##VIDEO ID:Bewj0hn8CfY## Just. Yeah. Are we ready? Okay. Yes Yes. Yes Good evening. It is 6:00, August 15th, 2024. And welcome to the opening of the Sustainability Committee meeting for this evening, and we have a roll call. Yes Taylor Mandela absent. Unexcused. Okay. Denise Menino here. Robin Sanger. Right here. Carol Pickett here. Great And Siobhan Meehan. Has anybody heard from her? I have not heard from her about this week. This month's meeting. Okay. Thank you. Okay, has everyone had a chance to look at the minutes from last month? Yes. And I moved to approve the minutes from July 2024. I second that. All in favor? Aye How easy is that? And we do not have anyone from the public here at this moment. We vigorously and enthusiastically invite people to come and participate in whatever ideas you might have about sustainability. And we do need members. So I'm making that comment right now. So anyone can apply at the clerk's office. So our first item is, stormwater infrastructure presentation with Tony Manilow. And welcome. Thank you for being here. Thank you. Give me a moment to queue this up. Tommy, did you have that on the toolbar? Scroll to the bottom. The PowerPoint? Yeah, just go to the bottom. The taskbar will pop up and you'll see the folder, which folder? There you go. And then, here we go. Excellent We found out that the civic. Civic clerk. Civic clerk. Software is not friends with PowerPoint. It made some unexpected changes. Yeah. Right. Okay, here we go. Thanks for having me. First of all, my name is Tony Manilow, which Miss Menino coming up asked me my last name, and I'm looking. Just change the end to LS, and you're good, I'm. I'm sorry. Proposal But now the game a while. But I can neither confirm nor deny, yeah. My name is Tony Manilow. I'm a streets and stormwater supervisor for public works. Going here. We're just on ten years, my public works experience goes. I don't like saying the year, so mid 90s. I've been involved with public works, so quite a while, it's kind of one of my passions. When I went to school for at UCF, and it's interesting. I was thinking on the way up here as I was in gridlock. Since, you know, whether it's this very first work order I ever got or direction from from our director or supervisor for 30 years. Unconsciously not even knowing we've been maintaining sustainability, we're keeping water flowing. We're keeping structures functional. We're keeping level of service up to residents, for residents. Keeping everything working. So without even knowing it, we've been sustainable. You know, it really goes all the way back to cavemen. But I won't go there, so. But recently, when I say recently, probably five, six years, the term sustainability really started taking traction, I think, in my opinion, due to the sea level rise and climate change and whatever you want to call it, it made people think, you know, are we having forethought or are we just reacting, we'd like to. There's two things I really think drive sustainability. It's absolutely technology and design. And the design is that forward thinking? I talked about and technology, we have pipe now that 30 years ago we never heard of. Last 100 years. So technology and decision making or design really play the two major roles. But I put together a little presentation here just for, an understanding of how we, we deal with sustainability in our daily routines. Okay May have to use the my next work to what? Keyboard, keyboard arrows. Keyboard arrow. Where's my keyboard? Down. Oh, hello. Sustainability. New technology. Oh, here we go. One thing is our pride and joy in stormwater. It's our what we call stormwater action plan. And I guess I almost have to apologize because you guys wanted to use SAP for sustainability action plan, and I shot that down. I said, no, I already have one. So what this does, it's basically our driver or our master plan for stormwater. Just so we're not scattershot. We have a focused, goal, and that's how we, we work on that. The, it's basically a, as I mentioned, a master plan. And. Right now we're, we have projects on there up to 2056. So that in itself would be would be considered sustainable. Tommy and I, we talked about this a little bit, and our engineer, who kind of was the godfather of this, if we could combine sustainability elements because we are predicting into the future with our infrastructure, the back and forth it I think it ended up well where it this is not the place to mention that, and I'll tell you why, our projects, they're basically they're just address flooding and water quality issues that we see, and they're known and they're observed and they're experienced. The sustainability is something underground is a whole, has a whole new meaning, it's you can't predict it. You can't predict when something's going to fail you can't predict when it's going to not function anymore or break, or it could be broken for 20 years and just didn't give way yet, so we thought it would be important to continue what we're doing with the sustainability plan and update that through narrative of kind of summarize what we're doing, it really has no place in our action plan. Like I said, they're they're realistic. They're tangible. You could see the flooding. You have to drive around the block, a pipe that's 40 years old, underground. That could give way at any second. You don't know until the hole opens. So that's kind of fortunate. And unfortunate, but what we do to, abate, that is, we have a. We just got a wonderful closed circuit television camera that goes. It's basically a robot, and it goes, in pipes, and it, that's how we televise the condition of these pipes. Now, I have there our vaccine. That's also the second really the first phase in this. We have to go in and clean the lines first before we can see their condition. So we go in and we blast it with water. Jet water. We vacuum it out. Now we have a clean pipe. And then that's where our camera comes in. I mentioned, that a little robot. And we have a couple methods. We have a monitor on the, the control cabinet in the truck, but we also have an iPad, or device like that which we could send it to. We could actually send it real time to, to my office if I'm not out in the field for something urgent. That's the box I mentioned on the back of the truck, my guys love this. They they just love it. And that's a good example of what we get out of this camera, you know, if you could really see. But anyway, everything we're talking about tonight is on this hard copy you've got. So if you have questions or you want to look at it later, you can call me. But everything in blue at the top left corner of that photo, we, you know, we could determine the, the degree of angle on the pipe where it happens. How far down the line it happens. And as you can see, you look at this and you say something's going to happen. Pretty soon, something is going to happen very soon. So, you can see the, the top right has the crack along it, and then toward the bottom of the photo, you can see where the joint, where the pipes go together. It's separating. So this is how we stay. We stay ahead of not having to predict the future. Tony, can I ask you a question? Sure. Thank you. So, is that what kind of pipe is that? I mean, what type is that? Like galvanized steel pipe or what is that? Great question. What goes through there and where is it? You will see on two couple slides. What exactly that is. Okay, I get it. Yeah I'm gonna explain the different type of materials. Metal? Yes, actually. There's aluminized and galvanized. There's two different types. And believe it or not, you cannot connect aluminized to galvanized because there's a chemical reaction that happens at the joint, and it fails almost very quickly. So great. Carol. Yes. Do you sell stormwater pipe for a living? How do you know that? Because I make sculpture and we've made sculpture. We have to make sure the metals aren't going to different media. Oh, excellent. Excellent See, I learned something today, but as I mentioned, you can see the failure there about 1:00 on the pipe. And that's the joint I mentioned, is separating. What's the diameter of that? You think? I mean, it's not exactly from. How big are we looking at? Is that, that's actually a 48 inch pipe, four foot. So it's about four feet. Four feet. All right. And then, that was the corrugated metal pipe. You're looking at the top photo there. That's what they look like when they come brand shiny new off the sales floor, down at the bottom was a recent project we just did down at a property we acquired at Ross. We call it Ross Property. Over off North Florida and Peninsula between there. It's about 51 years old, but you could see in the bottom photo that's what it looks like when we pull it out. So the before and after is pretty dramatic. And it's corrugated metal has an interesting, structure to it. Remember we were kids. We had the paper straws to get to the park or whatever. Well, when they get wet, if you pull them apart, they kind of unravel in a spiral. That pipe does the same thing. It's when it's produced. It's produced in a spiral and kind of spot weld it that way or, or riveted. So when you pull it out, it just doesn't come out as pipe. It comes out like a slinky. It's challenging. Yeah. It looks like a tree. You know, when I saw this first I thought, oh, that's a tree. So that was at, what I call our casting castle works. Ironworks drainage improvement project. I'm going to mention three types of repairs in a minute. But this project actually, actually, we utilized all three type of repairs on this one system. That's north to south orientate, Castle Works to the north. The blue area is a ditch line which was on private property for hundreds of years. We finally purchased that property. The city finally purchased that property. This year, so now we're we weren't able to get to it. And you could see how that's crucial, because when that's blocked and not flowing, all the residents upstream are flooding. So we got that property in there. So with that map, what we did was we had a crew come in, a contractor come in and line the corrugated metal pipes, basically it's a polymer type, almost fiberglass that they line. They maintain the diameter, they actually increase flow because with corrugated it's water's going to go like this with the lining. It's smooth. So the less coefficient of friction, so you make up for that little bit of pipe loss. So we rehabbed and we one thing you'll say you might look and say why didn't you do all of them? Well, the pipe under the roadways till recently was typically, reinforced concrete pipe due to the stresses of roadways. So they fail not near as much as the corrugated metal, think about this. You have a front yard. Can you see my cursor here? No, no. You see, if one of your front yards is one of these properties on the south or north, either one. And we have to go in and we have to dig up from the street to probably a third of the way toward your house, eight feet down, take out a pipe, take out all the dirt, put it back. It's going to be a mess for months. So slip lining. It's as it is expensive. It's not the most because we don't have to go through all that. It's done from one manhole or structure to the other. They do it underground. No damage to people's property. So that's a big, big point, so we use slip lining, we did. The contractor called us up and said, hey, Tony, we can't line this pipe, so why happens more than you know. Resident decided to put a fence up, and these are usually between properties. So where they thought thought the fence was okay, went down and dug a hole with an auger, dug into our pipe and sunk a fence post. So of course that rusted quicker and collapsed. So my crew had to go out. They stopped work. They went to wherever for lunch or the next day to a new job. We went in, we dug it up. We did a spot repair. We cut out the damaged section. We put another piece of pipe over it with some filter fabric and then backfilled it. It wasn't a professional, long lasting fix, but we didn't have to do that because with the lining going through right. That's what was important. But they couldn't get through the post. So we did a spot repair there that day. And then that pipe you see to the left, we found that that was pretty shot. So we had to actually do a full 20 foot section of replacement. So we did the lining. We did a spot repair replacement in that one project, 3 or 4 weeks ago. So how could somebody put a post through it? Didn't they know they were hitting a pipe? I'd like to think not, I'm going to quote a resident one time said to me, permits? Who gets permit? That helps getting a permit because then you have eyes on that. And scrutiny by city staf, and then you also need a fence contractor who will pull a permit for a survey and all that. So no one, no one could realize they may have just moved in and not know. There's a where the manhole goes and it goes through their resistance. When you hit through a pipe. Well, this one was kind of deep. And it it looked like they probably used one of those, like Home Depot or a contractor has a little auger that drills down. It saves. So much time for a fence contractor that would rip through it, especially in that 51 year old condition didn't take much to get through it. I see I'd like to put in a plug here for anyone who's watching, or anyone who's envisioning a project in your yard that involves digging, please call 811 and get your utilities located before you dig. That's it. Absolutely. I have actually, I have an underdrain I have to put in my home this weekend and I had to call. I called 8112. I know there's nothing on that side of my house, but if the odd chance there was something going to cost you a lot of money to be in trouble if you didn't get that located. So what Tommy said was a great, great advice for residents contractors. So the person who did that fence unknowingly, did they have to do anything corrective or did they? What Well, we're nice guys. All they did was they had to let us in their backyard and we fixed it. Yeah. And the pipe that was that you did the spot repair on and then you lined