Thank you all for being here and at our March meeting. So I think the first thing on the agenda is to approve the minutes from our December meeting. So from last year, does anybody want to make a motion to approve the minutes? Motion made and a second? Second. Thank you. Any discussion, any changes? All right. They are approved. I'm sorry, I didn't do that correctly. All in favor? All right. Any opposed? OK, we're good to go. All right. Well, I would like to welcome Tiffany Messer. I'm really excited to hear this presentation. She's going to be talking about fate and transportation of emerging contaminants entering, leaving and flowing past wastewater treatment plants in central Kentucky. Tiffany, we will let you have the floor. Good morning, everyone. I'm Tiffany Messer. I'm an assistant professor at the University of Kentucky, primarily focused on water quality. I work in the biosystems and agricultural engineering department. Today, I'm going to be talking about emerging contaminant exposure following wastewater treatment plant processes. And I first want to make sure to give a shout out to Kira Sigler. She is the graduate student that did the majority of the work I'm going to be presenting on. And this was actually funded off of a 104B USGS grant. This is Kira. She's currently actually interviewing for Ph.D. opportunities right now. So she isn't here with me today. So just to introduce, we decided to look into what is leaving wastewater treatment plants in the central Kentucky region. And I'll get into more of which type of plants you're looking at in a moment. But in particular, we were interested in the per- and polyfluoroethylene at-substance of PFAS because it has been, obviously, in the news a lot. There's been a lot of concerns about it. And we've actually been studying this particular contaminant for about five years now in our lab. There's over thousands of PFAS compounds. Particularly, we find them with water, grease, and dirt repellents. So think nonstick pans. Think of anything that repels water typically has PFAS in it, including clothing. Also, firefighting foam is another big contribution of PFAS in our environment. There have been some human health implications, particularly as a carcinogenic effect. And so that's been one of the main reasons why EPA has recently made new recommendations of what PFAS limits should be in water and other locations. And we're finding it everywhere. It is ubiquitous in all environments, in every country. There pretty much isn't a sample we can't get that has some kind of background concentration of PFAS. Just as a side note, this is a man-made chemical. So this is not something that naturally occurs in the environment. So we find it somewhere. It's because it was created somewhere, and then it has moved to that environment, either from air, water, or soil, or just people moving through the space, or animals moving through the space. The other contaminant we're really interested in are what we call neonicotinoid insecticides. Has anyone heard of the honeybee collapse disorder syndrome? It's kind of been a few people. It's been a very popular discussion over the past few almost decades at this point. Particularly, there's been some link of these particular pesticides linking to that colony collapse disorder. It does not mean that they are actually causing it, but there has been some pretty profound findings that it may lead to it. So there are seven available in the U.S. market. The colony collapse disorder particularly is a concern for honeybees, so we're thinking more of pollinators. And then we are also finding it ubiquitous in surface and groundwater. So we really have a hard time finding a sample that does not have neonicotinoids in it at this point. It's detected in human biological samples as well, although there's not been a lot of research of how these neonicotinoids could impact humans, particularly their byproduct formations. Meaning they start out as one form, but they break down into much more toxic formations, which is actually the bigger concern when we think of non-target species like honeybees. But there has, like I said, not been much research done on human information. So the overall objectives for our study was to improve our overall understanding of the prevalence of PFAS and neonicotinoids in the surface water and sediment surrounding wastewater treatment plants, particularly in the central Kentucky region. And then to quantify PFAS and neonicotinoid presence in wastewater treatment and produce biosolids. We as agricultural engineers are particularly interested in the biosolids because so often, particularly in western Kentucky, we would use biosolids as an application of fertilizer for ag fields. With the new EPA recommendations, if they were actually implemented, if we have PFAS in our biosolids, that actually could be a huge concern. Additionally, if we're putting neonicotinoids into our soil already, we don't want to add additional pesticides if we already have them there. So these are some of the things we were trying to consider looking at the biosolids. So for our experimental setup, we had an upstream sampling location where we would take water and sediment samples. We would also sample the influence of what's coming into our wastewater treatment plant. We would take a biosolid sample and then we would also sample at the wastewater treatment plant effluent. And then we would have downstream monitoring stations. We would look at water and sediment at these. We were measuring 18 different analytes. Like I said, there are thousands of PFAS analytes. We're looking at the primary 18 that we often are seeing right now and are pretty easy to be able to be detected on our equipment. PFAS is incredibly difficult to create methods for. They're incredibly expensive samples to run. So we were pretty limited on how many we can look at. We also looked at 20 different pesticide and herbicide analytes. All of the new nucleotides that are currently available in the market were assessed along with their byproduct or what they transform into. We also assessed nutrients, just kind of our typical looking at nitrogen and phosphorus and carbon speciation. And then we had some additional considerations where we had two wastewater treatment plants we were looking at. One was primarily an urban setting, which has dominated by an urban center. The other was looking at a more rural location. So we had more agricultural systems surrounding the wastewater treatment plant. We also looked at two different seasons. So we assessed during April and we also assessed during July of 2021. So one of the ways we do this is we could go out and take a grab sample every single time. But a grab sample where you just dip the sample bottle in the water is really just giving you a snapshot of that one moment when you sample. So one of the ways we work around this is we use these things called POSIS. And what they are is water flows through these canisters and then the chemicals will actually absorb to these filters. And it actually will give us an average concentration. So we're not just getting a snapshot, we're seeing what the chronic exposure is in these different systems. So we install these in the rivers of the streams upstream and downstream of the wastewater treatment plant. And then also in the influent and effluent of the wastewater treatment plants. To be able to get an average concentration of those different PFAS species and the neonicotinoid species. And this is a picture of Kira installing these. This is messy work. Anyone who works in wastewater treatment systems know this is pretty messy work. So she has a really strong stomach. These are one of our locations for our field sites. So we just put them inside of the stream. And these are rock beds pretty much so there's not going to be a lot of organics attached to them. But they would sit there and let the water flow through them for a two-week period. So we're getting a two-week average of that system during July and April. We also had water table data loggers to be able to measure flow through the system. To be able to determine a load of PFAS and neonicotinoids moving through these systems at that time. Lastly, we did sediment assessment. So sometimes these will absorb to sediment. And will just sit there or they'll move during big storm events like we're having today. So one of the things we did was work with Dr. Bill Ford in our department to assess the first five centimeters of sediment. And what amount of PFAS and neonicotinoids are literally just hanging out in the sediment and just residing there. This is really critical particularly for biogeochemical processes. How nutrients are moving and transforming the system. Particularly if they're being exposed to emerging contaminants. These emerging contaminants can impact the microbes that do a lot of our good work for nutrient treatment. Which then can reduce our chances of algal blooms later on down the road. So for our instrumentation, we shipped all of our samples for the emerging contaminants. The PFAS and neonicotinoids to the Nebraska Water Sciences Lab. A lot of the reason why some of our data still isn't here is we just got our last round of data this week. So I'll be presenting on most of our data. But there's a little bit you'll be like why is she not talking about July for neonicotinoids. We just got the data in this week. We also submitted additional samples to the Kentucky Geological Survey to run mainly for our nutrient assessment. And then we also did all the carbon analysis in our lab on campus. And so when we use these POSIS to do this average concentration. What we do is we actually will measure the mass of the picloidalite on this membrane. And then we have done in the lab what we call uptake rates. So we can determine how quickly those contaminants will attach to this filter. And then we'll be able to determine the overall average concentration we have per day moving down our system. There are four of the PFAS that we did detect that haven't currently been established uptake rates. So we won't be presenting those today. So time for some results. I'm going to kind of give you some general water quality parameters, move into the PFAS discussion, then finish up with neonicotinoids. So here is a picture of our water quality. Yes, it's a lot of data. The biggest thing I want to point out is we have our large urban system here. This is during April. Our small rural system here. And if you look at the gray lines, this is showing all of the downstream locations. And the biggest thing we're seeing here really is you'll see your chloride increase. That's not super shocking, right, because we are chlorinating before we release. We do see a little bit of increase in our nitrate-nitrogen concentrations. But all of these were well below the water quality limits for ecotoxicology. So we're not really concerned. But we do see an increase, as you would expect, downstream of a wastewater treatment plant. This will sooner or later get diluted as it moves to the system or go through biogeochemical processes typically. Here is the more interesting data that we're seeing. So this is showing the upstream and downstream comparisons for all of our wastewater treatment plants, for PFAS particularly. And we've broken them up into these different types of PFAS here. The ones that we're worried about is particularly with this re-recommended new EPA recommendations. Now, this