 Welcome everyone. So great that you're all here. It's the full moon and this south wind is blown like crazy. So it feels auspicious. So thank you for coming. Thank you for coming. It is so good to see many of you interested in the conservation and remediation of the Pine Street Barge Canal. So, you know, I am Ruby Perry, and I in the course of this evening will be offering a glimpse of our vision for this 26 acres of wetlands in the heart of Burlington south end. I want before I do that, let me introduce Aaron Lipman. There he is. Hello, Aaron. He is going to be our technology person. He's already managing things very well. He's a very early Barge Canal supporter. And Andy Simon. Hello. As a master assimilator of pieces and parts, he'll be giving us a history of the Barge Canal that is informed by many, many hours of perusing the vast trove of information ranging from EPA documents to city maps to committee reports and you would not believe what else. And before we do that, let's introduce Jess Rubin. Where are you, Jess? Can you say hello? Jess. Good evening. Hi Jess. Part scientist, part alchemist, she's a strong leader in the field of radical mycology. She's at home in the world of Michael Riesel Fungi, mesocosms and coppacings. We're talking about the rich and complex work of remediation and rematriation of the Barge Canal, remediation, I said that right, and of the Barge Canal. Each of us, our plan is that we'll talk for six or seven minutes. And after each of our presentations, there'll be time for very specific clarifying questions. We'll be able to unmute Erin will manage that any of the larger more general or complex questions we're going to leave for after that it's more of a discussion after all of the information is out. We'll use chat as much as possible. We'll type your questions in any time, and we will. We'll try to get to them when we get to the end of the presentation just will facilitate a discussion but mostly we'll try to do it on chat there's enough of us that I think that'll be the easiest thing. So, we're really glad you're here. We really need you. So let's get started. Yes. So we acknowledge that we are on the unseated territory of the abonankey people and this site is actually on the Cisco territory of the abonankey people, acknowledging that we're on unseated territory is really not enough. It's really providing a lens that's guiding how we're approaching this and informs us to take responsibility for the atrocities that have occurred on this land from attempted genocide, land displacement, and eugenics. So, living amidst the settler colonial culture. We are keenly aware that, you know, a good way to approach this was to write chief Menard which we did. We're still waiting to hear back from him and connecting with as many abonankey, as we can because their ancestors lived in this location and seasonal hunting fishing and and as we attempt to preserve it, clean it up and turn it into an educational park, we feel it behooves us to also allow, invite, ask guidance from the abonankey ancestral birthright of this land to guide us in what they see as the best vision and also in ways to empower them towards rematuration. We're still trying to understand what rematuration means, and we're learning a little through each conversation we have. And so that will be a continuing thread through this project. We are going to mitigate the pollution. We're not obviously going to have abonankey people have to mitigate pollution from colonialism, but the clean parts, the educational parts, the parts for ceremony and culture and connecting and community and healing. We're grateful to collaborate. Thank you. So now we are going to hear from Andy about some of the history. Hi, hi. I'm keenly aware that some people here tonight, maybe even many people already know the story of the barge canal and maybe better than I do. But some people don't know anything so I'm going to do a quick overview just to get us all on the same page. Can you go to that first slide Aaron. First, there was a wetland over many centuries as the salty Champlain sea evolved into fresh water. Lake Champlain and indigenous people inhabited the land. We call Vermont the area around what is now the barge canal became a large abundant wetlands along the lake a transition zone between water and land. This what you see before you is the approximate extent in the early 19th century of the wetland area with the barge canal the current barge canal right in the middle of it. Next slide please. In 1849 a big change occurred. Burlington and Rutland railway line was completed, largely cutting off the wetland from the lake. The lumber industry in Burlington was expanding rapidly and much of the remaining wetland was gradually filled in with sawdust and wood chips and even other things, creating space for storing lumber. Later as more and more of the unfinished lumber was coming by sailing barges down the lake from Quebec, a canal was excavated into the wetland with a drawbridge to allow the barges to unload their cargos and turn around. This is an excerpt of a bird's eye view map from 1887 and you can see Howard Street in the middle of it. That big factory there is the Hickok lumber mill. Next slide please. Lumber lumber production peaked in the 1870s, then it fell off sharply in the 1890s. In the beginning of the 20th century, a new use for part of the field wetland was found, a manufactured gas plant, turning coal into gas for heating cooking and light. These plants sprang up all around the northeast, fueled by coal from Pennsylvania. This is an image of a plant in Pawtuxet, Rhode Island, probably similar to the plant that was in Burlington. Next slide please. Here's an aerial photo of part of the barge canal site looking north in Burlington in the 1950s. That big drum-like building is for gas storage. The coal gasification plant operated until 1966, so about 60 years. Next. As you can imagine, this was a dirty process, creating lots of waste soaked with coal tar and other pollutants. It was all or mostly dumped out back in the wetlands and filled areas. Next. The coal tar waste soaked into the fill and peat soil over decades. With the rising environmental awareness of the 1970s and shocking stories of places like Love Canal and Upstate New York, the US Congress