 I'd like to call the meeting to order the Cold Chester Planning Commission. It is 7 o'clock. First order of business tonight is our wastewater project, JAF report presentation. Let's take over on that one. All right. Good evening. Let me... there we go. So I'll run through a quick presentation. I think if you have any questions along the way, I'll try and take them. As best as we can. However, there will be Q&A and comments at the end. So if you'll bear with me, I'll just give a quick overview of the project thus far, how we got here, where we're going, and also feel free to chime in along the way. I tried to make it brief and... So a little bit about why we're here and how we got here. At the Select Board meeting on March 26, 2019, the Select Board requested the Planning Commission review and analyze options to address the lack of effective wastewater disposal capacity for properties in the Intermalitz Bay and report back their findings this fall. The issue of wastewater in the Interbay has had a long history, stretching back to the original 1967 town plan. 1999 sewer proposal was conserved by the community and defeated. The Select Board posed a funding vote to the community to serve 289 properties along West and East Lakeshore Drive, as well as Good Sell Point, with sewer on town meeting day, March 5th, 2019. The project was a derivative of a project that began under Fire District 2 to serve a larger and broader area. The 2019 vote was narrowly defeated. The Interbay has a continuing sustained presence of human wastewater. In a 2015 determination, the Vermont Department of Environmental Conservation's watershed management division stayed the following. The division has examined E. coli sampling records from lakes and ponds throughout Vermont. While exceedances of this criteria are relatively common in streams and rivers, they're much rarer in lakes owing to the dilution and exposure of bacteria to ultraviolet light as incident to the lake surface. The exposure to ultraviolet light is relevant as this accelerates the sesonance of bacteria rapidly under most circumstances. The record of repeating and regular E. coli bacteria exceedances during dry weather is in common in Vermont lakes and waters and suggests a higher than expected source signal in Mallet's Bay. So a little bit about the planning commission's approach and what we chose to sort of try and tackle in the short time that we had. The initial charge was provided to the commission after the failure of the vote to fund a proposal for a specific portion of the Interbay, two and a nine properties along West, East and Goodsell Point. For the purposes of this report, the specific portion will be referred to as the Interbay. The commission has understood its charge to identify solutions for the same geographic area and to solicit as much community as involvement as possible in identifying solutions. All alternatives were open for consideration. So a little bit about some of the background, some of the stays and reports they looked at. Commission looked at previous reports and stays, conducted as part of defying their investigation, including the 2013 Integrated Water Resources Management Plan. The IWRMP was completed for Colchester as part of a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Demo Grant. This plan sought to comprehensively improve the overall management of nonpoint source pollution control infrastructure. The plan considered natural resources, current and future land uses of both the natural and built infrastructure, cumulative impacts to water quality. The plan identified the environmental and area constraints, conducted wastewater system assessments, created a wastewater needs assessment of priority areas, and provided wastewater management recommendations to the town, including all tourist analysis of the possible solutions. The Interbay was comprised of mostly high-risk areas with one medium-risk area along the non-lakeside portion of East Lakeshore Drive. The state constituted the highest level of wastewater investigation physically and legally possible and concluded that the best solution for the high-risk area of the Interbay was sewer. Due to the proximity of the medium-risk area, it was recommended that seruing this area was also a preferred solution of this plan. And you can see in the interceding years since this was completed, you see various staff, including myself, out in streams, continuing to collect data and build off of it. So a little bit of where we started, in May, we started with a kickoff. We had a wastewater forum, as well as a walk-and-talk of the Interbay. These events, coupled with an online survey, informed the commission as to community concerns of possible solutions. A town-wide mailing and ad, and the Colchester Sun made the community aware of the May events. A postcard mailing in June updated the community on subsequent workshops. Tennis of the meeting were added to our NotifyMe tool with our website to receive updates on the project. So following the May kickoff walk-and-talk in survey, the commission met at the beginning of June, this is a June 4th meeting, and met with our facilitator, Cindy Cook, here, and went through what we've heard. Many concerns were heard by the commission, including but not limited to land conservation, could be used to buy out property owners. Community septic should be examined as an alternative. Sewer could still be an option. Boaters might be contributing to the problem. Wildlife should be targeted for improvement. Upstream rough was a source of pollution. Better enforcement of wastewater rules could be used to crack down on polluters with failed septics, and more stays could be done to further limit the area for the wastewater solution. Commission isolated four possible solutions to be evaluated out of that. Land conservation, community septic, sewer, and no action. Each would have a dedicated work session. Additional work sessions would be provided to help the community address concerns such as development impacts of wastewater rules and permitting. On June 4th, the commission set a course for the action for the project adopting a decision matrix to evaluate solutions. The commission continued their discussion of this course of action and revisited it June 18th and periodically throughout future meetings. Our summer workshops. Commission set up a series of workshops to focus on the solutions and other community concerns, such as general information on septic systems on July 2nd, and development concerns on August 6th. A workshop on land conservation was held on June 18th. The presentation on sewer occurred on July 30th. Presentation on community sewer occurred on August 20th, following wastewater information received during a work session on July 2nd. The no action alternative was discussed on September 17th. We also undertook a tour of community septic systems on September 6th. We all got on a small