 being recorded. All right. I'm looking at attendees. And I see there's one and not not our lorry. Yeah. Okay. There's another one. Oh, goodness, shoulders. It's frustrating not to have all that stuff. Yeah, I bet the screen looks very different to you. Yeah. Yeah. I was trying on my old computer marks on the new laptop. Just give me my iPad. That worked good for you for a backup. And thank you so much for joining us. We know you're on vacation. So we appreciate it. Oh, welcome. Okay, so should I start as well? Okay, welcome to the July 14th Board of Health Meeting and pursuant to Chapter 20 of the Acts of 2021, this meeting will be conducted via remote means. Members of the public who wish to access the meeting may do so. There is an online Zoom link at the bottom of the agenda found on the Amherst Board of Health website. No in-person attendance of members of the public will be permitted. But every effort will be made to ensure that the public can adequately access the proceedings in real time via technological means. In the event that we are unable to do so for reasons of economic hardship and despite best efforts, we will post on the Board of Health website an audio recording of this meeting as soon as possible. And all Board of Health minutes can be accessed on the Board of Health website. So first, we'll have a roll call. And Maureen? Present. Tim? Yeah. Nancy here. Lauren, are you there? I don't see Lauren yet. Okay. And we only have four members because Steve's term expired. So we have three or four people. So we have a quorum. And the first item is review the minutes of the May 5th meeting and then the June 9th. So for the May 5th meeting minutes, are there any corrections, additions? I didn't see anything. And if not, may have a motion to accept them. I'll move to accept the meetings, the minutes of the May 5th meeting. That's what I did. And Tim, okay. So all in favor. Maureen? Aye. Tim? Aye. And Nancy, aye. And now the June 9th minutes. It was just you and I were there, Maureen. So we can vote on it because yeah, but we were the only two there, Stephen George, but he's no longer on the Right. Tim was away. And Tim was away and Lauren couldn't make it. Graduation or something. Yes. Yeah. So I'll move to accept the minutes of the June 14th meeting. Is that the right date? Yes. And I'll second that. I don't have them in front of me, Maureen. But yes, aye. And Nancy, aye. Okay. So next on the agenda is public comment on topics that are on the agenda only. And we will have another public comment at the end of the meeting for other topics. So I can't see any of that, Jen. There are no hands raised. Okay. So there's no public comment right now. In all business, should we wait to see if Oh, here's Lauren, Lauren's here. Okay. So I'm promoting her. Let's see. Oh, good. Just in time. Yay. Hi, Lauren. Hi, Lauren. She's getting settled in there. Lauren, can you hear us? We cannot hear you. Maybe there you are. Something's happening. Can you hear us, Lauren? There's some motion. I think we're getting close. Oh, hi, Lauren. We can't hear you. Lauren. Okay. Any ideas? Her video is off. She must be adjusting electronics, her video and audio. We can see you. We can't hear you. Yeah. Sadly. Yeah. Would calling in be another option or what the best thing is? Maybe Lauren can use the phone for audio, can still be in this home. And she hear us, you don't know. Lauren, can you hear us? And she vote with thumbs up, with thumbs down. Oh, she's hearing us. Lauren, is it, is your computer on mute? It looks like it's on mute. Something's on mute. Yeah, it is on mute. Can you unmute yourself, Lauren? Find mute and unmute. Okay. Got you. So, Lauren, can you still not hearing? Maybe the phone? Yeah. So, Lauren, can you call in? She doesn't have the earbuds. I think it sounds like it looks like. Is it possible to enable the chat box? Is there a chat box function here? No, I mean, that's a good, good question. I do, I would set that up when I'm initiating the webinar. So it's not something I can put in place now. I'm aware of. Should we continue Nancy or? Yeah, let's continue. Okay. So, Tim, thank you. We got the draft of the toxic chemical regulations that you and Lauren have been working on. So do you want to give us an introduction? It was a pleasure to read them. You made a lot of good sense. And I loved how you updated the references. So do you want to give us an overview of your work? Yes. So, I started off with our old toxic regulations, which had, which was had minimal, minimal chemicals considered. And, and so what we did is primarily included some, at least found some examples from other towns where they had used. And most of them were based on groundwater contamination. So, that was the original draft. And, and then when it was circulated among Lauren and, you know, we, we added a few contaminants, especially one contaminant, which is essentially becoming very important is the, is the PFA's. Which, you know, pearl and polyfluoroalkyl chemicals, essentially, they do not break down. They are also detected in almost every media, soil, water, air, even in our food. So, that was added. And also Lauren brought in the neonicotinoids, which are new class of pesticides, which, which mimic nicotine, nicotine chemical composition. But they are, they are neurotoxin for, for pest control. But it, more recently in 2017, I think they started to find some connection on human health end. So, and the other ones are endocrine disruptors, which also are emerging contaminants in the past couple of decades. That lot of research on pharmaceuticals, personal care products, most of them, which are primarily not treated, but eventually they can enter into our drinking water systems. So, I primarily defined many of these and also the potential risk involved. And the policies primarily, policy regulation is primarily addressing not a full control, but it is a, try to do the best in terms of managing and mitigating these contaminants at the source level for our, our town properties, town buildings and public schools. And there are some still research on complete, you know, some sort of a regulating to a full level on some of these contaminants, but it is, it is, it is everywhere, you know, and especially PFAs are everywhere. They are already spread out and so one of the approaches primarily to mitigate, to minimize, you know, by using alternate, an alternate chemicals, which will not be damaging. And that was one of the regulations, which were listed in this one in the procedures. Try to minimize those paper products, which are chlorine free, which is coming from our old regulation. And then this PFAs and toxic substances to have some sort of as much minimal contamination as possible, both at the source level and the transfer level. And also some of the cleaning products and degreases to have some sort of least toxic products, which are essentially proposing that, you know, the, at the source level we try to minimize as much as possible in the town properties. And if that is not possible, this is economic feasibility, that means it is very expensive or anything. There is a variance class added to that, primarily it comes to the variance can be obtained from the health director through our board. And so that is the, in essence, quick summary of the toxic chemicals regulations. So, there were lot of references, which were added. And this was some of the, something suggested, especially the references related to emerging contaminants were added. But also how this type of a impact varies with social classes, ethnicity, age, so that highlights the importance of looking at these toxic chemicals and trying to regulate them. Maureen, do you have any comments or questions? Well, I just went, I read through it. I think overall it looks and sounds very good. But I guess I had a couple of things that I noticed in the second paragraph of section one. There's a sentence that is complicated. It has, it's about halfway through, and it says, since existing environmental regulations based on a risk assessment are inadequate to protect human and environmental health adequately, a proactive approach is needed. And just as clumsy, and I wondered if it would say something more like since existing environmental regulations, based on a risk assessment, do not adequately protect human environmental health, a proactive, I don't just, it's just wording, but it probably doesn't really change the meaning of anything. The other question I wonder, you know, one of the, is to phase out the use of chlorine bleach paper products where available, but that was from our old regulation. Is that not been done or, you know, that was my question. Are there still some remaining things, maybe where the products aren't weren't available or they're still waiting for more cost effective or plentiful source of some of these things? That was one of my questions. I had that question and then that goes along with that in section four, it said the town will have one year from approval of this regulation to come into full compliance with this regulation. And that was in the old regulation. And was this done in the past? So I don't know if Jen would know. Yeah, you're section four number four. You know, I can tell you, I can, I can look into it because I don't know the answer. I sure you wouldn't because these regulations are from 2001 that. But I do know that their emails that go out and the reminders about using recycled products and chlorine free paper. So we do get notifications that's on our radar. So I can verify this with Jeremiah LaPlante, who's head of the facilities. I told him that this is a regulation that we're going to be looking at. And he said he'd like to be involved with it if we want him to. So if you include him, I thought he would be the go to person. So depending on what you find out, maybe Maureen and Tim, would it be something like that to continue the process of