Ann Arbor Environmental Commission Meeting 7/22/21

001let's see welcome to the july 22nd to 2021 electronic meeting of the environmental commission this meeting is in accordance with executive orders from the governor to affect social distancing and mitigate the spread of the covet 19 virus we intend to conduct this meeting similarly to an in-person meeting however please be patient if there are technical issues public comment will be via telephone only to speak during any of the public comment opportunities there will be two one at the beginning of the meeting and one at the end please call nine 1-888-788-0099 four eight seven seven eight five three five two four seven or two one three three three eight eight four seven or 206 337-9723 and enter meeting id number three three 978-7334 three nine one zero this information is also available on the published agenda

002in the public notices section of the city website and on the broadcast of this meeting on ctn channel 16 18t channel 99 and online at www.a2gov.org watch ctn so call this meeting to order at 706. um galen would you read the land heritage statement all right um land you statement uh i acknowledge that the land the city of ann arbor occupies is the ancestral traditional and contemporary lands of the anishinabe including odiwa ojibway bodhi wadmi and wyandot peoples i further acknowledge that our city stands like almost all property in the in the united states uh lands obtained generally in unconscionable ways from indigenous people the taking of this land was formalized by the treaty of detroit in 1807 the one where we work where we live work study and recreate does not change the past

003but a thorough understanding of the ongoing consequences of this past can empower us in our work to create a future that supports human flourishing and justice for all individuals that's the land uh your statement well thank you galen could you initiate the roll call i sure will all right uh commissioner graham i'm here commissioner needham commissioner needham council member this president in from ann arbor right commissioner uh gibb randall commissioner gibb randall councilmember griswold here from ann arbor all right commissioner cali work here uh president or chairperson uh stephen brown president here in ann arbor all right commissioner mursky commissioner mursky vice chairperson mitchell here from ann arbor uh commissioner vandenbroe here commissioner oriole here from ann arbor right uh commissioner zane from my number all right we have a quorum all right thank you

004galen um the next item on the agenda is approval of this agenda um is that does anybody wish to propose any changes to the agenda for this moment i see kathy griswold's hand up i would like to add a new business item i could report it out with council communications but i think it's significant enough to have its own agenda item and that is uh the a20 plan was revised after a council vote on monday night okay and and council member dish was a co-sponsor of that resolution okay so um shall we append it to the uh to the end or at the beginning or put it at the beginning of the presentation either one okay well let's put it near the end and um let's try to yeah and be uh let's try to

005be timely with the other items on the agenda are there any other suggestions to amend the agenda okay do i have a motion to uh i guess kathy kathy pass kathy did the first motion or the second to add the silence for the agenda seconds second okay read a second um all of you would i um raise your hand or say i i all who vote no please raise your hand or say no are there any abstentions okay the the agenda is modified unanimously we will add an agenda item at the end of new business for a20 revisions um kathy and lisa will lead that discussion so the next item on the agenda's public commentary this is an opportunity for persons to speak for up to three minutes please call 1-888-788-0099 or 888 or i'm

006sorry 877-853-5247 and enter meeting id 978-7334-3911 information is also displayed on the meeting agenda and video feed city staff will select callers that have raised their hand one by one using the last three digits of your phone number in order to electronically raise your hand to indicate your desire to speak please press star 9 on your phone you will hear an automated announcement that the host is allowing you to speak when speaking please move to a quiet area and mute any television or background sounds so that we may hear you clearly please state your name and address at the beginning of your comments and be patient there can be a delay of up to 30 seconds before a connection is established do we have anybody on the line as yet caitlin okay there are no

007callers okay we'll we'll wait another 30 seconds okay are there are there is there anybody on the line as yet there's no one on the line okay well this ends the first public commentary period um you'll have a second opportunity to speak at the end of the meeting so the next item on the agenda is approval of the minutes um let's um let's go for the may minutes first um and do these separately are there any um suggested amendments the minutes as written i don't hear or see any comments so i do have one and that is um on page five under the section reports from uh committees etc under the council report uh it just states judge cannon ordered gelman two and then there's nothing so it's kind of open-ended so i don't i

008don't have anything in my notes that really um specifies what that was because as i remember there was discussion afterwards about uh you know about um you know about some other items with the the gelman um i drafted those so if you don't mind i'll just check and see if i can find that all right i don't have them in front of me right this minute but judge connors ordered gelman to implement the fourth cj with that i think that was it but i'm not entirely certain and what what was the date of that reader um may 24th i believe may 27th okay sorry that's the date of our last our may you know i remember reading that steve with that incomplete sentence and i thought that i had gone back to my notes and

009i thought i had fixed it shoot per my notes it says the fourth cj as amended and restated that's what my notes state as well so if there are no other objections uh to that i think um why don't we is there a motion to add that to the minutes kathy is there a second anybody second a second chris um all who would like to finalize these minutes with the addition of with the completion of the sentence uh judge connor ordered gelman to implement the fourth consent judgment um are there are all who approve say aye or raise your hands all who us all who disapprove or say no raise your hands or say no are there any abstentions i'm hearing none the minutes are passed unanimously as amended okay let's move on to the

010june minutes um are there are there any suggested amendments or discussion hearing or seeing none um is do i have a motion for accepting the minutes as drafted um i see no hands or hear anything does anybody going hello oh i propose yes oh okay rita okay i have one motion second john john keller commissioner kellywood second did it um all who approve of the minutes as drafted um say aye raise your hands all who um proposed raise your hands or say no any abstentions okay hearing none the june minutes pass unanimously is drafted okay let's move on to the next item on the agenda special presentations um first one is um unfinished business on the first item under unfinished business is a discussion of the work group of chapter 40. yes um so i

011um would like to just open that for that discussion if i may and um i want to thank chris graham for providing some comments on chapter 40 for um uh re-drafting it um but i would appreciate very much um arranging for a small work group which could be me and chris possibly shannon gabranville possibly uh council member griswold um and um i think chris vandenberg may be interested as well um to look at chapter 40 and um uh just to be able to ask some questions for about the the changes that you had suggested so that we feel confident that um i i feel confident anyway that i understand um some of the terms that you used and that that we can integrate everything the way that it will allow us to move forward um

012to have um both uh well multiple things reducing turf grass uh establishing um safety on easements um and safety for driving for visual visual kinds of things while we allow more native plants to be placed more plants in general to be placed in areas that um would like to have reduced from mowed grass okay rita so i'm a little confused is this some i just need some clarification about this because we've been talking about chapter 40 revisions for a while um are you proposing any changes in the scope of that not in this scope no it's just interpretation of some of the changes that were suggested the last time i asked for um some input from uh kristen and um uh commissioner gibb randall um and i have some feedback from kristin and we just

013haven't had a chance to have an exchange so i just wanted to call it a little work group so we could have some discussion and possibly i'm hoping that it could be done in one session because there's there's some significant um improvements that that i'd like to make sure that that i understand before we move it to this group for approval okay um as a commissioner you're fully entitled to do that and recruit whoever you think is appropriate and who might participate and contribute to this work so um i don't think we need any formal action by the commission um so um my suggestion is just that you uh send an email to the entire uh you know entire commission members and ask uh you know um if they would like to join a work

014group and just outline what the scope and the goals are and the estimated time commitment and then um and uh some and maybe not a formal deadline but some idea the deadline for that work and then um and then um get volunteers and then report back uh next month i think that's cathy one of the reasons that it's taking so long is not the ordinance itself it's the procedures and operations that um come from the ordinance and how it's interpreted and and so we're trying to make sure that we have some of those supporting documents available as well as there are some new developments and one of them is the national wildlife federation has issued a statement including recommended ordinances for local municipalities regarding uh wildlife gardens wildlife friendly gardens and so while that wouldn't

015be in the ordinance that would be part of the supporting documentation and so we're we're just trying to keep up to date as the world keeps changing and we keep finding additional information that will be beneficial no that sounds great um that sounds great um okay thanks kathy um are there any other comments does anybody else wish to make a comment at this time okay rita well thanks for the yeah thanks for the suggestion so uh look for an email okay um so are you satisfied with this i hope so yes yes thank you um so the next item under unfinished business is a standard item that we have about the gelman plume um i think we do have um some lingering questions about the ms4 situation so i don't know rita would you take

016the floor and discuss this um this item is here to keep the issue um to our for so that we have an ongoing ability to comment on what's going on with the gentleman plume and i want to just in this case um i want to call attention to um an excellent article that was printed in the detroit free press just yesterday by reporter garrett allison he reviewed the entire history of the gelman plume from its identification from before its identification up until now and i strongly encourage commissioners to seek that out and read it i will send a link to the article for you to catch it but it does have a pay wall so i have been uh in touch with the free press to see about obtaining some copies if i have to

