negotiation with the Homeowners Association is to board their horses for the four months while we're in there working. That way, we don't have to worry about their horses getting loose and somebody losing a horse. Plus, our contractor can work unimpeded without having to work around them. That will start in January. Now, I'm back to the other side of town again. I should have reorganized these maps a little bit better. This is Lafayette High School up here where my cursor is now. This is Lafayette Parkway. Here's those two lots that I talked about that are the lay down area. We're anxiously trying to get this project launched so we can get out of these people's face. We've been there for a long time. The project here is on the street right now. It's supposed to be awarded. We're opening bids on the 10th of December. We won't get it to council, obviously, before we go on break. It'll be one of the first ones that you see when you get back. This will snake its way through the middle of behind the properties on South and Drive. Here's South and Drive right here. We're actually going to be coming down Cherry Bark. There's Fire Station Number 12 right there that we're going to have to work really closely with those folks. It works its way over along the railroad tracks. This is another one of those ARPA-funded projects. Here are the Cleaner Water Kentucky projects where we bought the dry cleaners, and we are cleaning that up as far as contaminated soil. Again, you should see that one in January. Moving back across town, back over on New Circle around Winchester Road, this is the Floyd Drive project. It is out for bid, and bid's open on the 17th of December. This one's going to be probably a little bit interesting as far as traffic control on Floyd Drive, but where we cross New Circle, that is not an open cut. That is drilling under New Circle. There will be no impediment to traffic or anything like that. When it pops out, it pops out into that field there. There used to be a bunch of houses on Dartmoor Court that we bought and tore down years ago. We'll be coming through there and doing the restoration of that when that's done. Last of the pending projects, and I don't have a bid date for this one. We just keep working on it. Easements are very much of a challenge. You remember from talking to me before back in the caucus room about some of the easements that we're acquiring. This runs from Armstrong Mill along Tate's Creek Road under New Circle Road. It's going to be the one that people notice more than anything else. There will be more updates on this, but we are working feverishly to get this thing started in 2025 because it's not going to get any easier. Back to my comment, 2030 will catch up to us really fast. If we don't get started on this, I get a little worried about how this one's going to go. Last, wrapping this up, we have projects that are in the queue right now. Easements and working with neighbors are really the main things that are impediments, I guess, to moving forward with Trunk F and Plainview, although I think over the last couple of weeks we've made some progress with a multifamily property that was owned by folks from out of town, so we're making progress on that. Wrapping this whole thing up, again, full compliance deadlines now 2030 instead of 2026. Sixty-five percent of the capital projects are complete. We're making progress. Eighty-six of the 117 reoccurring SSOs have been abated. We're still training to come in at less what the cost was originally projected to be, but we worry about it every day. Thank you, Director. Colleagues, please log in if you have any comments or questions. Vice Mayor Buol. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Director, for that report. I live right near the Wolf Run project. Do you have, and I get questions all the time from neighbors, especially about that space where things are being stored, big piles of dirt and construction equipment. Do you have particular finish dates for Part F of that? I know you haven't gotten started on G yet, but the Part F on Lafayette Parkway, do you have any projected dates on finishing? On the laydown area we don't because that laydown area will become then a component of G because we've obviously got to start there at some point. And Bob and I have talked about that is how far do we get in across Rosemont Garden before laying stuff down where we've been laying it down doesn't make any sense anymore, and instead we move farther back. We really still haven't arrived at that yet, but we would like to find a laydown area that's closer to the railroad tracks because that's the direction we're headed as opposed to having to drive all the way through town just to get a load of gravel or a piece of pipe or anything else. We haven't decided yet, but in the early phases of that project, that area will still have to be used as a laydown. Okay. So I will let folks know it's TBD. The reason why we're moving ahead with awarding this is not only because it's ready, it's because they want us to leave. I understand that. I always keep wanting to turn around. This detention basin area here, when we get into that, we might look at trying to be able to use that more as a laydown area, but it's for stormwater detention, so we don't want to use too much of it because otherwise