 Really? That's loud? How's your sound work? I think my sound works. I like my headset. I don't have a loud voice. So these little microphones, I actually kind of like them. I'm going to turn off my video. Now that we know what it works. Me too. Until the meeting. Good morning. Good morning. Where's my video? I can't find the video. Oh, there it is. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. We've got three more people we're waiting for. It's like John Dave. Brian. I can't wait to hear how much water we have in the reservoir. Oh my God, I know, right? Yeah, we got plenty. More than enough. Everywhere. Yeah. Yeah. Need to pipe it out West. I know. And the summer, the, just that distribution spends is too much. Well, at least we're done for today. I think. I think it's going to be nice to rest it today. Where's my phone again? Look at the weather. Are we not getting anything from Nicholas? That was the latest. Good. Yeah, we got as much from. I guess it was that. You know, we typically get in a whole month. That's crazy. It's exciting. All right, let's see. Is everyone here? We're still waiting for a few people. I think we should just wait for John and Brian. And Dave supposedly coming. Here we are still zooming. I'm so sick of this. I'm actually okay with it. Yeah. I'm okay with it. It's this thing. I just soon get rid of. What's the color of the mask? Yeah. Yeah. Put it on every day. So it's there. Otherwise I end up someplace like. Oops. Yeah, it's kind of like what two steps forward and one step back. To the Delta. I'm, I'm headed to. To Boston after this meeting. For my. Father-in-law's internment and memorial service. And then. Tomorrow we have my sister-in-law's. Internment. And Sunday, her memorial service. They both died nine months ago. Neither one from COVID. They both had long, happy lives, but. We have six siblings. They're significant others. Five grandchildren and. At least two great grandchildren out of. Seven or eight who. Are all. Descending to. Celebrate the two lives. The, the shock and the sadness are. You know, mostly. Mostly past, but it's time to celebrate their lives. And we thought it would all be better. And we wouldn't need masks anymore. Not quite. Yeah. Not quite. Just seems to keep dragging on. Yeah. That's all COVID thing, but. At least we're all vaccinated now. Yeah. That's good. And I feel like it's time people move on with things like that. You know, it's time. It's gotta keep going. Keep going. Do we have. I think we're ready. John. John is here. Good. Okay. That's good. Dave's the only one not on, but he. Told me he was going to come yesterday, but he's, you know, he's very busy. So he comes and goes. I'm sorry. I got a dress lined. There he is. Lions. Norm McDonald. There's a. He passed recently. The, the comedian from SNL. And he interviewed with David Letterman. And he was saying, you know, he didn't want people to celebrate his life. Everybody could cry and. Be sad and, and. You know, grieve. And he's got. Don't you dare celebrate my life. Right. Yeah. All right. Well, welcome. And here we are in our fall meeting of the water supply protection committee. And yet we're zooming again. We'll continue to zoom until the town really. Decides that we can do these meetings in person, but we're just going to zoom again. And I think I'll just get into it unless anybody has anything. They want to talk about. The first. The first item on the agenda is. The water supply. Yep. I'm going to, I'm going to jump in just. We, I was looking for, we have texts that we're supposed to read at the start of every single meeting that says that a court. I don't have it. Unfortunately. I don't know if Dave might. But it basically says, according to, you know, the governor's regulations with COVID were allowed to meet. Via zoom. I wish I had the exact text, but, you know, and also point out to everyone that this meeting is being recorded and, you know, so it will be available in the future. So just so that everyone's aware. So Dave, do you have the exact language on that that we're supposed to read in front of you? I don't. I didn't. Yeah, I didn't prepare. Sorry. I mean, I was trying to prepare. I think, I think what you said is fine. Good. Okay. Now you can jump in that. Okay. And yeah, I'm seeing that the recording is going. So we are recording. Okay. So the first agenda item is the water supply. The water supply. The water supply. Okay. So the first agenda item is the water supply. Status. And as we were just talking about, it's been an extremely wet summer. So the drought is. Is not an issue right now. I'm going to have. What just happened. Amy's going to talk a little bit about, so the drought is not an issue. And we will look at the reservoir levels and water. Use and all that data in a second, but Amy's also just going to mention that the town right now isn't a situation where we may. Be needing to issue some conservation. Language out to folks just because. Providing treated water at this point due to some of our infrastructure. Situations. If we have high demand, this fall. The situation. We may have a little trouble producing our treated water. But the, in terms of our water supply, there's plenty of water. So I will show you that data. Share my screen. All right. Can you guys see my screen? Yep. All right. So this. This, so this comes right off of the water supply. Web page. And this is. Back in reservoir levels through. The end of August. So as you can see, so the dark blue line is 2021. There's a port point in July when we were above the. 15 year average. Right there. And here we are right now at the end of August. And we're still. Plenty of water in the reservoir close to the 15 year average, just a little bit below. So that's, that's all great. And I just kind of wanted to point out, we added a little bit of language this year. Onto this chart that's in the web page. Just sort of explaining that certain years, like 2020 and 2021. We were using the reservoir as more of a source than in other years, simply because of the production decrease at well number four. So some, if people look at this. Just in terms of drought. It's a managed water body as everybody knows. So it's not exactly a. Natural drought indicator. So we just wanted to note that on the chart for folks who go to the webpage. And are looking at this and are thinking just straight out about drought. So. Yeah. So that's where we're at with the reservoir. It's very full. Going down on the webpage. The water use. A month. So. We're up in, we're up in August, which is typical students start coming back. So we've definitely uses definitely increased a bit. We don't have our September data yet, but we're still below some of the previous previous years, 2020, 2019. 