it. That liner is that's not a structural liner though, right. That's it is it is it is. Yes. And that'll take the kind of weight that. Correct. Yeah. I don't I don't know what the downward force is but yeah. And what we did was we put another piece of corrugated material on top of it, larger than the hole we made. So any downward force would be absorbed by that. And the structural integrity of the liner is incredible. So yeah, we were okay with that part. Very smart. Yeah. So that was a that was interesting. That was one of our okay. Everything we can do we will have to on this project. Something that we kind of live and die by is our, what we call an npdes municipal, separate storm sewer system permit. Ms4 permit? That's through the Department of Environmental Protection. That is something they set rules and guidelines of items both maintenance and, design and plans review that are mandatory, it must be done or they could they could, you know, do a consent order on the city fines. You know, we get in big trouble. So each year I must complete an annual report. And that's kind of small if you see it. But it, that right there is the ms4 pipes. So we actually know how many linear feet of pipe we televise, how many linear feet of pipe we clean, how much dirt we pull out of pipes, how much nitrogen and phosphorus is in, what we pull out of the pipes, it's very comprehensive, I'm getting used to. I guess I'm kind of numb, but it's very from the fertilizer, the nitrogen and the. Well, it's naturally occurring, but also. Yes, that's probably the main contributor, but now, now they're finding even groundwater coming from the ground is a source of nitrogen, phosphorus. How do we how do we remove that? So as great as this program is, sometimes they go a little extreme. And that's why they, they communicate with our municipality. Say we say this is not reasonable and they, they not a lot of leeway, but they give us a little bit sometimes. But so I put together this annual report and there's I mean it's chock full of data from soup to nuts. Everything we do, we have been in compliance since I've gotten here. I've never had an issue, except for a typo we had last year. I had to change that. But. Yeah, that that's our controlling force. And, okay, there's, you mentioned about pipe materials, a couple different kinds. We've got VCP, which is, vitrified clay pipe. These are going chronological to this was I mean, aqueducts, Chinese way back, basically they were clay pots without a top. And bottom that were stuck to each other. They weren't even slipped over. They were just butted up to each other. They actually used wood up north for a long time to they used a type of wood, and they just built a trough with wood and put a top on it and filled it and it some of it as wood gets older, it gets like, fossilized. So some of them are still in existence. But I didn't want to go back that far. I'm going to VCP because we do run across that matter of fact, we have VCP going under US alt 19 at Oakwoo, is it Dot is it us? We're kind of considering that right now, but we noticed in televising that's that's got to be slip lined, can you imagine digging up the OT the nightmare of stopping traffic for days. So lining is the way to go, you got VCP no longer used, but still in the ground. So what is your, When do you know that you have to do something? I mean, what are the signs of the degrading of the materials or. Well it's just a matter of time. Is it like the Golden Gate Bridge where you start on one end and. Well, you know what's interesting? We could televise it today at 2 p.m. and it could fail tonight at midnight, that's just the way it is now. We could there's predictors which I'll. Great question. You know, that it's failed. I mean, what are the. Well, there's typically either a depression or a hole because what happens is that that failed pipe right. Has an opening now. And what happens is through rain and just gravity, dirt and soil goes into that pipe and gets washed down. So what does that do? It creates a void under the asphalt. So the asphalt will bend till it can't bend anymore and then it breaks free. Is that what happened on Martin Luther King a few years ago? Where there was it was blocked off. The intersection was blocked off because of something like that. I don't know which time, we had several down there. I think that was a, a manhole rehab, which whether it's a sanitary manhole or a stormwater manhole, anything that's not under pressure, like water and reclaimed water is under pressure. So that pushes out and tends not to leak in. I mean, you'll see water coming out. You know, there's a leak with storm and sewer. You have to wait for a depression or a hole because it's all happening underground. When there's a water leak, it's going at least path and it's going out. That may have been, the, people call in and say we have sinkholes all the time, and that's kind of taboo. We don't like that word because sinkholes are pretty, pretty intense. There was the one most recent one down on, mango, by the trailer park, almost by 19, there was one up a little further, they do happen, so but you're saying that this this is just a depression. That's from the void of the collapse of the pipe, but it's not it's not an authentic. Correct? Correct People like that term just like, you know, give me a Kleenex instead of a tissue. It's a generic term that's used. And we try and steer people from that because it's scary. Is this clay pipe still work, what we saw in that televising and I'm sorry, I don't have it now, but as I said, they were butted together. You could see they're cocked and there's some spacing in between. So whereas we didn't see a huge issue, we know that next year when the budget comes out, that's going to be one of our areas to line. We now. And here's the other thing to kind of the hard rock principle, hard rock, hotel and casino. We're betting it's going to last a year. Yeah, if it doesn't, then we go to the emergency spot repair, then that'll buy us time to get through to the year for the year. But obviously they worked for a long time. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah though. Well on the next slide you'll see the life expectancy of these Tony. Yeah. Thank you, you mentioned the asphalt creates a depression. I'm just curious. The old brick streets that have this, VCP pipe running under them. Is that more tolerant? Is that sturdier than the asphalt? Does the asphalt tend to. Well, you got a couple apples and oranges there. Okay, brick streets and asphalt streets have different signs, they show different signs, let's get away from VCP because there's maybe 100ft, a couple hundred feet in the entire city in 19mi■!S. Nota big issue, as a matter of fact, I know of the under Oakwood crossing and then one over by on MLK. Excuse me? Just west of Rotary Field. There's a little one in there, but, yeah, don't don't get too concerned, what happens is when there's a void or the joint separated or tree roots grow in and cause the integrity of the pipe remains. Okay. All it's doing is, is breaching the pipe and letting the dirt come in, you could have a hole this big and the pipe will be fine, right? Pipe will be fine. But the bigger the hol, of course, the quicker the dirt comes out. Smaller. I mean, you could get a small two inch crack. Could take ten years, but eventually it's going to give. And the first time with asphalt is, like I said, you'll see a little. Just a little divot a little. Then that starts getting worse. That's our sign to go check it out. We televise, if we don't see anything, maybe we missed it, maybe it gets worse. Worst case scenario, it's a big enough hole. It relieves dirt quick. So much so quickly. The asphalt won't have anything. It'll fall. Brick streets, same principle with the pipes and the holes and the leaks. They tend to. The bricks tend to same a depression, but the bricks typically don't fall in, because when they get so bad, we usually either get a call or we notice it, staff noticed it and we go out and fix them. So basically it's depressions on both, but the bricks tends to well, they both have the pros and cons. So yeah, the depressions are first sign the holes there. Second sign. I was just wondering if one was vastly different than the other. It's just a different way, you know. Different. No, because they're designed to withstand weight, some traffic bearing, some not. And which I'll go into in a minute here. If they're under a roadway, for instance, you could have a four inch thick concrete reinforced steel reinforced pipe under the roadway. And I don't know if you ever heard the term bunghole. It's a hole in the top in the center of the pipe, where contractors put a chain through in a bar so they can pick it up, because if you picked it up from either end, you couldn't set it together. So they pick it up and then what they're supposed to do, and oftentimes they do they'll they'll mud that with hydraulic cement to cover that hole. Over time it chips, it falls. The water leaks in, it gets I have at my house right now and I don't want to talk about that too much. But anyway, an RCP can cause that same hole in depression as a thin metal pipe, but they're designed to withstand so much weight. So someone's not going to lose their car in it. You know what I'm saying? It's not going to just go crazy, structurally, they're intact even with a hole in them. So that's kind of a good design. Okay. Thank you. You're welcome. So then we have the galvanized metal pipe we talked about both galvanized and aluminized, we have, the reinforced concrete pipe, which you'll see probably on major projects along the side of the road everywhere you go. That's that's what they usually use PVC. Not so much. That's just a PVC pipe, it's what we call C 900. It's a little thicker grad, sometimes for applications where we don't have the size and there's not a lot of flow we'll put that in from like maybe into a, from a main structure to a canal or, you know, something where there's not a lot of flow, but it's used very sparingly. This is I have a bunch of this in the yard. It's called HDPE, high density polyethylene pipe, this has been around for years. Had about a well, I'll tell you here in a minute about a 50 year life, 25 year lifespan. That's that's awesome. That's almost like I don't want to say Legos, but it has a bell on one end. A wider side, and a spigot on the other with a rubber. Gasket. And two guys could pick this up, put it in a ditch. Don't we use a machine for, like, the 48 inch pipe? But two guys could take it off the trailer. They could put it in a ditch. Then we put a strap on and a machine and it snaps. And, you know, it's home. It's just like I said, it's fun to work with. It's easy to work with, RCP, you got to get the angle right, and then you might have to take it off and try again. And then a rubber piece comes out. So that's very flexible. And the newest rage same same type of pipe. But it's got a coating in it. And on it. And they're supposed to be lasting up to 100 years. Just came out a few years ago but same same lightweight, super easy, the guys could cut it in less than a minute with a concrete saw. They just cut right through it. It's just basically PVC, but it's very. So when I look at this picture of the high density, it looks like there's some metal inside. Yeah. I was going to ask that's all. That's all plastic high density polyethylene. Same. Yeah. Yeah it's great. It's just a great color to show that because if you had that right, it was black right next to the other pipe above it. You'd never know the difference. So that's what the manufacturers say. Well, this is a new idea. Let's charge more money and paint it gray or color it gray. That's that's great. So this is what we were talking about. The characteristics. If you look on the left, there's got and I don't want to go over this. You could, you could look at this at home unless you, you find something you want to ask me about, but, corrosion resistance, the material, what it's made of, the durability in years. And that's projected, by the way, you could put a pipe in a contractor, put a pipe in today, and in two weeks, it could have a road failure because they missed that bung hole, or they didn't connect the pipes properly. Once again, you know, you could inspect it all you want, but if it's off by a half a quarter of an inch, half inch. So two weeks after a brand new system goes in, not very likely, but could happen, flexibility, not a lot of flexibility with concrete. It's tough to move around. You can't bend it. Thermal UV, they all have UV resistance. Now. I don't know how good that helps. Four feet underground, but it's a thing. I think what they concern with is if it sits out in your yard for any amount of time, the sun doesn't degrade it. Chemical resistance, and cost. We the type of material we use largely depends on where it is and what the application is. Just recently, the city accepted in our standard details that HDPE, that plastic corrugated pipe is acceptable. Now under roadways, until a few years ago, it was only concrete. So that's a good thing. It's less expensive. It's we don't have to wait for a company to pour and set and build a mold and pour these. We go to the yard and we buy them from from our our stock yard or our purveyor. So, and now I think, what did it say in there, 50 to 100 years. They're predicting. How do they know that? I don't know, it's only been around for five years. Four years. So how much? What's the percentage of laying new pipe as opposed to lining the pipe? Unpredictable If, say, the pipes that were put in here in 1975 were all good? The answer to both of those would be zero, since we can't predict when it fails, we can't. I can't give you an assurance of, you know, 10 to 13% of pipe is repaired or fails. I mean, in the last, let's say five years, have you done more putting liners in or replacing pipe? We've been repairing and replacing. And I'll tell you why, most of it's in 90% of that is 95% that's been in house with my guys. My four guys, we didn't have money in our city and one's on a street sweeper all day, so I got