Happy Earth Day. And uh my name is Mark Forest. I'm chairman of the board of county commissioners. To my right is Ron Bergstrom. And to my left is a person you all know quite well, Sheila Lions. And I let me just say that we're thrilled to be here in the town of Wellfleet. Um the the board of commissioners, we're rotating our meetings. We're getting out on the road. We want to have the opportunity to hear firsthand from uh town leaders, municipal officials, and to learn better about how our
programs and services are helping communities and where there are things that we can make improvements. Uh, in fact, in some cases in the communities that we're visiting, there are local officials that are asking us to do more. And so, this kind of dialogue, this kind of conversation uh is incredibly helpful for us as we look to the future and find ways where we can better serve uh the communities here on Cape Cod. So, um we are now um just I'm going to read this brief
sentence here in our agenda. The meeting of the Barnstable County Board of Regional Commissioners is being conducted in accordance with applicable laws. Members of the public are invited to attend in person or may view the meeting via a live broadcast on our Barnstable County YouTube channel or on our website. So, um, is anybody else This meeting is obviously being recorded. Is anybody else recording this meeting? Please acknowledge or raise a hand. Okay, good. Um, having said
all that preliminary stuff, um, let's I'd like everybody to join us in a pledge of allegiance to the flag. Pledge allegiance. To the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. And and now I would like to just ask everyone to join us in a brief moment of silence to reflect on the bravery and the sacrifices of all those who
have and continue to put their lives on the line in service to our country. Thank you. Uh the next item on our agenda is public comment. This is uh we have a podium and we have a mic and I'm going to invite anybody from the public who would like to address the board of commissioners. Fair game. Whatever's on your mind, you can let loose right here.
Okay, come on up. My name is My name is Sharon Ragger. I'm a um year- round resident of wealth wealth for 18 years. So, still a wash ashore. Um and I just want to make a couple of requests that you consider as you move forward in your deliberations. Um one is I'd like to see a lot of support for the transfer tax. I'm on the Wellfleet Housing Trust and we really need more money in order to
do good things. And I'm not just talking about the great big the great big developments we can do with LITC and CPA funds and things like that, but the smaller things like supporting ADUs and building on small lots and purchasing year-round deed restrictions and just a whole host of other things we can't do with CPA funds because they're limited. So, um the transfer tax, we're really hoping that that will go through. The other thing that I would like to just um encourage you to
think about is that when you're talking about um alternative wastewater management systems, IIA systems generally is what I think you're talking about, but I'd love for you to include in the conversation composting and incinerating toilets, the possibility of urine diversion that's that's being piloted in Falmouth as we speak. These are other possibilities less expensive and um more earth centered and it's earth day. So it is. Thank you Sharon. Thank you very much for your
comments. She's hitting it right. Is there anybody else? Commissioner Bergstrom, would you like to um Yeah, I public comment just just for the last last person who spoke, we have here uh Brian Bum Bumgard, who is an expert in those uh composting toilets and urine urine urine diversion. So if you want to get some info into what's going on, you can talk to him. Well, we're going to be talking about it. Okay, that's great. Well, Brian will be speaking today, so you'll hear a lot more. Any
other public comments? Okay, let's move on to the next item on our agenda. Um because we're here in the town of uh Welfle. Uh and don't pay attention to the the reference to East Ham on your agenda. Uh we're here. We know where we are. We're in the town of Wealth. Oh. Um what we're going to do is we're going to invite uh Tom Gino and anybody from the select board uh to join us up here at the uh table for a brief conversation on some of the work that the town is doing and some of the work that
the town would like to see us do. So hey for the audience I know everybody knows you two gentlemen but if you could just announce yourselves for the record. Uh John Wolf the chair of the fleet select board. Tom Greeno, town administrator. Well, thanks for uh hosting us. Thanks for coming. Really appreciate your um all your hospitality. Everybody here has been wonderful. And um we know that we've got a lot of things that we do as a county here in the town of Wellfleet, but uh
we also know that there's some burning issues that you're wrestling with. And so we're going to spend more time listening and doing less time talking. And uh so I'm going to turn it over to you, John and Tom. And you have anything you want to start with? Why don't you start off? Okay. Um, first of all, thank you for coming up to Wellfleet. Uh, it is appreciated. One of the things about the commissioners, uh, we're lucky to have a commissioner here in town and on our select board. But, um, even without that, uh, the county is always responsive,
um, whenever I make a call to whatever department we have. I'm I'm I'm thankful for that. I'm also thankful for the rapid response that the county is able to provide us in emergency situations. The most recent being the icebreaker um up in the up in the harbor. Um we were in serious trouble. We undertook serious damage at our marina and our harbor this year. Um but the icebreaker came in um and was very helpful and it was very much appreciated. Those are the types of things that we
don't always don't always get in the press um but are important aspects of what the county can do uh to help municipalities. You know, when I came when I got here a couple of years ago, I knew there were a number of issues. I didn't realize there were so many issues. And I don't mean that glibly. There's a lot going on in Wellfleet. Um, Wealthfleet is really a microcosm of rural Massachusetts with although it's shellfish here, having been out in the west for a number of years,
it's very similar. Um, we're an agriculture town really, um, aquaculture, but uh, that's our largest employer. That's our our largest industry here in town and it is sacred. Um, so anything that the county can continue to do or expand to help the the shellfishing industry um and the people up here who benefit from and work in that industry is is very important. On
a more internal uh perspective, um, Wellfleet has a lot of projects going on right now. The Herring River project, although it's not technically ours, it's taking a huge amount of bandwidth of time from our professionals in the DPW and our finance department and other places. We're building a wastewater plant. We have a new housing development going in. It's uh actually being occupied and people are moving in right now up on Lawrence Hill. Um there's a lot going on. And I
have now nine or 10 different sets of engineers in town and trying to ride herd on that is not easy uh but for anyone. Um and some of these are not huge projects. It's engineering work $20,000 to uh figure out how we're going to put the broken pilings the the new pilings in. $25,000 for engineering for this. This is an area, I think, where the county could be very helpful. Um, it
would not be inexpensive. You couldn't just hire one engineer and and an admin person to help that engineer for 15 towns. I mean, some of the larger towns have in-house engineering capabilities. Um, we don't have that. We are fortunate our DPW director is a a PE but he can't do the he's busy enough. Yeah. So there's there's engineering is important to us. Um procurement uh you have a
really good procurement department. I've used the procurement office all my time here on the Cape. I think that that could be expanded some my assistant talented administrator, Mr. Bugby, who's extremely talented, but all he's doing right now is pretty much procurement work, and I I need that person to do other things as well. So, um I don't know what buildout of that would look like, but if
that could be expanded, it would be helpful. The other thing that is probably a third rail for a lot of folks here, but I do believe this. The cape is just about full. Um, can I quote you on that? No. Um, but I I knew that when I was in Bourne because Bourne became a very hot spot as the the rest of the Cape got filled up. the the the upper Cape started to have that kind of pressure with
COVID. That kind of pressure has also come here to after CO with wellfleet and the housing prices and all of those types of things. But I do think that on large projects um and I don't mean Maurice's and I don't mean Lawrence Hill. I'm not picking on any particular project. I mean Capewide. There should be a mechanism for the county to call, not have somebody request, but call for a DCPC. You
should have that, you should have that authority on on developments that are going to cross have crossborder impact. Um I and again, I don't know the specifics on how to put that together. It's just something I've been thinking about for for several years. um that gives the neighboring communities in large developments in another community a better opportunity to have voice
and that I think is important. Thanks Tom. Would any commissioners like to respond to Tom? Those are the only three points that I was going to make too. So thank you. Just Mark just Yeah. Tom I'm on the Cape Cut Commission as well as being a Cape Cut Commissioner. Can you hear me? Yes. Um, and I totally agree with you in that we should be able to look at some of the large projects and make some decisions as to whether they're compatible with the the environment and the neighborhood and and so on. I think that would take a um act of the legislature to change the the uh enabling
legislation that created the commission, but that's not impossible. It could be done with enough support, I think, from the Cape to do that. But uh obviously it's become an issue lately, not just here at Wilfleet, but throughout the Cape. So I hate to see neighbors fighting neighbors over these things. Then that's all I had today for the commission. Again, thank you for coming here. No, I've uh often thought about the uh power of the DCPC and um I was speaking to a person
at the commission probably a year ago and we discussed um is it possible for the commissioners to call for a DCPC which is basically a hold on development for a year for everyone to it's called a district of DCPC a district critical critical planning planning concern right And um so it is it is a tool that I think uh more and more people are looking at us to see if there
isn't power of exercise there to carry that out. So So would it be helpful for us to maybe support some forums and workshops to help explain to people how the DCP DCPC process works, how to seek a DCPC designation, what it means and how to go about pursuing that? Do you think that might be helpful here in the town of Wolfley? I don't know about specifically the town of Wallfleet. I wasn't being that specific in my comments. Um, you just see the interest in this. I think I think it's Capewide is something that we should you might want to consider. Duly noted. Duly noted.