it will end up underwater because we'll end up with a big, huge storm. We've talked about here at the dead end of Elam and Venice Park where we're coming through here because actually Lexington owns several properties back there already. The problem is getting back up and down there because those are very narrow streets. Yeah. All right. I appreciate that, and I know the neighborhoods are appreciative of any of that communication. They just kind of like to know what's happening and how fast it's happening. So thank you. Understood. Thank you, Chair. Council Member Fogle. Thank you, Chair. Just a couple of simple questions. What is the price of the concession for the horses? I'm sorry, what? The price. What is the price? Like how much will it cost to put the horses up? I heard you mention something about doing some work and the horses and we're going to put them up. What is that going to run? I don't remember that number right off the top of my head. I will have to send it to you when I get back to my office because I can find it fairly quickly because it's in a council resolution, so I can find it in Legistar. I just don't remember what it is right now. $6,000 a month sticks in my mind, but like I said, I would like to verify. $6,000 a month? Yeah. And how long do you think the project is going to take to complete? Four months. Four months? Okay. And so I'll transition over to New Circle because that's the first district. New Circle and Limestone. Is there a timeline on when that project will start? It has been awarded. I would like to see them start post haste, but I'll be honest with you, Council Member, my guess would be probably more like January. You know, we're running into the holidays and stuff and people generally don't want to start things. They're probably working on ordering their materials and things like that and basically putting together their plan. I would say January, February would be a reasonable guess at this time. Okay. And it's the same similar question about the Winchester Road project, and I know that it's in the sixth district, but it kisses with the first district coming down Winchester Road, and so I was just looking for a timeline in that area with that work that's going to be done. I'm not sure which Winchester Road project. This one here is the closest one we're getting to at Floyd Drive. Yes. This one, like I said, the bids open on the 17th of December. Obviously, there wouldn't be a first and second reading on it until January, February, and they usually take every bit of 60 to 90 days to get the contracts together, get materials ordered. I would say it's probably more of an April start. Okay. Well, thank you, and thank you for your presentation. I'll get back with you on the information about the horses. All right. Thank you. Councilwoman Gray. Thank you, Chair, and thank you, Director Martin, for your presentation. It's always a joy to hear the work that is being done regarding these things that I hear often about from my residents, often. So regarding the New Circle Road near Floyd that will be going under New Circle Road and going to Dartmoor Court, as you know, I live on Dartmoor Drive, which is near that court. So with the residents that live, because there are still homes on other sides of where the city did remove the homes, how much will the work impact the residents that the pipe? I know on Floyd it's going underneath New Circle and going towards Dartmoor Court. How much will that impact the residents whose homes are there? My guess is that a lot of it will impact the people along Harrogate because they're going to have a lot of traffic going up and down there once they get the materials in there. Once they actually get the materials in there, they're working across the old railroad tracks onto, what is that, Sunshine Lane maybe? Yes. Yeah. And so they'll be finishing up over there. That's the downstream end of it, so to speak. I got the map right in front of me here. Yes, you do. Traffic probably here on that street, the work going on over in this part of it, these folks at the dead end on this end, you'll get to be a front row seat for it for a couple of months. Right, because I will also on my end go out and knock on the doors to let my residents and my neighbors know that that's happening. So the property on Dartmoor Court, with this piping going in there, would it be feasible for, say, the neighborhood plant flowers are in that area? That was something I was brainstorming on, how we can do to beautify that lot of land. Just curious. We'd be happy to engage in that conversation about what the post-construction restoration would look at. You know, my personal opinion, any time the neighborhood takes an active ownership in some of these remnant properties, that's great. I mean, it's a win-win situation in my mind. Well, thank you. One other thing regarding the work on New Circle Road, which is actually adjacent, it's near the Kmart, it's adjacent to the 6th District. However, with that area, which does impact always 6th District, and the residents who drive through that area, how much will traffic be impacted by this work? I know at certain hours of the day, let me just say, New Circle Road at that area is very tight. And with the way that our lights are currently set up, traffic backs up. And I'm