bus together and toured some central Vermont and Charlotte towns of Sugarbush, Waitsfield, and Warren, with a group of commissioners, coal chester staff, consultants, and members of the coal chester community. Throughout the process, a variety of experts were consulted by the commission, including Stone Environmental, Waite-Hindell Environmental Management, Aldrich Elliott Associates, state wastewater officials, as well as coal chester staff. May officials from the state, municipalities, and private entities donated their time to assist coal chester in this project. I was amazed at the people on our September 6th tour that took time out of their day to host and facilitate us. Very greatly appreciated. A little bit about our outreach. We solicited public input throughout the process with an interactive website with polling. The initial PlaySpeak website was developed to allow an online interactive forum, but unfortunately is perceived to be too complicated and not user friendly. We abandoned this website in favor of a regular town website. Presentations from the public workshops, information conserved by the commission, including comments from the public, are available on the town's website, link through the tinyurl.com, backslash, coal chester MBI. We're live streaming tonight. There's a link on that website to where we're live streaming from. Videos of all the playing commission meetings, workshops, septic tours are also available on the website. We have a short video. We tried to take the whole day and shurn it down into, I think it's about an hour video on the website for the septic tour. We're locations permitted. We're live broadcasting with the ability for viewers to email in questions. We also provide coverage of many of the events. All right, so community concerns. We had a variety of community concerns that were voiced throughout the process, including about impacts of the character of the inner bay that could be caused by infrastructure such as sewer or community septic. There were concerns about the type and rate of development. The commission considered these development concerns at the August 6 meeting. While now a solution of the commission's role to administer the land use regulations could be used to address these concerns, and this is one of your future projects as identified in the town plan to look at specifically the East Lakes or Drive area. Hopefully in the coming months you will get to that. In evaluating community feedback throughout the project, the commission also noted many misperceptions held about septic systems, enforcement abilities of the town, wastewater permitting rules. Community could benefit from additional outreach in education about septic system maintenance, permitting and rules, but it's difficult to reach and engage people. As the town looks to improve our quality in the future, engagement of the community will be a continued challenge. So the solutions evaluated. Four solutions. Starting with land conservation, which is our June 18 meeting, the entire inner bay is comprised of 209 properties exceeding a value of $72 million. The option of purchasing and conserving the entirety of the inner bay is not feasible given this considerable cost. For this reason, the commission looked at a subset of the area, though it was recognized that a limited land conservation initiative may not solve the wastewater pollution problem. The conservation of lakeside properties, 126 parcels, has an estimated assessed value exceeding $38 million. These properties need to be purchased and conserved over a set time period through conceptual purpose, purchase, if possible, or eminent domain should consensus fail. Using a 50 year time horizon and 126 just lakefront properties along West Lakeshore Drive and East Lakeshore Drive in Goodsell Point, approximately two and a half properties would have to be purchased and restored to natural shoreline each year. Using an average property value of the 126 properties, which is $303,000, an annual purchase fund approximately $759,000 is required to acquire approximately two properties a year over those 50 years. So we tried to break it out into a longer time frame that could make it more manageable. Total annual costs would need to be in excess of $909,000 to support this conservation effort exceeding $45 million in direct costs, excluding loss grand list value. Eminent domain cases and increases property values over time would substantially increase required funds. The character of the properties adjacent to the conserved land would see positive impacts in that their lake views could potentially improve additional public use. Recreation green areas could potentially be created and the vehicle transportation networks would have greater lake views. While the character of the neighborhood could be a benefit to this option, including opening lake views and potentially adding recreational areas, there needs to be consideration for potential increase in use of these new recreational areas. Further, with land purchases and the relocation of residents from these parcels, there might be negative impacts to businesses and or population within this area as relocations will occur outside the project area and perhaps Colchester. Purchasing and conserving properties and perpetuity is a great way to remove human waste source for the inner bay, but there are also considerable disadvantages. First, purchasing the properties requires substantial funding for a great length of time. Townwide increases in taxes would be a primary source of funding, yet may not be considered the best approach by the community. Grant sources were evaluated. There are no sources identified that could regularly provide this level of funding for this project. Finally, it would take many decades to fully purchase the properties. The option is by far the highest cost to the town. This option would take the longest to implement 50 years. During that implementation, properties with inadequate septic treatment would be still polluting the inner bay. The option would have the highest cost to taxpayers as they acquire an increase to taxes while decreasing the grand list and creating a smaller pool of properties to tax. Other options can utilize grant funds as well as generate user fees and other non taxpayer funds offset costs. This would not. In looking to the future of Colchester, the planning commission found that the land conservation option had many merits, but it's not effective and efficient solution for human wastewater pollution in the inner bay. During this project, the commission learned of previous land conservation within the community, no local conservation fund currently exists in Colchester. Community septic. What you have on here is the Bayside Hazelope piece and a design that one of our consultants came up with for how a community system could be fitted on that field you see in blue on the inset as well as pictures of