 We'd like to call the order of the meeting. Will Chester plan a commission, 705. First item on agenda, public comment. Item is not on the agenda. We'd like to do it for tonight. So I want to do, point out, oh, go ahead and add. Yeah, I just, I just followed what it is. Yeah, go right out. Phyllis Briden, I just want to always, like I do, do the town speed limits. And the town speedy. That's not before this board. Sorry, the playing commission. Right, well, just, just, you can talk if you like, but just the playing commission has absolutely no power over that, that's the select board. So they hear, they also have citizens to be heard. And I'd recommend that just while I think the playing commission would love to have some purview over that, you unfortunately don't. So I do want to point out tonight that we did put time frame on here, because we want to get this finalized. This board is itching to get our final report out. So we'd like to stick to that as much as possible. All right. So next one on the list here is a recap of our September 6th septic tour. Sure, well, I'll just go through it briefly. And you have in the staff notes, the handouts that were provided on that tour, as well as a recap. And Amy was just correcting me on a couple of the numbers. So I'll go through and we can talk about those as we go through. But I think just first off, thank you to everybody that attended. We had playing commissures, as well as select board members and people from the public. And seeing here tonight, they all took a day out of their busy schedules to be kidnapped on a van tour of different sites in Vermont. We went to Chalot, Sugarbush, Weetsville and Warren, and saw a diversity of different systems and some of the different ideas. And I have Amy McCrellis of Stone Environmental here tonight to also answer some questions and chime in. But I think it was overall a packed day. We kept on moving, we covered a lot. I know I was exhausted when we got back. And so I think I'll just take you through some of the staff notes quickly on that and I can walk you through a little bit. We're working on a video right now. It's taking Sean Cannon, our coordinator, was actually over LCA TV today, trying to help them edit down the many hours that they have and sort of distill that a little bit better into something that will be hopefully watchable and under an hour for folks that want to get some good information about these different types of septic systems. So let me open up what we were just sort of editing here. And I think the thing that I'm always blown away by in Vermont is the time that people give us. We are met at all these different sites by town administrators, engineers, operators, a lot of people that took time out of their days too for absolutely no compensation and gave us an overview of what they have for facilities and how it came to be. I'll start by sort of reading through and a lot of this is in staff notes about Charlotte and welcome questions as we go through sort of each stop from the commission. We had Dean Blotch, the town administrator, Chris Gallapo, the system engineer, and Steve Williams, the system operator and his son that met us on site. And it was Thompson's Point in Charlotte, which it was very interesting to learn about the sort of geology of it and it's all on bedrock. So the facility sits in the middle of Thompson's Point. It's a gated facility. So don't try and visit it by yourself. Please contact the town. Apologize, it just got low battery and I shouldn't have low battery, but we'll plug in before it all vanishes on me. Here we go. So the system's about 27 years old. It's a 20,000 gallon per day system so it's not under tertiary treatment, it's just under primary treatment. It serves 123 summer seasonal resins and it's just that it's summer seasonal, there's no conversion to year round, they shut it down for the year and it costs at the time, almost three years ago, 1.4 million to build. All the resins is required to connect but some were given deferrals of five to 10 years. If there was a new system serving that residence, the system's on town owned land and it was after multiple failures were documented there on bedrock so you could see the failures to have far to go, it came up, it was visible failures. There's also E. Coli and the Wells different than Colchester, they actually didn't have town water, they had wells. It's operated by the town of Charlotte with a part-time operator, the operator that Madison site, Steve Williams, it's actually a full-time operator for the town of Shelburne next door so they benefited from having somebody that was highly trained like that with that they could use in that part-time capacity. So in the winter it's taken offline, it's winterized as it's only like about two feet deep in places so there's no going year round with it, it would possibly freeze and cause other problems. Pressure said to ensure that no leaks are there before it's brought back online in the spring. It's four mounds, they're 5,000 gallons each with four sand filter cells and there's a small control building and the effluent is sprayed over the sand filter four to five times before going to the mound system for disposal, low pressure pump station and they're within the residence is different shared pumps. It indirect discharge does govern it, it's under the older rules and was considered sort of a best fix of the time so it doesn't fully conform to current standards. There were smell concerns when it was first put into play and they put filter fabric down to reduce the smells whereas anybody else besides me, I think you walked into the building too. It was an overwhelming smell, we definitely had our shares of smells that day but you could definitely get right into the smells. So I think, did they leave anything out with that, Amy? Or, okay. And Serita and Rebecca and Prisha were there. Any comments from you in terms of things that I perhaps? Are we just talking about Charwan? Yeah. Just the seasonal, I just wrote down that I thought it was hard to prepare what we're proposing with that because not only the size, but it's only for the summer and it's just camp, so it's just hard to try and make a comparison of it too. So do you want to move on to Sugarbush or, okay. So on Sugarbush, that was perhaps out of the whole day, a system that was more in line with what we'd be looking at for our study area. It's a package treatment plant. It's permitted for 72,000 gallons per day and it was a facility. We toured the building. It was pretty substantial. Jean Martin was the director of utilities. It came out on site and took us on a tour, mostly through the building. It houses a treatment plant and that has tertiary treatment. It's constructed in 2006 as a sequencing batch reactor, an SBR facility. I tried to decode some of the terms from that day, but feel free if there's something that somebody picked up that needs to be decoding, let me know. It has a package treatment inside the building and it requires a Grade 2B license operator and there are two on staff and then also two utility operators. So there are four personnel employed by Sugarbush for this, for wastewater. There's a variety of other contracted employees. They are sure to mention that support the system, including contracted engineers, plumbers, electricians, and other contractors. There's another wastewater facility at Sugarbush that has 163 gallon per day capacity. It's called the Mountain Facility and that's a hybrid non-combined system. Lincoln Peak system, which we visit, accounts Claybrook Hotel, Schoolhouse Ski School, Gadbrook, Ricebrook Condos, and New Development. A forced main pump station brings the effluent to a 32,000 gallon storage tank with two reactors. Something that I didn't state in my notes, but it has seasonal peaks, but it's operated year round. And so there are peak times where effluent goes into storage until it's ready to be treated. And there are two reactors. There are five cycles to treating it. The react cycle, where they aerate it and expose it to air and good bacteria. The react phase, no more liquid and there's pressure equalization. And then the settle phase, it's sort of like decanting, I guess, is the next phase. If you think of wine and decanting, not quite that, but the solids settle out and then there are sand filters at the end to filter everything out. An ultraviolet light system provides disinfection, which kills pathogens like E. coli before the effluent goes into a holding tank and is discharged into a pressurized leach field. Leach field is 16 fields. Only four of those in use at a time. It's 21,000 square feet, so that's about half an acre. If you need a size, it has an application rate of 3.7 square feet per day. So when you get into a larger system, sometimes because that, help me out here if I misspeak, that pressure, that application rate is actually more. It can handle more effluent and be a smaller leach field size because you're doing all the tertiary treatment. So it takes up less space overall. Is that a fair? That's correct. Once you get into a system that has tertiary level treatment like the one at Sugarbush or like the one you would be considering if you were to build a single soil-based community wastewater system, you're doing all the heavy lifting with the treatment plant. So by the time you get to the leach field, you're really limited more by the hydraulics of your soil than by the need for bugs to do additional work. And that was something that he stressed is they try and use, I think I'd call it more of a holistic solution with fewer chemicals and more bugs. And so they talked about sludge being a good thing, but they do have to pay for sludge removal. And there are some questions that came up in terms of how much sludge do you have to get rid of a year? How much does it cost? 42,000 gallons of sludge at 27 cents per gallon. Just for your information, it's 11,340. You're using those numbers. Just disposal. The other thing that they stressed is you are constantly caring for that plant. There's maintenance, there's training, there's relationships with regulators. They had a whole shelf of just manuals that was pre-impressive. And they did have a switchboard operator. When you say reactors, it sort of looked like it could be to something more powerful in terms of reactor. A lot of green lights, red lights and other things. It was a pre-impressive technological array that they had in that building. And I think we were only allowed to go into some of it. I think some other people looked up into some of the other areas that were perhaps not as safe for us that had life preserve, throwable life preservers and other things. There's the full gamut of things in that building that looks like it's pre-contained and condensed area, but yet offering that very high level of treatment. So I don't know if, Amy, do you have anything to add? Yeah, I guess the only thing I would add was I was actually, I was impressed by how small the footprint of the treatment building was relative to the quality of that filament and what was coming out of it on a balanced-for-day basis. The whole building is probably maybe 30 by 60. It was not a large structure. It was tall. The reactor was tall. It was very tall. It was probably three stories tall, but also set into a hill, of course, sugar bush, such that it wasn't, it didn't stand out in the landscape as it's something unusual to be there. It blended in pretty well in that steep topography such that driving up to it, it looked like, oh, somebody's big house, sort of, but it's the big house for a lot of bugs and a lot of water, a lot of expensive machinery. All right. Terita, did you have something to... So I head down that they have four full-time staff there that are working 24, seven, 365. Is that, are they considered like town employees? I mean, how would they pay? So this was one of the unfortunate things about sugar bush. Gene was very great and friendly and showed us all around, but it's a private facility. And they want to see the videotape before it's released just to make sure for promotional reasons as part of our agreement to go there. But it's all sugar bush resort owned, maintained, so we can get real numbers out of them in terms of how much it costs to construct. We asked, we were told, sorry, but no, we can't tell you that. So I'm envisioning that the cost was pretty high because if somebody had gotten a really good deal on it, they probably will have been more forthcoming. But when I was trying to do the guess range of how much it costs, I said for two full-time Class B operators, just that alone, if we were looking at something similar, would we be looking at 200,000? Would that be a safe ballpark? And I got the, oh, easily, it'll be more than that. So for four, I could guess that it's probably at least double that. And do we know what we pay if we broke out costs from South Burlington, what we're paying now? I mean, we must be contributing to the costs of the operation and the maintenance. Do we have any other? So yes and no. So what we have right now from the city of South Burlington, we've been customers with them for many years since, I think it was the Patnod plant was the name of it, which was ours, which is on the Winooski River, was converted to a pump station to Airport Park. I think that was back in the 80s, 70s, 80s. So along the way, there have been costs of the city of South Burlington in terms of the partnership that we have with them with regard to the upgrade of their facilities. But at this point in time, the town of Colchester doesn't pay anything. What we in Colchester pay is if you are hooked up to the system, you pay a per gallon fee as a user. So you're paying a per gallon fee and I think there's a debt retirement in there too that's associated with those past improvements that have been done. So I'm trying to frame this as, I realize that there's a cost, but the town of Colchester itself is not paying that cost. Does that make sense? Yeah. I would say one thing about the costs from Sugarbush that would make it a little less comparable to Colchester's situation is that that was a privately financed and implemented solution. So some of the costs of, for example, using clean water, state revolving loan funds to pay for improvements would not have existed in their project costs. So things like other than Act 250 Archaeology, some of the other NEPA requirements would not necessarily have been incurred by them in constructing their project. Are there any tertiary treatment facilities within nearby states or other states that border major lakes where we could compare the cost of construction of the facility? So there are plenty of tertiary treatments the South Burlington plant is a tertiary treatment, but that's more of a traditional wastewater facility. I think what we were looking at was more of community systems and trying to find comparables in terms of smaller package treatment community systems. Do you want hazard? I'd have to go think about that a little bit. For the most part systems on sort of the design flow range that we're looking at here, I think that other than at ski resorts where there are a few more indirect discharge systems in Vermont with either spray irrigation or soil-based, sorry, I'll get closer. There are a few other indirect discharge systems in Vermont that are kind of of the scale that you guys are considering. For the most part they're associated with ski areas and they're either like the