017pay for them i will do that and and to allow that to be distributed so that people can read it without having if you don't have a subscription to the free press then it would be available but i would like to actually at this point in terms of reporting on status um i believe that um commissioner council member griswold is really um up to date and i see her hand raised so i would like to acknowledge her kathy you have the floor okay yeah i would just like to suggest that our minutes include the link to that detroit free press article even though it is behind a pay wall because i i think it's a very very important and comprehensive article and then also regarding gelman the city issues a quarterly report titled gelman plumen

018one for dioxane and this is public information one of the problems with gelman is uh some of the activities in court include our legal strategy and so they're privileged but i i can send this link to rita or galen so that we could also put that in um in the minutes and that's sort of the official city's position and it includes the settlement update uh the ms4 permit what eagle carter doing the mpdes permit um and one of the things that i've done is i work closely with scio township elected officials because the the government plume is in scio township and so they seem to be the most assertive and um and they have the resources devoted to keeping up to date every day i mean there's been some actions with the appeals court just

019in the last few days but at i have not received any um notice of it and the only information i have is privilege but what i can say and and this was in the detroit free press article is that gelman continues to appeal in and fight this in the court system and that has been their strategy all along and so i feel very fortunate that we have the dual path now with the epa as as a second way to work on on resolution or remediation and also related to this the water treatment plant is going to have another analysis they did one in 2015 to determine whether we wanted to invest in uh improvements to the water plant or to connect to the great lakes water authority known as the detroit water system uh and

020they're going to do another analysis and there will be a work session devoted to it i believe in september of this year so that's uh related to both of the dioxane as well as the pfas levels so that's a council work session kathy that's a yes that's a councilwork session so i'll make sure that the environmental commissioners are notified of the date of that work session in case they want to attend and i don't know if lisa dish wants to add to this um lisa do you wish to comment or chris graham does lisa um i don't hear or see her so chris go ahead you have before for many years i've been suggesting that there might come a time when we have such a drought in michigan that we don't have enough water entering

021barton pond to supply our water and that would be a calamity since we do not have a enough wells in the city to make up for the 85 percent of our water which comes from barton pond and the river and it seems to me that some sort of plan b ought to be in place if i understand correctly detroit's water comes from lake huron if i understand correctly genesee county and its environs are building a pipeline from lake huron so they can get off the detroit city water supply going all the way out to flint and genesee county i'm not sure i would propose we build a plan b pipeline to lake huron but it seems to me that the detroit water is in epsilante and it might or might not be practical to add

022a connection in case we need it for a year or so um maybe i'm nuts but uh i remember 1988 when it didn't rain from easter sunday and it was just the spritz on easter sunday until july 17th we were completely and totally bone dry in southern michigan and so was all of the feral growing zone of the united states all the way out to iowa and on days in june that year it was 104 degrees in the shade with a 40 mile an hour wind all day and it was unbelievably awful in 1988 i said uh oh along with james hansen who went to the congress that summer and said we have a problem about climate change and many people went to work until the oil and gas companies decided to quash work on

023climate change and now we are in a lot of trouble predominantly because of that i'm again maybe i'm nuts but um if our river our water supply doesn't flow very well or stops flowing for a summer we're kind of in trouble thank you um so is it my understanding that this discussion just pertains to the wastewater treatment plant hooking up to detroit's gia the glwa or just the water treatment plant the intake and in a couple of items i want to acknowledge the the water treatment plant um leadership brian steglitz and also glenn wizorchik i don't know how to pronounce his last name uh but they both seem to be very knowledgeable about this and so uh i have confidence that it will be a thorough analysis and a good news item is that 10

024years ago we were using 120 gallons per person per day of water and now we're using 80 gallons of water per person per day so we have definitely reduced our water intake so this is this is fee increases and what they do i'm sorry i didn't realize we're talking about sweet stream i lisa thank you for all these reports we're doing a very fine job in our sewage treatment efforts in ann arbor we are very nearly state-of-the-art and i don't think we need to burden this the city of detroit with our stuff to my knowledge there's there's no discussion about sewer treatment connection only only water okay oh right thanks and i wasn't out the lunch all right thank you very much you're welcome thanks kathy um well we say you have the floor um

025but if we were to join this they would be we would be receiving treated water and we would just be delivering it we wouldn't be treating it and so i do not think that this can be a backup because it actually means an entire it would mean a shift in infrastructure would mean bypass our infrastructure so i think we have to make a one or the other choice either we refurbish the water plant that we have the drinking water treatment plant that we have or plan a switch but i but the idea i think chris of a of a backup in case we have a drought um wouldn't be viable because it's it's apples and oranges you know currently we treat our own water here in ann arbor and to to receive treated water as

026a finished product from this new pipeline um uh you know when i get to lisa i so detroit is pulling water from lake karen which needs actually very little treatment and i'm not suggesting giving up on our own systems if we have a problem it's going to be transitory it's just that um we have what five wells down on the airport the one in town is closed it's 15 percent of our water 85 is coming from the river and we do really genuinely need to treat that a lot but there may be a way to bypass a lot of our systems with detroit water for the time period that we might need it i'm you know i'm we have we have outstanding people working on our sewer and water systems the proof of that pudding

027is that somewhere back there a hundred years ago they said well okay we're not going to allow our storm water tiles our storm water drains to overflow into our sewage lines causing what has been disaster first southeast michigan and much of ypsilanti right next door we have a completely separate system we've had wisdom in our in our in the people that worked here for a hundred years and i i don't want to mess with that i'm not suggesting we switch to detroit water i'm simply saying we need a plan b in case the river stops flowing okay well i'm sure that'll be an item of discussion a public discussion leading up to whatever decision might be made but thank you kathy for and lisa you still have your hand up okay so um so thanks

028for bringing this up kathy um it's very important um there are certainly you know not just engineering implications but ecological implications political implications what have you so uh this would be a very important decision to be making um so let's move on to new business um uh the first item on the agenda is discussion of format of minutes and action points discussion what i'm going to say about this is that um city staff prefers to have very spare minutes that really just mentioned what the topics what the topics were discussed with no little or no detail beyond that um for me i feel like it would be useful to have um more of a summary like what we've seen lately you know um i think it would help another thing that would help is if

029they were indexed to the timestamp on the uh on the broadcast that would make it easier for people to refer to the to the video recordings you know if they're interested in a particular topic while they're reviewing the minutes um so i think it's worth maybe having a discussion about this about what other commissioners feel is useful um so the floor is open um if anybody wants to i see rita's hand raised so why don't you go first then kathy thanks um i just want to say i think that actually this set of minutes that we just went over these two so are an example that shows some contrast because there was one that um it has more detail and there was one that was a little bit shorter but still had information so i

030just wanted to point that out to help our discussion um and it um i'll just state my own preference is to have um kind of in a medium amount of detail so that we can see get a flavor for what the discussion was if we can add the time stamp that steve described um to the minute so that a person who may be interested in really seeing the detail of our discussion could track back to it and see it even more in even more detail in an even more detailed way than what we write that would be really super cathy you have the floor i support having the time stamp and uh in terms of the amount of detail in the minutes more is probably better but we have to weigh that against the the

031cost and of resources to create them so if there's limited resources we can capture much of the conversation simply with a time stamp and an easy link to to the video yeah okay so those are alternatives um i think this may be something that's best table for our uh our working session in august um i wanted we i wanted to bring this top of rita and i wanted to bring this topic up now because there's been quite a bit of back and forth between us and the city staff about this and um on the one hand i'd like to have a seven minutes that's useful for you know the residents and citizens here as well as um the commissioners themselves so um let's see are there any other suggestions about uh maybe modifying the way

032we uh the amount of detail we put into the minutes what i've heard is that having a time stamp has some support so um i don't think it's worth a big discussion right now so why don't we have a continue this on our working session and traditional working session in august and meanwhile we can have some conversations with cities further conversations with city staff about this and get a better idea of what's how much time staff time is involved in putting timestamps on these on these minutes okay a quick question steve is concerned from the city about the staff time in preparing the minutes or what is the the the concern to keep them brief hey it's it's mostly about staff time taking up and preparing detailed minutes thanks you know it's it's really not

033um it's difficult for the staff person to be managing the meeting you know organizing a lot of the logistics while also taking detailed notes and getting them into the format and legistar you know we've had us we've had a lot of uh problems a lot of back and forth about getting things set up properly in legistar and a lot of that has to do with the staff turnover and commission support but um but i think uh you know i'm i think some i think we should just decide something based on you know what commissioners feel that the need is or what would be more appropriate and balance that against uh whatever time we're requesting of staff okay and just saying as uh as the chair i've been i've been writing more detailed minutes and submitting

034them to staff so i'm happy to continue to do that and uh the major problem is getting them embedded into legistar so um so uh we'll explore that further and bring this up as a as an agenda item on the uh working session okay in august and uh have some more and we could lay some alternatives on the table and talk about the trade-offs in more detail at that time okay are there any other comments anybody wish to make a comment i'm hearing and seeing none um i think we'll move on the next item on the agenda is um is about ann arbor's contribution to phosphorus and the huron river so um this was mentioned in our meeting last month lisa dish uh mentioned that council had approved a legal settlement that's the the city