our septic tour. The integrated water resources management plan provide information as to how a community septic could be used and where based upon conditions assessment information on permits and sample test sites. Task for the integrated water resources management plan states that community septic was perhaps viable along the non lakeside section of East Lakeshore Drive at one location in the good sell point area. No community septic areas were deemed viable within the West Lakeshore Drive area. A survey was mailed to property owners along East Lakeshore Drive did not yield that any property owners with appropriate land were willing to consider a community septic solution on their property. The owners of the good sell point property initially responded to the survey by request to do onsite investigations of the soil was not granted. Review of previous septic permits within the area yielded an estimate that the site might be capable of supporting a 3000 gallon per day system at best with over 16000 gallons per day required to serve existing needs. With no privately owned sites available for community septic on East Lakeshore Drive the town owned Bayside Hazelope was evaluated. This 14 acre parcel was purchased by the townwide vote with a approved bond in 2004 for $1.1 million. The site is currently vacant. However, significant planning has been undertaken by the town to identify recreational needs and program specific recreational elements and transform the site into a park. Craig Hindell hydrologist was hired to evaluate if the property could accommodate the 120,000 gallons per day of wastewater identified as necessary to serve the area in the 2019 sewer project. While some members of the public debated if it was that the gallons was excessive the 120,000 gallons would serve properties in the inner bay and Handel's report affirmed that the site could be capable of treating within the range of 100,000 gallons per day. This is 20% less than the amount necessary to serve the entire area but the commission believe that the solution was worthwhile investigating given the limited community septic options. Community septic system would require a small wastewater treatment plant to be constructed. The permitting design and construction would take three to five years to complete. The plant would have to be staffed to meet regulatory requirements. Stabilization of the shoreline of this portion of the property on the opposite side of the road along the lake would need to address the 100,000 gallons per day of wastewater moving through the soils that could destabilize the land. Adding additional cost based upon other stabilization projects in the area. We didn't investigate fully how much it would cost. Systems treating over 50,000 gallons per day of effluent as necessary to meet the needs of the area would be required to have tertiary treatment by the state of Vermont to remove the majority of phosphorus. If several smaller systems were built upon this site the threshold for tertiary treatment would still be necessary as the state would consider all one system. I think we encountered questions of could we build it in phases or bit by bit but you eventually hit that need for tertiary treatment. The state would require it at some point. We looked at the estimated cost of construction. In addition an ongoing cost of approximately we estimated to be a $250,000 per year would be needed to run the plant, sludge removal, staffing and required testing. The options to construct were estimated to be around $17,550,000. Concerns were raised by the commission that the development of a community system in the Bayside-Haslet piece could conflict with park planning for the site. While some systems can allow for general playing fields on top of the leach field the presence of a system would constrain the recreational use of the area. There are also concerns that the chance of malfunction and smells associated with the operation of the system specifically sludge removal would negatively impact the neighborhood. The ability of property owners to utilize off lot solutions may increase the rate of growth potentially impacting the character of the neighborhood. The existing rate of growth for the area is about half a percent or less than one dwelling per year. Even if the solution was to double that rate it could be a very low and slow build out for the area. There are concerns that the additional growth would cause adverse impacts such as traffic. Zoning particularly for East Lakeshore Drive was identified in the 2019 town plan as needing additional review by the commission within two years of adoption of the plan. As I mentioned this is one of your next priorities. The commission heard concerns about the increased rate of growth within the West Lakeshore Drive area although this area has had recent zoning changes with Lakeshore 1, Lakeshore 2 being recently adopted by the planning commission. At the conclusion of the project the commission has identified that it should work with the select board to implement the regulatory measures necessary to minimize unwanted impacts such as too much residential or commercial growth or conversions. Zoning would continue to limit the possible uses and determine how many total units could be built. Building caps or other growth management tools could be enacted for the inner bay to help address growth concerns. Solution could maintain and improve water quality for both current and future uses although it would be limited to 100,000 gallons per day most likely. And the scope of the system might not be sufficient to serve future land use needs. The solution is efficient in that it treats waste water close to where it comes from. However the solution is also expensive and requires considerable oversight to operate reliably. As with any plant the community would require monitoring system upgrades replacement and maintenance with routine testing to ensure that when breakdowns or failures occur water quality and surrounding properties are not impacted. The property values in the immediate area of the facility could be impacted the construction operation of a community system could be paid for by grant user fees and non-tax revenue. Incremental grand list growth could positively impact property taxes. Operating costs could be paid by user fees. While there is public comment that the community system could be sized at a much smaller scale thus avoiding the cost of tertiary treatment it was unclear to the commission how this could be fairly achieved and adequately address water quality. State waste water rules and regulations restrict enforcement of onsite waste water failures to systems that are surfacing or back flowing into properties. The integrated water resources management plan and follow up of water quality testing provided the greatest amount of information likely to be known on waste water systems and risk. More specific testing as