one in East Burke or Burke Mountain is an indirect discharge soil-based system. There are a couple that are spray irrigation based which is a much more land intensive disposal method but has similar treatment requirements and equal or more stringent disinfection requirements. Other nearby states may have comparables. I would have to go kind of dig a little bit. Each state has its own set of regulatory programs by design flow like Massachusetts for instance has two sets of onsite rules but they start at 10,000 gallons a day where it's state regulated and less than 10,000 is actually mostly at the town level for their regulation so they're harder to find in terms of like with Google. Alrighty, I'll move on to Warren and I'll show some of the handouts that we had. So I said I don't have the video yet but we can look at the handouts and while that's loading I was gonna say do you, we'll look through yours because yours has the corrected version of it. Sure, semi-corrected. Semi-corrected but so Amy led the tour there and we started, I don't know if the lights can be adjusted. Sorry about that, we'll zoom this in. I think you have that in your packet so I'll go back to my staff notes down there but because I have the corrected ones in front of me too. So Warren, we had lunch at the Warren store or outside is a beautiful day and walked over and saw the pump station afterwards and so I think one of the interesting things was that was an area that was hit with a flood in 1998 that sort of precipitated a lot of the actions the town chose to take or needed to take but even with the project starting in 1999 to seven years I had my staff notes 11. I think you're only involved for seven so only felt comfortable speaking to the seven years that you were involved or Stone was involved but it was a large project and the Brookfield system that we visited was constructed in 2004 as a remedy for those existing flows and was permitted for 30,000 gallon a day system. That was initially just for existing flows and I think a lot of what Craig Hindell or hydrologist that came to us at the August 20th meeting talked about was if you are interested in building a system like this you go and you dose the soils and see which way things flow you actually bring treated effluent onto the site and then see which way it goes. I think Warren did not have the luxury of that given some of their constraints they built the system and then tested it to see where it went where it went and it didn't go where you thought it would. So there are some complications with that one but the gist of it is it's pumped up to their elementary school and it's underneath one of the playing fields. It's a grass field it can't be it's next to adjacent to the ball field it can't be under the ball field so it does restrict some of the recreational uses that can occur on top of it. So it was originally permitted for 30,000 gallons but when they went back and had to make some of these modifications because they found which way it flowed and what have you it's now only approved for 20,000 gallons per day. Those are some of the corrections I made in staff notes. Thank you Amy. It was a little bit confusing but I think I've got it now. Some of it is the vagaries of the indirect discharge rules themselves. The way that the rules are set up you have to meet a lower bar for the water quality standards in your receiving stream if you're only treating existing flows and as a historic village Warren hadn't had any new development since 1982 when the rules first came into play. So they in the interest of fixing failures and doing right by their existing users they built the system for book flows, existing flows which were 30,000 gallons a day. They're only using about 10 to 11 at the time they were only using about 10 to 11,000 gallons worth of that capacity on a daily basis. So pretty quickly what existing flows means is that you can't add a bedroom. You can't change the use of your property to allow new flows. You can't add an accessory apartment. If you're a restaurant you can't add seats. You're stuck with what you have until they repermitted the system to allow new flows. When they did that they had to prove that they could meet those really strict aquatic permitting criteria in their receiving stream which is tiny. And so it was a voyage of about a year and a half to get it repermitted and when we did we could only prove that we could meet the aquatic permitting criteria for nitrogen and phosphorus at a flow of 20,000 gallons a day. So that's how they started with 30, ended up with 20. But even now with some of that adaptive redevelopment and expansion happening they're only using about 12 on a daily basis. The long strange trip. There were some odors there too. And I think they have some different carbon filters that they've added to try and keep the odors down there. Can I, I found the odors like overwhelming to me. I mean even with the charcoal filters, you know, I know it was depending on the wind but I mean, you know that we might be talking about a system that's three times larger than this system in a residential neighborhood, very close to a residential neighborhood would be very concerning to me. Because of the odors. Where were the odors, were they on the plank too? Well there were these pipes coming up from the tanks. Yeah, when we were up at Brooksfield at the elementary school talking about the system we were standing about 30 feet away from the septic tank which is a 50,000 gallon giant cast in place tank in the ground. And on the other side of us was the pump station where affluent is distributed into the various leech fields underneath the athletic field. So let me, I think. Oh yeah, this is a great illustration actually on the next slide. So this is in the playing commission's handouts but it's a second illustration of, you can see. This was during construction of the indirect discharge system under the athletic field. There's the ball field, there's the school and we were standing perhaps over in this area. Okay, okay. So that shows you a little bit in terms of size and scale. I don't know if I give you the mouse, do you wanna hover over what you, the area of it? Sure, so the septic tank is here, pump stations over here. This is actually the original 5,000 gallon per day leech field that was constructed right after the 98 floods and the pitcher in actually paid for that with the understanding that if the town ever did anything different, they might get paid back. And that system served the pitcher in the post office and like one or two residences as well for about 5,000 gallons a day. And the town did make good on that. They bought it back when they built the rest of the leech fields. There were a total of 12 over here, each with 5,000 gallons worth of capacity. And they ended up having to replace this one because of the increased use of it primarily from the restaurant use of it by the pitcher in. So it wasn't in great shape when we got to it. How much an acreage is covered by the leech fields? It's about three acres all told. Three acres? Yeah. This is a primary treatment only, so septic tank and leech field. If they were to add pretreatment, they could probably put a lot more water in there, but they might run afoul of those aquatic permitting criteria especially for nitrogen. I'm just trying to get a feel for how much property we would need to have to handle what we have at this point. And so some of that was from the August 20th presentation and it was substantial. There are some pros and cons with adding additional treatment that you can sometimes reduce the size of the leech field. And so this is one that just has primary treatment. So I think there are complicating factors with the discharge of this and aquatic biota and what have you, but if they had gone to tertiary treatment, they could have potentially shrunk the size of the field. Yes. So better filtration costs more, but smaller footprint, so pros and cons. In this case, they had plenty of land that had pretty good soils and in the school district, they had a very willing partner to allow for the community system to be cited there. In terms of project costs, this one was about, in 2004, it was about $4.6 million for the collection system, the treatment and the disposal facility. Let me flip to the next slide. Your question? What is not interesting on this one? Marilyn, we know your name, however, for the camera. I'm sorry. Marilyn Souls. What I found interesting and I just wanted if you can speak to you on this system and then the next one, the weights field system, was the community dealing with what was specifically going on in their community and having to be creative when voters did not go for the project in the first place. And so both in Watesfield and Warren, we had, I think it was defeated, was it once in Watesfield and twice in Warren? So Warren's, the decentralized project was fortunately didn't have an unsuccessful bond vote. So it was. But they did have a discussion when I was still in undergrad in the 90s about suing and it was, they decided not to move forward with it at the time. And then they had the flood in 98 and had septic tanks hanging over the Mad River. And then what you were saying was that in order to, I guess, so I was misunderstanding then. So maybe what you were now, I remember we were talking about that to get people to buy in, they were not required to, because there wasn't, maybe it wasn't a vote, but there wasn't agreement to do that. And they knew there wasn't, it must. So can you sort of explain that and how the community then worked through, okay, how do we come up with something that the community will support? To the best of your knowledge, recognizing you're still happily in grad school or maybe even undergrad when the town started on this. But yeah. Well, I think that, so when they were developing this decentralized wastewater project that had some support from an EPA demonstration project grant down in Warren, what they, what we did was actually a very long, stepwise deliberative process where we started with a needs assessment very similar to what you guys did in the IWRM project where we looked lot by lot using planning level information to see whether or not those individual properties could support a wastewater system and a water supply in that case because they had on-site wells and on-site septic systems that could meet current standards. And at a planning level, we found that a lot of them couldn't, which is not super surprising, but it made for a good communication tool. We also then followed it up with some water supply testing where and individual meetings with property owners where they were willing to have a consultant come on site and look at their system and talk about it with them. And all of that information was not shared with regulatory agencies or in any way other than very generally with even other members of the committee and it was not reported out individually in public meetings. But that was a useful tool to just help people understand what their limitations were, what the options were for their property regardless of what the solution ended up being. Then there was water supply testing that was done specifically to help people understand whether or not they had a problem potentially with either nitrogen contamination or pathogen contamination in their wells. And there were some substantial findings there where over a third of the water supplies had some sort of wastewater influence. And of all the things that we did that was probably the most convincing item where it was clear that there was a problem associated with the existing system of on-site wastewater treatment. And that was I think around 2001 into 2002 that we were doing that. And then ultimately we came up with a plan that involved several different shared systems and that got through a bond vote successfully with all of our fingers and toes and everything crossed. And it wasn't total agreement but enough people decided that this was a plan that they were willing to get behind that then it moved forward with design and more specific confirmation of sites. Our recommended plan had four, I think four different small cluster systems and still a system up at Brooks Field but we were only expecting to connect I think maybe 30 properties up there. And then as we progressed their design we learned the gravel pit doesn't have the capacity and we thought it did individual property owners where we were gonna put small cluster systems we're not interested once the rubber started to meet the road. So we ended up with a much larger community system up at Brooks Field. One small community system about 2,000 gallons a day and 10 individual on-site systems that were able to just stay in place and get minor upgrades that are also part of this overall program and are managed by the town. Great and then was everybody required to submit? No. No, that was a decision that was made by the committee and the select board pretty early on in the design process that they weren't gonna force anybody to connect if they didn't want to. So when we started really trying to confirm participation think we had about 70% participation and by the time we got to construction it was up around 85% participation. Amy, how can their soils compare to let's say East Lakeshore Drive? So the soils down in the village there are a few pockets of soils that are relatively sandy but for the most part like right where we were eating lunch you could see all the bedrock in Freeman Brook where we were sitting. There's a lot of really constrained situations there whether it's shallow bedrock or really compact till soils as you get out of the valley and start to go up out of the flood plain and start to go up a little bit. In contrast to that up at Brooks Field they have it's more like a sand plain sort of situation. It's a beautiful outwashed terrace. There's about 80 feet of unsaturated sand underneath that athletic field. So there are different environmental factors that play into whether something's suitable for onsite besides the soil such as high groundwater tables, limitations to the lot size, what have you. So I think overall that was a site that perhaps had shallow bedrock which we don't have the problem of but we have very constrained lot sizes and high groundwater and what have you. So different set of problems perhaps but still problems that need to be dealt with and more significant. Yeah, the lot size concern is definitely a commonality. Speculative question. Of the 15% that didn't connect I would assume those people are the ones whose wells tested well and were okay because I would think that if your well was not working well because of contaminants you'd probably wanna hook up. I would have to dig back into our records to confirm that. My admittedly foggy recollection is most of the people who declined to participate at the end of the project tended to have the larger lots closer to the edges of the village where even if they kinda thought maybe they had a problem they probably had enough land to deal with their problem on site without connecting to the community system. And before I go on to the next one I have some pictures that I can throw up so we can relive some of the memories. So this is all of us standing down in the village looking at the pump station across the road so it's a pretty small and compact village. This is us looking out in the field you can see it's sort of nondescript the tanks behind us, that's