 I'll show an environmental here to order. Councilman McDowell, can you hear us? Yes, I'm in. Awesome. All right, well, Madam Clerk, please note that all three members are present and we will go ahead and jump right in to the first agenda item, which is the tree and appearance commission update, Mr. Russell Jeter and Ms. Kristen Dowell. Y'all can come up here so that we can make sure that those listening remotely can hear you. That would be wonderful. Thank you all for having us here. Happy to share with you results of the heat mapping effort that we did a couple summers ago and the deliberations of the tree and appearance commission about approaches to addressing this issue and some unrelated topic. So this is a slide you probably are really familiar with or maybe not because we tend to underestimate heat in the South. This is the weather fatalities for 2022. What we're seeing is that they're higher than floods, lightnings, tornadoes, hurricanes, any of the rest of them. It's a serious health issue. And if you could read the very fine print and I didn't blow it up for you, it says that these numbers are likely to be an underestimate because often in our reporting, if someone comes in with a heart attack that was exacerbated by heat stress, they're going to record the heart attack and not the heat stress. So these, it's well known that the academic, the medical codes do not capture all the fatalities. This is also important because our heat risks are not well integrated into planning. If you look at all the other things that we do in emergency management, this is not the one that gets a lot of attention. Next slide. But we're seeing the changes. This is the shift in planting zones. You may not tell it from today's weather this morning, but the temperatures are changing and rising. Next slide. And within the city of Columbia, one way of addressing heat is by having adequate shade. This is a GIS based analysis with machine learning. It compares, you get two images here from 2020. And what we're seeing here is that the tree canopy loss between 2005 and 2020, within the boundaries of the city in 2019. Okay, so these are the 2019 boundaries, which means there was a lot of land annexed into the city between 2005 and 2019, but in that land as it's held, there was approximately 21% tree canopy loss. Yeah. Lost to what? Building? Lost to cutting and dying and removal, clearing for different purposes. This was done at a square, the resolution was about a meter. So what we're not seeing here is the efforts of the city to replace those trees. The large canopy trees and the replacements don't show up in an analysis like this. We don't have a tree inventory. But we do know that we've got this and it's overlaid on a heat map, which is a not a, this is a map of what they call skin surface temperature. So if you were to lay your hand on it, that's how it would feel with the darkest red areas being up to 121 degrees on this particular day. But we wanted to go beyond that. We knew that we were losing tree canopy and we know that we're famously hot and we joke about it, but we know that there's also the downside to it that happens July, August, maybe September. And next slide. So we joined this heat mapping campaign, which allows us to pursue an understanding of the heat risks that we're exposed to. Next slide. So we were able to successfully get this grant with the support of the Richland County Conservation Commission and the CTAC and Columbia Green and many, many others. Got about 40 volunteers to go out and we took these instruments and drove prescribed routes, 16 prescribed routes around the city and collected data at about six feet high and in the air and at temperature. So we're looking at the air temperature and the humidity at the level that people experience it. Next slide. And what we see here are some pretty dramatic, I think dramatic findings that on this one day, August 6th, there was an 18.5 degree temperature differential in different parts of town. Some parts were much hotter. The heat index was up to 100, almost 115 degrees and the scales indicate different times of day. 100 degree maximum temperature, but the airport was only recording 93 degrees. What we see at the airport in those carefully maintained NOAA places where they make sure they're kept away from buildings and surrounded by grass and that transpiration tends to be much cooler. The other thing I want you to see here is that the morning temperature differential, the pattern is pretty similar. So first thing in the morning, these volunteers were out there at 5.30 in the morning getting ready to start their routes at six. So six to seven in the morning and then again from seven to eight on the second day because of the rain. What we're seeing is a similar pattern of about nine degrees difference. So you walk out your door in the morning and you're already in really different, your forecast for the day is really different. Next. This is just to pull that up a little bit more. So what we've got here is information on areas where it's really the experience of being outdoors is quite a bit hotter. And if we look at it in terms of a heat index, next slide. What we're seeing is that large parts of the city in these, it's red on this map. I apologize, you couldn't