created the Superfund legislation to give a newly created EPA supervision of industrial site cleanup. The barge canal was added to the Superfund National Priorities List in 1983. The EPA identified at the time, 56 contaminants of concern at the site, some of which hydrocarbons and heavy metals are known carcinogens. Next. Here's a recent aerial view of the barge canal. In this view, Pine Street is running laterally near the bottom of the map. The railroad is at the top. You can see the site of the gas plant near the small red square on the lower left. The Superfund boundary is the blue line. After summer mediation work in the mid 80s, the EPA in 1992 proposed a remedy for the site. It involves scooping up all the contaminated soil and storing it in a giant containment vessel. The idea of a 25 foot high 13 acre toxic waste dump on the shore of Lake Champlain, the residents of Burlington ultimately backed by their elected officials rejected the EPA proposal. In 1993, for the first time ever, EPA withdrew their remedy and also for the first time created a local coordinating council to decide on a better plan. The council did extensive studies for almost five years and using consensus decision making proposed a new much scaled down plan. It focused on capping the coal tar on the bottom of the canal itself and essentially leaving the land part of the site, completely alone with regular monitoring of toxin levels in the soil and groundwater. It was accepted by all parties and enshrined in the EPA is 1998 record of decision. Next. This is an image from 2002 of the initial work done on the sand cap on the bottom of the canal. The coal tar seepage was discovered. This cap was redone in 2004 and again in 2009. Now it's hoped that the current cap will last for 25 years before it has to be replaced again. Next. Here's another map oriented north south this time that gives an idea of who owns what part of the barge canal land. The two parcels that you see are considered vacant land. The 11 acre parcel in the middle identified as zero pine street. You see that. Right here. Zero pine street is owned by the city of Burlington acquired when the plan was to run the southern connector highway straight through the barge canal. The east of that along pine street 453 and 501 are privately owned and are currently for sale. The asking price is two and a half million dollars. There have been several redevelopment proposals for the private land over the last 25 years and I know some of you remember them all. The most recent was a proposed office building and parking lot in 2015. The applications cost and potential liability of Brownfield redevelopment. They've all been shelved. Next please. My last map shows the current zoning of the barge canal site. You see the green boundary around the city land and the three small parcels along the railroad track that indicates conservation zoning. The private parcels along pine street are in the enterprise light manufacturing zone. With the urgent housing need in Burlington there's been talk of rezoning these parcels for residential use. The problem is that the EPA and Vermont Department of Environmental Conservation have had restrictions on this land for almost 25 years because of real real safety concerns very, very real safety concerns prohibiting residential development and childcare centers. So, we're going to take some questions. If you have questions about this section in particular, there'll be time for more general questions later on. So Andy I see a question. When you were showing the map if you could go back to the maps with the different borders. Larry, Larry Kupferman, go back previous map. One more. Yes. What is the pink dotted line pink dotted line is what's known as class four groundwater that highly polluted groundwater in that zone in particular. There's a there's a classification right class for groundwater. Another question from tree spalding is I thought because this is brownfield developments that brownfields development is not allowed. So how can they build on it. Isn't that why they didn't put the southern connector through there. And if they use the excuse that we need to build housing, you know it won't be affordable housing on the lake. And then the statement says some people want to make a lot of money. Well this this is a couple of great questions tree and the in fact it is. There are pretty severe restrictions on what you have to do to put a building on on this site. They include drilling down into putting pilings down the bedrock which can be 100 feet down. There are a lot of engineering challenges, but they it is possible under current rules to, if you follow the guidelines to put a building on this. They have talked about housing recently but since 25 for 25 years there's been a restriction on this land, prohibiting housing and childcare centers. And in fact, I think the chances are good that they would put affordable housing here and and we know there's a long history of putting low income housing on questionable or toxic dumps all over this country so that raises some big equity questions. There are other questions about this. I just want to add another answer to that which is in some of the documents. When you're reading through the development plans there are certain areas that say more research is needed in these particular areas before development can come. So there are several research gaps that those whoever would be developers would need to fill before that can happen as well. In fact, in fact for each development that's proposed there has to go through what they call a phase one and phase two analysis they have to hire people to do these specific, specific studies but, and they would have to address those data gaps that just mentioned. Anything else. Larry Kupferman wants to know what is the nature of the maltex pond. The maltex pond with a particularly polluted area that in 1985 they, the EPA decided before they propose a remedy for the whole site to scoop out. I think it was something like 85 tons of material out of there and send it off somewhere else and refill it with what they consider to be clean soil. It was an area where there was a lot of waste dumped and EPA in an initial attempt to remediate the site scooped out a whole bunch of toxic waste there. Okay, so I