just curious, how much will the work impact the traffic? I wish I could say with certainty, but I'll give you my opinion. The upper end where it's red, up in the, oh, jeez, I forget the name of the street there, but it's on the Lexmark end of it. We're on the access road, and then we dive off into and going through the parking lots and stuff, because that's where the existing sewer goes. And basically, we're trying to find a way to snake our way through it. It will be not so much of an impact, I think, for traffic as it will be for the businesses that were in their parking lot. I think they will sense it a lot more than people who are driving from Winchester Road to Newtown Bike, for example. You know, when we cross under the railroad tracks near Broadway, again, that's not an open cut. They drill under that. So they'll be working on each side of the road drilling under that, and they'll probably be using our parking lot for part of their lay-down area and stuff, too. So I don't see that it will be necessarily a traffic issue so much as it will be accessing if you are going to certain businesses in that corridor. Okay, gotcha. Thank you, sir. Thank you for your time, and thank you, Chair. Council Member Brown. Thank you, Chair. Charlie, I don't think you mentioned anything about Green Tree Road. Is it considered in your completed area, and can you give me a summary there because it's not finished? The pipeline part of it is finished. The post-construction part of it is not. We continue to wrestle with that contractor and the other utilities that were out there. I didn't put it on there because, like I said, the pipe part of it is done. The manhole overflows that happened behind those houses on Green Tree are a bit abated, but we're just going to have to continue to wrestle with our contractor out there on Green Tree because you're right, it's not done. Is it safe to say that this was probably one of the most challenging of your projects? It was certainly challenging. I mean, I think we made some decisions on it that now I'm not so sure that I would do again. If you remember, we decided to replace all of the laterals on both sides. The lateral is what serves each one of the properties because the sewer was in the street. We thought, well, let's put the laterals in, and that way we don't have to come back. The tradeoff was is that we were there twice as long as we would have been if we would have not done that. I'm not so sure that I would choose that option again. And then contractor performance is always a challenge. Well, and then you also, in this particular project, you had the water company that you had to work with because they were also laying their line in the road. Yeah, and Nancy's not here to speak on behalf of them, but I can tell you that I know she's working really hard to make the pavement sharing and utilities working together to be able to get in and get out and have things done seamlessly in a way. I guess in many ways this is the poacher's child and how not to do it. And I understand the biggest part of Green Tree has been paved, and I think some of the neighbors still have questions about some of the contract work. This is over a year-and-a-half project that was longer as a result of a lot of various things and ordering equipment and getting things in. And it goes all the way for anybody that travels that. It's a north-south route that a lot of people travel from Richmond Road, Chenaway, and then they hit Green Tree and go all the way over to Armstrong Mill Road. So it's a major corridor for traffic, and, you know, I think it's passable now, and they're using it and everything. And it looks like to me you're not going to be able to complete it until paving contractors open in the spring. Is that a fair estimate? That's my concern as well, yes. Okay. I just wanted to get an update on that so everybody will continue to be patient with the new council member in that area. We unfortunately challenge people's patience a lot. Like I said, I can only compliment some of the—even my neighbors. Like I said, I live off Kennesaw there with the yellow box, and they're all at least still talking to me, but I wonder why. Council Member Lynch. Thank you, Chair, and thank you, Director, for your presentation. And my question is about your slide where you listed the RMP projects and Clean Our Water Kentucky grant funds, and you listed the consent degree projects in red. There's a column that says 10% added question mark, and I know that the two amounts in that column are 10% of the base amounts, and I just wanted to know, just to get some clarification, why the question mark? Is that money that we put in or the additional grant money? Just a clarification on that column. I should have taken that out because this is something I've been— this hangs over my desk, and I should have probably added it. The program allowed for the addition of 10% of grant money, no more local money, just all grant money, but it required a separate agreement. If you'll remember, we had to walk one on here for a year recently because they wanted it, and they wanted it right now. And so the 10% for those two projects, which is actually one project and two different grants, has been approved, and it is state money, not local money. My apologies. That's what I wanted to know. Thank you, Director. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Director, and I just want to say that I really appreciate— I know a few of those projects either cross over or come very close to the 5th District, and I know that you and your team put a lot of effort into communicating and working with our neighborhoods, so I appreciate that, and I also appreciate your keeping on schedule and trying to be under budget. It's always something that we like to see here, right? It's always a positive thing. So thank you. There will be more updates, like I said, especially after the first of the year when we get a schedule. I probably will need to come back and brief everyone on what the real details of that schedule look like. Thank you. Our next item for presentation is from our Waste Digester Task Force. Council Member Savigny was the chair of this task force, so I'm going to turn the mic over to him to provide some background and any introductions. Thank you, Chair. Members of this committee, I'm pleased to present the Waste Digester Task Force report, but first I'd like to express gratitude to everyone who is involved with this crucial work. I want to thank my colleagues, Council Member Reynolds and Council Member Legree, for their dedication and their insights. We really want to thank Commissioner Albright, who couldn't be here with us this morning because she was called away, and her staff, including the former director, Tracy Thurman, Deputy Director John Howard and their staff, and Richard Dukas, who's going to substitute for Nancy here today and present for us. A special thanks to both Kendra Thompson and Alicia, my former aide, Larmore, who worked very diligently on putting this presentation together. We also appreciate the following groups for welcoming us on site visits. We made three different ones. UK's Food, Waste and Organic Diversion Program, we did a site visit there and to their Woodford County Research Farm. We went to Smith Creek in Indiana, who manages Louisville's commercial composting. And we went to the waste management, the landfill site in Moorhead. And our special thanks to GT Environmental and Coker Consultants who actually put together the report that we worked from, and they answered quite a few questions about the details of composting in the U.S. We have a few guests from Blue Grass Greensource here today. I want to thank them for being here. Our new Director of Waste Management, I think, might be here. And without further ado, I'm going to turn it over to you, Richard. And since Richard wasn't present through most of this stuff, we've gone through this, and he's going to present, which I appreciate. And I'll be happy to clarify at the end and answer questions. So without further ado, thank you, Richard. And I am Richard Dugas. I am the Administrative Officer Senior in the Environmental Quality and Public Works Office. So Nancy asked me to stand in for her today. So give me a little bit of grace if I trip up a little bit. So Councilmember Savigny, I said thanks to all the members of the committee that are here. And a little bit of background. This process started in 2015. Last year, or 2022 and 2023, the report was given. Commissioner Albright gave that report. And the results of that report were that the most likely scenario that's going to work for Lexington-Fayetteville County Government is going to be the source-separated, organic aerated static pile composting. So the task force was tasked with, they continued to look at three different options, the rotary drum, the tunnel digester, and the static pile. These were the three tasks, specific tasks, that the committee was given. And so over the last year, since they were tasked by committee, by council last year, in January they established their purpose and scope, set the expectations. And in February they met and extensively reviewed the consultant's report, informed a lot of questions because the report is very, very technical. Anybody that wants a copy, if you don't already have it, it's about an inch and a half thick. And it's a lot of gobbledygook. But it is very informative, but it is very detailed in composting organics. So in March the task force had a Q&A meeting with the consultants. It was very good. I actually did attend that meeting. It was very informative. In May the group continued to, they had Q&A with a couple experts, subject matter experts, one from Virginia and then one from the composting council. At that time they formally moved forward with that the, due to costs, basically the rotary drum and the tunnel reactor digesters are very, very capital intensive, and they also have very large maintenance costs, ongoing maintenance costs. So that's when it was formally, a vote was taken to just move forward with just the SSO. So in August they, after the summer break in August, they visited the Smith Creek composting facility that is just north of Louisville that works with the Louisville businesses. And this program up here, it uses, it takes a lot of the restaurants, residential food production manufacturing where you can get a high density of the organics as opposed to residential where you'd have a lower density. And so this is a successful project because they are basically breaking even with the money that they charge for the pickups and