get the colors to match. But in those red areas, you're in the area of danger for the heat index on a 93 degree day in the summer. This means that the National Weather Service calls this a probability of experiencing heat exhaustion, potentially heat stroke. So we've got things to think about in terms of how we manage this heat risk for folks, you know, what people can do personally and what we can do collectively around the temperature in the cities. And I'll stop here and let you go ahead and share the rest of the thoughts. I'm Russ Jeter. I've been co-chair of the committee commission for the last three years. I'm a lawyer. I can tell you it's hot, too hot here, but Dr. Dow with her geography background has brought a lot of science to our efforts and helped us focus where we think the city can best spend its limited funds. I was part of the heat mapping and I had an infrared camera and I went out to the corner of Jervay right by the Capitol and took infrared readings of the temperature of the asphalt, the temperature of the sidewalks and the temperature of the asphalt and the sidewalks under shade. There was, this is surface temperature so it's not what we feel, but there was a consistent 25 to 30 degree difference in those two measurements. So the problem in Columbia with heat can be solved very simply. Trees and painting the roofs white. We're not in the area of roof painting so we focused on the effect trees would have. As she told you, stepping into shade gives you an immediate feeling of nine degrees coolness which we all spend a lot of money in the summer on air conditioning to achieve that kind of result. We assume that everyone on council is in favor of a prettier and cooler Columbia. We don't think that's the problem at all. So we have been focusing our efforts on where is the money and how do we come up with helpful solutions that won't break the budget. This did not make it into our presentation but just to remind us, this is Jervais Street before undergrounding and the planting of trees and the ugliest entrance into a city according to the national media. And this, excuse me, this is the before, here's the after, so. You like to mark that exhibit one and two? I'm sure. Pretty compelling. I feel that way about Elmwood and I saw Elmwood is one of the hottest parts. When you come in, it's so ugly. There's no trees. No trees. No cabling underground, yeah. Well, we've got some recommendations for y'all to consider and hopefully take the council. Number one, and I hope y'all have this as party materials is an ordinance. Okay, yeah, that's it. That's right, thank you. We've spent several years working on this ordinance and we've consulted with city staff in doing it. And the main objective of the ordinance is to prohibit new utilities above ground where we've successfully undergrounded them. And it happens. It happens on Sumter Street, which is pretty clear but you're seeing new, I don't know what kind of lines they are, but new lines being strong. And that will put us back in the same situation we were in. That all new projects of a certain size or all renovations of a certain size be require undergrounding of any utilities they use. And that the ordinance would strongly encourage to require the planning of trees where undergrounding has been accomplished. Otherwise, you simply get asphalt and concrete at 30 degrees hotter if you don't put some trees in. And of course, the overall objective is to get people downtown spending money, increasing the value of property downtown, increasing the tax base so that money can be spent on other projects that the council sees fit. And then we've got the franchise agreement with Dominion and that calls for a million dollars a year if matched by the city. And the city so far has concentrated on major projects using that fund. We would like to see the city do smaller and more projects that people will see all over the city and that will have, we think, a greater overall impact on the citizens. Also, we do not think Dominion is the enemy. They are a leader in the utility industry in the effort to underground. The utility industry's had a sea change in the last few years as we understand. The wildfires in California and in Hawaii has forced a rethink of how they make their power lines more resilient and undergrounding has become a major solution for them and Dominion is actually a national leader in undergrounding. So we've got a utility we think we can work with to improve the situation here in Columbia. And this ordinance would set up, we have a half million dollars in there as a number to start a discussion for undergrounding on a small scale and get our people used to what they've got to do, how to plan it, how to execute it and get efficient at it before you get into a big project. We would request that you request that the city staff determine the cost of a truck, employee and all the related costs. We know about what a truck costs, water truck costs and employee costs, but we don't know the other costs. We don't wanna give you a figure and then have you find out it's wrong. So we would request that y'all determine the cost. Right now we have one water truck and that one truck plants 500 new trees a year. So a second truck would be another 500 trees per