001and i talked to my grandpa and he they told me if they if they want to win the wars and don't look too good is it don't say that guy but we cannot lose you um their their record here is very low um to get designated is a super fun site my understanding is that the governor has to uh has to sign on she gets one opportunity to designate a superfund site a year she could designate this as the superfund site but the state has to become financially responsible for the cleanup and then recover the damages directly from the polluter so i've heard lots of arguments about this and this is just an example i'm giving about why i'm reluctant to weigh in on this as an environmental commissioner because our duty is to provide
002our best advice that we've heard from the community to integrate it and to provide some advice to city council about about what should happen so now my first um my first uh question that i don't really know is uh does anybody know is this a make or break thing at this point is there no further negotiation does uh does uh do the parties have to accept it or do they totally or do they have to reject it totally and if so then what then what impact would that have on the judge's decision so steve i'll just uh respond to that real quickly is we don't know i mean i think there's a lot of unknown what happens if one jurisdiction approves the cj and the settlement agreement and what if the other ones don't what's
003the judge going to do the the judge could certainly quite possibly listen to uh all of the discussion uh in his courtroom and and decide on a judgment himself uh i i think we're just in uncharted waters and nobody can tell us exactly what's next i think you know council member banister and i have gotten you know dozens and dozens of emails urging us to reject this in its entirety you know i think they're i don't know if there's room to move on some of it i don't know if there's room to move on on none of it i think some of it um certainly the all of the attorneys are paying attention to all of this dialogue uh if if there's room to move i think it's because the judge makes people move okay
004so does the judge himself have uh any um power to modify any of this consent judgment accept or reject parts of it forward well i believe so i believe he can enforce a judgment down on us but you know i'm not a lawyer i you know i'm just kind of repeating some of the things that i've heard from different attorneys that i've been talking to uh you know i i know the judge connors is interested in hearing from the public on this uh in his courtroom uh there had originally been discussion of a uh opportunity for the public to come and comment before him i i don't know where that stands right now um maybe council member bannister has more information on that than i but you know i think that that would be an
005important part of his deliberation to be able to hear directly from the public in his courtroom i haven't heard that he has scheduled that yet but no i haven't heard it specific on that judge connors okay so will he be accepting comment after october 22nd or what is this date what's going to happen on october 22nd steve this is dan bicknell can you hear me um okay yeah okay first of all i want everybody to raise their hand if they want to speak um how do you raise your hand for some questions because he has some some knowledge in this area so dan go ahead dan go ahead and speak um you're muted which number is dan is he the 248 number four three two okay i'm an accident you can leave him unmuted okay
006thank you very much yeah on october 22nd the judge is going to have a hearing and that hearing will be to see what is the status of everyone's review how does the city look at this how does the county look at this how does scio township look at this and generally how does the public look at this and what's being asked of us now is to take a look at the fourth amendment consent judgment and accept it or reject it that's what's being asked of us gellman has said that this is the most that they're willing to give at this time so either you guys are going to agree to this or you're not going to agree to this there's no ability to go and say i want x y and z go back to
007the negotiations the attorney general has indicated in a card meeting recently that if it is rejected that likely the interveners and the state will go back to court with gilman and try to get a better deal or whatever there is the possibility there is a possibility i think as chip was talking about that the judge can just say well uh okay you don't like the fourth consent judgment we're here with the third consent judgment i'm i'm going to potentially just take that third consent judgment and i'm going to order as he has in the past things be done such as to make the drinking water criteria be current at 7.2 instead of 8.5 which it is in the third and make the gsi 280 which is the updated value instead of 2 800. so the
008judge has a lot of latitude but on october 22nd he wants to hear from everyone on what their view is but right now your charter is to accept this or reject it i see so however it would be possible for us to suggest modifications no or or who who would uh i guess it goes back to the attorneys that would be doing they would restart these negotiations that have been going again um brian nagle who's the attorney general assistant attorney general on this had said that if this is rejected that likely they will go to court and try to through the court process through the in front of the judge not have a settlement which this is but force gilman to do specific things so right now we're being asked to say do we agree
009with this take it or leave it offered by gelman i see so um i see okay um is anybody uh pack you would like to speak all right yeah so why don't we i would i that makes total sense to me i'm not a lawyer um but it makes total sense to me that and all we're doing right is recommending to counsel so what we ought to do is you know this is not a motion this is a discussion but we should uh recommend rejecting this settlement then say why that's a whole bunch of warehouses i suppose uh then we should uh say something about what we prefer which is much stricter um or well much more what would be called [Music] a comprehensive cleanup of this plume to prevent it from entering spreading throughout
010the region under ann arbor and adjacent properties or townships whatever the right word is to prevent it from entering into the river to prevent it from entering in to whatever uh and that the um and to protect the three sister lakes or whatever they are the sister lakes you know so we should we should actually list a few criteria that we think are really critical but from my point of view reading all this stuff it looks to me as though this is a super fun disaster gellman is trying to uh get away with murder probably literally and um we don't we can't let this happen ann are you know ann arbor and the people of ann arbor and adjoining townships whatever it's just the wrong thing to do and so we got to say that