three, and actually, I finally have three because I hired someone today. He started today. Yay! Finally, a full staff of four. But, the. I'm sorry. Where are we going with that? Last year, I've been asking and not to throw anybody under the bus, but we've been requesting for years in our budget for an annual stipend for lining. We got one. Last year was our first, and we used every penny of it, we got it in for this year, and it's looking like moving forward, we're going to have that those funds. And it was, I mean, it wasn't earth shattering $150,000. Well, we did the whole castle Works community, and, I think we did another location for that. And that all depends on how deep the pipe is, how big the pipe is, you know, are you factors are you trying to be proactive before there's failures or by, I'm sure you have a map of where they've been lined? Well, the proactive comes in with the camera. The televising and the cleaning. That's our first step in being proactive. If we see something, they say something they tell me and I determine, okay, well, let's go in and let's get that repair. And now we know to put that on the lining list, like I said, if we were to do the castle work subdivision and tear up everyone's front lawn and sidewalk and street and take eight months, I wouldn't be here talking to you. Probably right now you're fired. But it all depends on the application and location of where where it is and how bad it is, at all costs, we come out and we do. We do repairs first. If it's too large, we'll do a replacement, and if it's not in a conducive position, we'll still go in and we'll do a spot repair, and have to put people's fences and shrubs back and mailbox. But at least we know now that's a priority for our our slip lining, yeah. So let's see. There's essentially, three ways in which, gosh, we already talked. You guys are good. We already talked, you have replacement, that's the first type of way to address aging infrastructure, this is typically the costliest, like I said, that we could do 1 or 2 sections of pipe in town, and depending where they are. But for large projects, we need a contractor. So then you've got engineering, design costs. You've got construction costs of not only their labor, their materials, their machinery, we don't have that cost when we do it in-house, we just have the cost of the material, you know, it's a day to day business for labor and equipment, so that's typically the costliest, just if I may go back, I also run the street department. We'll go out and we'll do potholes daily or every other day. Now, if there's an entire block that to be resurfaced, we don't resurfaced. We don't have the equipment to do that efficiently or the manpower that has to be contracted out as well. So those spot repairs are done by us. The large like hole 1 or 2 blocks or neighborhoods have to be contracted. So then the spot repair, which I mentioned where we, we get into where we have to go, if possible, we dig down to the pipe, expose it, we see if we either have to use hydraulic cement, if we have to use a piece, another piece of pipe, if we have to use our well, we always use our filter fabric to keep dirt from getting back in. And then we backfill so that spot repairs are single single spots. Now, there may be three spot repairs on a run of pipe, but they're still considered spot repairs. And then finally the rehab or rehabilitation, which is the slip lining or what they call CIP cure in place pipe, it's really interesting. They, you know, there's new ways they're doing it now, but they, they essentially go in one manhole and they pull a, like a limp hose, if you will pull it through, they tie it off on one end and on the other end they open it up and they inject super hot, I think, 240 degree water. So it fills up this this like a limp straw fills it up so it expands to the pipe. And then over time that heat cures that and it turns into a fiberglass. You can't even beat it with a hammer. And then what they do is they they pull, they unplug it, they let it cool down, they cut the ends off. And now you have a new pipe. Wow. That's cool. Is that a resin that. Yes it's a two stage type of no, it's not, it's no like I said, it's in the resin is more of a you think of a liquid where you mix the two together. This is actually in the material of the fabric of this, this lining. So what the hot water does, it pushes it out, expands it. And the heat makes activates whatever's in the fibers. It's like a fiberglass sleeve that activates within it. There's no chemicals added, so it's safe for it's absolutely safe for stormwater applications because it's within the material that the pipes are made out of or the liners made out of. Okay, cool. All right. You guys ask great questions. I thought I would be out of here in five minutes. I'm like, man, I hope they ask me some questions. So anyway, thank you. This is great. Probably level of service you may or may not have heard about that, we're going to talk a little bit about that here in a minute. But, things involved, when it comes down to what you have to do, there's a level of service we want to provide to business owners and residents. Basically quality of life, you've got permitting which whether it's building department, TRC, city permitting, southwest Florida water Management district permitting, Department of Environmental protection, permitting. Army Corps of Engineers permitting. It all depends where if you're by a water body or what the thing is. So permitting is a big thing. Feasibility. Can we fit through those two houses with a machine to dig it? No If we dig this pipe, is this lady's bedroom going to collapse into the hole? So we got to look at feasibility of what type of repair, and then just like anything else, the cost of replacement or, you know, the cost of doing whatever you have to do, you know, sometimes it's like, get in there and fix it the best you can. Buy us a few months till the new budget comes out, you know? So it's a juggling. It's a juggling game, level of service. Service is really important, we have people all the time say, you know, the pipes are too small. Why don't you put a big, you know, six foot pipe in here and let the water go out? Well, number one, our average or average elevation in town is about three and a half, four feet. And our tides go up to four, three and a half, four feet. So I don't care if you put an eight foot, ten foot pipe here. Mother nature controls how much could go out. So you need you need fault. We're not in Colorado, right? Okay. So that's a big factor, the other thing is think about this. I'm a builder or developer, and I buy a tract of land, and I'm gonna put a hundred houses on this based on level of service, I go with the minimum permitted 24 inch stormwater pipe. Just an example. Well, they could maybe go with a 48. And this, this, this development may never, may never fail. However, the builder has to either absorb that cost or they pass it on to selling lots and selling homes. Well, what does that do? It makes the cost of homes go up and less people could buy it. So they make it as affordable as they can. I don't want to say it's cheap, as affordable as they can to develop that property. Now we as a city, all these developments are built with stuff on the ground right? How are we going to go fix it? We can't put a bigger pipe in there. It's only ten foot drainage easement. It's a four foot pipe. When you dig down, you need about three times the width to go down. If you're ten feet down, you're going to go 30ft wide. And we only have ten feet, 15ft. This might be naive, but no, is it wouldn't there be a code? A recommended code for the size of the pipes and particular areas? Well, yes and no. To prevent future problems, especially. Okay. Great questio. Codes are constantly evolving. They didn't have rules back in the 70s that we have now. Okay. So you're talking about existing developments right now. Well that's what we deal with new. We go through planning and we all we all you know put our eyes on it and we comment and we say is this big enough. You know. So you could live with a ten year level of service. Everything could be fine, but when you get that first, you know, 100 year rainstorm and you flood, it won't happen very often. Or it happens a few times a year. If you have that bigger, huge pipe, it's still going to happen, probably, but it's going to be. But then again, our storms have been increasing in frequency and intensity. So this whole five, ten, 25, 100 year storm, it doesn't happen once every 100 years. It seems like it happens eight times a year here. So I think they need to rethink that, that that methodology. One other consideration too is the water management district has rules for that. About stormwater. And people like the water to be off their property as rapidly as possible. But there's rules to protect downstream folks. So you have to maintain standards to show that you're not going to be putting much more flow into downstream rivers. And have much higher peak flows, because that might cause downstream flooding to other folks. So there's a lot of how this is handled is through, like, you know, storage and having stormwater ponds and things like that. So everyone gets focused on the pipes. But it's about storage, having a place for that water to go and slowly bleed it off over time so that you're not inundating all the people downstream. Because if everyone got rid of the water as rapidly as possible, you'd have a huge amount of flow going through flooding. Everyone for a very short duration. Which would be, yeah, years ago the main thing was flooding. Let's keep these residents from flooding. So they put the water somewhere else. Well, now it's water quality they're focusing on, right? So think about this. We have an existing system that we can only replace in kind. We can't make it bigger. I got a sneak peek at our peek at our new permit. They're they're including in all projects to us for us to implement a water quality element, maybe a pond where the water sits in and the nutrients settle out before it discharges you have a neighborhood that's built. There's no pond there now, how are we going to put a pond there, so there's some challenges coming up, but yeah, it's getting away from just flooding, purely flooding to flooding and water quality. So the property that's right at the end of my street, I live on Cypress, but on cypress and gross. There's, I think, a project where a pond is being put in. I've seen the cement, the cement pipes there for quite some time, how is that function? I'm just curious. And once it's complete, is that supposed to be a collection area for, these massive floods that we're seeing? Great question, that's the what we call the gross avenue. Gross avenue corridor drainage improvement project. Or as we call it, the Pink Gross Project. That was my first big baby, they said it would never be done. I'm like, we can make it happen. I'm not saying I did all of it, but with help of our engineers, we were able to procure a swiftmud a Southwest Florida water grant, matching funds, 5050, which the price has gone up since then. So it's not really 5050, but it was a $1.7 million. We got a grant. It the project limits are from Tarpon Avenue to the Anclote River. You especially know Gross Avenue, right? Well, a lot of the city are a little bowls. When you go up at Penn or Cypress or whatever, there'll be a low spot and a low spot. So this was we've had inundation and flooding here forever. So what we're doing is from Tarpon Avenue, we're running a main trunk line all the way down to the river or up to the river, because it's north, the first outlet, if you will, and inlet is Cypress Pond right there at Cypress and. Gross. It's going to take water from the surrounding water basin, store it. Okay. And once again, when you store water like that stormwater, the nitrogen phosphorus tend to settle to the bottom. So we were we benefited by not only having flood protection for residents, but it's actually providing water quality before it hits the river. So that's an important part of it. So it goes into that. It's going to be a big, big pond. Nice. It's going to look like a park when we're done, I promise, goes in there, then it pops off and continues north. We another thing they said you'll never be able to work with the school board. They're stubborn. They're terrible. Well, a couple conferences, a couple red wines. You talk to the people and they get to like you. So we have an agreement with the county and or the school board, after years of failing to really negotiate a deal, the pond that was in front of the elementary school and then what we call three a and then there's another pond above it by spruce, which is three B, once again, that takes all the flooding from the neighborhoods, contains it, and then pops off, goes down spruce and then out to the river. So really comprised of it has water in it right now. I in nine years, nine and a half years, I never saw water in it. But I think once it looks beautiful. So yeah. And they're still we're still going to plant trees around it too. So it's going to be landscaped much like Cypress Pond. So great question. Excellent. So I have a question about the pond. So there's a pond I live on Chesapeake and I think you've been there. I think I've talked to you there. I'll wait for you guys to say a road. That's great. But go on there with no issues. Well, there were issues, and the storm drain got cleaned and because during the hurricane, it flooded terribly. And then they've been cleaned. And this last storm, there wasn't any flooding at all. That's that's great news. First of all, when people say, you know, during the hurricane, I kind of stopped. I don't want to say I stopped listening, but all bets are off. During a hurricane. Nothing works as intended. It's always an exceedence of design. Need it to be cleaned. We. Brilliant. But thank you. I'll tell my three guys that they cleaned it out. Chesapeake and Riverside. Right Riverside floods all the time. But there's a pond behind that, and I've. I've said to so many people, even the county person who's doing Beckett