10 year average. We're still a little bit below for water consumption. So that's good. And rainfall. Now surprise. 2021 is the dark line. Highest ever in July. And now we're equal with 2018 approximately. So again, very wet year. Can I make one comment about this. This graph. Absolutely. When it came up. My first thought was that the yellow line was 2020. Because that's what the yellow line had been on the first graph. Reservoir levels. It might be helpful. To keep the. Color a year consistent. Yeah, definitely. I thought, yep. I thought we fixed that a little bit ago. Let me. Let me just see what else. Yeah, 2020 is orange. Okay. Yeah. I can go back and rearrange those colors again. Yeah. Yeah. Make sure they all match. So that's that. So that's still the web page. It's up all the time for people to look at. And it basically. You know, provides. Some information. Limited information, I guess, on our water supply right now. But we're doing, doing fine in terms of any kind of drought situation. So Amy, do you want to talk a little bit about the situation. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You guys might have actually seen a news article. Recently about this, but. You know, we, we've talked to in a couple of our past meetings, we've talked about Centennial being offline, which we're in the process of we did the pre-qualification process for contractors over the summer. We're hoping to bid the project sometime this fall. So we're nearing the end of the design. We're hoping to do that. We're hoping to do that. That treatment facility is offline and not available right now. And then the other thing that we've talked about in this group as well, was the declining capabilities of well, number four. Which is this project we've been talking about for about the last year. And have been redrilling a, well, drilling a replacement. Well, next to well, number four. So we're hoping to do that. We're hoping to do that. We're hoping to do that. We're hoping to do that. We're hoping to do that. We're hoping to do that. Everything's just taking longer with that project. So while we thought that that would be. Up and online and connected to the system before the students came back. We're not there. And really that's put us in a situation where we have enough water to meet an average day. But if we have. Higher than average day demand for multiple days in a row, then we'll be able to do that. And so. So we've communicated that that's, that's really the essence of the article. The article more made it sound like a water shortage. Drought related. But really the, the. The root of the problem is that well, number four hasn't reached completion. At this point. And that Centennial is still in the works as well. So we're looking at a couple of different variables. We looked at the last water usage in September. Obviously that's our largest month as best Beth showed in that graph. And we looked at a couple of different variables just to see if there was anything that would help us predict when the. Higher usage would be, and it's pretty heavily tied to, if it's above 85 degrees, you're more likely to have a higher usage day. We looked at what rainfall and temperature and day of the week. And a couple other variables in that temperature correlation was that we were looking at, we were looking at the water usage. We were looking at the tank levels throughout the day as well. And really monitoring that closely, but we're also looking ahead to the weather. And if we see a couple of days that might be above 85 degrees, then we're going to preemptively send out messaging to the community to help them curtail their water usage. Cause if we can stay below that average usage, we're okay. But we're going to have to adjust if we have multiple days that are above, you know, 3.3, 3.4, 3.5 MGD, that's where we're going to struggle. Thus far this month, I think our hottest day has been 82. So we're happy. And our average use has been about 2.9 MGD. So we've been doing well so far, but we were continuing to monitor it. So. Yes. Yeah. Okay. So. Who's first. I saw John's hand first, but. Anna, go ahead. Okay. I just wanted to say that, that I heard about this. Sort of for the first time in a big Amherst science chairs meeting. And I will say that the message was, I think conveyed very accurately about what the issue was. And I was like, I don't know, I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I kind of like escalated to like, well, worst case scenario, we may have to send all the students home. And I was like, what? Like I'm on a water board. And, but I guess we were doing like, if this would happen and then this happened and then this happened, it could be that water just had to be shut off for a while. So is that true? It's, it's funny because I have talked to several people at the time about the level of concern for, you know, if that perspective at all. But the only scenario where students would go home would be if we, you know, lost a major source for multiple days in a row. And had hot days and had like a raging fire. You know, that, I mean, it would take a lot of things. And so while I appreciate that they're thinking ahead. So that. If these disasters do happen, we're not scrambling to figure out the basics of water. We can instead deal with the major fire and the source being out in that sort of thing. But I think the likelihood of that is really low. I say that during COVID where who could have imagined this scenario too. So there is an element of thinking ahead that is certainly warranted. But we actually modeled another thing to add to that. We actually modeled the system. If there was a major water main break, if there was a fire in town and if a source went out and at least during the first two scenarios, it's not a huge impact. It's not a big enough impact that you think of a fire as a lot of water, but