001want to thank everyone for being here I'm going to call us to order this is the November 30th 2023 meeting of the environmental Commission of the city of Van Arbor um and this meeting is held in accordance with executive orders set in place in 2020 by the governor to affect social distancing and mitigate the spread of covid-19 we intend to conduct the meeting similarly to an inperson meeting and I ask you to be patient if there are technical difficulties um public comment is welcome and will be via telephone only to speak at public comment call 78899 and enter meeting ID 96961 1644 I'll say that one again ID 1644 this information is available on the published agenda in the Public Notices section of the city website and on the broadcast meet um of this meeeting
002on CTN Channel 16 uh Channel 16 AT&T channel 99 and online on at the a2gov.org watch CN Channel and with that um I will ask um Joe and I want to introduce everyone to Joe Lang who is here from the office of sustainability and Innovations he is sitting in for Sean Reynolds who is not available for tonight's meeting so um Joe if you would read the land Heritage statement you bet yeah good to meet you all and yeah apologies and thanks for bearing with me if at any point I do not have a full sense of what's going on so thank youall um I acknowledge that the land the city of an arbor occupies is the ancestral traditional and contemporary lands of the Ana shab including Odawa oji and bod wad me and W and
003do peoples I further acknowledge that our city stands like almost all property in the United States on lands of obtained generally in unconscious ways from indigenous peoples The Taking of this land was formalized by the Treaty of Detroit in 1807 knowing where we live work study and recreate does not change the past but a thorough understanding of this ongoing consequences of this past can Empower us in our work to create a future that supports human flourishing and justice for all individuals thanks thank you toob and U now would you please call the role of the commission yep um yeah bear with me here too um council member Amman Amman here Ann Arbor thank you sorry um Vice chairperson Brown um president in an aror um council member Cowart here um commissioner ctis here an arbor
004commissioner Dale do not see at the moment right I'd heard from council member dish they will not be present today um commissioner Graham I'm here uh commissioner Gruber here and an arbor commissioner Marson here and an arbor commissioner mki here in an arbor chairperson Mitchell here in an arbor commissioner Ned Rich here and Ann Arbor and commissioner weing here and an arbor right chair you got a quorum all right good thanks everyone for being here um I would like to um initiate the approval of the agenda with one change and that is to take a few minutes um following public commentary to introduce um one of our soon to be uh colleagues Aon Donnelly um and I'll leave the details of that for um that period of time so with with um the approval of
005the group I would like to insert that one item introduction of eron Donnelly um following public commentary may I have uh the a motion to approve the agenda as amended or if there are any other amendments move I got it okay move from um commissioner mki second Vice chair Brown thank you um and next up is approval of the minutes from our October 26th meeting we need of the agenda we just had a motion okay let's vote to approve the agenda Thanks Jen I'll learn these rules sometime uh would everyone please uh vote on the agenda as amended looks like 100% I'm going to assume Chris Graham is saying yes um and uh the next item is approval of the minutes I would like to um have a motion on approval of the minutes from
006October 26th w i so move and moved and seconded by commissioner Curtis moved by Brown seconded Curtis um can we vote to approve the minutes everyone raise your hand okay any okay because I wasn't in attendance okay thank you um please indicate an exstension from commissioner mki and someone else right I abstain as well I was commissioner grber all right and um I think commissioner wayhang is that are you in that category as well yeah I've same thank you um okay let's move on on we've got our minutes and let's move on to public commentary um this is an opportunity for persons to speak for up to three minutes please call 888 78899 and enter meeting ID 922 1644 City staff will ask select callers that have raised their hand one by one by calling
007out the last three digits of your phone number in order to electronically raise your hand please please press star n on your phone you'll hear an automated announcement that the host is allowing you to speak then you press star six to unmute your phone when speaking please move to a quiet area and mute any television or background sound so that we may hear you clearly please state your name and address at the beginning of your comments thank you um all right um Joe do you see any callers interested in speaking yep got a couple um first up is caller ending in 217 hello my name is siia hos and I live at East quad on the University of Michigan campus I'm an under undergraduate student um I am originally from Austin Texas and was living
008there during the ice storm in 2021 that left thousands without power the blackout that lasted for days caused people to lose their livelihoods their food their health and for some people their lives all this was due to the fact that the Texas grid is lar largely privately owned and therefore grossly unregulated if we continue to R rely on DTE for our energy the citizens of an arbor are also vulnerable to the same dangers that we faced in Austin in addition as a young person who is deeply worried about climate and the consequences of climate change I understand that municipalization our power is the best investment in renewable energy for the city of ant Arbor municipalization is the only viable option for actually powering all an arbor homes and businesses with renewable energy instead of fossil
009fuels CCA is illegal and while ceu is useful but uh it can't power all of an arbor um therefore I strongly urge you all to approve a phase to study um so that we can continue uh moving towards municipalization thank you thank you um caller ending in 179 um hello hello uh my name is Vincent Matthew I'm also a resident of esquad at the University of Michigan living in an arbor I was also calling in to voice my support for Public Power and the U municipalization of the electric grid in an arbor I think as a university student I've personally talked with other people living in Arbor who aren't uh living at the University of Michigan and a lot of those people are struggling with CTE right now because they know it's ineffectiveness and they
010have resorted them resorted a lot of them um to using power Banks because they know that they can't trust the system built in in Arbor at the moments and other than that and other than the people living in an arbor I also strongly Advocate listen to the voices of students in of an arbor who were largely affected during the beginning of the year of power out outages uh specifically in a lot of these students they're coming in as freshman and they're trying to learn their way through the school life and at that moment they were um uh they were LED through a power outage and they did not have access to much of their electronics and this was very frustrating for them and I think this this uh moment in this event could have easily
011been avoided if our electric was not privatized so I would like to urge the the council to look into public power as a better safer and more effective option thank you thank you and then um we have caller ending in 245 hello can you hear me yep yes uh my name is Kathleen Murphy I live in the ward five of an arbor and I'm calling to uh support the uh resolution to request the anab city council to pursue a phase two study for the municipalization of the power grid and all other means available to ease the burden of the currently available source of electricity unavailable unreliable source electricity by DTE um I very strongly support the municipalization effort and I think there therefore it is particularly important that we go ahead with this phase two
012study so that could has really the possibility of being put into practice and I think that this study is therefore very important and I commend the environmental commission for uh taking this on as a a possibility and I hope that it will um uh pass the must of the commission to uh go ahead with this and pass this on to city council so um thank you very much you have a very important role to play here and I hope you can do it positively thank you goodbye thank you um no further callers all right thank you Joe and thank you everyone who called in um our next agenda item is um an introduction uh and to kick us off um I'll recognize Brian steglitz who's here as our um Public Services administrator who will be
013um further introducing um a new staffer who will be working with us on the environmental commission ran thank you for being here tonight thank you for hosting us and um thank you chair Mitchell for allowing us the opportunity to to introduce our new environmental services manager Erin Donnelly um I'm going to let her do the honors and have her talk for a couple minutes maybe about where she comes from in her background but um she's been on the job for maybe three days now so she's quite new but she's picking up things quickly and she's really excited to be here and to be working for the city and have an opportunity to connect with this commission so with that I will turn it over to Erin yeah thanks Brian um yeah I think day four
014officially on the job uh about a month ago I moved out from Colorado from in the Denver area where I've been working as an environmental consultant for the past nine years doing a broad range of Water Resources um work but the you know the bulk of my expertise is in kind of Environmental Compliance um specifically discharge pering and general issues with water quality standards um and then I was also working on you know things related to watershed management and ecosystem Health um and then the occasional water supply uh project or big kind of water infrastructure projects um prior to that I was working for a small municipality on ms4 storm water compliance um I was there for about two years um and then way before that um I was an intern with the state of
015Colorado in there um as an environmental permit writer so kind of the organization equivalent to to Eagle here um so yeah uh I'm in a new role and the role itself is also new the environmental services manager so I'll be kind of working to frame out what that position may look like um I'll be you know refining and overseeing kind of an integrated Environmental Compliance program here at the city um and working to kind of plan and Implement um different environmental goals with the city and yeah excited to work with you all on on those issues as well so thanks for having me thank you so much I'm really glad that you're here um and I actually would like to just take a few minutes for the members of the commission to introduce themselves to
