 I'm hanging in there I'm so I'm home uh with COVID so oh no it's not that well I mean no it's it but I had gotten my bivalent booster shot about three weeks ago uh and then about a week and a half ago my children the normal transmission vector uh into the house they both got COVID they had mild pretty mild cases just a little sneezing and I managed to I think dodge it for a little bit but then I got it I tested positive but I've had super mild I mean I've had I've had a COVID run that has been so mild that I never would have stayed out of school it was like the kind of allergies that you know I just would have gone back in so but because because they caught me in the you know well I would stay home anyway but the PCR tested positive and uh now I have to wait until I can get back in maybe tomorrow I've been ace without any symptoms for the last three days so so that's how Amherst College is doing it you actually have to have a negative test to come back yes we have to have a negative test or 10 days after I've gone by so I'm trying to slide back in after day five uh tomorrow but um but or otherwise yeah I have to just keep keep waiting so yeah yeah it's great I mean it just it just keeps going round and round you know people keep getting it but it sounds like because you had your booster so recently you have had a really mild case so that's really good you know that's great I absolutely would have said it was fall allergies and you know the reason I was sniffling a little bit in the morning was just you know because things were dying right yeah I think a lot of people are confusing it with allergies right now but yeah you know but yeah that's good that it's mild yeah well I never had a fever because I yeah I didn't have a fever or any other other symptoms so mm-hmm yeah I just actually saw my primary care and was asking her about it because I had it in July and she so I was asking her about whether to get the booster and she said no hold off you know having it gives you the most immunity you know out of anything so you can hold off from getting the booster so I have I have anecdotal backup evidence for you there Beth the anecdotal evidence is Maria myself and one of my daughters all got the boosters together but Sarah who was doing track couldn't do the booster shot when we were all going and so but she had omicron like you she had one of these things uh in early in the spring and she also had an equally mild case of this uh as as the rest of us did so yep yep looks like everyone's here who do we have Amy Jason, Jack, my wife managed to get it twice and I haven't had it at all so well this was the second time for my daughter Sarah you know the first time the entire house managed to dodge it and the second time not so much so just wanted to know I'm here Linda our small morning morning let's see um John Tobias is not joining us so we're still waiting for Dave oh yeah one Brian and Brian babe and Brian Chris I was on Hampshire college campus yesterday and I was like saw you out of the corner of my eye but you were you were in conversation so I didn't get to go over and say hi but yes is your coaching track I'm coaching the running team yeah that's awesome so I was out there you know looking totally different than I do now but I was like that's what I figured I was like I'm kind of out of context but uh anyway good to see you today as well since we're just waiting here Amy what running team do you coach oh it's over at Hampshire college so they have a uh they have a little cross country team and so I go over there and run with them a couple days a week fantastic Beth do you want to poke Brian oh he's right there good yeah I think the only person that's not here's Dave Zomek but I think we can probably start without him yep you know he'll he'll join he is often late for meetings and we'll join at some point all right so Lions I I can bring up the agenda if you want me to Lions or you can just kind of start going through the items on the agenda I I have it on the side if others want to see it I'll just I'll run through it quickly and see if we have any changes uh I want to talk about the drinking water regulations um get an update on on uh on that then uh water supply status in terms of drought and data on the web page water infrastructure projects update for well number four and Centennial and we'll talk about the draft solar drinking water white paper and minutes prove the minutes the January meeting seems we should probably do that first get it out of the way uh and then approve choose a next meeting date and then anything else so on the subject of anything else is is do we know of anything else that needs to be added to this agenda yet um we were thinking of talking a little bit about the Northampton road project Jason can update us on the the water line and everything that's going on with that project great so we'll do that at the end or maybe under let's put that under infrastructure projects yeah before the solar discussion that sounds good so let's let's start with the minutes from the last meeting get that out of the way uh do we have any changes comments edits corrections seeing none um move that we accept the minutes from the last meeting the mood yeah uh second all in favor thank you all in favor hi i think i do i vote no i don't know don't vote but you did a great job with the months um okay thanks that's out of the way uh drinking water rags update yeah so i'll take that so um as you guys know we're doing this process of trying to update the drinking water regulations as well as the sewer regulations um but particularly the water regulations i think you guys as a committee reviewed them and provided some great guidance on that at this point it's gone to the town council it's actually gone through the tso at this point and got some um i guess they made some decisions um and and we made some edits to it um but at this point we've got a working document and it it went through g g o l or g yeah i think i get all the acronyms wrong but it went through the the governance one yesterday to make sure that i had commas everywhere and that it was consistent and concise language um it has to go through fincom still and then it's going to go back to town council so we still have a little ways to go but it is chugging through the process and the big the big chunks of things that they kind of made some changes to a lot of it you know um it's the same as what we've been doing it was just documenting the one thing that we got a lot of pushback on was um the water service lines and who owns them and as you guys know in the town of amherst we the town owns the water mains but whenever you take a private line off of main that's the responsibility of the homeowner that's at least how we currently operate um and what the town council ultimately decided was that they think it's fair if the town owns what's under the town property so basically under the road and if the homeowner owns what's under you know what's on their property which basically means you know in most cases where the curb box is is going to delineate uh or where the property in is going to delineate the ownership of the two different um bodies so that's that's the big change that they've made that we've integrated into the regulations um there is a financial component which again is why going to um Fincom to absorb the cost of all of these service lines that the town is now going to be responsible for and and going to have to fix um when they need repairing um you know there's a financial component so um I guess that's that's the big that's what's going on with