to what properties have deficient systems is not feasible and it's not probable to further isolate problem properties. With known high risk areas even if the worst sites could be identified and solved a limited community system to create a limited community system there would likely be as many new failures to solve shortly thereafter. It's also unlikely that these failures would be grouped together to provide cost savings and the piping needed to service. If a system was built without tertiary treatment expanded additional treatment measures would be necessary at additional cost. A system built incrementally could increase costs and new demands placed on the system and create delay. The Bayside Hazelette piece would likely not yield enough waste water capacity for a community system that could address existing flows and limited build out. While the tertiary treatment would be costly it would be a high form of waste water treatment that could help ensure the waste water discharge as clean as possible should there be a breakdown or failure. All right sewer halfway through 2019 proposed sewer proposed project was the source of information used for this option project would connect all properties within the inner Bay to municipal sewer. The town's existing sewer system is served by the South Burlington Airport wastewater treatment plant. The South Burlington plant has tertiary treatment no discharges of untreated wastewater. The facility staff by wastewater operators a 2.2 mile force main would be installed to extend the service from the inner bay to its current location at sevens corners as shown here. The South Burlington plant has recently upgraded expanded and does not require modifications to take the proposed 120,000 gallons per day of wastewater. The original funding package for the construction of the sewer was a 15% local option tax 25% grant 60% loan after the lot was to be repaid by user fees 75% of the cost would be paid by users and 25% by grant. No property taxes would have been used with a significant amount of lot funds still available to other projects during that time. The lot when repaid would be available for other town needs operating costs would be paid by user fees. Similar to the community septic, there'd be a potential for an increased rate of growth in some grand list growth, the existing rate of growth for the area being about half a percent or less than one dwelling a year. Even if the solution were to double that rate, it's still be a very low and slow build out of the area. There would be no impact to property taxes as the project has identified funding sources of grants, user fees and local option funds. The commission should work with the select board to implement any regulatory measures necessary to minimize unwanted impacts of too many residential units or conversions. Zoning similar to the community septic solution could be used to limit the possible uses and determine how many units total could be built. Building caps or other growth management tools could be enacted for the inner bay to address any concerns. Solution could maintain and improve water quality for both current and future land uses. The solution is efficient and cost effective in that ties to the town's existing system and does not require the construction of a treatment plant or area. The sewer options also highly reliable as is used as an existing plant and only obligates the town to the maintenance of pump stations. The construction operation of a sewer system could be paid for by grants, user fees, non tax revenue. Incremental grand list growth may potentially positively impact property taxes. Operating costs could be paid by user fees. Public concerns noted about the financing of the project are noted in the problem statement in the report and could be addressed if this option were to be considered. Last, no option. And this is a site in Colchester on East Lakeshore Drive. This option includes the SAS Quo and the do nothing approach that came out of the May 20th forum. The no action option was evaluated as a baseline comparison for the other options identified to remediate human wastewater pollution in the bay. The no action option was defined as maintaining the SAS Quo, including continuing ongoing water quality monitoring and enforcement of septic related public health and safety regulations. During the course of the commission's public outreach, despite the four years and $2 million of integrated water resources management plan study, there were calls to conduct additional study on the scope of the problem in delay action. In evaluating the septic solutions other communities have implemented. It's evident that Colchester State of the problem far exceeds that of other communities and move forward constructing wastewater improvements. This was evident on our September 6th tour. The commission agreed to reflect the settlement for more information in this report. However, the commission noted that additional education about all the studies and work to date may address these concerns sufficiently. The primary advantage of the do nothing approach is that no additional cost is incurred by the town. This no action approach aligns with a recent 10 vote, which did not approve the sewer proposal. Some of the public sentiments that we received over the course of this project include that the sewer community septic projects are too expensive. The cost and benefit of a sewer system are not fairly aligned among all. Better enforcement efforts could identify and hold polluters accountable. The sewer proposal was only a partial fix to the Bay pollution problem. More monitoring data is needed to determine the best solution. The opportunity cost of spending funds on this project is too great versus other priorities. Better septic technologies might be developed in the future. This concerns about new development or redevelopment if new wastewater treatment solutions is made available. While the town has undertaken considerable and comprehensive war quality initiatives, not all community members are aware of these efforts. It's clear that the community members believe that the town's enforcement abilities to be greater than that allowed by law. It's of note that the Colchester has a higher level of wastewater enforcement than any other on-site municipality in the state of Vermont. The only power available to the town that has not availed itself of yet is a point of sale inspection requirement. Such a regulatory requirement could help to identify deficient systems as part of the proper transaction process precipitating upgrades. While the town could still not require deficient but not yet failing systems to be replaced, the hope would be that there could be market pressures to improve systems to increase market viability akin to putting a new roof on a home prior to a sale. To recommend that the town investigate and employ a sale inspection requirement as