is wastewater treatment, right? We're not looking at water treatment. No one is drinking this water. I want to be very clear about that. So this is not something we need to be freaking out about yet. But this is purely for wastewater treatment. This is what's going into a downstream location that can maybe be used later. So here we're seeing wastewater treatment one. This is our urban location. This is the PFAS coming in, and you can see that it actually decreases from a concentration as we go down. We'll get into more details in a second about this. The wastewater treatment two, you'll see that the upstream has far less than the downstream. So we're actually getting an increase in the rural location as it's going through the processes. Now, this is the really interesting one. Our wastewater treatment one, we have an amazing amount of PFAS going into our upstream location in the stream. We actually get a decrease at the downstream location. So before it even hits the wastewater treatment plant, we have a much higher concentration in July at this urban location. And then downstream, we're actually seeing a decrease in the PFAS concentrations. There is a reason that we think this is happening. So our upstream location is relatively close to a firefighting training station. And as mentioned, firefighting foam has a lot of PFAS. So during this July month particularly, we had a pretty big rainfall event during our evaluation period. So our assumption is that probably a lot of the runoff from non-point source pollution ended up in the stream. And then we ended up capturing it in our average concentration that month. So there could have been a really high concentration at one point, but we didn't get to grab samples. So this is the average concentration that we got during that period. So again, this shows that what you're using, your land upstream, particularly if it is using a lot of PFAS, we can get these huge amounts that are entering the stream itself. Again, here we see that at the upstream location, we have a lower concentration at the downstream location for this rural site here. The one thing I do want to point out is that the PFOS and the PFOAs are all over those recommended limits. So if we're pulling water from this stream to treat for drinking water, we are going to have to consider a way to treat it if they do actually enforce these new recommendations. So what we're seeing in our streams are, you know, we have a pretty decent amount that are in our streams right now. Okay, so comparing our influent versus our effluent. So these right here, we've got our April locations, and this is the urban system. You'll see again, the influent has lower concentrations of PFOS than our effluent. This is a recurring theme for both the urban site and the rural site here, and we're seeing it again in July. And you'll see there's a drastic increase in July as what's being processed in the system. Now this could be for many, many reasons. Again, we're only looking at 18 different forms of PFOS when there are 1,000. So there could be precursors of PFOS that are occurring in the system, and they're just breaking down into maybe smaller pieces or larger, or they're just not breaking down at all. But we are seeing that they are breaking down, it's just into smaller forms. The other thing is that the PFOS, which is one of our higher ones. Let's see, so this is like the turquoise color right here, is right here. This one right, let's see, so the PFOS is the, yep, this one right here. This one is one that they're currently replacing. So you don't really see it super high here, but this PFH, this one is part of the replacements for the PFOSs. So we're seeing that there's an increase that is coming in with the replacements that they're trying to put in place for some of the ones that are being more regulated now, which is typical. We see the same happening with pesticides a lot of times too. For concentrations in the sediment and biosolids, comparably, when you're looking at concentrations, these are much, much, much less than what we're seeing in water. Of what we're seeing, the majority of them are going to be in long chain forms, so they're going to be larger molecules that are attaching typically to our organic matter. We have a lot less in the short chain here. And then if you break them up into the particular types of PFOS, we're seeing much more of the PFSAs inside of the solid formations. So I'm going to switch gears from the PFOS and talk a little more about the neonicotinoids. So neonicotinoids were detected at all eight sites that we monitored. We detected 12 of the 20 analytes we were looking at. And some of these, like I mentioned, are not neonics, they're actually herbicides. What we did see is that the large urban had higher concentrations in the influent versus effluent. What would you think of pesticides? Where would you expect pesticides to be highest at off your first inclination? Any thoughts? Rural. Rural areas, right? You think agriculture, you think they're applying it for food production, right? We have commonly, and this is probably our fifth study we have found, that neonicotinoids, these insecticides particularly, are typically higher in urban settings. And there's a few reasons for that. Does anyone have a pet? A few people? Who puts flea treatment on your pet? That's a neonicotinoid. And your pet does not keep it in their body the entire time. It goes typically on your lawn or a dog park. So we have done some assessments at dog parks, and these are usually just extremely high near dog parks, particularly. Another place is, does anyone like to golf or like to have a really nice, pretty lawn? My dad was one that loved to have a really nice lawn, and I don't know how many pesticides he applied to his lawn. And our neighbors are the same way. That also, a lot of times homeowners don't typically read what's on the back to actually apply it the correct way. They should also apply it right before it rains. And so we typically see these happening in urban settings, typically just because it's not being applied correctly or it's from overuse. So this actually, for us, wasn't that surprising that we would see. The other thing was that the small rural typically had higher in the effluent versus the effluent, and we really think this is probably happening because our rural wastewater treatment plant is using UV treatment. Now that's a great way to treat wastewater. Don't get me wrong. But one of the things with particularly the neonicotinoid pesticides is they degrade based on UV exposure, and they degrade into more toxic byproducts unless they have the appropriate time to degrade all the way down to their base elements. And so what we think is happening is it's pretty much starting the degradation of these pesticides. They get to their byproduct formation that's sometimes more toxic, and then they just sit there, and they don't have any more exposure to UV, and then they're released. And so that's one of the considerations we're needing to kind of look into further of how we're treating particularly these neonicotinoid pesticides. From the graph, you can see we've got our upstream location, we've got our downstream location in this larger area. You can see the downstream location has dramatically more. This could just be based on where we were located at the site because you'll see that it's not coming from the wastewater treatment plant. The influent had really high, but the effluent had pretty low in this location. This system was using mainly chlorination. This next one, the small one, which is the more rural location, the upstream and the downstream really don't have much in it, but we see a lot coming in in the influent and then even more in the effluent of the system. So again, we think a big part of that is because of the UV because the majority of it is this imidacloprid urea and the imidacloprid dust nitro. Those are both byproducts of imidacloprid, which is a commonly used neonicotinoid. They're breaking down. They're just not breaking down all the way. Why is it so high in the influent? It seems like it's more of a surface water, but this is showing it's high in sanitary. So what's the source there? We're trying to figure that out because that actually is concerning that it is coming from people. One of the things that we have found is when you wash your fruits and vegetables, you are washing off pesticides before you do that, so that could be some of the contribution, but we honestly don't know the exact source that it is coming in from. That's one of our hypotheses, and it has been shown in other papers that that is, and that's a pretty predominant source of pesticides. Always wash the fruits and vegetables. Very important. All right. The other thing that is a big concern to us because we do a lot with ecotoxicology is that the imidacloprid, the chronic toxicity level is 10 in a nanogram split. It's a very small amount, and you can see here that for the imidacloprid itself, we're only going over, it's kind of green, the first one's here. We're only going over a little bit, but the bigger concern is imidacloprid dis-nitro has been found to be much, much, much more toxic than imidacloprid itself, but there's no actual ecotoxicity levels that have been set by EPA for that. For all of the imidacloprid dis-nitro, which are these yellow ones here that are really high, those are all well over that 10 nanograms per liter. There is definitely some ecotoxicity concerns in these systems, particularly for the imidacloprid dis-nitro. We also looked inside of the sediment and the biosolids, as I mentioned. Upstream, we really didn't find anything drastic other than just regular imidacloprid, which we would expect, that's the parent. Downstream, we are seeing some release here, and then we see quite a bit in the biosolids. This green one here, the exoxisturban, that's actually a herbicide, so we are seeing that attached to some of the biosolid applications, particularly in the large urban city location. The rural city, it was much lower concentrations there. Again, as we mentioned, we saw more overall in the urban sector. Overall, some of the trends. We saw that the large urban area typically had higher concentrations than the small rural area. They have more users, there's more industry, and there's reasons for that. The effluent, particularly for the PFAS, was typically higher than what was coming in with the influent, and we were seeing the same with the small rural area for the neonicotinoids, probably because of the UV use. Then we always saw higher concentrations in the water compared to our sediments. We have a few things remaining for this study. We are needing to look at the neonicotinoids for summer, so the July dates. We just got those back this week. Then we're going to be doing actual load calculations, so we can determine how many milligrams of this is moving down these rivers per day. We can actually then develop some ideas of how to actually treat it. Some of the recommendations is PFAS is being detected in surface waters, and we will need further consideration for wastewater treatment processes if new recommendations become enforced. PFAS has the potential to increase following treatment, particularly during warmer months. We're still trying to figure out why that is, but there's something going on with temperature and season. There's more research that's needed for that. While neonicotinoids