Very good. John. Hi. Uh, again, I'm John Wolf, the chair of the Wolf Fleet Select Board. Um, I just wanted to touch on maybe three points. Uh first off uh I've been uh one of the things that comes up in discussions from time to time is uh it's usually referred to as regionalization. I like to sometimes that word scares people. I think it's more appropriate to refer to uh oh uh
uh areas of cooperation and shared services and so forth. So, I've been for some time I've been working toward a meeting I had on April 16th with my fellow uh chairs of select boards of the outer Cape Towns, East Ham, Turo, and Province Town. We had a very productive meeting. Um my goal was to explore the possibility of having quarterly meetings of all four select boards or as it came
out in the meeting representatives from all four select boards which is a little less unwieldy to uh exactly focus on areas where we can share resources. um topics that came up for instance were um uh g given well's fairly recent history of having to come pull ourselves through a financial uh upheaval as I'm sure we're all well aware uh finance directors um it's possible we could
share a resource of that sort um our health departments could perhaps share resources uh HR, IT, and uh dispatch services were other areas we discussed in our preliminary outreach. Um so I'm looking forward to developing that going forward. Uh we're we're looking at possibly having a joint select board meeting possibly in June. We we discuss that possibility. We'll keep
everybody posted. Can you invite us? We'd love to participate. Yes, certainly. Yeah, certainly. Make sure that Michael Dutton is uh on your We have an insider. I know. No, but Michael M, our county administrator is a former town administrator, many years of service as a towned manager and uh he meets with the Cape Town managers monthly uh to go over precisely these issues. So, by all means, we definitely want to participate. Um let me just add that this is a message that we've heard in the
other towns on the Cape. there's a desire for and I and I I applaud you for using the term collaboration or shared services because that's the term that we've embraced uh as as a county uh finding ways where we can collaborate and share services. Um sometimes regionalization, you're right, that term can kind of scare people because it means loss of control. But um the approach that we have recently embarked on is a regional shared housing services initiative which has been very
strongly supported across the Cape. You will see that term regional shared housings or regional service agreements come up, intergovernmental agreements, intermunicipal agreements. So we're we're with you on that. We've embra we've we've we've embraced that philosophy and uh we are now basically embarking on an exercise to identify the future services that we need to really start looking at and it's it's interesting that you mentioned Tom procurement because uh the count
our administrator Michael has been telling us that procurement is definitely an area that we need to be spending more time and attention on. So go ahead. One other point and I I I'm sorry I neglected it. We do participate with the IT uh services here and they are phenomenal. Um Ryan in crew does a just a phenomenal job for us and I meant to mention that earlier and I didn't and I apologize. No, that's great. We appreciate that. Thank you. Commissioners Lions, you good? No,
I'm I'm fine. I John and I have talked and I I'm aware of uh his efforts here and I was saying um I was first elected back in back in the dark ages. Um it was like the outer Cape Towns realized that there was a county and um and they were doing just what they called themselves the committee of um what was uh Sam Adams the original. So uh correspondence of correspondence and so anyway um there's there's as much as it sounds there was a lot of resistance then but I think as time goes
on and res financial resources are less especially for the smaller towns there is a desire to see how we can share some of the burdens that are put on the smaller towns the same as the larger towns but we don't have the capacity and uh it sometimes feels like it's a waterfall of all of the things we have to respond to. So, it's been a real learning experience being on the town side and I I have great empathy for the towns of what they have to deal with. It's really um not when you
think about it, it's not a it doesn't represent a loss of control considering the financial burdens the towns are under now. It's actually potentially increases the control each town has by sharing the financial burden. If I could, the the other really quickly, the two other areas I was going to touch on were uh as you mentioned, housing. Uh there's a saying they're not making more land on Cape Cod. I think we're all aware of that. So, it becomes crucial how we use that land. Um well
definitely not picking more land on lower Cape Cave. We know we know that we're actually losing Yeah. You're losing losing land and and uh so as as you know the uh our initiatives out here have drawn a lot of attention um and generated a lot of shall we say discussion on the town level. uh how we use that land and how we use the resources to de to develop it and to what extent we should develop it. So that's another area. And the last area I just wanted to quickly bring up because
it's something the county could play a role in, and that is um the situation with our harbor, the um uh dire need to maintain it and dredge it and the huge financial burden that that places as well as the regulatory burden in dealing with the agencies that control these initiatives. Yeah, I I appreciate you bringing that up. I think one of the things that we're learning today is that given the chaos in Washington uh there are unfortunately more and more services that
are being sort of left to us to figure out how to handle and uh so clearly the need for more collaboration and working together is going to continue to grow. So thank you. Now you're both welcome to stay with us stay here at the table while we move on with our agenda. Um, you have to go. You can't you I'm not sure what the the uh next item on our agenda is under general business and uh it's a very your comments John are are are very well said because it's a nice segue into the
next item. Uh we've asked Andrew Gotautle, the uh the director of the Association to Preserve Cape Cod to join us today on Earth Day to talk a little bit about this new initiative from the APCC on the Cape We Shape and uh their efforts to increase our awareness and understanding of the need to do a better job in conserving our natural resources. So Andrew, thanks for being with us today. Yes, it's great to see you coming down. See you. Thank you for inviting me. Um Robin was right. It worked.
Um so yeah, so I'm here to um speak to you about our our latest campaign um Cape We Shape. Um and then happy to branch into any other conversation you want to have. Um, also I'd be remiss uh being here in Wellfleet not acknowledging the work that we're doing uh with Tom and the whole town to help support your freshwater continuation of freshwater pond monitoring in the absence of um historic federal support for monitoring in the in the seashore. So very appreciative of the town
stepping in and helping to bridge the financial gap and being able to provide that ongoing service in coordination with the great staff that remain at park service and the town. So um see if I can actually make this all work. Okay. So as a preface to to what I'm going to talk about what we're trying to do, I want to just sort of set the stage a little bit. our perception as an organization of some of the problems that have arisen from the uh historic land use pattern
and development uh that we've seen on Cape Cod and the results are across the broad range. Um we got really poor water quality. 90% of our estuaries, more than a third of our ponds are exhibiting poor water quality on any given year basis. Um, I'm sure you'll talk to Brian about this a little bit more, but largely it's a combination of how we've chosen to develop and how we manage our storm water, people's behavior on how they utilize lawn care practices on the property they own. But
the dominant feature of all this is the choices that we've made as a community and how we chose to um address um nutrient septic systems. Um it's an environmental problem. It's also an economic problem. Touching on what the chair had to say a minute ago, um you know, living on the Cape is expensive. Um a lot of that expense is driven by cost of housing. Cost of housing is a direct result of some choices that we've made. Um and it ripples
through all of our lives in multitude fashions, not the least of which challenges in labor. You feel it when you're hiring locally. I feel it as an employer. You feel it as an employer. We're all aware of the stories that we get told by our friends in the business community that it's harder to um to attract people and that diminishes um the overall economic output of the community. Um way we've developed has broken up our natural landscape. Um it's had impacts on our water supply current and future. Um and it has created threats to species diversity.
132 rare, endangered, and threatened species that call Cape Cod home for at least a portion of their life cycle. They rely on large undeveloped tracks in order to be able of land in order to be able to um m support and maintain themselves. How we've broken up the landscape has provided an additional challenge to their survival given all the other things are going on with changes in climate. And then lastly, we've increased our vulnerability uh in combination with the changes we're seeing, storm frequency and intensity associated with climate change. Um areas that were once seen as
reasonably good places to put development are now subject to increased flooding and storm damage. That is only going to get worse. Um and so we've put people um at risk of um uh you know being more vulnerable. Um to really understand the predicate for this program um I want to run through a couple of quick maps. You probably have all seen these. This one represents Cape Cod 1900 to 1929. You can see largely undisturbed, largely undeveloped. Um things start to change
uh 1930 to 1959. Um and you'll see down at the bottom which is an indicator of the number of units of of h of property developed. Um things really start to change in the postw World War II era. um general period of prosperity in America combined with uh people's increasing access to cars uh and the ability to access the Cape began a great uh realization of the opportunities uh to both you know make money and enjoy the resources of the Cape and you begin to see
a little hard on this but along the coast you begin to see development uh on the Cape um things really change um from 1960 to 1989. Um all the development that happens in that 30-year window exceeds all that preceded it in total from the time of colonalization forward. Um and you begin to see breaking up of what were largely uh contiguous forested lands away from the coastal
areas, away from the ponds. So this is the period of time where things really started to shift. That brings us to current day. Um, and you'll see further infill. And the easiest way to see it is by what's not developed. Three major tracks. Um, that really jump out or four that really jump out at you. Joint base Cape Cod left hand side. Um, Barnsible Harbor and the Marsh area in the center north. uh Nickersonson State Park, Brewster area, middle right um and then National Seashore
upper upper right hand corner. Um the rate of development has slowed in this last 30 years um reflecting frankly the scarcity of land and the inflated prices that we're dealing with. But you see very little um uh remaining here. And that leads us to this, which is that 86% of the Cape is either developed or protected. When I say protected, I mean under some form of conservation restriction, whether it's private land trust ownership, private ownership constrained by
a conservation restriction or municipally owned with durable protections associated with it. Um from there that leaves us with um 14% of the of the um region is unprotected. And of that 14% or undeveloped, unprotected, of that 14% 80% of it falls within what we define and the Cape
Cod Commission defines as uh critical natural landscapes. So it's the most important stuff that we have remaining. So what does that mean? uh prior natural resource lands constitute our drinking water supplies current and future and the associated zone 2 is the land that contributes water to those uh groundwater sources. Uh the priority habitat areas identified by the commonwealth as being most critical to rare endangered and threatened species um survival.
The waterways themselves obviously you know people almost everybody in one fashion or another is here because of our water resources. So this definition includes both those water bodies and the wetland area buffers around them inclusive of vernal pools and then the coastal and inland flood zone prone areas which um land may be not a growth industry on Cape Cod. Um but land subject to flooding is
um the areas subject to flooding whether it's simple inundation in the Azones or uh inundation and velocity in the in the velocity zones um which would where you can have some of your most significant property damage. um those areas are increasing and are anticipated to continue to to increase and encroach upon areas that previously were thought to be um not floodprone. So of that 14% one way to look at it is threats and opportunities in every single community on
Cape Cod. Um the colored red colored areas in this map depict the land mass that makes up that 14% of undeveloped unprotected. And what your takeaway from this ought to be is that there is a piece of land that the future of which is undetermined whether it should be protected, whether it will be developed that constitutes one of those priority areas in every town near your house, near your
workplace, near someplace that you value uh in your association with what's important to you on Cape Cod. Everywhere, everybody. Um, so this is not a Mashby problem. This isn't a province town problem or an opportunity depending on how you want to look at it. It's a challenge that um that we all face that has all given rise to uh the campaign that we've started. And um the idea behind this is to um bring a sense of urgency to get your attention, bring a sense of
urgency and increase the public discourse about what do we want to do with what we have left and as a result by extension and not a big extension, what do we want to look like um as a community and as a natural resource area. So the campaign has um multiple elements to it. Um, and um, I'm not doing real well with the uh, there we go. Um, I'll just show you them. The idea here is to um,
let people know that this isn't an issue. This is a challenge, what the implications of it are. Um, we want to by broadening people's understanding of the choice we have to make about how we develop what's remaining. We think we're are tapping into um a pool of people who will become champions for protection of natural resource lands um once they have the information. We're looking to broaden the base of support for the conservation perspective in the political and public discourse. And we're
looking to mobilize people who once awakened want to know what they can do to address the needs to improve uh the protection of of those remaining lands that are out there. Um so that was the strategy. The campaign has um three phases associated with it. The first one that we're in right now raise people's ed awareness and understanding of what's going on, what is at risk. Second phase is to engage them and to build capacity. And what do we
mean by that? essentially mean um we are going to be rolling out this spring and summer a series of uh modules of education that let people understand and try to educate them on how to interact with how town government works, how municipal government works some extent how the state and federal governments work to the degree that that can be explained concisely. um and how they can then engage effectively as engaged, responsible, constructive partners in
self-governance to elevate and make a difference on the issues of um increased land protection. And then the third part is to sustain action. Uh we're creating these entities called team SOS's. The idea behind them is to have one in each one of the 15 towns. Envision this being a townbased campaign that we support on a regional level, but which we don't use to impose on any one of
the individual organically formed teams, what the priorities that they want to address are. We're going to provide them information about the lands that are vulnerable in their community. We're going to provide them information about how to engage constructively with town leaders to bring this issue to the four. Um we're going to um educate them on how to behave as a sustainable political actor. Um and in doing so that means understand how finances work at the municipal
level. Understand how to petition things in at town meeting, understand how to engage their select boards and constructive conversations about how and where to be directing CPC money, other town funding sources so that we have sustained political action and people that are locally based um that will be able to um bring this whole thing forward. Um, we have a resource page. It's the capewishape.org. Um, and that is the place where people can go and look at the strategy piece as
we begin to further populate the resource pages. U, we'll be having these online modules that'll explain to them as said the various elements of how we perceive and explain town government, how we perceive and explain uh, county government, how we suggest that people interact with them. So, it's an ongoing uh resource that's available to them. For us as an organization, um we've been around almost 60 years. Um we've worked on through multiple executive directors, uh multiple
staff. Uh we've worked on water quality, land use, restoration, other stuff as it's come up, but those have been core elements of the work that we do as an organization. We pride ourselves in um being a longhaul player um and taking positions and postures and interacting with our membership and our broader community that we're trying to influence in ways that's sustainable and reasonable. And as such, we're making a very clear long-term commitment to this campaign. This isn't a flash to the pan, one year done and next year it's going to be something else. we've built in