035has been involved in for i think at least a decade at least two decades um possibly three um and um you know this and i sent out a uh i sent out a powerpoint presentation that i think i'll put up right now if i may i've done some research and um this is um it's quite a complicated topic because just to just to uh recap the situation is that um the city inevitably has to uh discharge through both its storm water and its wastewater some phosphorus into the cowling river the phosphorus cannot be entirely cleaned out and put somewhere else um this phosphorus adds to the natural phosphorus burden phosphorus is a is a limiting nutrient in the aquatic environment here so what that means is that this additional phosphorus contributes i'm not going to

036say causes but i'm going to say definitely contributes to algal blooms harmful algal bloom blooms both in ford lake down river and in belleville lake um these algal blooms have not just uh they're not just aesthetic issues um uh they're associated with fish kills on substantial alteration of the ecosystems and what's most alarming is that it is um these blue-green algae um secrete toxins uh that are liver toxins to humans so if you remember uh the city of toledo for example because of the harmful algal blooms in lake erie the the where the city of um toledo against most of its drinking water uh they had to shut down their drinking water system for a substantial period of time i think it was a week or more until a situation could be addressed because these

037microcystins are very potent liver toxins um other communities have also had problems with this um like an adrian on the raisin river because because of cafo contamination the lake erie contamination comes mostly from capos that are located in ohio but there are cafos that's concentrated animal feeding operations that are located in um southern michigan and lenoir counties and monroe counties mostly waterway county and and other counties in michigan but they're not um the uh the river watershed does not have um much of an as much of an agricultural contribution to some of the municipal wastewater treatment plants so um the idea is that um the concept is that if anova reduces its phosphorus discharges into the river that they may have some effect on the harmful algal there's some controversy about whether this is true

038or not so should we be spending the money or is the money better spent elsewhere if we want to prevent these harmful algal blooms so um this is a it's a complicated topic and what i would propose um is first of all i do have this slide deck um that's all that's attached to the agenda so i can put it up but uh if enough commissioners have had a chance to look over it and it's available for public inspection um so i'm inclined to skip it if there's no um you know there was not as a special presentation um it's just there to facilitate our discussion um but my personal opinion after reviewing a lot of the information is that um i think this is best style discussed at a future environmental commissioning commission meeting

039where we invite three people to give a brief perspective for 10 minutes each and then join a discussion a more extended discussion for perhaps an hour or more about this issue um the people i would suggest inviting is rick lawson from the huron watershed council because um the mitigation of phosphorus is really should be based on a um on a watershed management plan and the heron river watershed council as a joint governmental body as well as an ngo develops the watershed plan for for the mid huron river here and so they their input would be critical um because they just finished the new water water management plan last year 2020 it was updated uh the second person who we should invite is um the director of the wastewater treatment plant you know or his designate

040so i think we would i would i will invite him to a future meeting of the environmental commission and then um the third person would be um would be a professor at the university of michigan who has done quite a lot of research on this issue locally and who is able to provide a lot of information um professor layman from lehman l e a h m a names are all on the slide deck um so i think um i think that's that's what i would like to do and um i'm wondering if so i'm opening the floor for discussion um kathy has her hand up and then young oh no no it's something something on your wall young when i don't see your hand up she she had her hand up first oh okay or

041is it or is it oh i'm sorry it's superimposed on an image of your uh something like a wall sorry about that yeah small picture i raised my hand earlier when i was talking about minutes um i just realized my name was spell around um on the last minute so can we just change that from like z h a n g to a zhe engine we can certainly do that without a vote thank you would you like to comment on the phosphorous issue young women i always think about this okay we'll have an opportunity in a future meeting uh kathy you have the floor uh yes our attorney general dana nessl has raised the issue of phosphorus a couple times when i've seen her in meetings and i was at a fundraiser in dearborn this

042week and uh mentioned that the even though there was a court settlement the environmental commission was interested in it and she asked to be invited to our meeting so um you may want to send her your slide deck um her statement was and she's made it more than once is that she became a lawyer only because she couldn't make it through organic chemistry but that's not really her first interest so i think that her her interest in phosphorus is is definitely genuine and uh so she would appreciate an invite okay i will certainly make sure that she is invited to this to the future meeting and phosphorus is an inorganic compound anyway not an organic compound okay okay more to learn okay so um thank you kathy because yeah it's uh it's a complicated scientific

043issue and i think the important thing is it's something that needs to be solved but we want to make sure we're spending the money in the right way yes and i think we're we're fortunate to have an attorney general who who is very interested in this and wants to learn more okay very good okay uh rita you have your well lisa you have your hand up i think lisa yeah well mine's quick i was just gonna say that um earl kenzie would be a great person to invite just from the wastewater treatment plant perspective yeah he's the director so i was going to invite him or whoever he might want to designate um is there anybody else you think could provide useful input for this discussion future discussion to me it seemed like these would

044be the most uh prominent players okay who could you know who could uh shed light on this issue okay arita you have a floor uh yeah thanks uh steve is there um i know you put some data in your um slide deck and i just wonder if there's anything else that you'd like to refer to us to review beforehand that would help us get a sense of for example the source of the phosphorus if there's a way to track it and if we have that information already just might be interesting and help us discuss well one thing i still hold on as you see there's a mention of something called capital e capital eq eq um i don't i have not been able to find the number um but that's what the uh just to

045just to recap what the settlement is uh we have two years to do whatever we've been doing what we're doing now we have two years to continue doing that um and uh but nobody seems to know exactly how much phosphorus we are contributing so um i think uh part of it is an estimate is establishing whatever this eq number is in terms of pounds per day that the city is delivering and i think i think both the storm water and the wastewater are relevant in this case um the second thing is that for the next um um practically 20 years from oh my you can see from the slide deck but we have until really 2048 you know to limit it to some fraction of that and then the hammer really comes down at a

046very you know a long time in the future like in 2045 or something like that so there's plenty of time it seems for both um you know technical advances and or you know and uh the reconsideration of this from a legal point of view depending on what information might come to life um i have been able to find one of my frustrations is that i have not has yet been able to find any document that eagle has issued which um effectively uh um um mentions about uh what remediation um standards are acceptable or what policies are acceptable i'm sure they're out there somewhere all i was able to find was a document from connecticut it points out that there are at least 36 mechanisms by which you know phosphorus could be reduced so that's quite

047a lot of cost benefit analyses it should be done or at least some triaging to be done so what i'm thinking this is something that the commission is um this would be within the commission's purview and it's also something that we would be capable of doing to help assist a public discussion and assist city council and in weighing the cost benefits of the various options that you might have open to us that's my personal take so i see more hands up this first kathy than lisa i think and then chris i think lisa was first lisa then kathy then chris okay i just wanted to say quickly that that we do i'm sorry i muted myself instead of putting my hand down um we do know a fair amount about where the phosphorus is coming

048um some of it is in those lakes to begin with um because they're depos you know they're primordial deposits and they just get um when there's a and the lakes are are anaerobic so they're still and and then when there's a like a big rainstorm or something like that it gets stirred up and so that's one of the things that's charging that algal blooms the other thing that we know is that runoff from fertilizer is is accounting for some of that because there was a significant decrease in the algal blooms and in the phosphorus after an arbor enacted its um ban on fertilizer with phosphorus and so the city itself has done a fair amount and we do know some about you know about what is causing this um i don't know i don't think

049anyone i i yeah i i cannot remember if i do know the amount that's in it that you know that we're discharging i can i was trying to look through my notes but i don't really think i'm gonna be able to find that oh not tonight you know i think that i think we'll have some time before you know we have this on the agenda for a subsequent meeting of the commission to figure a lot of this out and yeah my son my recollection is that we reduced our phosphorus emissions by 28 due that's fertilizer ordinance but we could certainly do more we could certainly do more and we've gotten something like 43 of the way towards a 50 mandate so that's like 80 of the way there just with that so um it's not

050clear what and um and professor lehmann was arguing with ava about what model they were using we're actually judging how much the phosphorus problem came just from the sediments and the lakes themselves and that uh of course there are the cheapest way to to mitigate this problem is to just aerate you know just aerate the lakes instead of uh that may be the least expensive and most effective way of doing it so um rather than um limiting our discharge further so this is worth you know this is this this this requires some consideration and you know identifying what the data gaps might be um figuring out what uh just figuring out you know how to get more certainty around the remedy the the appropriate remedy and whether you know how much of it uh really

051ann arbor can accomplish no matter how much money it spends um i think street sweeping is another input there because um you know fertilizer that ends up in the street you know like this is another reason why we should uh not be uh dumping leaves in the street for collection in the fall it's because you know they all contain phosphorus and so the running storm water will reach it out of that so keeping the streets relatively clean and not just fertilizer but any organic matter will definitely help and i think the city has made some steps in that direction as well but i don't have any details um kathy we have your handout um yes i was talking to kevin mcdonald in the city attorney's office and he is also very interested and very knowledgeable