year. Right now we're losing 380 canopy trees each year to various causes. Most of them are just aging out. And we're replacing them with sticks. Well, that's all we can replace them with. We can't help that. But we need to up, and that's a cheap way of getting extra 500 trees a year planted to replace the canopy we're losing. Secondly, there's a lot of money out there right now from the infrastructure act and from grants that the forestry department can make and others, but we don't know exactly where they are, how much they are and what they can be used for. We're asking you to fund an intern for us to have somebody investigate that so we can come back to you with possible sources of money. We're asking that you consider undergrounding one to two blocks annually. If you don't have transformers on the line, you can underground pretty cheaply. I'm gonna throw out a number, it's probably not accurate anymore, but 100,000 for per block used to be kind of the number. If you have transformers, you can probably add another zero to that figure. So if you can pick out streets that don't have transformers on them, you can do the undergrounding very cheaply and yet you've learned how to do it and you've made progress with tree planting. And then we also recommend that you encourage the city to re-institute negotiations with Dominion mending the franchise agreement. Y'all may remember the city ran the bus, I mean, the SC and G ran the bus system. To get rid of that, they entered into an amended franchise agreement and part of that franchise agreement is the million dollar matching funds a year for undergrounding. And we think this is not based on any knowledge, this is just intuition, but we think we've got a willing partner there and that now would be a good time to talk to them about solving a mutual problem. So none of those are bank breaking and yet they're a very good start and we spent a number of years looking at this and so these are very thought out proposals and we hope y'all will give them good consideration. No, we appreciate this and appreciate the time that you all took to think through some of these things and cover your bases in terms of having the ordinance reviewed makes the process a lot easier. So thank you to Dr. Dow and to Russell as well for your presentation. I'm gonna stop and see if there's any questions. Mr. G, I was just curious about the annual funding for burial of residential power lines on a rotating basis. You mentioned per each district in the city and cost to be shared by the city and the affected residents. Are you talking about using that nine standard service fund to do that or? That would be and this would be for each year switch to a different district for residential lines coming down where the resident pays half the cost and the city pays half the cost. And so that would be coming, that would be a budget item, not part of it. The assessment of the residents in that district. So correct. They would pay it back through the utility bills over the five years. I believe that was a half a million fund that you recommended. No, the half million was to city-wide do some undergrounding. The, I would suggest, and this was after talking to Will Brennan a couple of years ago. I don't know his thinking now. He suggested a couple of hundred thousand dollars a year per district for on a rotating basis for residential. Clint, we do have some current undergrounding underway that isn't necessarily us, but DOT? So yes, ma'am. Provided update on that, yeah. South Main, there's some undergrounding happening there. And that was a nine standard service project with Dominion. So there's some funding through the language in the franchise agreement to help us do that collectively, and of course we're funding 50% of that. And there are a couple of projects planned. I think Bull and Elmwood are some underground plan there with the transportation project that's occurring. There are a few others out there. Assembly Street, the gateway to the state house, that block between Lady and Gervais along Assembly is being considered for some pedestrian safety improvements, but also potentially undergrounding of electrical as well. But you're exactly right, Mr. Jeter. I mean, we focused on larger projects in major corridors more than pushing it out in the communities in previous years. And we don't want to interfere with that, but we think the other needs to be done. So, and then our negotiations, we just recently negotiated that, right? We did re-up our franchise agreement with Dominion. It was part of the city's initiative to secure and protect the property along the river. Right, okay. Which is a great benefit to our tree canopy as well, you know, in a tree city, USA, but so the agreement was extended and renewed. Not to say we can't have conversations with Dominion about non-standard service fund and what we might do with that and what others are doing, I'm certainly open to that. Okay, and that leads me to my next question. I think the idea of an intern, I looked at Ashley because we started an intern program this past semester. So there may be some opportunities there, but I think it would be great to see because it is very expensive. And I think it's more that extra zero that you're mentioning as opposed to 100,000 