the the water regulations I don't know if anybody has any questions or comments on any of that seems reasonable that homeowners would own from the shutoff box to the house the town would own up to the the box yeah it's just a change where right now it means people if they didn't maintain their line they could kind of wait out till the town owns it um and it also means that we're you know potentially absorbing some um some service lines that might have led service in them and we don't have records of any of it and so it there's going to be a it's not you know it's not a hundred percent easy but that that's what the town decided and that's fine we just have to we just have to fund the decision that was made I think the biggest switch in my mind is that they were all installed by private contractors the town would traditionally do the tap at the main and the road and then the rest was done by a private contractor I mean we did town was doing some inspections but really early on in history I'm not sure how well they were inspected I suppose and I don't know how good our records are I don't know how good our records are so yeah our records are probably 50% but I would expect in all those cases that property owners of today you know have no knowledge of of who who was contracted and who put in the original line either so yeah well depending on the age yeah yeah if you're first owner you know who did it but but would this mean then I could see going forward if this is always going to be something that the town will own would we then or would you guys then say that any new line being tapped and would have to be done by this town or or you know do you want to see more oversight at this point now going I mean even even currently if you do any work like that you're supposed to get a permit to be able to do it so the engineer is supposed to oversee it it's just private contractors aren't always 100 compliant sometimes they try and sneak it in in the weekend and you know hope we don't see what they're doing um but then also in the past I think we didn't have the staff to even support being able to see that or to make sure that we got the report so especially as we go further and further back the yeah um it's not the best paper trail so but when we didn't own it it like if we had owned it all along we would have kept paper trails of what we own us not owning it meant that we didn't even have the paper trail so I think I think it adds a huge cost if we when we go forward considering like paving a road in a in a relatively old neighborhood we really need to consider you know the investment we're putting down on top do we need to go dig up every service and replace it or it's kind of puts us in a weird conundrum where you know we used to send out letters before we paved the road like if you're having problems with your water or sewer please get them fixed now before we repave the road but now it's looks like it's going to be on us so I guess maybe that streamlines it but it adds a huge cost if we if we just blanket say let's replace them all they're all a hundred years old means we paid one road instead of five there should be some you know one might think there might be some ability to do some cost sharing there but absolutely you know it does sound like the town should be in charge because when those things are looked at they should be done in that moment in time where you're digging up the old road and repaving the new road whereas homeowners may have no ability to do that at that particular moment in time so well you yeah we could debate we could debate this all day I mean the point is that's that's the decision that the town council made and the new Braggs are covering that so certainly they agree with you Anna and um yeah so that's you know you can you can sense our stress with just the additional workload but that's that's not a you know the town is making the decision for the the homeowners and protecting the homeowners and and that's great hey uh there's nothing else let's move on to water supply status how's our drought going well let me let's um let's share the usual web page and we can talk about it all right um so yeah as you're all probably very aware there was definitely a drought um the summer and we're we're we're sort of coming out of it at this point um the last update from the state drought task force was on September 8th and so this is our water supply water animals water supply status web page this is how it looks currently um they were going to have a meeting I think in closer to the end of September September 22nd I think and it got canceled so their next meeting is now the beginning of October so maybe in the next week two weeks um so their last update was that the Connecticut River Valley remains in a level three critical drought um based on their data and whatnot and so you know we've got this the statement on our page and we keep updating it with what they say um and our um sort of uh conclusion about the whole thing is that we've been keeping a close eye this whole summer um on our water levels and we felt like the town um has been capable all summer of providing water so we haven't initiated any conservation efforts but we always recommend all residents to follow um water conservation tips and ideas and we have some of those on this page um so where we're at right now one big improvement is the well number four came online June 1st um so all summer we've had well number four uh working wonderfully so we're back to that providing 30% Atkins reservoir 30% well three 30% of our water and well one and two are sort of smaller providers and well five is a backup but you know our decisions this summer having to do with drought um really having well number four online played a big part in us feeling very comfortable with the water supply um and this is Atkins reservoir levels right now we can click on this um and this I thought I had updated it a little bit more than this we had we've been keeping a close eye so this I believe is maybe into the first week of September um the newest graph I've seen that goes to September 18th basically the red line comes straight out so it's sort of maintained the same elevation um up to about September 18th and I think we've gotten more rain since then right now we're at seven nine or something which means still you know nearly October 10th we're still kind of at that same level right in there somewhere yeah okay and yeah so that's closer to almost over here by October 1st and we're still at about where if you guys see my cursor um so we're about right there um so we're looking pretty good in terms of Atkins reservoir um yeah and then water consumption this is updated through August again we update it every month so in the next week or so I'll be adding the September consumption data um up in August when the students came back um again overall though if you look at 2022 it's the red bars we are below say you know 2019 is the last kind of normal year we had because of pre-pandemic so you're comparing it to the blue bar and the purple bar because the blue bar is 10 year average um 2022 has pretty much consistently again been lower than um than those years here were about even with the average a little bit above 2019 um but for August we were up pretty high I think partially that does have to do with um the drought in that people end up watering even a little bit more during the drought and then it certainly is a response to the students coming back um and precipitation August again we're here um you know I haven't seen the monthly data yet for precipitation but I believe