052about the history of what ann arbor has done to reduce phosphorus and so i would suggest that he be invited to this meeting and also if it would be helpful i could request a summary of what um what the city has done separate from the legal documents for the last 15 years kevin said that when he joined the city that the um the file regarding phosphorus reduction was on his desk and that was the first thing he worked on so he's also very interested in this and and offered some information to me today so i i think that if we take the lead on this we'll find that there are many people that are knowledgeable and and are interested yeah yeah i'm sure there are so um i will i will contact him as well

053oh okay thanks yeah and um and so i would encourage everybody to exchange emails about this in the meantime and i will continue to distribute information as i can as it comes in and i'll try to consolidate it into a shared document that we can use as a basis for uh you know for informing each other and for helping us facilitating a discussion and making a decision about this at some future time um i think this is something uh is probably not so appropriate for the august meeting since it's a working session um and so we might wait until september to bring this up and as i mentioned i don't i don't personally feel any sense of get any sense of urgency about this since um you know since uh with the legal settlement uh

054we're kind of we can we're allowed to go through this you know just practice the status quo for another two years but there's no reason to postpone it that long but i think it's worth a a good consideration in building uh you know building a consensus and building more of a political will about you know what to do about what's appropriate okay um chris you have your hand up sorry um well i would hope the aerators in belleville and ford lakes are solar-powered out there in the summer it's nowhere i mean those pumps are serious electricity um it seems to me that we could do two things one relatively easily one much more difficult i suspect one is to increase the storage requirement for rain gardens um they are completely worthless for the kinds of

055rains we've had in the last month all of them will would have been completely overwhelmed and would be even if we increased the standard to something a little higher and of course rita knows and lisa knows and thank you lisa for passing on all these documents the coefficient of runoff for turfgrass is just about the same as asphalt and of course the i would guess the principle source of phosphate that isn't somehow added to the environment is coming off our soils and if we diminish runoff by converting turf grass to more absorptive plant materials that allow water to percolate rather than runoff will diminish the phosphate low down in the river and causing that to be a regulation is a ways away i would guess but uh it would have a big effect it certainly

056would um you know do we have the whole example of detergents you know dishwashing detergents used to have we're loaded with phosphorus phosphate and they were banned back in the 70s and they made a big impact um people are still allowed to use um phosphorous as a chemical as a pure chemical you know rock phosphate as a fertilizer but um even just you know just having a regulation where you're not allowed to use a phosphate infanti fertilizer in the city would be useful you know you can still add phosphate to your garden but it has it would be a slow release variety like we have we you know no fertilizers especially not on grass are phosphate contain phosphate in ann arbor that's the rule whether that's true i'm not sure how but i think the

057commercial companies are complying and i don't see much phosphate fertilizer in the vendors that homeowners can buy here well you can still buy it online and you can still apply it to your gardens but that's expensive to ship so most people are buying from local vendors and and that's right but i know but i know you can buy it off you can buy it from amazon 50 pound bags of it so okay so a lot of this is going to be public education of course so um um let's see chris did you have an um would you like you have any more comments all right i'm sorry okay uh your hand was still up so um does anybody else wish to make a comment at this point okay i see you're hearing none but uh

058so i will i will continue making inquiries over the next month and i'll give you the commission an update um next week next month and then we will have we'll have probably a whole environmental commission meeting for this item alone when when it when it's prepared when we're all when we all feel prepared for a general discussion and some moving forward to some kind of a decision okay well the next item on the agenda is uh professor sally is going to speak on steve yes sorry to interrupt but i think that we were going to we reordered to have kathy talk about a20 i thought that was going to be at the end at the very end okay i thought it was at the end of new business okay all right well that's continued this

059is a new business uh sally roy on the uh planning staff report i'm sorry next on the agenda and then kathy and lisa you so um let's see sally areta do you want to uh yes why don't you manage the discussion here sure i'd like to welcome and introduce professor sally oy astronomer from the university of michigan um who has guided the city's development of uh an outdoor lighting ordinance to improve the quality of our lighting at night improve the reduce the use of electricity and actually it's something that will improve our nighttime environment um and so i would uh she has um kind of along with john mursky done a lot of work and this uh ordinance that we're going to discuss tonight has actually been approved by the planning commission it's been slightly

060amended and you'll see you had in your packet the amended um ordinance that'll be discussed at city council in the first meeting in august i believe but we wanted to just have a chance to have the environmental commission to see this ordinance hear its importance and uh make some comments that i think will um i'm hoping will continue in an educational direction but but before we go i would just like to um again thank sally or youtube for joining us and and um i if you want to start right now and and talk that would be great thank you great um let me get myself set up here can you see my screen yeah yeah uh great um thank you so much for inviting me and um uh i'm actually also the coordinator of an

061organization called michigan dark skies and that is a community group that is dedicated to raising awareness about light pollution and advocating for preserving the natural night sky which as i will show is a an important environmental concern i do want to again give a great acknowledgement to commissioner john mursky who really took this on and said let's do this when i approached him about trying to put together a lighting ordinance for ann arbor and so without his enthusiasm and dedication and work together with a couple other members of the planning commission and a couple other people this would never have happened so we're very very grateful to all of them so i have actually presented on this topic before to the environmental commission four years ago but most of you are new now so i

062apologize to those of you who have already heard various incarnations of my presentation but um this is an opportunity to bring everybody on board and as commissioner mitchell mentioned to really hope to spread the word and and the environmental commission is so important for this kind of advocacy so um in basically we're talking about a change to the fundamental nature of the night and the night is its own ecosystem ordinarily it should look something like what we see in this picture the normal night sky with stars and darkness and so forth but in fact 80 of people in the world live in something that looks more like this at night and so that is obviously not natural a lot of this lighting is absolutely necessary for our functioning at night and some of it's beautiful

063but a lot of it is not and the part that's not is meaning not used means that it is wasted light that performs no function or task whatsoever and that means that it is literally wasted energy and therefore it's pollution it's light pollution when you look down on the earth as you see on this picture you can see all of this light going straight up into outer space where it serves absolutely no one so that light is not doing the function that it was intended to be doing so light pollution is a significant waste of energy and it's a problem that is also increasing exponentially as time goes by here's a study showing what the light pollution map of the 48 states looked like in 1950s in the 1970s in 1997 and then the projection

064for 2025 and you can see that this is really an existential threat to the natural dark ecosystem here's the light pollution map for michigan and you can see that we're one of the few places east of the mississippi where there are still substantial regions especially in northern michigan that have pristine natural darkness there's even a couple patches in the lower uh peninsula as well so this is something that is very precious now in fact the michigan department of natural resources has designated six state parks as dark sky reserves so even our state recognizes at that level that dark skies are a natural resource worth preserving another thing to point out on this kind of map is that these are particularly light polluting cities that you can see here in red but that their footprint really

065extends over a much larger area so the affected area is on the order of 10 times larger than the light polluting source urban center itself so the surrounding communities are in fact stakeholders in a city's lighting and its lighting ordinance so this is an environmental issue we humans don't pay too much attention to it because we are daytime creatures and that is uh to the detriment of every creature that lives at night artificial light at night the buzzword is alan for the environmental for the biological sciences artificial light at night interferes with wildlife migration mating feeding and sleep which is pretty much everything that wildlife do animals and plants live by a 24-hour cycle and that gets disrupted by artificial lights and that includes humans as well so for example the nobel prize in medicine

066was awarded in 2017 for discoveries relating to the circadian rhythms of human health and uh much of this stems from disrupting our sleep cycles which has serious health consequences including obesity and cancer and cardiovascular problems and so forth the american medical association has actually issued an extensive report about the problems related to light pollution to our health and that's posted on our group's website so it's not just ourselves that are having trouble with this but obviously animals as well if we can't sleep neither can they birds are an especially uh sensitive creature to light pollution and that's because many bird species migrate at night but they normally rely on navigating by the light of the moon and the stars but with artificial lights then they get very confused in their navigations and they frequently end

067up colliding with buildings which are the number two cause of bird death after cats and it's believed that up to a billion birds are killed a year which is just mind-boggling these are up to a billion that actually crash into buildings and die um and you may have heard about how drastically the bird populations have been going down over the last decades we are here on the bird migration highway in the great lakes and so uh that is something that birding uh community is well aware of this problem with light pollution and crashing into buildings and for example here in our great lakes area the royal ontario museum annually puts on this exhibit where they've collected all these dead birds and display them to raise awareness about this issue a particularly poignant study was done

068regarding the 911 tribute lights in new york city they have this on on every september 11th they have this display where they shoot these very very bright lights straight up into the sky on the footprint of the former twin towers and these actually attract birds so many birds that you can detect them on radar which is what you see down here in the lower left there are so many birds about 15 000 birds that are trapped there that you can actually see them on the radar so this is when the lights are on and when the lights are off that you can see that they're not there anymore and so they actually need to turn these lights off for 20 minutes at a time in order to let the birds go so there are organizations