per block. I'd love to see what's out there in terms of grants. You know, of course the Dominion route is one route, but getting some federal dollars would be great. And I know the governor is interested in this too. So we could have some pull there if he's willing to support us on applying for some of these things. Absolutely, we'll look into our intern with sustainability and Ashley, the intern, we may have some capacity there to make some assignments already without specifically adding another position. But so I think we've got some bandwidth there. And they're very impressive young folks. And I think it would be motivated to help us find some dollars. We're working on it right now. Okay, yeah, that's right, the tree. You're from with USDA, I believe. So for the, and then the ordinance, I know we didn't spend a lot of time, but DK, I know your team might have reviewed this. Was there any comments, questions, suggestions about the ordinance? This is the first time I'm seeing it. I don't know, Robert, if we looked at it before, draft ordinance. Yes, sir, we... Okay. I believe this ordinance came out a couple of years ago. Talked a lot about residential undergrounding. Talked some, if I remember right, Mr. Jeter, it talked about the amount the people would have to pay if they came into the district. It's kind of based after a Charleston model, I believe, or something similar to that St. John's Island, some of that area. But I think one of the holdups, I'm not gonna say it was a holdup at that time, was when you bury undergrounds in a residential area, I think it requires the residential drop to the house. Also has to be buried. That cost was, I think, picked up by the homeowner, and I'm not sure about that. And I don't know if that was dressed in the ordinance. Will... Yeah, I was, can we... If you all can take a look and then come back with, you know, feedback, then we can make a decision about pushing it forward to all of council. Councilman Bailey, Councilman McDowell, any other questions for our Tree and Appearance Commission? No other questions for me. Okay. I have no questions. Well, thank you. Thank you very much for being here. We appreciate it. All right, well, we will then shift to the next agenda item, which is the rental housing ordinance. I'll pass it over to my colleague, Councilman Bailey. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman. A few council meetings ago, after there was a fire at Columbia Rising, where I believe over 20 or something residents were displaced in looking at all these situations with the colony. I started looking at the residential rental ordinance that we have in place to give the city attorney's office more tools when there are emergency situations. And I refer this to this committee. And there's a lot of different mechanisms, mechanisms in this ordinance, but today what I would like to do is have Jessica Panard from the city attorney's office talk about some of the issues that the city attorney's office had when the colony situations happened. And there's another case they had and what this ordinance would do, giving them more tools so we could know the actual landlord from some of these larger housing units. And we're not stuck having to put the bill when people are forced to leave their residence. There's some other things in here, but today I wanna focus mainly on the tools. And you could attorney Panard give us a little more information about some of the tools that sit up to your will. I might just get kindered. I'm a senior assistant city attorney. So basically this is in response, as he said to the colony fire and the Indigo 52 issues. And Councilman Bailey brought it to our attention and asked for an ordinance draft about what can we do to help these people that are displaced, especially in situations due to landlord neglect typically. So in the city of Columbia, we do not have a civil cause of action. We only have criminal enforcement procedures and a criminal court. So if we wanted to go after them, it would have to be outside of the city to the court of common please if we wanted to do something civilly. So we were trying to think how do we affect, especially these larger landlords, the business landlords, where it would really affect them and the answer is always in their pockets. So under Councilman Bailey's suggestion, he sent us some ordinances from other places in the country that gave us ideas about, well, what if we started requiring emergency plans from these landlords? What if we started saying, if a major event occurs due to your neglect, due to issues that you've allowed to go unchecked and tenants are displaced, you have to be responsible for housing them in a relatively similar manner and area. So that way schooling is not disrupted, jobs are not disrupted, so forth. So in order to be a landlord under certain guidelines in the city, you have to file an application for a rental permit. And we're still working out the details, but the idea is that for units or complexes that are deemed high risk, they will also have to file an emergency operations plan. So that will include information such as how to notify the tenants. If there's been an emergency, what the emergency is, how the management company will take steps to help the tenants, ensure