tection than city hall or the high school or any of the other items that are called out as critical facilities and if you're going to increase protection for some class of facilities i request that you provide the same level of protection for all the facilities which would be done by deleting the sections relating to critical facilities and amending 644 which is the design flood elevation and put that information into that section i'm surprised that hasn't been done already in this one no matter what design flood elevation you use i think c 121 needs to be amended to properly include everything within the area below the design flood elevation and not just the flood hazard areas or the boundary of the point two percent annual probability because if the what the proposal is is to regulate everything in that area up to this elevation but if it's an area where the ground is down here well you don't have to regulate it to this elevation because it's outside the boundary um now i know you're beyond the uh the time limit but i know that i i'm interested in hearing you hit the high points of what your comments are about the country club road property we have two hearings so i get two comment periods oh yeah you definitely i assume i assume you'll be back two weeks from now too uh probably but um i suggest that the design flood be based on a free board that'll be above the elevations of the 1927 flood and i ask that you strike the term 500 year flood from the uh regulations that was a political decision that was made years ago because it gives people a false sense of security and i suggest that you refer to it everywhere in the uh the regulations as the flood of 0.2 percent annual probability uh there's a i've got some more comments that are written i won't go over them now on this part so i can now move to the country club club road if that's okay yes um and we're yes start giving another two minutes based on zoning or three minutes based on zoning rather than flood i've got a 231 page zoning amendments 10 page four pages with a hundred different comments and i'm only allowed two minutes i don't think that's appropriate i understand we have we have uh procedure procedural rules and uh i'd like to work with you on getting in what the important things anyway say the country club road property the major point is that the property does not belong in the urban center one district if you retain the goals for the property then it belongs in some kind of a new district which might be called an urban residential district if you look at the purpose of the urban center one uh this property is not in the historic downtown it's not in the capital complex it's not in an adjacent mixed use neighborhood it doesn't have any of the infrastructure that's required to be in place in an urban center one district so i give you some suggestions as to the purpose of a new district which i haven't be calling urban residential you might call it something else but it just doesn't belong in the urban center one and when i look through the table of uses of what's allowed in urban center one many of those are inappropriate for what i believe is being planned for the uh at the country club property either in the denser area or in the residential 3000 is it segment so um there is that i think there are some points that don't comply with act 47 as i read act 47 of the tables of dimensions a simplex one unit would be one dwelling unit per 6 000 square feet maximum i believe that act 47 allows duplexes at 6 000 square feet so that would be two units per 6 000 square feet and then triplexes or larger would be one dwelling unit for 6 000 square feet each there are a number of other comments and the last item is the restricting access to sunlight or the the restrictions to solar access as mike mentioned that was discussed two years ago um i testified against striking that that proposal does not comply with the master plan and i list in my written document there are six points within the master plan that that's that striking that would if you strike it it would not comply with the master plan and those six points i've got uh some text there definition at the top of bank i suggest being amended and there are a few more proofreading problems and i understand how hard it is to find proofreading problems so i'm not making the point just pointing them out so maybe they can get corrected thank you very much for allowing me more than my share of time to speak thank you very much thank you um mike do you have any thoughts or response to any of these comments now i guess a couple of them that that just jumped out i wanted to mention so the flood of 27 making that the flood of record as opposed to what is the hydro hydraulic models what happened after 1927 was a whole series of flood control dams were built upstream so right spill um the marsh field dam and the uh one about of north berry berries dam yep the orange east berry dam so those three flood control structures hold back a tremendous amount of water and make a big difference so we had uh i believe 6.8 inches of rain this summer uh we had that in about 24 hours the 1927 flood was about eight inches of water over a longer period of time over 48 hours so they're very very similar but uh at the same time you could see the benefit of those flood control dams and that's why we did not see if we did not have those flood control dams we would have seen the flood of 27 all over again um it's the flood control dams that have made a tremendous amount of difference and i'm not a hydrologist i'm a certified floodplain manager i do know the maps that we have that are developed are developed by engineers using h and h hydraulic and hydrologic models based on the rainfall based on the topography based on the computers so um they have pretty accurately if we considered june to be a 100 year flood um one percent chance annual flood event then we pretty much mapped our 100 year flood event it was pretty close it was a little higher in the wanouski so people in lower state street state street had slightly above um that level but for most of the people on the north branch it was about the 100 year flood event so the maps that was a pretty extreme weather event it only hasn't happened that bad in a long long time and so that was a pretty good measure so we require people to be two feet above that all projects that have been developed at that elevation transit center um sometimes a small thing sometimes people are just putting in a heat pump and we made them elevate the heat pump two feet above base flood elevation they didn't get their their equipment damaged because it was elevated so meeting two feet above base flood elevation has worked that's not to say it isn't a good idea for us to have a debate about whether or not it should be three feet um but i would continue to use what we have as the the federal model and the federal floodplain maps and simply add more free board above that because that keeps us more consistently when we talk to the state and when we talk to other folks using that benchmark makes makes more sense um we can certainly add more free board to that if we think that's makes uh is a benefit uh i don't disagree um getting to the urban one comment for country club road uh i don't disagree we we we put that together as a more of a quicker thing we didn't want to go through and create a whole new zoning district and then find out everybody wants to go in a different direction so certainly if the council says we we like the direction it's going but we really do need to go and create its own urban center one doesn't work we should create perhaps as as tom suggests a uh urban residential and we we could create a new district uh as opposed to adding a new neighborhood to an existing district um as we said when we were developing it we know we own it so we're not really giving everybody the right to do whatever they want we're going to be working on a development agreement so we set things out to be as flexible as possible but he is correct the purpose statement doesn't perfectly line up the act 46 there was a comment about duplexes we already allowed duplexes so that's already something we've done uh the state home act says if you've got a single family home you can have a duplex we already do that that's already been the law of the land for montpelier since 2018 so uh that's why you don't see that as a recommendation in these regulations is because we already did that um and the definition top of bank i thought we did that but i will have to double check to make sure i thought that was on our list of repairs at the last meeting but i'll have to get a copy of thomas's comments if we've got an extra one okay thank you i because one council is not here today okay i appreciate that because then i can have the list and and look through them thank you okay jesse uh you've already spoken i hope you have very brief yet well plans i there was um i was recently introduced to something that's uh the river corridor uh that's been adopted by the city which is apparently a state area um and there's a property that i'm that i'm purchasing that's affected by that essentially eliminating a lot of what you can do there as i understand so i don't know just comment on maybe the river corridor has some downside to our residents as well thank you thanks um is there any other member of the public who would like to be heard uh either in the room or online not seeing anyone asking to be recognized i will close the public hearing and open up for comments or questions from council tim just the urban one thing is something i'm still struggling with too for country club road and also just looking at the concept of we'll change the zoning for us for our purposes because we're the city but we're not really establishing zoning for that area that's the highest and best use that we would intend for it to really be um for if anyone else showed up to do anything on that property it seems like ethically somehow we we should just determine what's the right zoning for that property to create the use that should be there and that's the zoning we should be putting in place not some inappropriate moniker that lets us just do whatever we want that we won't let somebody else go do there and certainly it's that's valid and and what's what's the difference are we thinking like urban one allows for like stores and dry cleaners and a whole bunch of commercial development that we probably aren't looking to put in the new neighborhood on country club road yeah i mean and if if i were going to draft something up and i and i certainly couldn't certainly would for the next meeting i would just need to have some parameters of guidance of what you guys were thinking you folks were thinking would be the appropriate um sense of what we're thinking of um should we put a density requirement i mean i could i grabbed and used because the actionable plan talked about allowing up the five stories we only have one district that allows five stories so if we don't do that i we just have to create a district from make it and make it kind of fit in for that area so then we have to start talking about okay if we talk about setbacks what type of setbacks did we want thinking about what type of bulk and massing what type of building sizes and that's where somebody a developer may come in who wanted you know a longer single building which would have a large footprint it's like well now we just knocked that out because we have a footprint requirement of you know 30 000 square feet and they were going to do one big one now they've got to break into smaller pieces so the the flexibility the sense of why i did it was just to let's see where people are going and then we can kind of put them together but we can certainly come in and go through and say you know what we do kind of have a sense of where we want to go with this we're going to want multiple buildings uh they're going to be of a certain size and we can put it in there we can always change it later that's always an option to go through and change it later to go through and say well we were thinking this is where it was going to go it didn't go this way let's do a quick we can do an emergency amendment and change it in a couple of weeks um tim is you have a follow-up on this i guess my other follow-up was just looking at the proposed zoning map and so we also have it abutting rural sun areas like some of the Zorzi golden property is still the green for rural and some of the town hill properties trying to understand why it's property under specific and if you've mentioned savings pastor or ages Zorzi or gold then it would be part of the tiff and part of the district we're trying to create wouldn't they have similar zoning goldman is they are already rezoned on their side we did that the lower 15 acres of theirs is zoned for riverfront which is the same zoning district as berry street so it allows up to 27 units an acre so it's very it's very flexible they can put a lot of uses in there but it doesn't have unlimited uses and you know certainly we can take that same approach and use a riverfront type designation down there um where the lines are on our map to the to the west there's some green that's actually we own that um it's also steep slopes um some of that is a parcel going a little bit south of that is owned by steve rubalini again very rugged not easily developable mostly forested mostly wet um so a lot of the ones around it the two areas we've carved out of the two areas that are open and most of the areas that aren't open are really rugged and not very developable so that's why we've kept those in rural we don't expect those even if we wanted to I don't think those would be easily developable pieces of land so that little blue area is all the things developable of the I think the urban center area that's carved out there is about 20 acres and then the piece across the top is another 15 something to something something in that ballpark so it looks small on map but you know it's it's 20 acres in size it's a decent piece of piece of property thanks thanks Mike is I have an over the question it relates to Tim's overall big picture question which is the zoning ordinance is too big too complicated and we we need a massive overhaul not something like this to paraphrase now if I'm right it from working on previous zoning amendment efforts it seems like a lot of the reason that it's so long and detailed is to allow for administrative approval of things that that we want to encourage is that right uh yes that's um there are a couple of things some is as courts uh jm golf is a big decision uh as decisions have gone along through supreme courts and environmental decisions they require more detail and regulations there's an expectation developers have to have an expectation of knowing whether or not they would meet a permit when they come in to apply so we have to then we can't just have rules that say you know you have to be compatible with your neighborhood you actually have to describe what that means and what that looks like or you can't have a negative impact on the scenic qualities of an area you have to actually express what that means and if we're going to have administrative permits which we have drastically changed um you know uh when I got here we we're basically issuing the same number of permits we did in 2014 when I got here as we are now um when I got here in 2014 permits if you count every day a permit sits in our office there was 9 000 permit days we're now down to 900 permit days an average permit only stays in my office for about two days we do a couple hundred permits a year so permits go through really quickly uh we used to have 50 percent of all applications went to the drb we now are down to like 10 percent so most applications don't go to the drb and so a lot of that requires us to then go through