we jumped above 2021 and we're in this area somewhere Amy have you seen more recent data I I did that update on September 15th that we sent out to like the universities and I know at that point we were above the 2020 even for kind of the mid month markers so um yeah we've had some good rain yeah yeah so here's this is 2016 drought year obviously a really really low year for precipitation um so we are we have always been above that this year which is great um but it definitely was a low year especially July I think July was oh it looks like actually June pretty flat line there um where it was both dry and hot um so it was a dry summer and that's that that's where the water supply is at um does anybody have any questions or comments I have a question about the wells um you it's listed you know what percent of the well of the production each well is providing what percentage of that wells um capacity is being used for each of them I'm sure they're all different I think I think they're all they're all different um Amy you might know the best yeah you're you're going to test my memory here lions we can figure it out too and like provide you that information um no I mean Mackins reservoir I think technically it has a safe yield of 1.5 mgd and if we're using about a third I think we're actually doing like you know 700 gpm which is just under 1 mgd um you know so you're operating you know just you know about at about two thirds capacity which is how we like to operate it using you know two treatment trains and having one spare that we can be cycling through um wealth free uh I don't know Jason if you know this offhand I feel like the the capacity the um well what the like basically the safe yield of that is I've got it down here might this might be old but I got 1.25 that sounds about right yeah and so again we're doing just under one mgd there um and then well four I think is maybe 1.4 mgd and again we're doing you know just a little under one so none of them were pumping to the maximum capacity that's great sounds wonderful okay so let's um if there's no questions about that let's move on to water infrastructure projects and well four um okay I'll take well four Amy you can take Centennial um so as I just said well four came online June 1st um and it's been great um but just I just wanted to note a couple things that the DEP's asked us to do um because they're sort of considering it uh bringing on a new source one with some additional PFAS sampling which we've done and we haven't had any detections um and then lead and copper sampling which we just we just finished one round of it we have we have to do some lead and copper sampling twice this year so we had to do some this fall we'll do it again in the spring and they increased us to 60 houses from 30 houses if if if everything is fine with both rounds of the lead and copper sampling we can apply for a waiver and they'll DEP will allow us to reduce back to where we were which was doing lead and copper every three years and doing 30 houses um so that was just one of the requirements I I'm sure there were a couple other things they were asking us that Amy might know that we had to do um as that well came online but um so far so good those are the major ones yeah so so far so good with well number four um how are those houses chosen yeah so um DEP I don't know I think we've talked a little bit about the lead and copper rule the federal lead and copper rule is being has been revised but we don't have to actually meet the new requirements in terms of like sampling technique and where you sample until 2024 so right now we're still following sort of the old method the old which DEP put together organized with forums and all the rest of it um number of years ago so we still followed that method um this year which is you know your first group of houses that you want to be sampling or anywhere where you're aware of a a lead service line or a gooseneck or anything anything where you're aware of um which we at this point don't have don't know of any um and then the next criteria is actually houses built between 1983 and 85 because that was a prime time for putting copper piping in that had lead solder and we have a lot of houses that have to actually be built during that time um so that's our main group that we select from and we had had a list of 30 that had been approved by DEP and had been using it for a number of years and with this round we had to add another 30 um and they all came from that group I'm just curious so the same 30 or different 30 every time but from that group the same so you you make a list and it becomes your your sort of your sampling plan and it gets approved by DEP and that is really the same 30 that that you use this this round we had to add 30 additional ones so there was about 30 who had gone through the program before and now there was 30 new participants well and to be I mean if we're nitpicking down into it you need to have 30 samples that are analyzed so we actually choose 45 houses and so there's a little bit of variety because there's a house that maybe did it one year and then doesn't the next year so it's not the same 30 houses and that's it but it might be 20 or 25 of them overlap and then a couple of new ones kind of get rotated in and out and this one we had to actually identify 80 houses and ultimately I think we collected what did you say about like 63 samples um yeah it changes you know there's a little yeah people who who maybe were on our list in 2020 when we did it but then didn't end up filling their bottle or didn't then I you know we kind of remove them and and add new ones um you know there's about close to 200 houses in Amherst that we're built during that time period 83 to 85 um and I you know I think them as we've done this so many years I feel like we've probably covered that whole group at some point. Onward to Centennial. Onward to Centennial. All right I can't quite recall what the update was when we last topped so I might repeat some of what what I said last time but we Amherst was selected for an SRF loan that's a state revolving fund loan so that basically means we're getting some funding to help support the construction of Centennial. What that that has slowed down the process because now we have some additional an additional body in the DEP has to approve everything and you know we had some additional like financial paperwork and everything that went along with that so at this point everything has been submitted to the DEP. The designs are finalized in terms of all of the local permitting so even just the permits that we need from Pelham to do this project and everything all of that is together and we're just waiting for the thumbs up from the DEP to be able to bid the project and so we're hopeful that that'll happen sometime this fall and so then construction can start sometime in the spring so chugging along I don't know if anybody has any questions on that or if if I skipped time periods between last update and now. I don't really have anything to but that's fantastic news that that so much is being being covered and it's going to be started this this this spring so yeah we were fortunate with the SRF loan and then because because of a couple criteria with like the income bracket that Amherst is in and then I think like because we're a mini entitlement yeah there was there was an entitlement yeah there were a couple things that basically meant that we actually get a lower percentage loan and we actually get that the state is going to cover it's basically 20% of our request there it's going to be paid for by the state