they have a safe place to reside. Remediation for the underlying cause of the event, and then the owners plan to reintroduce the tenants back into their prior living arrangement once everything is resolved. This also has to include a copy of the certificate of insurance. And we thought that was important because that helps guarantee that things will hopefully get back to normal. And if there is no insurance, then the owner or property company has to inform the tenants in writing. And that will actually happen through the city housing official. So it will be very clear that the tenants are kind of at a little bit higher risk by living there. So the way that this actually gets into their pocket, so to speak, is that if an emergency event occurs at one of these high risk units and they fail to adhere to the emergency plan, then they will not be able to have or renew a rental permit for three years from the date of the abatement or resolution of the emergency event, meaning they're out of business for three years on any property that they own in the city. So that's at least what we're looking at right now as a way to enforce that. So that is clearly, you know, hitting them where it hurts, which would be their wallets. One thing to note in this is that if an emergency event is caused by behavior of a tenant, then most of these things don't apply. This is to handle landlords, probably managing companies that are having these, like we said, high risk units that are really risking things. Code enforcement, which is under our police powers, are also involved in this as far as how we're going to make it all happen and the discussions about this going forward. But the big tools are how to use our, like I said, code enforcement, which is technically criminal violation, but as well as our business licensing and rental permitting to really enforce how these landlords will work in the future. Can you talk about some of the problems that the city experienced after the situation with the colony? I don't have as much personal knowledge as that of the colony. I know that once the inspectors went in there, the situation was just absolutely terrible. It really wasn't quite fit to live. And then these people were being, well, a lot of these places, home, house, people who have not very great means and they can't just go sign a new lease or stay with family or drive somewhere else necessarily. So these people were completely displaced. They know where to go, nothing to do and no money to do it with. And we were seeing some of them, unfortunately being unhoused, trying to find other places to live and in those type of units that are high risk due to their nature of how they are kept as well as who they house, it's just a bigger problem waiting to happen. And high risk units in the ordinances built prior to 1980 and at least 16 or more units, correct? And the draft we have now taller than four stories or any combination of those three things. And has the majority of problems existed in older units? Certainly, yes. Mostly older units that have not been maintained as they should have. Any questions from anybody? No, this is very helpful. It does make me think about Councilman Rev. Remember when we talked about the tenant bill of rights in the administrative committee? Yes. Is that something you feel like we could bring back up in tandem with this? Like we had started working on creating even just a easy to read document that we wanted to share with folks. Might be another thing to think about in terms of creating a tool for folks that are living in these high risk units. What do you think? Well, that's something perhaps we could revisit. Okay. That's something perhaps we could revisit. We talked about this several months ago. Mm-hmm. And what Councilman Bailey has the resolution there has implications of what we talked about few months ago. Yeah, let's do that. Let's do that. I think it would be good if we would, we would at least share that information with us. Okay. I think state housing, Madam Chairwoman, because after that discussion in the administrative policy committee, the community development staff was directed to work with state housing staffs where the tenants still have rights really lies for these tight housing units and developments. And so since then they had a really great forum. I think at the... The workshop. Yeah. The workshop that they did in conjunction with state housing. So I think you're exactly right to keep in that to those dots with, with, you know, really making sure these homeowners are aware of their rights. There is a process in place through state housing that this could just amplify that, I think. Okay. That's exactly right. Not interrupt, but that HUD. Sorry, Rav, go ahead. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's exactly the route we ought to take. There's not being that kind of, that kind of follow that would lead us in that direction. The state housing piece is already in place. And what we needed to do was to make sure that this resolution could be aware of your part of what we're actually trying to do. Yes. And in a way, this can fill some gaps between this. This is an emergency measure is what it creates. Housing has resources, certainly more long-term, but this is what do you do tomorrow when your house burns down today? Right. Yeah. And it might even be, you know, if we decide to move forward with the changes to this ordinance that we kind of re-release that Bill of Rights document too with it so that the media can share with folks that, you know, this is a mechanism that we've put in place, but also we've partnered with the state housing authority for this as well. So. That'd be good. Well, sounds good. Well, thank you. We'll look forward to hearing updates next time. All right. Thank you. I think that the resolution is right on time. I think putting the other pieces of the proposal together creates a kind of dynamic, which I think could really turn this audience, this resolution into something that could be very, very, very useful. So yes, I think the creation of that is useful. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Well, then we will circle back on that at our next meeting, Rev. So stay tuned. Last but not least, we have an update on, I'm just going to call it PFOSC, because I don't want to perflornated substances and drinking water. So Clint and his team, including our brilliant scientist over here, came a couple of months ago and introduced the concept to Councilman Duvall, Councilman McDowell and myself. Obviously since then, there's been a lot of attention around it, both in terms of a national perspective with other cities and water systems. Also grappling with this, but just in general as the science is emerging. So we wanted to get an update, given that there are potentially some regulations coming down from the Environmental Protection Agency that could affect us. Yes, ma'am, thank you for the opportunity. I apologize for my voice. The pollen is getting the better of me, but so not a whole lot of technical changes, but a lot in the public space. As you spoke to Dr. Bussells, I do want to introduce our staff, our excellent utility operations director, Frank Eskridge and Dr. Alejandro Bayer, our water compliance manager. They've been following these issues very, very closely and have helped put this information together. I think one of the, I'm going in the wrong direction, it's me, Leveny, it's me, I'm sorry. So one of the things we wanted to make our customers and the citizens aware of is that these compounds are not something that we're adding in the water. It's not something that the city of Columbia or Columbia water is doing through our treatment processes or our treating compounds that are causing the perflornated substances to be there. These are things that are rather ubiquitous in the environment. They're compounds that have been used in manufacturing for quite a good many years. The things that make nonstick pans, nonstick. The things that make your sandwich wrappers at fast food, the cheese doesn't stick to your wrappers. Those types of compounds are these perflornated substances. They're also found in firefighting foam and many other personal care products. And it's interesting that chocolate cake has a very, very high concentration of PFAS. So remember that as we enjoy our chocolate cake next time. When the water professionals get together and they have the dessert tray of cupcakes, nobody eats the chocolate cupcake. Because it's really, really high in perflornated substances. So it's an interesting thing. But again, we're tasked to address this occurrence that is in the waterways of our state and our nation and subsequently is in our drinking water because our treatment processes aren't designed to remove these substances, particularly down to the per trillion level. So just a little bit of background. You've seen this before. This is rather rapidly evolving science. Up until just a few years ago, we couldn't measure down to four part per trillion, which is the proposed regulatory limit that's been published by EPA. It has certainly has not been finalized, but that is a draft. But again, we believe these substances have been there for quite a good many years. One of Frank's I'm making it famous quotes is just because we've got a stronger telescope, it doesn't mean there are more stars in the sky. These have been there. We can see them at lower concentrations now because the analytical methods are getting better and better. And these analytical methods get better and better and the epidemiological studies are occurring. That is, it's prompted EPA to move toward the regulatory framework and propose this draft regulation. You'll see what we've updated our most recent testing data and looking at our average information from 2020 to present for both the canal and Lake Murray water treatment plant finished water. You can see at the canal for PFOA and PFOS, we are above that proposed limit of four part per trillion. And we've taken a slight tick up of one-tenth part per trillion since the last report. Glad to say the Lake Murray water treatment plant has taken a slight tick downward of one-tenth part per trillion. So right now, the average of all the data that we've got for our finished water would show that we would be slightly below that regulatory threshold. Now, the proposed regulation has you monitoring quarterly for a year to establish a running annual average. And then that's what your compliance assessment would be based on as proposed. So, you