when you actually think of how much water it is compared to three and a half million gallons a day, it's a small amount. And the same thing with the water main break, it's a relatively small amount. If we were to lose a source, obviously all the other sources would be pumping and so it would dampen the effect. So it's not like we wouldn't have any water, it's that we would be slowly losing pressure. So we'd have time to communicate out to people and to come up with the right approach as we're working the problem and as we're at least getting as much water going in. So it's not, you're not gonna get a call immediately that says, turn off all the water and send the students home, but certainly you might only get a 24 hour heads up before we would start to get nervous about that if nobody can curtail their water usage. So. Amy, could you describe the current sort of production capacity at well number four for multiple days in a row? How many MGD? We used to run it at 1.6 MGD like for parts of days or routinely, but what kind of number are we at at the moment for well number four? I don't have the number in MGD, I know in GPM. That's fine, divide by six, nine and four. Yeah, and so it's able to give us about 150 GPM. No, it's gotta be 150 GPM. Yeah. Where it used to be like a thousand. Yeah, I mean, that's a quarter of an MGD. Yeah, and that's the problem is that gap. 150 from well four. Yeah. Wow, okay. We think the screen got clogged, but we tried redeveloping it and it didn't respond. And then from there, the amount that we're able to get out of it has been slowly decreasing over time. Do you feel you could push Atkins to three trains to full, you know, max peak hour capacity kind of thing or you think it's one MGD? So we've tried that. We can get a little more than one MGD, but they tried the, they looked at doing three trains and it sounds like there's a couple hurdles, but one of the biggest hurdles is that all of the SCADA programming, because it never ran with three trains, all the SCADA programming assumes two trains and divides the number by two. It doesn't allow you to divide the number by three, which sounds like such a simple problem, but when you have so much complicated. I know it isn't. Yeah, it's actually a really, it would take a lot, a lot to reprogram it to, you know, have that input be able to be three and the guys are so nervous that something would get missed and then we wouldn't have Atkins at all. And so this is one of those, you know, had we known about it a year ago, we could have been working at trying to do that, but right now, right now it's a little more complicated than that. Yeah, yeah, okay. Amy, just really briefly, can you tell us what two trains, three trains means? Oh, I'm sorry. Yeah, so at Atkins, it has basically three parallel treatment trains. So yeah, and this is gonna be the same up at Centennial as well. And so the water, typically we use two trains and then one train is always offline, either being rehab, you're just kind of ready to go. And it's never really been operated with all three. In engineering parlance, it's an N plus one design. You design, train's operating and you have one ready to go for lots of things. So in each of the trains, have been about a half MGD 350 gallons per minute. So the design capacity or normal capacity is one MGD at Atkins, it was at Centennial, but there are three trains sitting there. So theoretically, but there's the notion and then there's operations. So understood. And I didn't realize well forth capacity had dropped. So not from the waters perspective, from the mechanicals, but from getting the water out of the ground. Getting the water out of the ground at that site. The subsurface. Any other questions or thoughts on this? Yeah, Chris. I guess just, what is the timeline for, I don't know what the right word is, fixing this situation, that's the right word. But just kind of like, how is this, months or years or like where are we? And so how long are we gonna be keeping an eye on this? Yeah, no, it's a great question. So we're most concerned about getting through the month of September because September is the highest water usage. If you look at the past like five years, taking out 2020 when the students were here, but you look at the last five years before that. And every year there was in September, there was maybe half a dozen to 10 days during the month that you would get usage above that 3.3, 3.4 that we know that we can comfortably provide for days on end. When you look at October, there's maybe one or two random days and never two days in a row. And so our immediate concern is obviously getting through September so that the usage drops a little bit. Now, obviously until well four is fixed and online, we're still gonna need to be aware that the loss of a source, a major fire, a water main break, those sorts of things may stress us out a little bit. So we're gonna have to continue to watch it, but we're a little less concerned. Cause as you know, it's really kind of the day after day, high usage that would deplete the system rather than allow us to recover. And that's where the biggest area of concern is. I think the question was, when will well number four be done? That's what's the prediction. Beth, do you wanna jump in on that one? Sure, I mean, that's what's next on our agenda. Great segue then. Yeah, great segue. These topics, they all go together. That was the agenda. So well number four, at this point, we are waiting for the pump and the motor, which have been ordered. And that is our drilling company is ordering that. So the well is installed, it's been developed. We sampled it, we sampled it for PFOS, which we can talk about a little bit later on the agenda, but we did a full round of sampling and everything came back fine. So it's been developed, it's been sampled. And right now we're just waiting for, again, some of the infrastructure. And there's been delays with well number four, like the screen, which is now in, but the screen took much longer than we anticipated or anybody did, and that's all COVID related. And I'm not sure about the motor and the pump, but I'm assuming it could be a similar scenario that because of all the manufacturing delays with COVID, those things are being a bit delayed too. So that's where we're at with