the money that they make. This is a for-profit. They do fine the participating entities that if they have their contamination rates are too high. And one of the notes on this is that even though it was a hot day, there was not any noticeable odors. And we're not going to point any odors, but we do have an odor czar coming. Also in August, the task force visited UK's pilot program, which is over in Woodford County. CM Savignee mentioned that. It's a very small, it's really concentrated, again, on UK's food production, the kitchens that UK runs, the prep areas and things like that. They did switch to brown napkins. They're going back and forth with this program, learning how to make it better. And this program is self-contained. UK does not export anything out. They use all of the compost that they generate through this program. In August, several members of the group went to Waste Management's landfill in Moorhead, which is where we currently take all of our municipal solid waste. They looked on there. One of the benefits that Waste Management is doing out there, they do have a methane capture program out there, which they use to generate electricity, which they are using some electric vehicles at that. So that's a creative reuse of the organic byproducts. And again, they noted that even though it was a hot August day, it didn't smell that bad. How do we prepare for success? Through this entire multi-year process, one of the things that keeps coming back is one of the shortfalls of our current program is our contamination rates, as you can see on here, 30%, 35%, roughly double what the national averages are. So you're going to see a recurring theme here. It keeps coming back to our contamination rates or what are causing our recycling and our alternative disposal programs to struggle. Getting to the end. So the task force's recommendations out to this group is going to be to develop an implementation of a recycling and yard waste contamination reduction plan. They hope to have that done by next year. That plan would be a work group, public outreach and education, marketing, and potentially modifications of ordinances or resolutions. Recommendation number two would be to develop and implement the aerated static pile composting by 2027. Recommendation number three is then potentially within a couple of years after that, hopefully move forward to that moving into residential. And then the last recommendation is our staff will commit to briefing out this committee every six months. And now it all comes down to what's it going to cost? The first recommendation on there moving forward, it's my understanding that the $75,000 that you see up there, there's been some discussions with finance and Nancy, Commissioner Albright, and they believe that they can utilize existing funds. So there's not an ask for those funds that we think we can come bring those out of additional funds that we currently have. Future costs, though, moving forward, just to kind of, again, give everybody the long view, and that is in fiscal year 26, which is not very far off, we're going to be starting to do budgets on that real quickly. We're going to have some pilot contamination reduction plans, education, marketing, additional staff, violations tracking, and then looking a little further out in the future in 27 and 29, a aerated static pile facility based on our current tonnages would be somewhere in the $8 million range based on what the consultants gave us. So that's just kind of looking down the road, assuming that the first steps in recommendation one, and we can get those contamination rates down, because if we can't get the contamination rates down, then that's going to continue to have any program we have moving forward is going to continue to struggle. And then moving forth into the out years after that, you would then incur a regular operating cost, because unfortunately the program is not going to be self-sustaining. It will cost money, but we have not studied yet in depth how much reduction we would get from our existing municipal solid waste by diverting some of that. So exactly how much that delta is, some of that $1.4 million might be diverted from other costs that we're spending elsewhere to dispose of it. But that's where some of those further studies in the future would come from. Possible sources of funding is just going to be from the EQPW, the urban services, landfill balances, and potential grant opportunities. We've always got staff looking for grants, keeping their eye out for it. And then any questions? Colleagues, go ahead and sign in if you have a comment or a question, but I'm going to call on Council Member Savigny to see if you have any closing remarks for the presentation. Thank you. Just a few clarifications. Because this was the Waste Digester Task Force, there was, in that original report, there was three different digesters, three different concepts in that report. And the one in Sevierville is rotary drum. Through the research, just so you know, there's been maybe 20 of those in the U.S., 20 to 25, and there's about four remaining. So it seems like it might be a good idea that we weren't a first adopter. And I think we learned a lot from just other people's experiences that there's easier ways to do what we want to do, to basically divert things