In this lesson, we'll be looking at a very well-known encryption scheme called CSS. CSS stands for the Content Scramble System. And the CSS system was a digital rights management, which often goes hands-in-hand with some cryptography work, and it's abbreviated by DRM. A system that was used for pretty much all DVD video disks that were produced back in the day. So I know DVD nowadays is less popular, they're still out there, but every disk that was made, that was a DVD video, had the Content Scramble System implemented on it. And the way that it worked was it used two LFSRs, like we've seen in the past. One of them was a 17-bit system with the taps at 1 and 15, and the second LFSR was a 25-bit one with four different taps. So, since together that makes 42 bits of information, and like we've seen in the past, we always set that lowest bit as a value of 1 in each of the LFSRs to make sure that we don't get stuck in an all-zeros condition. That means that there's 40 other bits that you need to know in order to seed these two LFSRs. Now, what makes this LFSR system different than the ones that we've seen in the past is that it's not a singular LFSR, and it's not two LFSRs that are going to be used with the XOR operation. It takes the output from these two LFSRs and combines them in a new way that we haven't seen before in order to create a system that avoids the linear congruencies that we've seen in the past, which allowed us to determine the seed. Now, the fact that we're talking about this now implies that the fact is a way to crack this message, but it is much, much harder than we've seen in the earlier systems, and this is why this method was used for so long before somebody figured out how to ultimately get to the seed. Now, how you do that is beyond the scope of this course, but we will look at is why the system is fairly good and what prevented it from being discovered for so long. Now, in order to do that, let's look at a somewhat simpler version of the CSS. We'll call it baby CSS. It has a lot of the same principles, but it kind of shrinks the size of the system down so we can better understand the workings. We're going to use the same two LFSRs that we saw in an earlier lesson. So a three-bit LFSR where you get to the new third bit by adding the previous rows, first and second bits, and a five-bit LFSR where you get to the fifth bit by adding together the previous rows, first, second, and fourth bits. The key we'll start looking at is exactly the same and same kind of operating procedures. It means we need two bits. The first two of those will go to seed the LFSR3 and the next four bits will go to seed the LFSR5. So all of this starts to look identical to the old LFSR sum system we saw previously. Now, let's see how it's different. The way that this differs is the way that we generate the key stream. So with the LFSR sum, we would just XOR the output of the three-bit and the five-bit LFSRs to generate the output key stream. What we're going to do for our baby CSS, and this is the way it works with real CSS, is that you add the two LFSR output streams with carrying. So it's not the bitwise exclusive or XOR like we saw before. Or we're going to actually take blocks of these bits, and we're going to add them together using kind of the standard addition algorithm that you've probably learned for decimal or base 10 numbers. We've actually seen how to do this in previous lessons when we first heard about the binary number system. So let's take a look at how this would work. We've got our three-bit LFSR, and we can quickly generate its output like we've done in the past. We've got our five-bit LFSR, and we can generate its output like we've done in the past. Now let's take those outputs, and we're going to group them into blocks of eight bits or one byte. So we're going to take the first 16 bits from the LFSR3, the first 16 bits from the LFSR5, and lay them out here and then group them together. And we will add those together to generate our key stream. Now remember, we add as a whole group mod2 with carrying. So the first output of the key stream there would be a one, and then a one, and then a one, and then a zero, because one plus one is two, which is represented by one zero. So the zero goes down in the key stream, and then we carry the one up. And we follow that through the rest of the way. And you'll notice here that in this particular grouping of characters, we have this extra one that comes off the end here that we don't have anything to add it onto. So we kind of bring that over to the next group of eight bits in our output. So we kind of save it and carry it forward. So it appears here when we start adding the next grouping of eight bits.  So we'll have a one down below and then a one that gets carried up. And just by happenstance, we have a lot of carry bits here and this grouping of eight bits from the LFSR3 and five. And again, we have an extra one that gets carried at the end. Now, we would go ahead and carry that onto the next grouping of eight bits. But if there is no next grouping of eight bits, we just kind of toss that out into the trash. It goes out at the very end. So you can see that we always are working in these groups of eight bits, eight bits from the LFSR3 paired up with the corresponding eight bits from the LFSR5. We work with those. We might carry that output bit to the next eight bits that we work with. And we just keep doing that over and over again to generate our key stream. Now, once we've got the key stream, we would take our plain text and we would just XOR that with the key stream, exactly the same way we've seen with all of our LFSR systems. So that part doesn't change. It's just how we generate the key stream that differs. So we'll go ahead and XOR that and get our ciphertext. And we can see we do go to slightly different ciphertext for these two characters that we've used in previous examples. We have our NC, which now goes to a nonprintable character, hexadecimal19, and then an uppercase letter D. So a different output so we can see it does result in a different ciphertext. Now, how can we think about cracking this message? Let's say we try and use that same method that we've used for the LFSR sum. So we would take kind of our theoretical LFSR3 with unknown bits in the seed, or in the key, K1 and K2, and follow that through to kind of create this output stream from LFSR3 that doesn't actually have numerical values, but kind of these theoretical placeholders for what those numerical values would be. And we would do the same thing with our 5-bit LFSR. So if you need a refresher on how we did that, I would consult our previous lesson on the LFSR sum cipher to make sure you understand with these output streams for the 3-bit and the 5-bit ciphers are coming from. Now we'll take those and suppose that we have an interested key stream of 0, 1, 1, 1, 0. We could take our outputs from the LFSR3 and 5 and say we get this condition that would kind of correspond to those bits in the key stream. We could add them together to generate what we think would be kind of a theoretical output of these two LFSR3s and 5s. And the first bits here on the very end in our grouping, K1 and K2 added together with K3 gives us an output of K1 plus K2 plus K3. But when we get to the next column of bits, the output there would be the sum of 1 plus K2, that's the LFSR3, and K4, that's the output of the LFSR5, plus there we go, there's that red box that carry over from anything that came from the first column that we just finished computing. Now how would we know if there was a carry over from the sum of K1 plus K2 and K3? Well, there'd only be a carry over from that column there in the blue box. If both of those outputs, the one from the 3-bit and the one from the 5-bit, were equal to 1. So if K1 plus K2 and K3 were both equal to 1, then we'd know we'd have a carry over. And it turns out there's a pretty easy way for us to compute that carry over using that logic. We can compute the carry over by just taking the product of K1 and K2 with K3. Because think about that, if K1 plus K2 were a 0, then that product would be 0. And if K3 were a 0, that product would also be 0. But if we were to multiply those two things together and they both had a value of 1, then the output would be 1. So if we just kind of replace that plus carry over there with this K1 plus K2 times K3, well, we've had a nice way there to compute either a 0 or a 1 depending on whether or not we needed the carry over. Now, this right here is the crux about what makes CSS and our baby CSS system so hard to crack. If we expand out that product of K1 plus K2 with K3, you see that our key terms are now being multiplied together. We have a product of K1 and K3 added to the product of K2 and K3. Whenever we have our kind of unknowns or our variables being multiplied together, we no longer have a linear system, we now have a nonlinear system. So if we were to try and follow through on the next steps like we did with LFSR sum and set up a system of congruencies, you see we'd have our first output K1 plus K2 plus K3, which is equivalent to 0 mod 2. That's because that's what the equivalent bit in that column that we intercepted in the key stream was set to 0. But then our next one would be much more challenging. It would be K2 plus, here's our carry over, the K1 plus K2 times K3 plus K4. And this is our nonlinear term, that K3 term has a nonlinear component to it. And as we continue to follow even more and more potential carry over bits into the subsequent columns that we didn't even look at yet, these terms are only going to get more and more complicated and have more and more nonlinear terms in them. You might have quadratic or cubic terms that arrive. This nonlinear complexity is what makes it very difficult to solve the system efficiently. It's not impossible mathematically, but we're going to see it takes far, far more computing resources and far, far more time than our linear congruencies that we saw when we were working with the LFSR sum cipher. This is a good lesson that whenever you're working with cryptography and trying to devise a new cryptography system, working with nonlinear systems are going to be a much more complicated and harder to crack system than if you work with just a nice simple linear system. Now let's take a look about how we could still break the CSS cipher and let's just think first about our baby version of it. So what options remain, we could certainly brute force this. If you think about our six bit key, that means we only have two to the six or 64 possible keys that we could use to seed our two LFSRs. That's very