commitments and the way we're operating and the way we're allocating our funding resources to be able to support this initiative and support the teams that we're looking to develop um over the long haul. And then lastly, people where people can find more information uh to capshape.org. If you're interested in joining any one of these teams and being uh tied into our weekly updates, people can uh email us at teams sosapcc.org. And then obviously we have the the range of um
um you know social media. But as you can see from the signs and the handouts and all that, we're viewing this very much as a political campaign. Uh it's a political campaign that is intended to um make a fullthroated unapologetic case why land conservation is critically important. Um, it's not necessarily on the front end of the conversation more important than absolutely everything else,
but it should have an equal standing at the table when we're talking about housing, we're talking about economic development, talking about wastewater management options. We also ought to be talking about what do we do about the stuff that needs to be protected and how we're going to protect it so that all the other stuff we're doing on other fronts is not undermined by further degradation of critical natural resources that provide us clean water, that provide buffers for water quality, and that we don't lose those lands that we're counting on to allow
the improvements to be made that we're seeing people do in wastewater. water. Now, we don't want to develop the critical lands in a way that sets us back either to where we started when we first started dealing with wastewater management or even further back from that. So, um there's a lot of nuance and we understand there's a lot of nuance um about how this intersects with other priority public discussions that are happening. Um, we think that as a broader community, we can walk
and chew gum at the same time. We can promote the importance and talk about the importance of land protection without it being say, well, we can't do any of the other stuff, but you can't do the other stuff without thinking about this, too, right? Um, and that's really what we're bringing to the forum here. So that when we're having these public tradeoff conversations, because everything's a trade-off, um the issue and the priority and the understanding of natural resource protection is at the place it needs to be. So it's an even playing field. We're having a level and informed
conversation that lets us make better public policy decisions about where and how to invest our limited resources as a broad community. That's what this is about. People can talk about it being anti- this or anti that. You can make it that if you want to. It's not what it is for us. What it is for us is talking about that which needs to be talked about which is environmental protection and then we can have a even conversation about where we trade off protection versus future development. So with that I'm stop happy to Very good Andrew. Thank you Commissioner Lions. Thanks. Um, you
know, you're uh talking about a lot of things that I bring up at our commissioners meetings and I try to bring up here and everyone in the room knows that I am uh very concerned about our resources, our water resources. We're having more people here. I was trying to find and you can see it in at the county level. Um, you know, in 1985 the population here was 2,0002 people and it would uh gain about 15,000 about in the summer and all those people went home and everything was able to
recharge and the amount of rainfall and snowfall was twice three times of what it is today. So our lenses and I'm trying to make this this argument when I'm talking to people about because there is a big push to keep developing and what you hear is people have a right. First it started with we need to keep our children here. We need them to be able to stay. Then it was we need people to work here. And now it's everybody has a right to be there. I mean don't you you're the last one here. You're
going to close the door. I hear that a lot. And um that's not what I'm saying. And a matter of I've said to people, I feel guilty sometimes being here all year taking those resources because especially out here, it is a sensitive um fragile area and we can see that just by the dynamic of storms and what it does. So when you have the situation of people pushing um the rights of others to have what they want um and people versus the environment to me um the environment has other
benefits. There's mental health benefits. There's benefits um just to be here and re refresh yourself and be able to go home after a vacation. If we develop everything The Outer Cape especially is a touristbased economy. We are not a year-round economy. And we're not going to be able to make it a year-round economy, no matter how much we want to make it a year- round economy. So, if you build it, what brings people here is the natural setting. And if you keep bringing people
here, that natural setting goes. So, where is the economy? And this is you have we have to think about what is are the long-term consequences of our desire to help people. And it is a natural for those who are saying affordable housing uh workforce housing that's all very good intentions and I I support that intuitively and emotionally but what is the reality of what we can do? The BL house is an example of just because you can build it doesn't mean you should. And um so how how
do we how are you how are we going to approach this? Because there's there's there's a lot of uh been years of pushing this. You and I uh worked together when the environment was our economy and that's how we got people to realize that we had to clean our waters, how we had to uh do some sewering against against people's natural feelings about that. And now because there is sewering that leads to more development. I mean I don't think that's what you were thinking in the beginning.
I think we were thinking of cleaning. So I'm putting out a lot of things that I I express at different meetings and I express to different people here and um you know a lot of people don't like it and I'm you know talking about things that uh people don't really want to see. So um how is how is that? How is that going for you? How are we going to counteract that? Well, I'll go back to kind of where I started, which was the 200 and something years of development
has gotten us to a certain place, gotten us high housing prices, fragmented landscape, not a lot of housing type choice, poor water quality, and a lot of traffic. Right. Um it's also provided economic opportunity for a lot of people, the opportunity to use and enjoy a wonderful place. um to ignore the fact that there are some significant benefits and some significant detriments to the
development pattern as we look at what's left kind of I think lead you to exacerbating more of the same of the negatives. Um, and so if the remaining 14% gets developed the way the first 86% was developed, I don't think there's any particular reason to think that the trajectory of challenges is going to change radically. you know, um, so, you know, the idea behind this is to continue to
raise awareness because I think I go back to the experience we had on wastewater together as a broad community. 15 years ago, conversation about allocating tens, if not hundreds of millions of dollars um, and asking voters to approve that was a political non-starter. You know, it was the rare town administrator who brought those issues to the four. Go ask Bill Henchie and chat him how
that worked out for him long term. Um, and it was the rare select board member who brought it up by educating people about what the need and the cause of the degradation, the need to deal with it, narrowing the conversation about the range of alternatives to those that were real and tenable on Cape Cod. All of that brought and then finding a way to crack some of the money challenges through the Cape Islands Protection Fund. All of that changed the political dynamic such that
now what would you guys do? 207 million bucks in Yarmouth. Right. 207 exactly 10 years ago. Would you have thought that was a viable discussion to have in the town of Yarmouth? No. But I do think what's been helpful has been building political support and funding to help the communities take this on. Exactly. But that came from a broader understanding and education of the need to deal with this issue. So that the dynamics around the politics changed and so it became possible to have a mature conversation with your voters about this is what we think we need to do. These are
alternative ways to do it. The same thing needs to happen with land protection. um so that you can have that discussion and you're not going to do it everywhere and you're not going to get all 14% of that land much as on the abstract level might say that would be what we need realistically are we going to get all of it probably not are we going to get any of it if we don't start talking about it differently no we're not um I put this back up just to go back and highlight you know we talk about you know that 86% about 46% of us developed 40%'s preserve So you could walk away
from this conversation saying, "Hey, 40% of every town on Cape Cod is preserved. That's not bad." And if that were the case, that wouldn't be that bad, but that's not how it works. Um, the vast majority of that protected acreage is a joint base Cape Cod, which has more protection than the average unprotected property, but not as much as we once thought. um the national seashore and to an extent Nickerson. If you take those out, right, the number is not 40%. It's not 40% in Yarmouth.
It's not 40% in Chadam. It's not 40% in Bourne. Um it probably is 40% or more in Wellfleet, East Ham, Truro, and Provincetown, which means which is why we're having this conversation rooted with teams that are locally based because the priorities are going to be different. Um but I think the core element to answer your broad question Sheila is we need to bring some
urgency to this right because while we're meandering through this thought process about conservation properties being picked off one by one by one and once they're gone they're gone. We don't undevelop property. Nature will do it for us on occasion. U but nobody wins that conversation, but once something's developed, it's off the map. And then your future water supply development, your future resilience, the future climate changes, those things are diminished. So
the whole element of this is to and it's why we chose the colors, the font, the whole typology around this campaign was done purposefully and with intent to get your attention, convey urgency and start the conversation to catch up for where it should be and hasn't been because other things have dominated the conversation. If if I can just add one real quick. Okay. Um you were talking about um the fragmented landscape and that came up in a talk about
fire. Uh Mike and I attended last year in Toro and uh Dave who is from the National Seashore uh their fire guy. We're seeing that when you do fragment that land, it also weakens the forest uh strength. It makes it more vulnerable to fire. It makes it uh weaker. And there's also a wildlife that lives here. And I've seen that diminish. I've been here 23 years now and it is a different place and we do have other neighbors that are wildlife that we should consider and um care about. And
for the first time that I recall, East Ham had a pond closed last year. And to me that was just a direct signal. We're going overboard. So, and it's going to happen here. We're on the precipice. We still have our ponds, but I'm not sure if we will by the end of the summer. So, I I just wanted to add there's a lot of there's a lot of consequences to these hits, as you say, bit by bit. Yep. And there's a lot of things that contribute to that, but what we develop, how we develop it, how we manage the wastewater and road runoff from it, all have an impact. There's a lot
going on that we don't control on the global scale around climate that's putting enormous pressure on these resources. Um, and I guess you have the choice. You can either throw your hands up in the air and say, "Nothing we can do about that, so let's do nothing." Or we can help mitigate it and provide time and buffer by preserving critical natural lands both for storm prevention or storm uh management and um and to give species that are otherwise under enormous stress at least
a little bit more of the habitat that they've grown accustomed to. so they have a little bit better chance of surviving a little bit longer and maybe we all get our act together as a broad world community. I don't know. Commissioner Bergster. Yeah. Um, you know, this goes along with what I've heard a lot over especially over the last couple years is what is what is what are we looking to toward in the next five or 10 years and do we allow the process to simply develop as you point out or do we make a conscious decision as a Cape what we want this place to look like
and if we make that decision that brings in a lot of variables. I mean, we have local conservation commissions, we have zoning boards, we have planning boards, and on a on a micro level, I've seen too often where you you allow maximum development. People people encroach on wetlands, they they go in and they they miraculously allow non-developable land become developed. So really on a on a very micro level, we can do a lot in our towns. On a macro level, I think we have to look
seriously on what our limits are. Not the natural limits. If we develop everything we can, what limits do we want to place on Cape Cod? What do we want it to look like in 10 years? And this really helps. It puts the anecdotal talk about, well, you know, Cape Cod isn't what it used to be and it's too much development. It actually puts it in facts and figures and and and a process. And at what point in that process do we want to say enough is enough. This is the carrying capacity of our fragile peninsula. And we can say we can preserve that 14% that that Andy talks about. We can also
preserve a lot of land by simply enforcing the regulations that we have now. And by selectman and I was a selectman for many years and you go selectman. You appoint someone to a committee. you say, "Look, these are the rules and I don't care if you have a failance of lawyers come in front of you, you should enforce those regulations unless there's a very good reason not to." So, um, this is very timely because, as I say, it's a conversation I've heard more and more now about what do we decide? What do we want the Cape to look like in five and 10 years? What do we do
about it? Those are good points. I think if we're if we're talking about, you know, having that kind of conversation, I would encourage people to not fall into the lazy trap that a lot of people want to set when I talk about this, which is, well, if you're for preservation of land, you're against housing. What we're against is trying to solve the housing issues which are real by developing the most critical and highest priority natural lands that we have
remaining that provide the water supply, the water quality buffer and the storm resilience that all of the development existing and future rely on in order to make this place viable. There are plenty of places and we worked on a project with the housing assistance corporation several years ago that defined areas that were best protected. And this project represents a much more refined um and and and uh well thought out um maturing of the ideas that were in that initial report, the
growth smart Cape Cod report. And it also showed the areas where future additional development were most appropriate. Already developed areas, underdeveloped areas, previously disturbed areas, all serviced by wastewater infrastructure of some sort. There's plenty of that. Um, so you can begin to responsibly address the need for housing on a scale, a community, a regional scale. And I understand what it looks like in East Ham and Turo and Well Fleet,
Provincetown, maybe different than what it looks like in Chadam and um, Yarmouth and and Falmouth. So we can deal with this on a regional scale. The one thing I'm sure of is that if we say we have to sacrifice the priority lands, the things that we know that are bad will get worse. And it's an unnecessary choice. It's lazy. It's wrong. And it just wants to just bulldoze over, pardon the punt, bulldoze over the conversation about the nuance about where you're going to
do this because the truth is that the market is driving highriced housing that doesn't address the needs of most working people on Cape Cod. That's what the private development community wants to do. That's where the money is. And that solves nobody's problem. Doesn't solve the affordable housing community's problem. certainly doesn't solve our environmental problems and it does nothing but exacerbate all the negatives that we see now. So why do we want to go down that road? And so this whole false dichotomy of oh this is bad. They're opposed to housing. Let's shut that
conversation down is wrong. It's lazy. And I would really encourage people not to take the bait on it because it distracts from the real issues that we have to decide as a community. Very good. Um I don't know how we end this conversation on a happy note. Um but John, did you have my happy closing part? I I want to follow up what you said there because the one of the issues we're confronting
here is um yes, we have a real housing issue. uh it goes to our um ability to attract people to work for the town and so on and so forth. But how h how do we balance that need against um what I see anyway as well we can get this amount of money from the state to do this but then we're being asked to solve not a local housing problem but a statewide housing problem with very scarce local
resources. Uh that's I think one of the balancing acts we're facing out here. uh we have a housing need, we have some resources available for it, but how do we use those resources? And how is it possible to use them responsibly when we're being asked to address a housing issue somewhere across the Commonwealth? I think that, you know, and I have a painful tendency for some that listen to me with some frequency to fall back to the wastewater conversation, but I think it's a useful framework.