016you um I'm Rita Mitchell I'm chair of the commission um my background is um in quite a few years ago in public health um and I have become more of an active environmental um outdoors type person on a volunteer level um and here I am I'm chairing this commission um and I'm really happy that you're here thank you for joining in um next up I'm just going to call out uh Steve Brown who is our vice chair of the commission yeah hi Erin welcome to an arbor um my name is Steven Brown I'm a some my retired pharmaceutical chemist and I've been doing a lot of work with volunteering with various environmental organizations mostly on toxics you know given my background and um I know something about toxicity and you know toxicology and chemistry um
017okay I'm gonna ask Chris Brown Graham Chris Graham to introduce himself now Ken welcome to an arbor it's hard to leave Colorado I suspect especially if you're a skier we have little tiny mountains up North but uh uh there's still lots of fun uh I'm a landscape architect by training but a landscape contractor and Gardener by profession doing that in my own business for more than 40 years and have been involved almost that long in um natural features and natural areas of Affairs not only in an arbor but in the state of Michigan thank you Chris um John callow would you go next please hi Erin I'm John um and my second term on the environmental commission um and also working with the circular economy working group one of the subgroups we have on the
018commission great and marzan hi Erin welcome uh my name is Ann and I um I'm on the parks advisory commission so I'm the liaison for that commission to the environmental commission and look forward to working with you hello um Brooks Curtis sure hi an my name's Brooks um I used to work for General Motors but I'm retired now so I do a lot of volunteering work for the city n and also the county nap that usually keeps me busy um John mki Aon I am a retired engineer I worked for Bosch the German company uh I'm a member and former chair of the anra energy commission and I'm leaon to the environmental commission from the energy commission I'm involved in a lot of climate environmental energy related uh e work as well as in the
019affordable housing area glad to have you here we won't let you go uh Bridget grber hi Erin I'm Bridget I work for the gram sustainability Institute at the University of Michigan so I do environmental and sustainability education and I'm a mom and I'm excited to be part of this commission next is Daisy waying hi Aaron um I hold the youth commissioner position and I'm really involved with uh youth advocacy and climate CH and Arbor and as well as involved with the school district's sustainable efforts and SAR edric hi Erin um yeah I'm Sarah nedrich um so I currently am working for the state of Michigan Eagle um I my specialty is water um so I'm I'm an environmental toxicologist by training um and um you know I have background in Wetland ecology and also work
020for the state in the remediation Redevelopment division um so yeah if you have any state questions feel free to send them my way um very very excited that you were hired on so thank you I'm sure I will have questions yeah and so um Dharma Amman hi there I'm a council member liaison for the environmental commission um one of two council member dish couldn't be here tonight um congratulations on your position I think you landed in a great place happy to meet Youk you and sorry to say we're missing as as some Council council member acman said uh we're missing council member dish and commissioner Ana Dale who works in the university and sustainability issues so um you'll have a chance to meet her another time um I just want to say that I really
021appreciate working with this group of people this is a really um content oriented and and motivated group and um I think you'll enjoy um being exposed to us um is there anything else that either you or Brian would like to discuss at this point not for me I'm here to listen today yeah okay all right well you're very welcome to stay please do um and um I think we'll just move on with the agenda then and that is moving into our new business section um we have a a quick item I think which is approval of our proposed commission meeting calendar for 2024 and the um meeting schedule for us is traditionally the fourth Thursday of each month with the exception of our final um year which is this meeting represents uh a combined November
022December meeting and next year it'll be on December 5th instead of the end of November so it's just however the calendar flows we get um 11 meetings in our year um does anyone have any questions concerns or issues with the calendar as proposed may I ask for a motion to approve the calendar got it from Chris Graham second from Bridget Gruber thank you and um now um a vote on the proposed calendar everybody raise your hand if you agree okay we got it um thank you um our next item is a presentation um by our um co-chair Steve Brown who has um studied puss and worked in the state um dealing with that particular threat to our public health so Steve I'm just going to let you take it away and thank you for putting
023this together Steve you're muted there I found my icon finally so um yeah thank you for um indulging me um I thought I would I've been you know spending a fair amount of my time dealing with uh uh or informing myself and working through various National organizations that uh emerging threats to Public Health and the two that I'd like to emphasize which I think are the greatest ones going forward long term are posos as a particular class those that stands for per floro per floro or poly floro alal substances um these are persistent organic chemicals that are um the Legacy ones that were originally produced before 2015 are bioaccumulative um all pthos are persistent some of them may not be bioaccumulative but they are persistent meaning that that's why they're called Forever chemicals because there
024are no natural processes that will break them down into other substances that are relatively B on and then the other topic is micro and nanoplastics um everything we throw out every plastic that shows up in the environment eventually gets down to the size of a of a living cell and they get ingested by zooplankton they get um ingested by people um they've been shown in human placenta they've been shown across the placental barrier and um enter fetal tissue so um so they are a a threat that is growing and both of these um uh mention that both of these substances are sub are subject to increasing attention over the last U five years in particular um both internationally and nationally so um and at local levels State levels and local levels so posos again these
025are a class of chemicals called uh the posos just stands for Po and poly floro alal substances um out of some you can scrape the pup cam data database um which has some 66 million compounds and chemical compounds that are registered or known to exist and of those about 10% or follow the most definitions of posos compounds so that means that there are six million P compounds um that are floating around out there potentially however out of those six million something like the estimates are something like 300 to 400 of them have been produced in large quantities or little last 80 years these chemicals were um invented basically in 1938 and like played a Ru during World War II and they started to go into consumer products in um 1948 so um I'm going to
026going forward here I'm going to just quickly go through these slides because I'd leave to leave um some time for Q&A but um anyway the def there's different class definitions of P5 um and they U the current EPA definition is at least two adjacent carbon atoms where one carbon is fully fluorinated and the other is at least partially fluorinated until further notice they say their their definitions coming under constant revision under criticism from U various mostly from various manufacturers chemical manufacturers and so you can compare this definition to the European chemical agency ECA I forther reach Authority um some time ago the European Union passed a a legislation called The Reach Authority that's just the acronym and um it made the European chemicals agency the ECA responsible for um eventually eliminating posos except for non-essential
027uses um based on what is know has been known for years about their toxicity and their threats to both public and ecological Health um so as such um they're regulated in Europe as part of U part of what are called persistent organic chemicals because these are organic chemicals that are persistent and um they the toxicity of most of them is unknown because these are because manufacturers have been allowed to make um millions of metric tons of these compounds Without Really subjecting them to meaningful toxicology data toxicology studies and so uh as I mentioned before their shared properties are um many of them are bioaccumulative meaning that they can concentrate in living tissues up to factors of several thousand um when um when those compounds exist in the environment in the air of the water they
028are all persistent because there's no natural process to break a carbon Florine Bond and many of them that have been studied are also toxic um in terms of the regulation there's a problem because most um most toxicities are measured in what's called acute exposures which means that if you give an organism a certain dose on when do they show symptoms of toxicity and um but because these compounds bioaccumulate and they're persistent as well and they will have additive effects in that um um most of these um posos chemicals the individual concentration of each um doesn't mean as much as the total concentration of all of this class because they interact in similar ways with living tissues and um and so their toxicities are additive not um not um not negligible in terms of um their
029individual chronic uh acute toxicities also there's very little data because on chronic exposures meaning a long-term lower dose of so these kind of exposures um are too are generally just too expensive uh to be performed and so people are reluctant to do these um even in um you know except for drugs for example as Pharmaceuticals um when they're when they begin human testing they U um you need to have a small population exposed in a phase three trial clinical phase three trial to see if there are any chronic exposures and um you're only allowed to dose people once they're marketed you're only allowed to dose people up to the up to the doses and the timeses that were studied in the phase three clinical studies and these cost hundreds of millions of dollars in many
030cases so um so that's kind of the general picture uh they've been manufactured since 1938 and introduced widely into basic consumer goods some some things that you all might remember or SC guard which was heavily marketed in the' 60s you know you could buy spray cans and spray the stuff on any fabric that you didn't want to have stained like um uh the Ecology Center a few years ago took swatches of most of the marketed car seats infant car seats and most of them had heavy doses of posos because everybody knows you know how quick uh infant car seats get uh contaminated with food and milk and things like that so um so one of the problems here is that um um because consumer acceptance wasn't what Dupont and 3M wanted scotchguard uh they approached