it. Those are those beautiful charcoal filters curtsing on the edge of it. And so that's serve the worn system. You're looking out at the playing field that it sits underneath. I can go back a time here just very briefly. We can do a few pictures of Charlotte while I have this open. Pam has her foot on the edge of one of the some of the sand filters, right? And there's the operator and Chris Gallop or the engineers are showing us around. Here's inside the little system there's a bunch of effluent swirling around underneath their feats there. And it was a rather tiny village. I don't think I have an exterior but you can see we were walking right over. It was very compact, we were walking right over it. So there were the plans for it. And then here is our sugar brush facility. There's one of the panels inside of it it was like a little bit of reactor. I resisted the urge to press buttons. It's a multifunctional space you can see you have people operating out there. There's I think there's an old overhead projector there. That's perhaps the most ancient technology in the place. These different huge filters that we stood next to over here in the corner and sort of crowded. There's a whole upstairs to it too in terms of speaking to multiple levels. There's genes are showing us well the different pipes are and everything is labeled on that building. It's pretty amazing. There's the shelf full of training binders. This is his little room. You can see it's over in the corner. It's a part lab where they're testing for things. There's a little fridge over there too. I don't think that's for their lunches. It's a very well used smaller space. I think we have one picture of all of us trying to stand in there with a camera guy. Very sort of constrained space. So with that, I'll move on to, you see if I can get back to Warren wrong folder. I have too many things open. Let me just start to close all. Where'd you go, Warren? It's in there somewhere. Back to it. Is Sugarbush the size and scope of a plant and facility that we would need to handle what we would have to deal with? That's the closest thing that we saw. I think we need to be a little touch larger than that. Yes. There's a six man crew that's paid annually. Four. Four operators. Plus there's waste that gets to be generated and leave on a regular basis. There's solids management. There's an annual engineering inspection because it's an indirect discharge permanent system. That's just by permit. That's a requirement. There's substantial monitoring that goes on with the system. Probably effluent from the system before it's discharged. We didn't talk in detail about the monitoring program, but usually monitoring requirements on a system that they include effluent, flow monitoring, and groundwater monitoring. And in this case, there's probably regular monitoring in the stream of the aquatic biota. He did mention that, that they have to do that regularly to make sure that there wasn't plant life and animal life being changed above and below in the whole nine yards and everything that goes with it. Yep. So I have up on the screen the picture of Weitzfield where we went, and I think Peter, one of your colleagues from Stone in the firm, I'll just put your laser check. Laser check. Laser check. Thank you. I was there in Trevor Lashow, the town administrator for Weitzfield, and we went to the Winter Park Business Park. It's for some of you that need direction. It's where Lawson's Finest is. And there's also the movie theater that's there, too. And so that is a truly decentralized system. We stood on the edge of a parking lot, and it's sort of like a pocket park if you're looking at it. It's in front of all the different businesses. All the businesses pumped to that system. It's a 9,000 gallon a day system. And so Weitzfield, too, is having, and I think some of this is how I mentioned, community concerns about what to do. And they had a bond vote, but it was all labeled as bizarre because they approved, as the voters, the second portion of it, but not the first portion. And you couldn't have the second portion without the first portion. So there was a defecation of need and willingness there. But in terms of looking at something holistically, that seemed to be a direction the town was not willing to go into. So what they did was they came up with this very decentralized approach where they have, through Evolving Loan Fund, incentivize people to do private community systems. And so this was a privately maintained community system that was operated by this business park. And it began in similar circumstances of the Comprehensive Need Assessment. There are now five community systems operating, and this shows some of the different ones within that area. That's correct. They're operating, and Loan Fund also is available to private individuals that need it. And when this system was first approved, it was at 2,500 gallons per day. So relatively small. It expanded to 9,000 gallons per day at cost of half a million dollars, roughly, using an Aquapoint Bioclear Treatment System. This was a tertiary treatment system. And it was interesting. There was a groundwater seep that was discovered, which required that they had to do a higher level of treatment, even though they're well below that threshold for tertiary treatment in terms of gallonage. I don't know if you wanted to say anything else about that. In this case, the site that they had for a disposal of the affluent was in the back of the field across the street, which is Route 100. We were able to prove out the capacity by digging a giant trench in the middle of winter, putting a tent over it, so seeing it with water from the community water system that had been built in about 2005 through 2007 at a rate of 9,000 gallons a day and watching to see if it popped out anywhere. And it didn't pop out anywhere, so we were able to get a permit, which is great. But there was still this groundwater seep that was relatively close to the leach field, and so the indirect discharge program required tertiary treatment and disinfection. Given some of the uses of this system, tertiary treatment serves a couple of really good purposes. Brewery wastewater is really high-test stuff. And so in order to allow that type of use, and restaurant wastewater is no slouch either in terms of its load and how hard it is to treat just with soil. So the treatment on this system was intended both to mitigate regulatory concerns and to allow the maximum adaptive reuse of systems and buildings that were already there. It's about 10% of the flow that you would need. And there's a sort of look inside the building. It looked like a small utility gorge that the equipment was operating in. It was rather noisy coming from there. Lots of blowers. Lots of blowers. Aeration, I guess, is part of that aqua-clear system. Not a lot of smells coming out of the building, but Peter was kind enough because we hadn't had our smell test yet at the site to pop the lid. And I don't know if it's visible from here, but you can see there are a bunch of little pieces of plastic down in this tank, which are part of the filtration in helping with aerating it and keeping the bugs in it. I've had lots of surface area where the bugs take over. Again, trying to decrease the amount of chemicals and increase the amount of natural decomposition that's occurring. So I think what we heard, and there are a couple of business owners that wandered over to, the sign business was there and talked about when Lawson's came in and what was required to treat those more unique flows that were going into it and some of the upgrades. So the shed basically doubled in size, roughly? More than doubled, yeah. To accommodate some of that stronger flow. And this was a good, I think, showing of there's regular effluent, but then there's when you get one particular user that has a higher strength effluent in what you have to accommodate. We don't have a brewery in the Bay, but if we ever did want to accommodate one, it's a whole different ballgame and can be a real game changer for what your requirements are. So innovative approach to on-site wastewater from Weitzfield. I think out of the whole tour, it really covered the full gamut of the variety of solutions that different communities have undertaken. Cold sister has over 5,000 on-site wastewater systems. There's hopefully a little bit of something here. We had some folks on the tour that weren't residents of the inner bay, were residents of cold sister and very interested in knowing what solutions to look to possibly for their neighborhood areas too. So hopefully everybody took something home that was useful that day. Anything else to add, Amy? Anything else that I haven't covered? We could have done more sites, but we've had to arrange for an overnight. I think there's a call for some more sites and I think we did probably about as much ground as we could cover in a day. Any other from those of you that company is along the tour? Was it five systems? Five different systems they have there, right? In Weitzfield, yes. The Winter Park system where Lawson's is, is the only one that is really shared between multiple parcels. The other four are generally single parcel, sometimes multiple uses on that parcel. Like the Linn property is some apartments and a Chinese restaurant and one other, like a separate, I think, two-bedroom structure on one parcel, but three different tanks, three different uses. The others are things like local folks, Moke House and Cousins Brewing, single parcel town offices, single parcel. I found looking at the size of the places and the scope and what was required was put a lot of things in perspective for me. I was very surprised the size of the whole sugar bush plot, plus the rest of them and how they adjusted to make what they needed and wanted work well in the towns and how they adjusted things too. I thought it was very informative and well done tour for us all. I appreciate your time and energy. Thank you. In Craig Heidl's, in his presentation, he talked about induced groundwater amount like horizontal and vertical discharge, like a drip irrigation system, and he spoke about the erosion of that amount of water going into the lake looking at East Lakeshore Drive, and he was concerned about the erosion of the road. I think he was concerned that the road was going to go down the slope anyway, but that adding hundreds of thousands of gallons of water to a system. Next to a steep embankment? Yeah. I wondered if we would have to build a huge seawall if there was a community. I think that was a cautionary tale of something. I think he was looking at this as a more of a tabletop exercise. I think I have a deep appreciation for the types of specialized fields that are required with any of these systems, and I think he was just noting it's a different type of engineer that you're going to need to have come and look at, and that is something that he felt in his professional opinion, which I greatly respect, that you would want to have somebody of that nature come and check it out. But that is no cost that we've accounted for in this, but I think obviously in going out to some of these sites with Warren in terms of ground flows, until you actually do some of that testing, and Warren's case, they didn't do the testing, they just built the system, you don't know exactly where things are going to go and how it's going to be impacted, and I think some of the things that he didn't cover in his presentation were things such as the aquatic biota, which we heard about in terms of looking at not just the hydrology and the water movement and slope stability, but how it could actually impact some of these bugs and other microorganisms and animals and what our liabilities would be to ensure that there's no degradation there. So that's another area that's another specialty. There are a whole bunch of them, I think I've only scraped the surface. Feel free to jump in if I've missed any of the other highlights. In the Memorandum, the 11-19-2015 Memorandum from the Department of Environment Conservation, they talk about when they're looking at the data that what is in Malitz Bay, they look at the role of ultraviolet life for killing bacteria, and that it was somehow an anomaly about how the sun usually can hit it and kill the bacteria. We're in rivers because it's moving water. It doesn't kill it as much, the bacteria. And they notice that Malitz Bay was very uncommon, the high level, I felt. So that attachment in staff notes is for the next agenda item, but just as a flash forward preview, I think part of what we saw on the tour was UV is used to kill bacteria, pathogens. And so exposure to sunlight usually does that. I think what was noted there was the presence of bacteria in sunlight is very unusual in the sustained fashion that we've seen. So I think that's another... I think a take from this tour is with those tertiary treatment systems that have that where it kills the bacteria as part of the tertiary treatment. Pros and cons, it does cost more, but you're ensuring that any effluent that's leaving there into the groundwater doesn't have those pathogens in it. Whereas a system that doesn't, that's just the primary system, you're putting all that waste water into the ground and if there's a seep or some other concern with that getting more discharged into another water source, you have a higher potential for contamination and that's your characterization. Yeah, that's pretty close. A system like Warren where they have a huge thickness of unsaturated sand, it's why a lot of historically instilled today water treatment systems use sand filters polish. Sand is a great filtering media and it's also a great media for good bugs to grow on that eat the bad bugs. Out of an abundance of caution, even when you have good soil, for instance, in Watesfield where there's a nearby seep, somebody might inadvertently touch it and what if your system is having a bad day? Using a UV disinfection system gives you that extra insurance that you're not releasing, not just E. coli, but lots of other pathogens that are coming from human bodies into the environment. What I understood was it was unusual, Malice Bay was unusual because of the amount of sunlight that hit the bay that there was bacteria and there was still bugs in it. That's kind of what I took away from that report. We'll get to that next. Anything else on our tour or recap? We've sort of gone over for our time, but thank you all for coming. So I'm having Amy stick around for this. So I think what was provided in staff notes is sort of, this was thrown into the mix in terms of control. You usually have, when you're evaluating any options in a methodology, you usually have a what if we do nothing. And so this is included in the decision matrix as an option for the planning commission throughout some of your outreach. You've heard calls to conduct additional stays at the scope of the problem, which would therefore delay action, so sort of a do nothing and could be wrapped into that. And I think the commission was duly going to consider these as part of their report back to the select board in terms of wrapping it up and providing to the select board what your findings are. But your mission was really in juxtaposition to the do nothing approach, which was to provide the co-tester select board with alternatives to, of how to effectively address human wastewater pollution in the inner bay for all 289 properties as identified by the