Bridge, why don't you pump water into there, dig it deeper and get that water away? Well, today I was walking the dog and we walked through that alley and there was a city truck pumping water into the pond from the trailer park. That's right there. And there was also a pipe into a manhole cover. So it really was like, whoa, they're finally putting water in that pond. Do you know about you mean the you know what that was, Tommy, that's a the pumps you saw. That was a temporary dewatering setup. That's. They're they're doing a spot repair right now on a sewer line. And they have to reduce the groundwater table in order to be able to access the pipe and not have the crews can't work in standing water in an open trench. So they have a temporary well point system that they set up to evacuate the water to make it safe for repairs. And that's that's a relatively small quantity of water. But that's what was being what you saw there while they were working on the sewer line. Yeah Because there were two guys in a truck. I want to thank both of you because after hearing your question, I would just say make some calls tomorrow and say, who was pumping into my pond? And by Tommy saying that, that makes sense. And they did. They did the right. They did the right thing too, because that water being pumped into that pond lets all the sediments filter out in the grass before going out to the river so that was a good thing. But I want to know why were Riverside is always flooded terribly? Why isn't that water being pumped into that pond? Well, first of all, pumps at this point in time are prohibitive. You know, it's million and a half dollars for one pump. They have to run all the time, or they seize up and they don't work. And you got to pay another million and a half or 2 million, probably by the time of price escalation, they have to be maintained constantly, they're subject to power outages, breakdown pumps are really the most, the least cost effective way to move water. I mean, they seem like they make sense, but they're not practical. Well, once again, we're victims of elevation. You have to. First of all, you could dig a pond four feet deep and hit water or 20ft deep, and it'll be 20ft of water. So you can only put so much into a pond based on the water table, and then you have to have the fall to get it to it. So there's a lot of parts. I get it, though on the bright side, along with the Baker Bridge, when we were talking about it, I spoke to their their engineers down there. They have also included the second or another part of that project from the west end of the bridge to, almost, what's the name of that court, around the corner? I know what you mean. Right around that loop, not central. Craig. Craig, Crai, drive. So from the bridge to Craig Drive, they're raising the roadway. They're putting inlets and they're going dumping out into the Kramer. Kramer Bayou with a check valve so the water doesn't tidally influence. So that's a county project? That's nothing. That's their sign. I talked to the woman about this, and she said the drainage, they have a drainage design. And that's going to go in first before they do the bridge. I can't wait. It's supposed to be like 22. They were supposed to start. They said the beginning of 25. So, I have a question about the area that always floods on alt 19, right between the hospital and the golf cours. Is that something that's county, or is that this? I used to like you. What do you mean, always? Well, no, that's that's an that's an interesting big rain it did last time. And I'll tell you what happened. Well, I mean, we used to have, we used to have rains every day. We're not having that problem now. That blessing, it's a blessing, but we during Darby, there was no I was really glad I didn't have to work on Monday morning and try to navigate that. Well, interesting about Debbie. And you say about every day rains every day rains, we might get a 10th of an inch or quarter of an inch cause that. Debbie. Yeah, quarter an inch to half inch, whatever. Debbie was ten inches over a couple days. Yes. The ground gets saturated. It can't go down anymore. It has to go somewhere. It doesn't. The other interesting part about this was that pond there at the golf course. Yes. First of all, I want to start out and say Dottie has a project right now underway. They're going to be addressing that. They're putting in drainage, they're raising the road. They're making extra turn lane. So that's happening, but right now what happens is the water goes off and we put we in conjunction with public services, have a you see that fountain in the middle of the pond? Well, there's a pump, like a lift station pump in there, which that's why we partner with our public services. Because they're lift stations. Crew maintain that, that pumps not only to the fountain, but also pumps to the next pond to the west, to the next pond. So when we get those rains, that pump keeps that intersection dry. So it was okay during Debbie. Well, no it wasn't. We had a comedy of errors. Number one, we got this ten inches of rain, which would have been tougher to keep up with anyway, but it would have, and we're addressing this right now. The water level rose to an elevation where the power box that ran that pump was underwater. Water and power don't mix too well, thus eliminating the functionality of the pump, so we're talking with Duke about getting that elevated, we're increasing the size of that pump. And what we did, our stormwater guys went down. We have these trailer mounted big orange box pumps. We took three of them down there. We put our four inch hoses in and we pumped it into the wetland. So it took about ten hours, 12 hours. We were able to pump it down that way because our our normal pump, if was working like I said it, it may have been a little bit of water on the road, maybe a lot. I don't know, ten inches is brutal, but that's what happened. There was a whole comedy of errors that, well, it's good that they're going to elevate the road. I mean, that makes so much sense. Well, the thing to me makes more sense is they're putting they're making it wider so you can actually have a safe turn lane there where people don't drive off the road to go crazy. Right So, just for an update on that, that, that we've been working with Dot on that project because they're going to be we're relocating some of our utilities in that area to facilitate the project. And that project was just recently bid and awarded. So it should be commencing relatively shortly. So and kind of on a smaller similar note, we've been in contact with Dot, for all 19, basically from mirrors to Dodecanese. Their roadway. We have a maintenance agreement with them. Ultimately it's theirs to theirs to make functional, we're going back and forth, but we're actually by guidance of the commission. A few years ago, we've been we initiated this contact. So we're working through all those issues, getting those resolved with our our help and our partnership, so anyway, everything we talked about today ultimately comes down to budget. Design, which nowadays you design a project, it could be 150, $250,000 just to design it, permitting, which all those agencies I mentioned earlier, property acquisition, if we need to buy a house to get something, you know, it happens, topograph, level of service desired and. Oh, yeah. And budget again. Did I can I stress that? No. And really, that's what it's all about, you know, everyone wants to drive a Mercedes, and they got Toyota Camry money, so it is what it is. So one thing that hasn't been mentioned a little bit, but is where does the stormwater go? And because that's a big issue, I mean, it's a big issue where, you know, sewage goes it's a big issue where stormwater goes because stormwater does have all that runoff. And you know, going in our waterways isn't a great thing. So, sewage at least gets treated. But stormwater doesn't. Bingo. Going back to the beginning of time, there was the hydrologic cycle. Rain comes down, hits the ground, runs to a water body, evaporates or translates or goes down to the clouds, rains. So that's a cycle. It's a never ending cycle, that's where it goes now, the Clean Water Act was established in 1978 to 81, and between there before it was finalized, and actually, I may because I was in the wastewater end. But you might help me with dates here, Tommy. Back in the day, there was what was called, called combined sewers. Right, and a catchphrase back in the 60s. 50s dilution is the solution. So they had poop water. Pardon the phrase, going out to a lake or a river or an ocean or, like, look at all the water in the ocean. This little poop will, you know. So dilution is solution that went away quickly. Was the sewer, was that parallel to the Clean Water Act or did they have a new a different thing that spurred on, treatment plants, no, that was Clean Water Act. It was. Okay. So this same, same Clean Water Act addressed wastewater now with the DEP, which we all we both report to, it was, the primary source of pollution. They saw was, was with wastewater plants. So then they, they started out saying, okay, where's your area? What pipes go into the waters, map them. So we mapped them. Then they said, okay, now show me. Test them what's happening? Okay. Now build a facility to remove all this stuff. So it was in phases with stormwater. You know, it wasn't as bad as fecal bacteria and all that. So that was never truly addressed with the urgency. Now we got phased in the same way. There are parallels. 2001 was when we started our well, it was 98. We started talks, but 2001 around that time is when we started that Npdes program, National Pollutant Distribution Elimination System, that's where I report annually to the state. And they, we follow their guidelines. First thing they said was, okay, what do you have underground going out into water and what is it? A river is Lake Tarpon. Is it the bayous or is it the beach? Okay, here's what we got. So great. Okay. Now I want you to go out and take samples and look for people dumping and kind of they do it in steps. Then now they're saying with this new permit, which is our fifth cycle, the cycles are five year cycle. So the last 25 years, we're on our fifth cycle or fifth permit. Now we not only have to test nitrogen, phosphorus in the soils, which we've done for years, but we they want to sample. They want to know all of our outfalls before they only want to know just major outfalls, which were 36 inch or greater. See, they were trying to get the biggest bang for the buck, the biggest pipes, most problem. Little pipe. Excuse me, little pipes. Probably not as much. Now they want all pipes that go out to waterbodies, whether it be the river, the lake, the bayous or the beach. Okay. You have jurisdictional issues. Is it split with county? County, dot, so now we're to the point where they're saying, okay, what's in this? I I can safely say probably not before I retire, there's going to be stormwater treatment plants. I can see that being feasible with the red tides. You know, you would hope that there's well, how do you put all that water? You put it in a giant tank. Well, that's the thing. You would have to do something similar to a wastewater plant. But how do you do that? Do you have to buy five, ten or a block of homes? Tear them down to put this in. Then how do you get all the pipes that are already underground to that facility? Right Not as easy as it sounds. It doesn't, doesn't sound easy. What? What? I mentioned technology in the beginning, now they have where the catch basins. They have baskets, filter baskets. They have alum injection where they inject alum into the waterways. And it it settles out the heavy metals and the nitrogen. Phosphorus. Then you clean the bottom, there's technologies in play now to avoid building that stormwater plant. And that may never happen, but it conceivably could because that's the same way wastewater started. Now, you know, they had a wastewater plant and it was a wastewater treatment facility. Now it's advanced wastewater treatment. So they've been improving throughout time too. So is it going to happen? It's going to be hard. It's going to be expensive, so now they're trying to do the spot spot repairs. Take take the dirt out of it. That's why we street sweep the streets. We, we cleaned the pipes and the basins because what? The dirt in the street goes in the catch basin goes in the pipe out to. Right. So we start with what we could do. We clean the pipes, keep all that out. Someday we'll have residents educated to pick up their own bag, their own leaves and yard waste so they don't get in the system. Someday, maybe we do that. I wish everyone and everyone should pick up dog poop, nitrogen, phosphorus. Bingo, correct. So, yeah, there's a lot of questions, and I, you know, I kept my sons none of my sons went in my career path. I told my son, listen, environmental stuff is booming. You get a job in that. Now you will have a job the rest of your life. But they decide to be electricians and in the Air Force. And you know, all this stuff. So, but, yeah, it's a it's not a career that's going to be like, hey, there's no more EPA or no more DEP. Not in our lifetime. It's the nitrogen and phosphorus are also fertilizers. They are two of the three consistent, I guess it's nitrogen. Phosphorus And because it's like a three numbers 24, seven, 15 or whatever, nitrogen, phosphorus. And what's the other one? You know usually I think potassium. Yes. You're correct. And we do have, actually Pinellas County, we're awesome, and I can say that because DEP tells us we're awesome, because Pinellas County is the main permit holder. We as Tarpon Springs, Largo, Saint Pete, Clearwater, safety Harbor, we're co permittees of Pinellas Count, right. We are held probably in the highest esteem at DEP from what they tell us, we were the first to institute a fertilizer ban. Yeah hardware, Lowe's, Home Depot, all the big box stores, even little stores cannot sell fertilizer between June 1st. And I'm going to say October 30th. But the landscapers, they can't even sell them to them. They know they can't get it in Pasco. And