011loud and clear to council and then hopefully they too will agree to reject this settlement and return to court and if it returns to court of course it costs ann arbor money and uh but you know maybe we'll get an outcome that is good for our citizens this is not a good outcome for our citizens and what you just picked off there could be part of the whereases it would be whereas this does this whereas this does that where it doesn't do this okay yeah we got to do it in an expedited way i don't know when council needs this spy but we better make sure they have something and it's so perfect as the enemy of the good here got to make sure tomorrow well we gotta get them something and tomorrow yes i
012believe excuse me and anne's you know arms or something no i'm just kidding council votes on the 19th on this issue all right so that's our last opportunity is on the 19th of october which is before our next regular meeting so um so let's see anybody else want to make a comment here i think rita has her hand up go ahead first i want to thank you steve for writing a draft resolution that rejects this consent judgment thank you for taking the lead on that and for working very hard to push forward with this meeting which was difficult under the timing that we had but i totally agree with rejecting it i believe that this does not do uh good for the citizens of the area and that we should make that clear so i'll
013just make it that short right now um there i think there are plenty of reasons we've heard good reasons and we should in my opinion we should proceed with stating a rejection okay um i've since modified it um so why don't i share my screen now and what i'm going to do is just share my screen and hopefully you all can comment on it and we can just potentially draft this online together is this possible suggest that perhaps we might want to hear from one or two other council commissioners if if they want to speak before we look at that that's my suggestion yeah uh chris um i've been on the commission since the mid-2000s and this has been an issue uh boiling ever since and i've watched it all the way back from the
014beginnings man naught's letter was extraordinarily accurate about the issues involved in this particular change and how things might happen he lives on first sister lake he gets up every morning and looks at that water body he was very instrumental in getting the sewage storm sewer system retention system designed just beside for sister lake to try to improve water quality and he did what you've been doing steve for many years trying to get involved in the negotiations and how things were going most of that time he was stonewalled and left out because of unwillingness of the courts to make ann arbor a party to the discussions i have listened to the guy who's led the i think he leads card it's called forgive me for not remembering his name but he's been a trooper all the
015way along and watched the graphics that he's presented over the years of the movement and direction of the plume and have been highly disappointed that the effect of treatment and groundwater withdrawals has really not slowed it one iota if i watch the pattern of groundwater i think sort of a miracle this plume is going to reach the river somewhere near where alan's creek comes in and it's i think we need to thank our lucky stars it's not going north into barton pond if this consent judgment was a site plan issue that was presented to the planning commission and to the council it would be roundly rejected we don't permit contamination of our high quality wetlands we don't permit overwhelming hydrological changes to our wetlands we would just say no and i think for that reason
016alone we should say no to the consent judgment the right thing to do in my view is to treat the water better to current standards and pipe it below barton pond wherever they want to do that there are no people below ann arbor who are drinking here in river water we are drinking barton pond water 85 of our water comes out of that pond so if you say no we don't want to do that and if you say no we don't want to contaminate and overwhelm first sister lake then a pipe of some sort down below argo dam makes the most sense i i'm i understand this is expensive i sympathize when this pollution happened it wasn't known first of all that this chemical would be so water-soluble and so portable in groundwater it wasn't
017known or perhaps it was by some technician but not maybe by the bosses that it would cause such a problem and the expense of fixing a water groundwater contamination issue of this sort really fixing it is extraordinary we can just improve it and most of all protect our drinking water and our wetlands and native lakes anybody else wish to make a comment um so i'm going to say something further i have a few questions and i'm wondering um so i would like to put up uh [Music] my document and share my screen so that we could edit it online um starting very soon but i had a few questions um that struck in my mind i'm reviewing all this information and i agree with you chris that it's this has just been a shocking lack
018of technical expertise being consulted at the proper times there's been a shocking lack of transparency and i think we're all seeing what the results of this of these deficiencies are so i'm hoping that we can correct that at some time in the future at least within the city and um and if not the state and the federal government so my first question was well who collects the data is it the polluter or is there some independent third party that actually collects the data about um you know what the concentration of dioxin is in these uh in the in the monitoring wells and service waters uh steve this is dan can you hear me yeah hi dan yeah it's it's this geldin who does that for the most part they collect uh samples from the monitoring
019wells and have that analyzed at their lab report that to the state and from time to time the state will share samples with them and the state will analyze it and have gellman analyze it but for the most part gelman is collecting all the data and providing it to the state whether it be surface waters generally or monitoring wells there was a program that the state and the water resources commissioner did on allen creek that was done by them but otherwise generally it's gellman's data i find that troubling yeah i believe the city has done some of its own testing on a few spots that gilman has not been um subject to be responsible for like i think there has been some data that is has been collected by the city that they've run in