wastewater project, so as to maintain improved water quality for both current and future land use and site conditions. So your charge implies that the existence of human wastewater in the bay is not in question. And we've already had a lot of efforts on studying this, and so I think this was a place on your agenda as you look to wrapping this up and writing your report to serve, I guess, provide direction as to how we're going to wrap this in. You know, I think calls for comprehensive monitoring. When you talk about comprehensive monitoring, you're looking for perhaps a broader spectrum of possible pollutants. I'm not sure that that is of additional value here because we know that there is an effluent problem. It's not necessarily a phosphorus problem yet or anything of that nature. There's been many years of water quality sampling, and as part of the staff notes you did provide that 2015 memo from DEC that you're referencing, Serita. And so I think just some of the highlights as I was going through as your staff person trying to pull this together in terms of what we have for data, the locations where human wastewater bacteria were detected along the shorelines of the inner bay and testing, follow-up testing confirmed that is human bacteria that is not coming from upland streams. Both tabletop and field investigations for the Integrated Water Resources Management Plan showed that properties contained within the project area have significantly... have significant area environmental constraints. We were talking about that a little bit earlier in terms of what similar areas we have with some of these other communities and collectively present as a high-risk area. There are more than 17 failures. I added one today, so we're up to 18. I've been documenting this area the past 10 years. I had three occurring this summer, we're now up to four. Two on West Lakeshore and two on East Lakeshore Drive. This is two to three times the failure rate of any other area in Colchester, and that's from some of our permitting data. Lake Champlain, Tactical Basin Plan lists the Mallets Bay sewer project as high priority, noting the pathogens in the inner bay, and the 2015 DEC determination eligibility for a dry-weather pollution abatement grant for the sewer project. I included that because there are different passages in that, which I thought sort of summed it up very well in terms of the findings. A quote from that is, the division has examined E. coli sampling records from lakes and ponds throughout Vermont. While exceedances of the criteria are relatively common in streams and rivers, they are much rarer in lakes, owing to the dilution and exposure to the bacteria to ultraviolet light that is incident to the lake surface. To lake surface, you get a lot of sun. Even in Vermont, you get a lot of sun on the lake surface, which kills the bacteria and accelerates the... This is now reading back from the memo. The exposure to ultraviolet light is relevant as this accelerates the cessence of the bacteria rapidly under most circumstances. The record of repeating in regular E. coli bacteria exceedances during dry-weather is uncommon in Vermont. Lake waters and suggest a higher-than-expected source signal in Malts Bay. So Amy's here and we can talk about what benefit could occur from additional study or what have you. On the way back from our septic tour, what struck me, and I asked Amy to confirm my sort of perception of this, is with all the communities that we visited and knowing Colchester, has Colchester done more study than any of the other communities actually went into implementation? And what was... That wasn't on the camera, it won't be on the camera, so we'll put it on the camera tonight. So I was thinking about this because I just turned 19 in my career at Stone Environmental. She looks pretty young, but I think she means 18 years of service. That's correct. My career at Stone turned 19 earlier this month, and the entire time that I've been working there, we've been helping Colchester with one water quality-related thing or another. Most of them dealing with wastewater, some of them dealing with stormwater. You guys have been at this for a really long time, and it's an exceptionally long time to still not have a clear direction, even with all the study and all the monitoring and all the analysis. It's tough, and you guys have put in a lot of work and a lot of effort, and it's clear that everybody cares about what's going on in the Bay. And yet, at the same time, we're still sitting here talking about untreated human wastewater getting into the Bay. It's tough because what we're talking about is non-point sources. There is no single screaming smoking gun, but it's incumbent on us to make a decision with the information we have in hand. So I think that's sort of a framing of the do nothing. But as we like to move forward with our poor and have the playing commission begin to write this, I guess as staffers, I need to know what additional information do you need to consider this? What other questions do you have? Or can discussion of the do nothing? Brian Costello. I was looking at your packet for this meeting and the decision matrix is there. I was hoping that we could see that and go over the four alternatives. That's what I was expecting. Well, that's the next part of the discussion. But are we moving on to that? Yeah, why don't we move on to that? Marilyn souls, just because we're talking about the do nothing. I went back and looked at the thanks to LCA TV. I looked at the March 26th select board meeting two weeks after the sewers defeated. Towns trying to figure out what to do because the townspeople said no. It shows on that tape the select board is brought in. We were from the planning commission and Sarah and saying hey, we're tasking the planning commission with taking a look at human equal eye in the bay and seeing that the word limited was even used. What other, is there something, what can the planning commission come up with? Is there something sort of limited? Not saying what you're going to come up with, but I heard it. Okay, they're tasking the planning commission to see if there's some other alternatives. I didn't find that particularly discouraging. Who knows what will show up. The point was we said no to the 289 units and let's see instead of spending $14 million, if we got a few camps that are polluting, can we come up with something less expensive? What can we do? How can we think this through in creative ways? That's why I found it so interesting. Waitsville and Warren and they had defeated things and they came up with things that were more limited so that they could do something. When we got around to, we all, Sarah brought some great experts in, everybody's learning together. Then all of a sudden we get to August and this, well everything, nope, can't talk about that unless there's 289. I have to cover all 289 units. That's what the select board says. I was like, gosh, I don't remember that. Where's the space for alternatives? Where's the space for you guys to see what you show up with? You're not making the decision. Select board's making the decision. That's why I went back and confirmed that indeed the select board had not started with 289 units. I don't know where that came from. That's not correct. I apologize for interjecting, but the playing commission clarified this with the select board and is for all 289 properties. What I'm saying is I don't know when that showed up because I never heard it. I came to all these meetings until August. I don't know if I'm the only one that was confused about that, but I doubt it. I don't know where that came from and my feeling that made me super discouraged. Like, okay, I guess it was a setup after all. I had plenty of space for, oh, maybe they're looking for options. Maybe it's just a setup to sort of repackage and get the sewer vote again. Don't like the vote. We'll just bring it back again. And so this brings me to the do nothing approach. So if the select board has confirmed that that's what, you know, even if it did come midstream, it's what you guys are tasked with now. No, that was clarified at the beginning with the select board. Well, it certainly was never said in any of these meetings until August here. You guys were looking at different things and it's all of a sudden, we started talking things in this 280. It was not said in the select board meeting. It was talked about limited. So basically you're not allowed to look at a limited solution, even though that was what was first said in the select board. So what I would say is, since you're not allowed to look at a limited solution, that the do nothing is your space in case you come up with a limited solution. Because all of the others are put the same thing back on the ballot that was said no to, because it's all 289 units. And it isn't surprising that maybe, gosh, that biggest system for a community septic, maybe it is going to be really expensive. I mean, those of us that were opposed to the sewer were never saying, you know, do a community system for 289 houses that's going to be the same price as the sewer, less expensive, we were saying, let's free some, let's see what can be smaller. Let's free some money up. Let's make sure we can look at some of the, putting some money into fixing storm drains and those kinds of things. Let's recognize that the water quality that there's some human E. coli showed up, but it was like 8% or something. So let's recognize, we got like 92% of the E. coli that we've got to solve things with. So I'm simply saying, given what you guys are tasked with, if you come up with some things that might be alternatives or might be limited, I would just suggest you could put them under the do nothing approach because that everything else is, is do exactly the same thing as was voted no. Very good, thank you. Thank you. Come right up. Yeah, I want to agree with everything that Marilyn said and it was my expectation that the do nothing alternative wasn't literally do nothing and don't clean the bay and don't look at failed septic systems forever. I thought it would be looking at ways to do comprehensive monitoring going forward, post the past results and the maps of where the testing has been done. Sarah, you mentioned all of the years and years of testing that Colchester has done. That's for sure. Excuse me. Right on top of it. I'm not right on top of it. I've been asking for weeks or months for the data to be posted or at least if I could get information on where to find it. I think I emailed you back and you're more than welcome to come in and take a look at. We have constraints on our website as to how much information we can. We're going through a website reformulation and we've been told to not put archival information. Some of the information requested from the 1990s more than having to make that available to you but can't put it on the website because it's making our website slower and so all of us are archiving a lot of the information on the website just as part of trying to make it more accessible. Right. So maybe you could put a link to it so it doesn't slow your website down. You told me it was the planning commission's decision, not yours as to whether this data could be posted. I think you should read your email. Sorry if you just came back from vacation but I was referring to your previous one. Thank you for the email four days ago. Have you read that memorandum from the Department of Environmental Conservation that refers to the testing in Smith Creek and at Bayside? Yeah. Right. So as far as I know, Smith Creek and Bayside and the tributaries are the only spot monitoring that's been done. But did you read the data in there about the levels? Yeah, I didn't say where. If there's any testing done other than those three sites, the Bayside E. Coli could be coming from boats. The Smith Creek testing could be coming from upstream. I'm very data driven. I'd like to see where the testing sites were in which years and... Happy to have you come in. Well, you told me that DPW has it. So I can go to DPW to see it. But if the rest of the town could see it and it doesn't slow the website down, I think that would be beneficial to the whole process if that could be done. Very good. Okay. So are we going to look at the matrix and comment on... That's coming up next. We stopped here at the consideration of the do-nothing... Great. So also in the do-nothing consideration, if some limited... I thought the do-nothing alternative was do-nothing with regards to a $15 million project that includes all 289 properties. I think we're on the same page. Good. Thank you. Yes. Hi, my name is Jack Scully. I had the opportunity yesterday to meet with Karen Adams, the technical services manager. Karen, of course, is responsible for storm drains. We've got a bunch of them in Colchester. We've got some big bad ugly ones that you and I saw the other day. Even with the storm utility money we've got, about $850,000 a year, when you take into consideration her salary and two highway department guys and some ancillary stuff, she doesn't have a lot to deal with these storm drains. I asked her what she thought to really take care of a storm drain runoff in Colchester would be. She's thought, just a guesstimate, $17 million. Excuse me? How much? $17. Per year? Per year. No, no, total project, $17 million. Well, right now, $17 million. So, what I'm saying, if we spend $14 million on a sewer or a big community system, which could be, I think, Sarah, you estimate it, $17 million, there's not going to be an awful lot for storm drain runoff and everything that's coming out of those storm drains into our streams, into the watershed, into the lake. It's Karen estimated that she can deal with about one storm drain a year. One a year. And we've got tons of them. So, we will not clean up the lake. If we blow the money on a big system. So, in March, I think the voters saw this when they said no to the $14 million system. Now, I've always thought that we should take East Lakeshore Drive, Waterside out of the equation. There's 66 camps. Some of them are already pumping across the street like munchens and land trees. And there are some other ones too. So, if you just take the East Lakeshore out of the picture and with a small reduced community system going into public lands, gosh, you're going to save at least $4 million right there by not having to do all of West Lakeshore Drive. Jeff, do you mean West Lakeshore or East Lakeshore Drive? The only thing that really should be done, the big problem are the camps on the rim of East Lakeshore Drive. The 66 camps. We know that six of the properties on Goodsell Point, six of them have been upgraded. There's 10 that probably are at risk. So, getting back to the consideration of doing nothing. You would like not to have anything done on East Lakeshore Drive at this point? No, what I'm suggesting... That's what I'm discussing right at this point. Then we'll get to the matrix part. Okay. But I just want to make sure that that's on the record. Absolutely. And when I talked to Herb Downing and some other folks on the Select Board, they said to me, let's see what the Planning Commission comes up with. And then later on, the 289 came up, Sarah, I'm sure it's in some kind of a memo to you from the Select Board or the town manager, but I haven't seen it. I would like to see that. And I don't think we really... Or if you feel you have to do 289 for community system, also say there is a possibility that we can save considerable costs and make this cost effective by just dealing with those camps on East Lakeshore Drive. Some of them date back to 1920 or 21. And that's the real problem with any E. Coli. And unless they can prove they're pumping across the street or they made a big investment, then I think they should be hooked up to assist them and take them out of the picture. Okay. Thank you. I'd encourage everybody to come up to the mic. The East Lakeshore is what your time to stay should be kept. I think, Jeff, I think you... I'm not sure if I wasn't clear. East Lakeshore, the 66 camps should be connected to a community system and take them out of the picture of possibly polluting. Actually, I think they actually are polluting the lake. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for that. So can I say one tiny thing about the do nothing approach? Right now what we're doing is we're doing nothing about... It's not nothing. It's the status quo for untreated or incompletely treated human wastewater going into Inner Mallards Bay, particularly along East and West Lakeshore drives, the densest part of the developed areas along the shore of the bay. I did some super quick math. $14 million divided by $289 is $48,442 just as a really rough order of magnitude. What are we looking at? A best-fix system for an individual property that includes pretreatment, disinfection, probably a bottomless sand filter because there's not room for anything else, could easily run you that. It's on the order of 35 to 40 at minimum, and then you have to maintain it. So we're not... If we're talking about trying to do the best we can with what we have, that cost is not that different from a $14 million project that serves all 289 properties along the shoreline of the bay. If we continue with the status quo for on-site wastewater management along the bay, there's an emotional cost to those property owners as well that I don't think I've heard anybody talk about. But we saw it when we did that forum and talk back in May, June, when we met with a property owner who had just bought on the bay and discovered that they had a failed system. And that is a real cost that can't be measured in dollars, but it can be measured in lost opportunity times 289. That's tough. And it's worth thinking about as you consider the do-nothing approach. Great. Thank you. Come right up. I was just wondering, just what you said, that they were... Oh, Phyllis Brighton. East Lake Shore Drive. I was just saying, how come that house could sell if it had a failed system? Where's the band name we're putting all over this? Because we don't have anything in place saying, if you sell a place, it's got to work. Somebody buying it... There's probably going to be some litigation there, but still that doesn't solve the unfortunate circumstance. How many other places around all of Colchester has... And how long has this been going on? I mean, we've been beating a dead horse trying to get the service system through. And the thing is, in all these systems, you said there's 18 failed systems. There's 18. 18 subtracted between 9 and 18. So that's 18 within the past 10 years within this study area. And as a percentage, when you start to take a look at it, it has two to three times the failure rate of the rest of the community within this study area. And I think it's worth noting that five of them have occurred within the past six months in this area. And only one was on the lakeside, which was a repeat failure. That's a good question. That has an innovative alternative, a bottomless sand filter, and has all the bells and whistles and continues to fail. And is within 50 feet of the lake because the parcel itself is less than 100 feet deep. Under the state wastewater rules, they have a right to continue to best fix it. Well, then we've got to get rid of that rule and stop grandfather-causing the sand. So that is literally what the town tried to do after the Integrated Water Resource Management Plan project. They spent almost two and a half years trying to convince state regulators to change state law so that they could do better with managing on-site wastewater in those high-risk areas. And they were told no. We're going to try it again. That's all news. I'll take you to Montpelier with me next time, fellas. Yeah, let's do it. Legislative session is starting soon. No, all that's getting aside, it's an incredibly frustrating scenario to be in when you want to do better and you can't. And so I think I want to have that noted for the record that we are trying to do better and can't. It's incredibly frustrating and it limits your options. I think we can all agree that it's not good to have limited options, but there's been a lot of exhaustive work that's been put in. And I think thank you for bringing up that sort of human element of it because we sort of forget that. There are a lot of frustrations on all sides that should be recognized in this. And I think that's just. I think that's very just. You've been given a very hard task that there's no easy answer for. And I, as your staff person, try and catch a lot of those bullets for you. You're all volunteers. You're all community members. Hello, I'm your paid staff person. Shoot over here. But I can't. And I think you've taken a lot of jabs, knives and along the way. And I can't tell you how much I appreciate working with you and the privilege I have of working through this difficult solution and the empathy I think that you've displayed going through this and the listening and the patience. So trying to give you a little more morale boost as we sort of go into the final phases. And I will say for those that, I was just quickly flipping through minutes. If you want to go back to some of the June minutes, we can talk about the 209 properties were identified in some of the June minutes. So we have been talking about this for a while in totality. I think the number perhaps was not talked about or discussed as much as we perhaps should. But we have been talking about this as a comprehensive solution. Before the sewer vote, I spoke to Rebecca Ellis at the state and asked her how the state, what the state's position was. And her concern about Mallet's Bay was that because of the soils, that these systems will continue to fail. It's not like we can fix the systems between these systems because of the soils. They're just going to continue maybe after 10 years or whatever. But it's just, it's not like there will be a time when you can put an individual septic systems along Lake Shore Drive and have them be okay for 10 years or 15 years because of the soils. Is that accurate? I think that there are a series of constraints that will make it hard to have fully conforming wastewater treatment systems that are soil based systems along East Lake Shore Drive and along portions of West Lake Shore Drive for that matter. Some of it is shallow groundwater. Some of it is finely textured soils. Some of it is very small lot sizes in some cases which really constrain where you can put a leech field. It's most challenging on the Lake Shore side of East Lake Shore Drive but there are also some areas on the up one side of East Lake Shore that have similar constraints. So I do not disagree with Rebecca Ellis. You know what I also find very interesting is we're talking of 289 properties. We're talking about community systems yet I see a handful of people here to discuss this. I also don't see those people who have those systems that they know are having problems not throwing out hey by the way we're working on a community system to fix this ourselves so you don't have to get involved. I think that there's some apathy involved with some of those properties and it kind of boggles my mind if you'd live there and that's where your place is you wouldn't want to make the water cleaner across the board. So this is the other part that makes me kind of wonder at times. We did receive some correspondence documented throughout the summer and one of them was from a property owner that was out on Goodsville Point that sort of spoke to that condender of we just want to know what direction you're headed in. So understanding that people's lives are busy and we have had people have taken the time to give correspondence and as we've gotten some of those comments they've gotten up on the website that was actually a good part of refreshing the website is a lot of what we have so far is up on our website under tinyurl.com backslashculturester.mbi we have yet to get the presentation from Craig Hindell. He's been away I've been trying to get that from him we'll get that up too but Duly noted. I think a lot of people are waiting to see they don't want to invest $42,000 to fix or upgrade their septic. We're going to propose a community system or a sewer. So I think people are waiting to see what the town is going to do. I have the matrix up. So I think the next steps as you look to wrap this up is I filled out the matrix of the information I have and this is staff filling out the matrix. We need to work on about a five page report to provide to the select board. I'm hoping to work with all of you over the next few meetings to hash that out and hopefully present something I'm aiming for the first meeting in November to present out our findings. As with other things in the past that staff have written I don't think this is something that should be entirely written by staff. I would really love to have different playing commissioners author, co-author some different portions of this in terms of the different options and different responses. You know, I can talk with some of you about time constraints and what you could contribute but I'd really love to take whatever you can and pull it together and I'll try and unify it all into one document in a correct way but I think the idea was to give this to a citizen delegation from the town. You are a citizen board and to have it come from you. So filled out the matrix with very brief responses this needs to be flushed out again welcome to take some criticism if we had in the wrong direction I have you but I'll just quickly scroll through it the first option that the playing commission discussed was back in June about purchasing conserved properties does this address the entire area when we looked at it it would just be limited to the lakefront properties maintainer improved water quality it could have the potentially greatest impact on improving water quality if all the properties were demolished or stored again speaking to some of the other tangential benefits of not just wastewater but stormwater impervious area that would be removed if that was done when we're looking at the estimated cost for just the lake shore properties we're up to around 23 million using some of the grand list numbers potential funding sources while there might be some grant organizations or other partners we would need to provide some leverage or some match at the very least and most likely property taxes could be used to leverage that we're looking at a timeline for approximately 50 years we're looking at in terms of reliability while we're only eliminating the lakeside portion of the equation not the entire area so didn't cover all of it so perhaps only half effective or reliable neighborhood character impacts positive impacts were identified in terms of potentially opening up lake views if you're on the non-lake side you have a great view of the lake now and there'd be some green areas but negative impacts definitely to displacement of long term families and property owners effect on property taxes and values reduction in values due to the removal of the properties and it would therefore when you decrease them out of properties that you have on the grand list you spread the burden the tax burden or fewer people so it could possibly increase the tax burden to those still remaining taxpayers and serve to sort of effectively increase property taxes sorry I couldn't fit this on one page we might want to move away from the matrix more flushed out answers but that was the this is 11 by 17 yes plotter size wall size I don't know so that was the first item on the matrix questions properties and this was that this is what we discussed back in June and it was looking at doing those two or three properties over a 50 year time period but with the goal being to buy off property for this we're just looking at lake front property it wasn't addressing all the 209 because that was all 289 on the lake correct address only the property on the lake correct so this this was a partial solution just simply because the magnitude of doing a full conserve buyout was beyond the pale also the feasibility you could be talking about purchasing homes that go on the open market versus and this was just using grand list values what things go on the open market for can sometimes be considerably more than our grand list values what people actually pay for them is a different story too but it's offered well with two or three properties a year there are I think three properties for sale right now so if you were to go at it for a 50 year just in that manner it would take you about 50 years but you could purchase all the lake front properties if they go on the market well yeah you wouldn't assume that it would eventually go on the market well we discussed that back in June about eminent domain and it's only to be used in certain circumstances that is a potential tool but I think we're looking at it as trying to be less aggressive but the goal for this was all the properties on the lake yep so I was suggesting a different goal the goal would be just to go after those that come on the open market to be scopeier and smaller and be much more feasible on the open market get passed down to family members of the ones that are polluting and 50 years to take care of a problem right and I think that was part of the issue was in terms of addressing that sort of purpose is you could have the worst polluters that have a right to continue and never get to them if you were to be very incremental about this and not to forcibly take properties in it you'd have a few holdouts and it's sort of an interesting conundrum that you put yourself in terms of property values because if you're making all the area around one particular property into a green area you're potentially increasing the value of that one remaining one that might be your worst polluter that you really want to buy and conserve so this had some intricacies in this and definitely if somebody wanted to take this on and sort of flush this out this could be flushed out a lot more this deserves a couple paragraphs at least and not just one line on the matrix this sets up an interesting precedent too if those houses come on the open market does it put the town at a really difficult position financially to purchase those houses or not be able to purchase those houses not to mention the time frame and the cost associated obviously if we had started some sort of land conservation program years ago and had the money saved in the bank we'd be in a much better position but if you're looking at limited funds and you can only purchase so many a year and four come on the market and yet a few years later you're coming after that fourth and eminent domain or something like that yeah I'm extremely familiar with purchasing houses I would think you'd want to definitely put some time in there to see where the the line is where the many many different things on this one