We were able to define as a region that our needs were separate and apart and different from those of the rest of the Commonwealth. The problems were the same about investment in infrastructure, how to maintain it, how to manage it, how to finance it, but the circumstances that we found ourselves in were different. So, we got a different set of rules when it came for financing. the statewide housing approach is a bit of a one fits sizefits-all approach that I don't think one-sizefits-all within the 15 towns of the Cape, let alone the Cape in context
of the broader community. So, I think we have to continue to have this conversation. If the outcome of that development conversation is more single family detached homes, we all lose. Um, and it's going to require, I think, to solve the problem in a financially sustainable fashion, a willingness of people to accept some types of development that look different than the 46% of the land mass that's currently developed on the Cape. Um, because unless you want
to consume large tracks of land, you have to consolidate and go up. And there's an enormous amount of resistance to height. Um, and you know, if you want to get a certain number of units in, it's tight. Either you go up or you go out. And going out consumes a ton of land. So, you know, I'm not here to prescribe to the housing community how to have that conversation. But the reality is that building our way out of it on virgin land isn't going to achieve the outcome. And it's
going to be subjected, I haven't heard any reason why it's not going to be yet, to the same market forces that have distorted the housing market that currently make it unaffordable. So why feed the beast whose hunger is insatiable to give it more of what it already has and expect that the economics are going to be any different? I think we've talked about as an organization through a number of discussions at the county level with the commission on the housing production plan that one element that's missing is having a regional entity whose job it is to identify,
find, and secure public interest in existing, for lack of a term, starter homes that can then become deed restricted affordable because that keeps things that are already built that already fit into your community character. It has zero additional incremental environmental impact attainable to the community that you're trying to support locally that feeds your schools, your local economy and the like. We don't have that. That's an unreasonable thing to expect from any one town to be able to. It's a perfect thing for a county government to be
thinking about. There are models out there. Yale, Colorado has it been talked about the last three years at at one cape. It's a model that's sitting right there that I think we all collectively need to grab so that we can begin to address that. If it's a one if it's a one-off kind of wealth responsibility to solve, you're one 351% of the state's problem. You're not going to get there. It's not cuz you're bad. You can't. That's why we banded together as a region to deal with wastewater because there's a bunch of one-offs. We were never going to get there. We're never getting
there on money. It's the same thing's true on housing. and we should just like wake up and have a grown-up conversation about it. Andrew, thank you very much. Yes. Thank you. Appreciate you being here. Happy Earth. Yes. Happy Earth. All right. Protect it. Go ahead. You can applaud. All right. We uh we're going to move on here with the rest of our agenda. Next up is uh an update from Brian Bombgardle concerning our um clean energy, excuse me,
clean water center and some of the great work going on there, Brian. Yes, he's up. There we go. Yeah, goes way. It goes way up if you need it. There we go. All right. Good morning. That's a hard act to follow. Um so my name is Brian Bombgardle, the director of our Barnesville Countyy's Clean Water Center. We have a number of programs that I'm going to talk about which are in the area of wastewater. And much like Andrew, I'm going to start my discussion with backing up in time. I'm not going to quite go back to 1900. I'm going to go back to about
2015 or so when the 208 plan came out and we all celebrated this new document that we had that gave us this menu of options that we could select in our towns to address the wastewater issue. And at that time um there had been a report that had come out from the commission that placed the cost of sewering for our entire region at 4.2 to 6.2 billion. Right? That's why we said we need to do something different than just sewer everything. Right? And that report then went through and
looked at all the options. The commission did a lot of work on that and they brought that number down to somewhere around 2.0 to3.8 billion for the Cape to address its wastewater problems. uh by utilizing a hybridized approach of centralized sewering, on-site advanced on-site wastewater technologies, composting toilets, permeable reactive barriers, shellfish, etc. Well, here we are. We're standing here in 2026, and we all know that inflation has been rather high lately, right? We're all familiar with the consumer price index. It's running about 3%
right now. When we're talking about construction of these large infrastructure projects, we need to talk about what's called the construction price index, which runs more like 8 to 10% and at some points during the peak of COVID, it was more like 20some percent. So, if you apply that basic factor to the numbers I just gave you, so that original estimate of 4.2 to 6.2 of sewering everything on Cape Cod now becomes 6.2 to 9.2 billion. And the hybridized approach becomes 2.8 8 to5.4 billion.
So obviously we've made a lot of progress on sewering, right? A lot of the towns have moved forward with their sewer plans because that's the technology that um functions best in most of the areas that we really need to to focus on. At first I'm not going to talk mostly about how sewering works. I'm going to talk about inside innovative alternative septic systems. We call them IAS. I really like to abandon that term because they're not really innovative or alternative at this point. They're just advanced technologies, right? So, I'm going to call them advanced technologies,
on-site technologies. I'm also going to talk a little bit about eco sanitation, which at the beginning we talked a little bit about. So, I'm going to address that right away from the county. There you go. You're your county at work. Um, so what is an IIA system? Um, just to give everybody here a sense of what that is. Um it's like a title 5 standard septic system that's really designed to address a specific uh contaminant of concern. Um, if you rewind back to that, you know, 2015 or before, most of the IIA technologies were really there to address different types of issues.