that. Again, a timeframe, I would say I would hope that those parts would be in in the next month. And then those need to be put in and then we need to connect it to the main, which we also have ordered, the town has ordered materials for that. So that's our goal. Wouldn't you say that's about right, Amy? Yeah, I mean, we're optimistically hoping end of October, early November that this will be in and online. Although at this point, we haven't heard from the pump and motor manufacturer like a firm date to know if that's realistic or if that's not. And then it's a matter of the driller fitting it in the schedule to come and install it. And so, you know, it's a couple of points are a little in the air and we're not gonna know how much COVID slows that down. Yeah, I mean, I guess hope would be that the materials come within a month and then the actual installation and all the work possibly happens over the next month. That would be the optimal, I guess. So anybody have any more questions on that? No. Okay. So moving through the agenda next is the Waterline Extension Project in Leverett, which I don't know, Jason, do you wanna update everybody on that? There we go, I can hear me. Yes, so that's going really well. Baltazar is the contractor. They've put in over a mile of pipe already. I think they're closing out on like 5,000 feet this week. And that was probably three weeks worth of work. So they really hustle, they've gotten all the water made, they're over the town line right now and turning the corner from East Leverett Road, Cushman Road onto T-Waddle Hill Road and beginning the final stretch to feed the five or six houses in Leverett that need treated water. So once they get the main in, they'll hop back and do services and they also have to do hydrants which have been a supply chain issue. We expect, we've heard that they're coming in mid-September, but it is mid-September, so we either expect to have them delivered or expect excuses on why we don't have hydrants yet, but they're coming. So yeah, they're moving right up very fast. The two obstacles right now are drilling under the two bridges. They've got JS Ray out there, boring Water Main under the river and they're having a heck of a time. They said it's the hardest rock they've ever encountered. So they're struggling, but they're slowly moving forward. They've had to get new drill bits. They've had similar supply chain issues with getting a new drill bit and breaking their old drill bit. And yeah, so, but they are slowly boring under the river right now and hope to be done within a couple of weeks. So once they get under the river, Baltazar can connect all the different pieces of main and move on from there. That's everything. Anybody have questions about the Leverett Water Main line? Hey, can you just remind us of the size and the material for the main? We went with a 12 inch ductile iron. We put an alternative for plastic PVC Water Main and it came in a negligible price difference. Again, I think because of supply chain issues, but yeah, the cost difference was negligible, even though the material cost is for ductile versus plastic is huge, the installation price was not very different. So we chose to go with ductile. It is the two sections that are getting board are gonna be fused HDPE, but that's just for the boring purposes. In this case, the boring Jason, you were referring to, that's underneath the bridge on East Leverett River by option of drivers. Correct. Yep. What's the other boring location? It's the same brook, but it's on T Waddle Hill Road. There's one house on the other side of the river. We're only doing a two inch under that river to get to the final house that needs treated water. All right. Yeah, that project's moving along. We've had weekly job progress meetings and they think they've got less than five weeks where the work left. That's great. They're a well-oiled machine. It's kind of scary to stand in the construction zone because you've got equipment moving on all sides of you. Nobody needs to be told what to do. Everybody's doing their job. Laying pipe, digging holes, compacting, backfilling. It's just, it's fun to watch actually. That's good. So this semester, a faculty member whose name is Nick Tucker, Professor Nick Tucker, is teaching both our freshmen and the senior design class that I taught forever and ever and ever called Water Spy and Waste Ware Collection. If he hasn't, he'll be interacting with you about some, I know he's been taking pictures of the project so that we can teach our students. It's a great learning opportunity to have these field sites to go to for pipe installation and stuff like that. So I know Nick will be. Yeah, he's been reaching out to Jimmy Jordan, who's the engineer kind of overseeing this project. And I think he's come up and taken a bunch of video and that sort of thing. Nick worked at, worked, maybe I don't know if you ever overlapped with Amy or at all, but Nick worked with Timebun for a number of years and then went, did a PhD at Northeastern and is in his third year of being a professor, or fourth year, starting his fourth year of being a professor here at UMass, a lecturer. He's really, really excellent. All right, great. Our next project, our next infrastructure project is the Centennial Water Treatment Plant, and I think Amy, can you talk about that too? Yeah, I mean, I covered a lot of that during earlier talking about the water supply status, but like I said, we went through the pre-qualification process over the summer to have all of those ready. They're nearing completion of design. I think we actually go to the Pelham Planning Board next Monday, so we're kind of going through the last bits of permitting for that project, the last bit, which are gonna just inform the last five or 10% of the design, and then we're hoping to be bidding sometime this fall. So I don't know if anyone has any questions or additional thoughts on that. Estimate of completion for production? Year and a half, two? Yeah, yep. All right, if there's any more questions on that, we can move on. Next on the agenda is the PFAS sampling that we did this year. I know I sent out a couple of emails to all of you when we got the results back, but we did sample in both April and July at five of our points of entry, so all of our points of entry