that could potentially be somewhat of a negative precedent well that's no no no we didn't let them there's going to be I think if there's not already a civil action pending in that which I that's not true I am talking with Sarah looking at what Massachusetts has done in terms of inspections of septic systems that it's not just that they can drain their septic system and then sell the house there's a much more thorough what do you call it well investigation when you're selling a home time of sale inspection program I am talking to her about possible presenting some legislation no I think it's a really good point you're making it sorry we need to have people come up to the mic which poor Brian has been standing patiently at do you have a question on this one excuse me do you have a question on this specific not a question I have three or four comments first one Mark started about limiting this maybe to just the properties that are failing so this has already been limited from the the whole area was 239 this is only the Lakeshore areas which is what Sarah 137 or something I don't have that number written from 132 but this shows how much it would cost to buy all of those properties whether they're failing or not whether they have new systems whether they have no chance of failing which really doesn't make any sense it's a waste of money to think you're going to buy and displace people who are living in a house that has a system that doesn't even have a risk of failing these are all homes within the high risk area just to correct you on that these all like this is every property on Goodsell Point this is all the lakefront properties which are definitely high risk you said that they were not high risk and these were all the very highest of high risk I'm sorry I thought that 23 million over 50 years was for every property on the Lakeshore it is so every property on the Lakeshore and East and West Lakeshore Drive and Goodsell Point is at high risk yes okay well yes so I guess going by that criteria every property on the Lakeshore no integrated water resources management plan okay there is a pretty good map of that in the IWR and I think it also ended up in the summary yep okay well that's a noose to me I thought that just only some of the properties on it on the lake on East and West Lakeshore Drive were at risk and some were fully compliant there's a difference between risk and the present situation at the present time if you think about the life cycle of an on-site wastewater system if all things are wonderful and perfect your leech field if it's a conventional on-site system is probably good for 30 to 40 years your septic tank is probably good for a little more than that if it's well maintained if it's not well maintained or isn't installed in ideal conditions and isn't inspected or maintained the risk becomes higher and higher if your septic system was installed before modern regulation and in conditions that aren't conducive to its functioning that risk is higher and higher and that came out pretty clearly in the integrated water resource management plan work whether we were doing planning level existing data review or in task four of it we actually had engineers go out and inspect systems along the lake shore and in other parts of the town where the planning level data indicated that there could be some sort of a higher level of risk so that could expect the need for comprehensive testing in the entire lake shore because mills point and porters point area and clay point certainly don't have good soils and they might be polluting to the exact same level or more as this area I don't want to get into this too much but you keep saying comprehensive testing and I'm wondering what you mean that would be testing for a year between what for what for E. coli isn't that the driving data that would require some kind of a upgraded septic treatment so we have over 20 years of E. coli testing so you'd say another year of comprehensive testing well I thought that was just in those three points in the bay there's been testing on well so yeah if I can see that I wouldn't be answering these questions and I'll I'll get that from Brian Osborne and answer my questions that way thanks I'll get on this one oh Jack in the 1990s the select board established a lake shore acquisition fund we put a penny maybe it was two pennies on the property tax for several years we bought three properties that are close to the east side of Bayside Park right now unfortunately that those pennies were taken off the property tax and we don't have any right now but I certainly would recommend that you consider a lake shore acquisition fund on a limited basis as was proposed and implemented in the 1990s I did send a copy of a memo on the point system that was established for acquiring properties as they became available sir I think I sent you a copy and you I think that was in one of your July packets if everybody wants it would you do you have it or would you want us to resend it to you there was a lot of work that had I believe it was in your July packet I'll double check okay so right now there is a perfect property to be acquired it's 727 lake shore drive and it's a good example of how you could start to make a difference in a short period of time this is between the dip and Williams Road it's bounded by green space on either side and it's 399 it's not even 400,000 it's probably a great realtor but it's not exactly bounded by green space on one side just the north of it is 755 east lake shore drive which was taken down which is going to be rebuilt the DRB just at the last meeting approved a seawall which is part of redevelopment plan so it's down right now right so as I said you can make a great realtor pitching the current state of it okay I don't have that information I'm just saying right now when I went to that property if you tore this one down there's enough space for a scenic overlook right there going from Norse's corner to Bayside you could probably get two or three cars in there and there is a staircase that could remain I'm just saying you don't have to buy all of these properties it's just not going to happen but you can establish some green areas and open space in a look card and all of that kind of stuff I've thought enough about this one that I brought it to the Lake Champlain land trust and also to the Colchester Conservation Commission the land trust is very interested in working with the town if the town is interested so things can be done in a short period of time so this is like in if we going to spend two years to do something on the community or the the big sewer we could start a fund with your recommendation and approval by the select board very soon this fall it's an interesting case in point that property had a replacement system done in 2012 and so that's one of the ones that we know that there is a fairly new wastewater system on over a third of the properties we don't have that sort of information on and again how would you with the land conservation program which is sort of more of a voluntary you'd pay good money to conserve something that most lately has a more functioning wastewater system than a lot of the other properties without fully going to that conscriptive or prescriptive where everybody has to participate you aren't going to get if we're doing this for these reasons to maintain and improve water quality there are challenges I just want to agree with Jack that whatever option is chosen we can still pursue the option of purchasing failed and nearly failing properties one at a time and I forgot to mention that under I'd like to suggest that under potential funding sources local options tax would be a great use of local options tax to purchase the worst of the properties thank you I just had a quick question because you said that 755 was being rebuilt their sewer system is fine so they have not yet submitted fully we've had some re-iterive processes and there are some legal challenges made with that system and what they had rights to there is an appeal of the wastewater officials decision to the select board it's most likely going to be a holding tank scenario for seasonal only most likely and again that was I'm just speaking to the plans that were submitted as part of their DRB application showed holding tanks they do not have a wastewater permit and they haven't fully applied for one but that's what was shown at last Wednesday's DRB meeting so after purchasing conserved properties there's the sewer option so does this address the entire area yep it would have yep it would have eliminated the possibility of wastewater pollution within the project area 14.2 to construct in 105 100,000 annually to operate in ONM to be paid for by the users take three years to implement South Burlington facility that would go to would provide a high degree of reliability with continuous automated monitoring and trained wastewater professionals this is part of the so the previous one was I think June 18th this is the July 30th presentation to the playing commission neighborhood character impact it could double the slow low rate of growth that we see in the bay to 1% or more two units per year effect on property values and taxes no direct benefit to property value and then in terms of taxes none as the project was going to be paid through local option tax and user fees just not quite done yet just wait wait wait wait okay so this was all part of the July 30th presentation from Brian Osborne these are all part of the facts of the sewer project that was voted down these haven't changed so a lot of those facts and figures were drawn from that data there was any new data collection or any changes from that that were made that was all sort of taken off the shelf and presented to you on July 30th so again nothing new or different from that sewer proposal I wanted to clarify so so that 14.2 million and all that is that still the price because the longer this goes on that's not going to be the price as I said that was the clarification I wanted to make was that was all taken off the shelf from the sewer bond vote it hadn't been updated at all okay so we're going to go into this blindly because we don't know what the bottom line will be and the other one as far as changing the prices of the home values 1% it's going to be a lot more than that because they're all going to go from whatever season no that's not you're reading in two different columns the growth rate was 1% in terms of number of units that you'd see a year that was the 1% there is no percentage placed on property values what are you saying property values will not increase if they're connected to the sewer is that all as a former realtor I'd like to question the state for about 15 years back in the last century but probably still holds true today that a property that has much more development potential hooked up to a sewer then a property that is limited to seasonal or could not be made into a duplex or other limiting factors so there is probably some value on people that are stuck that can't add a bedroom that would be able to but in terms of overall increase or decrease the property value it would probably be negligible again I'm not the town's assessor but there was not anticipated to be and I'd refer to the July 30th presentation the effect on property values in taxes was negligible to property value we were looking at you can go back to the previous column there's very limited opportunity for infill development or redevelopment within the area just simply because of the constrained land and that there is going to be no impact to property taxes as part of that project that was as originally envisioned thank you so most of the properties that even if it hasn't been tested in front of the camps to show the connection to the human E. coli and the camps still if there is the east lake shore drive most think gosh it's possible that some of those are polluting when you get to west lake shore drive it's always interesting when you drive along west lake shore drive and when you're looking at costs and maybe is there a way to do something smaller there's not nearly as many properties on west lake shore drive and we look at the charts that you guys have it's a it's a really different you can ask Sarah on that I was looking at it earlier today so and you don't have a lot of camps like along that front on west lake shore drive unfortunately I don't know why but the IWRM although it splits east lake shore drive into the east part of east lake shore drive which is the land side and the west part of east lake shore drive which is the lake side the IWRM doesn't do that for west lake shore drive I can't imagine why so it's harder to split things apart but if you just we all drive that road plenty so if you picture maybe cutting the cost in half or something if the pipe going down west lake shore drive costs X if that's 6 million or something how many along the lake are you really not picking up so there might be a way to make a smaller project that might cost less money might get some voter approval by pulling off west lake shore drive you're not pulling up that much on the lake side on the high side there also aren't as many property owners but that's where the bigger lots are and that's where the potential for development is I know that the town's gone through the process that Sarah led in looking at what might a village and lake shore drive look at I also followed that and it was always said sewer or no sewer what do you want sewer or no sewer so it isn't like we have to have a sewer for that that was what was said all along on the process so in this IWRM it always interested me the west lake shore drive in the categories it talks about it's such small print it's hard for me to read but it does say you cannot do a full build out on west lake shore drive without the sewer so it's the one place it says that so I know that we've had talks about and this relates to the no direct property value that's where I'm going with it no direct benefit to property value that's where I'm going with the discussion so we've had said that all the sewer will do is increase the rate of development I would say that if all the sewer would do is increase the rate of development and not actually increase the the what I'm looking for it actually increases your ability to develop if sewer does and that's why certain properties will have a great increase in property value if the sewer goes through that's why you've got a lot underneath pressure for this for 20 years that is separate from concerns about water quality and so that's why it states here that I would say that you can't when it says you can't do a full build out in the LS2 on west lake shore drive without the sewer what I learned when we were on that talk I was suggesting well what about those people just putting their own community system they've got enough land up there you know we certainly know they could do one house but if you want to do multiple houses and I was surprised the answer was Amy said the soils aren't good enough is that not true? in some places in that upland portion of west lake shore drive like you have some nice sand plain soils closer to the high school but the farther west you go the wetter and tougher the soils get is that not why you need the sewer to do a full build out because the landowners could not do the a full dense build out even though they might have 10 acres or I know Hazel has 150 acres but you've got a 10 acre you've got a