another tool to gradually improve wastewater systems. The cost of inaction is considerable. The Bay would continue to experience frequent unsafe levels of eco-line and other pathogens as well as other harmful nutrient loading as a result of failed systems in an identified high-risk area. The threat to health and safety impacts recreation and enjoyment of our natural resources and limits economic activity beneficial to the community. Should the problem persist or worsen, further economic impacts are possible such as lower property values and decreases in tourism-related revenues. Considering the deterioration of water quality in the Bay, we don't have time to choose the no-action option even if people would like to have more data. Colchester spent four years, $2 million, doing more research than any other town in the state in similar position. Conducting more sales now is a waste of public funds and ultimately does not provide a solution to the problem of pollution. In a few decades, the water quality will decrease property values along the lake shore, decrease tourism revenue, lower the rate of economic activity in the area and be much more expensive to clean up than it is now. And again, this is the draft report that I'm reading from which there are some copies of available in the back. There's also available online. So the draft findings and conclusions for tonight and this is part of a public process. So this is again draft. Should be noted, there's a common misperception amongst participants in the public process that properties with failing wastewater systems could be identified by the town and thus either enforced against or made a priority to purchase. Under state law, the town does not have the authority to test private wastewater systems or enter upon private property for these purposes. A wastewater system can only be considered fail if it's surfacing or back flowing to the property. Marginal systems that do not visibly discharge human waste in the bay are therefore impossible to isolate and then under state law cannot be held accountable or made to comply with current wastewater standards. With the state's limited definition of failure in the town's lack of authority to enter private property, additional enforcement, staff or site visits will not identify pollution sources or solve the current problems. With the majority of participants in the process, while the majority of participants in the process did not debate the pollution problem, the scope of the problem and the solutions were often called into question. May participants in the process thought that the town could create its own rules and could increase enforcement to solve pollution problems. The town has sought additional powers from the state to control the operation of wastewater systems only to be denied the ability to be more restrictive than the state rules. Field systems do not have to meet current state standards and can be best fixed. That means that you do not have to meet standards for setbacks to water bodies, groundwater or other dimensional standards. Innovative alternative systems are often used as best fixed systems and there is confusion about how these systems function. Innovative alternative systems can provide a high level of wastewater treatment when designed to state standards. Innovative alternative systems that are used for best fixes for failures are not built to these standards and will not provide the same high level of treatment. The commission conducted a septic solutions workshop on July 2nd that helped to educate the community on wastewater rules and permitting requirements. Only about 20 members of the community attended this workshop demonstrating that more work is needed on engagement and outreach. It's evident that not all community members are aware of the town's comprehensive water quality improvement initiatives. The sentiment that the wastewater project was being done at the expense of other water quality projects was also evident amongst public input during this project. The sewer project was not viewed as being a component of a larger water quality initiative. It's clear that community members believe that the town's enforcement abilities could be greater than allowed by law. Note that Colchester has a highest level of wastewater enforcement. More education outreach around the town's current wastewater efforts and plans could engage the community in understanding the need and scope of these improvements. The commission also heard concerns about the scope of the wastewater problem. The IWRMP and follow-up on water quality testing has provided the greatest amount of information likely to be known on wastewater systems and risk. More specific testing to the projects, to properties that have deficient systems is not feasible. It's not probable to further isolate problem properties within the known high-risk area. Even if the worst sites were identified and solved through a limited community system, there would still be likely main new failures that you would then need to address. With three or more times the failure rate of wastewater systems elsewhere in Colchester, the inner bay poses the highest risk in Colchester. During the course of the seven-month project, at least four additional wastewater failures occurred in the study area, the majority of which were not along the lakeside. The additional study contemplated under the no-action option will serve only to delay the needed solutions and inflate the cost to implement. The land conservation option would be the most expensive option and would not address the entire inner bay. With 50 years to fully implement a partial land conservation option, not all wastewater pollution sources would be solved. Where removing development and restoring the land would serve to improve water quality to the greatest extent, a limited program would not yield the results necessary to maintain and improve water quality in an efficient and cost-effective manner. There would be both benefits and detractions to the character of the neighborhood as structures are removed, improving views, but also removing the fabric of the neighborhood. Impacts of property values and taxes would be both substantially negative where liability would only come with full removal of all possible wastewater pollution sources that would not be achieved by the project as proposed. Again, we were just looking at the lakeside properties. The community septic solution may yield close to the flows necessary to sustain the inner bay, but would introduce a wastewater treatment plant with ongoing liabilities immediately adjacent to the bay. It was not clear that this option would provide sufficient capacity to address all the properties in the inner bay and fully maintain and improve water quality for both current and future land use and site conditions. The need for stabilized slope, continuing monitoring, was concerning with the potential