BOD, TSS reduction, um, to try to, um, work with lots that were small or have had high groundwater issues. Some of them renew nitrogen, um, and that nitrogen removal wasn't that great. Um, so they were kind of looked at as this sort of, well, we're going to sew her, but these could also maybe be somewhere in the plan. We're just not sure yet. you know, 15 years ago. Those technologies have really advanced since then. And because the on-site wastewater industry has really been recognized that they are going to be left out of a sizable market, they've started to de develop
products that are more uh tuned into contaminants that are needed really across the country. I mean, this is Cape Cod. We like to uh you know, we are all a unique place. We all like to uh go around and enjoy our environment, right? But Cape Cod is really one of many areas across the country that face similar problems, right? Um, as I was sitting here just a minute ago, I was looking a picture from my last family trip to St. Simons in Georgia. Um, very similar situation. It's an island uh that
is tourist driven um and has faced wastewater issues as well. Right? So these are not isolated problems in the country. So these companies have really been working toward well how do we prevent ourselves being from being left out of that market and that market right now is dictating we need nitrogen removal right to help address the bays and estuaries in Cape Cod and really across the country Suffach County Long Island in New York Hawaii uh down in Florida you can look basically anywhere there's a coastal area this is a problem right so these IA systems these advanced
technologies have come along that are really uh set up to deal with these contaminants that have become more evident in recent years as being a problem. So, I want to give you a little bit of a technology update here to start. Um, and I'm just going to kind of do that in a form of frequently asked questions. So, number one frequently asked question that we get with this is, do they work? So, based on what I just told you, we're kind of getting specialized systems that address contaminants um as they've become um more obvious. Do they work is really contextual. So if
you're looking at nitrogen reduction, the newer technologies that we have do work, right? So the reductions we're seeing from those systems are 80 to 90%. Um or better. Um and we're getting more of those technologies developed all the time. There's a little bit of lag in technology development, but those will start coming online within the next probably 5 years or so. How much do they cost? This is always the big one, right? Um, we put the average cost of fully replacing a septic system about $50,000 and that's borne out by some data I'm going to give you from our Aqua Fund
program in a minute. Um, so if you have to replace your septic tank, your leech field, put in an IIA technology, the average cost, and I know there are there are always anecdotes of somebody who spent way more than that, right? Um, the average cost capewide is about $50,000. And there's a bit of a regional sort of tweak to that. So out here on Wellfleet, you're probably going to see higher numbers because you have less contractors, less access to materials and supplies. They need to be trucked here. Um so that tends to push costs up in this area versus say born, which is probably
on the lower end of things, right? What about seasonal use? Um seasonal use is a question that comes up really frequently. And what I say in terms of that is it's not really a seasonal use performance issue. It's really you need to reframe that in terms of infrastructure. If you're rolling out hundreds of IIA systems to address a specific contaminant like nitrogen, right, you're rolling them out whether it's a seasonal use property or a full year round use property, right? You're not going to differentiate between the two. If you're installing a sewer, you don't
say, "Well, you're seasonal. You don't have to connect." Right? You're seasonal. You don't have to. Oh, you're full-time. You have to connect. You have to address it as a infrastructure problem because you never know. Maybe that becomes a full-time home. Maybe that stays seasonal for a while. Maybe this switches to seasonal. Um, so the seasonal use question is really a little bit of a red herring in that it's really an infrastructure problem and not a performance problem. What about phosphorus reduction? Well, there are technologies which are designed for phosphorus reduction. Um, they're a little bit behind in technology development from nitrogen reduction systems
simply because nitrogen has been identified as a contaminant for a little bit longer of a period of time. And there are more regulations driving nitrogen technology development than there are for phosphorus. And the last frequently asked question is what about PAS? My answer to that is PAS is everywhere we are and we don't know what we're going to do with it yet. Um so again I don't want to just call that a simple red herring. But this is a much PAS is a much bigger discussion that we need to be having really as a country and as a society because we keep putting PAS into our waist
stream. It's a problem from border to border in the United States where every wastewater treatment process struggles to address PAS. So, you know, I could sit and expound on PAS for a while, but um you know, I'm going to I'm going to kind of keep it to that for right now. So, that's sort of the state of the technology, and these are the basic questions we get really frequently. Um so, what is the county doing to sort of uh to help uh bolster town's efforts in the area of wastewater? Um we do that by supporting them through a number of programs which are in our wastewater division
um and clean water center. Um the first I'll talk about is our septic utility program. Um which is something that I've personally spent a lot of time in Wleley talking about over the last 5 years or so. Um my staff and I have probably spent hundreds of hours actually talking with town staff uh over the last several years about um what's called a responsible management entity program. So, if you are going to roll out hundreds or even potentially thousands of advanced on-site treatment systems,
they need to be operated. They need to be maintained. They need to be watched to make sure that they're removing nitrogen contamination as they should be. Um, and a responsible management entity is tasked with that job. And it's not just a uh simple function when you're talking about uh masses of systems being rolled out for nitrogen reduction. Um it's a much more in-depth process from start to finish. Um so responsible management entity is a very uh government term. Um so we've
named our program septic utility program to be a little bit more obvious in what it does. And the intention of this program is to provide a suite of services to the towns to help them potentially manage their uh on-site treatment systems and their decentralized systems. Um, and as a matter of fact, here in Wellfleet, our team was up doing monitoring on a number of systems. Uh, I think they did 10 or 12 different systems up here uh just a couple days ago. Um, we've been working with uh one of the private companies to gather data for their approval uh in the state. So, we've
been working with them for a while. Uh, we're also working on Capewide um in Falmouth and Barnstable primarily um and also in Martha's Vineyard. And what we're doing in those areas in terms of field operations is doing a lot of this sampling activity to make sure that the systems that are coming out as these brand new flashy technologies are functioning as uh the vendors are claiming. Um but the other piece of this is to help develop the management tools that go with that. So with the sewer you have staff who come in every day and check all the pumps and check the SCADA system
to make sure things are functioning. uh um but there's also the whole like management of the collection system, the infrastructure that goes with that and it's not just the treatment plant. So if you sort of equate that to on-site systems, you know, it's the staff that goes out and does the operation maintenance on the technology is taking the samples who's bringing it back and doing the analysis on that data to make sure that the system is functioning and identifying problems in systems and working with the town and the vendors to make sure um that each individual system is functioning as it should. and then to help the town potentially provide information
to the state for their requirements because as you were putting together your wershed plans, you know, ultimately at the end of the day, you need to hand the state a ticket that says we did our job. We needed to remove 10,000 kg of nitrogen and here we did it right. Um so you need to be able to toll that data. Um, so you start to think about on-site systems not in terms of like we're trying to collect information from homeowners and all these separate contractors and trying to figure out what this number is to trying to turn it more into a municipal function. So the septic utility program is there to help the town through that process if they so choose to take that
pathway. Um, in addition to that, we're working on workforce development. um trying to make sure that the folks who are doing all this work out there, the operators, the maintainers, the installers, the electricians, the designers are um up to snuff in what they're doing to make sure that there's a potential certification program for them to go through um and get a stamp that says I know what I'm doing on this so that you end up right from the beginning with systems that should function well. Um we've worked with the um uh nature conservancy on developing some system financing
tools. Uh we worked with naturevest to develop a tool such a tool. So in basic summary septic utility program is a suite of services to provide to the town to help you manage potential on-site um septic systems. And we're not talking about all the historic ones that we put in over the years necessarily. We're talking about the ones you want to put in potentially for nitrogen reduction specifically in our watersheds. I want to talk a little bit about Aqua Fund. Um, and I'm want to throw a few numbers at you. Um, just so you get a sense of the scale of what Aqua Fund has
been doing. Um, so right now we're in the process of borrowing another $20 million from the state uh to help finance that program. And it was about two years ago or so that we worked through trying to get $13 million from the state. I'm happy to report we've spent just about all that money at this point. Um, and why is that? Well, because we provide funding to homeowners to replace their failed and failing septic systems, to put in these advanced on-site treatment systems where they're required in watershed plans, and to also do sewer connections. Um, so if you look kind of back to
2014 or so, um, we had about 100 or so loans per year. It varies a bit. 100, 150, maybe 200. Uh, in 2025, we did 319 loans. So, we've we've scaled quite a bit from what our baseline was. Um, and a lot of that has been driven by sewer connections from the towns because as you finish the phases, you got to get that last little chunk of pipe from house to uh sewer. Um, in terms of costs for our loans, um, we've seen an increase. So, I talked about that rate of inflation at the beginning.
um looking at construction price index right um pre204 the average loan was about $11,000 and after 2014 and particularly through co we saw a rapid climb uh uh uh incline in that and we're seeing an average of about $23,000 now for a loan. Um so we're we're seeing that in our um our aqua fund data. Uh the number of sewer connections have increased dramatically from about we were averaging about 20 a year uh because there was very limited sewer. Uh in 2025 we did 178
and we're well on pace to beat that this year. Um the average cost for a sewer connection right now and that's this number I I'll give is a just as a reminder is only the cost of that pipe from house to street. Right? Not talking about the cost of the infrastructure running that big pipe down the street. just that little piece. Uh in 2023, our average was about 12,000. In 2025, we've actually seen that number come down a little bit down to about 10,000, which is, I think, a positive sign. And we're seeing economies of scale here at play because there's a lot of competition amongst
contractors. If you drive down any street that recently got sewer, you'll see Bob's contracting and Joe's contracting and Dan's contract. Like, they all have their signs out. They're all trying to get these houses lined up because really sewer connections are pretty turnkey for them. Mhm. Um in terms of IIA systems, I gave you $50,000. That's the average we're seeing through Aqua Fund as well as all the other data that we collect. And then looking at standard title 5 systems, um pre207 about a $12,000 average 2024 to 25 data puts it about 245. So we've seen a significant
increase in in those costs as well. Um the volume of standard title five systems is fairly stable. Um but the overall trend is is going kind of down in terms of numbers of standard systems going in which I think is a good thing. Um so the basic takeaway here is you know the county is providing Aquafund as a resource for homeowners to replace their not only their failed and failed septic systems but to also support the towns in their uh wastewater infrastructure roll out. Um, and I think we're having a tremendous amount of success in that regard in helping people do that
last little, not the last mile, but maybe the last 100 feet of pipe going to those homes. Um, so those are the major programs I wanted to talk about today and give you some updates on. Um, but I'm uh totally open to answering any questions anybody might have about the other programs that we run or any of this data as well. That's terrific. Thank you, Brian. Commissioner Lions is dying. So Brian, no, but Brian is here a lot and is uh always helping and and educating us on uh the options that we have. Some people don't want those options. Some people everybody,
you know, again, to me, if we can just get, you know, something started here, that would be great. And then we can look at how how do we incorporate the IA systems because there's not a lot of time. I'm not going to go into it, but I am going to ask that um maybe you come back again either before a sub the the select board or um maybe a forum would be you know we're getting there for a forum to really explain this to the homeowner uh within so that they can discuss it and I'm just
going to make it brief because we have two other um speakers after this. So, got it. And this is a question that might Mike could wait until you do come back to Wellfleet, which I would look very much forward to, but just thought I'd throw it out there cuz um uh it's been a question I've had for some time. Why do we not look at dry wells for nonbiological waste like gray water? It's mostly driven by state state regulation. So, the current state regulation would make you put gray water
into a standard Title 5 system. Um, I think we need to do some more local research on graywater disposal as an option and it's not something we've looked at heavily because it's in most most uh as as Andrew just mentioned, you know, 86% of the Cape is already built out. It's a little difficult to go back and put gray water systems into homes, right? But it's definitely an option um that I think we should be looking at. And rather even then I would go a step further. Rather than putting in a dry wells, find a way to recycle that on the property and use it for
irrigation. Uh it's good water to be reused. We actually have a demonstration of that at the test center that people can come and look at. Um the other piece that I wanted to actually come back to is eco sanitation, composting toilets, urine diversion, all those types of technologies um are available and you know those aren't one-sizefitsall. Not everybody is going to say, "Yeah, I want to do composting toilets." Yeah, I want to do urine diversion. Um, but we're doing a lot of research toward making sure that those things are available to those who may want to
use them um as options and maybe instead of an IIA system, you could use a urine diverent system or composting toilet or something like that. And again, at Mass TC at the test center, uh we have demonstrations of composting toilets that people can actually come and see and look and figure out how it functions and understand better um how how those things work. Yeah, they're not as scary or awful as they seem. And I do encourage people to take that tour. Uh you will learn a lot about the I know that Sarah here in the um in the audience has gone and was very
impressed and as they should be because there's a lot of work being done and more than we can even get into uh today. But um it's it's quite an operation up there and we very much appreciate it. Commissioner Bergster. Yeah. Um, you know, I've asked uh Brian about the average sewer hookup on more than one occasion because I'm getting wild numbers thrown at me and that's why I ask, you know, and saying, "Oh, it's $30,000, $40,000." I mean, if you take it in context, and I like to
run the numbers, if it cost you $10,000 to do a sewer hookup at 0% interest, it comes to what, $500 a year or $40 a month. I mean, you know, it can be an imposition on people who are in fixed incomes, but it's doable. you know, it's not and and I encourage people regardless of your income to take advantage of that program because it saves you a ton of money over what a a home equity loan would cost, you know. So, and and plus we want people to hook up because as Andy from APC said,
we're trying to clean up our environment and this goes a long way to doing it. But uh getting back to the um the uh innovative alternative systems, what is the trigger that causes people to install these systems? I mean, most of the people out there around here, they have Title 5 systems, had them for many years, they would just soon keep them rather than spend $50,000. So, what what is the trigger that that makes them uh put in these systems? failure. So the trigger right now in most situations is um they want to add a bedroom or something like that um and their lot is too small.