phasing out the use of paper products that we've. Yeah, the one thing I was sort of reading, it was like, like. There's something called processed chlorine free, because I think that the chlorine comes into the processing of the paper, but doesn't end up in the paper. So it's it's like a more I just I just happened to read a tiny bit about this. And I wondered if that would be a better way of saying what we're after, because it's not so much that there's chlorine in the paper, but the process of using the chlorine creates these diet is dioxins or something that is toxic. So the just to clarify, I think the paper products just essentially don't have chlorine that that's not we are targeting. It's it's indirectly we are talking the the industrial process, which actually bad bad for and so I think even though it was listed in the previous regulation, we might still have those types of products imported and used, you know, which actually can be any industry. I think carefully considering paper products in terms of the life cycle. That's what I think this we have to emphasize, you know, it probably was not it you cannot face out paper products now going to be new products coming in new type of a and then that last point which we are taking one year from approval that is not just for this chlorine free products, but it's also for the new new PFAs or other new nicot noids. And so that's why we had that fourth one year or so. The other thing I found confusing was the last statement. In section three. About the event of a less toxic substance is not replaceable for any reason. It it it doesn't sound right to me. It seems like it's not available for any reason, I guess, or something not. Yes, I agree. OK, I think that one was a typo or I just Steve had a correction there. And then I think when I incorporated, I think I didn't carefully check that. So it should it's not. Adoptable or something like that. Yeah, OK. And then I any more. Yeah, my last one was all products used in public spaces should have minimum contamination by PFAS and other toxic substances. How do we know what has PFAS in it? That's, you know, I guess I mean, if it's on the label, if there is a per whatever for or whatever on the label, but contamination with that is a big is a big part of the problem. I from from the little I read when we were talking about mosquitoes, some of the pesticides used to kill the mosquitoes. They showed PFAS in them. They weren't they came from the container that the that the product was in because the the original product didn't have PFAS. But once you put it in the container and let it sit there for a while, then it had PFAS. So I just I guess I I think that's a good goal. But I just I guess I'm maybe that's where someone else comes into the picture about how we how we work on doing that. You know, it just seems like a challenge. Yeah, I think when I had that in mind and I think we can you know, the PFAS is everywhere. It's already in soils, water, food and everything. But one way we could handle in terms of further contamination is at the source level and many of the procurements, for example, furniture, curtains, having some sort of a techniques for fire control, like a for foam, you know, all those have PFAS. And and I think at the procurement level, if if people are aware of trying to avoid those types of and then use some alternate material, that's what I mean by that. Yeah. OK. So that's that sentence products containing PFAS should be avoided to the extent feasible. Is that what you're referring to, Tim? On page three or or page four. And the procedure part is also a statement to that. Procedure section number three, I think. Yeah. Section three. At the bottom of my page is products. And then I have a question on the pesticides. Pesticides shall not be used until should we put all alternative means of pest control have been tried rather than alternative because maybe they'll just do one thing and then say, let's just go for the big guns. Sure. Oh, it looks like is that Lauren's hand in her phone? Hi. Yeah. Oh, yay. All right. Hello. I am. Yeah, I called in. I don't know if there's an echo. Yeah, I hear an echo. Sorry. Well, I can't talk. One way you can mute your laptop or speaker. OK. That might help. That should be good. How about now? Yeah, it's good. It's good. Oh, thanks. Good job. I had added the added the neomycocinoids right for the for the pesticide. For the dog. So the the copy that I printed out and the draft that was shared, I don't know if it was added, but I really think that's important. So yeah, it's very much. It's in here, Lauren. Oh, it's in there. OK. OK. They added it. Yeah. Yes. And Tim acknowledged you in the beginning for doing that work. So thank you for that. And it's on page two of the last draft. OK. So, yeah. So how do we want to make corrections or follow up? Tim has our few comments. There's not too much. And Jen is going to check on the what's been happening in the town and what we have of a record. Then we'd have to have a hearing and vote on them. I keep I hear myself in an echo. Yeah, there is. So can I I think I will make some edits based on the comments today and then send it. I will send it to everyone. And I think if if Jennifer can send it to the key players in the town procurement. Just for them to review the draft and once if we have that one, we can announce a public comment. Sounds good. Yeah, I think that sounds good. I'll send I'll send it out and ask about implementation. I think that would be an important thing. You know, just make sure it's pretty clear that I don't have to be notified for certain variances. You know, this just specific ones, like you said. That's sort of a worry of mine that people are always asking for variances. So we'll figure that out. This one also not just the procurement. The fire department also need to be involved, you know, especially some of the fire control forms have PFS, but we need to involve them right in the beginning. OK, OK. Thank you very much, Tim and Lauren. Any other comments on that before we move to the next item? So the community assessment. Emily is working on phase two, which is a lot of. Objective data and then she's going to be starting with some interviews of key informants, which will then lead to phase three, which is much more of the subject of data collection. Which would begin in the fall. We're having a second meeting the end of. This month on phase one and a I just got an email from another master's student who would like to join the team as part of his work for his master's degree. And I'm going to talk to him on Monday and he's sending his resume over the weekend. So I'll keep you posted on that. Any questions for me? And then. I've moved to gun violence, a public health epidemic. I introduced that last month. The the board, when I was on the board in 2015, had it on the agenda. And then after I left the board, it was dismissed and not taken up again. But I just looked up the data to date for 2022. There's 10,774 homicide. I'd 12,870 suicides. So that gives us 23,644 people killed just this year by gun violence. Three hundred and thirty seven in mass shootings and 15 in murders. Children up to age 11, 186 were killed and 404 injured and with teens, oh, my numbers here, or seven hundred and 17 were killed and 1,910 teens were injured just this year. And so I brought it up for the board to consider firearm awareness, identifying factors that contribute and protect from gun violence and using the public health model for us to define and monitor the problem in town and in our county, identify risks and protective factors in our town, develop and test preventive strategies and ensure that there's widespread adoption of effective strategies. Um, so I introduced this last month and we didn't have everybody there. So I wanted to just bring it up again and ask for people's comments and where they think and how we should proceed with it. So any comments? Do we have statistics for the town? I know those are national statistics, right? Right. I didn't look for those, but that's what we would need for defining and monitoring the problem of finding out what's happening in town. The last time we looked at it, Scott Livingstone was a guest and he gave us a lot of statistics and and how gun licenses were issued and how many gun licenses there were. So that was very helpful data. So that's what we'd have to get. I think he's the person. Is that correct, Jen? Sure, that would be that would be Chief Livingstone, you know, and and also our next guest might have some. Right. Earl Miller. But I wanted to get the sense of other board members of do you want to keep this on our agenda? Where would you like to proceed from this? I just brought it up to put on our agenda because it every time you open up the newspaper or listen to the news on the radio and I listen to NPR, you just hear about someone else being killed or injured, which is awful. You know, I guess, you know, partly my concern is that the new with the recent Supreme Court decision, which is going to affect the state laws and people may be challenging our state laws as well. Is there anything to town can do to support strengthening those laws? I think there are ways of approaching it that that might ban weapons in certain places as opposed to certain people. And I'd be curious to know what that process is like and and is there a way we can support that in our community, in addition to just gun safety, education and enforcement of the laws that exist. Thank you. Yeah, and that that's exactly it, Maureen, so that we would that would be helping to find the problem and then identifying risk and protective factors and then what actions can we as a board do for prevention? And now how should we proceed, Tim? I would just add that there's there's several pieces of legislation moving through the state through the House of Reps and the Senate. And I think we're all