to the distribution system, and we got nothing above the laboratory reporting limit, which is great, the laboratory reporting limit has been two parts per trillion. Currently, I'm not sure what DEP is gonna do in the future with that, but that's where it's at right now, and we haven't had anything, excuse me, above that. So those two sampling rounds we did at our points of entry and those were required by DEP with their new PFAS regulations. We also were required to sample the well number four when we were developing, so this is the replacement well number four, which as we just talked about isn't online yet, but part of the regulations for putting in a new replacement well is that you have to do a 48 hour pump test, and then you have to sample for a variety of parameters and one of the new ones is PFAS. So we sampled there too, and similar to our points of entry, so the points of entry are obviously after somewhat treatment, specifically at the water treatment plants. The well number four, replacement well number four was more of a raw sample, and we also got nothing above the reporting limit of two parts per trillion. So Amherst is looking pretty good with PFAS, which is really great considering, we've talked about this a lot, John will probably talk about it a more in a bit, but there's so many towns across Massachusetts that are running into this problem and it's becoming such an expensive and technical problem for a lot of towns across the Commonwealth. So what else did I wanna say about that? I think that's all I wanted to say about that. If anybody has any questions, Brian? One thing, I just wanna let folks know I'm taking notes. I don't use to always assign a note taker. Today I assigned myself, but the other thing is- That's great. Sure, Beth, you're saying reporting limit, do you mean detection limit or are those the same? No laboratories, so there's a detection limit that really is what their machinery, their lab machines can actually detect to. And then there's a reporting limit, which I always think of it as where a lab is absolutely confident that whatever's being detected is not coming from their equipment, for example. So they set, and that's for all parameters, for anything that gets analyzed at a lab, you have sort of a detection limit, but then you have a reporting limit. So, yeah, I mean, that's just standard lab results. You'll get back that you may get something that gets sort of flagged as a very low concentration, but the lab is not confident that that's not coming just from something having to do with them. So reporting limits are really the legal regulatory limit that you look at. And two parts per trillion is pretty low. So as part of the project that we're implementing for a DEP, actually, I don't want to tell you how many hours and how many people are doing QC for every PFAS sample collected for every PWS, every private well goes through a process of the team. The DEP doesn't have the insight capability to do this. So completely, so I mean, it's with DEP, but there's a lot of behind the scenes work, a lot of reconformation, a lot of sometimes samples rejected and redone just based on protocol. And there's a really intense amount of scrutiny both for PFAS 6, the regulated end for the full range of PFAS, it's either 18 or 14 in the current method being used. Because occasionally we have a significant level of something that's not PFAS 6, but one of the other occasional compounds that pops. So anyway, there's a lot of QC behind all that, getting to that MRL, MDL, what it is for different compounds, how it's reported, do you add this? The amount of discussion is intense. But yes, that's why I wrote and replied a bit that we really have to feel very, very fortunate to be in this non-detect world. I mean, there's a lot of non-detects, okay? But it's not like it's few, but there's plenty of issues too. So yeah, so we probably would expect these results because we don't really have a lot of industry in town or near industrial towns. The only thing I was thinking is that fire training and Amherst fire department, did they ever use these foams, fire suppressive foams? And if they did, where? But obviously it's far away from all our sampling points. Yeah, I mean, if you look to me, if you look at the history of how Amherst developed its water supply and where they chose to put our wells and also the preservation of the watershed since going back to the 1940s, I mean, it was really planned well, I think. And we're benefiting from that, you know? And Amy, do you know anything about the foams from the fire department? I can only speak from my experience that, you know, the foams were used and when we tested them out, it was at behind the North Station, I forget what that is, but that road down at the end of the road, there's that old, I think it's the old power plant. There's a bunch of land back there, which, you know, fortunately isn't near any of our active sources or isn't uphill of any of our active sources at least, but yeah, I don't know of other places in town, but, you know, we are fortunate that we don't have industry or, you know, a firefighting academy or an airport or, you know, a lot of these other things that are kind of typical that being said, it's being found in other communities as well. And so, you know, it's good that we sampled, but we're certainly glad that, like Beth said, they did a great job protecting the watershed from an early time period. You know, the program, you may be aware also, we have trying to get thousands of private well samples done where we're into many hundreds. And the toughest part about that is calling a private well owner about a limit over either limit or recent we had some over a very high limit that instantly invokes Bureau of Waste Cleanup and stuff like that. And that's a tough, we have a staff member who's making those phone calls and that's tough to do that. And a bunch of those on the source side are not very clear. Really, really, really hard to figure out. Just sometimes it's sort of obvious, like they shared the well with the fire station and there was AFFU and stuff like that is obvious. Other times not so clear. So it's a lot of hit and the town of Carlisle, it's evident, rough go and other places. So it's an evolving story. That's what I say, but. Yeah, yeah, I'm