069that try to promote these lights out programs including in chicago and detroit has also participated in these in the past as has ann arbor it's always a struggle to kind of remind people to do this every year but there are organizations right here in our area that are uh always raising awareness about the lights out programs including washtenaw safe passage for example here in our county so birds are not the only animal that is affected by light pollution there's another famous example of sea turtles where baby sea turtles hatch on the beach and then they are biologically programmed to look for the glinting of the waves and thereby reach the sea as quickly as possible in order to survive but when they see the city lights they go toward the glinting of the city lights

070instead and they end up not making it to the sea um and obviously they don't survive in that way so this is from a public service announcement in florida you may also have heard about the insect apocalypse when i was a kid and would go on road trips then you know the front of the car would be covered with insects and that just doesn't happen now which is absolutely terrifying because insects are the bottom of the food chain so light pollution has been definitively linked to insect to the insect apocalypse is just one of several reasons why this is happening but for example when insects larvae are exposed by lights at night then they get consumed by their predators more easily as well adult insects like fireflies even i believe are threatened now um and

071and yeah basically other activities that insects do are also disrupted they they navigate basically by the same principles that birds do for example and then there are other animals at night that are also uh important to us for example bats are nocturnal pollinators of certain things like the tequila agave and then fish apparently are also affected by light pollution including economically important species and so forth so just to give a quick overview of light pollution itself so there's three types we've got glare which is the kind that you see when you're driving at light and somebody shines their headlights and your eyes that is a health hazard it's a safety hazard um for both drivers and pedestrians and then there's light trespass and uh that happens for example when you've got the neighbor's flood light

072shining into your bedroom window which is also a health hazard as we've talked about as well as a nuisance and then you've got sky glow which is the unnatural brightening of the night sky itself and that again is a health hazard and an ecological problem there's also an issue with the color of light pollution so blue or light is not as good as as red light generally speaking and that's because blue light scatters much more strongly so that means it spreads the footprint of the light pollution you've also got a problem that blue light is more experienced more as glare especially for people who already have vision problems and then there's also the fact that blue light will also destroy your night vision more quickly than red light which is why astronomers run around with

073little red flashlights instead of blue flashlights so it turns out that these led lights that are very prevalent nowadays have much more blue light in them if they're the kind that are super super bright like you know when you're under a fluorescent light that's a very very white light that white color actually has a lot of blue wavelengths in it and that's the kind that actually uh you know is a problem at the level that the american medical association again has issued a statement about led lights in particular as being disruptive to our sleep cycles so leds have been wonderful because they are very energy efficient but the question is will they actually save us energy so there's a phenomenon called the javen's paradox which was known since 1865 that if you increase energy efficiency

074it simply leads to greater energy consumption and what i'm showing here on this plot is the price of lighting energy uh in this dotted line since the year 1700 up to the year 2000 and this is data for the uk and then uh the solid line shows the per capita consumption of lighting energy in the uk over that same period of time and you basically see that these two lines exactly mirror each other so people are not saving energy they're just lighting up more and i think you know anecdotally if you look around at all the led lighting that's gone up recently since the year 2000s it seems completely consistent with the gevins paradox and that's why legislation is absolutely imperative to realize any benefits of conservation for energy efficiency so the good news is

075that this problem is easily solved simply by following these four steps to light only what is needed no more than what is needed only when it is needed and no bluer that that is needed so this is not like cleaning up a toxic waste dump once you have the lights off the problem is solved uh and so that's the idea behind the ann arbor lighting ordinance the idea is to help accomplish this and to help raise awareness so that people can accomplish this and just uh look at their own lighting and how they can chip in so these are the highlights of the ordinance so it will specify that nighttime outdoor lighting should have warm colors and this is a technical specification for that so it basically corresponds to if you have a white light

076that it's not that super super white led white white but that it is a warm white in fact led manufacturers are getting much better now at manufacturing those kinds of lights uh that are warmer in color for white light trespass is going to be limited at the property light fixtures are to be fully shielded so in other words no light above the horizontal but not this but this that there would be curfew for business lights and there would be limits on brightness for facades under canopy lighting and parking lot lighting and to the extent possible that there would be some way to get non-compliant lights into compliance so that is what we are seeking support from this commission for i would now go into a little detail on the um on the ordinance itself so

077you can see exactly what the document is let me just switch to a different screen share okay so here is the document itself uh actually that's the old one and so this is in your packet so it starts with the purpose the purpose is basically to address the issues that i've just mentioned to minimize the adverse effects of light pollution to protect the natural environment to promote energy efficiency and also to foster an environment that actually enhances commerce and whatever we want to do at night if you have these more mellow lights then um it's basically a more pleasant urban environment in our downtown district then we've got applicability and it basically applies to all outdoor lighting at night that is on private property of course and because that's what the udc applies to and

078there are these exemptions temporary lights are exempted so that includes things like christmas lights so that's for a total of 90 days lighting for flags is exempted and any lighting that has to do with a historic character is also exempt and then there's the color as i mentioned the limitation on the color and then we have the limits on trespass and light trespass means no more than a certain limit is allowed over the property boundary and that's done by zones and then we've got a prohibition on glare and then we've got specifications for shielding so if you're shining the if your target is flat basically on the ground if you're trying to illuminate something that's pointing downward then basically your fixtures have to be shielded so that there's no light emitted above the horizontal plane

079as i showed an earlier figure for vertical targets let's say that you're trying to illuminate a statue or something like that then that's okay you can point upward some but you should make every effort to shield the rest so that you're not spilling too much light off of the target and then there are limits for facade lighting and a curfew for facade lighting and then there's uh limits to brightness on for under canopy lighting like at gas stations and so forth and then flood lights flood lights are not to be angled any higher than 45 degrees meaning 45 degrees downward and then there's a prohibition on changing lights so no moving lights or blinking lights or things like that the amendment that was mentioned uh extends this to temporary lights and then there's parking lots

080uh limits to brightnesses on them and a curfew for them as well and then uh indoor lighting also shall not be a source of light trespass or glare and then finally to the extent possible for example if you change an outdoor light fixture completely not just the bulb but if you change the light then it needs to come into conformance uh with the with the new rule and then this would be enforced especially for any site plan that requires a submitted plan to the city the rest of it is pretty much just definitions and there's a couple you know diagrams that are helpful and so forth made by commissioner lisa sovay and then there's the amendment right here that was discussed and added on by the planning commission and that again addresses the temporary lights

081not being flashing etc and that's pretty much it so um i would be happy to answer any questions about this well thank you professor white i first um i first saw this topic uh i was almost it was almost um four and a half years ago by now the planning commission approved this uh uh just about a year ago in august yeah so i see a few hands raised um kathy griswold and lisa i'm not sure who was first because i can't i still see the screen that's being shared cathy was first okay kathy you have the floor and then lisa okay thank you very much professor i saw this presentation at a local sierra club meeting at the botanical gardens a few years ago and i i also reviewed it and i believe it

082john mursky's request because i'm pretty outspoken about the need for lighting especially lighting for pedestrian street lighting and i um i agree with everything this is this is really great i look forward to something similar for our public right of way if whatever we can control locally that's not controlled by the the state and federal government what many people don't understand is more lighting is not better lighting and in looking at crosswalk crashes glare is is a contributing factor and also a recent crash that we had in the north side of the street was was quite dark and it was difficult to see pedestrians and so what ended up happening is dte kept increasing the brightness on the south side that actually made it because of the contrast even more difficult to see the pedestrian

083so i i won't go into more details other than to say um this is great i i recommend that we endorse it and i look forward to the uh the work for the public right-of-way thank you so much council member grizzled i remember discussing it with you thank you very much oh you're welcome okay um thanks kathy lisa you have the floor and then chris and then young when um this is really uh illuminating um i am confused about one thing which is that in the in the document that was on our screen in the applicability section there was um yeah it wasn't that one that we were seeing we were seeing a different applicability section uh and so that's partly why i'm confused the one that was showing on the screen as you were

084speaking at the very end included any project for which a site review is required uh i would strike that uh i'm sorry go ahead i would strike that because uh we're having the same issue with the um ev ordnance um the requirement of a site plan review by oh wait is it just site plan review at planning or site plan review at council or yours well um the the language that you saw was this can you see my screen or not yeah that's not what we were seeing though when you were speaking it was a much shorter thing and it had something about a site plan review and uh that was the sorry for interrupting but i thought that that was the prior version of the ordinance it was not what we are seeing right

085now so was it this it's not changing sally i'm not sure what's happening okay i'm sorry um someone it says your screen sharing is paused let me resume okay there we go okay so is it is it this can you go up a little bit yeah so scroll up no because i think this is the same thing again that you were just showing us yes so let me ask is it is it this one yeah it was this one okay yeah this is the existing one so this is going away all together so i apologize because when i first started to show it to you i i came up with this page and that and that was a lot because you were going into so much detail that was not on this page and i