020their own labs too um like for the sister lakes and things like that that wasn't part of gelman's responsibilities my understanding but that the city has done some of their own testing on that as my understanding i think that's true it's it's it's gullman but i think there has been some supportive testing from the city just because they want to be able to um test more spots than what government is officially responsible for well that would be prudent um um it's it's a that's a situation that's right for manipulation of all kinds so um i mean where i come from professionally you do not allow that you have an independent third-party lab you use blinded samples they test them they give you the results and uh you can request a repeat and pay for it
021but for gelman to be responsible for all the uh data the sampling the the data generation and the dissemination is i think is i think a recipe for a potential disaster so it hasn't helped that since uh john engler's term in office the governor and republican legislators have done everything they can to tell the department of our environmental quality not to regulate through this entire time period we've seen a drastic cut in the budget of deq a drastic cutting the number of employees a drastic pressure on them relentless pressure on them to back off and the idea of that the polluter can monitor his own work is part and parcel of that it's been relentless since the 1990 mid-1990s well i'm not sure what authority the uh the city has to to request to insist
022on that or to make that happen steve yeah i'd like to suggest that that be one of the results that we add it may not happen but we could at least make a resolution or add to our results that an independent testing be arranged i think that rita brings up a good point steve is that you know if you if this body can craft a resolution that has some specifics in there that's probably more useful for council and in particular our attorneys to uh try and and move this fall forward um than just a general outright rejection i mean i think you know to to cite what these things are uh and do that and maybe that requires another meeting on the 18th you know for for this body to spend a little time kind
023of crafting the specifics that that are objectionable and coming back with a more detailed uh you know grounds of rejection yeah chip um that's my instinct as well i was thinking that let's get as far as we can today and then hopefully we can work in the background just to do you know and uh and tweak it a little bit and then we'll have a second meeting to approve it if we run out of time because i would like to end this meeting at nine o'clock uh back so this all sounds good i'm just uh we will only have limited amount of expertise that's necessary to suggest how to move it forward beyond rejecting it and saying things like there shouldn't be further contamination of our wetlands and and lakes and rivers or the spread
024of this plume underneath ann arbor and we can say things like that the question of how to do that would require very technical assistance and you'd also of course need to bring in a lawyer or team to be able to figure that out so we need to do is probably focus our recommendation on the city doing just that you know rather than trying to let the polluter decide how to deal with this we need to somehow have a team of experts that represent the uh people of ann arbor and adjoining region that has the expertise both technically pollution-wise hydrologic wise but also legally to put together um a case that this judge will be able to consider as an alternative to the settlement you know in other words and ever has to fight the efforts
025by gelman to get away with this um and you know it's a pretty typical situation i assume a polluter wants to save money and absolve themselves a responsibility and people are going to be hurt natural systems are going to be hurt property values are going to be hurt you name it you know this is not good and gelman's just trying to get away with it and so ann arbor has to like step up and so that's in essence what we have to say you know it's pretty darn obvious that that's the case um and we can't get into the specifics of what ann arbor needs but we can do it maybe in some general ways i don't i but it's you know we got to be a little careful that we again we don't try
026and do something that would be impossible to do well no i agree i think i think we need to avoid asking for means where we need to we need to focus on goals that the community would desire we need to focus on goals and in respect to the last five minutes discussion right one of the resolve clauses i have put in there is that the city should expand should they panel a professional group to peer review the data that they get at least you know and then also provide uh um um some kind of uh some kind of legal advice about pathways um for contesting um some of the uh arguments that uh gelman's gonna put up and some of the and identify some of the constraints in both state and federal law that prevent
027us from getting this cleaned up to an adequate level so but first bob and then chris thank you sorry but this all gets one of the things that i'm really struggling with and that is uh presumably someone has been negotiating on the city's behalf here right i mean who is that and what have they done and and is there some reason to think that that you know that they're recommending that we go forward with this and i just you know there's so many questions yeah this is dan i can help with that that was a fred dendorf who was your lawyer outside a lawyer and larry limpke's been your outside consultant through this and and really the way that it has been framed is not it's not it's not really uh clear and what i'm
028trying to say is that you all have tried as interveners to get a very substantive cleanup but gelman has rejected many many many of the things i assume that fred and larry have asked for but because all these negotiations have been confidential we don't know what they've asked for the only things we know is gellman says this is the bottom line take it or leave it so we are looking at what maybe fred has already asked or what larry has already asked we don't know because of the confidentiality agreement we we we are unclear yeah yeah dan's bob dan's exactly right this confidentiality agreement has really made it difficult for the public to to get information to see where things started to see where they they've been going um and you know i'm not one