impacts to neighbors. As the operation of the plant, specifically sludge removal, you periodically have to go and, much like a septic tank, pump these things out and remove the sludge. Could devalue adjacent properties. The construction of the $17 million facility would have an ongoing estimated annual operating costs of $250,000. While non-tax payer funds could be sought to construct and operate the system, the project is not cost effective. Incremental grand list growth may serve to improve tax liabilities. Substantial oversight would be needed to put into place and ensure the solution would be reliable and efficient. Concerns were raised by the commission that the development of a community system on the Bayside Hazel Peace would conflict with the park planning for the site. While some systems could allow for general playing fields, the presence of a system would really constrain the recreational use of the site. Sorry, advance too soon. Sewer option would adjust the entirety of the inner bay and could maintain improved water quality for both current and future land uses and site conditions as sources of human wastewater pollution would be removed from the area. This option would extend the town's existing system that utilizes the wastewater treatment facility in South Burlington. It's effective and reliably operated. The least expensive of the actual solutions, the sewer option is a cost effective and would have an impact similar to community septic, would have possible incremental development and grand list growth. Funding sources could be non-property tax based with options for grants, user fees, and local options. For these reasons, the sewer option is within this draft report, the preferred solution identified by the playing commission as the most effectively addressing human wastewater pollution in the inner bay. The commission recommends the select board consider additional outreach and education regarding its current water quality efforts as well as addressing development concerns prior to further development of a wastewater solution. Again, this is the draft report. So next steps. Public comment, that's why you're having the meeting tonight to receive comments. There were some comments that are submitted shortly before the meeting that you have paper copies of. There are a few paper copies in the back. We'll look to try and get those in the pack information online as soon as possible. Public comments on the draft are welcomed by those that can attend tonight's meeting until the 13th of December. You've identified that you receive your comments at that December 17th meeting. I'd like to finalize the report at your meeting on January 7th and then hopefully present the report to the select board in January 2020. Very good. As you can see, it's very complicated. We went through step by step. Are there any comments tonight from our audience tonight on this project? Come right up. If you come up to the microphone, please, and state your name so we can all hear you. My name is Charles ISF. I'm interested. Is this part of a comprehensive solution? Because I gather this is not the answer to the wastewater problem. Am I incorrect? This is our best solution. Pardon? This is our best advice for what we've learned over the last few months. Okay. But is this the end of? In other words, this is what we're going to be doing to address the wastewater problem. So this is the planning commission was tasked by the select board with evaluating the different options. They're going to present their findings to the select board. And then the select board in the town will eventually have to choose what they do with this information. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. My name is Tom Berry. I live on Salt Mill Road. And I'll probably submit some written comments to just off the cuff tonight. First of all, compliments to the town on the planning commission. It's a very substantial undertaking. And not something we see every day on public infrastructure projects. A lot of work went into this and so I compliment you for that. I'm quick first read of it. I would suggest that if you do revisions, you do a bit more work on the problem statement and looking at the problem statement tonight. The only actual statement that there is a substantial problem with E. Coli contamination in the inner bay is a quote from the state that there's a higher than expected source signal in mallets Bay. And then the problem statement goes on to review a lot of studies and conclusions about solutions. But am I quick first read and maybe there's more in here. The only actual statement that there is a smoking gun of E. Coli contamination in the inner bay is a higher than expected source signal. But then from that it's concluded later on in the report under the no action alternative that the bay will continue to experience frequent unsafe levels of E. Coli bacteria and other pathogens. It may be that the bay is experiencing frequent unsafe levels, but probably it would be good to substantiate that in the problem statement if it's then the basis for conclusions later in the report. Also in the no action alternative is stated that harmful nutrient loading as a result of failed septic systems will continue in the high risk area. And connecting the dots between a failed septic system and nutrient loading to Lake Champlain is something that the current total maximum daily load plan for phosphorus, the main nutrient of concern in Lake Champlain does not do. And so if this report is going to draw that line between failed septic systems and nutrient loading again, that would probably be good to state up front with some evidence in the problem statement. And so those are a couple of areas and then it also says that deterioration of water quality in the bay will continue. That implies that there's sort of a linear acceleration of the condition of the bay deteriorating. And again, there's no evidence offered in the problem statement that things are getting worse. And again, I assume that among all the studies and I'm aware of some of them, the evidence is there. So there could probably be a stronger linkage between the problem statement and then the conclusions that are drawn later in the report. But I'll look at the report and provide some more written input. But those are a few things that occurred to me on first read. And again, really kudos to the town and the planning commission for the amount of work that's gone into this and that remains to be done. Thank you. Great. Thank you. All good. How about the commission? Any comments on that? I think there's some cleanup that still needs to be done. There's a lot of cleanup and I know you have your grammatical changes. Sarita had a few for me too. But that can be handled. I mean, there's nothing in the report that I would like to make changes to just clean up. This is also very draft. It's very boring and black and white and no