031the carpet companies drapery manufacturers Furniture companies and clothing manufacturers and um convinced them to just have all their many much of their materials coated before they actually entered the market so they were iner during a manufacturing process which is in fact C uh quite a alarming contamination of the Kusa River in Georgia where it turns out most of the carbon Manufacturing in the United States happens just west of Atlanta but we've all been exposed through this in in indoor air and through uh you know through just transfer from hand to mouth transfer over the years um the other is Teflon you know and then a major contaminant is affff this is a a Class B firefighting foam um which has caused a lot of contamination in airports and where there are fire training areas um
032um the only uh many airports around the world have already outlawed the use of posos in firefighting with aircraft fires um I the dod Department of Defense um will not do that probably especially the Navy so uh when you get down to it the only real essential use for posos in the these firefighting Foams should be tank farm fires and uh military aircraft especially um you know on naval ships so but also you know like most salesmen do um they've put it in many Cosmetics especially a lip gloss and eyeliner um Cosmetics that might traditionally run you know if people are tearing or eating or something like that or drinking so um and then gortex of course um we all are familiar with gortex most of us do a lot of outdoor activities that is
033posos um it turns out that uh probably out of most consumer products um um clothing Outdoor Clothing probably constitutes something like 40% of the um of the total use of posos in consumer products posos has even been included in toilet paper especially the cheaper Brands um it's in lubricants um car wash the environmental working group fered car washes um a lot of the products that are used in car washes if you got Deluxe treatment um contain posos so um there um so that's another means of entering um you know the the sewers and the Wastewater streams and many cleaning products contain pasos especially for lolans and things like that and wood floors um an investigation in New Hampshire revealed that a maor source of pollution posos pollution to their Wastewater was coming from schools and
034it turned out that the schools were using peos for uh buffing and polishing other lolan floors so last year I contacted the public schools here in an arbor and um uh some people at the University of Michigan Health Center to just make them aware of this because as you know there's still no truth and labeling act uh there's no truth and labeling about what's in cleaning products and these are sold directly to Consumers so they're a major source of contamination that could um easily be gotten rid of because none of these things none p is not necessary to get performance on any of these um any of these um applications so now um just to switch to micro and nanoplastics I'm going to abbreviate this as M&P so micro is just uh defined as any
035PL IC particle less than 5 mm or half a cm and Nano these eventually break down to particles that are term nanoplastics and these are less than one micron in size which is about the size of a living cell um it turns out um several academic studies over the last 10 years actually revealed that maybe half of them come from tire wear tires are made are plastic and um and actually the uh the Ecology Center here here did an investigation of um microplastics coming into the Heron River um of which there are substantial numbers and it turns out they're coming from every stream entering the heran river and that's since been and they were surprised at this and it's since turned out that yeah um most of these particles of course are so light that
036they're Airborne they're Airborne they get deposited on the ground and then eventually they get into surface waters so um and then of course there's the Disposable single use Plastics that are degraded in the environment there's some 300 million metric tons annually um that um um that are produced from Plastics um and the source of courses is 430 million metric tons of plastics produced annually worldwide um I already mention clothing and fabrics that about um 60% of um of um of these Plastics come from clothing and fabrics because of course many uh um much the worldwide about 60% of all clothing and fabrics are Plastics now not natural fibers then of course there's nurdles um you've seen this reports of this on occasion like I think at Great Lakes now um nurdles are used as manufacturing
037materials and these Escape container shipping containers and show up washing up on the beach beaches they're small PL pure plastic particles that are about um about half a centimeter across that are used in manufacturing other Plastics and then of course some uh micro beads were manufactured in the 60s and they were included in COs in personal care products as exfoliating agents these are Plastics um um the Obama Administration banned them in 2015 um after um after public awareness Ness um increased um you know during the uh during the 90s and the early 2000s so what is their fate uh they're ingested and and inhaled at roughly equal amounts because as I mentioned they're they're small enough that they're airborne and and being inhaled um therefore they they quite often interfere with respiratory functions and there
038are currently about 450 peer-reviewed Publications if you look at PBM you can see about 4 50 peer review Publications per year over the last two years so there's um finally been enough funding for academic research so that um more and more information is coming out um every week so and uh just as an illustration there's around it's estimated there's a study one study I've put the citation in here it's from E biom medicine um 2023 volume 97 page 104 828 and they measured around at an average around 400 micrograms per kilogram of body weight per day is absorbed in preschoolers you know through their um through their um bottles through their feeding and through um and through inhalation of microplastics that are actually coming out of the plastic bottles um that are used for Beverages
039and um and also in the um in the carpets in these facilities so in terms of Regulation it's been slow and ineffectual there's um enormous resistance for manufacturers and who also uh um on the legislative side and of course there's been regulatory capture on the U on the executive side the United n Nations has um declares posos as a class of persistent organic pollutants that are regulated through the Stockholm convention which was passed many years ago um and M&P microplastics are regulated through the un uh environmental uh uh policy um office and um you can see a study they published a study called from pollution to solution in 2021 that has quite a lot of detail so there are ongoing discussions now within that un group um and they're supposed to propose a treaty an
040international treaty by 2024 to regulate Plastics um this originally came of course out of um awareness of contamination in the ocean but um it's since you know been revealed that even our children are contaminated with these particles so the European Union of course is leading regulation through their reach authorization which um was initiated some years ago and um is being implemented through the chemical agency so you can look up those websites and see more details um but Congress has never been has never authorized EPA and the FDA to fully protect human health and I think these two these two um chemical substances I think illustrate this fact um because both of them have been in manufactured for decades everybody's been exposed to them and the current system that works uh uh tsca is a toxic
041substances Control Act that was originally passed in 1976 and um it was mildly amended um in 2015 or 2018 um so but the states can do a lot they're authorized to do a lot of their own regulation through the Clean Water Act and then with waste Waters it's especially through the national pollution discharge elimination something the npdes on permits that every for example the an arbor wastewater treatment plant um is is um required uh to file a permit for for um whatever discharges the wastewater treatment plant and AR releases to the river so you can see the safer State's website for details of State legislation on pasos and MPS and uh this is a very good aggregated information site that you can look at safer States is a NGO um that uh Cates all this
042information so um um the underlining there means that there's an embedded link there so if you have the PDF file you can click on that directly but you can just do an online search if you like and local governments will have increasing responsibilities to address P pollution because EPA for example recently um announced that they are going to begin regulating P discharges from municipally owned wastewater treatment plants so we'll see how how that progresses over the next few years so I think the in in this form Forum I think I just wanted to point out the potential pasos liabilities for Anor um EPA is broaden testing of P um with through their uncont unregulated contaminant monitoring rule number five that's ucmr 5 which is currently in progress sampling was done last year um and um
043there's a the previous sampling was done of posos was done in ucmr3 which only tested for pfos and pfoa the like y p um this because of the broad um the revelation of such broad contaminations including to Ann Arbor's drinking water um dcmr 5 um added many other common species of posos into their testing program so these data sets are starting to come out um they can be seen online they can be downloaded into spreadsheets um and they're going to begin to and they're in the process is under the Biden Administration uh the EPA is issuing new rules and regulations to limit exposures to pasos which has been a a real Dynamic change from the past so in terms of drinking water you know we saw the Michigan empart program the Michigan posos Action response
044team which it was a multi um is a multi- agency task group set up by Governor Snider in 2018 um to test for posos exposures in drinking Waters um mostly larger Municipal uh programs that served over 5,000 um households um there are smaller of course um drinking water systems that really have not yet been tested under this ages um and and you can all recall that the city installed new gak filtration to trap the P A couple of years ago so that's been done um so we're no longer exposed to pfos and Arbor uh a question in my mind was how long has this been going on and it's probably been going on uh for decades so I had my own blood tested you can buy a kit online it used to cost $400 now
045costs um $700 but you can through uins you can have your own blood there's a finger stick test you can do it home and send it send it to your offense and they will test your your blood for PS so my blood comes out somewhere um I'd say in the upper in the third quartile upper third quartile of the average uh of blood that's been tested over the United over random sample in the United States so everybody in the city was exposed to posos for decades and it's in our blood um it's causing a marginal morbidi probably um but the Health Care System here in an arbor is not is not really aware of this um at least the doctors I've talked to um you know haven't um haven't ex haven't haven't expressed any awareness