if they do, and that's the other thing. If you you'll notice on landscape trucks, you'll see an oval sign sticker. Bmp best management practices for all landscapers are required to have this certification and training through the county and the state. They know that. And if they don't, then they get fines and consent orders by the county. You know, there's so many there's so many ways to enrich even grass. If you wanted to have a lawn, I mean, we don't have a lawn where I live. We just have a garden and we're using volcanic minerals. And I mean, that that's fantastic. But and it's nonpolluting, it's organic. So I just. Where do you wish that there was as a might we get it through Vesuvius? Yeah. Quality green specialists. And the land only during eruption years. Anyway, no. That's great. And I look at it as, hey, man, if I put fertilizer down, I gotta cut my grass more often. But, and we also have throughout the year, there's a no no fly zone, if you will. I want to say it's ten feet along the slope of a water body. Or like, if people who live on bayou, the bayou or the rivers, from your head wall, you can't fertilize within ten feet. Do people do that? Of course we'd like to think so. Signs Because I was in Safety Harbor and along the Bayshore Drive, they had signs to remind people not to use fertilizers during rain season. I just started last year. We have three message boards during leaf season, and which goes and then through the summer where we put public service messages on there. Hey, bag your leaves. Don't you know, use fertilizer and I don't know, I guess you don't see our trucks driving around town. We have educational, public, educational wraps on our trucks. No fertilizer, only rain down the storm drain. Don't feed the beast, we kind of get catchy catchphrases. So that's public education, believe it or not, is the cheapest and probably the. Well, we want to say most effective, but being the cheapest, it's ranks up there on the effectiveness. That's the best way I go in schools. We have, all our schools we go into, we do programs where we go out in their parking lot, we suck out the pipes in the dirt, we show them what happens and what not to do. Because when they learn, chances are they're right. It won't happen. Right quick. Funny story. I probably way went over my time, and I apologize. No problem, I was in with Tommy's specialty. Was back in, when I was with Oldsmar. 90s. I'd go in for the teach ins and whatnot, and I tell kids about this bottled water. I go throw it away, don't use that. I said, our water is just as clean. And I said, the money I showed it was like millions of dollars in and the litter of the plastic I was also a football coach and a baseball coach. And you know how many parents come up and say, if you tell my kids, not for me to buy bottled water anymore? I mean, it wasn't very popular with the parents, but the kids got it. Yeah I'm not going to change a parent's right. I mean, I could change a couple kids who in turn, you know, appreciate it and do whatever. So, I also do a, a stormwater pollution prevention poster contest, which each of the schools top three winners get a 50. Yeah, a $50, 75, $100 gift card to the winners, we get some outstanding artists in those grades, fourth and fifth graders. Fabulous. So, you know, we try and, I'm I'm in the process right now. I was put on hold. We're going to do a adopt a street again that the county used to have. Adopt a street in town. And there's also a thing now called adopt a drain, where in neighborhoods people go around and clean out the leaves in front of the catch basins, and they give us the weight and we report it to the state and we get credit and all. So we're always looking for something new and something to message boards or sides of the truck, classroom. Everything we can do to get this word out. So great. I have a question. Sure. So we have the sewage treatment plant, and from what you said about the stormwater doing that, the sewer pipes had to all be moved to go there, right? In the same way you're talking about if you had a stormwater treatment. So how long did that take? And when did that start. That was with the same clean water act that we were talking about. So, 80s, early 80s start now, a lot of places already had where I grew up in Pennsylvania. Real quick story in the 70s, 60s, 70s, whatever there was, there was ditches around the outside of the small town, 1000 people. There was literally a five foot ditch that went along the side of the city. People's homes drained right into that ditch. Yeah. Summertime. We're off for playing around. There was all these metal pipes, water pipes going across, and we'd walk across them. Inevitably, one of us fell in the creek, so we'd have to go home and change. Was it sanitary? No way did we die. They made us tougher boomers. But But now, think about this. All the all the homes went to this ditch, right? So when the clean Water Act came out, I said 6070s in the 80s, they said, hey, let's take this ditch, put a big pipe in and have all those what's called laterals connect to that pipe, because that pipe eventually flowed somewhere to a main. So maybe a small treatment facility where they may be aerated it or filtered it. So it was a little easier transition. That's why it, it really I probably shouldn't have said that with stormwater stations, lift stations or wastewater treatments have been around for a long time, and now, once again, new subdivisions, we require that they they show us. How much do you predict water usage, how much sewer usage, what size lines you got to connect to. And this is the nearest connection you could make because we know they've got to connect somewhere to get to. And if there's nothing they have to put, what's the lift stations to pump it to the nearby, other lift station to a main line to the plant. So, being that that's been around for 40, 50 years, they've just been getting better and bigger. They've always pretty much been there, so that's probably why it's easier. I know this is about stormwater, but when you have the sewage treated, what happens to the treated sewage? Oh, you can tell, right? I know the answer for our treated wastewater effluent. What what our treated wastewater effluent. Yes. Yeah. So, our here in Tarpon, we have what we call full advanced treatment, we also have advanced wastewater treatment, which means we treat, this is actually something Holly and I were talking about. So back in the 80s, there was a large concern in the Tampa Bay region about, wastewater discharges into Tampa Bay. And it was considered, you know, like a dead water body, and you couldn't go fishing. And it was not safe. And, you had a group of standards called the Grizzle Figg standards. It was named after a couple of state legislatures, and they wanted to clean up Tampa Bay. And that led to providing nutrient treatment and nutrient removal in the wastewater process. And then when we had our plant constructed, it was upgraded to provide, full advanced treatment, which is the standard that is required for public access reuse. So we have to not just treat the nutrients to make it safe so that we don't have algae blooms, but also to, you know, provide a good, healthy degree of protection for public health, for irrigation, for the public. And so in Tarpon, about 80% of our treated wastewater is used for reclaimed water, for irrigation. We use it twice. And the remaining 20%, which mostly occurs in the in the rainy season in the summer, people don't need to irrigate. And it also rains a lot. So we get a little bit more wastewater flows, that's when we have that 20% mostly occur if no one's watering the we don't really have a customer for it. So that's that goes to the Anclote River, but it is provided with full nutrient treatment. We have been fully compliant for a long time. We've extremely low levels of nitrogen and phosphorus to the point where they're most often lower than the nitrogen and phosphorus levels in the Anclote River. So. So all the sewage is turned into liquid. It Yeah. It's all turned into wastewater. Yeah. It's except for the sludge. Well, yeah. And basically the wastewater process, you, you take all this stuff that's dissolved and you convert it into something that you can physically settle out. So you convert it into biomass. The bugs eat all the pollutants and they settle. Does that go, the wastewater biosolids in tarpon, we have a contractor that we take as much of the water out as we can. We send that water back to the front of the plant, have it treated again, and then all the biomass, all the bugs and the, you know, the dead, you know, biology that they clump up. That goes to a vendor for, stabilized with lime to disinfect it. And it's used for fertilizer and agricultural applications. Reused. Yep. Great stuff. Very efficient. Nice Tony. Thank you so much. Thank you. You guys are great. I was like this is only a five minute presentation. Very enthusiastic. So glad you fielded questions. And I. I, I'm also available through Tommy or call public works. They can get to me anytime. Any questions street or stormwater or traffic related. And I'll see what I can do for you. Well, it's such a big deal in you know, and it's going to get bigger with sea level rise with all the with all the climate change, the more rain we get. And, and tarpon we have just have a lot of flooding. And so, you know, when it's high tide, they call it Venice of the South for a reason, right. Exactly. Well, good. Listen, I hope you fill your seats with your committee, but then also with some of these comments, I hope you go to the budget Committee. Yes. Thank you. So much for your time tonight. Thank you. Holly, thank you. Have a good evening. You go feed my pups. Oh that's good. Thank you. Yeah. I was just thinking. Yes totally. I was just thinking, you know, sustainability, you know, when you when you look at the way things were when we were kids to the way things are now, you know that you have to do something to maintain, the quality that we experienced as children. And I know the population's growing, but if the education piece was, was there, as populations grew and hopefully they they were directed to environmental practices that are appropriate, we can make the future as good as we remember our childhoods. Does that make sense? Yes. You know, I mean, because we saw more flourishing animals, more flourishing sea life. And, you know, when I just want our kids to see the same thing, our grandkids. But when we made the PBS series and the people who made it were young and they blame us, I mean, I'm older than you, but they blame us for the way things are now because we had really bad practices. I mean, we didn't think about this stuff. People use fertilizer all the time. They dump things. We're going through a renaissance. Let's hope you know, and it's not just our generation. All the generations before the industrial Revolution. Look at all the stuff that happened and the young people now, I mean, I was shocked. They were like, whoa, you you're how are you? So aware of all this stuff? You're old and you're the people who did this. So, I mean, I think you're being a good representative of our generation. When I grew up, I think we were oblivious to this stuff. Right, and we all had, you know, we didn't have sewer pipes. Well, I think there's a phrase that applies, which is know better. Do better. So, you know, education. And just like Tony was saying it, a lot of it starts with that piece of the puzzle. And generationally, every generation gets the knowledge that, you know, we can do better than before and before. So as Denise said, maybe it's a renaissance. We've got lots of there are a lot of other things to tap into, you know, to make all facets more sustainable. So we just have to work on it a little bit at a time. And there's big changes that are that are happening. All right. It's wonderful on that note, we're going to talk about implementing some of our plan actions. Thank you. Take it away Holly okay. All right. So this is just going to be a brief update to, let you all know where we stand on the implementation actions that were slated to begin in 2024. So we're going to go through a little oops. Now am I. I'm in presentation. Oh here we go. Sorry okay. So these are the items the actions rather that have the 2024 to 2027. And additionally the one at the bottom all the way into 2030. So the top six are short term time frame action items. So we'll go through those first and then we'll end with an update on the longer term. The medium term we're just going to go through them one by one. Do a brief update. And if you have questions let me know. All righ. So I did lump actions one and five together because they are both related to our trees our canopy. So action one is net zero. Canopy loss policy. Action five ordinance requiring control of invasive species on city property. So I just put the verbiage directly from the plan actions. The actions that are in the plan on here to remind us what the plan states. So action one develop a net zero canopy loss policy through the Land Development Code. Preserve habitat areas for threatened animal and plant species. Action five. Adopt and enforce an ordinance requiring control of invasive species and use of sustainable landscaping practices on all city properties. Then it gets into integrated pest management. We're going to focus just on the tree part primarily today on that update. Okay, so the implementation implementation time frame again, 2024 to 2027. So the tree canopy inventory has been completed. I spoke with Progress. And the next step will incorporate what the comprehensive plan says, what the sustainability plan says as far as management of our urban forest. So that is where then the work will be done for the net zero canopy loss policy, as well as the invasive species management. So it's kind of going to be done in parts that then are put together to equal that whole urban forestry master plan. And of course, Shannon, our city arborist, will be the lead on that. And we'll be coordinating a lot. So yes, so I was thinking about when I read this, how it's related to what