graphics. We all look to definitely beef it up. No, thank you to Sarah, the staff, because this was, I mean, what, 13 pages, but seven months of a lot of your work bringing it to us. A lot of consultant work, a lot of knowledge that you brought in front of us that helped us identify this. And I feel 100% confident moving this forward and recommending this to the select board at our January meeting. All good? Yeah. All good. I am very happy with everything we've got so far tonight. And if everybody's happy, we're ready to move on. Well, we definitely, if people want to, I know that some people have very icy driveways tonight and haven't gotten fully cleared out and we're not able to make it for health reasons, what have you, but there is the public comment period until the 13th. Happily, if anybody submits it through our office through email, we'll get that to you. I'll put it into the packet and we'll consider all then. Fantastic. All right. We're off, Ryan. Thank you. Oh, go ahead. Come on up. Really quick. We'll move on. Lynn Latteri from Pine Meadow Drive. And my concern is twice before a sewer has been recommended and twice before it has been voted down. How, if this is recommended again, and if it's brought up for a vote again, what is the plan for preventing it from being voted down again? You know, a lot of time and effort and money has gone into all of the studies and the planning and the thinking. I would hate to see this come to the same conclusion. Leave that aside for a second. I don't understand the connection between the wastewater efforts and the stormwater efforts. Are they linked? Does the sewer address any of the stormwater at all, or is that strictly a matter of, you know, human waste completely? Thank you. So I'll take a stab at that. Cold Sister has a comprehensive water quality initiative that is looking at all aspects of water quality, wastewater, stormwater. And the sewer project was a component of that. I think as our Public Works Director, which can describe these projects and how they're constructed a lot better than I can, put it is when you tear up a road, you only want to do it once. We tore Westlake Shore Drive every other year. People would get really mad at us. And so the plan was that when the road was torn up to put sewer in is that they would avail themselves of the opportunity to also address a lot of the storm drains and lines and construction that needed to occur on top of that. But you put a sewer in on the bottom because it needs to not freeze. So that needs to go the deepest and then stormwater and then other utilities on top. So in looking at sort of as comprehensive package, the sewer needed to go first. So there are plans to address stormwater efforts as well, but those were not specifically part of the sewer project, but they were sort of trying to be timed sequentially with that. And so I think that's still a big question that's hanging out there is depending on which way this project could go is in terms of the timeline with stormwater. Now that has not held back a lot of these stormwater projects. I know shore acres was undertaken this summer or late late summer early fall. And there's still our projects are moving forward in terms of remaining some of the stormwater solutions, but it's a very tight space along East and West Lakeshore Drive that you have to work with. And so I know that the there were plans to try and make the most use of it. And I think your points are all taken in terms of what to do with this is brought up again. I'm not sure that we have a solution for that, but that's a very good point. This gave an opportunity for people that did vote down to have an opportunity to provide us with an alternative to the sewer. And that's really what we're looking for. Something besides the sort of can we bring something to you that was better than the sewer or is equal. I think as a planning commissioner, after all this, we just decided sewer still came to the top for our best bet. Carol Riker 388 Annas Court. I think it's up to us, the people that are in favor of the planning commission recommendation to get the other people that don't come because you all make great efforts to put the word out that these things are happening. So it it's not just your responsibility to make these things succeed. It's the rest of ours also who are happened to be in support of your recommendations. Thank you. To be continued. There you go. Thank you again. Do you want a two minute break while we let the room clear? Traps zoning supplement 42. All righty. Let me go back to my notes here. So I included some information for you and we can go to them about noise levels and some of the dispelled chart. Because there are some questions on the last meeting about noise and noise levels. The supplement hasn't changed since that time, but just wanted to take a chance and walk through any questions that you have. Try to address some of your questions about like noise and what is, you know, I was amazed at a regular office setting has 60 to 65 decibels. You can reach that in just a saying like this. So that was about decibels and then we did get a letter back from our town attorney about footprint lots and some of the things that are recommended within the draft, which hopefully we can look to try and incorporate in that supplement. So some adding of language in different areas, a little bit of wordsmithing. And that was the whole drive where we should recognize footprint lots because that's where the housing market is going in terms of recognizing for financing purposes. So it's something that's been happening, but we want to better define what exactly is a footprint lot versus a regular lot. And that while you might have a footprint lot for ownership or for financing purposes, it's not for something for your setbacks. So I think the town attorney draft was actually fairly straightforward. Yeah, it's just one thing that was confusing to me. And maybe it was just the way it was kind of reddit and see what you see. Yeah, see there at the end. Yep. It says the footprint lot shall be adequately sized. So as to contain a building and all expected at pernances such as stairs, patios, egress windows, bulkheads, decks, HVAC units, et cetera, but shall not extend more than two feet beyond the building. When I read it, I'm thinking, okay, some of these things like the stairs and patios extend more than two feet from the building. I think the idea was that the footprint lot should not extend for more than two feet beyond the building, including the stairs, patios, what have you. So you wind up with a huge footprint lot. Right. So if we do, you know, use something like this to put it into the supplements. We can add in maybe, right. We can add in maybe a E and have that be a separate. I think it would be better phrased if it was a separate and just say footprint lot shall not extend more than two feet beyond the building. When