046of the fact that this contamination has been going on in this population um in terms of Wastewater and storm water um so the EPA has requested pasos analyses as part of renewed npdes permits um this announcement came on December 6 2022 so um how to respond to this um treatment um removal strategies are expensive and pretty ineffective um so reducing P inputs to the sewer system is the optimal strategy and how can we do that um the first thing we can do is pre-treat Legacy landfill lee8 which is already going into the sanitary sewer and thus through our wastewater treatment plant um I'm not aware if our landfill Le has been tested for Pat but um it's likely to be a major contributor um a major input to our wastewater treatment plant um you can
047investigate potential Point sources like car washes um um facilities in our Republic schools Etc and um what we can do is reduce General consumer products containing posos um um another another waste product that the city um releases into the environment of the biosolids these are the solids that are left over from the wastewater treatment plant where the wastewaters are discharged to the river but the biosolids traditionally have been applied to agricultural lands as a soil amendment however these These are extensively contaminated with beos um um eiga a number of um a couple of years ago set limits for the amount of pasas um they set guidelines for how much uh biosolid should be tested for posos but using just a limited set of these chemicals for testing and that they and they set rules for
048how much posos you were allowed to have um to spread on agricultural lands but um if you remember Brian steglitz told us um a couple of months ago uh or last year I mean that um that the city's decided to stop applying its biosolids onto agricultural lands and direct them to landfills which I think was a was a very uh good proactive um decision so I'm just going to mention grostic Farm as an example this is a farm near Heartland uh it was a beef beef Farm um a family-owned beef Farm um whose lands pastur pasture lands were spread uh with Wastewater biosolids coming from the Wixom City wastewater treatment plant which as you recall was a pass through for the triar contamination that went on down river to contaminate our drinking water so his
049farm was shut down because um the beef his beef was um had high levels of posos in it so um so again there's a link there you could look at a Vice news report that came out on on this that's available online for free and um there are other examples but um I have through a couple of organizations I've been lobing the state legis CER about what to do about this and so far they've um Turned a cold shoulder the only response uh we got we're basically self- serving um but um we're hoping that um this new legislature will take this on and we're also working on trying to get um some some funding available for farmers who can no longer um grow food on their lands trying to help make them whole to try
050to get those funds in the farm bill that's being negotiated early next year so um I'll just leave it at that and uh if there's any questions um I'm happy to answer them any [Music] criticisms I John got a couple of questions yeah um I just want to say Steve no questions about your presentation but definitely a question on the status of our whole system right um yes I I am having trouble seeing people oh John had his hand up okay John mki thank you a couple of questions um first of all I'm wondering if uh polluter pay uh or extended producer responsibility legislation would cover any of this in the case in the first case in terms of spills secondly just in the case of things entering um the environment is is would would
051this extend to posos as well as to micro and nanoplastics I'm not sure about that because it's um the PO pay legislation is um addressed mostly to Legacy sites and one of the problems here is that the EPA I I believe still has not um officially designated any posos as a hazardous substance okay so that would that would not that apparently would not would not be the case the other question the other question that I had is um I'm wondering if you could make some recommendations on what we might be able to do individually to um minimize our exposure um as well as potentially minimize our contribution to the problems I mean I'm thinking um by more natural fiber um clothing if you've got um synthetics um I've heard that if you use the gentle
052cycle and wash on cold because it's a lot less aggressive you reduce the amount of microplastics or Nan Plastics introduced into the washing by up to 70% um I know that some Brands like Patagonia are eliminating fos um obviously things like um synthetic carpeting what what kind of things should need to be done systemically as well as what can we do individually yeah that's a big question and there are a lot of sources of information so um I could provide a data sheet I think I should provide a data sheet to to people to distribute as they wish but yeah Outdoor Clothing um it's a good idea not to buy um non-natural fibers of course you know we all have dust uh from natural sources that are also entering our lungs and things like that
053but um these plastic particles are something different because they also uh attract other toxic substances like they have plasticizers in them that are known endocrine disruptors and um they they seem to when they're in water of course they they they are able to absorb quite a lot of toxins that are in the water they would prefer to bind to plastic rather than bind rather than float in the water so that's one thing you can do another thing is um be careful when you buy something that says uh uh repels grease and repels water anything that says repels grease or water um you know be really careful of that and um or claims to and whenever you buy something you need to this needs to go up the supply chain because there is no truth and
054labeling and you ask the manufacturer of a consumer product and they have no idea whether there was posos added into their products but um if you can just get the message to go up the supply chain you know that's that's I think the only thing we can do by now right now and of course um the more people that complain about it to their elected representative um the the more the power of the money the bribery the naked bribery that goes on um and in legislatures and in Congress um the more um the more you reduce the impact of those bribes in decision making Eve I see that Brian stegas has his hand up yeah Brian um yes if I may I just wanted to comment on the poll pay legislation um so this is
055something that we have been tracking um there are many versions of this floating around in the Michigan legislature right now um whether they all get resolved and what happens I guess remains to be seen we are we have been advocating we have a lobbyist um in Lancing who is advocating on behalf of the poter pay legislation we believe that there's it's possible that it could include um things like posos so I wouldn't say that's mutually exclusive right now from what some of the versions are that are floating around so we um we're going to continue to watch and Advocate um our city administrator's office is pretty heavily involved in this also so um just wanted to keep we'll keep you updated as we learn more and how that develops um but it is something we're
056paying attention to and then just one final comment on sort of the regulatory Arena um posos U microplastics both pretty Dynamic issues in the water space um there's lots of things happening there's C different states are taking different approaches EPA is getting to be you know is proposing legislation um and we will be we're compliant with the federal um standards that have been proposed by EPA on posos and drinking water so we're pretty well positioned to deal with what's coming down the road um but it's also something that we're keeping an eye on um know microplastics California is probably taking the lead on that more than any other state so we're watching what's happening around the country and um learning from what other states are doing and making sure that we're keeping Pace we've always
057chosen as a utility to try to um achieve what the most stringent standards are anywhere in the country even if they're not in Michigan and we continue to follow that and meet those meet those standards um one other resource for you if you're not aware is we put out a monthly water quality newsletter where we provide current information on these types of issues when we're facing them um so it's something that you could use and share um if you want to know what's going on top of in the water space yeah yeah thank you Brian yeah I'm really proud that we have such a proactive culture here in the city um but I also would like to ask you Brian um what sources of information you think are uh would do you think the sources
058of information I pointed out are are appropriate and what what can do you think the commission can do to help educate our popul our our residents um I guess I have to give that some more thought so um I can give some more thought to that and get back to you all I think one of the challenges with posos specifically and even microplastics is that there's a lot of misinformation as well as information so making sure that we're getting it from reliable sources we put links on our website um to you know things that we think are valid um you know with posos we're looking at EPA and you know some obviously established resources so the and M part is Michigan is probably one of the most if not the most Progressive state in terms
059of dealing with P I think we're only state in the country um where all Municipal Water Systems have been tested so I think that's really positive and they have a lot of resources so those are the places that we look but you know I know some of the areas where you've looked are some of the publ research and obviously that is pretty Dynamic and there's things coming out all the time so we're we may not be as up to speed on some of that but once it sort of hits the mass um with the Regulatory Agencies and those places where um and and I guess I'll add one other source is the water Research Foundation um it's a pretty much a vetted Source it's it's peer reviewed research um we participate we are a member
060subscriber of that organization so that's probably one of the places where we go first when we're looking for information on some of these topical water issues um I see commissioner NRI has your hand raised thanks yeah um so I guess Steve I just kind of wanted to throw in like some knowledge I have from working at the state um so we do get a lot of inquiries about microplastics at the Water Resources Division um so we've been looking at potentially hiring someone like a specialist um to work specifically on microplastics as part of like emerging contaminant group um so that's one thing the state has been talking about um we've talked about monitoring as well in surface waters of the state I'm going to guess given like budgetary issues and other things we have going