quick. It would take very little time for your computer to try all 64 keys and seed them up, create the outputs, add them together, decode the message and see if it makes any sense. That would be pretty easy. But certainly the real CSS must be better than that, right? We got larger keys, bigger systems of LFSRs. Let's take a look. So let's take a look at breaking real CSS. So 40 bit seed that we talked about earlier gives us about a trillion or so possible keys. That's a lot. In fact, with modern computers, it's pretty trivial, but when this was being used in the mid 90s, the processing powers on our computers was much, much lower. In fact, the processing power was low enough that the government decided it would be illegal to have an encryption scheme with any more than 40 bit keys, because anything more than that, and the government wouldn't be able to break them if they had to if you were passing along government secrets or threats of terrorism. They wanted to be able to read everybody's messages and they decided that 40 bits was secure enough that most people couldn't read it. But the government had enough computing power that they could if they had to. That rule has since changed. But if you ever look at historical ciphers and you see kind of an arbitrary decision and everything used 40 bit keys, that's the reason why they were legally not allowed to use anything more than that. Well, it turns out though that it didn't remain secure very long, both from an advance of technology, but also an advance of mathematics. A cryptographer studied this system for quite a while and they were able to find a way to crack it or attack it that brought it down from having to try all two to the 40 power, but rather just two to the 25 power. Now, why 25? Remember, one of the two LFSRs was a 25 bit one and that's exactly why. They found a way that you could just work with one, the more complex of the two. You actually get enough information out to break it. And you might not seem like two to the 40, but going going from two to the 40 to two to the 25 power would be that much better, but it really was. If you have to remember working in powers of two here, we effectively have to the number of possible keys from a trillion 15 times. So that's that's pretty substantial. In fact, the modern computing at the time, the 450 megahertz Intel Pentium 3 processor only took about 18 seconds to crack the keys for your DVDs. And I think it certainly led to an advance of people being able to back up their movies to their computers, but perhaps the more nefarious I would maybe lead to an increase in piracy of DVD videos back in the 90s and early 2000s. A quick historical note about that Intel Pentium 3. If you've got an iPhone 13, the processor in your iPhone 13 that fits so nicely in your pocket has at least 100 times more processing power than that Intel Pentium 3 processor from back in the day did that we're seeing that this is one of the real reasons why modern cryptography has had to up its game a little bit from these initial systems back in the 70s, 80s and 90s is that computing power has grown very, very quickly in modern times. So if your whole system relied on inefficient computing power, that system is probably out the window. So that about covers it for the basics of CSS encryption. We're not going to go into how to break it the full system. In fact, that is not legal. There's many court cases that are on the books about trying to hide all of the nuances and details of this because it's still being used today despite the fact that it has been cracked. So we are not going to break the law in this course, but there's certainly a lot of interesting discourse out on the web about the ethics and legality of CSS. I would encourage you to dig in and see what that tells you and where you're following that debate.


Thank you. I mean, it's the end of the day, so I think people are ready to hit the dance floor again. But luckily, we're joined by Bitpanda's CEO and founder, Eric, to lead us off in style. For those who don't know, Bitpanda, as they said, is Austria's first unicorn and crypto wallet trading platform. So, Eric, let's just get started by talking a little bit about the last year, 18 months in COVID. Obviously, an incredibly difficult time, but as I understand, a big moment for growth for Bitpanda. That was the most efficient time of the company. You couldn't waste time at conferences.  And now I do this for work, so, yeah, no, that was fine. And then also, we did series A, B and C in that time, and we did everything virtually. And that saved so much time. That was so efficient. That's really good. And the number of users, I think last time, I saw something like 3 million, but do you remember the growth? Yeah, the growth is really, really has been phenomenal in the last one and a half years. More and more people sitting at home, they are also. And then, of course, the low interest rates from the national banks across the world are also helping, of course, the people look more into their finances. So it was a mixture of everything, of course, yeah. And you mentioned there the three fundraising rounds. So Seamless, this is about investment and investment barriers. I'm curious about your thoughts on the investment space in crypto in Europe. I read just now the data is something like the U.S. has seen 10 billion invested in crypto D5 projects in the U.S., and it's something like two in Europe, which is a massive boost from previous years, but still something like a quarter. How do you see the investment space here for European crypto startups? So I think this is not something where you say in the crypto space or in the investment space. So we're also right now going, we come from being a crypto company and we're now becoming an investment platform for everybody, so with stocks and factual stocks and everything. But this is a general European problem. So first of all, in Europe, you do not have bigger VC funds, very, very little. All the money usually from Europe comes from the UK. But inside, like from the EU, there's very, very little VCs that have big pockets to do bigger rounds. There's a lot of seed investment going on, maybe serious A investment going on, but it is usually historically a problem from the political side. So in most countries, pension funds, for example, that are the biggest, let's say, LPs for VCs are not allowed to go into risk or like equity or venture capital. And that is a huge problem. So you see, for example, our investors, it's all U.S. money flowing in. And what usually happens is you see a trend in the U.S. And then, like two years later, you see the stuff in Europe, but it's definitely a hot market right now for international VCs. So things are warming up, you see? Things are not warming up, it's already getting much, much warmer. So from our perspective, Europe in the FinTech space has a huge potential and it's actually further than the potential stage. So all the international VCs have seen this and they're moving in a lot of money and there's so much money in the market right now, it's also a bit crazy. What about those early days, 2016, 2015, did people think you were crazy on that seed roadshow that you did? We didn't really do a roadshow. It was... The speed invest, yeah, they... Yeah, no, but yeah, it was... We founded the company in 2014. And then in 2016, we became profitable. So we've been profitable every year since then, which is also quite rare for FinTech. But we did like a very small round just to get liquidity. So we were profitable, but we got so much growth at this stage. Compared to today, it's nothing, but at this stage, it was overwhelming.  And then maybe there was one investment banker from New York, but it was like an angel roundish thing, you know? How do you think people's understanding of crypto is today? So we've seen NFTs, DeFi. I mean, it's still in the very early stages, right? Even for investors. NFTs and DeFi is very early stage, yes. Crypto is not so much early stage, I think, in general. And so more and more countries are moving in. Countries, more and more companies are moving in. And you now see that other FinTechs, that, for example, have a neobank or payment companies or traditional banks, they see, OK, we also have to go into crypto because from traditional banks, we see how much money is flowing out of our system into crypto companies or into the crypto space. Our customers need that, want that. And this is why, for example, we decided to do the White Label solution where we now offer our FinTechs and banks pretty much everything we have. So you can have the whole Bitpanda functionality for fractional stocks for crypto. Everything we have, they can offer to their customers. So and I think this is the next stage of the evolution where you become, let's say, more than infrastructure provider when you're already established. So we see our app, for example, as our own, like we're the biggest customer for our own tech stack. And this is how we see it. And you don't have to be overprotective with your brand and everything. And finance is not like one brand will rule it all. It's not a network effect like Facebook or Google or something like this. And so this is the B2B model that you've rolled out fairly recently. Talk about, do you have any banks as clients? And how many banks do you expect to have in the next five years, let's say, using that? Which clients? Banks. Yes. So we announced that we're doing this in early summer this year. And since then, many are in the onboarding process. So Lydia is the first bigger one with, in France, five and a half million customers. They started last week. So they're offering now stocks encrypted to their customers. Over the next month, I think, like in Q1, there will be a few more fintechs. And then on Q4, I expect the first more traditional banks. So we have a huge lineup and already signed contracts in there now in the development phase, I would say. So that would be pretty extraordinary.  