and have have rules and the more you get into it the more questions that come up and so you need to have more answers for more questions of well what what happens in this scenario and what happens in that scenario uh we do have staff that understand the rules and you're more than welcome you know your taxes support them they you doesn't cost you anything to call and talk to the zoning administrator or the assistant zoning administrator and ask them questions and have them guide you through the process that is free of charge you're not charged until you put your application in so please take advantage of that if you've got questions you don't have to read the regulations they will they'll move all the things that you don't need to worry about off the table and the other changes that have happened were some other concerns and that people had that we we really wanted to add in people were concerned about steep slopes people were concerned we you know 10 years ago before 2018 we had no regulation of wetlands we had no regulations of steep slopes we had no regulations of riparian buffers on our streams to add those in ads pages but most projects aren't going to need to meet those requirements so they are there and they do take up space but only projects that happen just because the city didn't mean they weren't regulated for wetlands correct but the state does not regulate steep slopes and they don't regulate the riparian buffers so that was some concerns the public had for policies or the council had for policies that were included but and following up on the other thing is it feasible to say that once we're finished with approving the city plan which I know is is is coming towards us on the highway that that might be an opportune moment to start looking at like it does the zoning ordinance in general look like what we want it to look like or should there be changes you're always welcome to look at that that is going to be another opportunity you know I guess the other point I would make was our zoning actually was very was was specifically studied in 2016 up to 2018 to make sure that every one of our neighborhoods could be built under this zoning and that was the whole argument that was in in 2017 was people didn't like the fact that we were increasing our densities of all of our neighborhoods you're doubling and tripling the density of our neighborhood and we were just like that's what's already there we are simply changing our zoning to match what our neighborhoods are because if something happened to your neighborhood you could rebuild it under our current zoning it was something like 90 threshold yeah we have a 90 threshold 90 of our properties within every neighborhood should be conforming we could certainly go for a higher number that was what we left because we knew every neighborhood has a building or two that might be really small or really big and so we made a 90 percent rule to try to get everybody conforming because we we wanted to make that actually a reality we didn't want to have zoning rules that you know and before we had more than 50 percent of our properties before 2018 50 percent more than 50 percent were non-conforming either a non-conforming parcel or non-conforming structure and by the zoning that meant you had to go to the DRB to get approval which is why everybody had to go to the DRB whether you want to put a porch on or a deck on you're always having to go to the DRB and we eliminated almost all of those so we really approve a lot of permits very quickly and then we added more pages to the document when we did the design review rules because our design review rules were were five statements each with like six words and that just doesn't will not pass the jam golf test at all so we had to add more language to explain what what these meant and that way we could be more precise and be able to more efficiently especially over time a lot of the complaints of the old design reveal was well i'd get disapproved in 2006 and designed and disapproved in 2012 and then approved again in 2018 they should always be administered the same way which means you need to have a little bit more guidance to ensure that even as board members change you can get a consistent ruling on the same set of rules and so that was a big change again it adds more text it does but it's it actually is to the benefit of the applicant to have that text thanks lauren you had your hand up by what seems like kind of a long time ago but uh yeah just a couple kind of comments and one question one just overall really appreciate seeing the move to more density that's just i think great for what we need for additional housing for the community the solar shading issue i remember the conversation a couple years ago and it did feel like the current language is way too strict at the time we it was like we didn't have time to come up with some middle grounds like throwing it out altogether also seems like a blunt response like we're in the process of the state house of passing a much more ambitious renewable energy standard that's going to require a lot more solar development so i'm just curious about like as the energy advisory committee looked at this maybe we could get some feedback on like a much narrower but still having some provision so that we're not totally removing possible solar access as a consideration so i would like to ask them i think they're meeting before the next meeting i believe the next hearing so i'll see if i can get some feedback from them i don't know if you already have but uh what do you have now okay and then just just for the flood level issue i mean just with all the climate change modeling and stuff i just think if we're especially if we're making new investments and in things we should like the higher the better like like you know within reason but like certainly i think this is a good step in the right direction but um i mean it's pretty uh scary when you look at the climate science and so i think we should be anticipating that things will be ratcheting up and getting worse and that you know we should expect that 1927 flood we should be preparing for it and we should be you know doing everything to prevent um you know putting people at risk unnecessarily if we're making new regulation so just airing in that direction would be um my preference in general um and i guess my just last question about the when we were talking about changing the zoning around the country club is there any difference depending on how we do it in terms of um growth center designation or anything that intersects with the state or is that all not related and any does any zoning change we would make wouldn't impact that or is does that's something we have to think about the growth center requirement is it has to be at least four units an acre so so even if we were talking about you know going to a riverfront standard that would be 27 units an acre so we're we're not going to be anywhere close to i mean we're going to be way way under the density requirements needed for growth center whatever we choose any other counseling donna i'm glad you brought up solar because if i put solar panels on my roof i don't want someone to come and then build something next to it that takes away my son so it thinks we need something there um i don't have the answer i just have the worry and i was really glad when we did the 90 percent that was to me real progress that we made sure that what was in a neighborhood designation matched up with 90 percent it it really was practical and i don't like parking being removed we already removed a lot of parking and i see person after person who has either rented or working somewhere who don't have parking and particularly with the winter time and so i feel we we may have to really look at that because it's fine for the developer but when you don't have a lot of choices for housing you take what you can get and then you struggle with the car and i didn't feel so bad taking parking away when we were thinking of a parking garage and people had some options but uh i don't think that i'm totally comfortable with all the removal of parking and when it comes to the country club road i really see maximum flexibility for now and as things move we can narrow that down but i remember a discussion with savings pasture at one point three years ago four years ago we were sitting around the table and we modified that area because that owner came with us with a proposal and to me is that's being flexible to the time it was getting us where our vision was as a city and yet the zoning at the time didn't match it because we wanted some of that with the with this partner who was coming to us to have housing but some part to stay open for public access and so i see the same thing with the country club there's a lot of different uses and the more flexibility we have as we sit around and develop those uses then the better off we are and so i i don't see we should be treated any different than anybody else who comes and says gee we have this idea it really matches the gold of housing and recreation let's let's try to make this zoning work so that's where i'm coming from if if that makes any sense tim to you thank you kary did you have your hand up okay um i feel like we've identified about a half dozen things maybe not quite that many that that are questions that people might want a deeper look at you know including what should we call country club road what and this is talking about taking some of dr weiss's comments into consideration a couple of flood things the solar am i missing anything signs yep and you know i don't know if we'll be able to to get through all of that with with one more public hearing one more meeting assuming that tim's idea of re looking at the entire ordinance i would hate to see that hold up the changes that we have before us right now but pal and i can't tell are you raising your hand or just okay okay thanks um could uh could we have a motion from someone uh ask is scheduling a second public hearing with the idea in mind that the uh zoning doesn't need uh the unlike an ordinance zoning doesn't need that because it's uh following a different statute it's already warned for the 28th okay so we don't have to we don't have to vote on anything tonight we just no unless you had a particular change um as i said if people are okay i'm going to make those three changes to the document so that way the document is refreshed with those three changes um that i described if those are fine and i will come back with um a new zoning district that's going to require me to add another column onto my use table that's what i was trying to avoid having to do um my sense if you guys are okay with this because the the actionable plan talked about six stories i went with that because there's six stories we've also talked about riverfront which has a lot of density i could make a district that's very similar to riverfront which is barry street and barry street includes stonecutters way so it's got a lot of uses that are allowed in those areas um but it would allow for six stories which was either five or six stories i think it's five stories that might be in the plan i'll i'll double check whether it's five or six but we can make that match so that would be um up to 27 units an acre and if that's about 10 acres i would allow up to 270 units in the lower area that seems like a possibly a way to go i'm not sure i remember um might have even been before i was on the council one of the previous iterations of this zoning and savings pastor debate where people were saying that we should be designing the new neighborhood in sabon's pasture or wherever we're gonna gonna build it to be able to have like a a little neighborhood store so if someone wouldn't living there wouldn't have to drive downtown to get uh get a gallon of milk or wouldn't necessarily have to drive down to down to do that those kinds of errands whether there's enough business to make that feasible especially in light of the fact that there's a little store kind of like that right on uh route two i don't know but that's that's the flexibility that we we may lose if we change it into just urban residential so just throw that throw that into the mix so uh so i'll make a new district we can vote on whether you want to keep it or change it i will get information on the sign that jesse was talking about just so we've gotten information so we can make a decision whether we want to make additional changes to the sign rules and i'll make those three changes that i proposed at the start so we've got a complete document to to propose and then maybe we'll think about solar and yep we have no no decisions yet on solar we can certainly talk about the different uh details of that it's it's the way it's currently written is very problematic so if we keep it we should certainly talk about making changes to it donna i just had a question about michael's coming back with a new zone and that time we can still decide if we want it to be flexible or are we losing flexible totally depends on what we put in it right i know but you're asking to come back with something so i'm it's not a done deal it's that compared to the flexibility that he came with tonight i'm not sure what the answer is that i think my sense is i'm i'm i can leave what's in the proposal right now which is the very flexible and come in with the proposal and then you guys can decide okay yeah somebody will make a motion that says let's take out the urban center one designation and replace it with the new proposal that mic brought in or keep it yeah and you can vote it either way thank you sounds good everybody happy with this for next time good news for next time i just checked is that um other than getting the audit report all this is really all you have on the agenda so this is the building code stuff so um so you'll have all evening great well other stuff we have we've come to learn that what we think is on the agenda two weeks from now tends to especially if we put anything off tonight yep exactly okay thank you um back to you're still up mic i'm still up sorry correct um building code first public hearing i owe him and i owe him big now then i will open the public hearing on the uh amendments to the building code this one hopefully will be much much faster and i've regretted saying that before in the past too so tonight we've got the first reading on amendments to the building regulations so what this hearing is about this is first of two readings this is going to work just like your standard ordinances if you haven't done an ordinance amendment if you're new there there are two two readings you have a first reading and a second reading the changes are being proposed to remove the fee exemption for energy efficiency projects and changes to clean up the building regulations for accuracy and to make them more defensible if challenged in court um you are given both the clean version and the red line version in your packet because the red line version was all over the place so it might be easier just to read a clean version and council could take the opportunity to talk about the flood exemption for the flood fee exemption that still exists uh there is no end date on it but it's not part of the regulations but i just wanted to put that out there if people wanted to talk about that we could put that on as well so why remove the fee exemption um staff is removed is recommending removing the exemption for energy efficiency projects because there are many types of projects the city supports like affordable housing projects they all pay fees only energy efficiency and accessibility projects and i'll talk about that in a little bit get a fee exemption these projects still have administrative costs still have inspections we don't believe the fee is a barrier to anyone doing any of these projects and probably most