029of these people who's gonna criticize the attorneys you know our team is working as hard as they can to get the best possible solution but you know let's let's not sugarcoat it gilman's not our friend they're not our partner they're not wanting to do anything uh and when that's your adversary sometimes you just end up in court and sometimes the law is with us and sometimes it's not you know maybe at the end of the day it's just better to go to court now like i i don't know i i mean it's going to be long it's going to be expensive it's an unknown outcome but maybe that's that's just where we are and you know i think we've been doing this this dance you know it was such a heavy lift to become an
030intervener in the first place back in 2016. and the discussions that have gone on between 2016 and 2020 have been things that a normal person that's not a lawyer would think could have been dealt with in a couple of months and we're talking about four years here and you know at a certain point you just either got to take care of your business or you got to get off the pot and you know no business is being taken care of and i think what what i would be looking for and i'm not going to speak for any of my other council members but you know i i think we're we're looking for some guidances is it tell us what the most important or the most egregious things in here like i can tell you right
031now that the first sister lakes discharge bothers me greatly and that i cannot vote to move forward on something on a on a resolution that that includes that now whether or not judge connors will say oh well you were close on other things and we can do this and that i don't know but that's that's kind of my my take on it because that's just moving our problems someplace else and creating a new problem that we don't have any data on yeah at the the end of this they you know i don't know maybe we end up in court but i think you know some of what i i would like this body to give us is things we should be telling our attorneys like this is what we need to see in this settlement
032agreement i know we've we've given council has given the attorneys quite a bit of direction okay yeah steve this is dan in that presentation that i sent you all i tried to show the the advantages and the disadvantages between the fourth percent judgment and the third for example i pointed out that they threw out the maple road containment objective which would have stopped east of maple road contamination so i would ask people since i can't give the presentation right now to just take a look at what i had sent and i think you'll see chip that there's lots of things in there that they have excluded or need to include well dan i i've shared that with the attorneys so you know i think they're there they've got that information so i've read those um
033comparison of the third consent judgment versus the fourth consent judgment um changes and uh there seems to be a strong argument for uh the fact that the uh um the pz you know that zone is going to be fixed at where it currently is and i'd like to remind people that uh last time i checked 95 of all the super fund money has gone to lawyers and not to any clown that's not actually true but i'm not here to debate super fun i'm here to look at the fourth amendment judgment exactly so in my mind the risk is if we reject it totally then um we're going to be continuing with things as they are for uh an indeterminate amount of time until something else can happen so that's you're going to be going back
034to court according to the assistant attorney general yeah but will it take another we already have an example where it might take four years to get something else meanwhile you know the plume continues to migrate to the river under the current conditions so is there any advantage yeah are there parts of the fourth consent judgment that are advantageous to keep my summary sorry again my summary has been that actually the third uh amended consent judgment the current one's better it has more action than the fourth all you have to do is upgrade the drinking water criteria and the groundwater surface water interface criteria and it's much more protective than the form i see but those are the two that need to be incorporated from the fourth consent judgment as you're saying is the new drinking
035water criteria and the new gis criteria is that correct that that's that's correct and i can't believe the judge wouldn't immediately do that how can the judge sit there and say okay you guys can't come to an agreement but i'm going to let you continue to violate the current state laws no i'm going to issue an order and remember the judge has issued three different orders um that have impacted the the second consent judgment he ordered an expansion of the prohibition zone he ordered uh an investigation into the unity and he ordered additional remediation efforts so it's not like it's um odd for the judge to issue an order where he sees that there's right that's not being done okay so so in other words shannon's been trying to say something i'm sorry shannon yeah
036um i guess i would like to say that i think that something that was really clear to me with this last round is that nobody was looking at surface water in terms of the solution i think that's what chip is getting at um that it seems like it's been much more oriented to groundwater um but that just to kind of throw this oh by the way we're gonna add you know four and a half inches a day to the first sister lake every day i mean it's like that just has enormous implications and so i feel like that i know we don't have any access to what people are talking about but one of the things that i would suggest in terms of some sort of tangible movement going forward if we're going to ask
037for anything would be that surface water understanding and hydrology at the surface would be part of the negotiation as well besides just the the groundwater contamination piece because i i it's just incredible to me that they would that they would um i mean it would it would fill up fast so it would basically spill over you know into into honey creek because there's a connection under wagner there um but we don't know where that where is that there's all kinds of things we just need to understand it and and it's like there's just no mention at all of of what's going on there and um some sort of i mean if that's going to go forward some sort of at least pre-study and and post you know to understand what that impact would be i
038mean that's huge so i want to make sure that moving forward that surface hydrology um is part of the is part of the discussion um because it just seems like it's uh has been more focused on the on the groundwater piece which is obviously super important as well but i would like that to be included so maybe that's um you kind of get at that somewhat in the in the resolution um uh but maybe to call it out a little bit more directly in terms of how the the issue was understood okay uh chris um if if you take paul an australian company at their word but this is the bottom line um and i given the nature of this judgment and it's really awful ramifications i think one needs to take them at their