are high, the primary concern with these levels is for the non-target species, as they are not regulated for humans right now. Again, those high concentrations are more for our honey bee population we're more concerned about. A consideration potentially for longer UV exposure could probably help with that before they're released. I wanted to acknowledge, as I said, the USGS 104B was what funded this project. Here's some pictures of Kira out in the field. She also found lots of fun animals while she was out there. I think she saw a bobcat. It was the most exciting one that she saw. Some of her references. I'd love to answer any questions. Yes? You made a statement there earlier that the concentrations exceeded PFAS. Recommendations? Yes. And then you said, if they actually... Enforce them? What do you mean by that? Great question. Right now, the EK is just recommending. They're not enforceable. They're just purely recommendations for levels. Right now, you can still release the value without it actually being fined for anything like that. It's kind of like a, hey, you probably want to start thinking about this before it... This is typically how they do this. They give you recommendations and then a few years later it might become enforceable. This is where I'm just trying to think forward. They are finding ways to actually treat this. I don't know if they're forever chemicals, but there are people doing in Australia that are finding some pretty cost-effective ways that we can hopefully be removing this from systems quickly here soon. We're optimistic. Any other questions? Yes? Did you say that longer UV exposure could be a benefit for the new ethanoids? Exactly. Yeah, our lab has done a ton of research on particularly pesticides, particularly this form of pesticides. They degrade very quickly with UV. It's just they have to get that amount of exposure to degrade to their just base elements where they're not toxic. It potentially could be a longer exposure to UV could be a solution if it's cost-effective. It's a large volume of water you're moving through there, so it's a matter of trying to figure out how that could be possible. If not, even a settling pond and exposure to UV in that could potentially help with the situation as well. We found that that works really well in rivers, for instance, that have high turnover rates. Any other questions? Yes? I've got a really basic question because I don't know much about this. We're talking about the nicotinoids, which is the synthetic compound, right? Yes. When we're talking about human sources, I'm thinking about nicotine. Oh, sure, yeah. Smoking and things like that. Yeah. Is there any kind of parallels? I know it's kind of different... Well, they're kind of the base nicotine element, ultimately. What they're doing is they actually impact the way the brain works and that they're a neurological change, ultimately, breaking down the nervous system. It has to have the same reactions. So would it be possible to track nicotine, just tobacco-based, or what humans are consuming and kind of see if there's a parallel or a match with the neonicotinoids? They're very different elements in how you assess them and analyze them. Nicotine is kind of a more personal care product, so they do look very different in our analogical system. So you can pretty easily discern between the nicotine and the neonicotinoids. They just kind of have the base reaction, ultimately, where they do impact our nervous system. And they're both addictive, obviously. Yes. Are the treatment methods being investigated, something other than granular activated carbon? There are tons of treatment systems for PFAS, is that what you're asking? Yeah. So there has been so much funding internationally on PFAS. Like I was mentioning, there's a great group out in Australia that are finding magnets actually could be a potential way to remove it using polarity. There are some groups that are looking at activated carbon sources. There's some people looking at bacteria and how bacteria can actually maybe, like specific types of bacteria can actually break down the PFAS itself. They're also looking at that for microplastics, which is another big concern right now. And they have found a few that might be able to be an option for that. Our biggest thing is trying to find it so that we can do it cost-effectively. Yes. Was your urban sampling site Town Branch Wastewater Treatment Plant, and did you use method 1633 for your analytical method? We did use the method. I can't share which wastewater treatment plant it is, though. It is a rural, central Kentucky wastewater treatment plant. Any other questions? Thank you very much. I really appreciate your time. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, next is a presentation that's sort of a continuation of something we had previously and didn't have enough time for. So I'd like to introduce Tom Martin, who's going to talk about infill and redevelopment, the area versus the practice. Yes, I do. I will drop it. Okay. Good morning. This is, as I said, a continuation. Those of you that were here, I made a presentation on Article 19, our floodplain management coordinates previously, and this was going to be a follow-up to that because there's a lot of concern. There's a lot of discussion about infill and redevelopment in our community, and it's about the perception versus the practice. Now, to understand infill and redevelopment, you have to understand the context in our community. The context includes understanding our planning history. Our first comprehensive plan was in 1935, the Seagull Plan. I've got a wonderful map. If you want to come up to my office, I'll show it to you. But we've been having planning, and we had zoning based on that comprehensive plan from 1935. Consequently, we've continued to do that and have comprehensive plans and updates, and in 1958, Lexington adopted the very first urban services boundary, and that is and continues to be a cornerstone of our planning efforts relative to the physical development of our community. It's the very first one. We've got a big plaque in the ward. Other places have adopted it. Portland, Oregon, a lot of other places use urban services. Now, this concept is very simple. Urban services. You're going to develop where the urban services are available. You're going to protect the rural area of our county, and one of the reasons for that is the agricultural identity that we have. We all know we're the horse capital of the world. I don't care what Florida says. We know we are. But again, it wasn't solely just to protect an industry. It was to protect the rural character and to provide services, and in that context, for instance, you hear a lot about urban sprawl. That doesn't apply here. It never has because you've always been allowed to develop within that urban service area. Now, you still have to get services there. They still have to be built. They have to be developed. There was a time, 60s into the 70s, I believe, there was a federal program where local governments received large amounts of money. We built the sewers. Now, it tends to be an effort by the private developer, but we actually built the sewers to help some of our early subdivision development. Again, as I said, the economic rationale is twofold. Compact area. It keeps services low. Your sewer lines aren't as long. Your water lines aren't as long. Your private utilities, your buses, your school buses don't have to drive as far. All the different services associated with urban life in a more compact area are cheaper. We've had several expansions over the years. We've had several contractions. They're usually small. They have been small over the years. The last expansion, and it was a significant expansion, was the expansion area plan. 1996, it was adopted. It's primarily out Winchester Road and runs to the southeast in that area. We call it in planning. We have an expansion area plan, and we call it the expansion area. What's important about infill and redevelopment and that concept relative to the AMP is it informs the entire issue versus the concept. That is, when the EMP was adopted, it has its own regulations, its own legal requirements. Zoning is the primary issue, land use, lot sizes, those types of things. Other than that, they follow the same engineering requirements that everybody else follows in the manuals, these requirements that they have to follow, and they do. The good thing about the EMP is it was a master plan. For instance, the stormwater in the expansion area was master planned. It was laid out beforehand, and studies were done, and certain things have to be done. It was a unified, it was a concept. Because we adopted that plan, we were allowed and did create, again, as I said, our own development standards, our zoning. So how does this go to infill and redevelopment? Well, it's very simple. We have an official adopted infill area, and it has its own requirements. It has its own standards. It's the 1935 city boundary, and what that allowed us to do legally, because remember, we work, planning everything we do in terms of regulation, design, the manuals, all that we do in our world is administrative law, and it's based on law. And we're granted this authority, by the way, by the state of Kentucky. That's where it comes from. And so legally, the Urban County Council adopted an ordinance that said this is the infill area. So, again, a lot of times when we're talking infill, and this is where the perception comes in, people see a green field out of Harrisburg Road, and then it starts getting developed, and they go, well, that's infill development. Eh, well, you know, you could call it that. But from a legal perspective, in terms of having specific standards to address that, that's not what we would refer to as infill. We don't call that infill, per se. One of the things, here it is. The 1934, I mean, 35 city limits. Look out for Sills Road. You can tell that was an annexation. That was done in the 1920s as subdivision right in there. I love that stuff. But you can see how they did it. They went out the road and annexed it. Nicholas Hill Road, through there, you can see, again, how the city grew. Well, that is our official infill area, and it has its own... Pardon? I'm sorry. Yes, sir. Something you mentioned earlier made me think of what you brought up. You said the city actually built some of the sanitary sewers back in the day. Back in the day. When was that and where? I don't trust my memory completely, but back in what we think of as the IBM expansion, when all those subdivisions were built, there was a program, and some people here may remember it, I think it was called the 701 program, and the feds would kick money back to municipalities, and we built some big collector sewer lines. There was a column in the paper written many years ago, I was consulting then, by somebody who thought they were being clever and said, oh, Lexington grew where it was easiest to flush. Well, yes. Yes, indeed. That's very important. We have toilets and sewage treatment plants and garbage pickup. That's public health. That's why we're not ravaged by disease. So again, an ordinance was done, and this was an easy description. The 1935 city boundary is a legal boundary, so that ordinance describes it. It's got beats and bounds and bearings, and it says here's where it is. And what the infill does, it recognizes there's challenges in these older areas. We all