see two more questions I'm going to ask these and I think we will pause on questions so that Ruby can share her piece and then if there's more questions at the end. So one question from Annie has Lee is with the EPA organizations in charge change the guidelines if someone wanted to build on it. How do we prevent housing here. I have talked to the people at the EPA in Boston and the DC and there seems to be an indication that they might consider changing those restrictions for specific sites like 453 or 501. I think that 453 which is the one closest to the maltex building is not within the superfund site boundary. So it would have to be Vermont DC that changed the guidelines on that. But there are there is some indication that they might modify the guidelines under certain circumstances. One more question. There is one more but there was a two that was a two part question and the second part of that question was how do we prevent housing here. I think that that will answer that question later on when we talk about organizing. Okay, so Jean Bergman wants to know when. Well, let us know that when BCA took the old Pepsi building they had to deal with the EPA covenant. Do you have the details of what they did. Well Sanders did the legal work. Hmm, that's a really good question Jean and I don't know the details of that. I know that a lot of the area around the barge canal, like Jackson terrace, like dealer dot com had, you know, industrial ways because this was a big industrial area, some of the ways from the front in the barge canal is actually from the general dynamics GE complex Bell aircraft over on where the innovation center is now but I don't know specifically about BCA but I would love to look into that and maybe you could help me. All right then. So, Aaron if we can go to that beautiful slide number 12 of the okay. So I'm going to run through a few slides that highlight the benefits that we residents of Burlington are already getting from the barge canal land. This is falls into the heading of natural infrastructure. And it already exists and persists despite the heavy impact that human industry has had on it in the last 200 years. So here is where we started our campaign on a cold and wet day in mid November we gathered with about 15 other folks to consider how much the barge canal land was doing to heal itself and protect the lake with debris from the land late flowers and herbs from our gardens and paintings of mushrooms and birds. We created this altar as our collective offering of our gratitude to the land. In a very real way we committed ourselves on that day to caring for this land and in doing so began a campaign that continues with this zoom rally and you will talk more about that later too. So next slide. I'm going to talk about the benefits the infrastructure, starting with the garb barge canal provides invaluable have habitat to numerous species of mammals birds insects plants and other life. Here you can see an active beaver lodge in the foreground. While you can skate on the rest of the canal the beavers keep the water open around their home except for now, I think it's been cold enough, it is frozen. Every day, especially now in the snow you can see birds and dozens of animal tracks. The landscape is alive and getting more complex as it diversifies. There was a recent article about a new species of springtail what we call snowflakes that was identified for the first time at the barge canal. With our help, the land will regenerate itself and maximize its diversity. Next one. The wetlands of the barge canal provide a buffer for the city from 100 year floods that we know will be occurring more frequently with our disrupted climate. These soft buffer zones epitomize the nature based solutions to climate change that the city is promoting in its recent draft amendment to the open state space protection plan that hasn't yet been published approved the plan has but not the draft amendment. Next one. This is a map showing part of the south end stormwater sewer system. It shows the most active combined sewer overflow in Burlington is at the barge canal. These CSOs and the retention pond located behind the public works building are integral to the city's water system, particularly during major rain events. This is also more frequent now. Now I know it's too small for you to see, but if you look all along kind street there are dots and there are also little X's each of those is a place where when the pipes overflow that's where they come up. I'm going to use this to illustrate how much the city's water system relies on the barge canal's capacity to absorb overflows. The city should be protecting this land as if its life depended on it. Next one. This is the weir that the EPA installed under the old drawbridge, I think some of you will have seen that from the bike path. It's an example of an EPA remedy. To keep the coal tower from the barge canal from leaking into the lake wetlands absorb pollutants from roads and lawns and surface runoff that would normally flow directly into Lake Champlain. The barge canal wetland also keeps post industrial contaminants that are in the soil from polluting polluting the lake, the trees and shrubs growing here, even those considered invasive, stabilize the soil and prevent erosion. To help nature can do even more. Finally, and perhaps one of the most important benefits is that the barge canal reminds us of our history and our heritage, the early history of the land's original inhabitants, the natural history that abounds here, and the industrial history that continues into the present. Next one. Why conserve the barge canal. Those certainly incomplete you can see from this list that there are many reasons as trees, plants, fungi and microbes thrive at the barge canal. They have managed to contain and even transform the toxins leftover from industry, working with the land we can learn more about those processes. Much more research needs to be done in this area to document the work that the land has done over the decades by itself when we've left it alone. So, next slide. So let's go back for a minute and we're going to work a little bit of imaginative magic. And look at this map that Andy showed earlier. This time imagine the city's little rectangular parcel there as the center of the