know, we're certainly, we can't take a sigh of relief about our Lake Murray data because we're very, very close to the level. And we're again watching that very closely. In terms of when this regulation may be finalized, we had heard initially that it would be the very first part of 20, we're at the end of 2023, the first of 2024. Now we're hearing potentially by mid-April of 2024, the Office of Management and Budget is running numbers on the regulation and checking some math there. So we'll see what they come back with, but it's possible that it could be promulgated as a final rule next month, as early as next month. That schedule has tended to slide. So really no guarantees there, but that's what we're bracing ourselves for in preparing to move to the next step. So what are we doing about it? I mentioned the data and we showed our data that we've been collecting since 2020 and really a little bit before that. That data is readily available on our Columbia Water website. We've been very transparent about that ever since we started analyzing for these compounds, putting that data out there and with an explanation of what this might mean to our customers and where the sources of these compounds are. So we're sharing that information. The treatment technology and level of investment is significant. We shared that last time. There are some best available technologies like granular-activated carbon and ion exchange and reverse osmosis. There's also some novel treatment concepts that are out there that we're looking to explore. So a lot of evolving research in the area because this affects not only drinking water utilities, we think ultimately it'll affect wastewater utilities as well. And so us being a utility provider for both, we're very, very interested in these PFAS removal technologies but also destruction technologies so that we're not just moving the problem from one point to another if we're required to address it. We're also advocating strongly that these compounds be regulated out of our economy so that they're not allowed to be from industrial or personal care products or whatever to be put into our receiving streams because they pollute our waterways. That's not good for our aquatic environment, for fish consumption, for recreational, you name it. We'd rather they just be removed from the economy completely and then over time let that take care of it itself. We're gonna continue to monitor it twice a year until this final rule is promulgated in publishing that data. On new development since last time we spoke, 3M in DuPont offered a multi-district settlement, a class action type of settlement available to water utilities. And many of our peer utilities accepted that settlement as we looked at it. The calculation was showing we would get anywhere from 10 to 12 million dollars and that's not an insignificant amount of money. But when you're talking about spending potentially 150, 200 or more, it doesn't move the needle enough. So we've decided to go our own route and we'll talk more about that as we pursue that. But the other interesting point was if you opted in for this class action type settlement it prohibited you from claiming future damages against DuPont and 3M for any waste water regulatory actions that might be taken. And those are gonna be very, very costly when you think about your liquid discharge and your biosolids. So we were very strategic in trying to make sure we protect our ratepayers best interest in opting out of that. So our next steps other than continuing to monitor and watch very closely to see when and if this regulation is finalized, it just last Tuesday night, council approved a bench and desktop study with Black and Veatch consulting engineers to look at specific treatment options and the cost of those options. And we're looking at some of those novel treatment technologies as well to see if there are some interim measures we might be able to take to get us below the regulatory threshold because honestly significant capital investments like we're talking about are gonna take years to be able to design and construct and implement. So we're looking at a variety of different things and we'll leave no stone unturned there but that's essentially where we stand. I'll open for any questions and I'll also ask Dr. Byer and Mr. Eskridge if I've omitted anything clear enough. Well, thank you for preparing me. So questions. For the developing strategies for meeting anticipated federal regulations, I'm wondering and obviously on the national level as well, the National League of Cities, I think has a similar stance as we do. Most cities are saying like, let's wait and see how the science comes together to really understand what the thresholds need to be. But that being said, if EPA does come out, I wonder, do you see that with it being also an election year, do you see that it would be like reversed depending on who, you know. And so what I don't want to happen is then we have to meet these regulations and then a year into it, they're like, oh, never mind. And you've already invested in all this technology. Absolutely, I won't comment on the politics and what might, but you're exactly your spot on. I mean, those things could happen. We're doing this study to really identify the true cost and