know what we pay for. We're currently paying for the sins of our fathers. That's what the consent decree is all about. We know that. We're paying for the sins of our fathers. We do it so much better now. That's not their fault. They did what they thought was best. So, the community recognized the challenges, again, in these older areas. So we have standards that are a little different, and they recognize these. We have, we recognize the physical constraints in these areas particularly, and the impacts. So some of the things that are in the ordinance are lot sizes and setbacks, lot coverage, floor area ratios, parking once upon a time, variances, waivers are incurred in the infill. Planning Commission and the Board of Adjustment have authority to grant waivers or variances to the rules within a very set parameter. But they can do that. They're encouraged to do that in our infill and redevelopment area. By the way, they're encouraged to do that in the ag area as well, too. But, again, recognizing the challenges of infill and redevelopment. These are land use regulations. That's what these are. These are land use. This is what we do. This is zoning. These are land use. These are not engineering standards. They're not. We don't do that in planning. Engineering does that. Water quality. They are the ones that look at how things are actually built. They're on the ground They're incorporated by reference into the zoning ordinance. So that lends them even more force in that regard. And so infill projects, they have to comply. They have to. They're required to comply with the standards. Everybody is. And, by the way, the good people that do these things and work with these things, they understand that there can be problems and there's some leeway. There has to be a leeway in everything like this. A little bit of wiggle room to make things work. So, again, the concept. Infill and redevelopment has to be evaluated in the concept of the urban service boundary. Now, you can argue that everything inside is redevelopment to a certain extent. And in the public's perception, we get that. We do. Because something that we don't control is when land becomes available for development. That's a market decision. That's a personal decision. All around us once in a time were beautiful farms. Eventually those farms were put on the market. They see that. They see that remnant piece. They're used to seeing it. I lived next to one that was off Southland Drive. Seven acres. Been there since, you know, it was undeveloped since the 40s, 50s and ended up being developed oh, I think, oh, the 90s maybe. Finally, after all that time, little tiny piece of land and the question is that's not infill as defined legally where we've got standards to address the challenges of that. These pieces that come in, they've got to meet their eggs. They've got to follow the rules. But again, that's an economic issue. One of the more recent examples was out on Harrisburg Road. There was a long, rectangular piece of property. We call it the Kamek property. It was there for years and years and she lived to be a very nice life and lived to be up in her 80s, close to 90s, I believe. I'm not sure. She lived a long time. They developed all around her and there she was. She passed away. Her nephews, she had no immediate family or nephews. They said, well, they live in Louisville. We're ready to sell. They started stuffing into it. Flood plain. Flood plain on the back end of the property. It looks like infill. I mean, you could call it infill if you want to, but it's just development of Greenfield, a piece of land that's set there because that's a private economic decision made by Ms. Kamek and by her family. You can't make people sell their land. What I like about that development is there's a lot in our world about storm water issues and flooding. Well, a neighbor came in with a picture of this water in their backyard because they're at the end, their property's in the flood plain, the back end of their property. And by the way, their house is out of the flood plain and has a finished floor elevation of two feet above that flood plain elevation because that's where our regulation is required. That's what we've been doing for years. I love that picture because there was water all in their backyard, exactly where it was supposed to be. It was in the flood plain. That's what our regulations are set up for. That's why we have detention. That's why we have all the things we do. The math worked. So I love that picture because pretty much what it said was, relax, you all don't have a problem out here. You got water in your backyard. They also had some structures in their backyard. I know you're surprised people do that. So another aspect of what we would call infill and redevelopment is we have a tradition in our community of what we call small area plans or strategic plans. We have a lot of them. We've done a lot of them over the years where we target certain areas and we come up with plans of how we think it ought to be redeveloped and what would help facilitate redevelopment and what will address the relationships and the conditions in that redevelopment. Red Mile. The Red Mile has one small area plan. Coldstream had one. I was recently asked about that and was able to find a copy. Coldstream small area plan. Aylesford small area plan. There's been a lot of them and we've had a comprehensive plan over the years. We've targeted certain areas. Those of you who might be familiar with Loudon and Gray Line and the old bus station and that redevelopment and how nice it is, that area was targeted in a comp plan at least 30 years ago or more. But now the time, the economics, everything came together. So that infill, so again, in conjunction with our legal infill, we have these small area plans that help guide redevelopment of areas of our community, smaller areas. North Limestone, we have a plan that covers a big part of the north end of our community. We have an east end plan. We've done this for years. And those plans make policy recommendations. They rarely have resulted in any kind of specific regulation. But along with that, with these policies, if somebody comes in and proposes a development that falls into one of these areas, one of these plans, one of the questions we ask in planning is, how are you going to comply with this? We've made some recommendations here. What are you going to do? And a lot of times that addresses streetscape, access, planning of trees, pedestrian facilities. Those are a big part of what we look at in that implementation of these plans. We have overlay zones. Overlay zones are a little bit different. They have specific land use and they have design requirements. The most common one is a historic overlay. It's somewhat difficult to achieve. We haven't had one in a long time, but we have some areas where we have historic. They have the force of regulatory law behind them. The Board of Architectural Review can review proposals in that historic preservation zones and make specific recommendations and they can tell you what you can and cannot do. And they do. We have neighborhood development zones, ND, we call them ND, ND1 zones. These are developed by the neighborhood. They go through the planning process. Staff reviews them. We usually make recommendations. We tweak them and that sort of thing. They're easier to achieve than historic preservation. We have development standards that, because it's an overlay zone, you have to follow them. You have to follow them. And it tends to deal with lot coverage, setbacks, the housing, because these neighborhoods that do that tend to be very conscious of what they consider to be the character of their neighborhood and they want to protect it. You know, there's no perfect ordinance. Never has, never will be. No perfect regulation. Again, as I said before, there's some gray areas, there has to be some wiggle room. You can't foresee every situation. Where are we now? Lexington is currently operating under its adopted 2018 comprehensive plan. We've started the update on the new plan. My comrade, Mr. Taylor, is sitting over here, is right in the middle of that and having more fun than he can tell you. The 2018 plan. Very few of us, very few people probably in this room have ever been involved in any kind of public outreach that involves this many people and gets this kind of response. There were over 10,000 participants in the last update. There were 14 public meetings. 67 outside experts were consulted and there were 500 pages of public comments. 60 plus community organizations had time allotted to them for input into our comp plan. I want to tell you, in my consulting world, I've worked with a lot of small communities and they're fun, they're great people to work with. Public input, they don't care. It's fun. But our guys, my coworkers, let me tell you, they got, they did a heck of a job, they got good input. Some of it's good input, some of it not so much. We do get input from people that wear or should be wearing aluminum foil hats. But that's okay. That's all right. The people are interested. So again, that plan maintains and continues to maintain the urban service boundary. That's so important to who we are and to our community. Now we're growing, we've been growing. We continue to grow and we have to accommodate it. Again, we'll have a zone change and a neighborhood will come in and they'll scream, oh no, you're going to ruin us. Traffic, flooding, storm water. The schools, by the way, we have no say so the schools are totally independent. Well, guess what? That neighborhood they're living in they came in when that farm came in for a zone change and they said all the same things. All the same things every time. Oh no, develop. Well, we have to develop people. We do, it's good. We have to build houses for people to live in. We have to have apartments. We're going to have shopping areas. It's growth and that's what we have to do. We have to accommodate the growth. We have to accommodate it in a way that satisfies a lot of competing interests. It's possible that we may expand the urban service boundary. That's been under discussion a lot lately. As I said, it's been expanded before. If we continue to grow that's a legitimate conversation that we have or will have. Now, back to the old infill and redevelopment concept. One of the things that we have done over the years in planning is we emphasize maximizing the use of our current land. So yes, we have regulations in place. We have policies in place that are encouraging more dense development. We are, yes we are. That's what we're doing. We want to get the best use. We can. We want to do it where there's infrastructure. For instance, developing along our corridors and densifying our corridors. Well, guess what? There's infrastructure there. There's a nice big road there. You know, our roads all didn't start out. Four lanes were bigger. They all started out as two little two-lane roads. As we grew, we had to build them, make them bigger. But again, we're trying to encourage that. We are. That densification along these areas and the infrastructure is there. So yes, we maximize. And that kind of leads, I know, to a question about ADUs. People were concerned about ADUs. Well, infill ADUs, accessory dwelling units. It took several years to finally get that ordinance through. They are allowed in certain areas under certain parameters. There was a question, I think, about