conserve barge canal, including the water. The parts across the canal are the three parcels that will likely be donated to the city. Together they are outlined in green. These are already concerned lamp conserved land, no development. Now in your imagination, and I bet if somebody had the technology we could have done this but we don't drag that green line to the right, crossing over the parcels that are marked 453 and 501, all the way out to pine to see in your imagination that the green line encompasses those two private parcels that are for sale. In your imagination now do you get a sense of the entire 28 acres, including the canal itself, all within that green line. Voila barge canal land conserved. All you have to do is acquire those two 40 parcels along pine street between the maltex building in Burlington Electric. And that would span from pine street back to the railroad, and get them into conservation. We'll talk about that more soon. Next slide. Humans form a partnership with the hard working land that has already begun by letting trees grow on this land instead of buildings parking lot or toxic waste dumps. We've allowed the plants to do the work of carbon sequestration. Think of it by not redeveloping the brownfield site. We've created climate resilience and allowed biodiversity to flourish here. We've also created a formal partnership with the land and conserving the wetland as a whole. We can enhance the work already going on brownfields to greenfields. In our vision, we work together to regenerate the land, cleaning it up, planning native carrying for it. We see for we see a laboratory for cold climate remediation, and Jess will tell us much more about that shortly. We see talking about citizen science projects to see what is growing a plant and animal inventory. We see students training to be scientists and developing methods of repairing the damage we humans leave behind. We see a classroom where students learn about biodiversity or beavers or simply learn how to listen. We see an interpretive boardwalk that demonstrates the natural, indigenous and industrial history of the land. We recognize, as Jess said in our land acknowledgement at the start that this is stolen land. In our vision, indigenous stewardship is at the heart of our commitment to this work. We are learning with Abnaki elders to understand how we move towards true rematriation of the land. But turning it over to Jess who will speak more about this aspect of the work and some of the science projects that are either already started, and some that we are planning for the spring, and that will be under her guidance. I'm going to read some questions Ruby that people have asked. So the first question is, Susan asks how climate change will affect flooding. Well, we can assume that a couple of things this is the lowest as, as one of the about Abnaki elders pointed out to me when we walked when she said was instructing me on how to read the land. That's the lowest portion before the lake, which means it's the first shelf which means as the lake rises that area will also flood it's in that's what it was meant to do. But also, as we've already seen storms, bringing more rain, bringing more storm water, this bringing more overflows of the city's piping system. That's definitely going to be a price of climate change. It will overload the systems. So the next question is what from Jean Bergman, what does the city. Assess those parcels at. Actually, I don't know Andy, do you know that. I just typed the, the two things from the Burlington government, Burlington city database into the chat. And in fact, the, the assessment are incredibly low as that's a very pertinent question. The total value for 501 Pine Street assessed value is $22,200. And they have assessed value for 453 Pine Street is not that much more than that. So, in fact, you know, asking two and a half million dollars for this land is, is considering how low the assessment is on the land currently is pretty outrageous but more to be more to be said about that and Larry's question about real estate appraisal. I don't think that they've been appraised. And I think that that's just aspirational price that that Rick Davis is asking for that. And as far as I know, maybe they were praised when, when redstone in 2015 was thinking of doing it but I don't, I don't know about that. But, but in fact, there's not a current appraisal of those parcels. And I don't think that the sales the current sales price has anything to do with the, the appraised value. And what would you say Andy to Jean Bergman statement that the city's open space fund is a source of money to use as part of an eminent domain campaign to buy those parcels. And I think that that's that's to be discussed. I mean, the problem, Jean is that, and, and I'm looking forward to you being on city council after March 1 is that so far the city government has not expressed much interest in doing that and the. The gatekeepers of those funds have not been enthusiastic about using them for such an acquisition. So we, we definitely should talk about that more. And Carol and Bates has something said here but I'm not quite sure she's remarking to that someone is selling land and we should be asking them but I'm not quite sure what what what she's saying there. We should talk about this pretty soon as a, as a whole so let's let's hold the whole selling the land and what the next steps are, because we still want to talk about a little bit about what's happening on the, on the land and also all of the people that we have talked to so far, because it's pertinent to all of these questions. So let's go ahead. Jess is with with your part. Okay, so in talking about remediation to clean up pollution. I actually want to invite us to step out of the paradigm that we're currently living in mainstream, you know, could call it America Turtle Island. This is in 1922, where the mainstream form of remediation is scoop and move and dump, and then build, and it's based on a timeline and a budget. And this is really what's practiced and it has been practiced in this town was just listening to a webinar today about that happening in another spot in town and a new friend, Scott Kellogg whose colleagues with Andy and Ruby who did a lot of work in Austin, Texas, was was was reminding