A lot of we see a lot of this in um zone 2's the areas of uh public water supply contribution um which have nitrogen loading restrictions uh and would require these on-site systems. So that's where we see uh most of the triggers for these is like high groundwater zone twos out a bedroom you know those types of scenarios. Um as towns start to look at how they could potentially roll out IIA technologies in broader context those triggers become much more important. Um because if you look
at if you just base it on title 5, the triggers are if you sell the property, you're going to have to do an upgrade, right? And the town could require at that point that you upgrade to the IIA system. Um that's the that's sort of the primary point. There are little nuances to that that allow properties to transfer without those sort of inspection events to occur. So the towns need to address those as well. Um, you know, I've suggested maybe instead of looking at triggering events, um, approach this again, if you're going to deploy many of these in a known area, approach
it again like you would with a sewering project was to roll it out in phases because there are economies of scale and uh, efficiency to be had there. If you know you're going to do this street right in this period of time, you could bid that out to one contractor potentially to do a whole neighborhood worth of systems. You know, you could uh contract with a an IE technology company to buy all of the units at once and get a better price than individual homeowners could get on their own. Um, and it just it's it's rather than going from this property here to this one here to this one
here, you know, if you keep it sort of in a phased approach and think about it as infrastructure, which I always argue that it is, um, I think you get a much better and more efficient result and a better roll out. what Falmouth and Barnstable are looking at and particularly in Barnstable um they're looking at doing a thousand foot buffer um from their um uh their embmentsments their impacted embmentsments and everybody inside those thousand foot buffers would have to upgrade in a certain period of time. That's the closest thing I think to a phase that we have right now.
Um, but it's important, I think, to look at it that way. And and I'm asked just quickly, it's important that people who purchase property at an environmentally sensitive area become aware of their their responsibilities to to change their system, you know, so it doesn't come as a surprise. And I think the towns, and it's easy for me to say this, should identify those areas so that whether real estate transactions take place, people be aware of the fact that they should or should be encouraged to change their systems. Anyway, That's my editorial comment. Thanks,
Commissioner. Commissioner Lance, did you No, no. I I could be I could keep Brian here for a long time, but um time time is ticking. So, happy to come back to it. We'll have you back, please. Understood. Thank you, Brian. Thank you so much. Thank you. Is there any question if there's any um from the audience? Yeah, I guess. While Brian's here, uh, is there anybody from the audience that would like to ask him a question regarding, uh, IIA systems or urine diversion? I heard that come up from the audience earlier today. Feel free to Yeah, Matt Patrick, generally,
this is only only on Cape Cod are you going to get someone want to talk about urine diversion. Actually, you're wrong there. It's it's an international movement and and yes, it is. Like there's places in Paris, large buildings that are all urine diversion. And there's also universities in the Midwest, all their dorms are urine diverting. So this is not like a pie in the sky. We're just not we're not leading the the the the the whole movement here. We should be should
be because we have a very delicate situation here. And so um I wanted to ask a question now. I got I got distracted. I got diverted. Um um I would like to see like the Aqua Fund perhaps also supporting composting toilets for example um as an alternative. And there's there's always been some questions also about if you have a house and you put in an IIA system and the town sewer goes past
you that you'd be required then to still hook up to the sewer. And that's a deterrent both for IIA systems and for composting putting in composting or urine deferring systems. So I would like to for that to be considered. Okay. Thank you. Brian, do you want to respond to I think first um I can I can answer a bit of the first question. Um, so composting toilets if are applicable for
aquafund loans if your system has failed and you design it with a composting unit in it only if it's failed. There is a piece of legislation um that was put through and I think it was 2023 um I think it came from um it was on the house side uh not federal level but state level um that would have uh allowed voluntary upgrades of systems to be eligible for aquafund loans um that made it through the house. I understand the senate never took it up. If that were to be revived
potentially, then we could have a situation where if you're doing a voluntary upgrade, if you know, you know, you're going to have to do something and you just want to get it done now, that it would be applicable. Um, and it's also worth saying that in areas where towns are saying, you know, um, this is a watershed that we're trying to address for nitrogen reduction, uh, let's say W Fleet Bay as the example. Um, basically what the town is saying is all the septic systems in that area failed, right? we're going to be doing something about this and that at that point those systems would be applicable for those same set of loans. Um, and I'm neglecting
to remember really the full details of the second question, but I don't think I could that's that's really a town by town question and there towns are wrestling with that across the board. Uh, whether you just install the standard system like do you get some sort of a you know uh couple years to to keep that and then hook up. Can you permanently keep an IE system? Could you permanently keep an eco sanitation system? Um, it's a very town by town discussion really different. You know, Falmouth's approach is going to be different from Wealth Fleet's approach. So, I wish I had a better answer, but that's kind of the status. Okay, that's great. Thank you.
Anybody else from the audience? Yes, ma'am. Just Yeah, make sure we get your name. My name is Sarah Blandford and I live here in Wilfleet. Um and I just want to say that we do uh we are leading um the world actually in urine diversion and uh composting toilet research at masttec and the green center. There are companies all over the world that are sending their product composting
toilet products to be tested here in Barsville County. So, one could argue that we uh we have experts to help us to lead the way uh in this. And you know, a lot of the I took some pictures of Andrew who left uh Andrew's uh slideshow because I was um impressed with the the issues that we're trying to address in our wastewater management um are economic challenges uh envir fragile
environment and these are when when we look at IIA upgrades and um extensive sewing projects, those may have to be the way forward. But I think urine diversion, eco sanitation in general, there's more than just urine diversion and composting toilets, but those are the two main ones. And for sure the researched uh products from Masttec uh they address both of those. They're much cheaper
for the average single family household. Um, as well as a much more effective uh, from an environmental standpoint. No urine going into our aquifer is better than diluted urine going into our aquifer. So, thank you Masttec and thank you for those comments. Yes, in the back and again your name just quickly name Christy Johnson with APCC. Um just to note that we
actually at ABCC do have composting toilets and so if anyone wants to come and and see one try one out um it's you know you can come to Dennis rather than going all the way down to Mashp. Right. Yeah, it is. It's very impressive and not as scary and complicated as everyone thinks the more you become familiar with this other style. So, uh that said, yes, it's we are okay with anybody else. Okay, we're going to move on to the next item on the agenda.
Thank you for those very nice comments about our clean water center and our mastc staff. Right. Very much appreciate knowing that there's a tremendous amount of support here on the uh on the outer Cape. Next item is um an update from our Americanore program. Right. And I'm going to bring up Mike Maguire and our outstanding Americanore team. And just just to let you know, Mr. Chair, some of this team are now employed here in the town of Wellle. I see. So the town of Welf has
been stealing our Americanore volunteers. Yes. By design. Yeah, excuse me. I'm coming over. Yeah, Mike Magcguire, director, Cape Cod Cooperative Extension. The Americanore program is under our office. And uh the next three presenters are are from extension or from Americanore. And in 1999, I was an Americanore member. Liberty was one of the first members on the Cape. And uh I just love that term shared services and uh shared responsibilities. I think that's the way
that I've looked at it for a long time. Uh you're going to hear from Mike and Sadi and our Americanore program and Sarah from the town of Wealthley uh in a minute about what they're doing. And then you're going to hear from Josh who's uh one of our shellfish and aquaculture experts at the county. Um and then you're going to hear from Anthony uh on on some uh water quality protection initiatives that the county has through uh hazardous waste uh mitigation. So, um the the bottom line though is uh I think this is going to be a really nice display of uh shared services,
shared responsibilities, and the uh ability for the county and um uh the town to uh collaborate together to make this environment uh as good as it can be. And uh another thing too, Andrew just had my mind spinning and I I just appreciate so much uh that he was able to articulate so clearly that there is really not a conflict between housing and the environment. Uh we can do this collaboratively and that's certainly the approach we're taking in our department. That's great. Thank you
commissioners. How are you? Thank you. Mike Lranovich, program coordinator, American Cape Cod, resident of Park. Thanks for having me today. Just want to make sure I get my slides up. Sharing window, the entire screen. Let's try this. Make sure I talk right into the mic. Thank you, Mike. There you go. Comes up the way. Perfect. Um, so Americanore, like Mike talked about, um, it's really a shared service across the Cape, right? We operate out of all 15 towns. Um,
but in terms of the town of Wellfleet, I'm just going to talk about a few things today. Uh, starts with the housing, right? So, we do have a house provided by the Cape Cod National Seashore, uh, on Hammet Point. We've been living out of that house for all 27 years of the program. So, um, you know, that looks like a new group of anywhere from 9 to 13 or 14 in some of our bigger years. Uh, folks from all over the country, right? Not just here in Cape Cod. They come to Wellle. Uh, they learn to love the town. walks on Main Street, community dinner at the church shop in the spring,
right? So, every year that house is well loved and well utilized. Uh, not only that, you know, connections are made inside of the town of Wellfleet. Um, so I do have a picture of this year's class up there in the top corner. Uh, this year we have eight members and a house supervisor. Uh, the house supervisor, Michelle Morrison, is somewhere in the back there. Uh, she's also alumni of the program. Um, I guess I should have started with that. I'm alumni of the program, right? So, as uh Commissioner Lions said, uh you know, the roots run deep on Cape Cod. At any given moment, I'd say 30 to 40% of our alumni are working on Cape Cod or at some point held the position out
here, right? So, it's all about bringing people to the Cape, showing them the experience. Um finding them that housing that we've talked about all meeting and uh getting them to stay at a career out here. So, uh so yeah, starts with the housing. That's what we have here. Uh and then I want to talk about some of the projects we've worked on so far this year uh with our group service that occurs on Mondays and Fridays all year round. Uh good weather, bad weather, it doesn't make a difference. The members are always out there. Um so that top left corner, it started with Wellfleet Cemetery Cleanup, right? So they do a spring cleanup and a fall cleanup every single year with Dave Ager. Uh the members were literally three days on Cape when that project was proposed
because of our delayed start and they still were out there doing it. Um so a lot of shout out to them. Uh it looks like community outreach, that bottom picture there with uh Wealthfle Oysterfest, right? We had over a dozen members of our 18 this year come out over the two days, help collect shell, uh help with recycling, help educate folks on the shellfish. Um again, I talked about that community dinner aspect in the top corner. And then you're going to hear from Satie Bramberg, uh one of the members we have positioned here in the town of Wealthley. That's her in the bottom right corner with her IP, uh Welfish Department. On this next slide, we've also participated this
year in the cleaning of the Wellfleet Herring Run. Uh we've did a wetfest with Wellfleet Elementary School. So that's what the top left looks like. Uh partnered with Truro Central School. Uh we were up there in November. Um and that looks like our members coming in talking about the single source aquifer. Uh educating about um you know where your waste water goes when it goes down the drain, right? It doesn't just disappear. Um so educating children early. Uh we've done plenty of marine mammal rescue so far this year. So that's a top photo from Scusset. Uh but that dolphin uh was
retrieved from the town of Welfle. Um and then a couple more pictures. Uh if you're from Welfle, you recognize it, right? That's your famous Wellfleet mayonnaise. U you know, members have done plenty of days with the Wealthfleet shelfish department. So I'm going to give them a chance to talk, too. Um so that's what we've been doing on a group service aspect. I'd say we've probably had anywhere from six to 10 projects in the town of Wealthfleet already. Um, with the on the horizon, uh, we have some, uh, applications from the National Seashore. We'll partner with them on some shorebird fencing. Uh, Jenny Parker here at the Center for, uh, active adults, uh,
getting the community gardens done. So, we have a lot more planned for the town of Welfley the rest of the year, too. Um, and then I mentioned the, uh, IPS, that stands for individual placement. So, we have two members who are stationed, uh, one for two days and one for one day in the town of Wealthy. Um I have one here today, but I'll talk about the one who couldn't make it today. She's with the Walthleet Conservation Department and Leicia McKenna. Uh her project focuses on coastal resiliency permitting and uh getting those community gardens back underway, especially around the rail trails. Um so that's Emma Kerry. She was from she is from Connecticut.