whether or not they were reviewed by Water Quality. They are. They are. That's a requirement. Water Quality gets to look at them. There's nothing new about ADUs. I mentioned the expansion area. ADUs are included in the expansion area regulations as a by-right development from the 90s. You don't see many of them. There's a reason for that. It's called private deed restrictions. That's what it does, folks. That's not the public. It's important to distinguish public versus private. It's so important. And when it comes to runoff, when it comes to that type of development and those issues, those of us in the public sector that review the plans, we're reviewing them to see that they meet public requirements, that public infrastructure is done correctly. The plans get reviewed. And then the property gets developed. Houses get built. And people buy them. And it's private property. That's what I want to tell you. And I... We hear a lot of this. We get a lot of calls. I got one recently about drainage problems. Well, guess what? It's not a public issue. If you're a private property owner and you do something and you impact your neighbor, that's between you and your neighbor. Okay, that's not us. We're the public. That's private. That keeps a lot of lawyers busy and they love it. Fences. That's another one. We hear a lot about fences and people encroaching. Folks, you know, it's a private issue. You pull a permit, we'll review it. Building inspector will review it and make an easement. Make sure it meets the height requirement. But private property. Now, I wanted to demonstrate some stormwater drainage because I understand with infill there's concern about how that works. Again, so this is private property. This is over on Cardinal Lane and I am so disappointed, Ken. You all just have no idea how disappointed I am that Ken is not here. And because you all want to know why and believe me, I'm quite fond of Ken. But let me get my laser here. Put my glasses back on so I can see what I'm doing. Where's my laser? There he is. Can you see the kayaks? There's Ken's house. Now, Ken has a beautiful story and a half house made out of stone. I love it. I don't live far from Ken. I live in a similar neighborhood. 1950. 1957. The area in front of him here on Stratford, that was done in 1950. Well, we didn't have subdivision regulations back then. We didn't get codified subdivision regulations until 1965, which is good. But up until then, it was kind of ad hoc. But they had engineers and engineers were doing their job back then. They were looking to see how they could get a lot around there. It was designed. These things were graded so you'd have water drain drained to the street. That's one of the functions of our streets. That's why we have curb and gutter. It's to help with storm water. Runs to this facility, runs here, and here. I like this. It daylights by Ken's house. You all would be surprised how much we agree with Ken how important it is to daylight to the creek. It's piped. It goes up to Turf Lamont. That pipe does to the creek. But again, I just wanted to show you that because it's Ken's house. And something else that goes to the ADU issue, which, folks, in these neighborhoods, that's a 14,000 square foot lot. It's bigger than what the zoning would require. The zoning that was placed on that property when a city was comprehensively rezoned was 8,000 square feet. And it's R1C. That's 8,000 square feet. That's the minimum size. These older parts of town and all that, this is a big lot. 14,000, that's nice. The average zone in our community now is probably R3. Particularly in the newer areas out beyond Lucifer Road, you can put a single family home on 2,500 square feet. That's the minimum lot size for a single family home in R3. Well, guess what? That makes good use of our valuable land. It does. And particularly for those people who don't want a big yard. I like my yard. I garden. I put out flowers for the honeybees. I don't mow over honeybees. I catch a lot of grief from my lovely wife over that, but I'll stop the lawnmower if I see a honeybee on that white clover growing in my yard and let it go. And here we go. Here is an R1C requirement. This is Ken's lot once again. You see that area right there? Based on the setbacks and on the zoning requirements, Ken could build that much house on his property. He could do so by pulling a permit and it's nobody's business for Ken's. And if Ken creates a drainage problem for these neighbors because it's going to run over there that daylighted stream, it runs across their property, that's between them. He can do that just by pulling a permit from building inspection. Our ADUs, we're looking at them closer. ADU can only be 800 square feet. This is 5,000 square feet legally, private property can build. We've limited these ADUs 800 square feet. It's not much, not much at all. And again, they get inspected, they go through planning, they just don't go to building inspection. We review them. Water quality is asked to take a look at them. And I can tell you that I've lived in this end of town a long time. I lived on another street, I'm now elsewhere. I know y'all don't care if I'm a different part, similar age. But there were, I think, three or four illegal ADUs in my block. People converting their garages, putting big additions on their houses and building a unit, a mother-in-law unit or whatever. It's been going on for years. But now we've got a process and we look at it very closely. Chris, well we had six, we've had six applications since this went through. There was a lot of fear in the community. I'll say it like it is, it was fear-mongering. Oh, ADUs, we're gonna have this horrible impact. People, it's, that's not happened anywhere in the country. It's not going to happen here. And we anticipated the impacts of this type of thing. So we actually, we review the ADUs more than this would get reviewed. Again, private property. Mr. Cook wants to build that and pull a permit and follow the building code and zoning code. He can do that. I am so sorry he's not here. But anyway, I just wanted to demonstrate that to you. And here we have, this is the plat for 1950. This is Cardinal Lane. And as I said before, Ken is on the back end. It's got a different subdivision name. This was Clays Mill subdivision down in the 50s. You can see there's an easement here, easement back in here, not a lot of verbiage. And not a whole lot of notes and things. They didn't feel the need back then. They didn't do it. There were no regs to require a lot of things. There is some Jim Crow language. See a lot of that. You won't be surprised. A lot of our subdivisions had regulations preventing private, private, got recorded. You can't subdivide these any smaller than what you see here. That was to keep the riffraff out. Okay, that was what that was all about, to control who could live there in economics. Well, that's me on my soapbox. Here we have a brand new plat. This was just recorded recently. This is out off Leastown Road. This is the type of thing that we see now. Look at all this information. Look at these easements. See all those dash lines? There's setbacks, there's easements for all our utilities, for our stormwater, for sanitary sewer. Look at the notes. Look at the certifications. We've learned our lessons over the years. We continue to learn. We continue to refine. And by the way, back here, see these lots? See that note right there? That note applies to these lots. You know what it is? It's stormwater to drainage note addressing some specific concerns and considerations for that property right there. Our people, engineering, they did that. Okay, up here's another note. I like this note. This is important. That note says that not drawn on this property but it's being established by this plat are easements on every lot line for drainage. There's also a requirement in our subregs that a note goes on every plan. It's a smaller note. Sometimes it kind of gets incorporated in these bigger ones. It says homeowners are responsible for maintaining all easement areas. So if you're a homeowner, guess what? You're responsible for your property. That's private property. That's what it is. We respect private property in our country. One of the reasons we got founded, lots of land. One of the reasons we had Jayhawks, you know, the land rush in the 1800s. Free land. Did you know in Kentucky there was a phenomenon where there was abandoned farms and on the side of the barn they would paint gone to Texas? Go get that land. They're giving land away to Texas. So private property. Kentucky Constitution strongly recognizes private property rights. Case law. The world we live in, the regulations that we follow, whether it's zoning, whether it's the engineering manuals, administrative law, we operate within the context of law and with that balance between public safety and private property rights. So, okay, I'm finished. I'll stop. You can get me going. I'm bad. I'm bad. I can go on segues. I can go on forever and I can talk about planning and all that for a long time. So if you have any questions for me, Mr. Taylor's here to address specifics on ADUs if you have any questions on ADUs because he marshalled that through to get that adopted. Yes, sir. So thank you very much because that really informed me a lot about infill redevelopment, so I appreciate that. It's helped me understand a lot better. I've got a question as far as how, given everything you've been talking about in public, private property and what you can and can't do, but planning and zoning has a unique position that you're kind of looking at a broader picture from a higher vantage point across multiple properties, multiple individual properties, and you can probably see trends in areas like older parts of town where certain, maybe a lack of stormwater infrastructure exists, and you can probably identify this would be a great, you can recommend potentially, areas where it'd be nice to have a good detention basin or some ways to mitigate downstream flooding, or you could probably have that sense of scale. Does that carry through to does planning and zoning, how do you all engage with watershed plans, with like the rural springs, the water supply protection area? I'm on that committee. And water quality impact, water quality fees board, like is there some way that some of this could transfer? Could there be some priorities for funding? Again, we're planners and we are big picture folks, but we coordinate with the people that get into the specifics of that, with engineering, water quality, that sort of thing. We have a process here that involves, development comes through and goes to the technical committee, and that's exactly what it sounds like. It's the technical committee. And we have engineering, we have water quality, we have landscaping, we have environmental services, we have utility companies, and all these people that review development as it comes through, so we coordinate with them through that. And we have granted many of these entities sign-off authority on the plans, which means if you're a developer, an engineer hadn't signed off on it, or a utility hadn't signed off on it where it's applicable, you don't go forward. You don't get to record that patch, you don't get right in this, everybody's happy that things are going to work the way they're intended. Now, because we are big picture, we do identify areas where there's problems, and we work with