086was like okay so now i understand and i'm looking at the file in from my agenda so now now i'm not confused i apologize and this what i'm showing right here actually is only for non-conforming existing lighting in the first place but of course if a plan is submitted to the city for any new construction it needs to comply with this and they need to demonstrate um okay um i think um let's see whose hand was up uh chris chris and then um pyongyang so uh thank you um gosh energy commission and planning commission planning commission wonderful help from the university the original request to do something about lighting in ann arbor has been around since the 2000s mid 2000s almost as long as i've been on the commission and i'm so excited that we've

087reached the level of sophistication that this ordinance suggests um i'm wondering if we could add a provision that would allow uh some sort of complaint process to [Music] to ask for city um intervention and egregious circumstances of too much light i appreciate that it's normal to do these kinds of regulations for cycling review procedures and in the long run that will help but there are um some [Music] obvious um uh shall i call them difficult situations out there that someone might make a complaint about and cause a process that might result in diminishing light pollution sooner rather than later just a suggestion thank you um enforcement has was something that was discussed you know quite a bit because this is obviously something that is difficult to enforce especially because it's at night um and so

088uh i think we just kind of left that as a c-click fix situation um but i hope that just by raising awareness and this is the kind of thing that's going to need a lot of education um so i hope also that you know we can follow up at some point with the suggestion that council member griswold made about you know moving on to the the city's right-of-way uh stuff also i mean we have actually had some discussions with the city and with dda to begin with and then i'm afraid coven happened then i kind of let that slide because a lot of my notes were in my office um so i think education is very very important in addressing these kinds of issues um but i hope that having an ordinance will at least

089allow people to start approaching each other and saying are you aware that you know you're causing glare and that this is actually an issue that the city has legislated about um so you know if if somebody is in violation of this then i hope you know there would be a means to at least try to submit it through see click fix and i also did want to mention since you suggested uh that ann arbor has been looking at this for 20 years i was pleasantly surprised that chelsea i discovered only the last few months has had a lighting ordinance for years and they've actually just gone through an update to it which is far more comprehensive than ann arbor's and also scio and brighton have lighting ordinances that work on parts of the ann arbor

090so we're a little behind the curve on this sorry uh young when you have the floor and then rita yeah thank you so much for the wonderful presentation i really feel the need to like target by pollution because some of my friends are like birders and then they really love birds and they also told me about like how lighting kind of kind of factors and i just have some questions for you so like what are the main sources of light pollution in that knobber it's like from like commercial like businesses or like is it from like residential area from like private homes and like buildings audience like be able to target those problems oh that's a great question that's a really great question um in general businesses produce a lot more light so uh i

091i don't have actual data on who's producing the most light pollution here in ann arbor but in general businesses do have the most light they need the most light so uh you know that's a natural consequence we've also had a lot of issue with street lights in ann arbor um in terms of the pedestrian globe lights that are downtown and dda has been very helpful in helping us to get some of those get most of those well some of those converted um the new ones that they have uh implemented since we've approached them i don't know if you've noticed but some of them have actually have these light lids so that the top half of the globe is dark and they also have changed the color of them so that they are this more mellow

092color and you can actually go downtown and compare and contrast you'll see some of these uh newer globes that i'm talking about i think on william i said william and then in kerrytown also on fifth um and deals notice immediately a contrast between those and the the ones that are on main street uh the university of michigan is a huge problem too um and they are not under the jurisdiction of the lighting ordinance so that's yet another you know uh uh initiative that we have um we're only just getting started with the university of michigan but we we do have that on our on our agenda um and then the rest of the new street lights that are going in are actually not bad um the city is aware since we've raised this so i

093think the new street lights that are going in are in good compliance and then also the the ones that are under the state jurisdiction for streets like um like jackson road and so forth those new ones are also fully shielded and they're generally in pretty good shape um although some of the ones that are being installed at roundabouts in the county we're having an issue with the washington county road commission because they are putting in uh lighting for the roundabouts that is significantly in excess of uh industry guidance so that is something that we're still trying to work on and of course the lighting ordinance won't affect them either so the lighting ordinance applies to the private the private property in the cities it would be private homes and businesses as well so i think

094the main benefit would be the businesses in answer to your question okay i see and also i feel like like because some doors some stores leave their lights on like even when they're not using them midnight i'm just like wondering like are these lights necessary for safety or like i i'm not exactly sure like what this flight support because like in china when i where i was where i lived for like a long time and they don't usually have lights in the stores overnight i'm just like wondering because i i was just really curious like what what those lights are if like they are necessary for businesses well it's not my job to decide whether the night lights are necessary or an area or not but if they're not necessary they need to be turned

095off basically uh but the there is a specification in here that lights that are not for safety should be off i believe half an hour after the close of business if they are outdoor lights okay actually thank you thank you um thanks rita you have your hand up you have the floor thank you um uh sally thanks again for this presentation it is great um i want to just point out that in our next step that one of the things that has really come to my mind is that the need for public education ongoing so given that the ordinance has its limits and applicability to the site plans i'm hoping that we'll be able to work with council to move things forward in an educational way to encourage homeowners and business owners to reduce their

096lights even if they are not covered by the changes in the ordinance it would be really nice in my opinion to reduce some of those holiday lights reduce some of the the lights on as young one was saying lights on in buildings at night it really supports the kind of thing that the hs0 program is guiding us toward that we really should be reducing some of our use of energy overall so i'm hoping that we see some action in that way as well thank you yes i think that's really the most important thing that we could be doing because this is not going to help unless people are aware and i think once people are aware they really do just suddenly say oh i never thought about that i think i'll change the lights on

097my house and it's really not necessarily an expensive thing to do our group is is available to help with anybody who would like to work on that kind of outreach we have on our website first of all we have a website and we also have educational materials there and our group has even developed a children's activity too i wonder if anyone was interested thank you okay rita um yeah thank you very much professor roy um so if there are no further comments um shall we go on to the resolution i i see additional hands steve sorry i'm sorry yes i did not um notice that well i think i don't know who was first at least i think lisa was first lisa and then kathy and then chris or have a very quick request um

098uh professor oye would you be willing to share your slide presentation with us because there are some graphics there that i think would be great to put in my newsletter so that my constituents can be aware of the problem the exponential increase for example was a pretty striking slide yes i'm definitely planning to do that commissioner mitchell had already asked me to do that in advance so i apologize for not having them ready for the meeting thank you councilmember dish okay thanks kathy then um kathy and then chris uh chris was next sorry chris and then kathy oh okay i just have a quick comment that probably goes a little bit beyond the ordinance my daughter lives in connecticut and she just drives me crazy because the light's around in the house all the time

099she's got two little boys that are running around she just can't deal with it but it drives me nuts and i compare it to a situation where i i saw in france once i went into a dentist's office and that hallway was dark and i had to push a button and the light went out in the hallway for one minute you had a minute to make it to the door or something and we just if if we could get a i think this whole ordinance and the whole lighting thing in general to me impinges on the whole idea of outreach you know people just need to be educated that we just don't need as much light as we got and it goes way beyond the ordinance so you know if there's some way we could

100erase the public awareness of this whole thing it would be great so let's i'll shut up thanks thank you that's exactly the point thanks chris kathy i yes i just wanted to volunteer my advocacy and and history based on uh pedestrian crashes and one of the examples that you mentioned was the lighting at roundabout and what most people don't understand is if if you're driving on a road that's dark and then suddenly you have this bright light at the roundabout it's actually more dangerous because your your eye is not going to be able to quickly adjust to the darkness again and you're not going to be able to see so it's not just a waste of energy so anyway i feel very strongly about that and let me know if i can help in any

101way thank you so much councilmember griswold i will definitely be calling you uh this issue with the washington county road commission um is exactly that concern oh okay and they are they are building so there's already a new one at wagner and miller i'm sorry this is not ann arbor business but um yeah but there's a problem with with the lighting and exactly the way you described oh okay and it does impact ann arbor residents who are driving out there though sure i feel it's relevant so yeah thank you well i didn't want to take up this commission's time but i will definitely contact you thank you so much which is a lot of anne our residents while mabel was closed but wagner is totally packed with cars yeah okay um i think i don't

102see any other hands up so rita why don't we move onwards to the resolution right all right so um would the commission like to look at the resolution on on the screen or have you all read it um so um i really feel uncomfortable reading the whole thing um but i think the the the sense of it is that it points out the the issues um of light trespass sky glow etc glare the blue rich led lighting um the waste of energy um just that light trespass is really a problem for safety and and for um just health i think um uh i'm skipping around here um well rita i'm sorry to interrupt but my understanding is that this there's nothing new in this resolution this is a resolution supporting what the energy commission and

103the planning commissioner already that is correct yes yes right and so the addition though that i just want to say then is the last part which has to do with education so encouraging council to work toward developing some educational materials or perhaps inc um working in conjunction with professor oye and her group um to expand that kind of outreach and education i really think that would be worthwhile so um yeah so that's that um so are there any questions about the resolution move to pass the resolution second resolution endorsing the amended enhanced outdoor lighting um and support of the energy commission and uh planning commissions um submission to city council love say aye we're raising i anyone opposed hearing and seeing nothing um i think it passes unanimously so would you have caitlyn forward this