significantly is the exemption makes a significant difference in the amount of money we collect in 2023 energy efficiency projects made up 25 percent of all non flood related building permits so we had 162 permits that were not associated with the flood 40 of them paid no fees because they were energy efficiency projects that could be insulating that could be putting in heat pumps that could be putting solar panels anything that qualifies as um energy efficiency doesn't pay fees um because we don't ask for project costs we don't know how much this is going to generate or how much of a difference this is going to make but we know it's going to probably generate more than ten thousand dollars in additional income so generally fee exemptions would have been built into a fee schedule so why are we amending the regulations why are we coming to amend the regulations they're usually built into fee schedules but in this case it is literally written into the ordinance uh the other exemption in the ordinance is handicapped accessibility improvements um these could be as small as handicapped ramps to as big as elevators we aren't recommending removing the fees on accessibility apps we don't generally get them and we had none of them last year um if council would like to consider removing that exemption you're certainly welcome to as well um the flood permit exemption is not in the ordinance as i mentioned earlier and was made as an emergency measure that can be ended or sunset at any time and staff so why did we review the rest of the regulations well we were basically we've had this list of amendments that needed to happen for a long time um and this just never rose to the high enough on the list to work on it but because we were coming in for this we figured we would come in with the um with the rest of our changes so building regulations don't mention our cooperative agreement all of our building inspections that we do right now we do with a cooperative agreement with the division of fire safety there's no reference to that or any of the rules embedded in that in our ordinance so they really aren't talking to each other and they really should we have outdated code requirements we actually write into ordinance we enforce the 2003 building codes which have since been updated many times but we are required to enforce our ordinance and our ordinance is referring to old ordinance old codes so we need to update those codes and what would be the best practice would be to go in and say as most recently amended so you'd have the 2018 IRC or as most recently amended so that way as the IRC gets updated in 2023 or 2026 it automatically updates we don't have to come back to you to change your regulations that's the way it should have been written in the first place it also had poor construction poor organization it's just a pet peeve of mine I write organization I write regulations and they're right ways and wrong ways and this was kind of a jumbled mess so I tried to clean it up and then we were missing requirements necessary to allow enforcement we don't do enforcement not very often at all but it does worry me when we don't properly have things set up because if we had a situation where we did want to go and issue tickets we would not be able to it says in here we're allowed to issue fines but if you don't follow state law you actually can't issue those tickets so this is simply going to go through and make those ticketing authority meet state requirements and therefore if we ever had to which we hope we never do we would be able to issue a ticket so really quick the changes we added an authority to this it's always good to have it it's good practice we moved the purpose statement that wasn't to replace the one that wasn't one because there were purpose statements in two different places we cleaned up permit requirements and then we defined application requirements as sufficient information to determine compliance I'm a person who puts that into most of my regulations I don't want to list all the things you've got to put in your application because you might have a whole bunch of things that you don't need to give to me because it's not really relevant to demonstrating compliance but then you end up with weird waiver rules to the application forms so this just cleans it up fees we've discussed earlier there is an option we just wanted to put it out there we currently allow full refunds for projects that are not developed there is always a lot of work associated with reviewing applications and issuing permits you always could consider this being a partial refund you know or in full except for $100 if a project is not developed that's just an option we wanted to put out there does that come up very much uh it happens more it doesn't happen a lot but it it happens 10 times a year so I mean but these are a lot of times we spend a lot of time working with somebody we'll meet with them eight or ten times come up with a building project we get everything permitted ready approved and then they'll come back a year later and say yeah we're not actually going to do the project and everybody's size and it's like that was a lot of work to get that all the permit reviews but that's part of the job and it's not an issue but it's just with something we wanted to consider some places say you get your building permit you bought your building permit and if you don't build it you bought your building permit um we haven't we've always given full refunds so the codes we've had used to be if you look at the old code it was a long list we've shortened it right up shortened it to the Vermont building and fire code the state energy code and then the NFP 101 IRC and RBs are one and two family and then as I said as most recently amended and then we have a couple of unique codes just in case you don't know automatic sprinkler requirement and an abandoned vacant building code um we've removed a couple others that we either don't enforce like the property maintenance code or covered by other codes like swimming pools for some reason we had special rules on swimming pools but swimming pools are actually regulated so we don't need them and then we moved penalties to ticketing requirements and the last thing we removed licensing section as it's covered by other state statutes so that's it um I'll take any questions all right since this is a public hearing once again I'll start by seeing if there's anyone in the room who would like to be heard on on this or if anyone on zoom who would like to be heard on this topic while we're waiting for that I recall if there was something called the bokeh code is that that was the property maintenance code that nobody as far as Chris Lumber and and Michelle knows nobody has enforced that in their time okay yeah last time I remember hearing about it was in the 80s sometime okay I am not seeing any members of the public wishing to be heard so I will close the public hearing and open it to the council for comments or questions or thoughts Lauren just on the energy efficiency fees um I mean I assume this is just driven by we're we need more money for the city budget so it's a way to bring money in I mean this is one I also want to ask Miak about potential implications um to get the energy committee input I mean to me it's like we're doing like the state's putting incentives the federal government and the inflation reduction act is giving incentives like we're desperate to get people to do energy efficiency projects with like the climate crisis so to be like let's make it more expensive as we also are pouring like state and federal incentives just seems countered to a big urgent need that we have as a society to reduce fossil fuel use and climate pollution so going after this of all things just seems like against other goals and like literally the state will give an incentive to someone and then they'll have to put that money towards a Montpelier fee to do it it just seems like not the right place to go after additional money but that's just my opinion Donna can you tell us approximately how much those fees average a project I mean in the big picture we issue 100 and this year we issued 242 building permits but 80 of them are flood related so usually we're in about 160 building permits that raises about 75 to 100,000 dollars a year depends on how big the projects are if you have any big projects so having 25 percent of the permits not paying and as we said you know Down Street comes in has a project they've got to pay their fee it's affordable housing there's there's a lot of public good out there a lot of projects we support but we also have staff that have to go and administer and enforce and do the work of those projects and I think if this were a handful of projects every year we wouldn't be worrying about it but we just went through a very long process of trying to come up with where we could be getting additional revenues and to have 25 percent to find that 25 percent of our projects didn't pay and just I'll also put out there in total 50 percent of our projects didn't pay fees because the flood had the flood exemption was another 80 permits that we didn't get fees on that we understand that's a one-year one-time thing but we did have exactly 50 percent of the permits it was like 260 and 130 permits didn't pay any fees this year so it's and we only raised we're supposed to raise $75,000 we're at $25,000 in building permits right now so we are significantly under we're underperforming in our permit fees so I think I just I think it's if council decides you want to keep it that's perfectly fine that is that's your policy decision I'm putting it in front of you because I think it's my job as the director to go through and bring it to your attention that I think this exemption is having a difference a significant difference in the amount of fees that we're collecting for next meeting could you come back or the next hearing come back and and share the average the solar projects would pay we don't know that because they're as soon as they're exempt we don't ask them how much the project is building fees for everyone to understand building fees are paid based on the amount of investment so it's eight dollars plus a certain amount per thousand dollars of the project and as soon as they're exempt we're like yeah it doesn't matter we don't care I'm sorry you said that earlier as soon as you repeated it I remembered I'm sorry thank you okay it's also with this is the time limits issue for permits and it's come up a little bit this time too or at least looking through this red line version so if you issue permits is this also like a maximum one extension oh for how long they're valid for yeah yeah I didn't look at that provision but that is I don't know and what it is in this one it could be extended as well I think it's one year it's good they're good for one year that's that'd be my memory but it feels like it should save a lot of just backtracking it might make sense to make these longer to be more practical I mean having thinking about this last year for me for example I was going to replace the atrium on the plancher block at the permit staffed at all the work and then the flood hit and I didn't have the extra money to do a project like that so I'll definitely miss the days yeah totally selfish way of looking at it but it's an example of something that yeah we certainly show other people are going through yeah we certainly could either as a one time thing or just as a general rule of thumb usually people come in to get building permits at the time because you're gonna have a you're gonna have a financial outlay so usually people are coming in I'm gonna start building in the next two weeks and here's my my permit and my fee so usually development starts right away but this is a unique case but we certainly could there's nothing in statute that says it can't be longer yeah I mean it's also just getting contractors now for everybody is an issue so maybe longer would be something to think about is there a downside to letting people keep their permit open longer not that I can really think of you know it's not like these are rules that change significantly such that it's like oh we're gonna issue something and then six months later oh that would have been illegal had they applied now I mean there's very few incidents where something like that's gonna happen so I think issuing a permit and having it open longer I don't think it's gonna I don't think it's actually gonna come up often but you know as this case points out that's that's a real that's a real thing and my other two are just that the flood permit exemptions so if that comes up in a year same topic really just working through virtually and possibly get commercial electricians I don't know when we'll be able to do projects but we're gonna be way beyond a year same with our elevators I mean there's and those are really big ticket items so obviously if you get permit fees on that you get a lot more money yeah some communities have have stopped their permit fees with the waiver so they're getting people to pay again if you were asking me I would not be stopping the exemption before the end of this year just be calendar year because we've talked about when the flood happened people said how long do I have to elevate my utilities in the basement and we said it's going to take a while for all these plumbers and electricians to get through you got till the end of 2024 so it doesn't make sense for us to then go and pull the pull the permit fee out from under them put the fee exemption so I would say if you were going to we would at least be keeping the fee exemptions through but again it's a policy and a decision of the council if you guys want to keep it indefinitely it can stay indefinite too but eventually as time goes on flood damage is just going to go away right so there'll be yeah and then the third one I had was just the sprinkler system clarification because that ordinance like so we did away with or somebody did away with it way before my time but on for single family homes right it's only for multi yeah I believe it was initially and I might need to do a little bit I think it was initially to everything single family two family we then exempted single family and I'm trying to think if we also got the exemption onto two families he did for twos if they have an outside entry or something yeah there's a rule is it now up to four I think it is okay because I know we had a conversation it was a yeah Barb Conray had a big push on trying to push that up a little bit we were in I just don't remember exactly whether it went to four went to three but it okay thanks but yeah that's a sprinkler requirement that does not apply across the state is something we had adopted before my time because the thought being if we had more more buildings with sprinklers we would have less need for a fire department and over time we might be able to work our way towards a volunteer fire department I think that was the theory plus plus and then it didn't work out because they were it was the idea that as as we grew if we had sprinklers in every home as we grew we wouldn't need to expand the fire you know oh wouldn't you expand the fire department okay the size would be the same as opposed to you know we might need more police more public works like everybody if we get more housing we wouldn't have that need and also it's they are clearly proven to be safer for life safety but they're a cost housing and so at some point we said okay well we'll change the continuum so yeah wasn't that we were going to go to volunteer oh I knew there was some story behind it but yeah and people would save money on their homeowner's insurance right if they have a sprinkler and there's a tax credit the tax credit it was all put as a package you get the tax credit you put in the sprinkler but I think it probably