couple other large parcels there is that why the IWRM says that on that so the IWRM was done before the LS2 district okay but okay I'm just having trying to connect to so that you guys know so I think that's an important thing to not miss I think that's a very important point that you have is the integrated water resources management plan was done 2013 spring of 13 13 and that's when you still had commercially zone properties on west lake shore drive that when we went through that comprehensive visioning process with the town in terms of what do you want to see and there are concerns I think I heard Taco Bell many times fast food chains what have you we pulled back and rezoned in Korean new zoning districts that do not allow that scale of build out so it's very true that you would not get to build out under the zoning at that time anymore because we changed the zoning does that make sense I hear what you're saying but back to no direct property value if those soils are fine then because there's plenty of big lots that an individual could put their own community system I mean that's what we already have in other places in Pultz district that's what other places do we don't need it to be connected to the one because that top that the land side isn't polluting and so gosh it is well can they do they not have enough property to actually put the integrated bar research management plan found that West Lakes Drive was not suited to community systems because of the soils that's my point therefore it isn't true that no direct benefit to property value is the case because once you do an offsite pipe you've now allowed a person to develop that property without any constraints of soils just as when you put a pipe you still have the constraints of the land use and the zoning but you do not have the constraints of the soils so if there are no soil constraints up there then could not on a 10 acre price of property somebody be able to put their own community system in could there not or are there and I thought that's what when we were standing in Warren this is I said this is really interesting look at this maybe this would be something that would be helpful for those land owners as they want to develop their property and we learn these things and I thought that when I said that I thought that I was told well actually the soils aren't good enough for them to put their own community system on there and therefore if you put a pipe whether it goes off their property you are increasing the amount you are increasing the value of that property I think you are drawing a correlation that is not so if the zoning allows you to put 20 units on a property but your soils aren't good enough for it but you put a pipe past it that means your wastewater is going somewhere else can you not then do the 20 units that if you had to do your own so I think that raises the importance of zoning is making sure that you have the zoning rate and the vision rate which I strongly believe with the community outreach that we saw for Westlakeshire Drive I am talking about soils, is it not true that you could have it zoned to do something but your soils aren't good enough so what you are saying is that the soils are fine and those large pieces of property they could that as it stands right now they could do the same amount of development because the soils are perfect as they could do if there was a pipe going past what I am going to say is it is hit or miss you are not going to find that unified vision for the whole area come to fruition you are going to see hit or miss depending on the soils that people have which are highly variable in between properties and some people might be willing to forego some development in favor of other development you might find properties being torn down to use for a community system or something of that nature but the underlying premise is that the zoning, the land use drive what you want to see not the infrastructure and not the soil so it doesn't matter that the soil is on the land side of West Lakes or drive you are just it has an impact on the rate of development and how quickly you are going to see it achieved but overall in terms of what will be achieved is the regulatory the land use, the zoning so just to clarify so I thought let's say take it away from the bay a piece of property somewhere else in Goldsister five acres or two acres and it doesn't have good soils then they can do the same amount of development on that as somebody that does have good soils I mean I get that the zoning happens but I thought that your soils actually matter because you have to be able to to push that again I feel like we are drifting into into an area that is not on the matrix but let me just answer that very quickly in terms of saying if you have a soil where really nothing perks you could do a whole lot of mini storage you could do hundreds of units of mini storage if you did not have the proper land use controls in place the soils don't always limit what you have for development that's why it's so important to have that long range vision, the regulations the work of the planning commission in terms of setting forth what your zoning is, what your land use controls are because you can have a hundred acres that doesn't perk which one person could look as being undevelopable another person could say great I'm going to build huge warehouse buildings so at the end of the day in terms of what the limiter is you're right if you had two properties that resumed the same one had all the infrastructure there and one didn't you're going to see more development on that one that has all the infrastructure there but what type of development you're going to have if you have your regulations your land use controls say that you have all the infrastructure there but you can only do two units that's something different than that piece of land that has no infrastructure but you allow warehousing as a by right use so different ways depending to a higher level development but without the zoning regulations taking control and giving the vision so thank you Sarah I appreciate your explanation and just one last thing I think what's so tough about this is we have this bay that we all care about the water quality and then what we've seen over the years is as we've all appreciated the lake more the values of the lakefront have gone up and as that land gets more expensive and you have to spend so much for the land when somebody puts a house they're about the money to put the big house and it changes our development patterns but the point is we also I don't know I don't have a real estate background but I'm going to say that probably per acre that our lakefront in Colchester here because look at that little piece that Jack's talking about even trying to sell it hasn't sold for the 400,000 it's the teeny little piece so it's just one of these underneath pieces and what we've seen is as it changed as the septic things changed and I remember that was back when I was on the board and the state was changing things we all knew that this is going to help some people and it's also going to mean from camps that are seasonal to year round and that happened and so therefore what happened with the sewer, with septic things actually changed the values of that land and now we've got year round and now we've got sort of some more issues and so the idea that what happens with septic doesn't change the value of the part in our state that probably has some of the most valuable and I just find hard to believe I guess that's what I would say Thank you It's Phyllis again, Brydon I just wanted to check because you had assured me that there's no more commercial going on Eastlake Surgery No commercial Eastlake Surgery You said there was no commercial It's LS1, LS2, the only thing is you did zone the hazelut property which had been zoned industrial since we had zoning and so that partially remains the back portion remains the zoned industrial But the community can change zoning I mean 30 years a community could come in and say we want hotels up and down Lake Shore Drive and if the community voted for it, if that's what they wanted they can have that Is that accurate? So If that's their vision, right I'm just saying it's not like set in stone Yeah I think you're always adapting But in the 18 years I've worked for the town of Colchester and when I started here there was a lot of vision work that already taken place in the 1990s I don't think that vision for Westlake Shore Drive has changed all that substantially in terms of concerns about preserving the character that people know and love I don't think it would change in Colchester but I'm just saying that zoning is not set in stone that the community is the one that determines to a certain extent the growth However That's exactly why we have LS1 and LS2 The community wanted that direction That's what we put out there That's a perfect example One more quick one on this one The new limiting zoning on LS2 is How many units per acre? I think it's four So say for instance I own 10 acres with a high water table and one house It's worth $200,000 Excuse me This property value will go up Correct? That's what we're thinking It's worth $200,000 Sewer comes through I have 10 acres I can have 40 units 40 duplexes That's 80 units If we really wanted to delve into this in greater detail we could have the Colchester Assessor come in but I will say that after years of working in the developer view process what we've been advised to tell people is that the act of subdividing a property does not necessarily increase the value It's when you actually go to develop it that increases the value because the cost of raw land there's a whole bunch there's a reason why I'm not an assessor and we can have him in to talk about the nuances on this but just because you subdivide something doesn't necessarily give something more value just because something has a different piece of infrastructure associated with it doesn't necessarily give it more value There are a lot of variables to it Sceptic capacity usually drives overall value I would say it almost always does Same with road frontage a new road goes in, your property is worth more you're saying it doesn't that it has to be developed I disagree on that Thank you Community Sceptic Just go through this very quickly as we're running really late for timetables tonight Thank you Amy for saying I just leaned over and said sorry I promised you a much earlier evening than this Thank you for sticking with us Absolutely So Community Sceptic Yes it does address the entire area Yes it would maintain and improve water quality Estimated construction costs were up to around 17.45 which was not including the 1.1 million for the cost of the property over $200,000 in annual operating costs and that was just looking at hiring the two operators it wasn't taking a look at the sludge removal or anything of that nature potential funding sources user fees, grants, loans local option tax funds may be the same that we're looking to with the sewer option Estimated timeline for implementation in three to five years we have done a lot less work on this solution I think Craig and Dale spoke to some of the caring that would need to be done some of the additional stays the geomorphological assessment for the bank Liability as with many plants we'd be owning and operating our own plant different than the sewer option which South Brillenton owns and operates and it's their liability so we'd be subject to maintenance and upgrade requirements we need to have at least two wastewater professionals on staff to hire trained and administer and conduct monitoring on an offsite so a lot of the things that we talked about with the septic tour in terms of what they do with the monitoring we'd now be responsible for that so it's reliable but there are areas where if we didn't do the monitoring correctly or there are definitely additional liabilities that are associated with this option neighborhood character could double the rate of growth same as the sewer option that would be comprehensive and addressed so in terms of neighborhood impact and effect on property values it's really the same in terms of your answers when you're looking to that yeah I was hoping this could be a viable option but combined with the presentations and the tour I mean the cost is like almost $4 million more than the sewer the odor the odor at Warren was very concerning to me because this is not an open field or a playing field this is right surrounded by people's homes and I think about their quality of life in terms of you know the prevailing winds of the lake and just having that odor I mean coming into their houses or their windows and not being able to enjoy their property and also what it might do to their property value the erosion issue for me being so close to the lake along East Shore Drive just adding to or accelerating that erosion I think that's going to have to be dealt with anywhere and the limited I'm concerned about I'm not clear about this the limited uses of the property in terms of structures buildings uses of recreation on their property with the subject I think that would that would not go along with the plan that we have now for the park those concerns I in the size of the property that would be required for that too right I think it's also worth mentioning how you got to considering one community septic site it's not that you that staff and you guys didn't turn over any and every rock looking at the possibilities for places to put a community leech field we thought we talked about maybe putting holes up in Goodsell Point in the common to see if there was any capacity there fortunately we were saved by the existence of previous permits that gave us the answer we needed in terms of the test pits that had been done there I kind of threw out June a little bit in July and even into August about what about this what about that and in terms of looking for a community soil based solution the Bayshore Bayside Hazelet property is really the only thing that might be big enough to and have suitable soils to serve all of the needs in one spot and the reason you got there is because most of the other rocks that we tried to turn over just had like snakes and horrible things underneath them well I think we also did a mailing to property owners particularly in the East Lakeshore Drive area the West Lakeshore Drive was in Annapai it's not being suitable for community septic East Lakeshore Drive was along the non-lake side and so we sent a mailing and you heard back from three nice folks that lived on the lakeside that were up for it and one person that was on the non-lake side that was up for it but had just built a pool and pool house over their only viable area that they could accommodate so given the lack of privately owned properties we looked at the Bayside Hazelet piece and I think what you heard from Craig Handell at the August 20th presentation was while there are other town-owned sites within the area such as the park and this had the best soils hands down of any so why would you basically waste your time looking at the school properties Bayside Park piece or things of that nature when the best soils were I think the further north and west you went and the further that you went as you said sort of down West Lakeshore Drive and further sort of south and east the poorer the soils were that you're dealing with I think there was some thought about could this be done in stages where you