from the landfill, lower our overall carbon footprint. Methane production is not great, so you want to do what you can. It's about 10 times worse than carbon. So there's things that you want to do that are very proactive, and large-scale composting is a method to do that. So thank you. That's it. Council Member Lynch. Thank you, Chair. I was a little bit fascinated and curious about our contamination rates since they're so high. Are those numbers inclusive of the whole county? Is it just residential? Is it commercial? Is it all of us combined? Those numbers are the whole county, and it includes residential and commercial. So, yeah, they were extremely high, like way off the national averages, and that's kind of alarming because you can't really run a good program without it. So that's why that's our first recommendation, and it's just education, and it's practice. It's creating materials to kind of support that. Thank you. I don't see anyone else signed in. Well, Council Member Legris. Thank you, Chair. Council Member Savigny, I just want to take a minute, and I think that this presentation starts to get at the scope of the work, but I want to commend you for leading our group and for taking, honestly, what was a pretty expansive task, not only with the report, but just with the process and decision-making about what do we explore, how do we do site visits, who do we talk to, what would be a good fit for Lexington, sorting through all of those elements and then bringing us to a point where we have a set number of steps that are realistic and, I think, sustainable for our particular community. I think it's really easy to look at other communities and say, well, they're doing it this way, and that's the perfect model, so let's just replicate it here. I think it's much harder to say where are we in our community and what is going to really work for us, and where do we need to start. That contamination rate question example is a really good case in point there because we saw, oh, yeah, we would love to do this large-scale composting citywide, but we have to start with contamination rate because if we don't get that fixed and we don't get that addressed, then we can't be successful years down the line where we want to do something really big. So you led us through a very, very big process, talking to a lot of stakeholders and people who are already doing work like this, but also getting us to a spot where we have really, I think, achievable and positive goals. So I just wanted to make that note, and I appreciated being a part of it. Council Member Reynolds. Sorry. Thank you, Chair. I will echo my colleagues' comments, and I appreciated that you were very organized and we went through a lot of different steps. I just wanted to kind of say, personally, I started at this place of seeing what Sevierville was doing, wanting to digest our trash and break it down so that there was less in the landfill, and that's what I wanted, and we walked through this whole process. We not only did the site visits. We had this study. We went through what should we do, what should we not do, how much is it going to cost, and I realized that we're not going to be able to do what they're doing, but that we can still take baby steps, and I think that we have to do whatever we can to try to divert things from the landfill and process our trash, whether that be food, yard waste, whatever we have, in a better, more sustainable way. And so I think that even though we didn't end up where I wanted to end up in this whole process, that we ended up in a place where we said, okay, this is something that we can do. We're going to work on the education piece, and then we're going to have these goals of having more people in our community composting, maybe starting small and then going a lot larger, and I think in the end we're going to get to a lot better place than where we are right now. So thank you again. It was a pleasure to be a part of this. Council Member Savigny. Since nobody else has questions, I was going to wrap this up. So our task force, comprised of both council members and city staff, worked diligently since January to review composting options for Lexington. After extensive research, including site visits and expert consultations, we've determined a composting method known as ASP, aerated static pile, aligns best with our processes and our city's long-term goals. As outlined in both the 2045 Comprehensive Plan and the Empower Lexington Plan. I believe the task force has set a clear path forward. We feel confident in the focused direction we're proposing. With that in mind, I'd like to move through a more formal resolution forthcoming that the findings of the Waste Digester Task Force be adopted by this committee and be forwarded to the council for formal approval and action. So moved. Second. We have a motion and several seconds. Any discussion on the motion? Please sign in. Seeing none, all in favor, say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Okay. That motion passes. Thank you, Council Member Savigny. Finally, on our agenda today, we have a recycling update. This item is currently sponsored by Council Member Worley, so I will turn this over to him for any opening remarks. Thank you, Chair. I'll start these remarks because they kind of lead in. The reason I