engineering, we work with those people that are aware of that, how do we address it? And it is a challenge. That's why in some areas you'll see the little bathtub detention basins, which are not preferable. We don't like those, but in some areas you don't have any choice. That's kind of what you have to deal with, in particular these older areas. But again, that's for the math geeks, you know, the guys that can do all that. I never enjoyed that that much. Math's too tough on me. But yeah, we coordinate, all that's coordinated. And again, Royal Springs Aquifer, I'll tell you what, it's incorporated in our stormwater manuals, reference to it. We're very conscientious. When we get some changes out in that part of the community, we tend to restrict them. We have the authority in our community, there's only a few communities in the state of Kentucky where we have conditional zoning, we have that. So we can literally say, you get a zone and you don't get every use in that zone, we're going to knock a few out. And in that area and protect the aquifer, we tend to restrict certain uses, underground storage of tanks, certain types of activities and all that. And along those same lines, Cold Stream, when it was developed in conjunction with the University of Kentucky and the College of Agriculture, who actually owns it, they have specialized stormwater plans and requirements. And again, to protect the aquifer and protect our own water, we're very conscientious of that. We might have time for one more question. Anybody have one more question? Well, that's good. Thank you, that was really interesting, I appreciate it. Okay, next is not a stranger to this group at all. Richard Walker from Tetra Tech is going to talk about LFECG stormwater management regulations for redevelopment, ADUs and residential additions. So next segue in here. Thank you, Amy. So where am I on the agenda here? What do we have after this? You're almost done. There's a competition for our Boone Creek Watershed person, so we need a little bit of time for that, but not much after you. All right, very good. All right, so Tom and I are kind of tag-teaming here today. He's covered planning issues related to redevelopment. I'm going to cover the engineering parts of that, primarily from the standpoint of the stormwater manual. And I'm also going to talk about accessory dwelling units and residential additions, how that's handled from the stormwater management perspective. Can everybody hear me okay at this level of voice? Good. I want to just up front say there's nothing in the stormwater manual about accessory dwelling units and residential additions, okay? But we are going to talk about city policies and other things that are in place. And all of these topics that I'm talking about today, this has come up before in previous meetings of this group. So what we're trying to do here today is address a lot of the questions that have come up. Before I jump into this, I'm going to reverse this a little bit and we're going to have a little quiz, okay? So kind of a big picture quiz on the stormwater manual, where it applies, what it applies to, and so forth. Now some of you in here have probably read all 259 pages. Some of you may have read chapter one, which is really the meat of what we're talking about here today. That's about 30 pages. So some of you are probably very familiar with it. Some of you probably aren't. But in any case, I think these questions will kind of get us thinking about some things and make what I'm going to talk about a little more informative. So thinking about the stormwater manual, what are the three main objectives or purposes of that manual? Now there could be a lot of different answers here, but I've got three things in my mind that I want to be sure we're all on the same page on. Erosion and sediment control. That is a good one. And I'm glad you brought that up, because what I'm talking about here today is everything in the manual except erosion and sediment control. And it's very important in chapter 11. But that's really not what we're talking about here today. Okay, three topics. They're all in chapter one, by the way. Come on. New development. Water quantity control. Okay, number one. Water quantity. We want the manuals about new development and redevelopment to prevent flood, right? Water quality. Number two. What about water quality? What are we trying to do with it? Protect. Which one, improve or protect? There's a difference, big difference. It's both. Particularly in redevelopment, it's both, right? Number three. Number three is a little bit harder to come to. Anybody want to take a stab? How big are these things? How big do we make the storm surge? How big do we make our channels? How big do we make our detention bases? It's kind of related to flooding, but it's a little different. Okay, second question. What types of infrastructure is covered by the manual, and really what I'm getting at is where. What types and where? There's two answers. Public and private. Close. The stormwater manual applies to infrastructure in the public drainage system. Tom's kind of alluded to that in what he was talking about, okay? Well, if you look in the manual, there's a big definition about the public drainage system, but basically, and we're talking about residential here mostly today, city streets, pipes in the streets, and pipes that may go into the backyards and channels that may go into the backyards of houses, all right? Public drainage system. That's the first. What's the second? The second one is the stormwater manual applies to stormwater control on commercial property, private property. It's not the public drainage system. The city doesn't own it, but they are regulating it, requiring a shopping center to put it in a detention base and a water quality facility or whatever, okay? It's not the public drainage system. The city doesn't own it or maintain it, but they require it through the manual, all right? Now, let's get into redevelopment for a second. We've had a lot of discussions in this group and outside of it about two rules that are applied, the 20-percent rule and the one-acre rule. What is the 20-percent rule? Let's set a scenario. A developer comes in redeveloping a one-and-a-half-acre parcel. It's all parking lot, 100-percent paved parking lot. What does the 20-percent rule mean for them? Reduce the impervious surface by 20-percent. Or treat 20-percent of it, right? Now, if that same developer went out and purchased a one-and-a-half-acre greenfield, what do they have to do with their impervious area? They have to treat all of it, right? That's a 20-percent rule. Where does that number come from? Where does the 20-percent number come from? Did we just adopt it back in 2003? That was the number that the Chesapeake Bay people were using in their redevelopment standards. That was kind of the benchmark of the day, so to speak. And the city adopted it here. It's been the same since 2004. It's not changed. What's the one-acre rule? The redevelopment standards apply to projects that are one acre or larger. Say that again, Jennifer, a little louder, please. The redevelopment standards apply to projects that are one acre and greater. Okay. Unless they're part of a colony and a developer. Right. That's right. So, a developer comes in, purchases, make this a little more interesting, purchases a one-and-a-half-acre lot. It's mostly paved. They're going to disturb 0.8 acres. No water quality requirements. Okay. It's under less than an acre of disturbance. There are no requirements. There might still be some water quantity requirements, flooding-type things, but in terms of water quality, there would be none. All right. That kind of sets the stage for what we're going to talk about. So, with residential additions, just to elaborate a little bit, you know, this happens a lot. Somebody puts in a big garage, expands their driveway, tears down a house, builds one twice as big. It happens. Okay. It's kind of strange. Or it's not highlighted, right? Kind of weird. I don't know why that is. Anyway. Anyway, this is right out of the stormwater manual, okay? 1.3.1. If you read that top part there, it's what we just covered. The manual applies to stormwater infrastructure, inlets, manholes, and so forth that are in the public drainage system. Very, very important. And it also applies to stormwater controls on commercial development. Okay. Any questions on that? Public drainage system. If you look at the second sentence in the first paragraph, when this comes through the Division of Engineering, anything that's in the public drainage system gets put in a drainage or storm sewer easement. Okay? And then, if you look at the first and third bullets, what that includes is stormwater controls in residential development and then storm sewers and constructed channels in a residential development. And I'm kind of focusing on residential, but that's what a lot of the questions are about. Okay? Redevelopment in Fayette County. 20 to 30 projects annually. Chris, Tom, that sound about right? About 100 of them disturbed, less than an acre, so no water quality requirements at all, unless they are part of the larger common plan. Okay. Many of the projects meet the stormwater requirements simply by reducing impervious area, which is really the best of all. If you can take a, you know, 3,000 square feet of parking lot, turn it into grass, that's great. That's a whole lot better than building anything. There are landscaping requirements through planning that get them a long way to this already. All right? So, keep that in mind. When developers do have to install a stormwater BMP or a stormwater control, the most common device is an underground facility. They're hard to maintain. They're not as expensive as other things to put in, but they are expensive to maintain. And approximately half of the projects are part of the larger common plan. A couple of examples. Candlewood Suites on Waller Avenue. 2.6 acres, they reduced impervious by 6%. So, flooding issues are not a problem. They're making it better, but they didn't get to that 20%. Okay? So, they put in a manufacturer treatment device. No detention is required because they reduced impervious, but they still have to put in a water quality device. Jiffy Lube on Meyer Way. 0.9 acres. So, they're under the acre, right? But it's part of a larger common plan. Part of a larger common plan. They've reduced impervious area by 23%. So, no water quality controls required. We've talked about that. We've talked about this, I believe. I'll just reiterate under number two. If impervious area is decreased, detention is not required. Okay. That's kind of a busy slide. It's straight out of the stormwater manual, and it shows how new development is handled and how redevelopment is handled. So, I'm not going to go into that in great detail. We've talked about no detention and all that. I will point out, where's my laser? So, let's talk about new development. Let's switch gears here for just a minute. New development, you've got to control the reduced peak flows to pre-development levels. For water quality, it's a little complicated, but not too bad. We're going to control the 1.2 inches of runoff. 