all those things are attached, a building and all expected at pernances, that's all part of the building. Right. But in the sentence where it kind of says contain a building and then it says beyond the building, then it's kind of... I can clarify that. Yeah. What's the purpose of the law extending two feet beyond those items? So you did wind up with a footprint lot, again, just for ownership issues that was twice the size that was needed. So why not the actual limit of those? Just because nothing's ever exact, particularly with building. You know, I think two feet is normally like the roof clearance on a lot of buildings. There's also footings underground. You got things happening there. So two feet kind of gives you a little buffer. We'll clarify that. And the same comment on the next page is talking about the same section. It just repeats it. Any other questions on the attorney opinion? That's pretty thorough. Any questions on chainsaw or Walkman noises? I missed having Prisa here. I was going to ask her if she knew what Walkman was. I think we all remember. It's called ear buds now, I guess. They're re-releasing it for the 40th anniversary. Really? Sonia's, yeah. I think I threw mine away. Probably a collector's item. What's the number that we're using in the rigs? So for undeveloped tracks of land for one hour average, so 70. So you can operate your chainsaw for a brief period of time, but if it's sustained. And then we're looking at for developed areas for that one hour period too. During most daytime hours, 75. Evening hours, 45. Developed lands, properties that aren't residential. These are more of the general development districts. You're looking at 75. So still relatively low thresholds, but again, this is a one hour average. And this only applies to things that are permitted by the DRB. So if your friends have a wild party, we can't enforce underneath this. It's really just, if you had a business that we approved as an office, that was continuing throwing office parties that were very loud. We could, or a factory that was producing a lot more noise at the property lines than allowed under this. So if you had someone who had, you know, not that there's that many lots here in the cultures, but like a logging operation, which would make a lot of noise. It'd be making more than 75 a visit. This is at the property lines too for one hour, one hour average at the property lines. So if you have a large lot that you're logging and you're on the interior of it. Okay. We very rarely get things that we need to enforce under this. And just, I think the intent of it right now was, we don't have this one hour average or time period. We have just a decibel level, which is very hard to enforce. So I think the major change here is looking to have the time period and a one hour average as opposed to being just as an instant. And also to bring in line a little bit better with what current standards are if we are going to be taking a look at a one hour average. When you take a look at what is 70 decibels, a normal conversation right now is 60 to 70. Any other questions on the supplement? Are there any other changes different than our last review? No. Looking good? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. All right. So you can just move right on. We have approval for minutes of November 5th. What do you find those things? I'll make a motion first. Yeah. I'll make a motion to approve the minutes of November 5th, 2019. I'll second. This question. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. I guess not. Never mind. Okay. All right. All those in favor? Aye. Let's post. Back information. What was there? So you had two things. You had a notice from Aegis about 3943, it was about Highway. A transformer thing? A solar. Okay. And then you had a letter asking about rezoning in the fort. That was interesting. That was a tap change. Is that common? The fort's a little bit all over the map. Yeah. It's one of those historic areas that when it was sort of an adaptive for use in coming out, a lot of things happened out there that may or may not have been ever very well tracked. So I think it's too late for this supplement. I'm not sure when your next supplement is going to be. I don't know what you'd like me to communicate back that this is something that you're willing to have them come in and speak to at some point or. Can you just give like a five second like a lot of review of what he's trying to explain? So right now, storage and warehousing is not allowed use or conditional use in the fort. The fort is general development to allows for a range of everything from residential to some industrial to commercial. And. Many storage is allowed in very few areas in Colchester. It's allowed in our industrial and business districts. Because. Most many storage is. New prefab metal buildings. And so. I believe that one of the reasons why it wasn't concerned. For use in the fort was because of the story nature of the fort. This is a little bit of a different circumstance because they're dealing with an existing building that they want to use for this purpose. So. Right now. The storage such as this is not either a permitted or conditional use. It's just not allowed. So in order for them to expand, they're stuck. And what, why is he bringing up. The back and forth. All the way back to 1969. I think just to show some of the history. That it was used. And unfortunately they've lost rights. To. That but. They are looking at they want to expand. Their storage use and they can't. Set up for any kind of storage. Just. So it's storage units with any existing building. And so they're not like mini storage. They're like. There's like a door on a. Space. It's conditioned. Some of it's conditioned storage. So if someone has legal papers or something, they can store it there and know that it's. Not going to deteriorate. And. As they said, it's very few places. The area that provides this. So. And it's interesting that. When they. Started this business, it was zoned industrial. And then they. Rezone it so they can sell furniture. Yes. Yeah. And we'll let them know when we get a little bit closer on that. Right. I mean, right now he's using it. He is using it as a storage. Sounds like he just wants to expand it. He has at least space in there. You know, supplement eventually. Yep. You guys are. There's a lot on your plate right now. All right. That was it for pack of information. I'll say a Burlington just gave me something tonight, but that's going to be for your next packet. So. You do not have a meeting. For your first meeting in December. You've opted to only have the one meeting December and that's going to be in the 17th. So again. Next meeting. December 17th. We'll have all the comments back from. The public. Oh, there's more. You already have those three some minutes tonight, but. Motion to adjourn. I'll make an emotion to adjourn. Second. All in favor. Hi. Hi.