061on it might not be like you know two years until we actually get that project up and running um but there is definitely you know a lot of internal discussions going on in that um how to address microplastics um we've also talked about looking at developing an aquatic life standard similar to what they've done in California um so those are all things that we're thinking about talking about um of course microplastics are super complex um they're not you know single contaminant exposures like how our laws are drafted to address so um it gets a little dicey and um it's requiring a lot of like coordination and upper level management input which slows things down so yeah well thanks um no I appreciate that eagle is paying attention to this um but you know there really
062is no alternative to just eliminating all non-essential uses of plastic I mean we'll never get rid of it um it's such a great cheap manufacturing material but you know it's in our car you know you know it's the molding on our cars it's there's a lot of basic things that are plastic but at least if we can get it rid of the Disposable stuff you know that's a big that's a big one I've also been in touch um so there is a Michigan microplastics Coalition um that I believe they're through like they're partnering with Sierra Club and one other activist group I don't know if you've come across them Steve um but I think the leader is Art H um if you have any interest to getting in touch with him I have his contact
063and he's just really knowledgeable and has like a little fact sheet he's been taking to the legislature and stuff so yeah it's there's a whole ecosystem of NOS you know and groups that are working on this problem now yeah thank thank you are there any other questions or comments nice topic of introduction for you Erin right I hope um yeah absolutely we'll move forward so um with that I I appreciate your presentation Steve thanks it's really an important issue that we all need to think about and um uh look forward to more updates as time goes on um I would like to move us now into um looking at our next item which is um a new business item that I'm introducing tonight um it's a little bit um what do I want to say
064a little bit outside the range of of the environmental commission but it's where the environmental commission and energy overlap um the issue is one of looking at where we get our electricity in the future um with the con uh coordinating with the A2 Zer program and the goal of having 100% um renewable energy as the source for our electricity in the future ideally by 2030 that's a really um challenging goal that we have ahead of us um and I will just um uh let you all know that I have been a volunteer and involved with a group called an arbor for Public Power um and that's an interest of mine and but it's also I think it's um what I want to say it's something that is a coordinating kind of thing with with the
065whole effort um to move us forward quickly to address climate change um and that's just something that's affecting all of us and and the the the topics that we're all interested in um so um I don't know if Joe if you could possibly pop up the the resolution as drafted I'm presenting it tonight for discussion and question not for a vote but I would very much like your um comments um the intent of this is really to um support moving forward quickly um to making a transition with respect to the source of our electricity and an arbor itself um I don't anticipate us to be producers of electricity other than um solar and geothermal types of things but we do have an influence on our surrounding areas so um the goal is really to reduce
066the use of fossil fuel powered um electricity production um and I see this as within the scope of our responsibility because we are charged to address our the clean air water and land and our Public Health um so that's what what um brings this forward the um office of sustainability has um issued and received a report called a phase one feasibility study that addressed looking at the sustainable energy utility I may have to ask Joe for some help on on describing that as needed but but this is for a kind of a complimentary side of that program uh which is to say that that first study indicated that it is possible and feasible to um have a municipally managed electric company that would be managed by the city and as separated from DTE as our
067electric producer and that would provide us with the opportunity to gain control of the um sourcing of the electricity um its management its maintenance uh and ways that I believe in the future would be more reliable um and cleaner so um the phase one has completed and so this resolution um asks for a phase 2 um assessment of electricity uh production that would address the the real detailed issue of of how much it would cost the assessment of the equipment that would have to be purchased um the management process Etc it's more detailed that would allow people in the community to help make a decision so um I'm hoping that you all had a chance to look this over I prefer not to read it out loud if we but if we need to I
068we'll do that um I'm hoping that you have questions comments I see no hands okay PA five T brown your question oh Steve you're muted sorry disolve Clause I would consider amending it because the uh just because uh the reason for this is not to ease the burden of the currently unreliable source of electricity um because that unreliability the unreliability unreliability aspect of this is based on the distribution system that DT owns not the electricity system okay um what would you suggest happy to accept suggestions and we're just this is first pass let just say to attain carbon neutrality um um let's see how would you say that um just to obtain to better meet the a20 carbon neutrality goals or to consider um or consider this option I agree consider this option for attaining
069the 820 goals okay good I think that's a friendly amendment I like it agree second that thank you Chris um council member acman oh no I don't see you oh you're muted hi sorry I lowered my hand but I didn't unmute sorry I was trying to hold off to let other people speak but it seemed like people weren't rushing to raise their hands so um here I here I am thanks for putting this together um and I certainly um think it's within the realm of this Commission to uh put forth such a resolution and understand why uh you all would be interested in doing so I guess what I would say is that I think and I know that we're not voting on this tonight but if I were to make a suggestion it would
070be to probably hold off until the Staff uh is has been able to review the whole thing and come back with the report just because I know that personally as a council member I am waiting to get that just because the report was so Technical and so detailed and I did reach out to Dr stultz a couple weeks ago um now to ask her you know approximately what the timeline would be because I had a constituent reach out and you know they're working really hard to fit the review of the materials into everything else that they're doing I think as we all know they're doing some really ambitious things um she said there's a lot of content to review and they just got some of the final models two to three weeks ago um so
071anyway I just you know she need they to understand the results calibrate them for Ann Arbor gather the data that they need to come forth with a recommendation and so I would just suggest and she's saying that's probably going to be January or early February or it could be longer I guess I would just suggest that anything that this commission would put forward would probably be better time to happen then so that's that's I think that's reasonable yeah thank you thanks for doing that extra check in any other comments John mki uh I have a couple comments uh y i support what council member Amman said I think it makes sense to wait for the final report we have the draft report um the energy commission and lots of other people independent of the energy
072commission provided input um as council member Amman um mentioned um a couple of things that I think could potentially impact the the final report one is uh legislation and granted the 2030 or the a20 plan has a target of carbon neutrality by 2030 um um but um there's new legislation that was just signed by the governor that establishes new report renewable portfolio standards um I think it's 60% by 2030 80% by 2035 and 100% by 2040 and that would have um an impact on I think some of the assumptions and costs that are in the draft report um secondly um one of the things that I submitted as comment and hopefully will be in the final report is that um because the report really focuses on 2030 and doesn't really look after that um there
073is the need for offsets in the a20 plan um and the cost of those offsets um could be substantial certainly in 2030 but what the report doesn't consider is what the cost is after 2030 and if um in if the some of the actions in the plan do not deliver the results um to the degree desired or assumed in the plan then the cost of those assets uh those offsets in the case of for example a sustainable um energy utility the cost of those would would be a lot higher so there's a number of different things that I think are really important and that would um hopefully come out in the final draft of of the report um the one caveat that I would uh provide maybe in contrast to what I just said and
074what's been proposed by both me and and councilman Amman is that um what we might consider is a resolve Clause that asks the city to um start work on an RFP so that we know the what the cost would be for the study I don't know if we have a reliable estimate for what a phase two um cost is I know that there's some estimates that have been thrown out there um but you know typically what we do in a lot of the these things and this is true of a lot of organizations is we do everything sequentially and by doing things sequentially things take a lot longer and if we had um work on an RFP um if we if there was General belief that a phase two is is is going to be
075something that we should seriously consider then we should know what that what that cost would be and then if indeed the report Bears out the need for a phase two uh then would know what the cost is and we would know we'd be able to weigh the Ben the cost and benefits um vers versus what's in the report so that might be something that this group might consider and that Council that might also consider together with OSI yeah I think that's good thank you the reason we have group input um any other comments or suggestions so are you going to wait till meeting in January to confirm the resolution or are you going to edit the resolve clause and do it tonight we could edit the resolve clause and just hold it um and then
076decide boy I don't know well what do y'all think we could get the language ready uh Jen mki uh I if I understood correctly the earlier exchange was to um eliminate this phrase um to ease the burden of currently unreliable source of electricity and change it to you know basically uh accelerating uh the activities to achieve a20 targets um but I think as recommended or as implied by one of the comments um public comments is that there are costs that aren't captured by um that due to unreliable source of electricity and I think what some people are arguing is that if the city had its own mun Municipal utility that the reliability of that REI of that utility would be higher than DTE there's a lot of uh objective data out there that shows that