waiting to see just so folks know those gun laws are being challenged in court now. We expect that they will need to shift to follow the Supreme Court's guidance just to add to Nancy's data set, which I think is really important is one of the real pieces here is around suicide prevention. We are number three in the country for the lowest death rate by suicide. And that is absolutely the two states above us are Jersey and New York. So you're looking at kind of a real correlation. And that's because the longer that it takes for someone to ultimately make that decision for someone to move forward with an attempt, every second lowers it. And if you can buy two minutes, you decrease the suicide rate by something like 80 percent. So it's it's, you know, I think it's really important there. I think just time wise, I think we'll have a lot more clarification kind of towards the end of next winter as the courts kind of come back in the session and look at these things. But I think there's a real sense of kind of waiting to figure out what the kind of new direction of the court will say on gun laws. I'm sorry, can I ask to introduce? I don't know who. OK, sorry, you know, not much. I'm the director of the community responders for equity, safety and service. And so new face, but it's it's glad it's going to meet you all. I was very late to the last one. So I'm glad I was here on time today. Thank you. And Earl will be under new business, Tim. Introducing himself in his role, so. Lauren has Lauren. Yeah, I wasn't sure if I was on you. I don't really follow the the court. What's going on in the legislature? Mostly, but I am concerned about what I am. I also have heard on NPR about the connection between how close we have guns and how close we have guns. And it's it's easier to have a deadly situation with suicide if suicide is attempted. So I would like to see us as a board, like, if there's any kind of initiatives that we could do, like, educational wise or, you know, I don't know how we would approach that on an outreach level, but it's just another issue that needs to be shared and information that needs to be shared. So I think that's how I would like to see the board and form the community by just maybe first educating. That would be part of the prevention strategies. Should we in the fall have start again and have Scott Livingston and possibly Earl talk about guns, guns and licenses in Amherst and especially Scott, what he sees from the police point of view and then figure out what other data we need to define the and monitor the problem. Reaching out to the schools in the university, the colleges in the university, do they have protocols in place? It seems as if a lot of these mass shootings have been often are related to campuses and and education, some of them. I know when I don't know, Tim, if you've ever had that feeling, but I know towards the end of my teaching, I thought, oh, my God, if a student is really disgruntled with a grade, what might he or she do? Yeah, I'm sure they're active shooter training at those institutions. And that's a scary thing to do. But that's really way down the line. I think the prevention thing is really what we want to see. Right. So we want to know what's in place already and how those institutions view define and view the problem if it is a problem. So do you think having Scott come to our September or October meeting to talk about guns, guns licenses, how he views guns in town? I think it'll be good. But I think before we spend time in this, I think some groundwork, I think it's a very important problem. But I would like to know a couple of things. One is some evidence of that that is a real problem for Amherst. First thing, second thing is what the Board of Health can do beyond the current structure, which law enforcement, gun safety, and all the rules which are already existing, you know. So what additional thing they are expecting from the Board of Health? That's what the two things I think if we can clarify, I think we can we can start deliberating on that. Where it was going when I was on the board and then I started looking at the minutes after I left the board, but it was deferred and never picked up again, was contacting pediatricians and primary care providers if they asked in their annual visits, they ask if a child has a car seat, was in a seatbelt, has a bike helmet, is there a gun in your house, is it locked? I'm sorry to chime in again, I might be able to help you all with this. Crest receives a grant from the Violence Prevention folks over at DPH who monitor these data points for every community in the Commonwealth. So we could ask them for any pertinent information that they felt was worth sharing. Helpfully, we could we could broaden it and ask them for any sort of violence. So kind of preventable violence like car accidents to everything and just get you all kind of up to date report from them on on whatever whatever data they have available. I know they they have a team of about, you know, 40, 50 people working on it. So so it's pretty rich. Sounds good. Jim, any others? Anything else you want to add, Earl, while you're here on this topic? On this topic, and is it something that the Board of Health and Crest could explore together? I mean, we're certainly talking about it. The reality is in comparison to to some of our neighboring communities. We certainly don't see guns in our community. The police are not, you know, kind of if you go down to Hampton County, you see some of those communities are kind of engaged in this sort of finding guns on people in the community in fairly regular amounts. You know, I would say the larger piece you see is some fairly significant untreated mental health. But the ability to readily and freely access a gun is pretty challenging. The police have a really robust training course called Alice for active shooter training. I think that might be interesting because that information has really shifted over the years. The folks remember that kind of post column by world messaging was just to hide. And now, as you're saying, some of the things that are happening around the country, the message now is really to escape to get out of spaces as much as possible, which is a huge shift. And if you think of some folks in town who haven't had that training in a significant amount of time, they may have some messaging. But the PD really likes doing those trainings, too. And they get a lot of experience doing it. So I mean, I also think Scott, you know, with his amount of history here can give you a narrative that goes much farther back than I and, you know, likes to talk about these things. You may want to ask him just some questions via email. And I'm sure you'd be glad to let you know if there are issues worth discussing. As a board member in 2015, I felt very good having Scott come and talk about it and explain what was happening with guns, how people were licensed. And I think we could benefit from it. Because at that point, we might say, well, the risk and protective factors here are are OK. And we really don't need to develop any prevention strategies. But I think because gun violence affects the well-being and safety of all. And now every kid, like my grandchildren, every every kid is aware of what's happening. And I think as a board, we should educate ourselves because there's so many. People killed by violence and then also non fatal firearm injuries, not to mention domestic violence. And we had a mother killed by the father quite a few years ago. They lived in Amherst, but the the shooting took place outside of court in Northampton. So I just feel. That we should should become a little more aware of what's happening because it is such a public health issue. And if you want to proceed with that, we could get Scott to come and talk about it. Or if you feel that we should defer it as it was in 2016, we can defer it. Comments, Maureen. Well, I was just thinking we're expecting the chief's time. It might be helpful to email and get some data and get some data through the Department of Public Health and then have another discussion about it and then bring Scott in for questions and follow up to that. You know, I just think it might be like a place to get to, but it might be more informed if we had some information ahead of time. OK. And also, I think Earl mentioned the increase in mental health issues, which looks like it's much more critical, especially when they have access to guns. So I think that statistics could also be included, you know, if you can, you know. So, Jen, can you get us this information? Thank you. Nancy, yeah. So I'm very interested in supporting this. So Nancy, you and I can talk and you can guide me with what kind of questions Earl and I collaborate frequently on the same building. And we can we can dig into this. OK, I'll be home at the end of the month. So maybe we can the three of us can sit down and come back with something to tell the board in September, then. Yeah, let me support you with this. OK, thank you. OK. So, and you're on vacation. Any other comments about gun violence or are you OK with that? We will, the three of us will look at it and get information back to you in September. Is that OK with the board? No, it's good to me. OK. So, Ed, geothermal wells popping up in town, you're on. Sorry, was that my cue? Yeah, that we have one, two, three, four of them on our agenda here. So you're busy with geothermal. We are. And we have in an attendee, Hanna Kowalski, who is the permit coordinator, I believe, for dandelion energy, all four of the current geothermal applications are from her company. There are two in the downtown area. And then the other two are out on Linden Ridge Road, which is a fairly new street still building out on the Beltertown side off of the mine. I believe you've received all the materials. The applications were thorough and complete. I did visit each of the properties and I