me that as we approach this work, we really need to look at the long view. And this, if you think about the history that Andy and Ruby went through today, it's, it's two and a quarter centuries at least of pollution. It's not something that's going to get cleaned up in a day or a year. So, first changing that view and knowing that it's going to take a long time if we're actually partnering with the microbes of fungi and insects that are already doing a lot of remediation. And, as Andy mentioned, there's 56 contaminants that's a pretty complicated cocktail. And there's no one species that's going to be able to remediate all of those but there are many people out there that can remediate those toxins individually. So it's going to take a lot of research. And I also want to note that there's 46 brownfield sites in Burlington area. And so this is a wonderful opportunity for us to start the process of changing that mainstream remediation mode and demonstrating that we can learn and invite other people. And so the field that this is within is ecological restoration. And some people call it ecological reconciliation because we can't really restore the ecosystem to what it was, but we can reconcile the damage and two sub fields of this field are micro remediation working with fungi and fighter remediation working with plants to remediate these toxins. You are likely familiar with bioremediation that's what's working at the wastewater treatment plant. And there's certainly those microbes are certainly involved in micro remediation and fighter remediation. And there's also micro fighter remediation using fungi and plants. So I just want to highlight a couple of techniques that colleagues and I and others have used and to give us some view and understanding that this is very possible. This is a spawn that some of us grew through gathering wild spore from a local saprophytic fungi that eats dead wood. Now, some of the saprophytic fungi eating cellulose or lignin and trees recognize hydrocarbon bonds, and they can break down some of the toxins that are in this list are all different forms. And so one of the ways that this work can be done is by growing some of the fungi that we know can break down some of the toxins on the list. And I recommend doing it in a bench lab like a laboratory and this is some that we this is what it looks like this was tramedy's verse of color you may know as turkey tail that we had grown from that spawn. Imagine that you find the toxins that are in the soil, and then you do several different concentrations and you can train fungi, you can train strains so that over time they can deal with higher concentration levels and you do that in a lab where the conditions are controlled. So you can really understand the dynamics and everything that's involved. And this is a wonderful opportunity for students I do want to note that currently at UVM's plant soil science department, PSS 269 soil water pollution class which I took a few years ago. Students in that class now are doing research at the site, and looking at some of the many research gaps that are in some of those documents we referenced earlier. So we're going to look at what species, which toxin and it will take years to get through the list of 56 and imagine doing these bench trials but then you can bring it to the field once you have some species and you know they can work on the concentration we can have these field trials, and we could have educational science, we could have middle and high school students students learning. And meanwhile the rest of the area can be a park. It's also a wonderful opportunity for all sorts of people in society to get involved. It doesn't need to be all scientists you can have a few scientists involved, and then parents and students, neighbors, elders. And this is a filtration sock when we were remediating a river and Colchester trying to learn how to. You know, lots of people came out and learned, and there's our skills that are essential for this time that we're living in. Technically, these are skills that you would think we would have had already. And it's kind of odd we're learning them reactively rather than proactively but going forward, this is the work of our generation. And this is an example, because we had noted at the site there are a lot of non native species. And of course they play a role. But this is an example of an area overgrown by buckthorn that you would think wow that's daunting. How are we ever going to recover that with no chemicals. And there are some brilliant people in our community including someone you may know named Mike ball of got weeds, who had taught us to cut the stomps at belt height, the ones not near waterways you can pull out through muscle and community power ones near the waterway, you leave intact, and you may need to cut regrowth two or three times in one season. But then you can plant native species in this case because it's a repairing eco tone, you know we would plant polyculture is based on what would naturally grow there. And this is an area. And this is an example of how again many people can be involved. Everyone can have different roles a few people can guide. And then this is what that area looked like the summer after, and you can see the stumps right here. So it's very possible. This is within our reach. We can work as a community there are so many experts there's so many people that are just willing and ready to help and all hands on deck. I just want to kind of encourage us to think positively and trust that you know this land can be recovered and it can also be an example of all the other places and a model. And to just note that we are starting a citizen science group this spring. So everyone's welcome to join we're going to start inventorying the already quite diverse community natural community that's there. There will be a lot of opportunities at least on the 11 acre piece for now. And there are a couple other universities and homeschool groups that are interested in starting many research projects, and a bond to keep people have spoken to us about different ideas they have of ways they can do ceremony here and ways that they're rich history they're rich memories of the place can be brought to the center, and we can all take care of this critical eco tone together. So