so we're very we're very fortunate that that's great especially with interest rates yes jason you want to do the route nine route nine yeah sure um so the water line is all set don't drive the road yet but the water line is is in it's 100 it's functional it passed all its tests all those side streets are now being fed off of the new 12 inch main we haven't had any complaints um I don't know Amy have you you haven't heard there was a couple of side streets like Blue Hills and I think it was mostly Blue Hills maybe sunset that we used to get complaints for dirty water so we'd have to additional flushing rounds I don't think we've heard from them since the new main went live um that just just the process of installing the new main sort of acted as a a flushing project anyways because you have to flush and chlorinate and and repeat so that may be keeping their water extra clean to begin with but in the long run we've got a new 12 inch main that runs all the way down there and now you know provides good hopefully good circulation through there so that you don't have any stagnant sort of dead ends with the multitude of pipe sizes that was there before it was sort of went from eight inch to six inch to nine inch to very random sizes all up and down the road so it's all one consistent 12 inch pipe now and it should be providing nice circulation through all that area we hope so yeah we're gonna knock on wood and say it's done it's hooked up it's connected and and all the house services that were fed off of route nine have been swapped over to the new main so um that's going pretty well we had to replace a fair amount of sewer services that crossed route nine um that's sort of unrelated but they were very old sewer services and and we technically don't own the sewer services but we don't want to see the road ripped up after a year later so there was a lot of old clay services that we just paid to replace paid caracas to replace they didn't fall within the state project funds so but other than that it's worked out very well great glad to hear it's progressing they should just for everybody's like general knowledge traffic wise they're starting full depth reclamation or plan to be starting full depth reclamation uh next week first week of october and they will be detouring there's going to be some sort of a detour plan i believe which involves amity i i have that meeting later today so i don't know yet but that was what was discussed earlier in the year so it'll probably be reduced to one lane in one direction and amity street in the other direction it's going to get worse before it gets better so just know that christmas or you sometimes day or you know i we're not exactly sure but um yeah it's it's still that you still haven't seen it at its worst oh that gives me so excited so avoid it just avoid it at all costs yeah okay thank you uh moving on to the white paper okay um so yeah share my screen again um i just put together a sort of a little presentation of just to summarize the paper a bit and um so i sent it out to all of you and it got posted on our web page the community's web page for the public to look at if they were interested it's in draft form um so this was a product of subcommittee and it of jack and brian and lions and amy and myself and we met many times we were trying to meet every two weeks i think i'm not sure when we started this um begin the spring maybe um and we we were pretty good about meeting um we divided the document up and everybody worked on certain sections um and i i think it it came out pretty well you know it's basically um our research document so we went out out to just find sort of the current current information current knowledge on the impacts of large-scale solar on specifically on drinking water that's really what we were looking at so um and then the purpose of the document is to be used by the solar bylaw working group and hopefully uh permitting committees and boards from the towns where our watershed is shoots mary and pelham um if they eventually get any solar project applications at this point nothing that i know of has been submitted to those towns but um you know the idea is that those permitting committees would be looking for amorce input since it is our watershed um so that's what the that was the goal of the paper and i hope you all had a chance to look at it a little bit and um like i said i just wanted to summarize some of the conclusions so i can just read some of these um i can move it over a little bit so stormwater management both in the short term meaning uh during construction and and and long-term management of the site has proven to be potentially damaging to water resources if not conducted properly we we found and in the paper there are some examples of projects i'm nearby in the connecticut river valley where during construction especially um stormwater wasn't managed appropriately and there were some sort of catastrophic results in terms of erosion and sedimentation into nearby resource areas so um some of our conclusions are that managing stormwater at solar sites is more challenging than a typical development project due to the large side typical typically large size large footprint of the project and typically that they're placed on sloped topography um so our conclusion is that more robust erosion control and erosion control and monitoring during construction and certainly until the site gets revegetated um but then even into you know the first year of operation of the project we also concluded that the current research indicates there are don't there are no long term don't appear to be any long term impacts from contaminants originating in the solar panels themselves and their associated equipment um you know in the in the paper we refer to the actual panels themselves and then things like transformers um as not seeming to be showing any long term impacts um however the battery energy storage systems which are now really being pushed and recommended to go along with solar projects we found in the research that there does seem to be a threat of uh release of contaminants from those systems in the events of uh if there was a fire oops um and then we also concluded that so far the impact of solar arrays on hydrology um seems to show that it increases runoff so installation of a large scale solar project would actually increase runoff and groundwater infiltration um and then some of the highlights from our recommendations we came up with sort of distances from um drinking water wells and from surface water sources that we recommend for the disturbance area or the clearing area of a solar project we've got 100 feet from private wells what does that say i've got things on top of things um 100 well 100 feet for private wells 400 feet for public drinking water wells 200 feet from reservoirs 200 feet so from the bank of the reservoir 200 feet from the bank of all zone a tributaries to reservoirs um and then we definitely recommend PFOS-free solar panels and we also then increased the distances from those same resources in terms of installing the battery storage systems we increased it to 300 feet from a private well 600 feet from a public water supply well 400 feet um from the bank of reservoir and from the banks of the of tributaries to reservoirs um there's other recommendations in the in the report i i didn't feel like i we needed to list them all right here um and then i just kind of wanted to clarify what we're doing today in terms of the paper um and it's it's just we're taking everybody's comments seeing if people see changes in comments that they want