0.8 inches has got to go through green infrastructure, if possible, and then also channel protection. Control that 10-year, 6-hour storm to prevent bank erosion downstream. Redevelopment, we've kind of talked about already. Clear enough? Okay. Questions. These are questions that have come up many times over the years in this meeting and outside of this meeting. I've worked with staff to kind of, you know, make sure we're all in agreement on the answers. Can the 20 percent design standard be changed? It's been in place since 2004. Yes, it can be changed. It would require a change to the manual, which would have to be approved by the Planning Commission and the Councils. As I said, it's been talked about before. So, what are the concerns with raising it? It would increase the amount of treatment, right? Instead of reducing 20 percent, they'd have to reduce it by whatever the higher number is. So, what are the concerns? It would increase the cost of development, which might hinder redevelopment activity. It would require more space, typically, to put in the stormwater controls. Any comment on that? Number two, can the one-acre number be lowered? Yes, it can. I learned something very interesting a couple weeks ago. The one-acre threshold is set by EPA. The state uses their number. The state writes permits uses their number. The state writes permits to Lexington. How many phase twos do we have, Lindsey? 70 or 80, 90, something like that. There's a state law that says Kentucky cannot impose a standard greater than EPA's to their permit to the cities. Now, Lexington can, but the city can't, or the state cannot make the city, okay? So, can the one-acre threshold be changed? Yes, it can. Planning Commission, council has to approve it. What are the concerns? Well, it's imposing a standard greater than EPA's, okay? The city tries to be consistent with state and federal standards on these kind of things, so that developers have to do the same thing, whether it's in Lexington, Nicholasville, Richmond, Louisville, or whatever. Consistency is a good thing. Number three, are developers intentionally splitting up parcels to less than an acre to avoid having to do anything? Very unlikely, and most of them would be part of a larger common plan anyway, okay? Richard, I have a question. A little bit of a leading question, but the 20% standard that was implemented, what was the policy that the 20% standard was designed to implement? In other words, what was the policy goal that necessitated putting in the 20% design standard? To do anything, really, right? I mean, I guess, well, it was the goal to reduce runoff? What was the policy? Okay, it's kind of a two-part question. One is, the state's MS-4 permit to the city requires the city to have a program to control runoff from new development and redevelopment. You can't just ignore it, okay? The 20% standard, kind of what I mentioned, that's what Chesapeake Bay is using, and it's to reduce runoff volume. It's not to treat oil and pollutants coming off the parking lot as such. It's to reduce runoff volume. So it's to incentivize lowering impervious area, or to punish for not reducing impervious area. Well, it's a requirement. They have to do it. Yeah, what I'm trying to figure out is, what's it trying to achieve? I get what the standard is, and it's a threshold. It either meets it or it doesn't. They either have to do it or they don't. But what is it trying to achieve? Reduce runoff. Reduce runoff, but why? I guess, well, I work in the Y, right? And so you're outlining all the areas of what it would take to do that, but there's a myriad of other things that can do that same thing without changing that standard, depending on what the policy you're trying to implement is. And so we just made a change to our zoning ordinance on the parking regulations that are going to have a drastic impact on that 20 percent. We just had a huge increase in tree canopy requirements. We may have eliminated our parking requirement, but we had a significant increase in landscape buffering and tree canopy, all without changing the engineering standard to meet a policy goal. So I was trying to figure out, if there's interest in doing these things and they seem like they may not be possible, there's a lot of other avenues to achieve whatever the policy goal is. That's an excellent point. I'm glad you brought that up, because sometimes we get focused just on this, getting a developer to do something, when, from a bigger picture, like the urban service boundary, when we're protecting all that green space out there so it doesn't become impervious, it's a bigger picture. And I'm glad you brought that up. Richard, do you have a layer of parcels that are larger than one acre that would potentially fall under these redevelopment standards? Just so we can see visually what this looks like. That should be able to be generated fairly easily. We do have a layer of vacant land in the city, but that's for any size. Probably most of that is greater than an acre per parcel. We have a parcel layer that will show you everything. It's created by deed, a parcel, and its size in RGS. But that doesn't answer part of the question. That's part of a larger common plan. No, it doesn't. It doesn't eliminate a lot of those parcels. That by itself doesn't, but there's other layers that will indicate that. Okay, moving on. I have three slides here that are out of the manual, and the purpose of this is just to kind of show history. Tom's my resident history expert here. Redevelopment, if you think about it, can be complicated, because if it was built before 1974, there's nothing there in terms of detention or water quality. From 74 to 2001, what happened in 74, Tom? Detention or something went into effect. Between 74 and 2001, a site that was developed probably has detention requirements on it for a detention basin, but no water quality. And then everything after 2001, for the most part, is going to have both. So, when a project comes in to be redeveloped, engineering has to look at what's on the site in terms of a detention basin and water quality. Is it big enough? When you get into all that, it can get kind of complicated. All right, shifting gears to accessory loadings. Fairly new program, adopted in 21. Five units completed. Chris, that sound about right? Whenever you're correct, it's easy to count to five. That's okay. 15 have gone through an application meeting. Maximum size allowed is 625 to 800 square feet. They have to be attached to the structure, I believe. Well, they can be conversions of existing detached structures, and that's mostly what we're seeing. There is a requirement that Tom mentioned that planning and water quality look at those things for potential drainage requirements. Questions? Is there anything in the manual about ADUs? No, there isn't. For one thing, the manual is adopted in 20. The last update was. But ADUs are going to be less than an acre, and they don't involve the construction of public infrastructure or public drainage systems. So, the manual doesn't apply. Does the city review them for drainage impacts? Yes, as I just mentioned. All right, we're about done here. Residential additions. Does the manual have anything about residential additions? No. It's under an acre. How many houses are going to be an acre in size? I guess it could happen, but it's very rare. But typically, a residential addition is going to be less than an acre, and it doesn't involve public drainage systems. Are they considered redevelopment in the stormwater? No, they're not. You can read the definition there. Can you read that just in case I can't see? Okay, read it. Redevelopment is defined in the stormwater manual as alterations of developed property that will disturb one acre or more of land. There's a longer definition in there, but that's the basic gist of it. I mean, they do have to apply for a building permit, but they don't involve the construction of public infrastructure. Does the city review the building permit applications? They do somewhat to ensure there's no encroachment into an easement. Now, depending on the subdivision, there's an easement. There's an easement on every lot, and there's probably some subdivisions in the 40s and 50s that don't have any easements, right? Which is a big deal when you get into this thing about water law and legal rights and so forth. Okay, comments? I have something I noticed on your side. You talked about driveways, and this goes to Chris's point about bigger picture. We have restrictions on driveways. Okay, that helps. But on the other hand, you can still pay for that. Just don't park on it. Don't park it. Put a basketball goal out there. All right. Questions, comments, ideas? The few number of ADU applications, does that indicate they're not being built? Or does that indicate they're being built without voting? There's a number of things. Do you mind if I answer that? Go right ahead. Okay. One, the ordinance that was put in place, we spent years advocating for what was a national gold standard ADU ordinance, proving where if you're actually serious about building housing, what that ordinance would need to look like. What other cities have done, they've evolved their ordinances over 20 years to get to a reasonable, decent number of ADU production every year that's workable. Then we entered that process into the public and political realm, and then it gets constrained, which is normal. Every city's ADU ordinance usually starts pretty tight, and then it gets a little more permissive as people get used to it and understand how it's going to work. We're in the review process now, trying to make the ordinance more permissive, because the restriction on only allowing conversions of existing detached structures is a big impediment. There's a lot of existing detached structures out there that people are interested in converting, but they can't for various reasons, or they might need to turn them down to start over, and then that's not allowable. We made the ordinance very restrictive. We put some restrictions on there that a lot of cities have already gotten rid of, and maybe over a 10, 15-year horizon that'll happen here, if we can document that it's not the end-all that people thought it might be. One is that the ordinance is very restrictive. Two, also, there's a lot of site constraints on these lots. Just because you allow it under the zoning, you get back into some of these lots, and then if you look at all the available single-family lots where maybe you could go under the zoning ordinance, then you start applying topography and your available sewer and how you can get to it. You start eliminating a lot of things. Easements eliminate a lot of lots. Topography eliminates a lot of lots. So the available pool is narrowed down quite a bit. So there's a lot of constraints on the program, both self-imposed and then naturally. So our goal is to, over time, update the ordinance, try to make it so that they're a little easier, try to improve our process, try to work with water quality on some of the issues that we see that they've run into and they've called us about. We try to put significant protections in place that, honestly, might make it a little harder than it needs to be at first while we get a handle on what the situation might be, try to figure out how these things work under the consent decree and under our capacity assurance program. We will basically want to commit to council 100% that we wouldn't be putting these things in areas where there were infiltration or overflow issues. And so a big part of it was committing to making sure no existing sump pumps were still incorrectly discharging, not getting those fixed. Because