didn't note for any of them any particular difficulties. They were well sited. Clearly marked and I didn't find any issues with them. Because we have Hanna Kowalski in the audience, if you know, I would be happy to, you know, hear actually if you have questions to let her respond to. Can she tell us about these projects? I'd be interested to learn. Yes, of course. Sorry, my laptop camera does not want to connect right now, but I can share my screen and show you some diagrams and some site plans of what we are planning on doing. If that's OK. Yeah, I'm interested, especially downtown. Perfect. Because the properties are close there. Let me see if I can get the screen sharing to work. Jennifer, I'm having some issues. It's saying that it's I'm not able to share my screen. Would it be better if I email some diagrams over to someone who can? I'm going to see if I can make you co-host, Hanna. Sorry about that, Jennifer. No, no, it's just, you know, I'm in the learning curve here. See if that's given you more access. Perfect. That's exactly what I need. OK. OK, so for starters, this is just a general geothermal overview. So what we are doing is in the yard, we'll be drilling these ground loops. You can kind of see what they look like over here. It's obviously very oversimplified. It's a closed tube that has a it's a mixture of glycol and water. It's food safe. It's basically what you would find in your refrigerator. And it cycles from the heat pump in your home into the ground where it has a heat exchange with the earth there and then comes back up into your home. So in the summer, it takes the heat from your house puts it. You know, does the heat transfer between the air in your house and the fluid in the tube goes down into the earth. The heat dissipates into the ground and then brings back up liquid that's around 55 degrees and then does a heat exchange again. So it air conditions your house in the winter. We do the same thing, but in reverse. So we take the heat from the ground, which again, it's around 55. We bring it up back into your home. There's an air compressor in the geothermal furnace, which increases the temperature from 55 to around 120, which is basically the standard for forced air heat. And then we disperse that through your home. So this way you can heat and cool your house without having to use any sort of fossil fuels. The downsides to this are, you know, obviously you need to have a ground loop in your yard. So you need to have yard available where we could drill. And also it is drilling. So I know sometimes in Massachusetts are a little bit wary about drilling. This isn't fracking and this is a closed loop. So once the loops are in the ground, we grab the whole thing up. So there should be no fluid exchange between our loops and the ground water and no fluid exchange between our loops and the domestic water lines in the home. Does anyone have any questions about this so far? No. So it doesn't affect, especially out. I'm not sure where all our aquifers are in Linden Ridge. Do we have aquifers out there that affect our aquifers? It should not. So we have our own drill rigs. Let me pull up the next images here. And so you can see what the drilling process looks like. OK, here we go. Let me know if you can see the next page. This would be your just some general images of a different job that we've already done. So here you can see the drill rig itself. What we do is as we drill, we put down metal casing, which keeps all of our material inside basically the metal casing. So we're inject or we're excuse me, we're using basically a sonic drill rig, which is just very high vibrating metal to we push that metal to down. The metal tube itself is sealed. Once we get down to depth, all of the material inside of the tube, all the soil, you know, rock, dirt, clay, et cetera, gets pulled out of the ground. So what you see here is the this is the material from inside of the drill rig inside of the probe, as it were. We let that sit. We let that dry out and then we put our loops in and we grow out. And as we grow, we pull the metal tube out. So there shouldn't be any exchange at any point between the aquifer and what we're doing. Here's some other photos. This is another silt fence kind of example. This is the material that we pulled out of the ground. It's fenced in with silt so it doesn't go all over the yard. It doesn't go in the street. This picture right here is an example of the loops themselves. So you can see the black here is the plastic tubing. They're coming out from the grouted well, going across the yard into the basement. And then when it's done, we return the front yard to the original grade. So we just backfill the material that we pulled out unless it's, you know, contaminated or if it's particularly cobbly, then we'll get new clean fill and replace what we excavated with the clean material. OK, thank you. And Lauren has a question. Sure thing. Yeah, thank you. I had posed this to the board before. Sorry, the echo. Let me see if I can. OK. One of my questions was how many geothermal wells like would not be a problem for the town and the groundwater? And I still hear echo, so I'll just leave it at that. Sure thing. So what your town would want, obviously, it depends on what you decide in this meeting and going forward. I have the all the jobs that we are hoping to drill open. So I can just show you real quick. This is for 77 McLean Street. So for that home in this example, we would only need two wells. And it's it's, you know, obviously home specific. The number of wells we drill has to do with how much heating or cooling the home needs. So if it's a larger house, it will need more wells. But on average, we can get between one and three for, you know, your your typical residents. Let me grab the next one here. This is for 96 Linden Ridge. This one has three boars in the backyard. You can see here. I apologize if you can hear my dog. She is unhappy. The next one. This is 111 Linden. This is two boars here. And then this is the last one we have. I believe this is 10 Pleasant. And this is also going to be two boars as well. What is the benefit of the geothermal wells to the homeowner? Is it more efficient or? So the biggest benefit is not having to pay for the oil or gas to heat and cool your home. So personally, I live in Connecticut, so I have a better idea of the cost of heating in the state of Connecticut. But this past winter for us, it was around five dollars a gallon for heating fuel. So with the geothermal system, you have obviously the green energy effect, which is, you know, you're not burning any carbon dioxide or carbon monoxide creating materials to heat and cool your home. But also you don't have to pay that monthly bill to the heating and cooling companies, to the oil and gas companies. So it does use electricity to run the pump, both the pump for the fluid exchange and also the pump or fan for the house. But beyond that increase in electricity, all of the heating and cooling would be, you know, provided by the earth under your home. So it's a way of getting off of oil and gas and having a smaller bill. Obviously, you know, you do have to pay for the installation of the home or of the the wells on the furnace. But Massachusetts, Connecticut and New York are also the states are providing incentives to lower that cost for the homeowner. And if you are getting, if you're replacing your heater or your furnace or boiler, often getting a geothermal system can be cost effective. If you're going to be replacing your old equipment. Anyway, this can be a comparable way of getting yourself a new furnace, but also lowering your monthly fees in the winter or summer. So how deep are the wells? Oh, go ahead. Sorry, Tim. No, I'm just checking. You know, do the depth of the wells vary with the demand of the energy? Yeah, we try and keep. So each well, we try and not go deeper than 400 feet. Usually they're around 300. It depends on the geology of the area. If you have, you know, shallow bedrock, for example, you can get very deep without issue. But usually we have a general assessment of what we think is in the ground based off of, you know, the quadrants that we have, you know, the geology quadrants. But when we actually get out there, it can obviously be different. There can be cracks or other, you know, bedding shifts that are not anticipated. So we try and get to 300 feet with each of these bores. If we run into problems in the field, sometimes we have to revise our plan. But if that's the case, we'll have to, you know, submit something to you guys or submit something to the building department just to let you know what we've seen and why we need to change from our original plan. And how is the maintenance over the long run? Just quickly say, say, for example, maintenance, we installed it with minimal impact. On the groundwater systems or aquifer down the road, there was, you know, some sort of a leak or and then you have to dig in and then fix it. And I'm just curious, what is the history of that type of repair costs and what type of how, what will be the environmental impacts of that? Yeah, I can get our actual engineer to give you a better, you know, more specific guidelines. But we believe based on the quality of the materials that we use, that the wells themselves shouldn't need repair for 100 years. The furnace in your home, the actual equipment, I believe has a 20 year warranty. So after 20 years, you may need to replace the actual, you know, physical heat exchanger, but the loops themselves should be good for around 100 years without any issue. This question was primarily intended, if there are many installations like this coming up in the town and if it is 100 years, that's a very ideal one. That means, I'm sure the materials are some sort of very robust to any shifts and stuff like that. But I think any type of impacts are essentially going to be on the surface water, mostly