didn't chime in to speak about the digester issue and to say thank you to that subcommittee and their work, looking at the opportunities for a digester go back, Council Member Maloney was talking about that for several years and always wanted to go to Sevierville, but at that time that was really the only model. And so your all's work and the experiences of others have led us now to a better opportunity and continued sustainability opportunities. And one thing that kind of led to this recycling item is that contamination rate. When I was initially my first year on this council in 18, I sent out a survey to my constituents about issues that they were concerned with and questions they had. And one that came back is we really don't understand our recycling practices because there's a lot of items that say they're recyclable, but they may be in some communities but not here with our technology. And there's some items that say recyclable and just aren't. And then there's other items that are recyclable but are difficult to commingle and difficult to work together. And so I put this item in committee that led to a subcommittee being created that at the time was chaired by Councilmember Fred Brown. And I believe it was me, you, and Councilmember Bledsoe was that subcommittee. And we worked with Commissioner Albright and started looking at our MRF and how we could improve it, how we could improve our practices. And that led to at one point refusing to take paper, then taking paper separately, working our way back to taking it all together. Because I think one thing that people don't realize, particularly those that were raised in my era of elementary school, everything was recycle, reuse, reuse, recycle, reuse, reuse. People want to do good things for the environment. But some of the things that we try to do are either not efficient or affordable for the city to do or actually ultimately end up costing more in the environmental cost and bigger carbon footprint. Because if it shows up at the MRF and it can't be taken there, we've got to put it back on a truck and take it to the landfill. So we started just saying let's – we made so many progresses out of that subcommittee, and I know it's part of the presentation, but then it just became kind of an annual thing of let's keep our eye to it because we can always see where the community can learn more and where we can get better and better because this is something that we want to do for our community. We just want to do it affordably and efficiently. So thank you for that long-winded intro, but please. I'll turn it over to Mr. Dugas for the presentation. And I am again substituting for Commissioner Albright. A poor substitution. So basically we're going to go over what we currently accept, which again is, as Council Member Worley highlighted, is the fact that for a lot of citizens it can be a little confusing on what our messaging is. And that is something that continuously is being worked on by the public information group that we have. So here is a list of what we currently accept. And I do believe that this is obviously on the website, and we do the stickers that you can put on the rosies. And again, hearkening back to Council Member Worley, basically in 2020 we stopped taking a few things and we've piloted recycling 3-6 plastics, unsuccessful. And then we moved forward. We started improving the facility again, started accepting that. Over the last few years we've put over $4 million in upgrades. That's done through grants and through Council appropriating the money. We now currently accept the broth boxes, milk cartons, juice boxes, glass. We've moved the sorting of the glass out. Glass originally, again, going back to when I was a kid, glass was one of the things that was a big recycler. Now it's not as big a cash. It doesn't sell as well. So we've now begun accepting commingled paper again. In 2023 we accepted a SWFR grant, and that did come through Council just a few weeks ago. We accepted that grant. We have the $1.8 million. We're just starting that process. We just completed our first quarterly report on that grant. And part of that grant is to, again, allow us to expand how we can and improve our existing single-source recycling, how we can sort it, do a better job of sorting it so we can take more plastics. Here is a little bit of a breakdown of some of the proposed. It's going to be we're going to upgrade some of the areas of facilities, do some more digital optical sorting, using some more technology, and hopefully that will allow us to get a better end product that has less contamination, less contamination, cross-contamination, and then be able to sell the polypropylene bales on the secondary market and actually get a little bit, reduce some of our overall operating costs. The new baler, you've probably heard about this. Today is the last day that we're accepting recycling because the plant is shutting down to do the new baler. It will be installed next week. Construction will start on it next week. We actually have two construction projects going on next week. While the plant is down, not only will they be replacing the baler, which is over 12 years old, and it's more than four years beyond when it should have, we've been just holding it together, but also the fabric tent that goes over the