104to city council we'll do that thank you all thank you very much thank you professor roy thank you so much all your support is greatly appreciated thank you we'll all be in touch okay well let's move on to reports from committees so natural features chris uh i think he stepped away oh he did okay well how about pollinators um pollinators um is working toward very similar kinds of things that i just mentioned which is education um to provide people with information on um the importance of saying this over and over again reducing turf grass reducing pesticides um and installing um gardens so um we are working with um a young entomologist who is providing us with some background and some um i think some additional support that will help us develop some materials and some

105outreach so that's that's our next particular program um and also in uh as a another one that i've talked over um significantly with commissioner mursky is um trying to work with some large landowners to convert property to less turf grass and we have a target ex-commissioner anne bannister is working with um with me to to approach one of the local churches that has some significant land that we think would be useful um so we'd be building on um installations there that would be provide educational information for even the parishioners that maybe they would take to their homes and expand it that way so that's just one right now yeah okay um oh chris do you have a report with natural features group um we uh because of my uh overload in business are going slowly

106a suggestion was made to try to convert a lot of the language in new and old in the woodlands section and the landmark trees section to a chart um apparently that's the fashion in the planning department now rather than just text in code chart and graphics and we've done our first attempt at that and it's not not so easy so stay tuned we'll see how that goes okay you're a pioneer here chris so i'm sorry um the other work groups i need to retire and and put full time on this stuff well um that's fine yeah okay um do you want to mention anything else no but i um had a client that lost a 36 inch heritage tree down into a big red oak down into his house last week i was very sad

107about that it was really big and uh it was a tree in an 84 fragment on the top of the glendalough hill and came down with no obvious reason perfect a healthy tree lots of acorns oh that's a shame okay um the zero waste working group you want me to go lisa yes i want you to go first and then i'll talk about the policy committee okay sure um so we've completed the micros grant that we will be submitting to um blanking right now lisa next energy yeah um for uh the first phase of work on creating metrics around the circular economy so that's been well worked and the office of sustainability and innovations will probably be submitting that on behalf of the city next week and then the goal for the first phase is

108to get an intern to work with us to do the background work and the research and the literature review to develop the metrics but then we've already started working on the second phase and the next grant application to move the work forward to implementation we've got great support from several organizations providing letters of support so overall we've put together a well prepared proposal and it's great that we've got uh support from several organizations county city university etc so fingers crossed that we'll be reporting back in september on successful um receipt of the funding which will be ten thousand dollars for the first phase okay so you'll know what the funding decision was in september that's what we're anticipating sometime september-ish yep that's right i think we're committed to the work moving forward and i think

109so is the city so if for some reason it's not funded i think we're going to find alternative paths right okay and then the other major thing that the zero waste working group is doing is that its policy committee has drafted a zero waste target date which will become a resolution to bring to council but first we'll bring it here um and it is it asks the council to reaffirm its uh zero waste goal which was in not the most recent but the one before that iteration of the solid waste resource management plan and we're asking council to reaffirm this goal and set target dates and think about strategies as part of realizing strategy five of the a20 plan which calls both for expanded composting and recycling so um and also uh to promote a

110circular economy and part of one of the stages along the way to a circular economy is expanding compost and recycling to reduce the amount of waste that goes to landfills and so we will be bringing you this policy document i hope at the next meeting we've gone through really a lot of drafts and a lot of really thoughtful deliberative sessions on this and we've engaged staff support and i think it's a really strong statement at this point so i'm i'm eager for you to see it and excited about that yeah that's wonderful okay um let's see um i guess that leaves the uh solid waste working group uh which is really basically uh construction and demolition ordinance i don't have anything to say today about that um so um i think that covers the committees

111and working groups um other commissions um i think shannon's not here so planning is not represented we still haven't gotten them assigned a commission or assigned to the parks yeah i hope to remedy that by our next meeting which is a working group session um and uh john mercy is out as well but he's provided he's provided a statement here from the environment from the energy commission that i think i will just read to people and his absence so the energy commission first of all at its meeting on july 13 they considered three resolutions there's a second presentation on the case for a municipal utility uh by the citizens group and order for public power a resolution was also introduced for the first reading asking the energy commission to formally request city council to fund

112a municipalization feasibility study this is estimated to cost 120 000 so um there was a lot of good discussion that a date has not yet been set for the second reading possible vote on the resolution as it is likely other viewpoints will be presented in future commission meetings if the idea advances there is also likely to be a lot of discussion on the content of the feasibility studies rfp regarding the scope right and mix of assets grid and or distributed energy resources including i imagine microgrids and services to be evaluated in the study so again now this is an alternative the city has um to provide actually to create a supplemental um [Music] um utility um that would be supplemental to what the gt is providing i believe there was a second reading of a

113resolution in support of a proposed energy benchmarking and disclosure ordinance which applies to the commercial and multi-family housing sector the resolution was voted on and passed unanimously the draft ordinance now goes to city council for consideration a resolution in support of a sister ordinance requiring a home energy audit and its disclosure at the time of sale of single-family residences will be taken up at the commission's next meeting so the two ordinances together will ensure that the ann arbor built environment sectors have some type of energy related disclosure requirement this would be commercial multi-family and single-family buildings so different disclosure requirements make sense for these different sectors both ordinances are modeled on similar ordinances which are in effect in other municipalities there was also a second reading of a resolution asking the city to promote and

114support the use of low-carbon materials in construction the resolution was voted on passed unanimously and now advances to city council for its consideration so a pilot low carbon meaning 37 percent lower carbon emissions co2 emissions a mix was poured last week on repair sections of south industrial highway and the tridelta sorority the cement workers liked working with the new mix and the second floor was observed by a concrete expert from michigan tech and a rep from the michigan concrete association so all of the above mentioned materials and resolutions are posted on legistar for anyone's inspection um so we should also mention during this meeting that the mayor has proposed a climate action millage to be put to a public vote this november the proposal was discussed only briefly at the energy commission meeting uh there

115has been some other um i think reports on m-live in a city council meeting was a brief discussion i believe about about this knowledge proposal um so um all i knew at this point personally is that uh you know it's a village proposal to fund the 820 effort basically um it's a 20-year um so far it's a 20-year mileage um i have to propose one mill um so um i think lisa and uh lisa and chris have uh something to say on this so you want to start lisa and then of course it's not on this i wanted to say that i could report from the planning commission and that it's very easy because the planning commission did not meet on july 6th and it is meeting now so there's another report okay all right

116well thank you sorry i just noticed that uh chris you had something to say about this uh going back to your um um gosh um forgive me i've completely forgotten what in the world you were talking about before you got to this getting tired my apologies no i'm sorry i was talking about the parks benchmarking and before you talked about the arts commission other parts parks i'll think of it and be back to you okay all right so um and then um okay that's all that john wanted to report at this point okay from the energy commission so i'm sure there'll be a lively debate about this knowledge proposal and i um i'm not sure when council is going to bring it up uh on its agenda possibly i think on august 2nd is that

117correct okay lisa is affirming that so we can expect to have a discussion of council about this knowledge proposed knowledge um that's all i know um so if there's no more okay chris has his hand still has his hand up i haven't thought of it yet i'm sorry i'll keep working with it that's okay so the next uh report uh on the list here is from council and uh you were going to mention about the a20 so this would be a good place to talk about the a20 i mentioned to council member dish that i was working on a resolution for the environmental commission and she offered to co-sponsor it and suggested that we just bring it to council and we did and it passed unanimously on monday tuesday night and before midnight the 820

118plan was actually updated so it's truly a living document and the resolution was to add just a few words to um strategy six action six of the plan to include not only monitoring heat air quality waterways and flooding but implement sensors to monitor and strategies to manage and just a few words but that is is very very important because it moves us into a more active operational area and i want to commend um missy stokes for for writing the resolution for uh supporting it and also for um updating a20 as well as jennifer lawson uh and what this means is that we will be more proactive and there will be no increase in funding needed from the general fund because storm water management is funded from the storm water fees so there there is a

119separate fund for that um and missy and i met with some neighbors who had extensive flooding uh damage and it's been chronic um off orchard hills drive and the proposal is to have a meeting with the neighbors not only in that neighborhood but in a couple of adjacent neighborhoods and we feel that we need to be proactive because if we're having flood damage on a regular basis we can't be a resilient community if we haven't resolved our minor flooding issues that are chronic you know we've got to be ready for for these uh heavy rains and one of the issues is that storm water management was not required in residential neighborhoods until the 80s so many of our older neighborhoods do not have i'm sorry storm water management and in in the case of orchard

120hills drive the there is a county drain there but it's inadequate and uh we believe that it is collapsed in at least one place so excuse me with with this framework we'll be able to have um the office of osi do education advocacy uh interacting with the community and then um sort of scope out some of these projects and then the actual work will be done um and i'm through public works and that does acknowledge that we're going to need more staff because we can't just say we're going to do more uh through osi when the work is going to be done through public works and so there's already been a discussion about that and that that will be ongoing okay all right thank you you're welcome um yeah this has been a recurring book