So you're seeing in Europe that banks are responding to this and they are wanting to offer, like traditional banks, not the fintechs. Absolutely. Traditional banks are offering this when they have a proper banking app. Because then they can integrate it. And it's like a toolbox. So you can say, OK, I want this feature. I want that feature. They can try things out. And then mostly what they are doing is they build a few, let's say, user interfaces. It's quite early done. And the rest is done with the API, which is the integration is super fast. So it's just a few months and then some testing. And then they're good to go. So yeah, they are also doing it. But their roadmap is usually very packed. So they need a few months more. So they are coming. They just need to be with the companies. They are coming. We already have some aligned. And so on the B2B side, do you expect this to be the major part of your revenue in the years to come? I mean, I imagine that the deals that you're signing, that could supersede the consumer side, right, in course. Excuse me, that was? It could be bigger than the consumer side of business. That is the consumer side. Because it's like a B2B2C model. Sure, like the pure consumer side and then the B2B. We also have a real institutional offering. We just had it very passively over the past, let's say, 12 months, our exchange. But we just hired great people from JPMorgan joining us. We have our exchange, so it's called Bitpana Pro, has now since last month a new CEO, or like a CEO, actually, the first time. And they are rebamping it. So next year, we were relaunching pretty much our exchange. And then there we will have an exclusive offering for institutional customers and professionals. OK, so what is it about crypto that excites you personally? Why is it interesting? I mean, I'm in this for quite a long time. Originally. I just like everything digital. I just like when things, there's no need really to make it so complicated with bank transfers and everything. And everything will be more digitized. And for example, what we saw with crypto, all the good things, we said, you know what? If the stock market would be invented today, it would look more like the crypto market than the actual stock market. Why is there off hours? Why is there a weekend? Why can't you just have a fraction of a stock? So we said, let's try to bring all the good attributes of crypto and bring it into the traditional world as well. And then it doesn't matter which asset class you have. And this is why, for example, with our Visa card, you can now here at the bar or somewhere, you can just use a Visa card and you can spend whatever you want. If you want to pay with Tesla stocks, pay with Tesla stocks. If you want to pay with crypto, pay with crypto. If you want to pay with Euro, pay with Euro. So everything is treated equally. And therefore, I think this is more the future. So everything that can be digitized will be digitized. And so our asset class is everything that has value. Let me ask you a question that the endpoint of Bitcoin in theory is that volatility will come down as the end of the process comes in terms of mining. Isn't volatility the core of the business model? And what does Bitpanda look like when the volatility goes down? I mean, how do you mitigate that? So you have already seen over the past years that the volatility went down. The more mature the whole market gets, the more money flows in. And then you just, everything is not like, you don't have these 20% ups and downs days anymore. A 20% day would be like a Black Swan event today. And therefore, volatility will probably be always higher because you have so many different projects.  There are new projects coming up. And the market cap is just a different thing there. But I expect much higher volatility also in the long term compared to stocks. On other assets? Yeah, compared, for example, to gold or something. I mean, gold, for example, has also a much lower volatility than stocks. And crypto will always have a higher volatility than stocks, for example, in my opinion. Could be wrong. Yeah, but it will get, you know, there will be less volatility. And that's part of your plan as well. Yeah, but this is completely fine because people just need to find the right strategy for themselves to invest in on the long run. You can have, let's say, 80% long-term investments, maybe savings plans, and then you have a strategy. And you keep that strategy. You go with it for three or five years, at least, or 10 years. And then the rest you can play around with. And the more you try things out, you will find the right asset classes for you. Nobody else can tell you that. No bank advisor, especially no bank advisor, can do this because they're just selling their own stuff. But yeah, this is education. And we don't learn this at school, so it's the task of also platforms like us to, we have our BitPen Academy to create good content and explain the world of finance and how everything works. And it's not rocket science, you know? So again, the panel is called investment barriers. And the other investors other than VCs are obviously your consumers invested in this. There's some people who will be very reticent to use the app and to invest in crypto. Some will say, we've missed it, it's too late. And others will say, you know, this is scary. This is very volatile, as we've discussed. What do you say to those investors? What's the general pitch? The whole thing of, I miss crypto. I hear this every year, since I'm in, every year. So, and you can also say this to stocks. We now have all-time highs around, all-time highs for stocks. Now you can say the same thing there. So, but people tend to say more, okay, it's on Bitcoin, I missed it, you know? But not for stocks, why is that? You can't predict that. So, it looks like, or for me, it looks like why would it go down now? Or why would this be the peak, you know? So, therefore, I'm a long-term investor in stocks and in crypto because I, and also, for example, the Bitcoin market cap is like one-tenth of gold. And seriously, why would you invest in gold in the digital age? There's, let's say for me, Bitcoin is way superior as a store of value than gold. Does it make you uncomfortable, though, that there's people like Elon Musk who tweet and the price of these crypto assets just spiral up and down? There is no oversight of that. Or actually, you could regulate people tweeting but obviously not of the market itself. I mean, what do you think about that? When he tweets, the Tesla stock goes also up. It's not a crypto exclusive thing. Maybe slightly less, yeah. Yeah, so therefore, this is fine. And also the first time someone bigger goes in then there is some market movement. If he does this, let's say more often, you see less movement in there because people get used to this stuff, so on. So, we had this over the past years with many different events and then there is like an article misinterpreting the China stuff.  They just extend something that they have the regulation for since 2017 or something or even earlier. They're just extending it. And I always see the headline, it's forbidden now. No, it's the same thing that has been there for years. So, yeah. And these things, let's say, slowly get less impact. In terms of investment barriers, is the other remaining barrier also gender?  Yeah, this is something we definitely want to tackle in the next one or two years. We will start tackling this next year. How do you tackle? It's like content educational part. It is a huge, so like it's a mixture of tech and finance. And I don't know why, but historically, this is a very male-heavy area. And it shouldn't be the case, why? There's no reason for this. So we will try to bring financials, more, let's say, bring more women in there, yeah. Have you, so what else? I think it needs role models in that regard. Because the whole industry is so male-heavy, it needs some role models. Do you share the gender breakdown in the app today? No, but it's heavily... If I would have to guess, it's probably around like three quarters or maybe 80, 20 or something, so it's very male-heavy. Yeah, it is, it is. The other question about skeptical investors is also on geography. So obviously you're in various markets, I think Spain, Italy, Austria, the Dark Region. Now I think you have some new news about your next geography. Feel free to talk a little bit about that. And also, so far, what the most challenging geography has been? Yeah, so we're... I mean, our home market, of course, was Austria. This is where we grew up and everybody knows us there, let's say. But we now started to enter France, Italy, Spain, Portugal, very new, and we tried it out a little bit. We now have experience, and then next year we're gonna move in quite fast or quite aggressively. And also, for now, this is also news. So we're going to the Nordics, and so now Denmark is the first country, so you can now sign up from Denmark. And then the other Nordic countries will follow in the next quarters. So Q1, Q2 next year. But yeah, so we're now starting with Denmark and also they are improved user experience. So what we always do is, I think we're best in class when it comes in Europe, when it comes to regulation and all these license and stuff. And this is also good for the user experience because you won't have any problems with banks and so on. As a private user, and we will add more payment services and make it more individual, let's say, for each country. So what do you have, Denmark? Denmark is the first. We have a Danish supporter, all your PR, I'm not sure. What's been the most challenging geography so far, though? Who have been the most skeptical investors? We talked before about that you have very little VC money in Europe, right? And you also have the problem that in Europe, compared to the US, you have very, very few people, private people, investing themselves. Because we've never been taught, and for example, when I'm German and I live in Austria for 30 years and people there are completely about there, what is it like, savings accounts. You don't get any interest, you lose money there. But the other stuff is very, very new to them. So you really have to educate because we don't have, let's say, something like a 401k plan. You don't have something, because in the US, pretty much everybody is involved in the stock market because you have a small part of your pension plan every month goes into the stock market. So naturally, already from the beginning, you are involved in the financial markets. And here, this is like a very, very complicated thing. It's not very complicated, but we were told it's very complicated. Leave it to professionals. Yeah, so, and therefore, for example, Spain also is a country that is very much on saving, you know, everything like, oh, keep it on the bank, keep it on the bank. Spain's the most. Yeah, but you know how the inflation is going, it's moving right now, and so therefore, people have to, and now we have to problem in Europe that people have to stock from scratch. Never did this before, and so with our product, with our stocks product, we're still in beta now, but at the beginning of next year, we will roll it out big. We will educate and try things out, make it