sure it's gonna change as time keeps going. One other thing I just wanted to say about it, we did apply DEP allows communities who have gotten two rounds during, so this is mandatory quarterly sampling that we've been doing. And if you have two rounds that have, they're all non-detect, you can apply for a waiver to not have to continue with the quarterly sampling. So we did apply for the waiver. That being said, that doesn't mean that we obviously won't sample again for PFAS. We would just be a different schedule. We wouldn't be necessarily doing it that often, but we will find out from DEP exactly how often they're gonna want us to continue to sample our points of entry. But that was a good thing too, because the analysis is a bit expensive. So to not have to be doing it quarterly for the town was good. By the way, DEP got a DPA regional one award for the program. Oh, wow. It's the DEP drinking water program. And by extension, the whole team of other people who are involved, but not named explicitly. Then it wouldn't happen without the project at UMass. Hey, UMass. Yeah, it's a weird thing to do, but I know we're doing it. We benefited from the free sampling round in April. That was great. You got your first one free, yeah. That was great. We're waiting for big explosion here for October, because all the smaller systems are supposed to sample, but it's just not happening yet. We'll see. If that keeps communicating, saying, hey, by the way, you can get a free sample. You got a sample in October, why don't you do it? All right, well, Lyons wanted to talk about some work he's been doing with rainwater and PFAS. So I have volunteered to be a rainwater collection station, the operator of rainwater collection station for a statewide study being done through the LSP community. And we'll be collecting two rainwater samples in my backyard and a collection of other LSPs across the state and their employees are doing similar sampling at their, at day. Oh. Oh. Lyons, I think you're. At the big freeze. Yeah, you froze up. They're residences and we will be putting that together. So am I back now? Yes. You are back now. Okay. My understanding is there somewhere around 200 collection stations across the state. And I just got my sampling kit yesterday, not in time to sample last night, but we'll be sampling soon in the next couple of weeks. And by the time we have our next meeting, I should have results. Lyons, can you describe the motivation, the lab that's being used and et cetera, a little bit about why this is happening? The motivation is to help determine whether rainwater is a source of PFAS in certain areas of the state or not, the lab that's being used is alpha analytical. The studies being run by Duff Collins out of Woodard and Curran and their employees and other LSPs across the state. Great. I assume the device, a lot of attention to the device you're using to collect because it's a super easy sample to contaminate. It's got a rainwater collection tray. I don't know, it's still in the box. It just arrived yesterday afternoon, so. Teflon lined, don't worry about it. I said lined with Teflon, don't worry about it. Exactly, don't you? And we'll spray it with WD-40s so nothing sticks to it. Perfect. So this is rainwater, not stormwater. This is rainwater. Direct precipitation, yeah. Direct precipitation, hasn't touched anything but the tray. I don't know if people are aware of the subservice contamination in New Hampshire from a manufacturing facility that rain was the mechanism attributed to causing that. So it's a good, excellent question to be asking. All right. Any more questions about PFAS? If you get a chance, whenever they put out the map of sampling locations, it'd be interesting to see, I think you said 200 sites or so, it'd be great to see where they are. Yes, it would be very interesting to see where they are. LSP community did a similar thing with indoor air contamination, I don't know, about 10 years ago, maybe a little more, where they reached out to folks and had them sample the air in their houses because there was no such thing as a background indoor air number for a long list of volatile contaminants. So LSP is like, well, we need this number. Oh, well, why don't we design a study and collect the data? I don't know about that sampling strategy of asking environmental professionals to test for indoor environments. I hope they're a little more conscious than the general public. I don't think so. Based on the study, I... We'll see what the PFAS results, since it's like, you know, as John was saying, you have to be pretty careful with how you collect your sample. Lines, you've seen a lot of LSP, BW, Bureau of Waysite Cleanup interaction due to, I mean, we're finding these things, Bureau of Waysite Cleanup takes it over and I assume then there's subsequent interaction with LSP's to deal with sites. I'm not working on any that have PFAS issues at the moment. I've worked on a dozen or more, I can think of that if we went back, people would be asking that question and we would have sampled, but we didn't know at the time. Right. No, I'm not really working on any. How about Jack? Yeah, I was gonna say, I have one site, but it's a New Hampshire site, but the source is in Massachusetts. I have to say commerce. But Massachusetts had, didn't make us chase it. It was New Hampshire that was kind of leveraging their hazardous waste sites to require consultants to do expanded sampling just for their database. And we had a sample because it was a dry cleaning solvent. So it was associated with the, what's that spray that you would use, ray something, that the watery pollen spray, I can't think of the name right now, but anyway, there's some association with dry cleaners and we found some that was just like all over the place, not consistent, because you know how PFAS has all these species to it and they're not related necessarily. And we found some and some private wells down gradient and but we just really couldn't attribute it to the dry, to the release that we were working on, but it's that, I don't think MassDEP has required LSPs if you have this type of contaminant, go ahead and sample for PFAS because you're not aware of that either, Lyons, right? No. Yeah, so I don't sample for it. Absolutely, I have to, but it's like