made um to the to the draft document and then we're basically voting did you agree with the conclusions and recommendations and agree to finalize the paper um as is right now or with any changes that we agree upon during the meeting this morning um or you're voting that you don't agree with the conclusions and recommendations and you'd like to see further work done um on the paper so maybe i'll just leave this up and i guess we're gonna we'll open it up to comments from the committee so um one of my comments was just in the uh regulations regarding the building and maintenance of wherever the battery energy storage system is located because it sounds like that is done at different installations very differently um and i'm wondering whether or not you wanted to to put in any more sort of define or is there already like a code for how those buildings have to be built because one would imagine that even if there is a fire at a battery installation if you had it in a trailer or something that might be worse than if you had it in a cement block building with you know fire retardant you know so that i'm just curious is like how how do they do that on other installations and how could we just you know basically take that threat down even more than it already is Jack do you want to comment on that yeah um well i just wanted with regard to your summaries the one bullet with regard to where the solar development will increase a runoff and increase the recharge that was more in comparison of a conversion say from force uh to a solar field i think if solar goes on a pasture or agricultural land it's going to be roughly you know no change a little or no change so i just want to make that comment and with regard to the battery storage uh we there there there's much to be done but i think there is you know their best management practices that are developing and it i think it's continually evolving um but uh so that level of detail whether it be a trailer or a concrete building it's it's just you know it's speculative i think most of them are going to be you know in trailer type structures i'm not aware of any that are in you know buildings but that would be you know an added cost the developer it seems to me like it'd be like a little bit you know you know over design for these things um but they are learning i mean there's been i think there's like a couple examples that have been like catastrophes that we've learned from that are stated uh within the white paper but i think we're way past that and you know there's all these alarms and you know sensors whatever that that need to shut down that decrease that but you know we made the points that you know there needs to be education the fire department to deal with you know this special uh circumstance where we're not going to be putting a lot of water or any water basically if uh we had you know a thermal runaway event at one of these uh events but you know certainly i think shifting that responsibility on the developer to include you know the you know belt and suspenders approach to you know this event where there was failure uh will be you know you know paramount so um you know they're getting they're they're being implemented um you know within the state via the the incentives or or mandate by by the state so but there is no existing sort of like guidance which is kind of crazy but that's that that's is where we are on the subject okay um lines can you see the hands or do you want me to call on people looks like i can only see uh five people yeah well so chris has her hand up and then then dave chris go ahead great thanks um i i guess i too i just wanted to make sure i understood um that that this is forming the foundation of recommendations we're making about a solar bylaw that would be created in the town of amherst like that i just want to make sure i understand kind of where we're going on that so things that we may recommend recommend may or may not end up in the final bylaw is that right okay and then i guess i i just want to highlight and make sure i understood it one of the things that jumped out at me in the white paper was around the erosion and sediment control um that seemed really important in it and i wanted to make sure i was clear on what it sounds like we're recommending um because of the potential for erosion and sediment problems that are higher than maybe in a regular construction project which is what the conclusions say that we're recommending additional erosion and sediment controls with it seemed like more oversight and more um you know kind of more stringent requirements to make sure that that doesn't happen during construction is that is that one of am i right and that's how we're reading that that we're recommending that the town take a more active role in ensuring things are going um preventing that erosion yeah i think some of the things that i that's not in this presentation are things like all projects will be required to you know have a SWIP which is an EPA NIPTES permit um we're recommending that some of those details about erosion control get included actually in the bylaw so that they're sort of in addition to them being reviewed possibly say at the conservation commission if the project is within the jurisdiction of the conservation commission or at the planning board that also the bylaw itself includes some language on uh increased um erosion control and certainly sort of monitoring and then we go as far as to suggest some monitoring i can't quote it exactly but it's like every two weeks or something like that and then we suggest having a third party consulting company do the the monitoring um so yeah i think we're basically trying to push that that that area really needs to be strong with these projects thank you great um Dave yeah good morning everybody um well first i wanted to thank the group that put this together i i think it's fantastic it's a great it's a great you know document and really appreciate all the time and energy and effort folks put into pulling it all together i had a couple of quick comments one um is that my hope is that the group does not vote to approve this today as is i would like some time i've sent it to um uh erin jock our wetlands administrator i've sent it to stephanie chiccarello chris breastrup our planning director stephanie chiccarello our sustainability director chris and and chris and stephanie are working on on the bylaw itself and of course erin is an expert on erosion control so i'd love to have a little bit more time i know you just finished this so i'd love to have a little bit more time to see if they might and i've asked them for comments to be sent through beth to to this group so i would just put that out there that that i hope you take a little bit more time to really get get input and i know you've had some public comment on this as well going back to jack's comments yeah i just wanted to highlight that i think in my mind um you know solar's been around for a while a lot of a lot of projects permitted in the state it's the battery storage piece that is new for or new wish for a lot of us we now have you know we now have projects in amherst where battery storage is proposed as part of a solar project and then we just had our first standalone battery storage no solar there's no photovoltaics on the site but simply a standalone battery storage project uh proposed for amherst uh route 116 the former annie's garden store site is proposed for a standalone battery storage um facility so i just you know i think i think as i read the paper it seemed you know i think you know you all were spot on kind