077DTE is is not a very reliable utility and so um I'm not so sure that we really want to cut this uh resolved clause or at least the reference to unreliable sources of electricity I think we definitely want to mention um achieving a20 gos so that was what I just wanted to throw out there um if we're going to try to Wordsmith this tonight okay um I see council member amman's hand I wanted to speak to um the suggestion that we um I think the suggestion that I heard was to potentially ask for something else which would be something sooner than the staff um recommendations based on the report which was to like in tandem do an estimate of what the phase two is and I I mean I get the impression that we have
078a decent enough estimate I guess I'm a little reluctant given what I just shared with you all about just how much work I has to spin up a number of new programs and then to like evaluate this I mean I appreciate the idea of doing things in tandem but to me it feels like adding something on when it's already um you know it's challenging to fit this in so I guess I'd rather them focus on the evaluation of the phase one uh draft report that they have than piling on additional things right right I can see um doing that at at this point um but once they have their assessment it seems like it would be reasonable to um move forward with considering a a at least drafting an RFP um for phase two um
079so I'm going to suggest that um we hold on wordsmithing live during this meeting um and I would be very happy if there are any volunteers who would like to uh talk with me about this and and come up with an alternative we could circulate um I see Chris Graham's hand I'm not sure I'm the right person to be volunteering but uh um this particular calendar year we had storms through an arbor that were extraordinary I'm fully supportive of working on different sources of electricity one way or another if that's what we're doing with a municipal utility but unless we bury our utility lines which is extraordinarily expensive we're not going to change the reliability that most people are talking about which was down power lines in a huge percentage of the city's area and
080lots of other areas in southeast Michigan so I I I just caution that there are a lot of people very emotional about being out of power for days and days had nothing to do with where the power plants were working it had to do with down power lines and for us to assume the responsibility for those in the city of Van Arbor will be uh it'll be a major hit to our tax requirements I think we don't know that yes um Chris is is my feeling on it but well been I've been cleaning up after storm for more than 40 years um the only one I remember in most of that 40 years apart from the ones this year happened in 1980 we had a der Rachel come through town and it really tore the
081place up since then there have been nothing like we had multiple ones of this year in terms of number of power lines down it wasn't a failure of power sources it was it it was increasing and probably with we have to figure out how to deal with that but increasingly strong storms and taking down the aerial power lines and so we have to be careful what we ask for here thank you sure yep thank you uh Steve um yeah I'm supportive of this goal but um for example I mean one example I know of is Boulder Colorado and just a quick you know internet search will tell you that um it was estimated to cost anywhere from 350 million to $800 million to acquire DTS assets within the city which is just a distribution system
082which I don't think anybody wants so um I would in in exploring what the options are I would put that off the table and think about um and broaden the search so that you would consider um um other ways of building a distribution system um instead of just um in here instead of just trying to pay for DTS infrastructure if that's possible I mean I would just I would just want to broaden the search so whatever we pay for um you know doesn't just give you one option sure I want to just make one comment and then I'll get with you um council member Amman um is that the city of Lancing has its own Municipal Power Company and 10 years ago they had a severe um power outage with down lines due to ice
083and storm um and after that it was like it was over a week um that the power was out for substantial amount of the city um they did a significant study of the um aftermath and came up with something like a hundred s recommendations of actions to be taken to improve the service and it has improved significantly since then I can't tell tell you the details of the um of what they did but that report is available and it's an example of of a municipal um Power Company taking control and managing its services I do believe that one of the people who was uh managing at that time is no longer in that position that's one thing um but they also did some maintenance that was different and probably significant management of trees um and
084and I don't know what else but I'm just saying that it's a in terms of it being a local control kind of thing that's an example of something that turned out better now and we've um looked at Lancing and even though we're often in different storm cells of intensity um they're nearby and tends to not go out as much and or as long as here so um councilman rman I mean I think the point is well taken that you know if this goes forward to a phase to study if it advances to the steps that are needed to Mize you know the cost is going to be substantial because not only are we going to have to pay for the existing grid but once we have that grid it is not going to be made
085better without significant investment so that's two huge costs we don't know how huge um but we know they're huge so that point is well taken and I think that's part of the reason why we need the staff evaluation um I did want to say though speaking to commissioner Brown's point about the distribution Network and what I understood you to be suggesting is like thinking about potential other means to get there and I think that's part of what we are doing so a clear um uh part of the recommendations in phase one was around establishing the sustainable energy utility which is essentially uh micro grids that sit within the DTE grid and connect houses together um so I feel like that that's one example of um of what you're talking about a scale what's that that's
086a way to go yeah right y yep I think broadening the the reach is is a good thing so what I think I will do is I appreciate this discussion um and I'd like to just um move offline and um do some work on this and I'll circulate it for additional comment and um we appreciate that additional comment as well thank you um I would like to move us along to our last item for the evening and um well just about left um which is our our look over and we kind of had an initial review of um our legislative um recommendations um that we had talked about last year and this was um our opportunity to move forward some some issues to our um State lobbying resources to um forward some um actions that
087we feel would be useful to us in the city um and at this point Joe could you pop up the at least the first document that we started with and I know there's some other suggestions we'll figure out how to deal with those thank you um so this is a list from our multiple work groups um and it's still labeled draft and I guess the what I would like to know from the group is um if this represents fairly well the kinds of things that we would like to ask our um legislative teams to address um if we want to add anything delete edit and um all right um commissioner Brown yeah I would like to um modify the solid waste Parts I would propose changing that first of all I would change number one
088um we I don't think at this time given all the um toxic concerns of um of putting organic waste on agricultural lands that um um we in fact like for the time being perhaps a landfill is the most appropriate and end point for organic waste especially you know uh Municipal biosolids I don't know about compost um I mean the city's measured its compost and it contains it's past contaminated as well but um I would say I would just say something like amend part 115 to prevent organic waste disposal in landfills um whenever you know see and this is the problem because um many many toxic products that could be present in these wastes are not identified for decades so I would try to amend it in some way um um to say that um to
089prevent organic waste disposal on landfills um when they when they're um tested and approved by some reliable agency I don't know otherwise I would just strike it for now and um and just maybe replace that with um amending part 115 to require testing of um of uh waste disposal before U uh before it's um done before it's has any endpoint other than landfills I mean you know there's been a fair amount of discussion about this that actually like maybe spreading them on um on like um you know reclaimed mining land or something like that and it might be appropriate but um but I'm just reluctant to leave that in there because city is in fact currently putting its fire solids into landfills M and I think that's an appropriate response right now right okay I
090understand um I guess the question is is that one that we want to um eliminate for this round of something that we would send to the state that would be the easiest thing to do um you know because for now for now yeah okay um okay and now for number two um restrict the sale of all packaging there have been bills introduced in the state legislature there are states that have done this so we could specify the bills I think um I think maybe uh Jeff Hern is already submitted it but they haven't had time to uh you know to get it through committee um this year but maybe next year so um this would be coordinating with our state senator or we're just mentioning whatever Bill we're talking about right okay and then um
091is that go ahead yeah I don't have it on the top of my head he's been doing it for 10 years um so then um number three these contaminations prevent that's not a recommendation that's just an exp explanation of number two and um but I would replace it with um um with encoura encouraging a producer um Extended producer responsibility act because you know during the last Trash Talk tour and um you know talking to various people um in the community that are closer to this topic than I am um that they all agreed that the best the best way to uh um the best U legislation that could be used um is extend producer responsibility laws like the state of Maine and the state of Oregon have already implemented them and this would help us