very, very simple and understand so you can't make too many mistakes and then have like a long-term plan, like savings plan, and then get more people into the investing space. Including the Spanish. We've got about five minutes left. I want to talk a little bit more about you as a founder versus just Crypto and the business. I'm interested in perhaps the peak and trough of the last six years of your life as a founder. What has been the moment that most stands out in terms of what felt most successful or most memorable, and perhaps also the biggest challenge of being you? Honestly, I don't know what the biggest success, it's like a constant flow. It's not like you wake up next day and then like everything change. It's also when you, for example, when you announce a fundraising and then you're like a billion company and then the last time was, now we're 4.1 billion euros dollar worth. It's not like, because everybody thinks like you're waking up and then everything changes. This is the same question if you would ask like, oh, you have your birthday today, how do you feel? Yeah, the same like yesterday. Because it's like a constant flow. It's not like you were in the coma for a year and then the world has changed. So as a founder, it's a constant thing. You see everything transparent on the table. So therefore it's not like this one big event that really like shocked you. But of course, what happened afterwards of these big fundraising, you see that the company is seen differently. By partners, by banks, by politicians. And you get so much more talent. You get a completely different also, different people that come from tech companies that come from Silicon Valley that wanna work for you. So that changed a lot, that changed a lot, yeah. And then the most challenging thing perhaps of on a personal level of being a founder. I mean, as I said, you're valued at nearly a billion dollars on paper at least on a personal level. I guess that also changes the way people see you and maybe treat you and the way you live your, perhaps the way you live your day to day life. I mean, it's not, it's a first world problem. Don't get me wrong. But it can't have. So, the biggest changes also the valuation of the company happened during COVID. Yeah.  The only thing that changed was I have a much more expensive computer. But like, yeah, so I'm also, when I have free time, I'm gaming and stuff. So there were only a few months. Now we have another lockdown in Austria. There were only let's say three months where I was a bit more out.  So I don't know what's coming up in the future after COVID, but right now nothing really changed. Life's good for Eric. Yeah. I just need proper internet. Brilliant. Well, thank you so much for talking to us. And I look forward to continuing the conversation again next time. Thank you very much.


Welcome everyone. So great that you're all here. It's the full moon and this south wind is blown like crazy. So it feels auspicious. So thank you for coming. Thank you for coming. It is so good to see many of you interested in the conservation and remediation of the Pine Street Barge Canal. So, you know, I am Ruby Perry, and I in the course of this evening will be offering a glimpse of our vision for this 26 acres of wetlands in the heart of Burlington south end. I want before I do that, let me introduce Aaron Lipman. There he is. Hello, Aaron. He is going to be our technology person. He's already managing things very well. He's a very early Barge Canal supporter. And Andy Simon. Hello. As a master assimilator of pieces and parts, he'll be giving us a history of the Barge Canal that is informed by many, many hours of perusing the vast trove of information ranging from EPA documents to city maps to committee reports and you would not believe what else. And before we do that, let's introduce Jess Rubin. Where are you, Jess? Can you say hello? Jess. Good evening. Hi Jess. Part scientist, part alchemist, she's a strong leader in the field of radical mycology. She's at home in the world of Michael Riesel Fungi, mesocosms and coppacings. We're talking about the rich and complex work of remediation and rematriation of the Barge Canal, remediation, I said that right, and of the Barge Canal. Each of us, our plan is that we'll talk for six or seven minutes. And after each of our presentations, there'll be time for very specific clarifying questions. We'll be able to unmute Erin will manage that any of the larger more general or complex questions we're going to leave for after that it's more of a discussion after all of the information is out. We'll use chat as much as possible. We'll type your questions in any time, and we will. We'll try to get to them when we get to the end of the presentation just will facilitate a discussion but mostly we'll try to do it on chat there's enough of us that I think that'll be the easiest thing. So, we're really glad you're here. We really need you. So let's get started. Yes. So we acknowledge that we are on the unseated territory of the abonankey people and this site is actually on the Cisco territory of the abonankey people, acknowledging that we're on unseated territory is really not enough. It's really providing a lens that's guiding how we're approaching this and informs us to take responsibility for the atrocities that have occurred on this land from attempted genocide, land displacement, and eugenics. So, living amidst the settler colonial culture. We are keenly aware that, you know, a good way to approach this was to write chief Menard which we did. We're still waiting to hear back from him and connecting with as many abonankey, as we can because their ancestors lived in this location and seasonal hunting fishing and and as we attempt to preserve it, clean it up and turn it into an educational park, we feel it behooves us to also allow, invite, ask guidance from the abonankey ancestral birthright of this land to guide us in what they see as the best vision and also in ways to empower them towards rematuration. We're still trying to understand what rematuration means, and we're learning a little through each conversation we have. And so that will be a continuing thread through this project. We are going to mitigate the pollution. We're not obviously going to have abonankey people have to mitigate pollution from colonialism, but the clean parts, the educational parts, the parts for ceremony and culture and connecting and community and healing. We're grateful to collaborate. Thank you. So now we are going to hear from Andy about some of the history. Hi, hi. I'm keenly aware that some people here tonight, maybe even many people already know the story of the barge canal and maybe better than I do. But some people don't know anything so I'm going to do a quick overview just to get us all on the same page. Can you go to that first slide Aaron. First, there was a wetland over many centuries as the salty Champlain sea evolved into fresh water. Lake Champlain and indigenous people inhabited the land. We call Vermont the area around what is now the barge canal became a large abundant wetlands along the lake a transition zone between water and land. This what you see before you is the approximate extent in the early 19th century of the wetland area with the barge canal the current barge canal right in the middle of it. Next slide please. In 1849 a big change occurred. Burlington and Rutland railway line was completed, largely cutting off the wetland from the lake. The lumber industry in Burlington was expanding rapidly and much of the remaining wetland was gradually filled in with sawdust and wood chips and even other things, creating space for storing lumber. Later as more and more of the unfinished lumber was coming by sailing barges down the lake from Quebec, a canal was excavated into the wetland with a drawbridge to allow the barges to unload their cargos and turn around. This is an excerpt of a bird's eye view map from 1887 and you can see Howard Street in the middle of it. That big factory there is the Hickok lumber mill. Next slide please. Lumber lumber production peaked in the 1870s, then it fell off sharply in the 1890s. In the beginning of the 20th century, a new use for part of the field wetland was found, a manufactured gas plant, turning coal into gas for heating cooking and light. These plants sprang up all around the northeast, fueled by coal from Pennsylvania. This is an image of a plant in Pawtuxet, Rhode Island, probably similar to the plant that was in Burlington. Next slide please. Here's an aerial photo of part of the barge canal site looking north in Burlington in the 1950s. That big drum-like building is for gas storage. The coal gasification plant operated until 1966, so about 60 years. Next. As you can imagine, this was a dirty process, creating lots of waste soaked with coal tar and other pollutants. It was all or mostly dumped out back in the wetlands and filled areas. Next. The coal tar waste soaked into the fill and peat soil over decades. With the rising environmental awareness of the 1970s and shocking stories of places like Love Canal and Upstate New York, the US Congress created the Superfund legislation to give a newly created EPA supervision of industrial site cleanup. The barge canal was added to the Superfund National Priorities List in 1983. The EPA identified at the time, 56 contaminants of concern at the site, some of which hydrocarbons and heavy metals are known carcinogens. Next. Here's a recent aerial view of the barge canal. In this view, Pine Street is running laterally near the bottom of the map. The railroad is at the top. You can see the site of the gas plant near the small red square on the lower left. The Superfund boundary is the blue line. After summer mediation work in the mid 80s, the EPA in 1992 proposed a remedy for the site. It involves scooping up all the contaminated soil and storing it in a giant containment vessel. The idea of a 25 foot high 13 acre toxic waste dump on the shore of Lake Champlain, the residents of Burlington ultimately backed by their elected officials rejected the EPA proposal. In 1993, for the first time ever, EPA withdrew their remedy and also for the first time created a local coordinating council to decide on a better plan. The council did extensive studies for almost five years and using consensus decision making proposed a new much scaled down plan. It focused on capping the coal tar on the bottom of the canal itself and essentially leaving the land part of the site, completely alone with regular monitoring of toxin levels in the soil and groundwater. It was accepted by all parties and enshrined in the EPA