everything else. If you have a potential source and you need sample, but if you don't have a known potential source, you're not gonna go for problems. How long has New Hampshire been requiring that for hazardous waste sites or certain hazardous waste sites? That program was initiated, again, where John was saying with that classic study is a Saint-Gobain or something like that. They had a New Hampshire site and it's just clear that prevailing winds, there's a plume of atmospheric deposition down gradient of where the factory was that had the stacks. But so they started maybe five years ago, I think. Oh, wow. Yeah, and yeah, so. But New Hampshire's very busy. They're putting a lot of people in public water utilizing the MTBE monies that they won in a case against ExxonMobil with the MTBE. So they're using the money for water lines up there and taking care of a couple problems at the same time with the PFAS and the MTBE. Interesting. All right, if nobody has anything else that they wanna say or ask about the PFAS, we can move on. Next on our agenda is the Lawrence Swamp Spring sampling results. So we have these few wells down in Lawrence Swamp that we monitoring wells that we sample in the spring and the fall and we did sample last May. We sampled six monitoring wells in one surface location, which I think is what people have always done in the past. So let me share my screen as I show you a quick graph. Pretty simple graph. So we've been doing this sampling for quite a while. I just started the graph at 2010 but the sampling goes way back into the early 2000s. But so this is just showing three of the locations that we sampled because these are located near major roads and they're also shallow monitoring wells. So they're just good to look at in terms of salt and so we're analyzing for chloride. And one, monitoring well, 189 just consistently tends to be a little bit higher. That's off of Southeast Street. The other two are off of Holst Road. So I think 189, it's located sort of at a lower grade from the road. So I think it takes a little more drainage than these other two do. So it does have a little bit of salt showing up in it. And that's all I want to show for that. So let me stop sharing. And yeah, so those wells are all down in Lawrence Swamp and that particular group we look at for road salt and some of the, they're downgrading of the landfill too. So we're looking at some things with that too. That's all I wanted to say with that. Let me know if anybody has any questions on that. Have any of the wells downgrading of the landfill been sampled for PFAS? No, not yet. We haven't been asked for that yet. Yeah, don't ask, don't tell. We have our, yeah, we do, we have an annual, we have a monitoring or environmental program for the landfills you probably all know and we sample annually at 40 different locations and that's coming up this October and it's wells and surface water locations. And no, the last thing we added to that list was one for dioxane. So we will see when PFAS gets added. Next thing on the agenda is watershed projects and what's been going on in the watershed just in the last six months, I guess we had Atkins Dam inspections. So these are the required phase one inspections. Atkins was inspected about a year ago and Hill and Holly and intake were just inspected last week. Atkins, so time bond is who we've had to do this for a while and the results from last year's inspection showed, I guess it gave the dam a rating of fair which is pretty good. There is some embankment seepage which actually showed up at the inspection in 2018 also. So Atkins is inspected every two years. The other three dams have a much more spread out inspection schedule because they're not rated as basically as dangerous, but so Atkins is a high monitored dam and so there's an embankment seepage and the recommendation from time bond was to do some kind of an evaluation program putting in a weir to measure sort of the outflow that's coming that measure the seepage try to measure it maybe monitoring wells, maybe ground penetrating radar of the dam itself to get a look at what's going on in the dam structure wise. So all of that is on our radar and is something we'd like to apply for a grant hopefully possibly this year, even to start looking at. So, but besides that, besides that the embankment seepage the other recommendations from the phase one were minor things like vegetation mowing, tree removal in areas that maybe some roots are getting into the abutments and things like that. So we got a fair, which is pretty good. Does anybody have any questions about the dam inspections, Brian? Yeah, do they inspect the dike at the, the south end of Atkins? Atkins, that was not part of this inspection. I think that is on a different rotating schedule. So we haven't done that. They rated all, I mean, Beth explained this a little bit, they rated all of the dams and dikes and all of that. And based on if they're high hazard or medium hazard or low hazard, they're on different schedules. And so the dike is one that gets regularly inspected, but not as often as the Atkins because it's not as tall and we don't have as much critical infrastructure below it or houses or people that could be harmed in the process. So it's just inspected a little less frequently. Yep, less hazardous. Is part of the reporting done by the consultants now thinking about the likelihood of a more frequent and more extreme events that can lead to, you know, that's the stressors on dams is extreme events. So, you know, I assume that sort of now routinely part of the evaluation that people make, at least I hope. Yeah, it is, there's some discussion of climate change and changes in storage and storm events and everything in time bonds reporting. And their evaluation. I mean, the geography leading to the watershed for that reservoir is not of the sort that's not like a ravine topography or something like that. But so that's favorable, but still good. Yeah, yep. I think it's worth thinking about because there is no engineering school for Atkins. There's only one way for water to get out of Atkins reservoir through those two or three trains, I understand. Yeah, right. There is control of water going in, you know, and at one location, but yeah. So hopefully, oh, sorry. No, I was just gonna add