we just heard about stormwater because and I always use my neighborhood. So on Riverside because of the flooding that's there. And they don't drain it. So many trees have died. I can count probably six, seven, eight trees that had to be cut down because they're dead from that flooding, which includes saltwater. Right? So it's like all of this is connected. So we keep seeing more and more trees dead, and we're not going to mitigate climate change if we have to keep cutting down. And they're big trees. And so the stormwater runoff to have adequate stormwater runoff and a place for it to go is essential. And I hope that Beckett Bridge helps because to see all these dead trees is horrible. I mean, I think you see you know, obviously trees are impacted by saltwater intrusion all around this area. And I would say that it's a great point that the stormwater management has an impact on that, but it's just something to expect is going to happen from time to time. And that the urban forestry master plan for Tarpon Springs will hopefully address that, because we are coastal and we are going to be dealing with this on an increasing basis due to sea level rise. So there's two other things that cause we know that caused trees to be cut down. One Duke Energy, who cuts down trees, have no no say over right. And secondly, insurance companies are forcing people to cut trees in their yard because they might fall on their roofs. And one, a friend of mine, this has happened to him, but there was a thing in the paper about this person and it was all about mitigating climate change, but she's using satellite to tell the insurance companies what trees to cut down. And I'm thinking, wait a second. So we're in a there's some there's something amiss in this. And we're lucky to have this tree canopy thing. And we must initially think Robin Sanger, because she was instrumental in in trees in the city. And, I mean, we really have to make an effort to see how we can live without cutting down the things that can help save us. Well, I think it's multifaceted, and that, the combination of the fact that the city has obviously experts on hand and, you know, the city obviously values the trees. I mean, there's so many things going back to what the city has done to maintain and increase its tree canopy. I think that it's safe to say that the city is not going to take it lightly. And again, it's very multifaceted. So of course there will be there are already tree replacement requirements. I mean, when you take down a big tree, it's just it's one of those things where trees aren't going to last forever, unfortunately. So we've just got to look at the life cycle of those and do our best to replace them. And I'm sure that the again, near net zero canopy loss is going to be a huge part of that. Right? So anything that goes away, it's got to come back in. So we're just going to just cut down a number of trees on Riverside. So they're going to now replace them more. We would have to look in the details. Yeah I don't I'm not familiar with that I'm sorry. But I do know that as right away they had to remove them because they were dead from their. Which yes, I mean hazards to the right of way or, or on city property would be. Yes Do they plant the mangroves? Because I was I'm just curious about that. Is that is that part of any project that is, we'd have to look into it, I think I think we've, we've done some mangrove restoration in the past. Like along like Riverside Park and stuff like that. Yeah, so we do have a little bit of a history of doing some, like mangrove shoreline restoration, you know, and that's something we're, we're kind of looking at as part of, like resiliency. So we do have like, the Resilient Florida grant program is encouraging that type of solution. So that'll probably be something we'll continue to look at as we work on our resiliency stuff. And Tommy, y'all do for the tree gives away. You started doing mangrove tree giveaways to for some. Yes I believe so. Yeah. So they're encouraging people who live in coastal you know properties to plant them on their own. Sure Thank you. They're so cute. Mangroves. Yeah. The little mangroves. The little baby mangroves for restoration. Grow lots of them. Grow forth and do good things. Mangrove. Yeah. No, that I think that is I did see that the red mangrove is actually the city tree. So that's I think that states the, the value of it right there. Okay. Action six land use regulations that establish appropriate wetland stream and shoreline buffer widths. So the action stated review regulations that establish wetland stream and shoreline buffer widths and adjacent land uses and achieve no net loss of wetland streams and shoreline buffers. So what does he. Okay, so what is happening during this implementation time frame? First and foremost, the Comprehensive Plan 2040, which is still draft but soon to be updated. It strengthens the wetland protections. So I know that, Caroline from planning came in and gave a presentation back in March, and there were some questions about this. And I think that through the any revisions that were made, the plan pretty well clarifies through the objectives and policies that are stated in the plan that, you know, it has strengthened the protections for wetlands and increased some of the requirements for the buffers. So the objective, the main conservation objective, 1.4 says, protect and improve the function of all wetlands and areas of significant upland habitat, as defined in the future Land Use Element. It has a number of policies supporting it. I pulled out policy 1.44, which allows revisions of the Land Development Code subsequent to the adoption of the plan as needed. Right, so that there could be new thresholds. It says acreage thresholds to require. I'm going to read it here. Sorry All development and redevelopment adjacent to identified wetlands and or areas of significant upland habitat to assess natural systems, biological wildlife impacts, and evaluate alternatives to eliminate adverse impacts. So heavy focus on negating any adverse impacts to development adjacent to any current wetlands. And I know that essentially the goal is to have no, again, loss of wetland habitat within the city. So, that is again, lead department would be planning on any land Development Code regulations that were to come forth. But the plan itself does a great job of, you know, strengthening what is allowable. What's a shoreline buffer? So that's essentially the distance between where you can build something from, you know, a body of water. So a creek a right. So there's got to be a setback. There has to be a buffer to protect. Especially like during the construction process. That's very important, obviously. So okay. Moving on. Action 14 seawall ordinance. I'm sorry. The text is so small. It was not like this when I originally made it. I don't really know what happened in the in in our technological transfer, but, so action 14 stated review and revise the seawall ordinance to require all newly installed or renovated seawalls to meet a minimum height based on current base flood projections. Evaluate potential use of living seawalls and city seawall improvements. So what again, the implementation timeframe 2024 to 2027. The comprehensive plan also addresses this in the Coastal Management Element of the Comprehensive Plan. Objective 1.2 says maintain, restore and enhance shorelines to reduce risk to property while maximizing benefits to natural coastal habitat resources and systems. Additionally, similar to the stream buffers and Wetlands land Development Code revisions could be done in accordance with the policies established in the Comprehensive Plan. So they could. It could require land use code changes going forward. In addition to land use code changes, we have found a model ordinance through the Tampa Bay Regional Planning Council, so that has been vetted and adapted from other cities and coastal areas in Florida. So that would be a great jumping off point when it's time to actually dig in and talk about whether the policy changes, you know, how those are going to take place. Okay. Actions 16 and 18 I put together because we have merged them a little bit, the Climate Action Plan and the greenhouse gas reduction target. So action 16 was to draft a climate action plan with actions to transition the city toward clean energy goals, including increasing on site renewable energy production and the use of electric vehicles and alternative fuels. Create staff incentives to encourage the use of alternative modes of transportation and the transition to electric vehicles. Action 18 adopt an official greenhouse gas emissions reduction target, such as. This was just a suggestion that was in the plan 30% reduction by 2030 and 80% reduction by 2050. In local greenhouse gas emissions. So where do we stand on this? We are currently working on the Climate Action Plan. So within the implementation timeframe we will have this completed. The work was initiated back in June. So we do have our consultant Italy, using the baseline 2019 data to project future emissions by category within the city. So some modeling is underway to assess the value of actions that the city could take to reduce our energy consumption within specific areas of use. And so part of the climate Action Plan is going to be the specific target. And the goal of that plan is to create a target that is achievable. Right. Strategies that the city can actually use to capitalize on the best use of the resources that we have. You know, obviously, as Tony was talking about, they're always going to be limitations within what, a city the size of Tarpon Springs can do. So we want to make sure that it is achievable, we are participating in the development of the Regional Comprehensive Climate Action Plan. I actually attended a meeting this morning on this that was specifically about setting regional, near-term, as well as long term targets within a lot of the sectors. Specifically, they were talking about water and wastewater transportation, land use, energy, solid waste. So at the same time that we are doing ours, there are obviously regional efforts that are talking about the same exact things. And so it's really a beneficial timing to have, you know, just to see that process and to have our consultant who's actually also involved in the regional one as well. So that's pretty, pretty cool. And we have noted that Duke Energy, who is our power provider, they have a commitment to net zero energy use by 2050. So they are proposing a number of actions. They have a list of strategies and mechanisms that will get them to that. Number. Ideally, we have been paying the city of Tarpon Springs has been paying into a program called the Clean Energy Connection Program since 2022. So that is going to be a number that we of course, point to in our climate action plan in our greenhouse gas, reduction target to say, you know, how we are supporting Duke's efforts to achieve their goal and we will then, we are within the Climate Action plan going to specifically list actions and initiatives to help the city save money, reduce the energy consumption, which obviously has the benefit of reducing emissions. And one of those that we are getting done is an energy audit of city facilities. That's going to be done by Duke Energy. So we're going to do that this fall. And that's just a cool way to take advantage of programs that they offer. Since since we pay Duke a lot of money, they offer some ways to help the city save. So we're going to see if we can take advantage of that and just kind of, you know, keep initiatives like that rolling into the Climate Action Plan so that we know that we have little steps that we can take that incrementally will add up to some big changes. Okay. This is just an example of some of the projections, this is one of the modeling tools that Iclei has used to help us look at the future potential decrease in emissions that the city could realize. And so we're looking at multiple, versions of this. I guess if you will. So as you can see, this particular one just does point to a gradual reduction throughout time. So nothing dramatic. So if the city wanted to see something more significant, obviously we would have to model inputs that would show how we would get to a more significant reduction. But this is kind of a business as usual based on policies that are sort of currently in place. So just an example of and I know that, you know, Tommy has talked about this before a little bit with the baseline data, but you know that the water and wastewater is the biggest, user of energy in the city. So we're always looking at ways to just make things more efficient. But that's a again, incremental changes. All right. And lastly, this is a longer term time frame. So action 35 evaluate family friendly workplace policies for local government employees. It states evaluate family friendly workplace policies for local government employees, including paid family leave, flexible scheduling, teleworking, job sharing and easily available child care. Limit contractual services to equal opportunity employers and ensure that all city employees earn a living wage according to applicable standards. So that is a lot in one action. So right now the update that I have is that I have confirmed that our procurement language, the city of Tarpon Springs purchase Order Terms and Conditions currently does include the phrasing here. Item number 22 was pulled directly from the purchase order terms and conditions that addresses the equal opportunity Employer requirements. So as you can see, it pretty well covers everything that would be wrapped into those requirements. So that's a good thing that we already have that in place, and I don't know that that requires much. You know, I don't think that really requires an update or a change. It's a standing policy. Yeah, that's one thing is we kind of go through the different action items. Some of these things, we had policies in place. And, you know, during the development of the plan, we didn't have time to go and do a deep dive on existing city standards and policies for every single item. So a