built several different like 30,000 gallon a day systems and then not have to do the tertiary treatment the state would look at that as being all one interrelated connected system serving the area and we require tertiary treatment on all those 30,000 gallon systems so there wasn't any real benefit to doing so and also I think what you saw on the tour which we talked about previously tonight not to be a dead horse because we're getting sort of late in the hour but without the tertiary treatment you go to a larger field area too so you take it more of that space for so you wouldn't accomplish anything by going down to smaller systems because you're actually going to end so again I think it goes to the feeling that we really try not to leave any sort of stone unturned on this so yeah at the public input meeting for the community septic I asked just that question are there any other sites you're saying every stone was unturned all properties were looked at and I was asked if Upper Bayside or Hazlet properties or the high school properties were looked at and I was told that you can't you had to find some place inside of this area and you couldn't look outside of it so even if there was a better site outside of the area like Upper Bayside you couldn't look at it you've already done all the studying you're doing Upper Bayside was in this study area and Hazlet property it's in the study area and that wasn't worthwhile looking at okay I was under the understanding that it wasn't studied so there's no good soils in that area it's not as good as Bayside Hazlet not as good but it's potentially so more consumptive of land for wastewater treatment which ultimately means less land is available for other uses or for keeping space green and undeveloped so why would you blow out two potential parks to have a community system where you only potentially have to interfere with one park for example if the property in the back of Hazlet was suitable then and again West Lakeshore Drive was identified in the integrated is not being suitable for community systems I thought it wasn't studied the upslope area of Hazlet I don't think that anyone has specifically dug holes there but if you look at it on the soil survey it's Hydro Soil Group D which is sort of failing from an on-site wastewater treatment perspective the Hydro Soil Group A is the best sandia soil in terms of on-site wastewater treatment it's actually silty clay to clay usually with seasonal high groundwater constraints within six inches of the soil surface thanks for the clarification at the last meeting I was told that it was more looking at even on a cursory basis of the soils maps that's why you got that answer because it had been looked at I thought I was told that it wouldn't be looked at but here it has been looked at great thanks I was just as Phyllis I was just wondering about the water flow if we do that property next to mine with the Bayside swimming area right next to it and the shallow water I don't know I just you know maybe the site on the other side of the road is the best place for it but to have all the water going underneath the road that's very narrow that's very fragile through all of East Lakeshore Drive and then to have the water come out on that area next to the bay where everybody is supposed to be enjoying the water in shallow water I don't know how much of a benefit that's going to be and what it's going to influx on on our dwellings next to next to the sites smells I don't mind the bike path I think that would be great it's not being used for anything if other people could use it that would be an ideal place for that and I'm just wondering about Coates Island because Mallets Bay is being all of Coates is being washed towards Mallets Bay where we are what's going on with the stuff coming from Coates Island nice movement I like well I don't know because when I'm out here I can see all of Coates Island Coates Island is a little unusual it is a high risk area but it's all owned by one property owner with lease slots and is perpetually seasonal by property owner decision and so you don't have any of the conversions out there I dare say that you could probably take a walk out there today and find that most people are gone for the year I think usually end of September they're starting to close down and what have you so it's still is one of a few bastions over truly summer seasonal community we haven't had the documented failures out there but it is a high risk area pumped area do they at the end of the season he pumps all the things or he just lets them see fall winter I mean I don't know how it works so because it's all one property it's a variety of systems some of them are shared or community systems some of them are singular it really is varied but there are a variety of systems out there but they're all summer seasonal any other questions on the community septic option alright do nothing we covered that earlier in the meeting so does it address the entire site area we get into a lot of nos here does it maintain or improve water quality potentially could cost more money for additional studies potential funding source for additional studies would be tax dollars estimated implementation timeline unknown reliability none it doesn't move the needle one way or another on water quality it does potentially have a negative impact as water quality continues to lead without solutions may decrease values for lakefront properties as well water quality degrades this could increase tax burden for non lakefront properties so I think just to summarize this table was meant to be the beginning of a talking point for the playing commission in terms of looking at your future October meetings as being more work sessions where you actually hammer out and write something so I think tonight you took a couple hours on just reviewing very limited information open for ideas in terms of drafting and looking to do this in a constructive fashion just want to add do nothing do we have that cost will increase I mean every year cost will increase the cost of the other solutions any eventual solution will continue to increase that's true so are we go ahead are we clear about are we giving these four options so writing up four options to the select board and they will make a decision after looking at our items or are we making recommendations I'm a little uncomfortable making recommendations I'm a little uncomfortable making recommendations just not being elected I think that was our task at the beginning of this whole thing when we were back in the first meeting the first question was will we be comfortable coming up with some type of recommendation after all this we have to come up with some type of recommendation that's what I just wanted to do and I personally want to see it done as soon as possible I'd like to have as many ideas we can get through Sarah the next meeting I mean you're not comfortable tonight's too late we've done a great job everybody's been very vocal which is great I think we've taken in all we need to take in I think we have a couple weeks to discuss with Sarah if necessary send her some ideas about the next meeting I think we should be having some more concrete I think you need a work session where you all can talk amongst yourselves and draft something I think citizen participation is a very valuable part of the process but at the end of the day the report needs to come from you all it will be reported out and there will be a public presentation of your findings but I think you really need to hone in on discussing amongst yourselves what your report is going to be and how you want it written and what points you wish to make so again I think you need to be a little more in rudely focused moving forward I don't know if people want to take different parts of this and volunteer now I'd rather have some commitments from people leaving this meeting rather than sitting and waiting for I'm drafting staff notes on Friday afternoon and all of a sudden I get a great 10 page that I'm looking to incorporate last minute just Murphy's Law I won't be at the next meeting so I just want you to know that but I can send you some ideas or my thoughts if you want Bob? I was looking at it and I'd be willing to take a look at the purchasing conserved properties and do some documentation and do a little research to kind of give us some honing in on costs, thoughts and things like that if you'd like thank you I'd help you out I'd love something we can talk I think this is going to be different steps I think we're aiming October 1st is coming up really quickly which is your next meeting we're two weeks away tonight I do my staff notes that Friday before I finalize them but I really start trying to drive together details that Wednesday before so that gives you about a week to get something sort of starting to be drafted it can be bullet points and then we can flush it out some more any other takers on the commission I'm going to be on vacation next week you have a wedding you get a free pass you have a dress maker the candlestick maker I don't know whether I can make the Tuesday meeting but I will try my best understood and you know the playing commissioners aren't making meetings you can definitely and still have like Serita wanted to submit some comments definitely up for that I'll try and see if I can pull some comments together I'll be busy but duly noted you both likely will not be at the first and you definitely will not be at the first any other takers Nick I have faith in you doing the purchasing conserved property if you want I'm serious I think you got a good background on that I can jump and take something else then so that we can get this kind of looked in kind of heading in the right direction I can look at the do nothing or I will take a look at the community septic either one if somebody else has some help thought process do that can be yours that that needs some time and effort and so then I'll do the community septic one anybody going to touch sewer sewer is an easy one feel free to jump in definitely you can't vote on things but you can definitely we've had our past student member did a whole lot of proof editing on the town plan hands down beautiful work so definitely we can send you part of the community in our board so did you want a particular subject area or okay or you can do both extra credit okay so you and Rich I have for sewer Bob I have a community septic mark and do nothing Syria and Becca will provide comments and Nick is working on the conserving properties anybody else want to on anything else can choose more than one sorry so we're going to be aiming for a week from now 24th to get some bullet points will flush this together I'm going to try and play gatekeeper on this and pull everything together into some sort of document and do editing so that hopefully we're not canceling each other out on different parts of it and pulling it together so I think October 1st you're going to see a really really rough draft you're definitely then depending on things you might want to add a meeting in between that and your second meeting in October if you are going to aim for getting your report out for that first meeting in November it's only going to be five pages but it's going to be a lot to get through and a group so is the issue of growth will that be on the sewer will you be discussing growth or the impact or lack of impact of growth okay because I think that was a real concern of the community I think in terms of worried about growth would explode so I think that would be helpful to have that as part of quickly Jack Skelly a couple questions for Amy if we put a community septic system on the 14 acres of Bayside Hazelnut could a system be constructed that would not emit any odors that would disturb the neighbors it would depend on the technology being used for treatment in particular and the level of control on the treatment plant and the charcoal filtering or whatever odor reducing filters could be used on that I would not I am a planner and a geologist and a soil scientist and have a lot of knowledge about onsite and soil based wastewater systems but I am not a professional engineer so I cannot guarantee you that no odors would ever be emitted from this system I would not to do sludge removal a few times a year and there will be odors associated with that would be any worse than them fertilizing the fields probably not and probably wouldn't I get it all the time I don't know that's there well I just have some comments on the do nothing option haven't asked for comments on it yet first of all in the first column under do nothing as I was saying before under the do nothing option we would obviously continue testing and that would be the benefit of that option so I think it should be renamed the more testing option rather than the do nothing option that would be more accurate and it will also change the next box where it says does it address the entire area if you do more testing that would be yes it does address the entire area of course the next column wouldn't change the cost while the next one potential funding I can't think of anything that would qualify more easier for grant funding than water quality testing of Lake Champlain and the local options tax is a potential for their other options so I would change that from tax dollars to at least add grant funding and local options tax and under estimated timeline implementation I would change unknown to spring of 2020 thank you Brian before you sit down do you have ideas about the grant programs that could be used to fund water quality monitoring Lake Champlain Basin program is there a particular grant vehicle there for water quality testing I'm not aware of one from the Basin program it's not my field of expertise Sarah Brian Osborne not from the Basin program there are some La Rosa grants that would be for volunteer lead water quality testing that pays for the test but it doesn't pay for the samplers and it doesn't provide access to sites for testing so I have a lot of appreciation for your desire to have better data as a scientist but that data in and of itself is not going to solve the problem nobody will outline it better and it will help us so Amy there aren't any grants that would be we still are probably looking at tax dollars with any grants you usually need to have leverage well we're not talking about millions we're talking about thousands or even if it is significantly more than that it would be a tiny bit of the local options tax even if we can't get grants and I guess that's a task for staff here to go to Montpelier and work on see if we can get more state money and that's going to be a longer implementation timeline than two years then that's an unknown implementation timeline well thanks thanks for letting me know that there's no state dollars available for water quality monitoring that's too bad thanks thank you appreciate it thank you minutes I was in here so I can't approve it's a long minutes Mark are you here? can you make a motion to open? second second that was just a major one do you have any questions so who made a motion? hang on for one second Mark made a motion Mark made a motion second okay okay the day can hi hi I just needed some lines did we vote? yes everybody said hi but you what do you have to say? yep anybody have any questions on the packet information? future agendas next meeting the first we'll get everything to serve we need I make a motion to adjourn second all in favor bye