we're just going to now read a few questions that came in. Oh no actually those aren't questions those are comments. So if anyone has questions feel free to put them in the chat. So Meg Pon hat says, did you see that when we know that Lake Champlain has become increasingly sick with excess phosphorus and other just destabilizing elements. The pine street barge canal area of life and vitality is precious to the long term help of all of this area so did you want to comment on that. Meg Pon that's spot on. I mean, this spot is a critical eco tone, and also in terms of stormwater as Andy and Ruby mentioned it funnels like through this site, and that buffer is is critical and needed. And there's a lot of remediation that can be done now tree wants to know if there's a chance you've been would buy this as a research site. I have no idea. That's a really interesting idea. That's out of my wheelhouse so I'm going to hand that over to Andy or Ruby. I haven't actually approached anybody at UVM about that but since as Jess said we we do have UVM students in plant and soil sciences down there now. We're taking a slightly from the bottom approach to to that kind of idea. Sylvia asked, Have we been in touch with Lake Champlain land trust actually indirectly there is somebody on this call who's on the board of Lake Champlain land trust and we did discuss it indirectly when we were talking about this the question of the barge canal so we will certainly follow up more with Lake Champlain land trust. We've been making great suggestions actually. Carolyn suggested talking to the real estate agent at needy and and that was one of the first calls that I, that I made, but I am going to talk about some of the things that we've done just to give you sort of a picture of where we've what we've been doing since November. Do you have any more to add Jess or Ruby. I had time wise. Okay. So, since our rain so ritual in November you saw the altar we've been pretty busy. We started early talking to Abnaki elders and leaders just to kind of get our grounding on our role as non indigenous settlers on this land. And we've been having those discussions sort of continually as we go. We launched an online petition that no doubt all of you have signed I hope all of you have signed if not we'll put it in the chat. Today there are 563 signers, and most of them are from Burlington. We presented this petition back when it was I think 250 signers and asked for time on the agenda of the Burlington Conservation Board the Parks and Rec Commission the planning Commission, we also brought it to the city council only parks put us on their agenda, and responded with a polite comment that they had no current plans to work on conserving any barge canal and we presented the petition to the city council as I said and had further discussions with counselors Max Tracy and Jack Hansen. We had an extensive conversation with Samantha done who's assistant director at CEDA we've made contacts with the Boston office of the EPA at numerous exchanges with the barge canal project managers name is Graham Bradley at Vermont DC. We have had discussions with Vermont land trust the river Vermont river conservancy indirectly through the river conservancy with the nature conservancy. And as I said we did I did have a peripheral contact with the Lake Champlain land trust. We made a call with Rick Davis is the owner of the private land at the barge canal, who has no objections at all to it being conserved as long as he can get the money that he's asking out of it. We made a contact with John Collo who works with Russ Scully, who owns a small parcel of the wetland area that he bought when he bought the blodget plant, and it appears likely that he's willing to donate that parcel. We talked to South end business leaders like Steve Conan, we talked to the Lake Champlain committee. We've talked to UVM students we talked to UVM professors and St. Michael's St. Michael's professor. I think we can say that we are pretty directly engaged with most of the parties that were always open to suggestions. So far we have not received any significant support from from city officials. I think that we are waiting to get I think most of them are waiting to get a signal from from the mayor or from higher up in the city administration so that discussion is is continuing. Now, we need your help. Where are we with the conservation of the barge canal. The, the administration's attitude so far is, we don't have the money, we need housing, we need to expand the tax base all of these discussions it's private land that boils down to we don't have the power. Through our work together in the coming weeks and months through organizing and speaking out we need to get them the power to conserve all of the land between them all text building and BED from pine street to the railroad line to mobilize the resources we need to turn these brown fields into green fields. Ruby, you're going to take it from there. I will and briefly because I think there are more questions but we decided we would tell you the questions that are outstanding for us. We have some and we don't have answers to them in the absence of support from the city. How do we proceed. The potential inherent liability risks associated with this property, even if left undeveloped the PA when we asked them that question will only consider specific proposals to answer to, you know, to respond to that question. What is a fair price for the land. What entity might hold this land and the vision. In the absence of a land trust how might we begin fundraising for an appraisal and ultimately for acquiring the land. We're committed to working on this, but are there enough others who feel that same commitment. Another chance to speak out will be the city's promised public input sessions was a south end rezoning after the male mayor published his MOU he said they would start in January, we haven't heard anything yet. People need to go to those meetings and speak about the importance of conserving the large canal the residents of Burlington have stopped ill concede plans for this land in the past remember 1993 the story of, of stopping the EPA's proposed mountain. But we need your energy, we're ready to expand our small impromptu committee into something more tangible, something