that like kind of dovetailing with this effort, you know, the town is also through, you know, Stephanie Ciccarello and the, you know, sustainability coordinator, she's doing efforts with the whole town on climate change and kind of looking at, you know, flooding and stressors and that sort of thing. And so I know they've, they're just kind of scratching the surface of that, but they are looking at, you know, the water supply as one of the infrastructure, you know, critical infrastructures that they're, you know, reviewing as they start to dig into climate change and how it would affect the town and then how we can prepare for those sorts of things. So again, like, that's in an early phase, but it's, it's the, you know, the town in general is looking at that as well. See, seem to get these intense cells local that I mean, the infrastructure damage in South Eastern New Hampshire and some places this past some storms, you know, and I know the spring for water and sewer commission Cobble Mountain Reservoir at seven inches of rain one day on, you know, so there's just seems more frequent localized intense events that will cause infrastructure damage for sure. Yeah, and I know, you know, I know time bond and when they're doing these inspections is that's in their thought process, that's in their reports. And I would assume even DCR, which is sort of the regulator for all these, for the dams would also be considering all that and maybe, you know, increasing requirements. I don't, you know, I don't know, but you'd hope it's all on everybody's minds. All right, so yeah, so those are all, that's all the major topics on the agenda. Anybody has anything else they want to say? That's great. We can also set a date for our next meeting and Brian, just so you know, we are recording too for doing the minutes, but any notes you're taking, that's great. All right, well, I was thinking Thursday, January 20th, it's the third Thursday of the month of January. We seem to be sticking with the third Thursday. Works for everybody. Is that good? Okay, great. Could change it to the second or fourth Thursday. I have another set of meetings that happen on third Thursdays of the month. Okay, I'm fine with that. Thursday is a good day. I just wondering if folks could be. Let's go with the fourth one, fine with me too. I would vote for the fourth one versus the second. All right, does anybody have a problem with January 27th? No, okay, awesome. Great, thank you all. Appreciate that. No problem. And that's all I have. Does anybody have anything else? I just want to make two comments. One is about PFAS and the private wells. I mentioned some things, the selection of wells. It's the 83 communities that are 60% or more served by private wells for drinking water. Those are the communities, about 83 or 84. And the well selection process, it is targeted. We're trying to find, there's information taken in and try its random, but also a group of wells where we're looking for things that might be. So we might have a higher incidence. While I'm mentioning things, there are hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of non-detects also. I do want to mention that, we're not talking about a majority thing here, but the fact that it is there is a concern just to mention that. And you should on that subject, if you just Google MSTP PFAS, there's a great page with a story map. Story map is a popular thing these days, populating things, showing maps of stuff. So there's a lot of behind the scenes GIS work also by students and others producing those, that information for DEP. So there's a lot of great information there. There's also going to be one that I want to mention and continue working in the lead in school and childcare facilities. We've got resources where our struggle is to get childcare providers to sign up. This life is many things on their agenda much higher than doing sampling of lead in their water. You can only imagine, right? That's a low priority. So we're hoping to get them engaged and we have an opportunity to leverage the upcoming revised lead and copper rule which requires some more sampling at schools and childcare facilities which puts an onus on public water suppliers that I've imagined public water suppliers have concerns with, I'm sure. Amy could speak about that, but hopefully this program can do some help to team with public water suppliers to help with that. We're trying to get some EPA to agree that we could spend some money now to get some data that can be used for regulation that will be in effect down the road. But we'll see if EPA goes along with that. Anyway, that issue is still there. I have John one question on it. So I live in Shootsbury, which is one of the 83 communities with more than 90% on private wealth. And so I applied for the sampling, the free sampling and was told that there was other priorities. There are other areas apparently of the town. So is that that's common? And should I apply again? Or if I'm in an area where they've decided there's not any, then I shouldn't leave it. So we got dollars and politics and other things. So we got 40 samples per those communities roughly and we frequently have many more people sign up for some communities. Some communities it's the other way around, but Shootsbury was one where there's more people signing up and in there that could be accommodated. Yeah. So yeah. No, you're in the queue, you're there, you're known about, but it may not happen. Yeah, but it doesn't necessarily mean that my particular neighborhood doesn't have it. That's why I wasn't chosen. It's more just based on numbers. Yeah, there's a multiple group of factors that could go in there. And in fact, there's a random part of it as well. It's a combination of random for coverage and targeted. Okay. All right, thank you. All right, thanks everybody. Thank you. Have a good day. Thanks for taking notes, Brian. Yeah, thanks, Brian. Brian gave a great seminar on erosion yesterday in the Northeast Climate Science Adaptation Center. So that was nice to listen to then, Brian. All right. Those of you who missed it, it's online. So if you can actually see Brian, if you missed the talk, it's on the UMass website. So, right, or it will be. Good, good. All right, thanks. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Thank you.