you would take a long time to have the insurance savings catch up with what you spent with the sprinklers in anybody else okay are we ready to have a motion to set this we are ready to set a motion to set a public another public hearing so someone ready to do that and keeping in mind that there are some things that we're going to look at changing before the next time so is this motion just about the building code hearing that we're having so I'll make a motion that we proceed with the second hearing for the building code on February 28th is there a second any further discussion all those in favor signify by saying aye anyone opposed okay great thank you we have now we have next buyouts is that you mike no it's not me uh i'll need to just be able to get that guy back out how can i close that guy yeah oh i think oh did i lose josh no there he is oh josh there he is okay beautiful just give me one second to get my bob back do you have a presentation or no okay it's gonna be really quick and everybody wants to get the week all of our people enjoyed your evening in my pillar that's right yes members of the council have given up their valentines night all right pass this around to get my keys back ready josh yep okay uh josh to roam community and economic development specialist for the city of Montpelier um i'll keep it pretty brief because i know there's some other individuals behind me that would love to be up here but this is sort of just a preview as we've gone further into the recovery process we know that there's going to be a number of buyouts that the council is going to have to consider and we're at that point now in my action item i mentioned two there's going to be a third one that we intend to bring to you in a couple weeks so just wanted to preview that these individuals are all substantially damaged properties even some of them might be repetitive loss structures or severe repetitive loss structures um the city has um entered into a memorandum of agreement with vermont emergency management for them to handle the administration of all of our acquisition projects that will relieve us the burden of managing the grants through FEMA the state themselves they'll handle all of that um what we would do as the city is just sort of be the liaison between the property owner and vm um and to help make that a smooth closing because ultimately you know during an acquisition the city is um taking ownership of the parcel in agreeing to maintain that parcel after it's converted into green space to be maintained as green space in perpetuity so there's a number of funding sources that vm has access to and my understanding is that as acquisition projects come into the queue they will put them in the right bucket at that time for instance like some could go into the flood resilient communities fund that that's a state-run fund or a FEMA program called swift current or their regular hazard mitigation grant program which is available to us so all three of them have different cost share structures ranging from 75 25 all the way to 100 percent covered obviously let that's what our goal is um is to get these individuals into a program that has 100 cost share so the community doesn't have to come up with that that cost share so i just wanted to preview that we intend to bring three of them to you in a couple weeks um and you'll have to vote to accept those those parcels thanks josh one of the things i was thinking about as you mentioned a property being reverted to green space is there any is there a definition or any regulation on what green space can be can it be constructed catchment or flood mitigation beyond just being unbuilt on um i mean it could be restored to floodplain um i don't think any of these parcels um are large enough to have any sort of significant impact on it um but certainly they could all be parks the pocket parks um which would be a nice amenity for the community um and so yeah they're just not very big parcels thanks donna now are there any of the significant damaged properties that have not decided to buy out yet yes so how long do they have um timeline on that well i mean um the funding window is is is finite and so if somebody wants to um go into a buyout um they really should be in letting us know um probably in the next no later than in like the next six weeks probably just so that we can ensure that they get into the queue um early enough and you're in touch individually with all of these property owners and i assume you're communicating to them that you need to you have a fixed time to make a decision and here's what it is yeah donna what percentage of their property value so the process um uses a forensic review so they'll look at the fair market value of the property the day before um the the flood event so they'll they'll they'll figure out what that fair market value is um on for july 9th 2023 and because these are all substantially damaged properties um and they're in the flood plain um they're all considered to be cost beneficial according to FEMA um and so you know sometimes you have an issue where if they're out of the flood plain um and it goes over a certain the assessed value is over a certain amount 360 thousand then you have to do a full benefit cost analysis these are not the case um and so you know i think these properties range in assessed value from 255 um to probably 295 300 000 so part of the process is going to be allocating funds for the acquisition um demolition of the property capping all the utilities and and restoring the site so that's part of the whole project cost and do they have the ability to you know it's might be kind of a good thing for them that uh we just went through the town-wide reassessment but but do uh does the homeowner have the opportunity if they want to do go out and get an independent appraisal to argue for a higher value than the assessed value i don't i don't know if they have the ability to sort of um use a third party i mean i think vermont emergency management is going to come up with um a method that they have to apply to every single parcel um and so you know i i don't i've not i've not seen that in the policy guidelines that's if somebody doesn't like their uh praise value that they came up with that they can challenge it okay anyone else have any other questions and pelin i'm just looking on the screen to see if you're okay um i think we're set thanks a lot josh all right item 16 leachate come on down who's kurt this is your show or starting out anyway right yep i'm kurt modica public works director um here tonight we've got representatives from vermont d ec they're going to open up the discussion with sort of an overview of the status of um the regulations of pfos with the vermont and then kasella is going to go through a presentation of um where they're at with the treatment process of the leachate uh up in coventry and then following their presentation i'll provide a recommendation to council so with that i'll turn it over to uh vermont d ec thanks for hanging in and staying with us thank you for having us you got to listen while sorts of fascinating conversation good evening i'm pete leflum i'm director of the watershed management division at vermont d ec and with me here tonight um emi pelacic uh who's the manager of our wastewater discharge permitting program from within the division and heather collins who's the supervisor of our pretreatment program also within amy's program and i'll just talk a little bit about why this all matters and the sort of the dual level set of where we are with the permitting and and the the relationship of the different permits so as i mentioned amy's program issues discharge permits direct discharge permits to wastewater treatment facilities like montpelier for example um we issue that permit it's a federal permit we are a delegated state so we issue that federal permit in place of epa as part of that permitting process certain discharges to the wastewater treatment facility also receive pretreatment permits so those pretreatment permits are intended to provide treatment for substances that may not be treated at the wastewater treatment facility and also to provide treatment for subs substances that may interfere or pass through the wastewater treatment facility or upset the wastewater treatment facility so that's sort of the relationship of the way that we permit discharges to surface waters direct discharges from facilities themselves and certain discharges into those facilities the jurisdiction for pretreatment permits um is triggered by the existence of a direct discharge permit so in other words if there's not a discharge to a bremont wastewater treatment facility there is no pretreatment permit that we can issue because it's then outside of our jurisdiction currently why this matters currently there is one facility in the state of bremont that is accepting leachate from the coventry landfill and that's the city of montpelier should the city of montpelier decide not to accept leachate from coventry then the pretreatment permit goes away and we don't have jurisdiction over the landfill why does that matter well our pretreatment permit which we can talk more about requires cascela to treat for to remove the five bremont regulated PFAS and we've been working with cascela there's a draft discharge permit or pretreatment permit out on draft right now to have cascela operate their facility and monitor it closely over the next six months six months from the date of issuance of the pretreatment permit to analyze and provide the data necessary to create a effluent standard for treatment of leachate treatment of leachate is different than treatment of other water matrices it's a difficult matrix and so understanding how the particular treatment system that cascela has installed is operating it's really important for us to develop the so-called t-bell or technically-based effluent limitation for these types of treatment facilities so again the pretreatment permit is it would require that it's been out on draft we've received many public comments on it and we're poised to move forward with issuing that permit if we still have jurisdiction to issue a pretreatment permit um I'll pause there if there are questions about any of that and I have the two experts here with me tonight to be able to answer any questions you might have which is so far okay great um the the leachate from cascela represents one of the more significant sources of PFAS in the state all of the material that all of us dispose winds up in the landfill that material perks down through the landfill is collected in a liner at the landfill and comes out it's all collected it comes out as leachate we our management strategy for PFAS is in the state are to identify sources of PFAS prioritize those sources and then provide treatment at those particular sources work on source reduction source identification source reduction and then if necessary source treatment as I mentioned cascela the landfill as a result of everything that we put into the landfill that contains PFAS is which are many many things these days um that combined contribution of PFAS is there's an enormous opportunity to provide that treatment at the landfill and eliminate those PFAS is from you know recycling into the environment so we um we have the draft permit out as I mentioned we have a number of comments we've received and we're poised to move forward with response to those comments adjustment to the permit and then potentially issuing it so that's the status of where we are at Vermont DEC right now Donna oh what's the time limit here you said you have the draft out how long will it be out the draft would um I should have said it in the past tense the draft was out for a 30-day public comment period we had a public meeting we received all of those comments we have those comments and we're working how many pages of comments 267 pages of comments so it is closed right it is yes the comment period is closed correct and we're working through processing all of those developing response to comments you know evaluating making additional tweaks to the discharge permit and then you know pending where we're going with the issuance of a pretreatment permit and the jurisdiction for a pretreatment permit we would um we would then move forward with the issuance process so when you say I may have understood what you said a little differently from the way you meant it when you say you are poised to issue the permit that makes me think I hear that you was saying you support the permit you're just about ready to go and sign off on it is it when we issued the draft permit we we supported the the concept of the draft but we put it out for public comment we received those comments we're working through the comments responding to them and making you know if necessary making changes to the permit we would then be poised to issue it but every anticipation is that it will be issued when when you've completed the review when we complete the review and make the necessary adjustments to it we'll be prepared to issue it great thanks gary so if I understood what you said that uh you only have the jurisdiction to issue this permit because Montpelier is accepting the discharge so if we decided we're not going to take it anymore then what would happen to all of that leachate and would it be regulated at all or what happens then we only can issue a pretreatment permit if there is a wastewater treatment facility in vermont that would accept it that that gives us the jurisdiction to provide the pretreatment requirements for it if it then goes if if there are no vermont facilities that would accept it currently Montpelier is the only facility that does accept the leachate if if there were no vermont facilities accepting it it would go out of state and it would then be regulated by whatever entity you know whether it goes to new hampshire or new york or wherever it goes to um that particular state would then be responsible for issuing a pretreatment permit if they chose to okay loren thank you and appreciate you hanging in for a long night um my question is you know so it was a big part of our discussion when we were kind of going back and forth the number of years ago about whether to keep accepting the leachate because of course it does have these contaminants you know it's very concerning to be bringing any PFAS into our community I mean and then there's everything else that's in leachate and knowing that it's persistent it's creating contamination you know so we're like knowingly contaminating our community but we wanted to be able to have this hook to be able to move forward with pretreatment um I guess I'm curious how you would characterize your consideration for I know that you know we're going to hear more about a proposal tonight on a like kind of newer technology I believe there's other technologies that would perform better at removing PFAS at some point it becomes really to me just really hard to say that our community should continue accepting PFAS contamination you know despite this regulatory morass we're in so I guess it's like how are you going to be weighing the fact that you know I know there's a proposal to do a technology that removes less PFAS than other technologies could because presumably it's cheaper um so how are you weighing that and I don't know how long we can stay at the table taking it if there's better technologies and just curious how you how you're considering the different options no it's a good question and certainly Heather and Amy you should you should chime in but I guess I would say that part of the one of the requirements of the permit that where we would propose to issue is a six month pilot study so to evaluate exactly how well this particular technology performs at removing PFAS is from leachate and again leachate is a very very difficult matrix it's different