of saying that's an area that we need you know kind of to be learning i think jack you said we're it's evolving and there's not as many regulations and you know we need to be um you know just um aware of new new developments new research um uh and and be aware that there can be problems if if um you know related to fire and these battery storage units not to be overly alarmed but what happens when that when that does happen and have we taken the appropriate safeguards around those facilities so that whatever happens there if there is a fire any chemicals anything at the battery storage facility doesn't get into uh groundwater or um surface water so those were my quick comments and again thanks for for those folks who put it together are there any other comments from the committee yeah i have a just i was just curious i i read through the commentary that beth sent out from three folks who submitted comments i just wanted to mean you know get it in the minute that we discussed it i didn't i personally didn't find anything super relevant to the water resources recommendations that we're making um the letters you know all three of them seem concerned about sort of the net carbon impacts the impacts of um deforestation sort of more broadly than than water resources and i certainly thought they made some good points each of their comments but um they didn't really inform um sort of hydrologic processes water resources in my opinion just wanted to try to get that in the minutes and see if anyone read them and found anything in there that they did think was useful to change our grasp jack yeah yeah brian good point um i mean i think that's going to be taken up by the uh solar bylaw you know working committee to look at the you know greater breadth of uh you know environment environmental impact um with regard to conversion of you know existing land use to a solar field but i i agree brian a good point i would also agree and i'd like to say that the the most recently submitted comment from um jenny calick um i provided some additional research from epa that i've not had time to go look into um but i'm i'm curious to look into it i'm i don't know that it's going to change how i feel about any of the recommendations but um it might be go ahead it's cut in inna i i looked at some of them i mean a lot of them were pretty far off base it seemed there was stuff about induced recharge out west and i think um yeah it was some of them weren't super on topic okay great anna i think you have your hand up i do so so brian you you cut in but i was going to say that so i i did look at some of those other epa ones they're not they're not um uh very applicable here uh from those outside and once again i also want to say thank you this was a a fantastic document and i think what really struck me is that most of this most of what was written about for uh hydrologic control stormwater calls seem really right on on the money um on what i've read uh but the thing that really is is kind of like just in my brain is that the the battery storage issue and that we don't have you know we we know how to deal with with chemicals that come out of a battery and we know how we would build a if i had a storage room at amherst college that where i was putting a bunch of batteries i would have to make sure that if a fire occurred that like the fluids that would be would be contained um sort of within some some structure and so that's the only thing that that strikes me is being interesting that we don't have i i understand that it's in flux but um i see no reason why we wouldn't give some guidance that we would indeed uh uh want that to be um contained um even you know if it does cause a little bit of extra expense so that was my only opinion it's on on the rest of it ians you have your handout i do and you're you're leading the meeting you could talk habits um i it occurs to me that uh perhaps we should add to dave's list of folks to review the white paper um we should add the fire department and get their input on the battery storage piece particularly uh since they're the ones that would have to deal with that if we're gonna um leave the comments open perhaps till our next meeting then it would give everyone in those groups uh time to comment yeah i i i kind of like that idea i you know i think so i think it was the comments from jack um jack hersh where he also he's somebody from the public who also brought up you know what do we do what's what would if we had a fire like that are we sort of recommending the best protection to against something like that and also is the fire department people sort of trained on um how to deal with something like that so maybe that that is an area we can expand a bit more in the paper um and so yes taking in comment from the fire department sounds like a good idea Beth can you take down the yep share i can see there now i can see everything um so i guess we did not have any members of the public show up oh no we have seven we have seven folks do we have jack that wants to make a comment yeah so far yes i just say that that we did uh state in the paper that you know training was paramount to deal with this specific uh condition which you know i uh you know standard protocol for training of a or an emergency response personnel would not cover this situation so that needs to be you know hardwired into the approval of uh you know any you know solar field that they are you know probably contribute to the training if the training isn't there already within the immerse fire department but that's a great idea to have them uh take a look at this at this point in time yeah they may have experience or knowledge of battery storage catastrophes somewhere else that we're not hearing about that they're getting through their circles and and that may inform you know if if a particular type of structure is recommended to reduce impacts um they could provide that input and it could be whether it's part of the paper or goes to the to the bylaw committee uh doesn't really matter but i do think it would be a good way to get them to start thinking about it and providing put so anything else from the committee i just want to apologize i've got to go in a minute thanks for your help on this paper brian i want to thank brian and jack for a huge amount of work they both put into making this paper happen so thanks do we have anyone from the public that wants to speak i can't see any of them so i'll have to oh i thought i made you a co-host but you can you can see that if you if you click on participants there's a tab for panelists and a tab for attendees so if you click on the attendees you can see but it looks like eric has raised his hand yeah there it is look at that okay weren't something new today lions great that's great i love it uh zooming so so if you highlight that person you can let them talk that's okay great eric you're ready to go thank you can you hear me yes great thank you thank you so much for your um you're very hard and timely work on i what i think is a critical uh critically um uh important um aspect of of the work of the water protection supply committee to to do in january at your january meeting um i raised the issue about um well well water what is the consequence of of clear cutting and removing a forest on well water and um i was um i was forwarded uh to the border of health which evidently has jurisdiction over the private well wells in in our town uh evident and in the report you're cited that it was cited at three and a half to four percent of the households in amherst um uh our our rely on well water for for for