092um give us much more power to control um you know the uh just the release of um potentially toxic substances into the environment including you know the recycling of [Music] plastics okay other yeah um I see um commissioner calart yeah I wanted to put a plugin again for the um what will Garcia from the city forwarded after our last meeting about banning the sale of toxic Mercury Lighting in order to accelerate LEDs I think that fits well in there and it's something that's you know kind of spreading across the country with five states having it and four more kind of encouraging it so I'd like to see us add that in is that um is that something that we know there is legislation or we're just suggesting it as a topic well we're working on
093topics we want to policies we want to promote right y I don't know that this is anything that's been proposed yet in Michigan right okay sounds very good johi thank you i' like to support uh Steve's proposal well also um John's as well um related to Extended producer responsibility we talked earlier about polluter pay and corporate responsibility Brian made some comments to that um about that so I don't know if that's already on the legislative agenda it's not on this list um and maybe it's not on this list because it's on the existing list if if both of those are not on the existing list then I think both of those should um be on the list and um I had sent this before the meeting to Rita as well as to Joe um while
094looking up some materials um for this um I looked at Michigan clean water action website um and they have a long list fairly long list of um leg legislative policy uh priorities and um I look through the list and it includes um those topics as well as others and also references when um bills that are already have been introduced either in the house or the Senate and I I don't know that we need to go through all those but I would encourage Council to look at at those that doesn't mean they all rise to the level that needs to go on the city's list but there's a lot of good ideas there um and they all certainly tie to the kinds of things that we're interested in um in terms of water quality but they
095also affect some of the other topics that are um on our you know list in terms of the other categories so um like I said for the sake of time it probably doesn't make sense to look at it but somebody should take a look at those lists and and try to harmonize that and decide what what really Rises to the level of uh the legislative priorities for the city that's all okay um if anyone is particularly interested and would like to join me in looking these over and getting them um uh more effectively uh edited so that we can present them I will appreciate that um I will say that I've had a little bit of um uh connection with um our state representative Carrie Ryans on um nanoids and she is currently um working
096on a bill to um ban the use on public land and these are neonicotinoids are the toxic chemical that um affects insects usually but it also can affect birds and has a significant um when used on seed in particular um can have uh dust that spreads into the atmosphere and surrounding areas it's it's really toxic and bad chemical so that's that's kind of in order and I would like to support her action on that um okay I thought I saw your hand up there Steve you have a suggestion well yeah I I just volunteer to help you with this I mean objected here in the solid waste field so I'm sorry I didn't get to that earlier but um that's okay anyway the another thing that's caused a lot of sugarin in the e in
097the environmental Community is that when these part 115 bills were passed there were some lame duck amendments that were added to Define um pyrolysis as a um you know as a as a recycling as recycling um the problem here is that the definition of pyrolysis can mean almost anything you want to make it mean like chemical recycling they call it chemical recycling or pyrolysis it's basically incineration and it's these these terms are used to try to avoid um any regulation by the Clean Air Act through the Clean Air Act so they were put in in the last minute and um and rather than kill the whole package which you know took years and years to negotiate um the legislature just passed them so but they are um they are a u what do you call
098call it you know they are they are a bad they're a bad last minute Lan duck Amendment uh that needs to be addressed going forward so um I would suggest adding that to the list as well okay so um so we'll talk about that um the question is I guess what where we are right now is uh at a point where I um had hoped that we'd have a list that we would literally forward from here and I don't think we're at that point um and I will um check with Joe and Sean on um what the next steps will be with in terms of the um legislative process and uh if anyone else happens to know it um please let me know uh I think we should move on and I'll appreciate working with
099you Steve on this um okay we are now at the point in the agenda for um reports from our work groups and committees and I'm gonna start off with all right asking for any comments or or updates on the circular economy sure I can do that or get started if other folks have things to add please do so but uh we are Mee meeting once a month as uh the circular economy working group plus several folks from City staff um in October we met with representatives from Madison Wisconsin I mentioned that at the last meeting and this month we talked with uh two reps from the city of Austin and kind of gathered information about the orgin they've had in place for about 10 years now uh we're continuing to gather all that information kind
100of put things together um we've got we're another meeting in December before the holiday break so that work is kind of continuing on with Gathering and then we'll move into synthesizing that information and seeing if we are ready to move forward with an ordinance or what other steps might need to take place first um the other thing I just wanted to let folks know that there's going to be an upcoming social media campaign around the circular economy map uh the city's going to be promoting that still one of the most visited websites for the city in terms of mapping um so uh we're even going to try to amp that up a bit so will Garcia was showing some of the uh materials that they put together for that so beond the look out for
101that and help promote that resource thanks that's great um all right I'm uh two hands up uh commiss Brown oh yeah thanks John um I just recently started participating in this group again but I was just wondering has there been any talk of updating the schw you know the Strategic plan for solid waste um do you know if there's any um any uh any do you know when that's going to be updated I know the previous one was like 2017 so it's like been five years I don't know how yeah but I would suggest that we contact City staff on that uh Joe I don't know if there's somebody you can put us in touch with from that or we can check I can check with Jenny the next time I talk with her Jenny
102and Sarah if I can comment this that was my my topic as well Steve and I exchanged emails before the meeting um the the current shrimp um as so Solid Waste Resource Management plan runs ran from or running from 2019 to 2023 so it runs out at the end of this year year um the previous plan ran from 2013 to 2017 and I looked at the process for the last shrimp um and if you look from the beginning where um we had a consultant that um helped us develop the plan so there was an RFP there was a contract that was led there was an advisory committee that was um named met several times um just happened to meet at the DDA Steve and I and some others were a part of that and then
103to get to the draft report and the finalized report that took two years so we're at the end of 2023 and um that means that there would be potentially as much as a two-year Gap if we follow the timetable for the last one to update um and issue a new one so hopefully um we can get an update on what the status of the shrimp is and what the process will be to updating that thanks that's what I wanted to talk talk about thanks um do we have a person who's going to do the followup on that okay thank you John Cowart great um I'm going to move next to um the biodiversity work group with Chris Graham um we've developed a proposal that's nearly done I hope um to the fellows of the Graham
104sustainability Institute to help us design a city of anber less grass initiative we need Erin to sign on I hope it can be irin um Brian uh not a lot of time for our city representative and not any money from the city it's paid for by The Institute to um engage the fellows beginning probably in January through the end of the um school year um to help us do this um they would develop element elements of a potential program that would encourage Property Owners to reduce the area of non-native non-recreational grass across the city we call it turf grass Thea education Outreach incentives perhaps some regulation um grass would be replaced by trees shrubs or herbaceous plantings with preference for native plants in whole or in Parts Fells would look at other communities efforts in
105this area and uh where most other places primarily done for water conservation goals in our case it would be done at least as much for biodiversity goals and energy goals a20 goals so um I'm I was hoping this would be on agenda so you could see actually see the document tonight um I'll try to ask Joe or Sean when he's back to get it forwarded to you please comment promptly um there in the final stages of reviews of these proposals um over the next few weeks and hopefully we can go ahead the committee will be meeting Monday I'm not sure what's on the agenda have to figure that out Brooks have you got anything I haven't thought about it yet so okay um I saw commissioner buber had her hand up I would I would
106just want to maybe talk more internally biodiversity group before we pass this on to City staff yep I'm sure we need to we have to have the city person before we get to proceed at all with the application we won't make make it be a surprise for you Erin promise okay yeah I'll check in with Brian on that for sure okay um all right the next is the water quality working group yeah um I have two things first of all just a reminder that um you know the city is under a consent decree with eagle about um pollution nutrient pollution to the Heron River it's one of five communities that have been cited for that um it looks like that's being managed through the Heron river water chck Council you know and Rita and I
107and I think Sarah have been invited to the middle Heron Partners meeting that's quarterly held quarterly to um um by the posted by the um Heron River Watershed Council and they're coming up with a plan uh which will be publicly available sometime in the near future so I'm hoping we can review it and um maybe talk to our city council members about it at some point in the near future the first quarter of 2024 and then the uh uh second thing is that and their next quarterly meeting is December 21st so um and then the other thing is that um you know I for we've had residents complaining about petroleum Motors in West Park for years and commissioner Mitchell recently walked by there and saw some lurking under the ice and took some pictures and