on the construction stage, where there is a lot of site preparation and it's very similar to any type of a development construction. So I'm sure that I think a lot of mitigation is being done during the construction stage, right? Yes, that obviously, if we're going to encounter issues, usually it will be during drilling just because, like I said, the biggest unknown for us is what the geology actually looks like in the ground. And we do have, you know, some towns have, I don't want to say more strict, but, you know, they're more particular about the guidelines for what our site looks like during drilling. We have a couple of towns in New York, for example, that want a silt fencing inspection before we start work, just to make sure that everything, you know, is packaged away nicely before we start work. In Connecticut, we almost always do a trench inspection. So once the wells are drilled, the trench is dug, but before we backfill everything just so that the town can see what we have on site and what it looks like. So we're more than happy to do anything like that, if that would help, you know, just sometimes it's just nice to see it in process. But as for, you know, obviously there could be issues if there's like an earthquake or something that would, you know, shorten or be concerning for that hundred-year lifespan. But we do use the, like all we use is food safe, and I'm happy to provide an MSDS for that, if that would be of interest to you guys. So even if it does leak, it shouldn't put toxins into the aquifer itself. Yeah, that's a safe one. Is DEP, mass DEP involved in the, in during the site construction? They, we've reached out to them and they no longer care about closed loop systems. I have an email that I can forward you guys as well. And I can give you the name of the fellow I spoke with. They still are concerned about open loop, things that have active flow between, you know, your heating system and the groundwater, but they don't consider closed loop systems fracking or something that they particularly are concerned with at this time. I just have one other question. Because we're a board, because we're a board of health, I don't know what the regulations are around this, like how many geothermal wells are we supposed to approve or, you know, I just, you know, from, from just, you know, learning a little bit about it. I just, that's one of my questions. Like, and how does it, how do all these wells affect the general water level? If there's like not a limit to how many wells are being built. Thank you. Well, they shouldn't affect like the water that's being used in the aquifer because they're going to be closed off from the aquifer. You know, obviously in theory, it shouldn't change anything at all. Because we're grouting as we go, there shouldn't be any water, you know, coming up from our holes or any water going down through our holes. We've and, you know, obviously I'm biased because I work for this company, but we've done a lot of these wells in New York and Connecticut. And we haven't had any issues, you know, with aquifers or with the towns that we've been working with. Obviously, stuff happens. The I think the worst that we've had so far was we had a. Oh, gosh, what's it called? Basically, we drilled through a confining layer and had water coming up through our hole from the groundwater. And that was more just a concern because it made the site a mess. It had water. We had, you know, excess water on the site. But in terms of like, once we grouted that well up, that water went back to having a confining layer. So it wasn't a constant flow of water from the aquifer out. And the name of that system is going to bug me all night. But beyond that, we haven't had any issues with like things leaking out of the aquifer or things, you know, going into the aquifer. And again, I'm biased because I work for this company, but we've been doing this for five years and we have not had any issues with that so far. And sorry, while I was while you were talking, Lauren, I pulled up the email from the DDP. So it's up on the screen now, if you want to take a look. I will also forward this along. And any other questions for Hannah? Hannah, you mentioned about fracking. Similarity, I think fracking, let's say open system, where we have to pump and a lot of potential impacts on methane emissions and these are underground emissions, you know. So this system will not have these types of impacts. Yeah, we haven't seen that because it's just a single, you know, one or two boreholes as opposed to with fracking, it's multiple boreholes. Usually you have a, you know, a receiving end where you would hold the material up that you were pushing out and then basically an input end. So with fracking, you have two ends of borehole fields and then you force fluid through, you know, one end of the bores, which causes the natural gas and another fluid to flow out to your receiving boreholes. The big concern with that is just, first of all, you know, you're doing fields of boreholes both on the receiving end and the input end. And also you're displacing material that's in the ground. So, you know, natural gas and other things with whatever in fracking, it's usually like a proprietary fluid. The concern with that is that if the density and the pressure is not the same of the of the fluid you're injecting as what you're pulling out, you can end up with fissures and fractures in the bedrock. And, you know, bedrock collapse because this is just a single like straw hole down that we then ground up. You don't have the same extent or concern. It's these are very similar to groundwater wells. It's just instead of, you know, punching down a straw that then slurps up water from the aquifer. It's just a punched hole that gets filled in and just sits there. It's like a more like a cork than a straw. Are there questions? Thank you, Hannah. Any time. And I will, like I said, I can send this along along with any other photos or diagrams that you guys would like. Just let me know what the best email for that would be. Jen, Jen Brown's email and then she can get it out to us. Perfect. Thank you so much. OK, I just have one thing. I noticed this little discrepancies. I think it's more of a clerical kind of thing than a big issue, but the Linden Kramer Linden, the 111 Linden, it says the site plan has three boreholes. The letter of support says there are two. And then on the 196 Linden, there are two boreholes on the site plan and two in the letter. But the photo that's attached to the letter shows three three marked boreholes. So I think they just need to, you know, align in terms of being, you know, that that may have been something that I did, Maureen. It might have, and that's I could see with four of them going on at once, that that is something I could actually have done. But I just just think that they need to pay attention to that, making sure we're approving what what is actually out there. Yeah. Well, the material, what I would say is the material that Hannah submitted is appears to be correct. It may be that my letter was was an error. I don't have everything in front of me. I know the one on 96, though, actually showed three marked things in the lawn. So that that was what confused me. And two mark two on the site plan. Yeah. I just got really interested in this because I actually have a geothermal system from my house, but it's a horizontal loop. It's like the slinky type. It's about 10 years old and I'm really happy about it. And I think it helps reduce, you know, use it. It's more efficient than other systems. So it reduces all total carbon, regardless of where the electricity and what's being used to generate electricity, whether that's propane or whatever else is out there. Ed. Yes. You want us to approve these or are you just? Yes, please. OK, so I have one thing I would would just say is that these projects involve other permits from the Department of Inspections, any applicable electrical or plumbing or actual building department, you know, overall building permits. So there is another layer of supervision that's going on for the whole system. But the well regulations in Embers do require the Board of Health to approve all wells. And. Do you have the layout with the aquifers mapped on it? I I don't have that, but I could get that. Aaron Jock and I had talked about working on some maps and I'd be happy to to, if that already exists, that probably does to share it with the board. Because that was one of our early concerns. Will these geothermal wells affect any of our aquifers? Yeah, I believe that these are all not. In anywhere near any of our wells or the, you know, the aqua surface water that the town uses. But that map is something we could all find useful. It'll be. I mean, these four may not be affecting, but I think as we move into more and more applications coming in with each installation having three or four wells, which are 300 feet or something like that, you'll start to see some sort of a some physical impact on the aquifers, you know. So that's what I mean down the road. There might be something we need to consider. Thank you, Tim. Is it the board's pleasure to approve these four wells? And if so, I need a motion. I make a motion to approve those four wells. OK, and for the record, it's 77 McClellan Street, 96 Linden Ridge, 111 Linden Ridge and 10 Pleasant Court. So it's been moved and seconded. And now we will vote Maureen. Hi, Tim. Hi, Lauren. I'm going to have Spain. OK, and Nancy. I say we have three eyes in one extension. Thank you. So now and it's thank you, Ed and enjoy the rest of your vacation. Thank you. Thanks especially to Hannah Kowalski for bringing her expertise. Yeah, yeah, I'm glad that I could come. I'm sorry. I was very informative. Thank you. Any time. OK, now we have Earl Miller to give us. Introduce himself to us and talk about Chris. Hi, I'm I'm going to string a bad luck. Yesterday, you