is 1998 record of decision. Next. This is an image from 2002 of the initial work done on the sand cap on the bottom of the canal. The coal tar seepage was discovered. This cap was redone in 2004 and again in 2009. Now it's hoped that the current cap will last for 25 years before it has to be replaced again. Next. Here's another map oriented north south this time that gives an idea of who owns what part of the barge canal land. The two parcels that you see are considered vacant land. The 11 acre parcel in the middle identified as zero pine street. You see that. Right here. Zero pine street is owned by the city of Burlington acquired when the plan was to run the southern connector highway straight through the barge canal. The east of that along pine street 453 and 501 are privately owned and are currently for sale. The asking price is two and a half million dollars. There have been several redevelopment proposals for the private land over the last 25 years and I know some of you remember them all. The most recent was a proposed office building and parking lot in 2015. The applications cost and potential liability of Brownfield redevelopment. They've all been shelved. Next please. My last map shows the current zoning of the barge canal site. You see the green boundary around the city land and the three small parcels along the railroad track that indicates conservation zoning. The private parcels along pine street are in the enterprise light manufacturing zone. With the urgent housing need in Burlington there's been talk of rezoning these parcels for residential use. The problem is that the EPA and Vermont Department of Environmental Conservation have had restrictions on this land for almost 25 years because of real real safety concerns very, very real safety concerns prohibiting residential development and childcare centers. So, we're going to take some questions. If you have questions about this section in particular, there'll be time for more general questions later on. So Andy I see a question. When you were showing the map if you could go back to the maps with the different borders. Larry, Larry Kupferman, go back previous map. One more. Yes. What is the pink dotted line pink dotted line is what's known as class four groundwater that highly polluted groundwater in that zone in particular. There's a there's a classification right class for groundwater. Another question from tree spalding is I thought because this is brownfield developments that brownfields development is not allowed. So how can they build on it. Isn't that why they didn't put the southern connector through there. And if they use the excuse that we need to build housing, you know it won't be affordable housing on the lake. And then the statement says some people want to make a lot of money. Well this this is a couple of great questions tree and the in fact it is. There are pretty severe restrictions on what you have to do to put a building on on this site. They include drilling down into putting pilings down the bedrock which can be 100 feet down. There are a lot of engineering challenges, but they it is possible under current rules to, if you follow the guidelines to put a building on this. They have talked about housing recently but since 25 for 25 years there's been a restriction on this land, prohibiting housing and childcare centers. And in fact, I think the chances are good that they would put affordable housing here and and we know there's a long history of putting low income housing on questionable or toxic dumps all over this country so that raises some big equity questions. There are other questions about this. I just want to add another answer to that which is in some of the documents. When you're reading through the development plans there are certain areas that say more research is needed in these particular areas before development can come. So there are several research gaps that those whoever would be developers would need to fill before that can happen as well. In fact, in fact for each development that's proposed there has to go through what they call a phase one and phase two analysis they have to hire people to do these specific, specific studies but, and they would have to address those data gaps that just mentioned. Anything else. Larry Kupferman wants to know what is the nature of the maltex pond. The maltex pond with a particularly polluted area that in 1985 they, the EPA decided before they propose a remedy for the whole site to scoop out. I think it was something like 85 tons of material out of there and send it off somewhere else and refill it with what they consider to be clean soil. It was an area where there was a lot of waste dumped and EPA in an initial attempt to remediate the site scooped out a whole bunch of toxic waste there. Okay, so I see two more questions I'm going to ask these and I think we will pause on questions so that Ruby can share her piece and then if there's more questions at the end. So one question from Annie has Lee is with the EPA organizations in charge change the guidelines if someone wanted to build on it. How do we prevent housing here. I have talked to the people at the EPA in Boston and the DC and there seems to be an indication that they might consider changing those restrictions for specific sites like 453 or 501. I think that 453 which is the one closest to the maltex building is not within the superfund site boundary. So it would have to be Vermont DC that changed the guidelines on that. But there are there is some indication that they might modify the guidelines under certain circumstances. One more question. There is one more but there was a two that was a two part question and the second part of that question was how do we prevent housing here. I think that that will answer that question later on when we talk about organizing. Okay, so Jean Bergman wants to know when. Well, let us know that when BCA took the old Pepsi building they had to deal with the EPA covenant. Do you have the details of what they did. Well Sanders did the legal work. Hmm, that's a really good question Jean and I don't know the details of that. I know that a lot of the area around the barge canal, like Jackson terrace, like dealer dot com had, you know, industrial ways because this was a big industrial area, some of the ways from the front in the barge canal is actually from the general dynamics GE complex Bell aircraft over on where the innovation center is now but I don't know specifically about BCA but I would love to look into that and maybe you could help me. All right then. So, Aaron if we can go to that beautiful slide number 12 of the okay. So I'm going to run through a few slides that highlight the benefits that we residents of Burlington are already getting from the barge canal land. This is falls into the heading of natural infrastructure. And it already exists and persists despite the heavy impact that human industry has had on it in the last 200 years. So here is where we started our campaign on a cold and wet day in mid November we gathered with about 15 other folks to consider how much the barge canal land was doing to heal itself and protect the lake with debris from the land late flowers and herbs from our gardens and paintings of mushrooms and birds. We created this altar as our collective offering of our gratitude to the land. In a very real way we committed ourselves on that day to caring for this land and in doing so began a campaign that continues with this zoom rally and you will talk more about that later too. So next slide. I'm going to talk about the benefits the infrastructure, starting with the garb barge canal provides invaluable have habitat to numerous species of mammals birds insects plants and other life. Here you can see an active beaver lodge in the foreground. While you can skate on the rest of the canal the beavers keep the water open around their home except for now, I think it's been cold enough, it is frozen. Every day, especially now in the snow you can see birds and dozens of animal tracks. The landscape is alive and getting more complex as it diversifies. There was a recent article about a new species of springtail what we call snowflakes that was identified for the first time at the barge canal. With our help, the land will regenerate itself and maximize its diversity. Next one. The wetlands of the barge canal provide a buffer for the city from 100 year floods that we know will be occurring more frequently with our disrupted climate. These soft buffer zones epitomize the nature based solutions to climate change that the city is promoting in its recent draft amendment to the open state space protection plan that hasn't yet been published approved the plan has but not the draft amendment. Next one. This is a map showing part of the south end stormwater sewer system. It shows the most active combined sewer overflow in Burlington is at the barge canal. These CSOs and the retention pond located behind the public works building are integral to the city's water system, particularly during major rain events. This is also more frequent now. Now I know it's too small for you to see, but if you look all along kind street there are dots and there are also little X's each of those is a place where when the pipes overflow that's where they come up. I'm going to use this to illustrate how much the city's water system relies on the barge canal's capacity to absorb overflows. The city should be protecting this land as if its life depended on it. Next one. This is the weir that the EPA installed under the old drawbridge, I think some of you will have seen that from the bike path. It's an example of an EPA remedy. To keep the coal tower from the barge canal from leaking into the lake wetlands absorb pollutants from roads and lawns and surface runoff that would normally flow directly into Lake Champlain. The barge canal wetland also keeps post industrial contaminants that are in the soil from polluting polluting the lake, the trees and shrubs growing here, even those considered invasive, stabilize the soil and prevent erosion. To help nature can do even more. Finally, and perhaps one of the most important benefits is that the barge canal reminds us of our history and our heritage, the early history of the land's original inhabitants, the natural history that abounds here, and the industrial history that continues into the present. Next one. Why conserve the barge canal. Those certainly incomplete you can see from this list that there are many reasons as trees, plants, fungi and microbes thrive at the barge canal. They have managed to contain and even transform the toxins leftover