creative and quick thinking an entity to act together to develop strategies and spread the work around. So let us know as we talk, we finished talking tonight you will put our emails in the chat you can call you can respond in any way, but we need your help. How else can we power this up. So let's open it up. And just I'll let you field questions and mostly put them in the chat I think we can start with Isaacs. Yeah, so Isaac wants to know what Vermont land trusts are interested in this land and saying that they signed on to the innovation district. Okay, well, I'm all you. I can, I can answer that question. Well I can try to answer that question I have talked twice to Nick Richardson who's the CEO of Vermont land trust and he did sign the the memorandum of understanding on south end rezoning as a stakeholder in that net MOU, which is one of the reasons why we're connecting right away. I'm still not sure exactly why Vermont land trust is part of that group, but they have been after initial enthusiasm from Vermont land trust they've been a little backed off of their sort of eagerness to get involved so I think again they're waiting for a signal from the city tell you the truth I think that's happening right along. So there's a few. So one point from Larry. Cooper Cooper, Kuffman is Kupferman, excuse me, is saying the scientific approach is wonderful and is mentioning the importance of environmental liability. And that's one site parcels and that is like really important points so when we were guiding the students at UVM because we created like a project, you know for them ish we gave them many options but sharing all of the data gaps. We laid out like safety guidelines and so yeah there's some very basic safety guidelines. Depending on how sampling goes and you know obviously the more you sample the more you have to go more strict with those so yeah that's a really important point and we're tracking it but we're also aware that that might be why a lot of organizations are not wanting to touch this because that's a liability issue. But we feel we can be navigated responsibly. So the answer to the question from tree about recording this it is being recorded, and it will be available on channel 17 CCTV, as soon as they post it they, they agreed to actually solicited a recording of it and we'll give it to them. And then people can see it on their, on their website. Sylvia asked a question that I just wanted I answered in the chat but I want to answer verbally to is it only Burlington residents that can sign the petition or do we prefer that. And my answer is no I think everyone is welcome. We've, I mentioned the fact that the majority of people are Burlington residents, but only because I think that decision makers in the city are swayed by, you know, having many Burlington residents and not just. You know, not so much people from Shelburne Charlotte and like Berkeley California when my brother sign. But the, I think it's great to have everybody sign this petition I don't think it needs to be people from this is this is a, you know, an earth question. It's not just a Burlington question. I just want to know, can we start on the land of pine zero in testing and replanting Carolyn Bates wants to know that. Well I think that's a question for for for you I mean we're planning on the students will be doing research this fall. I mean this right now this this semester and in the spring will start doing the land the assessment of what's there the inventory, whether they're planning I think planting I think they'll need to be a plan for that you know I think it would only be on the public plan the 11 acres as you say. We're not there we're not there planning that yet. We're going to do an inventory first and gather a team for that, and then also figure out who we need to speak to about that plan. And it would be great to obviously have all citizens have input for that. If this discussion will be public. If is it we should have asked if anybody in who's asking questions and who's been identified in this discussion would prefer that they not be on a recording or on Channel 17 when it's being broadcast. On TV necessarily but on their website. So, yes, the answer is, when this recording is public it will be available to anybody. So, if, if that's a problem for anyone. We should drop you out of it right now. I don't know how to do that, but and probably 10 minutes ago. And if anybody doesn't want to go to Channel 17 they will send me a copy of the zoom recording. So you can just send me an email and I'll send it to you send you the link. I think it probably takes 24 hours or something. And Carolyn was just asking to know letting being let know when and where the inventory. So the way that you'll hear about that is the information emails that Andy and Ruby have been sending out. If you're on that email list, you will find out about that it's likely going to be in April, early April. And one of the things I think would be helpful is, is if we had a good website up and running but of course we don't have that and we don't have anybody who stepped forward to say I'll do that for you. Actually, we do have a friend who said she would set it up. But that's takes time and she needs help so this is why we're also reaching out. There was a request about how to find the URL and zoom recording. So is that something that you all will email out to everybody. Yeah, well, yes, I guess I'll email it out. I think I can email it out to everybody who's in who registered. So I can do that. Yeah. I'm going to ask by gene if there's other documents prepared by you besides the slides and petition. And I would say that there is a very robust folder that we put together, and we created some projects for research there. And that's currently just accessible currently to like students doing research there. But I'm sure that some point when we figure out our website, and all that we can find a way that a lot of those documents are available because they're, they have a lot of really interesting historical facts and important pieces that hopefully we can work with. I'd say that I'd say that, you know, one of the one of the issues that's hampered this campaign somewhat is the small number of people who've been involved in it, mostly Ruby me and Jess, and we need more people we