039work it means an australian company that's abandoned our town is about to stop cooperating and that is a big gravity um if we could get it to be a super fun site then maybe 20 years from now there'll be some money there that could help us um it means in my view that we the people of ann arbor are going to have to fix this problem as best we can i wouldn't waste money on court i would get busy trying to figure out how to deal with it and raise the money to do it i you know uh the history of companies abandoning these things and going bankrupt or whatever it takes to avoid obligation is huge and i think that's where we're going right so what are you saying is that um council should
040not agree to block uh superfund option green okay um let's see so yeah um any other comments at this point so let me let me write down what i have so far here um one is that uh that we recommend the data be uh acquired and uh made public and uh you know well that any data about uh contamination or pollution be done by generated by an independent third party and that it be publicly available how about that okay the second one would be absolutely no discharge in the first sister like any diversion would have to be the other side i'm surprised that they didn't uh propose to take the treated water and inject it into an underground well on the site probably not a not a reasonable aquifer to do that with here and
041deep wells are very expensive well yeah but that's one way of uh if you wipe your dilution and dispersion you know if dilution is a solution then that's one way of doing it at low levels you know if they treat it down to seven parts per billion john calhoun would like to speak yep yeah so while we're on that point of the water discharge do you still have in the one whereas clause about the 100 year reign event and the reason i asked is i've seen people calculate that in very different ways and i don't know if we want to kind of commit to that without really having the analysis for that but maybe other folks know i'm just thinking i would feel better if that was not in there and the way that we
042talk about the groundwater discharge or the water discharge impact around there i think would make it stronger no i'm with shannon i'm with shannon uh go ahead um i just would say i was suspicious of it too and so i ran the numbers and i came up with the same thing so i actually feel pretty confident that i mean it is naming something so i get that in terms of um in terms of like it is a little tricky you know to to get in and name that i agree um but i i was also kind of like huh who did the math on that and so um i came up with a very similar very similar number but i think that um we don't have to say a hundred year i mean we can
043we can we can still get out get at the idea of it uh which is i think yeah yeah it would be yeah yeah no i agree i would be more stringent and just say no discharging to first sister like that's what i'd recommend and then if it's considered it need only be considered further if there's a thorough hydrology study and that there's a reliable and constant monitoring that at least uh it's it's been treated down to 7.2 parts per billion before it's put in there because you know uh what i heard in lumpke's presentation is oh yeah you know the lake will fill up but it'll discharge and so but where will it discharge right into honey creek right so what if they're not treating it down to drinking water standards and running it
044down here on creek upstream or municipal water intake right so so i'd rather leave it at that and just not even mention any rain events or you know because a thorough hydrology study would give us some better idea of what the hazards were what the flood risks were but there's even there's another risk of uh you know untreated dioxane getting dumped into hunting creek and so okay and then i mentioned the peer-reviewed panel for review of technical data the other one was vapor intrusion we haven't talked about vapor intrusion but there has been a concern that when the plume gets close enough it's going to we might get some potential intrusion of dioxane vapor into uh residents basements down in the water creek uh ellen creek watershed does anybody want to comment on that or
045does anybody have a uh have an opinion about that or some some closer knowledge now dan well the problem that we have is that they've never done a study to show where are the routes of exposure as this thing moves through the city when they originally set this up they said well the groundwater is going to go from maple road and go into the river but that's not really all the things that can happen to it it actually can go down and now in the old west side in west park it's within 10 feet of the surface so like you say you have the exposure where the dioxane kind of like radon will evaporate up and go into a building causing vapor intrusion you can also get a building that could get flooded and if
046it's flooded with the dioxin there's another route of exposure and then you have workers in the trench you can imagine a person cutting a trench to lay some pipe and if that's within you know 10 feet of the surface where the groundwater is contaminated that person can become contaminated so yes in the old west side and west park areas there are routes of exposure that this does not dress and also please also please the city of ann arbor sorry the ann arbor charter township has excuse me has wells between the plume and barton pond which we all don't reflect that but that's a major concern of course in our charter township is their residential wells right on that path because the plume moves towards martin pond which is which is where it's partially going yeah
047that's their concern not the city of ann arbor's i'm not to be blunt but you know i think we given our time restraints right now we should really restrict ourselves to thinking about what you know what what we send to council who's responsible for you know the city of ann arbor not the town yeah i think you could probably phrase it steve that the consent judgment should be protective of these routes of exposure in the old west side with the shallow groundwater contamination yep no i think that's good okay um now uh yeah i'm sorry anybody have their hand off yeah yeah steve there was another point i wanted to bring up to see what folks thought about this as an additional kind of issue to address is the the lack of performance criteria for