from industry, working with the land we can learn more about those processes. Much more research needs to be done in this area to document the work that the land has done over the decades by itself when we've left it alone. So, next slide. So let's go back for a minute and we're going to work a little bit of imaginative magic. And look at this map that Andy showed earlier. This time imagine the city's little rectangular parcel there as the center of the conserve barge canal, including the water. The parts across the canal are the three parcels that will likely be donated to the city. Together they are outlined in green. These are already concerned lamp conserved land, no development. Now in your imagination, and I bet if somebody had the technology we could have done this but we don't drag that green line to the right, crossing over the parcels that are marked 453 and 501, all the way out to pine to see in your imagination that the green line encompasses those two private parcels that are for sale. In your imagination now do you get a sense of the entire 28 acres, including the canal itself, all within that green line. Voila barge canal land conserved. All you have to do is acquire those two 40 parcels along pine street between the maltex building in Burlington Electric. And that would span from pine street back to the railroad, and get them into conservation. We'll talk about that more soon. Next slide. Humans form a partnership with the hard working land that has already begun by letting trees grow on this land instead of buildings parking lot or toxic waste dumps. We've allowed the plants to do the work of carbon sequestration. Think of it by not redeveloping the brownfield site. We've created climate resilience and allowed biodiversity to flourish here. We've also created a formal partnership with the land and conserving the wetland as a whole. We can enhance the work already going on brownfields to greenfields. In our vision, we work together to regenerate the land, cleaning it up, planning native carrying for it. We see for we see a laboratory for cold climate remediation, and Jess will tell us much more about that shortly. We see talking about citizen science projects to see what is growing a plant and animal inventory. We see students training to be scientists and developing methods of repairing the damage we humans leave behind. We see a classroom where students learn about biodiversity or beavers or simply learn how to listen. We see an interpretive boardwalk that demonstrates the natural, indigenous and industrial history of the land. We recognize, as Jess said in our land acknowledgement at the start that this is stolen land. In our vision, indigenous stewardship is at the heart of our commitment to this work. We are learning with Abnaki elders to understand how we move towards true rematriation of the land. But turning it over to Jess who will speak more about this aspect of the work and some of the science projects that are either already started, and some that we are planning for the spring, and that will be under her guidance. I'm going to read some questions Ruby that people have asked. So the first question is, Susan asks how climate change will affect flooding. Well, we can assume that a couple of things this is the lowest as, as one of the about Abnaki elders pointed out to me when we walked when she said was instructing me on how to read the land. That's the lowest portion before the lake, which means it's the first shelf which means as the lake rises that area will also flood it's in that's what it was meant to do. But also, as we've already seen storms, bringing more rain, bringing more storm water, this bringing more overflows of the city's piping system. That's definitely going to be a price of climate change. It will overload the systems. So the next question is what from Jean Bergman, what does the city. Assess those parcels at. Actually, I don't know Andy, do you know that. I just typed the, the two things from the Burlington government, Burlington city database into the chat. And in fact, the, the assessment are incredibly low as that's a very pertinent question. The total value for 501 Pine Street assessed value is $22,200. And they have assessed value for 453 Pine Street is not that much more than that. So, in fact, you know, asking two and a half million dollars for this land is, is considering how low the assessment is on the land currently is pretty outrageous but more to be more to be said about that and Larry's question about real estate appraisal. I don't think that they've been appraised. And I think that that's just aspirational price that that Rick Davis is asking for that. And as far as I know, maybe they were praised when, when redstone in 2015 was thinking of doing it but I don't, I don't know about that. But, but in fact, there's not a current appraisal of those parcels. And I don't think that the sales the current sales price has anything to do with the, the appraised value. And what would you say Andy to Jean Bergman statement that the city's open space fund is a source of money to use as part of an eminent domain campaign to buy those parcels. And I think that that's that's to be discussed. I mean, the problem, Jean is that, and, and I'm looking forward to you being on city council after March 1 is that so far the city government has not expressed much interest in doing that and the. The gatekeepers of those funds have not been enthusiastic about using them for such an acquisition. So we, we definitely should talk about that more. And Carol and Bates has something said here but I'm not quite sure she's remarking to that someone is selling land and we should be asking them but I'm not quite sure what what what she's saying there. We should talk about this pretty soon as a, as a whole so let's let's hold the whole selling the land and what the next steps are, because we still want to talk about a little bit about what's happening on the, on the land and also all of the people that we have talked to so far, because it's pertinent to all of these questions. So let's go ahead. Jess is with with your part. Okay, so in talking about remediation to clean up pollution. I actually want to invite us to step out of the paradigm that we're currently living in mainstream, you know, could call it America Turtle Island. This is in 1922, where the mainstream form of remediation is scoop and move and dump, and then build, and it's based on a timeline and a budget. And this is really what's practiced and it has been practiced in this town was just listening to a webinar today about that happening in another spot in town and a new friend, Scott Kellogg whose colleagues with Andy and Ruby who did a lot of work in Austin, Texas, was was was reminding me that as we approach this work, we really need to look at the long view. And this, if you think about the history that Andy and Ruby went through today, it's, it's two and a quarter centuries at least of pollution. It's not something that's going to get cleaned up in a day or a year. So, first changing that view and knowing that it's going to take a long time if we're actually partnering with the microbes of fungi and insects that are already doing a lot of remediation. And, as Andy mentioned, there's 56 contaminants that's a pretty complicated cocktail. And there's no one species that's going to be able to remediate all of those but there are many people out there that can remediate those toxins individually. So it's going to take a lot of research. And I also want to note that there's 46 brownfield sites in Burlington area. And so this is a wonderful opportunity for us to start the process of changing that mainstream remediation mode and demonstrating that we can learn and invite other people. And so the field that this is within is ecological restoration. And some people call it ecological reconciliation because we can't really restore the ecosystem to what it was, but we can reconcile the damage and two sub fields of this field are micro remediation working with fungi and fighter remediation working with plants to remediate these toxins. You are likely familiar with bioremediation that's what's working at the wastewater treatment plant. And there's certainly those microbes are certainly involved in micro remediation and fighter remediation. And there's also micro fighter remediation using fungi and plants. So I just want to highlight a couple of techniques that colleagues and I and others have used and to give us some view and understanding that this is very possible. This is a spawn that some of us grew through gathering wild spore from a local saprophytic fungi that eats dead wood. Now, some of the saprophytic fungi eating cellulose or lignin and trees recognize hydrocarbon bonds, and they can break down some of the toxins that are in this list are all different forms. And so one of the ways that this work can be done is by growing some of the fungi that we know can break down some of the toxins on the list. And I recommend doing it in a bench lab like a laboratory and this is some that we this is what it looks like this was tramedy's verse of color you may know as turkey tail that we had grown from that spawn. Imagine that you find the toxins that are in the soil, and then you do several different concentrations and you can train fungi, you can train strains so that over time they can deal with higher concentration levels and you do that in a lab where the conditions are controlled. So you can really understand the dynamics and everything that's involved. And this is a wonderful opportunity for students I do want to note that currently at UVM's plant soil science department, PSS 269 soil water pollution class which I took a few years ago. Students in that class now are doing research at the site, and looking at some of the many research gaps that are in some of those documents we referenced earlier. So we're going to look at what species, which toxin and it will take years to get through the list of 56 and imagine doing these bench trials but then you can bring it to the field once you have some species and you know they can work on the concentration we can have these field trials, and we could have educational science, we could have middle and high school students students learning. And meanwhile the rest of the area can be a park. It's also a wonderful opportunity for all sorts of people in society to get involved. It doesn't need to be all scientists you can have a few scientists involved, and then parents and students, neighbors, elders. And this is a filtration sock when we were remediating a river and Colchester trying