need more energy so anybody that wants to step into the center of this in any in any way that you feel is appropriate, you should contact here's the SOS Burlington at gmail.com is our email that you can get us at that it would be great to hear from you and you know we can talk further about ideas and ways you can help. We will be having we will be doing presentations at the the NPA meetings in March. Excuse me. We've made a request for all the NPAs in the city. The neighborhood planning assemblies to present. And you know the the different meetings that are going to come up for south end zoning that the city is going to run are going to be it's going to be very important that people show up to those and ask questions and speak out for the barge canal really. The, the dates of those have not been announced, but there is an intimation that those are going to start at the end of this month and go through March. So, please, we'll, we'll definitely send out alert, but please be alert to front porch forum and other venues for the city to announce when those zoning meetings are and, and please come down, we need lots of people power to make something change here because otherwise they're going to do things in the same old they're used to doing the same old developments and the same old desecration of the land. And speaking of that, Aaron, will you put up that last slide that has writing on it it's a question that you all didn't ask yet that I want to. I want to put out what what is very likely to happen we've already heard it from CEDO and the mayor already intimated is. It's classic Mayor Weinberger process is why not just compromise build on the front border that borders Pine Street and conserve the back so the 11 acres is already conserved and he's already said he imagines a legacy park. So, we just put together. I'm just going to read it because I think you all need to hear this, because these are the question, this is the main question that they're going to ask. It's a rare opportunity to protect a mini quarter corridor for birds mammals reptiles amphibians insects that enjoy the rich zones of this eco tone and live in different proximities to that waterway. Leaving this untouched allows space and time for us to create more comprehensive remediation studies and pilot research projects so that the cocktail of toxins can be remediated from all of the soil and water. The top of polluted line only having part of it to clean up just leaves that for the next generation to deal with because over time these pollutants will volatize plume and leak into the surrounding ecosystem. It is in the perfect conditions now to be protected remediated and conserved is it will never be like this if they start paving it over or even worse digging it up and hauling it away. Located at the intersection of significant stormwater coming from the city and adding more impermeable surfaces will only exacerbate runoff and contaminant loads entering the lake. It gets at the heart of rematriation to not build when we always build. So Gordon in in the chat suggested having a campaign strategy meeting. And I think that that is something that we'll propose and people who want to participate in planning campaign strategy can show up. That that's one of the next steps it's got to be one of the next steps. Thank you for that suggestion. Emily is proposing a listserv. So we can have private exchanges as we plan I think that's a good idea. I don't know how to do that if people to know whether people want to be on it or not. As it is we're sending out enough that enough people send me that daily. Would you please take me off this list so you can write the SOS address and say you want to be on a listserv and we will put together a listserv where we can have strategic discussions and updates and everything else and call calls to action. And you got and I think you posted that SOS. Andy right. Yeah, I'll do it again. So we've passed the 830 mark we can officially say we are done. I think it's been absolutely incredible to have all these listening years. And I really, really thank you and all of the ideas and I feel excited renewed excitement. In fact that we may have helped as we move forward. Any of any of you Andy, Aaron, Jess, let's want to sign off say goodbye. Any last things. I think I think I want to say. Thank you to Tiff Blumley and Gabrielle Stevens, who are our state representatives in our district who've been very supportive of this campaign and who lent us half an intern. Thank you to help out with, with various tasks and he has Lee was on this been on this zoom meeting, and they've been great listeners and great suggestions and a very, very supportive, and that's been, that's been helpful. And thank you everybody. Jean is, Jean is asking that whether people identified by wards who are Burlington residents. He was asking that. And Jean also said that he would, he would make it a topic of his campaign and help put it forward so thank you for that Jean. Great. Thank you so much everyone really appreciate it takes the village. So maybe Aaron unmute so people can say goodbye. I love to hear the sounds. Everybody unmute and say goodbye so it feels like. Bye. Thank you. Great dreams. Bye bye. Ruby you got that note. Hi Charlie chat. Hi. We can get him to, he could do those singing for us. Well, we were. But I broke my arm so I can't play guitar yet. Sing. No, we're not going to sing Carol and thank you. Well, Charlie can go on the recording. That'll be for the fundraiser that we do later after is. Right, right. Let's early do you need some help driving or something. You need help Charlie. I don't have a car anymore. So I don't need help driving. I have car shares. I can drive, but thank you so much for asking. And I can do some errands or something for you if you want. Oh, shucks. Well, why not. Thanks. Why not market or something. I also have a courier service that does errands for me. Who could help you. All right. So that's nice. Ruby, you saw that note. I do see it. I do see it. I'll respond to you directly Charlie later. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Yes, I didn't. Thanks everybody for coming. Great to see you all. Thank you, Andrew. Good job. Good. Thank you. Yep. Bye Laura. Bye. Bye. Bye Jeff. Thank you. Charlie. Thanks. See you again.