048the fighter remediation plans um it just kind of has a basic you know we're going to plant some trees but no kind of performance criteria in terms of what's what are we looking for what's going to be success what's what's very vague all they are required to do is remove mass which like you say is very big yep how does fighter remediation have to do with removal of mass well technically what they're saying which is partially true is that the dioxane will get sucked up with the water into the plant and like all plants they respire they breathe so the dioxane will come up into the plant and as the plant breathes and respires it's going to go off into the atmosphere so i know a little bit about fighter remediation and usually it's very
049much triggered by certain plant relationships it's like certain species are actually part of that whole system you don't just use whatever plants are out there there's targeted plants for targeted you know issues you don't just say fighter remediation you you know you would list the things that are specifically set up for whatever 1-4 dioxane is not just general you know evapotranspiration yes yes yes well that's the problem that we have with this a lot of this is in the future they're going to propose their plan you see they don't lay it out for us but generally poplars are supposed to be pretty good at this because they have a fairly deep root system dan you're fading i can't hear you sorry um yeah the problem is is that we don't know uh because they didn't
050tell us what their plan was but generally poplars are are used for this sort of phytoremediation so they would just plant poplars everywhere i mean it's like yeah yeah that's it well it was for a specific site near the gelman facility if i remember correctly okay well great i'm sorry i'm sorry yes it was in one specific area yeah yeah it was there was the pond one and two area in the marsh area okay the marsh area near the gilman site itself yes all of these all this is going to be on the gilman site not off of the gelman property okay the fighter remediation is for their site okay that clarifies that thank you yes ma'am um i just want to add to that that they they didn't provide any information for success with
051this method very specific to dioxane at all it's just just stated as a method yeah yeah it's uh it was bizarre so um so dan is there uh so are all the hot spots that you're aware of that have that have been admitted publicly by gelman are all those hot spots being treated in this plan in this future plan or do you think it's important to treat all the hot spots i think they should be treating all the hot spots yes but what they do in here for the groundwater off-site hot spots because they really don't do enough work they don't do enough groundwater extraction so one of the comments that that i would one of the warehouses that i would have is that they need to properly design broad water extraction and treatment system
052to actually you know halt the plume and clean up the aquifer you got to remember that what they did is to estimate and to put the number of groundwater extraction wells out there and how much they should be pumping they just simply use the 200 gallon per minute uh transmission line that they currently have they didn't say okay here's where you need to put the extraction wells and here's what the rate should be to capture this area they said wait a minute this line can only carry 200 gallons per minute so where should we put the welds so there's never been a remedial design investigation to determine what is necessary to halt the plume which is something they should be doing for sugar yeah i would uh yeah i would add a resolve clause that
053would say treat all hot spots to halt treat all hot spots using best technology available yes because i heard there already is another one okay well let me put up my screen now does anybody else want to make a comment at this point uh tech you're muted no i didn't have a comment sorry okay all that excitement for nothing think i must have just been going like this this is ian hey ann yes did we want to include maybe on even on that last resolve clause something about the the cj allows for that 500 parts per billion which and then gelman can walk away which was i think one of vince or james one of the callers put out that that's a non-starter that's way too high i'm sorry could you repeat that um they
054this this fourth cj allows for parts per billion is the threshold that then gelman can walk away and consider it done and that was too high i think aren't those limits set by by state law and federal law no sorry steve but what they said is that if you operate the park lake well to a remediation level of 500 parts per billion as ants talking about then you can turn it off it doesn't mean that things below 500 parts per billion aren't going to cause a problem it'll just allow that 500 part per billion below 500 part per billion plus to move the same thing on-site they have these three uh production wells pw wells on site which are extraction wells and their cleanup criteria is 500 parts per billion as well but but the
055rub is these other wells their criteria is until they attain the eastern area objectives and you can attain the eastern area objectives by just simply expanding the prohibition zone or using a mixing zone based groundwater surface water interface value so as soon as you attain the prohibition zone objective and the groundwater surface water interface objective then you can turn all the off-site wells off in the eastern area or most of them are [Music] well and that goal right now is 7.2 parts per billion uh that's the drinking water criteria but it's they don't have to hit the drinking water criteria is what i'm trying to say as soon as they find that the prohibition zone can be expanded okay which they can continue to the to expand if the court agrees okay that ident that
056satisfies their prohibitions on containment objective by expanding the prohibition zone sure the second thing they have to do is there's a groundwater surface water interface value that's where the ground enters the surface water and if they apply a mixing zone based uh groundwater surface water interface value which they can where it enters into the huron river so it goes all the way through the city and then enters the huron river then they're done with that objective so as long as they get those two objectives they can turn off the uh groundwater extraction systems that are off the site except for the park lake which you gotta hit 500 and the ones on the three on the site but you got to hit 500. okay that's why i'm saying that the third uh amended consent judgment