than than regular water treatment because it's so dense it's so viscous it it clogs a lot of other treatment technologies so looking at the operation being able to evaluate the operation across the unit at its efficiency in removing many different PFASs we're interested here in Vermont the five regulated PFASs but of course as you know there are many many other PFASs and how does it perform against not only the five Vermont regulated but the other PFASs that do exist that's the purpose of the study that's the purpose of the pilot study so this amendment that we're proposing to issue this this permit amendment it's an amendment to the existing pretreatment permit would require Kasella to operate this unit for 180 day period and to scrutinize across the unit through pretty intensive monitoring how the unit's performing at removing these PFASs so that will allow us to really assess Kasella you know we'll talk about some of their existing information but you know allow us to assess it how well this unit's working just and I don't mean to get ahead of the Kasella presentation but they shared it so just like looking through some of the slides it's showing like 60 percent removal of one of the PFAS for example if I read it right and correct me if that you know like do we anticipate that it's going to get better and that they're going to be refining the technology and again it is five of 14 000 PFAS like are we testing organic floor like are there ways to get at the fluorine content or something so that we're capturing more I know there's other you know protocols that can test for a lot more than just the five so it just sounds like you're planning to do which is great but I mean I guess like what are we going to learn like we already know the EPA is saying there's essentially no safe limit of PFAS best case scenario if this plays out the data that we're going to be presented it still is not removing all PFAS so we're still planning to move forward with the technology that's going to still result in PFAS contamination being brought to Montpelier so I'm just trying to wrap my head around how this is a good outcome if if there's better technologies and if like your perspective is there's no better technology out there and this is just I mean I know it's a really hard situation and Cosella as you said like has brought in all of the waste collectively that has all the PFAS and it's this huge global issue so you know I don't I'm not trying to like demonize anyone but I'm just trying to get like the best outcome the cleanest water and not result in contamination so as we are too yeah yeah so I guess just like what are you expecting to see that's going to be tell a story that would be like yeah this is a great outcome if we're already seeing it doesn't remove all PFAS and then what are you doing about that like I'm sorry I think that it's important to kind of like back up a little bit just for people to understand you do realize that there is PFAS coming into the influence already just from the consumer products that your residents are using so talking about removing all PFAS from the leachate you're not going to even be able to remove all PFAS from your influence coming into your plant from just regular residential use I'm not saying like one's better than the other but you're you're taking a highly concentrated form from all of our waste from our trash but you're still getting your residential product stream coming into your plant so you're not going to be able to remove that either yes but we are choosing as a city to import a PFAS contamination and so that's a very like I agree I'm also like there's legislation to ban more PFAS from our products like there's a lot of work going on like I totally hear you and like this is a piece we can control and that's not a very satisfying answer to me I think you know we should wait we know we're gonna we'll stay here and and be able to answer better or discuss better after Kasella presents the results of what they've been able to do so far there are the process steps that they can continue to take to looking at things like certain additives that might enable them to better remove some of the PFAS so it's a it's a real emerging technology this is cutting edge across the country right now what we're trying to do with this leachate treatment here in Vermont and so the 180 day pilot study will give us a lot more data as to you know how the unit is performing once it's really fine tuned if they look at different additives you know what does that do to the overall performance of the unit so you know again that's the purpose of the pilot test is to really because this is new technology to be able to evaluate how will this technology perform in a tough matrix like leachate so it will I think the pilot study will give us a lot of answers to you know to some of your great questions and just to kind of add on about the the analytical techniques that you were speaking to the method for detection of multiple PFAS in this matrix have now been accepted by the EPA and so it's something that allows us to use that method we're not just asking them to measure the five PFAS we're asking them to measure all the quantifiable PFAS that exist in an approved method at this point and if there are different types of analyses that can be added to the permit for a requirement for determining you know like speaking to the organic fluorine tests those kinds of things that it's an emerging contaminant with emerging testing techniques and so we've tried in the permit to maintain at to stay at the cutting edge not only of the technologies that are being used but the testing that's being used in order to quantify the best of the abilities that are out there now again just sort of speaking to our overall management strategy for PFAS in the state it's to identify the largest sources and try to apply the best technologies to you know to remove those PFAS to try to limit as you mentioned where a wash in it right I mean it's it's in rain water it's everywhere so it's a really tough problem very can you just clarify a little bit more about the 180 day pilot study and what happens at the end of that and what you're looking for and what you know what conditions will trigger what response sure so uh amendment that we put out asks gives them some time to prepare for that pilot study and then within four months of the permit being issued they need to start the pilot study it needs to run for at least 180 days to collect data for us to be able to analyze according to EPA's techniques to set the limits based on that technology and so once that pilot project data collection period is over we'll start that data analysis and we will depending on where we're at in the permit cycle when that comes through we'll either reissue a new permit with limits in it based on that analysis and the the type of tech the technology that's being used uh or will amend the permit again depending on it because it's a five-year permit and you can amend it until it needs to be renewed the the system will be allowed to continue to run and treat the PFAS and continue to be removing PFAS from the waste stream even until we get those permit limits and then at which time those permit limits are promulgated they'll have to be able to consistently meet those to stay in compliance with the permit so you so they have six months and we see how it goes we see what they're able to do and then what they're able to do it determines the limits that's how the technology based affluent limit procedure works it actually balances the cost that's going into running the unit and the technology that you're you're using and the maintenance of the system and the uh the results that you get out and we have received a lot of comments on the permit about setting goals which is very challenging because we don't have water quality standards surface water quality standards for PFAS at this time so setting numeric limits based on source receiving water protection is not quite available to us which is why we're taking this technique of trying to reduce as much as possible the PFAS that's coming in from this very concentrated source so I would say that in to summarize my answer is that essentially we we have as part of our comment response period some things to consider as to how we set successful metrics for the pilot project as we're finalizing the permit issuance here okay thank you so so what's the incentive for cassela to improve the product the results once the limits are set based on what they can achieve at that point in time after 180 days what's what's the what's their incentive to improve the process well this point the incentive is being driven by the peculiar requirements for receipt of the leaching and so the evolution of the way that the regulations are happening it will depend on what you know what requirements are in place at any given time so first it will be the technology based affluent limits eventually EPA is going to have surface water quality limits that we that Vermont will adopt those likely won't be protective enough so we're trying to take this approach to stay ahead of the federal regulations and be as protective as possible without having very solid numbers for surface water protection EPA has been working for several years now on developing water quality standards aquatic for aquatic there are two different types of water quality standards ambient water quality standards human health protection and protection of aquatic organisms they've been working for several years on the aquatic organism part of that they currently have out in draft form for public comment nationally water quality standards for two of the PFAS is PFOA and PFAS those standards are orders of magnitude higher than what we're seeing in ambient waters here in Vermont so they won't be the limiting factor which is why we're doing the technology based affluent limitation optimizing the performance of the unit is I mean it's uh running the unit in an optimized way as again we're jump we're we're giving a spoiler alert for I think what you'll hear from Kasella so why don't we be happy to come back to your question after you see some of the latest performance data from from Kasella but but sort of the question I as I understand it is is shouldn't we be looking for some kind of mechanism to drive them to constantly improving improve their performance and if if the standard is based on their technology that they're available to do now what's the driver for constant improvement we don't have the baseline you know because this is cutting edge we don't there's not a proven method that we can point to and say you need to do as well as this method because treating leachate for PFAS is right now there's really not nationally there's not much if any information as to how that can be done the use of this unit on this foam fractionation technology that they're using on leachate is is a new concept relatively new concept I'll say so um and another question that may seem kind of nebulous but throw it out there we've got measurements here for five out of 14,000 compounds is is it safe to say that the efficacy of of this technology on those other 13,995 tracks the efficacy of the five no they're all the PFAS is an incredibly difficult subject and there are there are different estimates of how many different PFAS's are out there it though they're out there there are far fewer that are actually used commonly to the point that they're going to create concentration issues right now there are a couple two of which I mentioned a moment ago the PFOA PFOA and the PFOS you know not PFAS which is the assemblage but PFOS those are the two that raise the most concern they're older compounds that because they're older they're found in a lot of the trash they're also more problematic in terms of the research the epidemiological and aquatic life research they're more problematic so we're really focused on those there are it seemingly infinite variations of how you can create a molecule with fluorines hanging off of it um and many many different properties that resulting from that but though there are that many there are a more limited set that you actually see um in troubling concentrations in um in consumer products and in you know in in trash but they're they're really really hard to to generalize okay thanks any more Mr. Lauren sure just kind of like building on Kerry so this technology is piloted meanwhile and we set our standard base on that but meanwhile there are better because this is an emerging field there are better technologies that are developed and found yeah can we require a transition to a new technology or are we locked in it's a five-year permit so for five years but then you could force a new standard that we could only map the new technology or updates to this technology like a hypothetically yes I mean the five the permit though it's a five-year permit there is a general re-opener clause that we put in our permit so we can reopen a permit at any given time will there be new technology that comes along that quickly that we would reopen a five-year permit I don't know I'd say probably not but but it is a five-year permit so every five years it's renewed and you know if there are different standards that come along again Vermont is is way ahead in this our neighboring states New York and New Hampshire do not have this requirement but anytime say there's a new technology that someone people decide is generally considered to be be better and it's developed I can imagine Kasella or any company who's started with the one that we have now say well geez we already invested 800,000 1.7 million whatever it is in this old thing we need to get our money out of that before we can justify making a change right we we hear that a lot from the regulated industry in general we hear from municipalities when it comes to nutrient reduction or reduction of we're constantly adjusting we typically we receive standards from the federal government they work on developing new and different water quality standards every three years we reevaluate our water quality standards as a rule here in the state also subject to federal approval and we ratchet down on this most recent round we came up with new standards for copper and for aluminum you know we typically are reducing you know the the limits for discharges into the environment you know from wastewater treatment facilities as you well know we did that several years ago with the Lake Champlain TMDL and ratcheted down significantly on phosphorus discharges on the western side of the state on the eastern side of the state we're looking at nitrogen contributions to Long Island Sound so we're constantly revising permits and ratcheting down on those requirements we never can go up through a concept called anti-backsliding but we can go down and we do and we you know that costs are an issue we we hear about cost issues from most regulated entities but at the same time we have standards whether they're effluent treatment standards or water quality standards or TMDL based standards that we we push out and you know hopefully you are able to provide funding to ameliorate some of the impact on communities but we that's our job thanks tim i'm just thinking if we finish this item we've got other people waiting for other items should we let them go home and get some track on how we're gonna end this meeting well i i think i've i've been thinking that same question it's just curved right because what we have after this is the water sewer and budgets and water line replacement plan now that's that's a big deal and and we've been eager to discuss this for a while i don't know if people are willing to stay past 11 to have a full discussion of that but but since it's just curt i think we we we cross that we we deal with that when we get to it i don't i and i'll take the temperature