our water um my my concern um with the report um and um and i am uh uh the in in the title of your your your committee water supply protection committee i felt that the protection particularly of the well systems was really glossed over and not not delved into um i think the report kind of a very in the very beginning um makes the assumption based on the energy and climate action committee's notion that uh we we cannot accommodate our solar requirements simply through through um through rooftops or other other um uh other means um and that we were going to have to essentially uh deforest my my my concern is um when that happens and i've done some research myself i'm not a hydrologist so i rely on other scientists like dr william moumou and dr moumou in uh the uh paper that he co-authored called the great american stand says in bold letters that two-thirds of america's fresh water supply filters through far so again i'm not a hydrologist so if we if we deforest and and the the water runoff is increased drastically it's not absorbed by by our forests anymore so where is our water going to come from if it's running off at a very very rapid and drastic rate in fact there was a there was an article in the new york times last week that cited that over 70 percent there was a 70 percent increase in in uh rainfall during the during um our um more recent um uh uh you know heavy storm incidences so i'm concerned that uh the well water and and um how we how people who rely on well water is being kind of overlooked um i think it's a real a real concern and um i think that the the um you know how how can we rely on a report that really has not delved into the private well water system as completely and thoroughly as i think it should um so i would ask that um someone from the town whether it's the water supply protection committee or the board of health look at how private wells can uh um can feel secure that we are out the consequences of climate change the consequences of of deforestation for solar is not going to affect private wells thank you so much for your your work thank you for your comments appreciate it um unfortunately brian just left how convenient of him so brian um worked on researched the section of the paper that was water quantity so really looking at the current information and knowledge on um taking down trees clearing or or in some cases not clearing uh when you're building a large solar array sometimes are put in fields and he looked at really how that affected the volumes of water uh where they go when it precipitates on a solar field versus a forest or versus a farm field and um i guess then that impact on the the volumes of water that we're able to use from our wells public or private um and i don't really want to speak for him and i wish he had stuck around um jack jack has his hand up so i don't know if he wants to speak to it jack yeah i'm quite familiar with beth you know that um on this topic as well but anyway i i kind of beg to differ with eric i think we really we have some guidance document from the mass dp with regard to public water supplies and we took that into consideration along with some basic you know hydrologic knowledge of the differences of you know water budgets of forest land versus grassland which is a solar field basically becomes a grassland and uh we took all that into account and we you know we put in buffers that we thought were consistent with the mass dp policies uh that were extended for public water supplies which again take you know mat orders of magnitude more groundwater out of our the aquifers than a private well so i you know in my opinion i feel like we we really covered that to the best uh you know they using you know current knowledge uh there so um but so i think we're trying to be protective of of the private well owners you know in addition to our public water supplies within our conclusions recommendations within white paper thanks jack mike lupinski has his hand up uh okay go ahead mike yeah i'm mike lupinski 167 chutesbury road and amherst and i hope that you'll follow uh dave's recommendation and certainly just look at this report as a first draft that requires more input from other people especially other town boards a couple of things that i think are are missing from the report and i think it's probably one of the most important things that seems to be coming up over and over again for me in this discussion today is there's no mention of size and there has been some mention of topography as far as most of your your watershed is sloping but there's been no mention of size so some of the statements that are being made about you know very little effect um that might apply to something that's the size of five acres of clearing it maybe it applies to something that's 10 or 15 acres of clearing but you have a watershed that's primarily forested and you have projects that have been they're not formally proposed but they certainly have been lingering for the past couple years to clear hundreds of acres of forest that's either in your watershed or near your watershed i think any calculations you make they might work for small amounts of forest clearing but we're talking large scale forest clearing and we're not talking about the type of forest clearing you see where a logger comes in or removes the selective numbers of trees and leaves the stumps in the ground and the other bushes around you're talking about clearing that basically takes the entire forest ecosystem out of commission and as a water protection committee i think that should concern you if the area where you're getting your water from is not the same as it was and if it's a five acre site or something i can see where you could say well it's not that big of a deal it's five acres of forest that got turned into a field but we're talking about huge facilities i can't see how you wouldn't look at that and say this is a concern for us it's dramatically changing our watershed and after all you are the watershed protection committee and i'm surprised you're not more concerned about that but maybe you're not thinking in terms of the size and scale of some of these projects to give you another example especially in the battery storage area which everyone i think has mentioned that it's critical it's evolving and it's something that means more research the facility that dave mentioned earlier today which is proposed on 116 and amherst there are at least 35 sort of tractor trailer size battery units that are proposed for that site and that's i wouldn't call that a big or a small that's kind of like a medium size installation as far as some of these battery storage proposals go what would that look like you know sitting off prep corner road attached to that transformer that's up there on the shootsbury border you know basically in the center of the amherst watershed would that be a concern what if it were 70 battery units some of these units go into several hundred storage containers and you might think that that's far fetched but it isn't these are the types of things that are coming down the road and oftentimes they're put right next to substations another part of this battery storage businesses yes the state is requiring people to put battery storage next to solar sites and there's a there's a logical reason to do that i'm not going to get into the reasons why you do as far as balancing the the energy on on the grid but like the 116 site they're also just building these things nowhere near a solar site and the intent is just siphon off electricity from the grid store it and then use it at other times so