057is very good it doesn't allow that sort of shenanigan and it was it would produce much more work if if they just change the drinking water criteria to 7.2 and the gsi to 280 to 280 yeah the groundwater surface water is 280 parts per billion now in the past it was 2 800 parts per billion right oh i just thought you said uh 208 but he meant 280 280 i'm sorry yes that's what i was trying to say okay it might have been me so um all right so let's um galen can you let me share my screen yes alrighty but to ann's point the 500 parts per billion has no scientific basis so what so how would uh how would these numbers be changed in well it's a simple thing you know you need
058to halt the plume and restore the aquifer to drink your water criteria um do we have the authority to demand that are we restricted by state and federal law you can ask for it i'm sure your attorneys may have asked for it but yellman is not yielding that's the most concerning thing here is that the prohibition zone can continue in the eastern area to expand and as it does that um it takes the private owners water rights away and just lets the plume go and does it again does it again and does it again and that's what happened as you all may remember in the evergreen area originally the prohibition zone in 2005 or six didn't include the evergreen area then as it as the plume expanded they expanded the prohibition zone in to take
059on those houses and now they've expanded it again so their strategy is to just keep expanding the prohibition zone taking away private property owners water well rights uh in implementing institutional controls and land use restrictions and do it all the way to the river and that's what this document allows them to do okay so um i'm not a very good typist here so uh you all can talk among yourselves while i'm doing this um let's see rita do you want to moderate or should i find a secretary to do this i think any comments anyone i guess i would ask them how would like if you were to help us craft this knowing that what um council member smith is asking for and what we've been discussing to date and given the sort of restrictions
060that you know about what do you feel like would be the most effective way to edit this document i can pass on some suggestions the ann arbor charter scholarship passed this resolution that said that they would not support the consent judgment and i can give you some of the whereases from them and i can give you some whereases you know that over the areas that we've been talking about as well like you guys are the decision maker i'm just here to kind of provide some regulatory technical thoughts right but you you know you're what we have right now and i don't know that we're going to convene a panel in time you know for us to be able to um you know i i i would love to have peck's idea of getting a panel
061together to be able to do this but i don't know that we're going to be able to um pull that off um well what i can do is i can give you all a draft of a set of whereases that i think would address the majority of the deficiencies in the fourth amendment and probably what you guys would ideally like to have and then you can uh you know back and forth yeah tibbetts on that that that sounds good to me to um kind of edit this to the extent that we are able to tonight steve and then if dan can share his technical expertise about what he feels like could be helpful for us to be able to pass this along um that we have another opportunity to be able to adjust it based
062on some of his wisdom around this yeah no that sounds um that's a great suggestion shane so i just have a process question about that do we have to convene another meeting like this in order to agree as a group you know to vote on it or could we take an e-vote over a time period my impression is that we need to um have a brief discussion and a vote publicly yeah the deliberations need to be public okay thank you but we can but i can draft this document and we can all have some input into it first i think i'd also like to just say that it seems to me that we don't i i totally like the idea of giving specifics to council but i don't think that we have to solve all
063of the problems necessarily we're in a tight time frame and i think if we give the guidance um that we've got to start on here that council will get the point and can take it further and find additional um consultation i hope rita is exactly right just say what what what the deal breakers are in this yep i agree i agree okay well i uh we've already talked about most of them uh-huh bob has uh commented yeah just a a couple tweaks i i might suggest if i could um what you've got now is the last resolved clause i i think makes sense to be the first resolved clause [Music] and i think it should probably be phrased that result that the ann arbor environmental commission recommend that ann arbor city council recommends yeah the
064environmental commission recommends that city council reject and then just one more thought um up toward the top um if you could scroll up to the very top of the document so i think we need to introduce the idea of the fourth consent judgment i would suggest a set i think the first whereas clause is fine but i would suggest a second whereas clause saying something like you know whereas the court has released for public consideration a fourth amended consent judgment and then all those things that come after it are part of that i'm sorry what was that bob i mean i'm just kind of spitballing but whereas the court has released for public consideration of fourth amended consent judgment oh yeah i'll tweet these a little bit i still don't know what legally this is
065called this consent judgment is called the document concern judgment to what the proposed fourth amendment consent judgment to the government and state that but they don't call it the gilman plume it's it's on the document i'm just going to get it from there yeah later okay so let's just go down here from we got the first two what about the third warehouse i don't personally i think all the warehouses are in pretty good shape actually one that i was wondering about was whether to split um where is it this there was an and one let's see the last one and have a separate whereas to emphasize the outreach to the epa you know so instead of having the epa mentioned in the same oh sorry i was looking at the old one i don't see
066it i mean what would the city do appeal to the epa consider yeah well the thing is that the the issue as you wrote it though the first time was um you said whereas the city of ann arbor would be required to submit an order of dismissal terminating their rights to participate in the consent judgment and agree not to support requests to the epa for super fund designation i would just put and and then that as a next whereas um i'm sorry where are we it's not a big deal um well it's not in because i hadn't seen this new different version that you've got and so it was your original version that that um [Music] a a phrase about the epa um yeah i just want to make sure that i think the city