of the room once once we see how long this takes yeah yeah i think and i well i know when you're getting older and so okay time to hear from kasella thank you thank you this is great thank you very much uh we're we're glad to be here uh sam nicolai uh vice president of engineering with kasella with me i have jeremy labby who is our general manager at our country landfill and joe gay who is our regional engineer for the state of her mom you guys have had the slides so certainly we can try to keep this fairly brief although we certainly want to give you any information that would help you in terms of of this discussion so you recall we were here in july um at that point we had done uh testing both in the field and bench scale uh and we're optimistic about getting our treatment system in so treatment system uh the full scale system started in august of this year and so the results that we're going to talk about tonight are a compilation of data starting in august uh going into the the present day so a reminder you know this is the foam fractionation technology um miss hurl had you know good points and questions about well why did we select this particular technology you know the primary reasons were that um we found it to be effective in the exact characteristics that p fos um creates problems with p fos was used by manufacturers as a coating it likes the water air interface and so when you aggressively foam you drive the p fos into the foam that combined with the amount of low foam that we were able to generate which is a critical function led us to this technology we did not do a bid process for this technology we did not select the lowest bid we evaluated several vendors we selected we thought the best vendor that we thought would be the most effective um admittedly it's a a field that continues to evolve and grow there are a lot of very smart people and universities working on this problem um but it does appear not only from our work but nationally throughout the country that foam fractionation is sort of leading the pack as what people are finding as the most effective uh for managing these technologies or managing these compounds so these are the results that you're seeing you can see that we get very effective removal of four of the five compounds but we do struggle a little bit with the fifth compound p f h pa so we're in between that 96 and 99 percent removal which we think is excellent the p f h pa has not um been consistently 66 it goes up it goes down we'll show a little bit of that um it is a seven carbon compound it's not necessarily a short chain compound and i'm not sure we know exactly why it's been so difficult for us we have some good working theories and we're expecting to continue to improve that in the pilot test uh six six month program but there's no doubt that that is a compound that we've struggled to get consistent removal on this is a chart that we showed you in july in july it was based on what we hoped we would be able to do this is based on the actuals so we're showing you the mass that's coming in to the wastewater facility both from leachate and from the residential influence on the left and we're showing you what we're actually able to achieve through treatment on the right so this is not new you've you've seen a version of this before but we're very happy to report that the actual field conditions match to what we said we were going to do uh you know in july and to be clear that the uh the units are grams per day so in all that we get from you before we were getting two tenths of a gram per day in in how many truckloads one truckload a day no this was 30 roughly 30 000 gallons a day and now it's down to 0.02 okay so a gram is a the weight of a paperclip so a fifth of a paperclip is is what we're seeing and we're getting that down to uh a fiftieth of a paperclip so we're dealing with really small concentrations and really small amounts of mass here which is challenging of course both from a removal and a quantification standpoint but even that quantity is hazardous to health even these very low concentrations so the the levels of that we evaluate and regulate for PFOS are a full magnitude below traditional compounds so we're measuring lower and we're being held and identifying health impacts of those lower concentrations okay thanks again this is a a graph you've seen before it's really the same data showing you into the pie chart so we're really shrinking the the amount of PFOS that you're coming down from leachate to a very small amount I certainly appreciate herles comments that it is new it's coming into the facility as opposed to the residential um but the whole goal here is for us to remove this and get as low as possible so that's not providing an impact to the wastewater facility this is probably the meat right here so now instead of percentages you're actually seeing the concentration data so on the left you're seeing the the data before treatment so all those colored bars represent the various of the five PFOS compounds and you're seeing the variation over time so it kind of goes up and down um you know over the the weeks and months on the right you're seeing the the treated and you can see by color we're very successful when everything except for the blue the blue is that recalcitrant compound that we have trouble removing you do see that we were successful in two samples in early November where we actually got the results down and met the drinking water standard and those were the only two times we've been able to do that where we've gotten all five low enough that we were below the 20 so we know it can be done but we've not been able to do it consistently with especially that fifth compound the other four compounds essentially are at the drinking water standard or right at it or above or below it that fifth compound is the problem child and that one is up and down a little bit more still we're very very pleased with this level of progress on the amount of removal we're getting acknowledging that we've got to continue to try to find solutions to get that fifth compound a little bit lower I'll point out interestingly that fifth compound is the only one of the five that is not part of the federal drinking water standards so only Vermont is regulating that fifth compound EPA is not going to regulate today that fifth compound so it's interesting that everybody has their different perspectives on which of the compound is supposed to be regulated that fifth one is only in Vermont today nevertheless we're doing our best to get as much removal as we can again I think you know we want to share this data just showing you know the magnitude of the reduction and again you can see our our PFHPA that fifth compound at the bottom is the only one that we continue to show higher concentrations to the earlier point that DC made you know the two compounds that are of the largest concern are those top of those top two compounds PFOA and PFOS those are the ones that have the most study those are the ones that have the most standards that everyone is focused on and we do a very effective job of removing those two it is only the fifth compound that we have a little more trouble with we wanted to try to graphically represent how this closed loop is working because it really is a closed loop in Montpellier you guys are generating waste and biosolids coming from the wastewater plant that's coming to the landfill that is being managed at the landfill we're sequestering PFOS within the landfill that's where the vast majority of the PFOS lies then we're sending the leachate back to you it's being treated at the wastewater plant so you've got this loop back and forth and we want to kind of show you a little bit graphically what that loop is so on the left is the estimate of PFOS that you're sending to us in in mass so you're sending us waste that contain PFOS you're sending us biosolids that contain PFOS like every other community in Vermont so nothing unique there but this is the portion that Montpellier is sending us and I assume our profile is pretty much indistinguishable from other communities yep yep so that data does not include household trash only because we really don't understand how much PFOS is in household trash but that does include bulky furniture carpets things of that nature and so we certainly could produce that graph for any other community in the state of Vermont and it would look very similar on the right of course is then what we're sending back to you and we share this to say we're doing everything we can to try to get this mass as low as possible the ultimate solution is that we're sequestering that PFOS in the landfill as much as possible and we don't want to lose that acknowledging that we want to get it out of the leachate as well and the further reductions are intended to do that so really to give you a cap of where we are today the system has been operating since august in an exterior containment what we consider a temporary location we are very close to finishing the building it's in its final stages electrical plumbing we're expecting in a matter of weeks to be completed with the building we'll have a two to three week period where we're move the system from its exterior location inside the building to its permanent home and then we expect the permit to be issued from the from dc and to go into that formal pilot testing period and i think the agency has already talked about sort of the schedule going forward from 24 into 25 i think the only thing that i would add perhaps to the earlier discussion is that part of our obligation on the pilot testing is not only to report the data but also to report what we were doing what's happening temperature-wise what's happening climate-wise what's happening at the landfill so that the agency can track and see what the differences are so there isn't any way for us to gain the system we're saying we're only going to do certain things that they're going to see our behavior as we try to get as low as possible presumably as we identify what are those factors what's the way we operate the system that gets the most bang for our buck then the limits will reflect that and that long 180 day period is intended to shake those kinds of questions out over that time frame most of us have toured Montpelier's wastewater recovery facility so just out of curiosity what does the machine that does this look like how big is it so we'll jump back to the other slide it actually comes in a shipping container so it's a fairly compact footprint oh that's it i think my friend Jeremy would tell you that he would love it and it wasn't so compact because it's difficult to work on and maintain but that that shipping container essentially will go inside of our building so it's a fairly modest footprint there are tanks and filters and other infrastructure that are going to be outside of of that box but all inside the building itself yeah i mean the associated infrastructure it's a 60 by 60 building so it's not a small building because you have tankage for the concentrate that comes off the back end which one of the benefits of home fractionation that most of the separation technologies don't provide is that it gives it in a manageable fraction you know people like well reverse osmosis works better well it doesn't really because it takes a thousand gallons of leachy and it gives you 800 gallons that looks really good and 200 gallons that you don't know what to do with right and so this one will take 50 000 gallons and turn it into 50 or 100 gallons that we can solidify or we can destroy because destruction technologies are not there where they can process large volumes yet and they're still years away from being having that ability to do so you know we're keeping our eyes on it but there's all that stuff that needs to be inside that building to the tanks to supply leachy back and forth to concentrate the stabilization that we're going to use or destruction that we may use someday down the road needs to have room so it's quite involved it's a multi-million dollar project it's not that we you know i i've heard the concept of us cheaping out we did not we looked at what the best technology was in fact when we initially did our study this wasn't even considered uh when we did our study that the state of mandator we do and they asked us to look at it because it had come out in that time frame and we did look at it added it to our list of potential candidates with brown and called well and said this looks really promising we want to go down this path so it is a small container for a lot of stuff yes and it comes from australia so it's really hard to work on at times unless you're small and you have really small hands but it is a really really cool technology and when we happen in the facility we'd love to bring you up for a visit if you were interested i think we are probably going to be the first commercial operation of one of these in the entire country um and one of the first landfill is treating all of our leachate the entire country so you know we're we're setting the tone for the rest of the country with this and uh i'll stop talking yeah i'm interested so happy to address any questions the council may have okay anybody have any questions so uh just two things i guess what else is in the leachate that we get and what and what what does the leachate itself with everything that it contains how does it affect our our facility when it gets here so that's a big part of what dc has done with this current permit and did with previous permits so forget about PFAS for a second part of being permitted to come to the facility was to ensure that the wastewater plant could properly manage what's in the leachate leachate is primarily a mix of organic compounds so it tends to be a little bit higher in BOD than your traditional wastewater but very similar it does have a fair amount of ammonia which has to be monitored it has to be evaluated and it does have a fair number of metals which have to be um also tested for um but that evaluation is is part and parcel of the pretreatment permit and and the agency would not allow us to take it to wastewater plants if it were not able to be treated so you're um you're measuring the content of those those sorts of organic chemicals at your end but uh so we know what's uh what the percentage is in what what is sent to us essentially we know what the mix is Joe you can speak to our our current monitoring programs yeah so we we sample quarterly for um volatile organic compounds semi-volatile organic compounds metals chloride ammonia um and report that to the agency the city gets a copy um in this newer permit we're also testing for PFAS monthly that report goes in with our monthly report um so yeah so we're looking at the analytical quarterly for and how is it actually transported in a tanker truck or something and what happens if that truck spills and we have leachate you know on the highway it would certainly be considered a release we're the um has to be reported has to be cleaned up as it would for any other kind of release um you know and similar to um if there were gasoline truck or um other kind of vehicle i haven't heard of it happening but it's not like it's not a toxic material it has this material it's it's a wastewater um well metals ammonia we would spring into action and and clean up the release we'd assist the state emergency response any any material would end up back in the landfill so no no east palestine scenario no no i mean leachate needs to be treated because of the organic mls that it contains um but but you know this is not a hazardous material it's not a flammable material it doesn't rise to the level of kind of the rail disasters we've seen unfortunately on the news recently but if it spilled out on the ground you'd presumably have to excavate you know dig up a lot of the whatever soaked it up