to learn how to. You know, lots of people came out and learned, and there's our skills that are essential for this time that we're living in. Technically, these are skills that you would think we would have had already. And it's kind of odd we're learning them reactively rather than proactively but going forward, this is the work of our generation. And this is an example, because we had noted at the site there are a lot of non native species. And of course they play a role. But this is an example of an area overgrown by buckthorn that you would think wow that's daunting. How are we ever going to recover that with no chemicals. And there are some brilliant people in our community including someone you may know named Mike ball of got weeds, who had taught us to cut the stomps at belt height, the ones not near waterways you can pull out through muscle and community power ones near the waterway, you leave intact, and you may need to cut regrowth two or three times in one season. But then you can plant native species in this case because it's a repairing eco tone, you know we would plant polyculture is based on what would naturally grow there. And this is an area. And this is an example of how again many people can be involved. Everyone can have different roles a few people can guide. And then this is what that area looked like the summer after, and you can see the stumps right here. So it's very possible. This is within our reach. We can work as a community there are so many experts there's so many people that are just willing and ready to help and all hands on deck. I just want to kind of encourage us to think positively and trust that you know this land can be recovered and it can also be an example of all the other places and a model. And to just note that we are starting a citizen science group this spring. So everyone's welcome to join we're going to start inventorying the already quite diverse community natural community that's there. There will be a lot of opportunities at least on the 11 acre piece for now. And there are a couple other universities and homeschool groups that are interested in starting many research projects, and a bond to keep people have spoken to us about different ideas they have of ways they can do ceremony here and ways that they're rich history they're rich memories of the place can be brought to the center, and we can all take care of this critical eco tone together. So we're just going to now read a few questions that came in. Oh no actually those aren't questions those are comments. So if anyone has questions feel free to put them in the chat. So Meg Pon hat says, did you see that when we know that Lake Champlain has become increasingly sick with excess phosphorus and other just destabilizing elements. The pine street barge canal area of life and vitality is precious to the long term help of all of this area so did you want to comment on that. Meg Pon that's spot on. I mean, this spot is a critical eco tone, and also in terms of stormwater as Andy and Ruby mentioned it funnels like through this site, and that buffer is is critical and needed. And there's a lot of remediation that can be done now tree wants to know if there's a chance you've been would buy this as a research site. I have no idea. That's a really interesting idea. That's out of my wheelhouse so I'm going to hand that over to Andy or Ruby. I haven't actually approached anybody at UVM about that but since as Jess said we we do have UVM students in plant and soil sciences down there now. We're taking a slightly from the bottom approach to to that kind of idea. Sylvia asked, Have we been in touch with Lake Champlain land trust actually indirectly there is somebody on this call who's on the board of Lake Champlain land trust and we did discuss it indirectly when we were talking about this the question of the barge canal so we will certainly follow up more with Lake Champlain land trust. We've been making great suggestions actually. Carolyn suggested talking to the real estate agent at needy and and that was one of the first calls that I, that I made, but I am going to talk about some of the things that we've done just to give you sort of a picture of where we've what we've been doing since November. Do you have any more to add Jess or Ruby. I had time wise. Okay. So, since our rain so ritual in November you saw the altar we've been pretty busy. We started early talking to Abnaki elders and leaders just to kind of get our grounding on our role as non indigenous settlers on this land. And we've been having those discussions sort of continually as we go. We launched an online petition that no doubt all of you have signed I hope all of you have signed if not we'll put it in the chat. Today there are 563 signers, and most of them are from Burlington. We presented this petition back when it was I think 250 signers and asked for time on the agenda of the Burlington Conservation Board the Parks and Rec Commission the planning Commission, we also brought it to the city council only parks put us on their agenda, and responded with a polite comment that they had no current plans to work on conserving any barge canal and we presented the petition to the city council as I said and had further discussions with counselors Max Tracy and Jack Hansen. We had an extensive conversation with Samantha done who's assistant director at CEDA we've made contacts with the Boston office of the EPA at numerous exchanges with the barge canal project managers name is Graham Bradley at Vermont DC. We have had discussions with Vermont land trust the river Vermont river conservancy indirectly through the river conservancy with the nature conservancy. And as I said we did I did have a peripheral contact with the Lake Champlain land trust. We made a call with Rick Davis is the owner of the private land at the barge canal, who has no objections at all to it being conserved as long as he can get the money that he's asking out of it. We made a contact with John Collo who works with Russ Scully, who owns a small parcel of the wetland area that he bought when he bought the blodget plant, and it appears likely that he's willing to donate that parcel. We talked to South end business leaders like Steve Conan, we talked to the Lake Champlain committee. We've talked to UVM students we talked to UVM professors and St. Michael's St. Michael's professor. I think we can say that we are pretty directly engaged with most of the parties that were always open to suggestions. So far we have not received any significant support from from city officials. I think that we are waiting to get I think most of them are waiting to get a signal from from the mayor or from higher up in the city administration so that discussion is is continuing. Now, we need your help. Where are we with the conservation of the barge canal. The, the administration's attitude so far is, we don't have the money, we need housing, we need to expand the tax base all of these discussions it's private land that boils down to we don't have the power. Through our work together in the coming weeks and months through organizing and speaking out we need to get them the power to conserve all of the land between them all text building and BED from pine street to the railroad line to mobilize the resources we need to turn these brown fields into green fields. Ruby, you're going to take it from there. I will and briefly because I think there are more questions but we decided we would tell you the questions that are outstanding for us. We have some and we don't have answers to them in the absence of support from the city. How do we proceed. The potential inherent liability risks associated with this property, even if left undeveloped the PA when we asked them that question will only consider specific proposals to answer to, you know, to respond to that question. What is a fair price for the land. What entity might hold this land and the vision. In the absence of a land trust how might we begin fundraising for an appraisal and ultimately for acquiring the land. We're committed to working on this, but are there enough others who feel that same commitment. Another chance to speak out will be the city's promised public input sessions was a south end rezoning after the male mayor published his MOU he said they would start in January, we haven't heard anything yet. People need to go to those meetings and speak about the importance of conserving the large canal the residents of Burlington have stopped ill concede plans for this land in the past remember 1993 the story of, of stopping the EPA's proposed mountain. But we need your energy, we're ready to expand our small impromptu committee into something more tangible, something creative and quick thinking an entity to act together to develop strategies and spread the work around. So let us know as we talk, we finished talking tonight you will put our emails in the chat you can call you can respond in any way, but we need your help. How else can we power this up. So let's open it up. And just I'll let you field questions and mostly put them in the chat I think we can start with Isaacs. Yeah, so Isaac wants to know what Vermont land trusts are interested in this land and saying that they signed on to the innovation district. Okay, well, I'm all you. I can, I can answer that question. Well I can try to answer that question I have talked twice to Nick Richardson who's the CEO of Vermont land trust and he did sign the the memorandum of understanding on south end rezoning as a stakeholder in that net MOU, which is one of the reasons why we're connecting right away. I'm still not sure exactly why Vermont land trust is part of that group, but they have been after initial enthusiasm from Vermont land trust they've been a little backed off of their sort of eagerness to get involved so I think again they're waiting for a signal from the city tell you the truth I think that's happening right along. So there's a few. So one point from Larry. Cooper Cooper, Kuffman is Kupferman, excuse me, is saying the scientific approach is wonderful and is mentioning the importance of environmental liability. And that's one site parcels and that is like really important points so when we were guiding the students at UVM because we created like a project, you know for them ish we gave them many options but sharing all of the data gaps. We laid out like safety guidelines and so yeah there's some very basic safety guidelines. Depending on how sampling goes and you know obviously the more you sample the more you have to go more strict with those so yeah that's a really important point and we're tracking it but we're also aware that that might be why a lot of organizations are not wanting to touch this because that's a liability issue. But we feel we can be navigated responsibly. So the answer to the question from tree about recording this it is being recorded, and it will be available on channel 17 CCTV, as soon as they post it they, they agreed to actually solicited a recording of it and we'll give it to them.  