Um went to the University of Delaware. Another one of those members that we pulled from uh off Cape, brought her here, really enjoying her time um during her 11 months. And the other member is with the Wealthy Shellfish Department. So I'll let Sadie say a few words. Um, but I would be remiss if I didn't put up the flyer brochure that Sadi has already created. Um, that will be handed out to incoming tourists this year uh to let them know about the Welfley shellfish uh permitting system uh catch rates, things like that. So, I'll let Satie say a few words um and then we'll hear from
Sarah Comtock from Wealthy Shelfish Department. Okay. Thank you, John. Good to see you. Thank you. Hi, my name is Satie. Um, and as Mike said, I'm placed with the Well Shelfish Department every Tuesday and Wednesday. And so I just wanted to share some of the things that I've done with them this year. So, um, my main like three goals were to create this brochure to help them with their green crab mitigation project and then to generally just, um, help with their propagation programs. And so with that, starting in the fall, we broadcasted oysters. That was like our very
first group service project. My whole house was here out on the barge broadcasting oysters and then breaking down the spat collectors into bags to then put out on the grant. Um, and then helping with the green crab mitigation. So going out in the boat and pulling up all the crab traps and putting them back in every week. And then I also helped a lot with their overwintering services. So helped take all the bags off the grant, put them um into the pits. And then we had another big group service day with two of the houses, us and the Barnstable House all came, took all the bags
out of the pits, rebagged them all, put them all back out on the grant. Um, and then in the winter, I also created this brochure that um is going in all of the like summer rentals so that rental people can learn how to get their own recreational license and shellfish themselves. Um, due to the amount of snow, there wasn't a lot else to do. It was really amazing to have a lot of time to focus just on this project cuz a lot of other things got delayed because we couldn't access the materials as they were all buried. So right now I'm starting that project which is
to remake all of the spat collectors. Um and so getting all of those materials. We just bought PVC pipes yesterday so I have to cut those today so we can make all of those fat collectors. And then at the end of May, we have another upcoming project where my house is coming back again to help with all the completed spat collectors and dip them and prepare them for going out in the harbor to collect oysters. And I also wanted to plug at the end um my other IP. Every Thursday I'm
a part of the COD day which stands for community outreach and development and we plan the signature events that America hosts and we have an event this Saturday. Um it's the 25th annual canal cleanup in collaboration with the Army Corps of Engineers. And so um this Saturday from 10 to 2 at the Herring River Recreational Area, we have a free event, free breakfast and lunch. All the materials will be provided to walk at your own pace along the canal, clean up trash, and then we'll collect it at the end. And we also have around 10 tablelers with educational um activities
for kids to do. So we'd love to see anyone there. Great. Thank you. Outstanding. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks. Hi folks. Uh my name is Sarah Commtock. Um you guys heard me last year opine at great length about the values of Americaore and why uh you guys should continue helping to fund them. And I just want to start by thanking you for your efforts in protecting this program. Um I think it's really invaluable to Cape Cod. A lot of the things that we're talking about here today
um need a really valuable resource. And I think that that's young people who care. And not just young people who care, but young people who are determined to do something about it. And that is a huge pipeline that Americanore brings to Cape Cod. I lived in the Wellfleet House. I served for the National Seashore Fire Management uh office there. There was a government shutdown my year back in 2018 and I spent a month with the shellfish department. Caught the bug. Now you all are stuck with me. Um So Satie through her individual placement program with us will serve around 600 hours alone just through those two days a week that she gives us. Um which is absolutely
massive. They have already listed out the numerous projects uh that they complete for us here. Um and the other thing I want to add about Americanore is that when they get things done, they do it always with a smile on their face. They've been out in the nastiest weather, in the muddiest muck, and you would think that they were at a party. Um they're just having such a good time laughing. They sing songs. It's amazing. It's very positive. Um, but when they do things, they they do them quickly, they do them better, they exceed expectations um, on every level in every project
that we've we've ever engaged them with. Uh, and I just can't thank them enough for the support that they provide us. And I can't thank you guys enough for the support that you provide them. Thank you. Thank you. And I just our shellfish warden, uh, Nancy Chibeta couldn't be here because we have a tide today. So, everybody's out doing their thing. But uh so she sent her ambassadors and very hard workers and just she wanted to extend her thanks as well. So um Americanore has become really a part of wellfleet community and uh and cherished. We're going to transition to uh Josh Writzma from
our marine program and uh let Josh introduce himself. Yeah. Good morning everybody. Uh Josh writes my um fisheries and aquaculture specialist with Cape Cod Cooperative Extension and uh so yeah I work with a small team uh within the Barnstable County on marine resources. So specifically uh a lot of work with shellfish and I'm got more of a picture show than anything else. So I'll keep this quick if I can. um about some projects we've done here in Wellfleet on um shell fisheries.
And we all know how important shell fisheries are to the town of Welllefleet. We heard that several times today. And one of those things uh here is uh wild oysters. And some reason, there we go. Um you know, wild oysters are are pretty unique to Wealthy here in Massachusetts. There aren't many other towns that still have a really productive wild fishery. And you know, the one way that the town has looked at managing it just because they have this natural productivity
of of wild oyster reproduction is uh to catch the spat. So, a little bit of a definition here. Spat is just generally the term used for for baby shellfish. They're sort of spat out into the water and they they drift around and they look for a spot to settle down. And in the case of oysters, they look for hard structure like shell material. So what the town has taken on is uh what they call culting. So another definition needed there. Uh that's dried shell and that's the optimal
uh habitat for for oysters, although they'll set on other things as well. So given all that uh time and effort put into uh getting shell out there for the oysters to settle on, they asked us to come in and sort of help them evaluate whether the the culting is effective or not effective but how productive it is and and what are the numbers there and you know so we went out with volunteers from the town of Wellfleet and and counted um the actual shell that they placed out in different
year classes and compared that to bottom that wasn't coached And you know, the bottom that wasn't culched had almost zero oysters. I don't think we actually found a live one. When we did our little square foot quadrats, but the the areas that were culted had really productive um you know, oyster habitat. There was in excess of 200 per square foot sometimes. So really effective just putting that out there for them to to settle on. So that is one project we came in and helped them on as a as a third party there through Barnstable County. And uh yeah, occasionally
a shocking knife gets in the mix as well. And it's just a good good example of hard structure providing habitat and the oysters looking for that hard structure and oysters getting their vengeance on the the shucking knife. Um, so some of the other things, you know, Wealthfleet is dealing with is, you know, the Herring River restoration project and the shellfish industry in particular had a lot of questions about how that might affect them. We don't know whether it'll be positive or or negative. The the the thought is it's probably going to be positive, but there was a lot of
questions about increased iron in the water. Would it change the flavor and or the the color of the meats? So, we couldn't really get into the the flavor aspects of it, but we we embarked with the town's help to um do some routine sampling to look at the condition index of both Kohhogs and oysters, especially in areas like Egg Islands that are closest proximity to to the Herring River. And so we're we're trying to set a baseline there, what the condition of those oysters are
and saving some some dried shellfish meat samples if they were to be needed in the future. And then we'll look at it as as the dyke opens up and and things do start to change. We'll have some sort of a baseline to look at. Is the health of the animals changing? And are there changes in color? We're trying to get at that, too. So um trying to uh I guess alleviate some of the fears of uh of the industry or provide data to go back and look at it whether whether anything has changed.
So shellfish disease remains one of the bigger challenges to uh economics. You can imagine if you have a disease so these are diseases that affect the shellfish themselves the oysters or or clams not us who eat them thankfully. Um so yeah like us they have um microscopic organisms that that can attack their bodies. Um and in Wellfleet uh with our surveying with with growers um neoplasia came forward as as the biggest challenge with with hard clams and it can cause
pretty significant mortality. you know, really questioning sometimes the economics of of still continuing to grow hard clams if you're going to have significant mortality in the face of that. So, with the help of Roger Williams University, this is a a picture here of Dr. Roxanna Smallowitz from Roger Williams. She's sort of worldrenowned uh shellfish disease specialist. you know, we were able to find some money and and bring her in and her group and her lab as well as you or I to do a study to look at whether there's genetics in involved in survival to the disease and try to get
at answers for the industry to move forward with um genetics and that project is is still ongoing and that this was done again with the help of the town of Wellfleet. And then finally, you know, we do have a water quality monitoring network and this is focused on saltwater areas in areas of a you know, a lot of shellfish productivity. Well fleet being one and we we put out instrumentation every year. Um this buoy based system that you you see pictured here is on a shellfish farm in an
area where there's a lot of other shellfish farms. So growers can can look at that. And then through the winter, we have a temperature only sensor so that you know when when ice is of concern, growers can have a resource to look at. And this is all publicly available on the web. Uh this picture here on the bottom right is uh what the website looks like. And so folks can go up and and and pull up their region and find uh up-to-date uh water quality information. And this all came out of shellfish growers making their living on on the water, being reliant on the water and wanting to
know what's what's going on with that. So that is the quick overview I have of some of the wealthy centric projects we we have going on. If there's any questions, I'm happy. That's great. Josh, uh, Commissioners Bergstrom. Yeah, just just a quick anecdote. After the hurricane back in 2014, there was some money, federal money coming down the pike to help the people down in the Louisiana area, but there was also some lobbying up here because of red tide had shut down some of the estaries.