and that would be going back up to your place it would yeah um just one other thing going back to my earlier question uh with the dc folks um it's i mean seems to me that you you're you're pursuing this um vigorously i mean you you started at much lower levels of treatment and have continuously brought them up but the only incentive for you to continue that once the limits are set based on the 100-day pilot is non-manual of the permit is that in fact the case or do you have are there other limits in the permit are there any incentives in the permit other than non-manual there won't be a written incentive in the permit the incentive is going to be that while all of us i think are frustrated that we don't know what the right limits are they're coming epa doesn't move nearly as quickly as any of us would like but there will be limits one day and we want to be able to utilize the technology to get below those limits or know that that the technology cannot get below those limits and when that happens we're going to have to implement technology that does now we one of the reasons that we like this technology is that we believe it will be very adaptable to add on to there are other technologies that could go in front or behind to help improve it so we feel confident and one of the reasons why we pulled the trigger as early as we did that it's getting us better removal than that we think we'll achieve otherwise and we will see what the regulations bring us but rather than wait another five years for epa to figure out what the right number is this is what i would think of an interim step and our goal then and our incentive is to ensure that we're leading the way finding ways to further remove it because eventually there's going to be a number that comes out from epa that and i'm sure you're curious as to why it worked in november so well and yeah but they are very curious yeah i mean um yeah i mean this is this is i mean it obviously it can it can do a better job with that we have some working theories we're we're looking forward to testing those out i think the agency is looking forward to hearing from us and and testing those out and you know we're excited that we're not dealing with oh five percent removal to 95 percent removal no we're getting good consistent results we got to find a way to improve that one compound so it's tweaking around the edges and and continue remind me what what you do with the foam once once you've processed it so today the the foam is allowed to return to a liquid state um combination of spraying it and and just time so that gets back to a liquid um and we essentially mix it with a mortar mix a cementation mix and bind up that liquid so that it then could go back into the landfill the reality is the landfill is a full cycle so in theory it could go right into the landfill and go around and around and it would always be captured but by putting it in the mortar mix we bind that up so that it can't escape and it's going to stay as a solid material we know that solid materials do a really good job of staying in the landfill because we've seen the graphs that say hey for all these waste materials the vast majority of PFAS stays in the landfill is a small amount going to leach out we don't know that's one of the things we'll we'll work to evaluate but regardless it'll be in that closed loop so that it can never escape that landfill environment thanks for all this i mean really from where we started a year ago it is great to see the progress and i do think the ability to continue working together as challenging and frustrating as it is to have this huge contaminant um and i'd really encourage to hear the idea of maybe you know adding a reverse osmosis system or something down the line if we still can't figure out how to get i mean it looks just from googling it like that's cause like nobody's figuring out very well how to capture that particular because it's a shorter chain PFAS and it's a breakdown product of other PFAS and all that so i'm sure you won't be alone in trying to figure out how how to get it out but yeah i think just obviously like from my perspective just continuing to try to get as little PFAS back out into the environment as possible is the goal so that's the lens like that for me i'm bringing to this and you know talking to a lot of community members here who are kind of baffled why we even continue to take it um but yeah i guess i'll just i'll leave it there but it's getting late anybody else all right where do we go from here speaking about full circle yeah right thanks this is great all right um again court modica public director says chris cox chief operator of the water resource recovery facility so um i just wanted to wrap up the presentation or the discussion tonight um with just some of the implications with the decision that council does make you've heard a lot of it already but there are a couple things that we have not covered um the first is we have a really large upgrade planned for the wastewater plant and we're just starting work on that now recently signed the final design contract with our consulting engineer and there are some components of of the plant that are that we need to consider whether we take leachate or not as we work to upgrade those so the first the biggest one is the uv system that wasn't initially in the project scope but we recently found out that our uv system is no longer going to be supported for parts so the ballast cards are called they did one last run of manufacturing them we bought a bunch to get us through the next three years but that system will have to be replaced they're all our alternatives to uv parasitic acid is something that we could potentially utilize that works well with leachate acceptance so we just need in order to advance our project and we're in the process of doing that we really just need a decision from council so that we can proceed accordingly with the upgrade another component is the arpa grant so the city was awarded one million dollar pretreatment grant and we're allowed up to a hundred thousand dollars for administrating that grant if we do not accept leachate um then you know we're not we're not really it's hard to justify the grant to the city because we're no longer accepting pretreated leachate so that is on hold now until council makes a decision about the future of leachate acceptance again dz um discussed the regulatory oversight piece so there'll be no more regulatory oversight should the city not take leachate um and environmental impacts so um i think what where we started with council really setting limits and clear goals for casala has really moved this process along and i think that's a great success story for one player in the council um but if we don't take leachate um there's a lot more uh trucking that goes along with moving the material out of state so there's you know carbon emissions associated with that environmental impacts um and the majority of the leachate is still going to end up um being discharged into lake shamblain plasberg is the primary alternate discharge point uh for leachate for casala so it's just it's hard to see that there's any environmental gain i think there's a lot of environmental uh negatives if we um if the city decides not to accept leachate and then finally is the financial impacts um so we are the budget if we get to that tonight um it does not include uh leachate revenue so there's an opportunity to amend proposed rates which will be another discussion later on um so uh each load we take right now we're taking one load a day and that quates about a hundred thousand dollars a year um the most we have taken in the past is four loads a day um so there's an opportunity for financial benefit to sewer rate payers and then on are they producing enough to for us to take again but four loads a day if they yes hitting bad odds from yes they are yeah flooding rate gotcha and then the last um financial component is our our sludge disposal so uh like cal said our um dewatered solids go to the landfill and um we have very low rates from casala because we take the leachate um so there's it would you know casala would likely um need to put our rates to market rate which is essentially double what we pay now so that would be roughly like a quarter million dollar annual additional cost to the city um so with all of those things for council to consider um i did draft up a draft motion and open to modifications to this should any council members want but this is um what we tried to find is a balance of um maintaining accountability and treatment until the state permits are actually issued and we have clear levels established of um of treating treatment amounts or levels on the on the vermont drinking water standards and the reason we're focusing so much on the vermont drinking water standards is because that's was the direction from council initially is um to meet vermont drinking water standards which casala is not able to do now but they have made great progress and i and i um as you heard they said they're going to continue to try to improve on that process so the way this is written is um is to try to find the balance of allowing us um to uh continue with acceptance of leachate for all the reasons i mentioned in the previous slide um until their permits well and then at limits of 80 percent reduction so that's kind of the average of all five being reduced all five components in vermont that are regulated being reduced by 80 percent until their discharge permit is issued by the state at which time we would revert to requiring them to meet that permit um so i can read the whole motion but i think that's uh for council member if they want to but i'll turn it over to you for discussion okay any comments or carry yeah just just a quick question the 80 percent that is uh looking at all five of them together not each one that's correct um i i think this uh discussion really puts mont pilier into an interesting position because we we regulate the housing within the city with zoning or whatever we pave our roads we we do all this stuff that really affects the city of mont pilier um this decision puts us in a position of really influencing the environmental regulation system and the environment outside of mont pilier because we're the linchpin to state regulation and and i think that's uh for for us to want to be a player in improving the environment not only within mont pilier but outside of mont pilier it's an opportunity we don't often have donna it's an opportunity to take responsibility i mean we put the same stuff in our landfill so that we're responsible for it and i don't see shipping it off to platzberg to go back into the lake i'd rather see us be assertive we've had partners that have been very responsive and i would propose that we i make a motion to recommend the motion that curt laid out here word for word is there a second okay thank you go ahead so if the if you're talking about an aggregate is you're talking about an average is there a difference between an average and an aggregate how is it calculated 80 seems low to me given the results that i'm looking i'm looking at 98 99 except for the one sort of recalcitrant version yeah um right so the sum of all um the pre and post treatment with an 80 reduction from the initial number to the final number and and the wording is a minimum so um you know encouraging cacela to do to do better if they can 8100 gallons a day this doesn't seem to have any limits on that is is that still the same amount or they it's are you considering more so i do have the first part of the motion um notes that the limits will be approved by public work staff and within our existing discharge permit so we have a limit uh on gallons per day of what we can take in our permit now um i think we believe that's around 60 000 gallons a day we don't anticipate getting to that level anytime in the near future but um so really what it would be dictated by is um you know chris's primarily chris's comfort level um and um and what the plant can accept and and treat effectively gallons a day we're taking almost 2.1 million gallons a year this stuff um running it right through and sending it up the river past a lot of other communities too to get to the lake i i'm not there any other comments from members of the council lauren kind of struggling with the math still of the 80 percent of the five maybe it's because it's 11 24 at night it's not helping um like one piece of this that i definitely don't like is that we will revert to the the dc permit standard like i would want to see what that was i feel like us setting out the 20 parts per trillion the drinking water standard even though it wasn't an existing surface water standard as a goal has kind of pushed the conversation and the process forward and set an ambitious target for this whole process i want us to continue doing that i mean 80 percent i was trying to do the math it seemed like you got set a higher number based on like just the averages they're showing us right now so um i think we could go higher like i want to be pushing for the best possible if we're going to go in this direction and i i don't think i would put that whole last section about i think we should keep ours and push for it we could always look if dc goes lower than what we have or a more protective standard we could move in that direction but they might go higher that we wouldn't want to and we don't i don't want to revert to a less protective standard um if they're hitting it and able to achieve it because of what we're putting out there so would you think it should be more like uh where it says at which time at which time the council would reconsider the limit or something like that laid out that lowered problem but but yeah i see what you mean like a more protective standard more protective standard um or cut that whole salmon i understand where you're getting at you're right would be a good idea i feel like maybe we could we could just revisit it if i mean i assume we'll get a presentation once the dc you know we like inviting kasell in every six months so i think i think yeah i might like i'd be more comfortable just getting rid of that we could always revisit it and see and if it's more protective than moving that direction you put a period after standards and then to be reviewed in six months by the city council yeah i think something like that i mean i wondered too i mean if right now we're taking one truck load i would love to not be increasing the amount we're taking it's i thought that was kind of getting us the amount where we could kind of send a truck it was helping with our uh other waste costs i thought yeah well one of the one of the impacts is as if the city were not to take leachate that we would pay market rate for solid disposal that was but if we were but if we were still taking one truck load and not increasing it to 60 000 gallons a day yeah well we yeah right i don't anticipate us getting to 60 000 um i guess the ask at this point would be to the ability to go up to two loads a day that's likely all that we would that we would be comfortable with at this point as up to two loads put that in the in the motion would that would that help people's comfort level loads as opposed to three loads or four loads i mean what are you what what's the process you're using to evaluate that answer that um yep we are working through um we had before this year accepted up to four loads a day um we had had some ecoli violations um attributed to leachate and so we are working with brown and cauldwell and with kasella as well to try to understand what type of disinfection system we need to make sure we don't have any violations and we've we've done studies kasella's helped pay for those studies with with brown and cauldwell and we're our comfort level is with two loads at the dilution which is the you know mixed in with