few of these are, you know, as we're going through, we're evaluating what's needed. And this is an example of something like, hey, we really want to make sure we had equal opportunity. Employer requirements for city vendors. We looked into it set with procurement, looked at our standards. We've got it in place. We've had it in place for a while. So we've already achieved that. And we can, you know, declare victory and move on to our next items that we need to start new work on. Well, this this is like a part of it. Correct. This is not the. That's right. It's not the whole yes, it's easily available. So because so how would those correct how would those facets be wrapped in what types of so going back to the just pointing out the implementation time frame for this one is a medium time frame. So it is 2024 all the way up to 2030. So it is going to take us a little bit longer to kind of do thorough research and interweave the other requirements. So obviously we haven't completed this entire action because it is multifaceted. But those other steps are going to be slowly, you know, worked on as well. And, you know, it's just we're going to use a longer a medium time frame to address all of the elements than to take the segments that are completed and divide the one about child care and all that. Put that separately so that this is all checked off. So there's no dangling participles left that you, you know, so that has to. Right? I know what you're saying. So the plan itself isn't slated to be updated but once every five years. So I don't see us pulling it apart now. But should we not maybe complete the whole. That would be something to consider in a plan update, but also I think maybe there's an annual update or there are other interim steps that when we do a more formal update annually, maybe to the board that we would say, you know, completed, you know, portion of action item 35, for example. So yes, we would definitely want to give credit. And that's why we're doing these quarterly updates, is to kind of say, okay, we're making progress, but nothing's going to happen. Obviously, we're in the first year of even beginning to implement these actions. So we're going to be working along on them as effectively and efficiently as we can. But they're going to be, you know, some that are multi-step actions for sure. So yeah, I'd like to address this one too, just because it is very like, you know, employee policy oriented. So I think one thing you're kind of getting at here, and which is kind of interesting about the plan as a whole, is we have nominally 50 actions. A lot of these are not exactly one action. This is really three different. This is three. All right. This one is about employee policies. One is about procurement policies and one is about, wage standards. And so those are really three different things. So we right now on this one, we're in the phase of reviewing existing policies across the board to see like, you know, to triage the whole situation. Like, you know, what do we have in place what's, you know, and then and then where do we go to start on, on individual items. But I but yeah, that is interesting. And this isn't the only action item like this where it's kind of got like 2 or 3 different things that are related, but quite different kind of glommed together a little bit. So we'll, we'll think about how the best way is to present that. So you can see that we're making progress on the whole thing. You know, obviously there's so much for you all to do. And it can't just you got to do it in bite sized and as it's, as it's achievable and so forth, and take care of that. It's just I like how you referenced though, that it's in three separate parts and somehow be able to signify, sure, this part is done of this action item, but these, you know, are still in process to where you you can say, you know, a percentage of the whole action item is done or, you know, I mean, there's tons of different ways to look at it, but there's no doubt in my mind that y'all are pedaling as fast as you can to get this done. It's just that sometimes the other parts of the policies, you know, there's a possibility that they just kind of go by the wayside. Sure. Oh well, I would I would say there's definitely not any intent just because this all can't obviously be done at the same time, that it doesn't mean that any of it will be, you know, ignored. But I do like that you want and I think it's a great added value potentially to somehow, you know, specify within the actions that are so, so multi you know combined that right. Multifaceted that we could pull out when we do an update and specifically say you know we've completed one third of this. You know maybe it's a part A B and C or something. And we could say, you know, two thirds complete or one third complete because I mean that would be great to have some, you know, progress that we can show. So I agree. Yeah Suggestion. So in this thing that you've done which is really wonderful on page 13 okay. Right. You have the equal opportunity thing. That's what's been done. And then underneath that you could just say what still needs to be completed and listed okay. Sure. And then that's great. That Yeah. And you can do that for all of them okay. Because what you have the policy and then you immediately say okay this is what we've already done. And then you have underneath each one what still needs to be complete. Sure. And that would be helpful for everybody okay. The city is reevaluating, salaries and pay grades and wages, to which I consider to fall, you know, as part, part of this process, isn't it? It's adjacent. I mean, yeah, it's Tommy can speak to it a little more than I can, but the cost of living has gone up. And I just listened to the Budget Advisory Committee discussion today where they were looking at that and looking at the competition, not competition, but the adjacent municipalities. And we have to we have to stay in a position of offering not only you know, better cost of living increases, but also complete compensation packages in order to retain our people and get new people. Yeah No, I think you've hit on a really key thing here. You know, you're correct that we these are our peer, you know, municipalities and we work with them and we share resources. And when there's a hurricane or there's an emergency, we share stuff. But we do compete for workers. And it's a very competitive hiring environment right now. And Tony was talking about level of service. And it's, you know, when you're need essential workers, you know, you have to be competitive in the job market. And, what the way Scott was phrasing it, this morning or this afternoon, the Budget Advisory Committee was talking about, you know, this is a first step. And so, you know, this is a step in the right direction. This is definitely something that the city has its eyes on. And, you know, we have, you know, a few different ways of tackling this. And, you know, we've got a small work team that we're looking and looking reviewing the policies. And, there was a separate committee that was set up to look at like wage and, you know, wage grades and, reorganization and things like that. And so, the city is definitely taking action on this item. And, but it's going to be a not just a multi-person approach, but a multi team approach. I think so, but but it's definitely, important. And, for the city to, to keep on top of this. And, going back to what Doctor Baker was saying, it's, very originally seen we had, you know, six action items and six bullets to check for the year. And I think it's quickly those in reality, those are well, maybe they're six on paper, but, you know, it's more like 12, right. They've kind of multiplied. They've they've when you really break it down, there are many within each. So yes, it's you know, the other thing is, is that one of the things that happens in the sustainability and people thinking about it, they think mostly about the environment and trees and flooding and all of this stuff. But this action is perhaps one of the more important ones, namely, that if you don't have qualified, happy people working here and an amply supplied staff, there is no sustainability at all. And more and more people want to work at home. People need women. You know, it's been this way for a long time. I mean, forever really, that women work as well as men. And there are people who are single parents, male and female, and they need, childcare and they need, you know, leave when people are pregnant. And, those things are becoming standard. They aren't like rare. And if Tarpon doesn't keep up, one, we're not going to get the quality. And we have an incredible staff. But, we also aren't going to be sustainable and we aren't going to treat people the way people should be treated. And luckily we have piece for Tarpon who helps us do that. Yeah. No, I think that's a great point. And I do really like that aspect of the sustainability plan that it addresses so much more than just the environmental impacts. And as time goes on in the plan, which actually we'll talk about briefly in the last slide, we're going to see a lot, you know, more of the social things being integrated. And it's just really cool that it really is all interconnected. So that's what we're going to see as we go forward. That you know, you kind of open one little, little can of worms and it's it I don't know, there's a string that's going to connect to something else. But so, you know, some of the timelines are going to end up I think, overlapping even more because of that, because when we start doing certain things, we're going to say, oh, we're already working on this. Well, doesn't that relate to a policy that you know, is farther down the line? But we should just kind of start thinking about how they interact. So I think that's going to be kind of a there's a lot of value in the fact that the plan isn't totally prescriptive about how it's got a good, layout for the implementation time frames, but there's some flexibility there as well. So we're going to keep obviously working on the 2024 implementation. The ones that started this year, they go for another three, you know, in some cases beyond that years and then in 2025, here we go with our next sort of let's start talking about the next set of actions. So like you said it's going to be a continual amount of work. So some of the things coming down the pipeline, which this really connects to pretty much everything we've talked about tonight, but improve facilities and infrastructure okay. So that's icon is that which. Oh for thing. What is that the solar panel. It is a solar panel with the sun because it's up here. I don't see how it's an improved facility. I think that it's probably yeah. Getting you know, improving facilities and infrastructure related to ordinance has the solar panels. It's just it's just which section of the it's which section? Section of the plan that that action is within. So that's your key as far as which how they were broken out in the plan. I couldn't figure that out. Yeah It doesn't write this. I just I just took a little capture from our actions list. So it's the action category. That's what that column is, okay. So we've got improved facilities and infrastructure, very wide reaching. Of course. We have a solar feasibility study for city facilities. So that will be something that is definitely going to be initiated in 2025. By 2025. M mean o n m. That's operation maintenance. Okay. Thank you. Those those are the budgetary sections like where we intend to fund those different things. Potential funding source. Okay. Sorry, I should have put the key over that. That's a good that's a good reminder. I'll do that next time, yes. Okay. Proactive green infrastructure practices for new developments. Wow. That relates a lot to, what Tony was talking about as far as educating you know, residents and possibly having other things come online, there's a lot of potential there. So that's a big one, that's a okay. So the top one, improved facilities and infrastructure. Just drawing attention to the fact that that is a long timeline. So that's a ten year, 2025 to 2035 because that touches so many things, the next three are all short term action three guideline with required break times. So that's another employee, you know, kind of links in a little bit with some of the other family friendly or not family friendly, but the workplace policies and, so I could see that one being pulled in and then action seven, connectivity to wildlife corridors. So that's a long term implementation timeline. So just again drawing attention to that number 11 park and open space plan. So that is in that is a priority to begin in 2025. Action 31 focus market demand for green jobs technology products and services okay. And action 48 adopt a climate in all policies or sustainability in all policy statements. So there's potential for this to be something that links back to our climate action plan as well. So again, I think we're just seeing a lot of potential for the work that we're doing now to tie into the next set of actions that we're going to start looking at. Very good. Excellent, great. Thank you. Okay. Aren't you looking at wildlife corridor stuff? I'm looking I'm excited. Thank you. Holly, thank you very much for bringing us up to speed. You're very, very welcome. What's happening? Absolutely. In reality, this was really nice. Good. I'm glad. I am glad that we had some. You know, we've got some wins already, which is exciting. Yeah, I'm going to give you the quickest update on Eco Fest, because we still need to talk about new business for next meeting. So just letting you know because we won't have another meeting, vendors are still being finalized, so that's, I think it's going to be just so many city departments represented. Of course I'll be there and coming up with some eco friendly, you know, interactions, giveaways and maybe like an activity or something for families, kids to come and do. We kind of talked a little bit about the EV stuff, and I don't know that it's the right venue just due to water park and water slides. And it's kind of an interesting there