have your hand up Maureen for anything. No, OK, OK. Yeah, no worries. I was saying I want to have luck yesterday. I did a legal women voters event and I had to follow a rocket scientist. And today I I turn my camera off because I felt like I was making little kid faces trying to I didn't know that was a thing that was possible. So you learn something new every day. I'm the director of our community responders for equity, safety and service department. You know, I think sometimes people use the word program. But one of the really distinct features of what we're doing is that we are the third leg of public safety in Amherst as of July 5th. So we have eight community responders who will be working in pairs of two. I have a program assistant, Kat Newman. Some of you may know her from the ambassador program, which she she led for a long period of time. And we are it's there's there's a very long version of it. I'd say the short version is where we're looking at, you know, challenges that communities that may often find themselves without a clear cut public safety entity to engage with might have. Those often look like things like homelessness, mental health challenges. For some folks, just a real fear of public safety of police. And we recognize that that is most common in communities of color for for lots of really valid reasons. You know, I think we're one of Amherst is one of probably about a hundred communities that started to have this conversation. And only a few of those communities got to bear fruit from those conversations. So we, you know, our approaches, we are unarmed. We're we're savoring our work around de-escalation, motivational interviewing. Folks haven't heard of that modality. It's a mental health modality of curiosity and relationship building. The idea being that the relationship is where the healing happens and cultivating that and asking questions that allow for that are really important. Our responders are multiracial. We have folks from we have folks who speak Swahili. We have a Spanish speaker on our team. We have the former student life director from Western New England University. We have a really diverse team as far as experience and life experience. So I've been on the job since March 21. I've been trying to get as much work as I could as a kind of team of one. And really, I think to Timothy, your point earlier, one of the real challenges is coming out of the pandemic. There are a lot of people who didn't have mental health challenges before that, who are now having these and it's challenging because it doesn't look so similar for everyone. For some people, it's a pretty profound depression from those kinds of months of quarantining, of not having social contacts. And and right for those of us where it comes easy, socializing doesn't necessarily feel that hard, but for folks where it is a little bit more of an effort, that can feel really, really stunted for some folks. You know, it looks like some, you know, symptoms that might be, you know, hearing voices, suicidality, lots of things are coming back. Folks are mistrustful of the government. That seems to be a pretty pervasive feeling these days from kind of all sides of the conversation. People feeling less steady with things. So we were training currently at the Munson Library. Feel free to pop it and say hi. And we'll be training until the last week of August or first week of September. We're we're saving that last week, just in case we feel like we need a little bit of finishing before we go. And kind of the way I describe our work is really three parts right now. We will take 911 calls. We will be first responders in some settings. We had a report done by a group called Leap that suggested that about 20 percent of the calls, 911 calls year to year fit really neatly for us. Their calls that maybe wouldn't have even generated a response before we started. Assisting. So one of the scenarios I think about this in this is domestic violence, which is obviously a public health concern. You know, really the way we deal with domestic violence now is to remove the perpetrator, but that often ignores the fact that you then leave the rest of the folks there who have who have had a member of their family leave, who have been the victims of abuse, who are now having to move forward with how much support. So when 911 calls come for that and the criminal justice aspect of it has ended, providing support for folks on the other side of that. And then I think what is most important to me is prevention. Hopefully as much as we can, keeping folks from ever needing to call 911 by addressing their concerns as upstream as we can be. You know, my sense of all these things is, you know, waiting until things have broken down as often too late. People have already lost a lot. So to that end, you'll see us throughout town. We've done engagement events that some of the apartment complex we had a really about 150 people at Graf Park. It was about 100 degrees that day. So I was surprised anybody showed up, but there's a lot of excitement. And I'm excited. And, you know, we feel there's a lot of pressure. We already have other municipalities reaching out to us to hopefully join us in this experiment. And it is an experiment. The unique features, there is nothing quite like Amherst. It is nothing quite like Amherst. But there is no a tent like this in a town this small. Most of these are in municipalities are at least 100,000 people, places like Denver, Seattle, Portland, Camden, Durham, North Carolina. So we are one of the smaller municipalities, which most towns are about our size. So if we can do it, that really does open it up for a lot of other folks. And we're a public safety department. Northampton is doing a similar attempt, but it's a public health approach. Not that public health isn't deeply important to me, but I just have learned that it's sometimes easier to be in public safety and work with public health, as opposed to the alternative. And Jennifer is such a great partner that even if we're not, you know, nestled under public health, I think we're going to give you guys a lot of bang for your buck, too. And I come from the Department of Mental Health, so, you know, prevention is really it's just something I feel really strongly about. So I don't know. That's my spiel. If it made sense, then I certainly should not have followed heating your house with the ground, which is the thing I didn't know about. So any questions or anything glad to talk about it? Anyone have a question for Earl? I have a quick question. It's Lauren. Oh, go ahead, Lauren. Go ahead, Tim. Go ahead. Oh, I had a question about prevention. I think you had this, you mentioned prevention. That's a very, you know, it might consume a lot of your time assessing, you know, looking at some of the data and evidence. And I'm just curious what type of prevention you do in coordination with pediatricians or primary care providers who have some sort of a psychiatrist and everything. I'm just curious. Actually, me and Jennifer are working on an initiative to bring some psychiatry to bear in town. You know, one of the one of the state initiatives that has really worked is this line that pediatricians can call to get kind of direct consultations from a psychiatrist. But as it has grown, there is a lack of psychiatry everywhere, everywhere you go. And so sometimes that line takes a long time to get back to folks. And so the idea of bringing some psychiatry into town, doing some consultations for folks, having a sense of the resources in the community and what they actually look like, right? If you call a mental health clinic, they're going to tell you we take people. You know, I'll be honest, the majority of the ones really close to us have fairly long wait lists, particularly the kind of large ones. So who has openings and how long is the wait? And what can we do to keep sustained people through those weights? The other piece is bringing to bear some of the programs in the area that are not very well known, I think of PREP, psychosis recovery, prevention and recovery and early psychosis, which is a program for people who are having their first experiences of hearing or seeing things that other folks are not. One of the things we know is that if you can get treatment for folks in the first two or three years of that experience, the outcomes are generally much better than if you wait until when most people get treatment, which is somewhere between eight to 10 years later, when folks feel like they can come out with those experiences. The other piece is the responders will have some limited case management ability really targeted to get people from a distressing event, a life interrupting challenge to resources. Particularly what I see in Amherst is a lot of people who are waiting for openings in clinics who are waiting for psychiatry appointments. And there's nobody is supporting them in those moments, unless they end up in real trouble. The other piece is there's a there's a reality to to what it's like to have particularly mental health conditions that the system kind of. Puts people in positions where the only time you get resources or support is when you are in the worst moment of your life. And when things get better, all those resources instantly kind of dry up. So sustaining people through their kind of early recovery until they feel a little bit more steady on their feet. Initiatives we'll use are things like the Columbia Scale for Suicide Prevention. Columbia Scale is a really kind of in the field assessment that is flexibly built to not for some people, they feel kind of chronically suicidal. And one of the faults of suicide scales is that they catch those people and they often end up going to the hospital for experiences that they've learned to sustain themselves through. Columbia Scale doesn't just rank the in the moment experience, it ranks the historical risk, right? Suicide