the influence that we're taking that we can comfortably meet our ecoli limits and and through this next phase we'll be looking at uv systems or different types of disinfection systems that will allow us to take three four loads per day if necessary so it's really an ecoli um consideration so if um if we didn't do this uh and you have you need to replace this uv system right and you can do you can choose a system that will treat leachate or one that won't is that did i understand that correctly there's a couple options and not all of them leachate or are not as well so there's you know the end product or the end process of the plant is is disinfection and there's a variety of ways to do that um and there's different costs associated with each operating end construction so um you've uh the leachate does um there's an acid within it that um from the studies from um kasella's engineer an acid that can impact the light in the uv system that reduces its effectiveness at higher at high concentrations compared to the influence so um so yeah there are alternatives to uv and we would look into more of those should the city decide to take leachate uh i i don't know what the cost differences are but would it make sense to look into that anyway given that maybe the technology would change down the road even if we didn't go this way tonight that someday we may i take it you don't want to replace the system every five years or i don't know how long it lasts yeah it just impacts the financial picture of us being able to select the best long-term cost effective alternative not knowing what the future is yeah okay yeah kasella has said that they'll work with us if we need to put in a uv system that is more robust or disinfection system that is more robust to accept leachate so they have offered to contribute financial assistance to that so just a continued partnership loren back to the wording of 80 percent removal like if their total amount goes up 80 percent removal could be more p fast total like why are we moving away from a part per trillion standard which is what every other regulation uses i mean looking at their chart like i can see it's way above 20 so that's it's is it because it's a horrifying number that we would have to propose what's the thinking there um i mean i i'm seeing them touching 500 occasionally 300 if you're trying to set something that they could hit consistently or yeah i mean that hundred parts per trillion like i know rhodiolins set a surface wire standard of 70 parts per trillion like yeah i'm it's there is um there's a lot of fluctuation in and what kasella is treating so the like they said if there's a big rain event at the volume of leachate goes way up it's just an easier matrix for us to track so we don't we as public works we don't want to be in the business of regulating permits this is why i added deferring to the state that's really what the state does um you know we do public works permits and but that's not a long term monitoring so that's pretty heavy burden on public works to put that on us long term um and we're trying to find and they the percentage is just an easier way for us to manage and check um the removal rates and so what we would propose is that kasella would send us in the interim period until the state issues a permit they would send us the results we would you know they would have a summary of the data and we'd be able to you know check that relatively quickly rather than going by the exact parts per trillion moved under each parameter um so it's a management ability for us partially it's just an easier metrics to understand and in some ways um i mean it's not just there's no i mean we can change it if you want but um that was kind of the thinking behind it it looks in their graph like they're i mean they're reported a month by month parts per trillion like i would think that would be just whatever we ask for them it's either a percentage or a parts per trillion measurement i don't really understand why that's different it just a percentage feels like of what and that could be changing over time and so do we even know what we're getting then it's like they just stamp off like yep it was 78 or 82 percent today but of what whereas parts per trillion is like an absolute number that we can compare to other time periods i just i would feel more comfortable with a standard that everyone else uses as opposed to this percentage that i've never seen and i assume like dc would be moving towards a part per trillion i don't know as opposed to like a percent removal standard um remains to be seen but it's more likely to be a generic standard so it just i don't know why we'd be setting a different type of standard than every other way that this is always regulated that seems harder to gauge what's going on so is that a number that's ascertainable so that either uh could sell it would report or we could ascertain in what comes in chris you were shaking your head no you should step up so because there are people there believe it or not there are still people at home uh watching this we clearly have the lab data so we clearly can report the actual ppt um our struggle was um it's not as if we're getting that consistent 66 of that fifth compound it's been bouncing up and down so we were trying to give feedback to kurt to say what can we achieve really thinking that this was an interim step we expect the state's number to be lower and you certainly could clarify that and say you have to meet the lower of of these two items that would be another way to to capture it um but that was the reason behind the choosing that percentage you're certainly correct we have the ppt numbers it's just a matter of selecting well what ppt number do we want to to select and that we're operating the system in an interim condition we want to get it in the building get it in the controlled environment so we can understand advantages the system better too this just allows us to get to that point before the permit decision well folks are we going to get to the point where we're ready to make a decision tonight or we should should we stop and take it up next time as far as the permitting do you need us to make decision tonight do we have another two weeks month but we're also accepting it now and if we don't take action to change that then you still have jurisdiction i guess my only other encouragement would be you're really only setting path for six months you're asking us to come back and talk about it you're asking us to do the pilot study you have the opportunity to then modify ideally we'll be able to share new data and better data this was our best guest of of a number that drove us to continue to find ways to reduce it but was at least achievable in the short term i'd encourage if the council could consider that and know that it has the authority to come back in six months and and put something new on there but that this is holding our permitting up in a way that's not as productive as probably we'd all like it to be i guess i support motion i think it's it's a tough choice it's the um it's a choice between two um undesirable outcomes but um we've come a long way where i think we're in in the in the end we we may be contributing to a solution to a problem maybe not a complete solution but i think we're improving the situation net net um so i i would support this motion lauren my sense throughout this process is us for example choosing the 20 parts per trillion helped drive better outcomes so kind of going to an outcome that they think is already achievable as opposed to pushing for a better outcome seems like you've already that will push a weaker dc regulation because they're like oh the people if you guys are willing to take it for a higher standard great then let's not push on progress so to me that doesn't accomplish it i'd rather say 70 parts per trillion which is the surface water standard in rhod Island looks like if you average out maybe that's like a monthly average or something so you know so you can have some fluctuation day-to-day or you know give some like time for the technology to keep being tested i don't know if that's a number i'm trying to look at your graph and figure out a number that might be achievable over a month but would still be pushing for progress and maybe we could figure out the details change that part it's just that we have to then measure it right they're measuring it they report it's in their reports already well they're measuring it but we're verifying right we're not so yeah do you want to move to amend the motion your graph and it's like 500 to zero and i can't really tell if could you like is that an achievable number at all or is that like impossible and off the charts as an average or a minimum i mean we've clearly been over it right i'm thinking an average like i do when i understand it's a pilot and i think giving time to work out the kinks figure out how to get a better handle on this short chain one and um but like to me that still goes in the spirit of setting a target but also i don't know not possible which is is there a number that you could meet as an average we pull the fifth out and make its own average would that work for you i guess depending on what it is and is it trying to push towards finding a solution because i mean there are technologies out there like you could add in a reverse osmosis and get there so it's like it's a comes to be a financial decision a technology like figuring that all out so if it's like this pilot can't actually meet a reasonable protective standard then like we need to know that and i don't want to just give up already yeah i think that's right i think that they've done every time we've told them you have to do the do something to improve what you're doing to uh keep us going they they've done or tried to do it but but i think you're right we need to keep that pressure on right that's what you're saying and if we find out that what they're doing now doesn't work then the the the machine you have allows for add-ons in front of the system to or outside of the system to make you do better that's what i heard you say anyway we would certainly be amenable to a target of 70 ppt to drive innovation we're not meeting it today so i don't think you can set a minimum because i'm worried that we'll fail instantly but i have no problem with council saying we want to drive innovation we want you to continue to strive to get as low as you can you have a target of 70 ppt come back and report on it to us yeah could we say 70 parts per trillion by the end of six months i guess i would ask it would be most productive if we got all the way through the pilot program so that would be six months plus four so perhaps the end of the year carry it's it's not clear to me that this technology is capable of getting it down that far i think we agree we we don't know for sure whether we can do you think it's possible that it could could get that low with this particular technology well we did it we did it those two samples in early November the question is whether we can isolate the behavior and the variation of lead shade over time so that we can consistently get those results and i i'm being honest here i don't know the answer to that we we believe this is the right pathway to go down and will be effective but i don't know the answer lauren or donna sorry if we set that as a gold and then as close to you come to it or maybe you make it then we can judge that when you come back but you could still set it as a gold lauren i would support that could we amend i believe it was donna's motion yeah it's donna's motion um to say i mean maybe we keep curts proposed language of ensure a minimum of 80 percent aggregate removal of the five regulated compounds under Vermont drinking water standards with a goal of 70 parts per trillion combined and maybe and maybe keep the until final issuance of the dc discharge permit at which time all treated leachate received shall meet the lowest of the two standards okay so that's a motion to amend donna's motion are we ready to vote on that motion is there a further discussion don't people talk about high standards and low standards so the lowest of the two standards is not what you mean you mean the highest standard but the lowest number right so what do we want to say the most protective standard all right so that's the motion okay all right are we ready to vote on that the second one is donna yep yep tim do you have anything to say before we vote limited the quantity we're accepting or are we just leaving that out there we haven't limited the quantity is the motion what we've heard from the department is that they would not at present be willing to accept more than two truck loads per day and whether we put anything in the motion or not i think you're hearing from council that if you started to get a higher than that we would want you to talk to us about it does that seem accurate all those in favor of the motion uh lauren's motion to amend donna's motion signify by saying aye all those opposed okay we have a roll call um donna yes carry sal yes tim lauren yes and pelin yeah okay the motion carries we have amended donna's motion do we have any more discussion on donna's motion or are we ready to vote on that so i'm gonna take a start start out with a roll call call uh donna yes carry sal yes tim lauren pelin okay we've uh passed the motion and uh thank you for sticking with us this is complicated and very important stuff um and i appreciate all the work that everyone has done on this um we're clearly not doing water and sewer budgets and water line replacement tonight you know it's already almost midnight we're not doing that um but thanks for saying sorry exactly that's right okay city council reports lauren actually we should decide when you want to do because you're not here on the 28th is that right yeah right that's school break so i will be out that week i will be remote that day so one idea i could do it remotely potentially yeah well i like to say the other idea is if we're gonna meet next week in my review we could do that one we could do that first just nothing else just that yeah that way then you'll still have time to do the zoning on the 28th yep yeah let's i think that's a good idea great thanks okay council reports starting with lauren just very quickly reminder public forum tomorrow night 6 30 to 8 30 p.m at montpellier high school for the um montpellier commission on recovery and resilience would love to see lots of people there um do you want to unmute palin palin are you shaking your head do you not have a report yeah no report okay want to make sure you're heard if you want to be heard tim yeah i really appreciate it tim no report case sal carry and donna do you have a council report oh i did have something oh yes i received a complaint from constituent who felt there was some bias in her timing with the cards and she went back and set through the tape of our meeting and she found herself at three minutes and 30 seconds and i had her at three minutes and 25 however she was correct that the person after her i missed timing so he didn't get any cards he talked only for four minutes but she's totally right he got more time and so just to bring up to the council again it's very legitimate as much as i try to pay attention sometimes i get listening and i forget to push the button um so if indeed the council may want to consider to help it be more stable some sort of more automatic timing or i can set a timer that in three minutes goes off i can still do the cards but if i miss it at least that three minute goes off so think about that i mean before people didn't want a little buzzer because it you know it's a little annoying the cell phone buzzer isn't that bad um but anyway just think about that because it's a legitimate complaint so i just want to pass it on thank you oh you should hear some