what technology might make the most sense for us right now so we can plan accordingly. The regulation allows for a three to potentially five year compliance period after one year of monitoring. So you're looking at four to six years down the road and the real impact on our utility bills and our utility operations and having to construct something that said, we would have to start that design and construction sooner, but we certainly want to be rock solid in what the level is and where it's headed before we pull the trigger on anything like that. A lot of the comments that EPA received were geared toward patients, but also if you're going to regulate these very, very low levels, perhaps you would want to phase in and regulate the levels at 20 per trillion and take care of the highest concentrations that are out there first. So your top contracting community and equipment suppliers could focus on the higher numbers, the utilities with the higher numbers first and then step it down over a period of years, if not a decade or two, to get to these very, very low levels if we needed to do that. We're not sure they're going to move in that direction, but we're kind of hoping that that may be an approach that they're looking at. And again, the level may be set at four now it may move to two at some point, we really don't know. I think part of, as we do our study, we want to look at a technology that will not only help us remove all of the perflornated substances down to non-detect, but also if we're going to spend that money, something that helps us out with other benefits and is not a one-trick pony, so to speak. So if there's some taste in odor removal that would help us during those seasonal events, disinfection, bioproduct reduction, those types of things, we want to look for those if we're going to make a very, very deep, costly investment here, do something that's helpful from different approaches. And my question really isn't about the cost, I think it is, I know it says full knowledge about the health effect, not attained yet, but we do know that we would prefer not to have PFAS or drinking water. We absolutely know that, we do not want these compounds in our drinking water. And I think part of what we're doing is positioning ourselves to, if the regulation is finalized to let our customers know, look, we're going to do what's necessary to comply to meet these levels, and we are in compliance with the Safe Drinking Water Act and with all the levels now, and we're going to do what's necessary to stay in compliance with those. That said, we're not health researchers, we do fund research to the American Water Works Research Foundation and other organizations, but certainly we'd prefer to keep these out of our environment completely. And that's why we're advocating for regulating, for EPA to regulate these substances out of the economy rather than making our customers pay. So if somebody asks, in the meantime, what can I do to remove it out of my water? Cause that was one of the questions I was getting. There's nothing that we can do currently, right? On our own? We do not have that capability at our treatment facilities. There are point of use devices, granular activated carbon point of use devices that, and we don't endorse a particular manufacturer, but those are fairly well known out there, those point of use devices, filters have to be changed periodically, but those are shown to remove at least a portion of the perflornated substances. Is in your spacing, you know, water, were PFAS, was it something that's commonly talked about even before the EPA regulations? So EPA has been talking about this and this has been looked at through unregulated contaminant monitoring rules for quite some time. And so we were happy a few years ago to report that we were well, we're below detection level. We did not detect any of these perflornated substances in our drinking water. The analytical methods then got tighter. And so we could see the lower levels and that's when we discovered, well, we do have these in our drinking water and in our source water and many, many, many others do as well. So up until just a few years ago, we were, you know, reporting that we're non-detected. We don't, we're not able to see these substances in our water. And we did not see at that time, we did not foresee a four per trillion level from a regulatory limit that's extremely low. Any other questions? We will continue to keep you apprised of regulatory developments and the results of our testing and study routinely. And don't be talking more about the legal ramifications and how we can hopefully help find any improvements that are needed by those that actually created the pollution. One last question. I can't remember, cause it was, I know it was on the consent agenda. Do we know when they'll be coming back, when they'll have completed the study? So there's some rapid column testing. There's a good bit of analytical work. So we're looking at a six to eight month window. Any other questions? No, for me. Okay. Thank you, Clint. Thank you. Thank you. Well, that concludes. If there's not anything else, our committee meeting, I'll take a motion to adjourn. I'll so move. Rev seconds. Rev seconds. Well, we are adjourned. Thank you all very much. Thank you.