I remember sitting through one of Director Martin's presentations about how one of the biggest issues left was individual homes with sump pumps in neighborhoods and how difficult it was to correct those things. And we saw this as an opportunity for properties that would probably never come back in for permitting for any reason and get that sump pump fixed. This would be a way to catch those when they look to do new construction. So we want to, just like the 20% rule, our goal is to make sure every time they do a project, the site is better than it was before. And so some of those things are going to take some time to figure out if they're working, how we can tweak them, how we can incentivize them. These things are extremely expensive to build. I mean, getting contractors and designers to come up with these things, there's all sorts of natural problems that make these things harder to build. So to answer your question, it's a mix of all sorts of things. Anything else? Amy, back to you. Thank you. All right. So next on the agenda is something that we've not had before that I can remember, which is a contended seat for our watershed at large. So we have two people who are interested in our Boone Creek position. We have Jim Griggs, who's been with us for the last three years, maybe longer. And then we also have Burgess Carey, who nominated himself as well. Unfortunately, Burgess could not be here today. I think he sent an email to all of us, so we know that. But we have a little bit of information about Burgess that I can read, but I'd also like to invite Jim to come up and stand up and say a little bit about yourself. My name is Jim Griggs. I live on McCall's Mill Road. It's right next to Boggs Fork, which is the tributary to Boone Creek. We've been there 20 plus years. And something that's a little unique about that area, there's six households that aren't connected to Kentucky American water. So I'm on a well and treat the water a little bit myself and have been successful for 20 years with that. But I'm deeply concerned about surface water and subsurface water. I also was a member of the Board of Adjustment for 12 years, and I have an engineering background, and I'd like to continue being the Boone Creek watershed representative. Thank you very much, Jim. I'm going to... Burgess didn't send us anything. Lindsay found something that... a bio of his. So I'm going to read just a little bit of it, just so you have a little bit of an understanding of Burgess. He's a construction and real estate development professional specializing in the development and management of industrial and self-storage real estate assets, as well as ecotourism and outdoor recreation projects. I know he lives on Old Richmond Road and owns the Boone Creek Outdoors as well. So both things are within the Boone Creek watershed. So he is a pre-engineered building dealer, performs all facets of construction and development for the Cary Group of Companies. So that's a little bit about Burgess. I think just to keep things less awkward, we will do a hand raising vote. But perhaps, Jim, if you wouldn't mind stepping out, would that be just... I don't like conflict. I was an only child. You can come back. Don't leave for good. Just step out for just a moment. We'll just raise hands and count for that. All right. Anybody have any comments about either Jim or Burgess that they want to talk about? All right. So raise your hand if you would like to have Jim continue to be our watershed representative. All right. And raise your hand if you'd like to have Burgess. Okay. Thank you very much. Would somebody, Jennifer, or somebody go back and grab Jim back there? There he is. Congratulations. You have one back your seat. We'll take one vote. I'm so happy to have some fighting here. I'm so excited. Okay. I'm going to turn it over to Lindsay to talk about potential topics for new meetings and any announcements that we have. Yeah. So I'll unmute my pen if you're going to say things. Just want to open the floor for potential topics for our next meeting. Two definites that we will have for the next meeting will be the North Elkhorn Watershed Focus Monitoring Program results will be presented in June at our June meeting. So that sampling was all conducted last summer and screening was the spring and winter before that. And so we're getting to see the results of that effort. And then we'll also have Doug Burton coming to talk about composite drainage plan requirements potential updates to that. I think that we won't be ready for a West Tickman Watershed Management Plan update in June, but that's probably a future presentation we'll see hopefully this fall. And then Ken Cook sent in possible topics for future meetings to build our Commerce Lexington attendance back up, maybe inviting them to do some sort of water quality management success stories or something like that. And so he submitted that as a potential topic. If there, I'll open the floor if there's any other topics the committee would like to see or discuss. By curiosity, I've heard that there I guess in recent maybe weeks or within the past month or two there may have been a litter or trash characterization or assessment. This might have been to keep Lexington beautiful. Does anybody know about what we're talking about? So is that something that would be relevant to this topic? Or is there any information that would be presentable in the coming? So we're going to do a presentation to Corridor's Commission next month or this month, later this month, so we can repeat it. I mean it's a very fairly short thing, but I'm happy to take that. What is it called? It was a litter index of something that the Keep Lexington Beautiful Commission has been doing for a long time and then just restarted it after decommissioning from the city. Thanks to help from Jennifer. And I guess my understanding is it might have to do with floatable trash or just things that are in streams and creeks? Yeah, it was six-ish groups of people going around the city thinking about how much trash there is and ranking it on a scale of one to ten. It's not a giant thing. I mean it's great and it's interesting. I've got two. The Lansdowne Merrick Feasibility Study, that's a water quality incentive project, should be complete by June. So that would be kind of a subset of the West St. Watershed that we could take and present on. And then the second item is, you know, there's a committee currently working on updating the Empower Lexington plan and that might be good for the number of components that have a nexus between energy and water. Do you think it'd be a presentation of what comes out of that or a discussion? Maybe just a discussion at this point in time and it may be more appropriate for the October time frame. Anybody else? And then I feel like several people are here that could talk about most of these things more than me, but I'll touch on the incentive grant stuff and then I'll let Jennifer do a quick blurb on Water Week, which is related to a lot of these on this list. But just one announcement from our area, the incentive grant program, those applications for Class A, B education, and B infrastructure are all posted and available on our website. So those are all up. And if you have questions, we've got two Q&A scheduled during Water Week, Frank and I. So those will be, you can see the times, they're both through Zoom, March 21st and March 22nd, once in the evening and once during the day, whatever works best for folks. Those will be Q&As for the Class A and Class B education grants, which are due May 5th. So if you have questions, please come and we'll try to answer those then, but also feel free to reach out to us anytime. And then we've also, in early May, we will have our volunteer sampler training for the Wolf Run sampling events that will start this summer, May through September. So our last round, Wolf Run Watershed, so we'll be getting into that. But if you have questions or you want to attend that, reach out to me and I'll turn it over to Jennifer. Hey, we have Water Week coming up from March 18th through 25th, and basically we just partner with UK and a few other community organizations and watershed groups to offer a week of water-focused events in Lexington. So we have about 20 events so far, and it's a mix of virtual, in-person, and self-guided events. And it includes, it kicks off with the Reforest 5k, which is at Heisel on March 18th. And there are still, it's still open, so if you want to register for the 5k, you can. The incentive grant Q&As are part of that. We have some litter cleanups, some stream walks, some educational speakers, just stuff like that. But if you or your group is interested in submitting an event, we are keeping the forum open until Monday, so if you want to submit an event for Water Week, you still have time. And if you have questions, you can email me or find me after the meeting. And do you want me to talk about the other ones that are mine? Okay, April 15th is Reforest the Bluegrass. So that's the traditional, everybody come out and plant a tree with us between 9 a.m. and 1 p.m. It's at Heisel Park, which is where the 5k is, so it's cool that we have those in the same location this year. And then April 22nd, which is Earth Day, is Reforest at Home. And there are three locations where you'll be able to pick up a tree, well up to three trees, to plant at home. So it's kind of a good option for if you can't come to Reforest or you want to put some trees in your yard. Angela has something. I was just going to say, I have posters for Water Week and the 5k. If you want to post those to help fund those events. Awesome, thank you guys. And then Amy, do you want to say something about Sustainability Summit real quick? Yeah, so that's on Tuesday and Wednesday of next week. And the idea of the Summit is to understand the intersection between climate change and environmental justice. And so the 7th is actually a workshop where we have a national non-profit that's coming in to talk about, help us understand how to talk to people who are not like us. So that's from one to four on Tuesday. And then the Sustainability Summit over at UK is all day on Wednesday. And again, we're having everyone from our state climatologists to state geologists talking about climate and socioeconomic differences. And then a lot of really great solutions to some of these things or beginnings of solutions to environmental justice towards the end with people from Louisville, Cincinnati, Lexington, talking about a lot of great stuff. Registration is open online through Monday at noon. And then you can also come and do it at the door. I know a lot of you are coming, so I look forward to seeing you all there. Thank you. And that should be it for our meeting unless anyone has anything else. Yes? I just wanted to mention tomorrow at Midway University is the annual Kentucky River Watershed Watch Annual Meeting. There's a number of interesting presentations and then they're going to do a field exercise of doing a stream habitat assessment training sort of thing. So I think anyone's welcome to attend that and I think it's still open for registration but maybe not until lunch. And I'll be there, so I'll see you there. All right. I did just get an email that the city's closing at noon, so. So is UK. So yeah, UK as well. So everybody please be safe as you make your way back to work or home. And thank you so much and we'll see you in June.