is much more likely for folks having their first attempt someone who's a little bit further down the line for a variety of reasons. I can talk prevention forever. And I really like to do that. We're taking good notes as we're going through our training. So by the end of it, we'll have a real list of approaches we're using and connections we're making like at the schools with the social workers at the schools who are supporting kids. They were sort of justice program, you know, we want to be as deeply embedded in the town as the other public safety entities. Thank you for asking that. Lauren, can you hear me? Yes. Have you received any phone calls yet? Any phone calls? Yes, have people been able to actually call Chris or how how I probably have asked this before, but how do people actually get to be, you know, help or supported by the press? That's a great question. So we're not live now. We're in we're in training, so I just want to be super clear because I know folks have waited two years for this. People are ready for it to go. What what would be most dangerous is having untrained folks making approaches without a real sense of that. So we started training on the 5th, our training ends the end of August, September, we're going to do some events to promote the number. There will be a line directly to crest. All of the responders will have their own lines, so they'll be able to take calls individually. And like every other public safety entity, folks will be able to call in through the regular 911 dispatch line. A question I'll have a good answer for you in like January or February is how 988 the new the new kind of federal initiative will impact us. It just went live on the 12th, so none of us are quite sure what it's going to look like yet. But Earl, I have to amend that. You have helped us already with some case consultations. So thank you for that. And you know, that's one of the great things about Amherst is folks are willing to let us be supportive. You know, there's a lot of places where people get really territorial over the work, and I appreciate the spirit, particularly from the public health folks about, you know, when folks come to the building and are struggling, being willing to engage the folks around us and being in that same building with them in the senior center is such a force multiplier for all of us. And that's such a big part of public health is, you know, people call us. We really want to make sure that we can link them with different services. And I know that's something that you and I have talked about is we use to have something. And I know I say this frequently called Amherst Human Service Network. And it was a great, great program that Julie Fetterman put in. And you and I are going to talk about that and rename it and raise some some fresh air and new life into that. That's really important. Having regional collaborative processes is super important. Right now, a lot of providers are kind of working in the dark. And for some folks, that means they're getting duplicative care. You know, two people are trying to work on the same issue while other challenges are unaddressed. And I'm really excited about the opportunity to kind of roll in the same direction with public health. Thank you. We appreciate it. So once we get going and I have a sense of what things are looking like, I will send Jennifer some information for you all. I always want to be a good partner to public health. So if you ever have questions about what we're doing, you ever want to participate in any of our activities or just see what we're doing, maybe have a responder come, someone who's doing the work and talk to you about that. You all are very important to me. And because we don't have that sort of contractual obligation to each other that Northampton does, it'll be really important that, you know, if you guys have a question, my door is always open for you. And I hope vice versa. You know, we were just talking today about what happens if COVID happens. We're a very small team. And I caught COVID while I was in Amherst and Jennifer and her team gave me really good advice. I took antivirals. I felt better very quickly. So so they've already been really helpful to me. It was I've caught COVID three times. So I seem to be a real you might want to avoid me, but I'm trying. Thank you all for your time. Thank you, Earl. I'll see you all soon. I'm sure. Thank you so much. OK, lots of luck with all the training. Thank you. Very exciting. OK, so directors updates. Well, I have to say, I think that's a hard act to follow. He was saying hard. So excited about about collaborating with him and having him in the bank center up on the second floor. So I'm going to start with the COVID update. Our numbers are lower, but they're still coming in. For example, we have 66 people in isolation now, seven new people overnight. But we know that this is a gross undercount. And we've been saying that for a while. People are using antigen tests. They're not reporting. And it's at the point where the Department of Public Health, as of this week, is changing their reporting to weekly reporting. So collecting the data daily, but reporting it weekly. Here in Amherst, our dashboard will continue to go on the same manner. We'll post daily, at least for the fall semester. The B.A. 0.5 or B.8.5. I've heard of B.A. What's that dot dot five five? Yeah, I didn't really know about it. Yeah, 65 percent of the total cases. I see some notes from two to four to health meetings ago. It was at 7 percent. Sixty five percent total cases spreads easily. It bades immunity from vaccine and prior infections. So here we are. It's I don't want to say it's a lull, but it's a quiet time. But we sure are watching our numbers, our other indicators, hospitalizations, people being sick for this fall. And we're really going to be monitoring this very closely. We are in a different place than we were last year. Really, we know what our tools are and what we're going to be able to do to leverage those. You know, we have vaccination testing. Stay home if you're sick. It's a big one. Ventilation mass and like Earl was saying, Paxlova or the antivirals. So I'm just throwing that out. That's what we have. I do want to make another plug for our wastewater reports. Thank you, Amherst Department of Public Works. They are taking samples three or four times a week. Those get sent off to Jamaica Plain. Biobot analyzes them and they go. Come back to us and thank you, I.T. for posting them. We have a really great website. Those numbers, as I say, the numbers don't translate into actual cases. Don't try to guess or estimate, but really, we're looking at trends and those trends happen prior to people reporting cases or if there's asymptomatic. The Department of Public Health is also going to start posting wastewater biobot reports as of this week. They get posted Thursday at five p.m. So those should be up. But that's something that we really have as a tool. It's not the one key public key indicator we'll look at. But it's it's one of the things that we'll continue to look at. That's the COVID update. I'm going to go into some other things. We continue to have free antigen tests here that I help come to the Amherst Health Department. We have about 1,200 we'll give them to you. We will distribute them again. This is our third shipment with our partners. I think we're we're sort of we're not sitting on them. Come get them if you need them. We've been giving them to Amherst Survival Center, Craig's Doors, other other areas that would benefit from them come fall. I think we're really going to try to do more of a push and get those into people's hands. And I always make a plug for antigen tests. They're a great public health tool. If you're asking the question, am I infectious? It's going to give you a really good answer. So that's that's how we use it to stop any kind of chain of transmission. The other thing is come get them before an event, before you're seeing a vulnerable person and do cadence testing. Two days out, test yourself if it's negative. That day of test yourself, if it's negative, you have a pretty high certainty with other things that you can enjoy other people's company with a mask if needed. The UMass website is the public health center is saying that the PCR testing is ending July 29th. So that's what DP UMass is reporting on their website. So that PCR testing may be sunsetting. So here in the health department, our vaccine clinics, we were doing. I think we've done about 18,000 shots, not including home visits. But over the past two months, we've really seen a drop. So we're we're hovering around 20. Patients coming in over the past three weeks. What we're doing is we're ending the clinics, but we're morphing into office hours. So every Thursday from 12 to two, we'll be here to vaccinate. If it's five people, if it's 30 people, but we're just shifting to sort of a different system. And with that, I say that we're going to continue to monitor where we are. If we have a surge in the fall, we'll expand, we'll ramp back up. If there's a new. Bivalent vaccine and people want that, we'll be able to to start vaccine. More people as needed, so we're ready to go with other direction. I want to announce and some people know that we have a new public health nurse. She started last week. Olivia Peters, we're so happy to have her here. She's been a public health nurse in Worcester. And she has we stole her from the Department of Public Health and the tuberculosis program. She's been resettling new immigrants. She's she's bright. She's kind. She's multilingual. And I look forward to to working with her. You know, showing her what we do here and really learning from her and her expertise that she brings. So so thank you, Olivia. I'm going to shift gears just very quickly at the Department of Public Health webinar that we used to have twice a week, then it was once