Sylvia asked a question that I just wanted I answered in the chat but I want to answer verbally to is it only Burlington residents that can sign the petition or do we prefer that. And my answer is no I think everyone is welcome. We've, I mentioned the fact that the majority of people are Burlington residents, but only because I think that decision makers in the city are swayed by, you know, having many Burlington residents and not just. You know, not so much people from Shelburne Charlotte and like Berkeley California when my brother sign. But the, I think it's great to have everybody sign this petition I don't think it needs to be people from this is this is a, you know, an earth question. It's not just a Burlington question. I just want to know, can we start on the land of pine zero in testing and replanting Carolyn Bates wants to know that. Well I think that's a question for for for you I mean we're planning on the students will be doing research this fall. I mean this right now this this semester and in the spring will start doing the land the assessment of what's there the inventory, whether they're planning I think planting I think they'll need to be a plan for that you know I think it would only be on the public plan the 11 acres as you say. We're not there we're not there planning that yet. We're going to do an inventory first and gather a team for that, and then also figure out who we need to speak to about that plan. And it would be great to obviously have all citizens have input for that. If this discussion will be public. If is it we should have asked if anybody in who's asking questions and who's been identified in this discussion would prefer that they not be on a recording or on Channel 17 when it's being broadcast. On TV necessarily but on their website. So, yes, the answer is, when this recording is public it will be available to anybody. So, if, if that's a problem for anyone. We should drop you out of it right now. I don't know how to do that, but and probably 10 minutes ago. And if anybody doesn't want to go to Channel 17 they will send me a copy of the zoom recording. So you can just send me an email and I'll send it to you send you the link. I think it probably takes 24 hours or something. And Carolyn was just asking to know letting being let know when and where the inventory. So the way that you'll hear about that is the information emails that Andy and Ruby have been sending out. If you're on that email list, you will find out about that it's likely going to be in April, early April. And one of the things I think would be helpful is, is if we had a good website up and running but of course we don't have that and we don't have anybody who stepped forward to say I'll do that for you. Actually, we do have a friend who said she would set it up. But that's takes time and she needs help so this is why we're also reaching out. There was a request about how to find the URL and zoom recording. So is that something that you all will email out to everybody. Yeah, well, yes, I guess I'll email it out. I think I can email it out to everybody who's in who registered. So I can do that. Yeah. I'm going to ask by gene if there's other documents prepared by you besides the slides and petition. And I would say that there is a very robust folder that we put together, and we created some projects for research there. And that's currently just accessible currently to like students doing research there. But I'm sure that some point when we figure out our website, and all that we can find a way that a lot of those documents are available because they're, they have a lot of really interesting historical facts and important pieces that hopefully we can work with. I'd say that I'd say that, you know, one of the one of the issues that's hampered this campaign somewhat is the small number of people who've been involved in it, mostly Ruby me and Jess, and we need more people we need more energy so anybody that wants to step into the center of this in any in any way that you feel is appropriate, you should contact here's the SOS Burlington at gmail.com is our email that you can get us at that it would be great to hear from you and you know we can talk further about ideas and ways you can help. We will be having we will be doing presentations at the the NPA meetings in March. Excuse me. We've made a request for all the NPAs in the city. The neighborhood planning assemblies to present. And you know the the different meetings that are going to come up for south end zoning that the city is going to run are going to be it's going to be very important that people show up to those and ask questions and speak out for the barge canal really. The, the dates of those have not been announced, but there is an intimation that those are going to start at the end of this month and go through March. So, please, we'll, we'll definitely send out alert, but please be alert to front porch forum and other venues for the city to announce when those zoning meetings are and, and please come down, we need lots of people power to make something change here because otherwise they're going to do things in the same old they're used to doing the same old developments and the same old desecration of the land. And speaking of that, Aaron, will you put up that last slide that has writing on it it's a question that you all didn't ask yet that I want to. I want to put out what what is very likely to happen we've already heard it from CEDO and the mayor already intimated is. It's classic Mayor Weinberger process is why not just compromise build on the front border that borders Pine Street and conserve the back so the 11 acres is already conserved and he's already said he imagines a legacy park. So, we just put together. I'm just going to read it because I think you all need to hear this, because these are the question, this is the main question that they're going to ask. It's a rare opportunity to protect a mini quarter corridor for birds mammals reptiles amphibians insects that enjoy the rich zones of this eco tone and live in different proximities to that waterway. Leaving this untouched allows space and time for us to create more comprehensive remediation studies and pilot research projects so that the cocktail of toxins can be remediated from all of the soil and water. The top of polluted line only having part of it to clean up just leaves that for the next generation to deal with because over time these pollutants will volatize plume and leak into the surrounding ecosystem. It is in the perfect conditions now to be protected remediated and conserved is it will never be like this if they start paving it over or even worse digging it up and hauling it away. Located at the intersection of significant stormwater coming from the city and adding more impermeable surfaces will only exacerbate runoff and contaminant loads entering the lake. It gets at the heart of rematriation to not build when we always build. So Gordon in in the chat suggested having a campaign strategy meeting. And I think that that is something that we'll propose and people who want to participate in planning campaign strategy can show up. That that's one of the next steps it's got to be one of the next steps. Thank you for that suggestion. Emily is proposing a listserv. So we can have private exchanges as we plan I think that's a good idea. I don't know how to do that if people to know whether people want to be on it or not. As it is we're sending out enough that enough people send me that daily. Would you please take me off this list so you can write the SOS address and say you want to be on a listserv and we will put together a listserv where we can have strategic discussions and updates and everything else and call calls to action. And you got and I think you posted that SOS. Andy right. Yeah, I'll do it again. So we've passed the 830 mark we can officially say we are done. I think it's been absolutely incredible to have all these listening years. And I really, really thank you and all of the ideas and I feel excited renewed excitement. In fact that we may have helped as we move forward. Any of any of you Andy, Aaron, Jess, let's want to sign off say goodbye. Any last things. I think I think I want to say. Thank you to Tiff Blumley and Gabrielle Stevens, who are our state representatives in our district who've been very supportive of this campaign and who lent us half an intern. Thank you to help out with, with various tasks and he has Lee was on this been on this zoom meeting, and they've been great listeners and great suggestions and a very, very supportive, and that's been, that's been helpful. And thank you everybody. Jean is, Jean is asking that whether people identified by wards who are Burlington residents. He was asking that. And Jean also said that he would, he would make it a topic of his campaign and help put it forward so thank you for that Jean. Great. Thank you so much everyone really appreciate it takes the village. So maybe Aaron unmute so people can say goodbye. I love to hear the sounds. Everybody unmute and say goodbye so it feels like. Bye. Thank you. Great dreams. Bye bye. Ruby you got that note. Hi Charlie chat. Hi. We can get him to, he could do those singing for us. Well, we were. But I broke my arm so I can't play guitar yet. Sing. No, we're not going to sing Carol and thank you. Well, Charlie can go on the recording. That'll be for the fundraiser that we do later after is. Right, right. Let's early do you need some help driving or something. You need help Charlie. I don't have a car anymore. So I don't need help driving. I have car shares. I can drive, but thank you so much for asking. And I can do some errands or something for you if you want. Oh, shucks. Well, why not. Thanks. Why not market or something. I also have a courier service that does errands for me. Who could help you. All right. So that's nice. Ruby, you saw that note. I do see it. I do see it. I'll respond to you directly Charlie later. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Yes, I didn't. Thanks everybody for coming. Great to see you all. Thank you, Andrew. Good job. Good. Thank you. Yep. Bye Laura. Bye. Bye. Bye Jeff. Thank you. Charlie. Thanks. See you again.