tipping floor where we initially receive everything, that tent is also going to be getting replaced so we won't have leaks and things so we don't get soaked and contaminated at the facility. Hopefully, if everything goes right on our timeline, December 16th, we'll start accepting recycling again. So the messaging, I do know I've seen it personally on the news quite a bit. They're basically just telling everybody, hold your recycling because once the plant's back up and running, we'll be able to accept all that and push it all through. Any questions? Council members, please sign in if you have questions or comments. And Ms. Hatter, the manager of the MRF, is here, so if you want any more detailed questions about that, as well as Director Baldwin. Okay. I don't see any questions for you. I do want to thank you for stepping in today for both of those presentations. I know it was a last-minute change, and I appreciate you being willing to do that today. Council members, let's take a quick look at the items referred to committee to see if you have any removals or changes you would like to make. Council member Savicny. Yes. Thank you, Chair. Since we presented on the waste digester, and that's going to turn into a six-month update, so I would just want to move that to a six-month update and we might want to call it something else. We might want to call it ASP composting update or something like that. Okay. So moving that to under the annual updates, and then you could work with Alicia on the particular title. Okay. That's fine. Thank you. I don't believe we need a vote on that. Okay. Any other items to update or remove at this time? Okay. We have a quiet committee today. I do want to say this is our last meeting of this term, so I want to say thank you to this committee for the opportunity to serve as chair. I also want to thank Council Member Legris for acting as my vice chair for the committee. We have gotten a lot done over the last two years, so I appreciate everyone's thoughtful participation in our meetings. So thank you to my colleagues. And, Chair, I just think I speak for everybody by saying thank you for your work and Council Member Legris for your work. You have worked through some big agendas and a lot of big items. You've done a great job with this committee. Thank you. Thank you. Council Member Savigny. I'm just going to pile on. Thank you very much for the work that you did this last two years. It's fun working with you on this. And Council Member Legris, you as well. So thank you so much for serving. Council Member Gray. I guess we're going around the table. Chair and Vice Chair, I would like to say thank you for your leadership in this committee, how you were easily able to smooth through a meeting. I loved it. But I would also, since this is our last time meeting, I would like to say thank you to three Council Members, or actually four Council Members that will not be here with us in the new year. A special thank you to Kathy Plowman for all that you have done during your tenure, standing up for your district. You know, I've already told you how I feel. And I just love passionate people who care about our community. And it's through to your bone. To Preston Worley, you have been a joy of my jokes. But it has been a pleasure to serve with you on this Council and on this committee. And during the great comprehensive talk, thank you for taking the heat. Council Member Fogle, you bring the fire, you have brought the fire these past two years. And you have brought a perspective that this Council, this city, has never had an opportunity to see in this position. I'm just thankful for you and your fire that you brought. And you swayed our attention to things that we did not see. And that's what a leader does. So thank you. And lastly, to my partner right here, my partner in crime, or in jokes, as I like to say, because we joke a lot, to Council Member Fred Brown, it has been such an honor to listen to you and to hear your thoughts. Although we are on different sides of the spectrum, we got along so very well. And when someone is true and sincere in who they are, I admire it. You are every single thing that you say that you are. A man of God, a true leader who loves his family and takes his job as Council Member extremely seriously. So thank you. Thank you for your leadership. Thank you for all that you've done for the city of Lexington over these decades. So thank you. And thank you. Council Member Fogle. Thank you, Chair and Vice Chair. What an interesting committee. Most of my calls that I received was from waste management workers. And so being on this committee and learning everything that I learned from you all, it has been a joy to serve on this committee with the folks that were selected to be on this committee. I wanted the waste management people to know that we're moving in a great direction. So hearing the conversation today about contamination and their direct contact with the contamination that they pick up every day of the week, thank God they did not go on strike in my two years of being on Council. So you chaired a great committee, and thank you for your hard work. Thank you, Council Member Legree. And thank you, coworkers. Hey, everyone. That concludes our business for today. There are no objections. This meeting is adjourned.