a week. Now it's once every other week. They mentioned very briefly about drought conditions. So I want to bring that to everyone's attention. If you Google drought, DPH, it's a new page to me. You can see where we are in Western Massachusetts. Um, three days ago, I looked and we were a level one of four. And yesterday we're level two of four. So I tell that to you with no more information that I can share. But it's something that we all need to be thinking about. Well, we have water restrictions. Will the town use that data for water restrictions? So that's what I'm saying that I don't understand completely. So this is one source of information. So with this, I'm going to go to other departments and see what information they're getting. I'm sure it comes directly to to other people and not just a mention at a department public health webinar. But I think, yeah, that should be everyone's on everyone's radar and something that I'll look into more. And then the last thing is that mosquito trapping started mid June. And we have in Massachusetts, the first West Nile virus mosquito in Essex, so north of Boston. So that ramps up or hopefully does not ramp up over the summer. So we'll continue to report that and watch that and push out more information about preventative measures. That is my update. Thank you. Any questions for Jen from anyone? I'm so glad you finally have a nurse to help you. And thank you for covering both bases for all this time. It's greatly appreciated. It is a lot of work and most appreciated. You know, thank you. It was an honor. You're welcome. And I just thrilled. I'm thrilled to have her here for the residents and I'm thrilled. I feel like it's going to open up more possibilities for me to support you and to do other interventions. Great. I have no topics that have been anticipated. We have said that there's other public comment. So I don't know if anyone don't see any. There's just one phone number up. Yeah, no, I don't see any other hands. And we will in the past, there has not been an August board meeting many years ago. But once COVID, we had many meetings in August the past couple of years. So our next meeting is September 8th. Are there any other comments before I ask for adjournment? Can I ask a quick question? Sure. This is a totally different area. But I think since it's summer, some days are very hot. I'm just curious if there is any tracking of like a heat effects on communities, you know, especially those who are having no public amenities, you know, like to cool off air conditioning and everything. I'm just curious if we are seeing any cases like that or do we have any statistics? Yeah. Oh, yeah. And Jen, we talked about cooling places at our last meeting. So, Jen, do you want to fill Tim in on all of that? Yes. So what what I can share about that is it's something that we are definitely talking about. And when I say we at the townwide, you know, I speak to other people, the fire department, they're in charge of cooling centers. They've opened them when there's a certain heat index, you know, spread out over a period of days without, you know, relief at night. But there's this real acknowledgement that these hot days are going to be hotter and they're going to extend further, start earlier. So there's talk about, for example, what to do with these old buildings and Maureen, you sort of grasped it well when we were talking about it. There's regulations in place that have allowed only certain cooling and heating days. So we're looking at a permanent variance to that. And I believe it actually we have one written. So the Groff Park cooling pad, splash pad is something that they've opened early. And I think they're keeping it later at night. So it's something that's a real concern to us. I don't do not have statistics, but I know we had that really hot weekend in May was it? I mean, it was it was hot. And I can just see the sun on, you know, Clark building here just beating down it cooled down at night. And then two days later, it was cool. But, you know, there was a report out of Chicago that they have similar heat wave. And I think a few people died, you know, so you can't just dismiss these these events. So when the fire department has cooling centers, I know with COVID, it was complicated by not wanting to bring people into spaces. What are the spaces that are currently targeted for something like that? And I know they had some outdoor cooling, like like tents and things like that and water and vans, etc. But I don't know if that's something you know of, or we'll wait to see what they have planned. Yeah, no, I mean, good question. I don't have the answer to that. They've used the large activity room in the Bang Center before. And it's something that they'll, you know, determine they're very aware, very on top of it. When we've had them in the past, we've had a pretty low turnout. A lot of folks opt to go to the library or some of the other smaller places in town. So but I just want to really assure people that it's on on people's minds, how to to to work with, you know, our homeless, as Nancy brought up last time during these heat spells. And what are we going to be doing? So Tim, did I answer your question? Kind of. He wanted stats. I don't think so. Thank you. I was just exploring, you know, if we have an inventory of places we announce or people can go to the website and say, these are the places where you can have access to this or that or whatever it is. Yeah. So so the town does a really good job of on the banner, you know, that'll go across and then through social media. So that'll be posted. And then also on the website itself, things get, you know, on the main web page, you go down and they have they have those big blocks with information. But I think that banners are really good thing. I also, I don't know what kind of alerts you can sign up for, if that's an option, maybe. Or the reverse 911, is that used for that? I mean, it might not get to the populations you're trying to get to, but. But it's another, I guess it's another tool. The other thing, if people have signed up, is that the enhanced 911 you're talking about, Maureen, that? Well, I think if you sign up, I don't know if you have to sign up for these. But, you know, every once in a while, you get an alert that. There's like when they're big power outage or there's I can't even remember, but we've gotten some of those calls. You're signed up for that. But also, I know when our father, my father-in-law was living with us, we signed him up through the. The call, whoever, you know, when you call in 911, that they knew we had an elder in our vulnerable person in our house. I don't know if people are signed up for that, if they can be alerted. Because sometimes elders are not aware of what's happening to their bodies in extreme heat and they can dehydrate and die very quickly. Yeah, the Amherst Fire Department on their web page. I haven't put my eyes on it recently, but they had a place to sign up for alerts. And it's something that I'm going to go and make sure that I'm up to date with. But that used to be a place for tornado alerts or, you know. Yeah, again, harsh weather, ma'am. And and just I don't know if we're done with this, just as backtracking, I might have like spaced out, but we talked about the vaccine clinics, not clinics, but just having office hours for the 12 to two on Thursdays. So that's a change in the timing, right? And is there continued effort towards the youngest kids? Or is they are they part of that whole mix, too? Yeah, six to relatively new six to six months to five year. You know, we had offered those two clinics morning for the little PDs. Thank you very much for being there yesterday and doing that. You know, we offered the two times and and that's what we were sort of thinking of what's what's it going to look like or is a rush for people to get that vaccine and people's, you know, their kids immune system. You know, up and running, you know, two weeks after their second. I think with our new public health nurse, I'm so looking forward to more public or more outreach. So if there's a real need that, you know, we're going to continue these if people are going to their pediatricians, right? That's my sense is that might be a more natural thing at that age group to kind of to go towards your own pediatricians. Yeah, but I guess you'll see, right? I think the demand. Yeah, absolutely. You know, I just remember Emmerdrag and really saying every every one shot is really important thing, but we do want to be efficient. What's UMass doing? Kate Kelly, Northampton does an incredible job, but we definitely want to support our community. There's, you know, we'll we'll always be vaccine always here. So where is there a need? It was very satisfying. Did you like vaccinating? Oh, it was. Yes. It was really different. And, you know, to see these like mostly they were like between maybe two and four or something and and it was different. And it was very sweet. And some families were very happy because now the whole family is vaccinated. So that was, you know, or is on the way to being vaccinated. I think it was momentous. I'm so glad to be part of it. I didn't vaccinate, but, you know, really, we've been waiting for this since May. You know, yeah, I'm happy for the parents. Yeah. And one other thing is I had talked to Jen about at our September meeting, having the new public health nurse just check in to be introduced to everybody. So she's on board. I did forget that. Is there anything else? If not, can I have a motion to adjourn the meeting? I can make a motion to adjourn the meeting. OK, then I second. All in favor of adjourning, Maureen. Aye. Tim. Aye. Lauren. Aye. And Nancy. Aye. Thank you, everybody, and enjoy August. I hope you don't have to have any emergency meeting. Yeah, could happen. No, see you in September. All right. Thank you, Jim. Thank you, everybody. Bye bye. Bye bye.