are a lot of logistics there, so might sideline that. But I think we can revisit you know, another opportunity to kind of showcase that. So, but it should be great. So come on out on the 14th of September. We will be there. All right. Excellent. Thank you so much. Very welcome. So items for, the next meeting agenda. Yeah I had. I had a thought. Okay. You know, and it's kind of a follow up to old business. It was ■your from your presentation. On the water. Infrastructure. Water that you did last month. You know, we were talking about the pipes. So I kind of did a little bit of, research on the variety of pipes that are used in the cities and, and copper is great copper. You know, if you have copper, you don't want to remove that. It's wonderful. But there's a lot I know that PVC is very popular nowadays, and yet a lot of cities are looking at the, health costs down the road. Yeah. Because, PVC can be carcinogenic. It can be an endocrine endocrine disruptor there. Is it breaks down over time. And there was, you know, when I looked at some articles on it, I ended up I found a city in Troy, New York that actually had chosen it was it's written into their charter to use different materials. I'm just wondering, is there any interest in, in, in getting more information so that we can look at this? That's not something that is probably part of this iteration of the sustainability, although it does fit under health and safety, Tommy, I would say for that one, the just the with the timing for our compliance schedule for the lead and copper, rules, we're going to be developing a, there's a regulatory deadline to complete the our, our plan to renew the pipes, the service lines in October. So, just knowing that we're kind of in crunch time right now. On with our staff on getting all the submittals together for the for October. So, this is this would be the September. That might be just a bit early for us. So that might be something better for like October or November schedule wise. Okay, that would give us because by then we'll have our, you know, replacement plan complete and things like that, if you're interested, we will in early in September, we're planning on doing an update on, PFAS with the board. So, PFAS, the forever chemicals. There's a lot of stuff about that. And the news so that that might be something if you'd like an update on that, that would be a good water related topic that we'd probably be ready for in September. That'd be good. Yeah Increasingly feeling that water is the biggest issue. For sustainability, it's always for the future. For now, I mean, and we only have a set amount on the planet. We have to be very mindful stewards of what we have. So I'm hoping October we can talk about this. Yeah. We'll try to come up with more information. I did call, Troy, New York and had a discussion with, the person that was in charge of that. And it was it was excellent. So maybe I've got his number if you want to call him. I told him you were our water guy. What materials did they use? They're using ductile iron coated ductile iron. That's for their main lines. For their water lines and for everything that goes into the homes. That's copper. And this is written into their city charter, there's several places that are. It's just it's a wave that's happening right now from article after article that I pulled up on PVC and public health. Yeah. And it's just something that we call ductile coated ductile iron. Ductile iron. Yeah. Like I said, we could we could definitely come back and talk about our, our pipe replacement plans and things like that again in October. Like I said, just we need a little bit of time to, for our staff to get through their, their regulatory compliance and get our plans completed. A tricky one. I mean, if you're if you're budgeting to replace with 100 year pipes that are going to be PVC components to them, and that's costing a fortune. It's like I mean, it's kind of like how do you get on the other side of that? Well, yeah. They said that the health costs are in the range of $286 billion. And nationally or. Yeah, nationally. Yeah I mean, anyway, I I'll send the materials and maybe we can discuss, we can talk how to present. Yeah Or just the information. Just think about it. Yeah. To get it get it in the consciousness okay. Any other suggestions for September. Yes So, one of the things that striking me is that, you know, we did the plan and we've worked. We worked really hard on the plan so that we had a task and we did this task, and then we got it finished. We did the report and now it's being implemented. And now it's like it's unclear to me what we're doing. I mean, we're gathering information, but for what I mea, I love this document. It's a living document that will be updated. Of course, it will. But what are we doing now? That's proactive? You know, what's our task? That's what I don't understand. What is our task as a committee? I mean, some committees you know, they say if you can have a fence or they, you know, there's all this stuff, it's unclear what our task is, we're collecting information, but you know who's hearing this other than us? Well, yeah. Go ahead. Tommy, the. So this committee is an advisory committee. So there are certain committees that have, you know, they have different roles within the city, and some of those are defined by statute. And things like that, like, you know, so Charter Review Committee reviews and makes recommendations for updates to the city charter, you know, the Budget Advisory Committee, reviews and evaluates the annual budget updates and make recommendations to the board. So, one, they may they reviewed the budget. They provided an update to the board and that's that that's their role. Who are we advising at this point? So the this, committee has, here, let me just pull it up real quick, it has yeah. It has five listed duties. So it, it serves at the direction of the board to review and make recommendations to the same to the board regarding city sustainability and resiliency. And, these subject areas, you know, so basically, you're an advisory committee. Your role is to make recommendations and review and advise on on the materials that are related to sustainability that the city is doing. And so that includes things like energy efficiency, conserving water, protecting sensitive environmental areas, but who's coming to us for advice? Well, so what we're doing here tonight, right, is having the discussion. So that's a step. So we're bringing ideas to the table to discuss. Then the work that is done in the city of course. So we talked about some ordinances. Any potential land development codes. We're talking about research that we're going to be doing. So remember the plan is just in the first year of implementation. So haven't really had a lot of time to figure out what the next if there's going to be another firm task. But what I foresee us doing is coming back to you with, you know, advice on where we're going to be seeking your advice on some of these implementation items. Right. So we're going to need input. It's just that we're not we're we're in the information gathering right now. We're just so early in the implementation that I know it feels like you're kind of in a holding pattern, but I think that you're going to start seeing more and more specific things that, you know, we'll say, you know, what do you think about this approach or does this idea fit with what you were thinking when the plan was developed? You know, I wasn't here when the plan was developed. So I'm definitely going to need input and reminders and sort of, just how, you know, what some of the intent was on a lot of these. Yeah, I think one thing too, like so one example, I think of something that would be right up the alley of the committee, right. So we have a plan. We're supposed to set a greenhouse gas target. And, you know, and a climate action plan. Right. So we'll be bringing you a draft plan. You know, the committee's job will be to evaluate it, make recommendations. And then the next step, just like we did with the, the sustainability plan was, the committee evaluated the plan. They liked it, they accepted it and recommended adoption to the board. And so some of these things will, as we get into the meat and potatoes of it, we'll either, will will probably want recommendations for adoption to the board. And some of these things will go on and become board level policies that just like, just like how the board adopts the budget, you know? So, like Holly's exactly. Correct. We're very much in the information gathering and setting out, but as we get over the next 6 to 8 months, you know, we will have some items that will be coming back that will be like asking for votes on things like that. That's a really good response. And now I feel good about collecting all this information because it'll be good for us to I think I need to make a motion. I think that we extend the meeting, if we haven't had comment, I mean, we haven't had to. Do I have a second? No, I have to give a time specific to 805. I second that. That'll go. All in favor? Okay Yeah. One thing. That I think that we need to keep looking at is community engagement. Because we don't want what we're doing here just to be an isolated little satellite within Tarpon Springs. We need to be able to bring more people into the excitement that we have for sustainability, and we want to reach out. So one of the things that I hope you'll put on the agenda is giving a report on what happens at eco Fest, and you know how successful that is. And then that'd be great. We last time we talked about community engagement, but we just looked at the structure and maybe go back to those notes and come with some solid ideas that correlate with what we talked about in community engagement, or I think, you know, actions, you know, ways that we can make ourselves visible, gain more members, gain more members. But more than anything, just get the word out with the community. Sounds good. Yes. I'm having an idea. Work it out. Yeah, well, we can. Maybe we can send that out, that would be for. What do we have left? Are you saying something? Yes, I am staff comments. We have we done staff comments. No no, one comment I would just like to share. I sent you all a an email this which I left on the printer. Yes. So there, the workshop training opportunity, there's a workshop training opportunity. The city will be funding it for the first ten committee members from a variety of committees, who sign up. So if you're interested, please. What It's a training. Yep. Hold on. It's a one day workshop for, it's a for the in the Florida planning conference, it's for, planning. It's for commissioners and, citizen committee members. And it has a variety of topics, several of which are sustainability related about community planning and things like that. So take a look at the, agenda. If there's things that you're interested in, their email, an email. Yeah. Send it to me. Yes. I just sent it this afternoon. Probably. You're probably on the way to the meeting. So it was right before the meeting, right? Yeah. So we, if you're interested, the please sign up. Just email it to me again because I may have deleted it because I, I saw something about it, but it made it sound like it was so expensive that I didn't look at it. Yeah, yeah. So the city will be funding the first ten members, you know, so if you're interested, take a look, sign up. But please sign up by August 19th. And if you sign up sooner, you're more likely to get a spot. So. And. Yeah, so that's that's an opportunity the city is making available to the committee members. Thank you. Holly, do you have anything? I do not have anything at this moment. Okay And would you like to know? Okay. I have two minutes. T minus two, when we were talking and, Carol, you mentioned about wildlife corridors. I think that's something that that is something that the city is, is going to be looking at more and more. So we have some acquisition, property acquisition funds that the commission a few years ago put into the budget every year. And I don't I don't know what kind of parameters are on that. I don't remember. But right now, like what's on my radar is West Klosterman Preserve. And that's not in our city limits, but that's in our planning area. And it also connects to a much larger piece of property adjacent to it. So it would it would have I don't remember how big the other acreage is. West Klosterman. 14 more or less acres. And if there's a way and of course, the West Klosterman is looking like right now they have a $200,000 matching donation thing to where a fellow put up $200,000 to match $200,000 worth of donations. They need 600,000 by sometime in September, and we're in the middle of budget season. And I mean, it's like that's just like not going to happen. But at some point I don't want to have a lost opportunity. If the city could look just have its eyeballs on what, what property might be available or just like with the Ross property, if it's needed for a specific use, or just kind of look at at connecting lots throughout the city that contribute to whatever, you know, stormwater runoff or wetland management or all those terms. So I think that that is important. If some of those. Oh, and the other thing is so just looking at starting, opening the door towards acquiring, acquiring properties to contribute to our corridor or even our what the city needs for different uses. The other thing is talking about Duke Energy, I don't think I dreamt this is Clearwater. Looking at independent energy now and getting away from Duke. Yes, yes. So in Gainesville and talked about and Gainesville does have energy independence. So that would be interesting for Tarpon to look at as well because especially right now nobody's very happy with Duke. No. And you know, all the dollars I spent for their to increase their nuclear power plant, that never happened. And we still had to pay for it. That was like the icing on the cake. Anyway, 805 805 I'll make a motion that we leave. I think we should get out of here. The meeting is adjourned. 805. Thank you very much. I have a phone call to make.