108so she and I are investigating with the city staff we contacted CI to Rita did so I don't know Rita do you want to um CH chime in here um well I haven't heard back but I know that Joe helped get um the staff in touch um I also reached out to the um County water resources commissioner's office um they were also going to send someone down I'll just say it wasn't only the visual presentation um I've heard from for years from people about a smell of petroleum in in the great area near the pond of of West Park the Western tip of it um and it was pretty powerful um and so that was what motivated me to uh move forward with with um taking some action this is an ms4 drain um eron
109so maybe your experience will help us um uh address some of this in communication with the um um Water Resources Division of the county um but it's it's still an open issue so yeah we should talk yeah and then the only other thing is that eigo has finally started a remediation of the Armen um cleaner facility um there which is um which is significant perk and contaminated contaminated um there's a groundwater plume of perk going towards the Heron River so they're finally starting some kind of remediation so we'll see um how that's progressing right there was just a news article about that today um all right uh commissioner or council member dish is not here she would report on the Planning Commission so I'm going to bypass that next is energy Commission yes um so
110the main topic we we also did a review of our bylaws and our calendar but the main topic I think of interest to this group and more broadly for residents is that we got an update on the city's uh home energy advisor program um it was referred to in the a20 plan as energy conier uh Julie Roth provided an import a report and I encourage people to look at it because this is something that really all citizens hopefully would be able to utilize uh pilot has been done um that was used to inform um the RFP and two bids have been um received Unfortunately they came in above budget and so right now the scope and the scale of the program is being re-evaluated get together with the biders um and so right now um
111there wasn't a timetable given but it sounded like there's an attempt by OSI to to do that as quickly as possible um there's some significant goals related um to this in the 820 plan like uh serving 2500 residents by 2025 um and um hopefully those are not jeopardized but um the plan is really good the materials that have been developed the road map there's uh a a value stream map that's been developed that sort of walks um both the the advisers as well as um residents through a a decarbonization process that are all really good um hopefully this is something that will come to um fruition rather quickly so if you're interested in that topic uh go to legistar and and look up that report that's it thank you um next is Park advisory commission
112commissioner Maran hi we just met last last week um Leslie science and nature center Susan westof did a presentation for us they they're developing a nature playscape on their property on the parks property there and they are doing fundraising for that and um so encourage you all to check that out um West Park um at West Park the park department has completed the phase one um of gathering of an outreach program to gather feedback um on that Park due to the um the Band Shell that's there that is currently not usable due to deteriorating uh the deterioration of the foundation of that building um they're going to be processing they had over a thousand responses to their survey so they're going to be processing that information and getting back to the community um in 2024
113with ideas um the parks manager reported that the Gallup the bridge work at in Gallup Park has started so if you're over there you'll see that um there's a new bridge being built to replace the existing one that goes over the the car bridge that goes over the river um nap the natural areas preservation is engaged in strategic planning at at the moment I know I saw Rita and uh Stephen at uh one of the meetings uh one of their community outreach meetings but if you're interested in getting involved in that um I would go check out the nap website and see when their meetings are being held um and then they also reported to us that the m. fencing project is currently paused um so I'm sure we'll hear more about that sometime in
114the future but no fence will go up this winter as far as I know um and then finally we sent two resolutions to city council to move forward the construction project for the B2B Trail um through through the Barton nature area so that that work um should start um I think sometime in the winter that's all I have sounds great um looking forward to that uh all right next up I have Transportation Commission uh council member a yep uh I wasn't able to attend the last meeting but I watched it after the fact um we had a presentation from the DDA on their downtown circulation study and curbside management study and these are two things to basically look at how we accommodate the different modes of Transit that we need to and that we want
115to in the future with our transportation plan so thinking about things like parking allocation and making sure there's um prioritized spots for people with disability um and making sure that we can accommodate um you know bus prioritized Lanes you know we're trying to balance a lot of different uh modes of transportation to meet our goals essentially both for a20 and the transportation plan so both of those efforts um get at that um and they're still in progress but we got a little report out on it that's it than um we're still I think I'm gon to ask you if you don't mind to talk about Council as well yes so I think of key importance to this group is to know that um council member Cornell and I and council member a been working on
116a resolution related to um Banning gas powerered leaf blowers um that came for a first reading at the last meeting and it was postponed so it will be on the agenda for Monday for a first reading because it's an ordinance so we'll have two readings for the public hearing at the second reading um and we are taking kind of a progressive approach to this because we don't want people to throw out perfectly good working equipment um so we're giving people some time so it starts by limiting the hours and the seasonality of it um so not being able to use them you know it starts with the summer ban from June 1st to September 30th um specify the hours in which leaf blowers can be used and sorry the Summer band is just for the
117gas powered you could use electric during this time and then beginning January 1st 2028 um the use of gas powered leaf blowers would be prohibited um at all times in the city so we think this is giving people enough uh Runway and uh look forward to the discussion it does not like some communities in its current form exempt golf courses or large commercial properties or the city though it has some exemptions for emergency uh type of things um but we were pretty deliberate in uh that approach so that's it see two questions um Mr Cowart yeah just a question Darman about the if there's going to be a public hearing I didn't see it listed that way in the agenda but there will that's because the one coming this next because it got got postponed
118it's basically a re a first reading again so have the public hearing and the next one will have the public hearing yeah thank you no problem and uh commissioner grah I'm very proud to say that I've changed my machines from two stroke gas once to Electric for my property I still think there's a problem which may be solved over the next several years about commercial equipment being good enough uh I'm I have my fingers crossed because I think the council is quite right to get to this I would include hedge bruners spin trimmers small chainsaws um if things progress as I hope they will by 2028 those things can be banned as well um they're all burning gas that's mixed with oil they are very polluting machines and to some degree noisy that's not to
119say the electric stuff is quiet um it's not actually uh so if People's motivation is primarily noise then this will help a little but won't solve the problem but pollution is serious from these machines it's true thanks for that comment that's um encouraging because I know you work with that equipment um all right I will speak up with the chair's report which is really short um we already talked about um observation of um Petroleum in West Park um I want to just call out to our attention because we're the environmental commission that the um Conference of the parties the cop 28 started today and um we should all watch for that what's what's going to come out of it um and I hope that it will guide our actions so that we will guide it
120perhaps in some ways here um to reduce our use of fossil fuels um uh I want to also point out and say congratulations to um commissioner Gruber who was given the rain Garden leadership award um last month for her work with establishing rain Gardens in the city at ever White Community School um and um in her own home yard and uh just has been a leader in in that so congrats um the we talked about the compost audit and the result of that will um I think what I haven't done is U to send that that report that we received around to the commission or or was it did everybody else did everybody receive the commission the report of the compost audit useful see how how it happened okay I recommend doing it going out
121and and actually doing the audit um Steve did it twice I've done it once it's interesting um and uh that is um it for the most part except I want to say thank you very much to Joe Lang for stepping in kind of cold uh and appreciate your support for this meeting and um welcome Ain um I hope to have many conversations with you and look forward to um joining with us on on this commission um all right that is oh okay I would like to um let you all know if you just say that I'm open at any time for uh call for agenda items this is a time to post one if or mention one if you would like that for our next meeting um and if not please contact me in between
122now in our next meeting which will be January 25th we have a big break because we're at that kind of end meeting of the season of the year um all right I hear no additional agenda items right now so let's move to our second public comment uh of the evening this is an opportunity for persons to speak up for for up to three minutes please call 888 78899 and enter meeting ID 922 9696 1644 as you can see listed on the screen I'm going to read it anyway um City staff will call um will select callers that have raised their hand one by one um by calling out the last three digits of your phone number in order to electronically raise your hand please press star n on your phone you'll hear an automated announcement
123that the host is allowing you to speak plus press star six to unmute your phone when speaking please move to a quiet area and mute any television or background sound so that we may hear you clearly and please state your name and address at the beginning of your comments um and Joe do you see anyone with a hand raised I do not no callers are in the attendees list either okay well um in that case I don't think we even need to wait so um with that I would like to uh call for adjournment do I have a motion to adjourn council member Amman and seconded by msky and shall we vote to adjourn yes all right goodbye good night have a good holiday everyone thank you