067should um reserve its rights i agree i totally agree and that's why i wanted to emphasize it yeah okay so i'll figure out some better language and then we can work on the draft over the next couple weeks okay so um i think we're getting close to where let's see if galen are there any um so i'll i'll finish this off tonight and send it to everybody and give everybody on the commission uh permission to edit okay or to uh and then we'll see where we go okay we've got a question about process i thought we were going to try to vote on this tonight so that it could be shared with council tomorrow or that's not a priority um that was my original intent john but uh we're getting it's 8 51 now i'd
068like to finish by nine and we do have a public comment left got it i'm not sure we can finish this off so we might need a short meeting like a half hour meeting later on to do a final discussion public comment and then tweak it and then vote on it is that a grant indicated that this is not going to be voted on by council this week no the the wednesday night meeting is a public hearing for council to hear public comment there'll be no action on the agenda okay so i would propose uh does anybody want to propose a motion that we um that we tweak on this document um and then schedule another meeting um before um clearly before october 19th when council will vote on it and that we will vote
069on it at that point we'll have a meeting to discuss tweak it and vote on it that includes public comment i mean we didn't even introduce this formally so i'm not sure that's even necessary we can as long as that seems to be the consensus yeah okay yeah we can we can probably leave it at that okay that's my understanding of the bylaws i wanted to make sure that uh um you maybe have that formal option okay well um why don't we um why don't we and do i have a motion to end discussion and uh to postpone um uh discu further discussion and presentation of this resolution and voting on it until uh a date to be determined before october um let's make it uh i'll bet the 19th is a monday so let's
070make it um before the thursday beforehand so that would be yeah that would be october 15th okay okay we'll i'll schedule a meeting before october 15th just like this one it'd probably be shorter and they will finish uh we'll finish this at that time can you get a copy to us so we can suggest edits to you yeah i'm gonna share with everybody on the commission i'm going to try that gut done tonight okay yep right okay this seems like the most expeditious method that doesn't uh um you know that doesn't uh that still involves our full purchase participation of us and the public okay all right so um galen why don't we um why don't we pass to uh the second public comment period okay so uh this is the second uh opportunity for
071public content um this is an opportunity to speak up for three minutes please call 1-888-788-0099 and enter meeting id 925-5309 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 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 sound so that we may hear you clearly please state your name and address at the beginning of your comments and please be patient there is a delay of up to 30 seconds before a
072connection is established okay um we have a question from uh council member jack eaton uh go ahead and uh speak council member thank you can you hear me yes yes we can hear you okay so i'm not here to advocate any position but i really do encourage the environmental commission to take a a strong position for or against the consent judgment if you have any questions on how to draft a good con a good resolution i would recommend that you read the ann arbor township resolution um the sierra club uh here on valley chapter also uh sent us a letter um in opposition to accepting the consent judgment so i i would even recommend um looking at that for for reasons a consent judgment is an agreement between the parties it's it's a means of
073avoiding the trial and so it's not real likely that the judge will dive into the consent judgment and tinker with it um he may urge the parties to alter their positions and and send them back to to negotiate or he may try to impose a couple of small items like the numbers but he's not likely to to engage in a lot of modification of the agreement so in your resolution advising council you should identify the reasons for your position you know so for example if you advise us to reject this you might note that the polluter is not using the best treatment method they're using a substandard treatment method that actually will reduce the dioxin but not eliminate it the consent judgment only requires them to reduce the incidence of of dioxin to 500 parts
074per billion it allows for the further expansion of the uh prohibition zone um it will cause dumping tainted water into the lake as you've noted repeatedly and further there's no metrics for measuring the success of phyto remediation those are just some of the reasons that you could mention as a reason to reject the consent judgment i don't think that you should engage in suggesting what we should seek in a consent judgment um as councilmember smith noted we've given our lawyers lots of great suggestions this is the product of negotiation when you have hard bargainers on both sides of a negotiation nobody gets everything they want and so you really trying to decide whether this is good enough to accept or whether we should reject it and face that unknown that rejection really represents and you
075know going forward um if if the city rejects this we may be subject to more hard negotiations we may in fact have to go to trial on this matter or we could ask for a super fund designation but the question before us right now is whether to accept or reject this and so if you recommend one or the other you should give us reasons why you're recommending that not ask us to go and seek something better honestly we saw it better um and so you just need to know um the restrictions on what what's possible as to the next step thanks so much for everything you guys do i really appreciate it and i i hope that you'll give us a strongly worded recommendation thank you okay thanks jack um um who's the next caller
076do we have another caller on the line uh no we don't no one's hand is up okay i'll wait a few seconds then to close public commentary okay do i have a motion for a german how do i have a second john callaway seconded by rita um all who agree raise your hands all who disagree raise your hands well who wrote no okay the motion passed unanimously unanimously i declare this meeting adjourned thank you steve you