121you know kind of kind of still a um i think a unresolved area certainly um you know so i think this is deserving of a full commission meeting at some time in the near future at the right time are you referring to flooding yeah maybe we can have a review of the city's green streets policy and revisit that somewhat because it does seem to not be addressing the issue completely so um lisa you have your hand up and then chris kathy was first i want to thank you very much for all your work on that it's so important that we make the connection between flooding and climate change and that the work of osi while it has been brilliant and effective in the areas of energy it also needs to extend to these other effects

122of climate change so um but did you want to update them about the landfill solar project and uh and the fact that council approved the um articles in court of incorporation for joining warmah if the other members of warma accept us or do you want me to have just done that by what i just said because council also did that yes if you do that i i guess i would like to say that um this resolution it really looked easy and simple and it was done within a few days uh but that is because of of the tremendous um work from staff that had been done prior and so it was just the right time to bring this together so i i i cannot say enough about the staff that that worked on this it

123passed unanimously it was not controversial at all however it was something that has needed uh to be done probably for decades well yeah thank you very much kathy that was that's fairly stellar um chris you have your hand up so um lisa and kathy the performance of the city in the six and a half inch event friday three weeks ago presented flooding problems that weren't on the list of things that were approved in a extensive study three or four maybe five years ago there are things that we need to worry about those that list was a list of chronic things and are underway did we get some new ones to add to the list in this last event um we are aware of them neighbors have raised issues i think that it's still being formalized

124i know that in the third ward there was an issue on pittsfield street or road um i have two in the second ward narrow gauge nature area as as well as the area around the arboretum uh it will one of them has has made will be on this in the cip however uh when we have this type of flooding we can't be a resilient community if we're going to take four or five years to analyze it and get it in the cip and so i think that this resolution is going to fast track some of these i'm i i begin to see the list and compare it with the really comprehensive study that was done and see if there are new ones in this much i mean for us to have more than a four

125inch event is really unprecedented and so no doubt some new things showed up would you mind sharing that list with me sure i'll go back and find a study and the city has a model to predict these things and it may explain why i all fast-tracked so much steven um construction debris i don't usually take materials to what used to be called calverts which is where a lot of the construction debris from ann arbor gets cycled through out on jackson way west jackson road now owned by recycle ann arbor and i was astounded at the volume of material that they're processing through there every day i mean the place is just really busy and i asked the guy okay so a load of construction debris comes in here are you sorting it recycling it and

126he said absolutely so i would suggest that um contact be made with recycling ann arbor with the guys that are working out there i don't know who's leading and solving these problems for them but uh i think they're hot on the trail of no they are sean adams is my contact out there they've been doing um they've been doing this for a number of years in support of led projects you know many of them at the university because they have uh you know because that's a requirement for led certification you're right on top of it thank you stephen yep and you know um yeah and um some of the um you know some of the uh some of the materials are are eminently recyclable and some you know like for example asphalt and all that

127asphalt that gets taken up when they do road repairs that's always fun that's almost all recycled but other things uh it's more difficult so um yeah thanks for the comment chris um i hope i can update the commission next month uh during the working session about the cnd the other thing that we're really missing is is recycle ann arbor's reuse center on south industrial yeah yeah they lost their lease a year ago and the places remain closed and gosh been nice to keep the thing going for that year of pandemic i guess but um yeah yeah it's my um it's i sorely miss it that was the first place i went to before i went to a hardware store because you could almost always find like uh what you needed like a bed frame or

128a you know or a piece of pipe to do something to do a project or you know yeah shingles so um i'm hoping um i'll see what i'll see if i can get an update from raa and uh and distribute it to this list okay um so is that is that the complete report from council kathy and lisa that's all fabulous that's really good news i'll have to go look at the uh i'm sorry i missed that council session i'll have to go look at the uh the agenda in the minutes on the attachments myself and see what was transpired for the details um so in terms of a chair report i just have um one and that is that we we need still need to recruit two members we're still missing two members and

129uh i've requested an update for applicants and i want to encourage anybody who's listening this to if they would like to serve on this commission to apply within the next week on the city's website and you would be considered along with the current list of candidates for these two positions um and i need to continue trying to contact the parks commission to try to get a parks commissioner assigned um that's all i have to say right now um so the next uh are there any questions i don't see any so um the next uh the next item on the agenda is a report from staff uh galen do you have um a report from the staff not this evening okay um so let's see the next item on the agenda is action points review um

130so what i have um so far is that our next session in august has traditionally been a working session i think that's a good uh that's a good practice so i would like to schedule that as a working session um part of the you know especially because we have new commissioners on hand here so um please um please respond with any agenda items you'd like to have discussed during this working session um and uh galen hardy uh we'll check that off we'll check to make sure that all commissioners have been added to the email distribution list i thought that had been done um a month ago but apparently it has not been done um i will uh send out the promised survey by monday on um commissioners with what their skill sets are and what

131their interests are uh and what kind of goals they would like to see with for the commission i would like to have this survey returned by august 10th if that's possible so that um i can compile everything and then and then distribute it before our working session on august 26th uh galen hardy will include the link to the freak article in the minutes um and um i have a subscription to freak so i know i can read it um i'm not sure what the copyright laws are on this kind of distribution but i think um i want to respect whatever those are so uh um i'm surprised it's still behind their paywall uh hopefully they'll decide to release it at some time in the near future and then sally roy will uh share her slide

132deck with commissioners i think possibly rita mitchell already has it so maybe rita can just make sure that uh that slide deck is emailed to all the commissioners as soon as possible and um are there any other action points i might have missed with somebody any new action points can you say number uh i think it was number three again the survey oh yeah you'll include a link from the uh freak article on the calendar no uh no about the uh survey to commissioners i think that was number yeah i'm going to send a survey by monday to the distribution list for the commissioners it's basically a survey it's it's all long answers no multiple choice on what people's skill sets and interests are whatever information they want to share like um you know if

133they've got a linkedin page or something like that they can choose to share that but whatever their interests are what they're passionate about um discussing and having uh having this commission deal with on what their skill sets are and um what issues they would like us especially investigated over the next year um that's what i was talking about so i'll handle all that galen okay and of course you'll be copied on it as well so are there any suggested items for the next agenda at this point um but i will call i will send out as i have been trying to you'll send out a call for agenda items uh rita and gail and i will put together a skeleton and then um and then we'll see what uh people might want add it to

134frida you have your hand up yeah i just want to put myself on them for a task to send a message to commissioners for their interest in working with me on chapter 40. okay i want to say chris thank you very much for the the help that you've provided so far i appreciate it very much okay so what are yeah okay so that our next for next agenda for that you want that as an agenda item um let me just decide that i guess it would be september if we're doing a work group on in august right um yeah and i just want to remind people that uh if there are no other comments on items for the next agenda i also want to remind people that we need to elect um a chair and

135a vice chair at this meeting as well okay so that will be an agenda um so let's see if there's no other suggestions at this point um uh the next schedule meeting is august 26 2021 it will be a working session meeting and then we begin at 7 pm so the next item on the agenda is public commentary our second public comment period this is an opportunity for persons to speak for up to three minutes please call and 1-888-788-0099-487-853-5247 meeting id 978-7334-3910 this information is also displayed on the meeting agenda and video feed city staff will select callers that have raised their hand one by one using the last three digits of your phone number in order to electronically raise your hand to indicate your desired speed please press star 9 on your phone you

136will hear an automated announcement that the host is allowing you to speak when speaking please move to a quiet area and mute any television or background sounds so that we may hear you clearly please state your name and address at the beginning of your comments and be patient there is a delay of up to 30 seconds before a connection is established is there anybody on the line right now galen no okay well in the meantime there's something i did forget with the chairs report and that is that i'm sorry i've been neglecting the commission business the last couple of weeks because i've been working very hard on fifa's um with the national sierra club and some other organizations on i just want to announce that uh debbie dingle had co had had uh written and

137submitted uh a bill called the pfas action act which uh as which is a significant alteration in how the epa and how and how the toska program handles pfas uh this bill passed the house yesterday after three years of consideration um i i do not know the complete details yet because of course there were amendments flying around at the last minute so i'm here to look at a final copy of it and i can send commissioners a report on that but what it does is that i had significantly empowers the epa to regulate pfas chemicals in their in our environment and their manufacturing use so uh we finally got some movement on this issue and so i'm looking forward to some relief for residents some businesses small businesses that are largely affected by this this

138will also possibly ultimately affect our ability to get some money to uh for whatever uh get some money obtain money for whatever remediation might be required um from our water treatment plant or our wastewater treatment plant with regards to fifa's contamination so um um kalyn is anybody else on the line anybody on the line right now uh no there's no one on the line okay so um this ends the public comment period and so i declare this meeting adjourned at 9 24. thank you everybody see you next month