basically you're storing electricity it's been produced by gas and produced by nuclear energy and by so or you name it that type of facility could easily be put off of shootsbury road hooked up to that substation that's up there is that the kind of thing that would be a concern to the water protection people if there were 35 or 50 or 100 of those battery units sitting in the water protection zone so i think in this particular case size does matter and i wonder if there's any attempt in this report to put a limit on things because right now the way it's written it sounds like you could put in one unit or you could put in 100 units it doesn't matter because you're basically saying there doesn't seem to be a big problem so please do some more work on this and please get some more input from other sources thanks for doing the work and i look forward to following the developments as this report moves along thank you for your comments i think in part the the size of clearing is taken into account with our recommendation that a stormwater pollution prevention plan be generated for all projects those take into account the type of clearing and the type of redevelopment and the change in surface conditions and it's a fairly extensive look at those those types of changes on precipitation events and it's not something that's generally done in all cases so if we include that in our final recommendations that piece of it i think is fairly well covered the question of size is definitely an interesting one and i appreciate your comments i would say given the time i will make a proposal that we follow david's recommendation and send the paper to um what was your list david was the planning board conservation commission i added the fire department yeah mine i guess focused more on on staff review fire department planning wetlands um in our sustainability director but i would defer to the group on weather and jack i'm sorry jack was a member of the planning board but it's no longer is that right jack you you moved off but i i would defer to the group on whether you you want um whether you'd like review by the planning board or or the concom or whether this is a staff review so i would i'm fine with staff review i was not uh intending to create more work for the boards themselves unless the staff of those boards feels it's important so that's fine um i do think it would be good to get additional input and we can move this along to its next logical step at our next meeting yeah i might just suggest you know we'll we'll certainly do that we'll send we'll get these people to review and comment but we may have another meeting before january you know we'll probably be sending out info to the committee about probably have just warning you before i can have another meeting then but that all sounds good to me jack has his hand up again jack yeah so i i i think that the the the the filter there i think would be the solo bylaw committee and let them decide you know to interact with the boards versus the water site uh protection committee you know interacting directly with the boards so once it gets delivered to the um the the bylaw working committee then i think you know that may be an option or not but i think it's critical that what david said and lions really got you know the uh the town experts at least take a look at this and which hasn't happened at this point i guess so yeah um it looks like uh mike lapinski has his hand up he just never lowered his hand okay yeah put your hand down there we know okay all right sorry if we can move on yeah yeah i is there any um other comment on sending this to staff of various town boards and committees if not um let's simply make that happen and um we'll we'll move along to uh revisit this when uh when we come back at our next meeting lions if i could just add just so beth and amy and jason know um and i let beth know this i did send it to uh stephanie and um stephanie and um erin yesterday but maybe coming from you beth you and or amy as point staff for the water supply protection committee would be good maybe in one email to all of those folks this is the official hey here's the draft of this white paper we're looking for your comments and give everybody a deadline because everybody's busy and you know i think you're right beth revisiting this before the end of the year makes perfect sense because this group only meets quarterly right so um but giving giving us all a deadline would be good you know a couple weeks out give people whatever three weeks to comment and and that way the water supply protection committee isn't waiting for you know planning to get back with this or wetlands to get back from this or you know et cetera et cetera so yeah give us give us all a deadline and and uh and we'll meet it sounds good so that brings us to uh choosing a meeting date um john tobias and chimed in via email um requesting a date near the end of january or early february suggesting either january 26 or february 2nd i i'm gonna i'm gonna throw out that i think more just to get the solar paper done so they can get in the hands of the people doing the bylaw committee that maybe we look at like you know six to eight weeks from now like give the town staff or anyone else from the public that wants to provide comments give them a month to do that and then that gives us maybe a a couple weeks to a month to incorporate those comments or have a better conversation um because the bylaw committee is they're they're chugging ahead and i know it would be helpful for them to have you know our recommendations yeah i know that that's fine we did we don't need to set the date for our january one at this point because it sounds like we're definitely doing as amy says one um before the january one or we can set the date for the january one too whatever you guys want to do um i gotta go i'm sorry i got a contractor coming in um let me know what the date is i'm sure i can make it okay sounds good thanks for your work on this jack thank you jack okay why don't we just go ahead and set the date for the earlier meeting um okay at this point do you have a quorum by the way uh what do we got we got three yeah so there's seven members right so yeah no quorum no quorum um but what i miss that are you setting a date yeah we're just setting a date we don't need a quorum we don't need a quorum we could do a doodle poll and just say you could do a doodle poll or whatever a couple of dates i was gonna i'm gonna suggest november third i was gonna suggest the the second week of november but that's good too so um um there should we go with maybe with the tenth just give a little more time so the tenth is fine okay and so then do we say public comments i think we just need to officially have a deadline for anybody from the public and we'll communicate that with the staff too so october 15th october 20th what gives us hope oh for them to get their comments to us yep all right so we're saying the meeting is going to be november 10th and we could maybe give them basically four weeks i'll send the letter today to staff and and folks but write the public who are on the call submit comments by um october 27th so that gives them a month seems good perfect all right i will send invites and all for the tenth and i'll send a letter to staff and um different departments and things for review great thank you very much nice to see everyone and um having no quorum we're not gonna go down to meeting we'll just say goodbye we'll just say goodbye and we'll see you all uh november 10th so all right thank you very much sounds good see you everyone good day bye bye