So I went to Washington. I was the selectman then with Barbara Austin who lives here and the shellfish constable from Chadam Rene Gag and we lobbyed them on on the event. But in the time we weren't lobbying, we went to a hotel nearby, the hotel we were staying at. Went to a and there was a an oyster bar. This is in Washington. And they had a list of all the oysters you could get, you know, from up and down the coast. And right on the top of the list was Wellfleet Oysters. Well oysters famous. And is really it's a it's a national brand, I have to say. You know,
I would say international brand for sure. Yes, it is. Anyway, that's my comment. Thank you, Commissioner Commissioner Lions. Last night, um, at the select board meeting, we, uh, went over the new shellfish regulations, and I learned more that last night than I ever thought I could. And, um, and again, you know, the cooperative extension is mentioned uh, many times in their help of with your help of identifying different aspects of those regulations. So, um, you're much appreciated
and, uh, I think internationally you're we're all appreciated because the product is so good and we need to keep it that way and there's new experimentation, but it is a place where people can do wild uh, fishing and recreational shell fishing and that is a really special thing, another element of Wellfleet that makes it special. So, we really appreciate in the town of Welfle all of the work of the Bronstable County Cooperative Extension, uh, otherwise
known as Cape Cod Cooperative Extension. But the website that he's referring to is capecod.gov and you could go to the cooperative extension and learn more about all of this there. So, when he was referring to our website, so thank you, uh, Josh. Yeah. Did Satie, did you want to jump in? You're gonna sing his praises. Is that what you were doing? Yes. Yeah. Again, my name is Sarah Comtock and uh Josh covered a lot of what they do for us, but I'm here to just keep bragging a little bit more. Um they also help organize all the town oyster seed orders that we get. Um we do
do our spa collection because as a lot of people have been talking about but don't realize, Wolf Gle's one of the only town, if not the only town in the state that has this prolific wild oyster set. Like we are very unique in that. Um, so they help us get all our hatchery seed together too. We don't just rely on those fat collectors. We do also buy some from hatcheries. They also have been um an invaluable resource for us as we foray into uh the green crab predator control earmark that we were awarded um by the state for the outer cape under representative Hadley Letty, sorry,
excuse me. um with her support and direction and they have just been constantly answering questions, joining meetings, helping us figure out how we're going to implement that, working out how the funding is going to be distributed. Um just a lot of things that require a lot of manpower, administrative work, and things that we couldn't support through this municipality on our own. Um they also serve as we uh Nancy called them earlier as our scientific research resource arm of our department. Um we don't have a biological shellfish person like Barnstable does or other places like that. So, um, they not only do the testing for the department, like they mentioned,
they also help individual growers with things. You know, they're willing to take calls. They're willing to help the people here. Like you guys said, this is a huge industry. It's worldrenowned. Um, it's very unique and we certainly could not do what we do protecting our shellfish and helping them with diseases and things like that without what they do for us. We just don't have the time, the money, the equipment or any of that. So, um, we would be nothing without them really. Thank you, Sarah. Thank Sarah. Thank you very very much. Uh Josh, as as you can tell, there's a lot there's a lot of love in this room for the work that you do here, as well as for all of the work
of Cooperative Extension, and it's just important for us just to reaffirm for folks here. I mean, it's great hearing all these great words. Um, but we're we we as a board are incredibly well aware of the talented group of professionals that we have within our cooperative extension program. and and Josh, our Americanore volunteers, everybody working in that department does a great job and uh we very much appreciate um you know, we don't see you that often, Josh, but that doesn't mean that
we don't care about the work that you're doing and we don't value it and appreciate everything that you're doing for all of our communities, but particularly places like Wellfleet where, you know, shellfishing is it's it's it's very much in the DNA of the community. um it's not just um you know a marine organism. It shell fishing is pretty much the lifeblood of this community and we understand that it's critical in terms of its identity and its future. So thank you for all that
you do. Uh, in full disclosure, um, I I camped out at the Dennis Yarmouth Regional High School shelter during the blizzard of 26, the famous blizzard, and I had the opportunity to see our Americanore volunteers sort of working day in day out helping make that shelter go. I mean, a lot of people stepped up and helped out, but I can just tell you, I was incredibly proud to be there in your presence as a county commissioner, watching you folks, the way you conducted yourselves,
the way you serve the community. You make us all proud. So, thank you for everything that you do. It must, but at least we're going to talk. All right. And Anthony, you got you got some big acts to follow here. I know. And I wanted I just wanted to to introduce Anthony because he's only been here for one year. Um I had the position many years ago that he has now and Collapy who um you all know right um retired and Anthony stepped in. So the household hazardous waste collection
program big mouthful. Essentially what what we want to convey to you is um the water quality uh protection aspect of it. It's been around for 40 plus years. the county was a leader in trying to divert uh the things that we know can contaminate our groundwater. Um and I'm going to let Anthony uh kind of present to you what he's been doing and then a proposal that he has. Okay. Thank you. Probably is one of the short a little bit. Hello, my name is Anthony Trace. I'm with Barnesville
Countyy's Cape Cod Cooperative Extension, uh the hazardous materials environmental specialist, groundwater guardian. Um I'm going to go through a couple of my plans, try and be an efficient with it. Um so we can get to the heart of the issue which is my flare proposal. Um so I conduct a lot of these programs through all 15 towns uh especially in W fleet and it's exciting to be able to talk about them a little bit. Um so I want to display a couple of them. So I have these four. The sharps program, uh the flare program that we'll get into a little later, the hazardous waste
collection and a mercury collection program. Um we will slide through. So the sharps collection is in conjunction with all 15 towns. Uh many are the fire departments, DPWs. I work closely with all of them to get the cases to the fire departments. Um residents can come drop off needles, pick up the cases. Um and then I schedule the pickups and do the state documentation for it. I want to say this year we've already collected 21,000 lbs worth of needles. Yep. Wow. So, it's been a very big year
for Needles. Um, keeps the ground safe. You know, we don't want anyone to step on anything. Um, and the fire departments alone have a lot to deal with. So, I try to do what I can to support them. I also lines I think. No, I was just wondering is that I mean, we want to think that some of it's um, you know, drug related, but a lot of it might be medicinal and I'm sure some of that increases by oanthic. Yes. So, I've yeah, I have been in direct contact with the fire departments. I've looked through the cases to see what's going on. Um, there's been I think it's been a 40% intake or
uptake in uh the amount of sharps we're getting, especially from OMIC and these needles. Mhm. Um, so there's a lot of education that goes out there cuz people love to stick the cartridges without the needles attached to them, thinking that that is also a sharp, right? So, yep, it's been a huge uptake. The fire departments have been overwhelmed with the amount of sharps coming in. Um, and people love to put random things inside of the sharps containers, so we do what we can to help them. Um, this one's kind of in conjunction with the HHW collection, which is my Mercury
program. Uh, residents from all over the Cape can either go to transfer stations or call us and I will schedule a pickup for free. Um, there's nothing worse than mercury in a household. Um, you don't want it to evaporate into the air. Um, little spills turn into massive responses. Um, and they can cost thousands of dollars. So, I run this through all 15 towns. Some of the towns work with Covent. Um, so they're able to just kind of bring it there. Um, but still I will schedule pickups for them as well and help them. And the kind of bread and butter of the uh program, which is the
HHW collections. Um, this is through all 15 towns. I run. Could you say what that acronym is, please? Yeah, absolutely. It's the household hazardous waste. Um, so residents, small businesses, um, even the National Seashore and other state departments that have issues getting rid of chemicals use these events as the only opportunity to really dispose of chemicals. Um, a lot of the people who come are members who've lost family members um, and are looking for any option to dispose of generations worth of chemicals in their basement. So, this program provides a relief to
them. Um, and I want to say as of last year, just in Wealthy Truro in Provincetown, there was 27,000 pounds worth of hazmat collected. Wow. So, there's a lot of it out there and it doesn't go away. Um, they keep coming up with new chemicals, so we have to deal with them as they come. So, I kind of wanted to fly through that so we could get to the Flare proposal program. Um, if there's any questions at the end about them, I I'd be glad to answer. Um this is the last of the programs I run and it is the flare collection program. Um the majority of what we see are handheld flares. Uh
these are signal and smoke flares, but we also get quite a bit of aerials and parachute flares. The fire departments deal with quite a bit of these every year. So we receive about 6 to 8,000 flares um per summer. They are explosive, flammable, toxic. uh they they contain perchlorates, strontium, magnesium, barerium, heavy metals, oxidizers and every three and a half years they need to get thrown away and new ones need to be bought. So it is an issue that continues to renew
itself. Um and the fire departments and the DPWs are the only people who can store and hold these materials. So, how the programs work so far, the residents, marinas, uh, small businesses drop their flares off at the DPWs and fire departments. Um, they will then schedule with me. I'll usually have these flares picked up and brought to a flame cap a flame cabinet. Um, where the Massachusetts State Police bomb squad will pick them up, bring them to the stove facility, and
detonate and destroy them there. Sadly, because of just the uh quantity and the amount of work that's going on in Massachusetts, they are unable to continue picking them up and bringing them to Stow to have them exploded. Um, and because of that, I wanted to come up with something so the towns would have more options. So, their current the Massachusetts State Police Bomb Squad's current plan because of how busy they are is to go town to town, uh, find a suitable location, and they're kind of just hoping to blow them up in the ground at this point. Um, I would like to give
the towns a couple more options to choose from. Um, whether it's these proposed program updates or continuing with the bomb squad, um, I think it's important that they have the options to choose. So the fire departments will still serve as the drop off locations. Um they will receive all the flares from the residents for free. Uh we want to support and we want them to be able to drop them off and not contaminate any water in the process. So uh one flare is able to contaminate 240,000
gallons of water. I'm not going to sit up here and do math for you right now because that's that's going to get labor. Um the disposal process will be pretty much the same. uh fire departments would be able to either come directly to the locker, drop them off, or I will be able to pick them up, bring them to the locker. I have a state approved contract with um Clean Harbors right now, Cleanar Earth. Um they have offered to come after my HHW collection events, pick up the flares from the locker and dispose them properly at the uh at at the right facility where the dust could be
managed. So, with that in mind, I have proposals for cost reimbursements for the towns. Let's see if I can make this move forward. There we go. So, marinas tend to be a really big issue. Um, private, public, it would be up to the towns for the most part, but I have been with the fire department talking to them about the issues. I've talked to the chiefs. Um, and I have had marinas show up with 55gallon drums worth of flares and just dropping them on the doorstep of the fire
departments and driving away. Um, there's not many options to get some financial finances back. So, with this, I want to recommend that they charge these marinas the exact cost of disposal. Uh, this is in line with the HHW collections where small businesses do pay to drop off their goods. Um, I'd like to extend this towards the marinas and if the towns would like to kind of subsidize out them, they have the opportunity to do that. Um, they aren't being forced to. Um, but there is
that option there for them to get some of these funds back as it is very expensive to get rid of them. They're considered explosives. There's not many people who can't handle them. And yeah, there there's a couple benefits of this. It does promote uh safe water. It kind of raises awareness of this issue to the marinas and the marinas can kind of pass this down towards all of their slip owners. Um, it's safe. It's accessible for residents. They can still come as they normally have and it does protect the soul source aquifer. If 6,000 flares are blown up in the ground, I can't even imagine
what the plume would look like from that. So, um long-term strategies are kind of working with the Coast Guard, uh National Guard, Marines, and they can use them for some training opportunities. Um if I can find that every year and reduce the amount of flares that are being incinerated, um that will kind of give uh the towns a little cushion uh in between paying for anything. Um there's also the e-flare adoption. I know the Coast Guard in California has kind of pushed this. So, I think we need to kind of talk to the Coast Guard a bit and see if we can get them to
start pushing either the e- flares or some other alternative so we're not getting new flares every 3 and 1/2 years. Um, and then advocating for, you know, disposal solutions and EPR bills. Um, that's always a tough one. So, if we can get it and they are willing to take them back one day and that will save the towns quite a bit of money. That sounds very good. Anything else to your presentation? Nope. I wanted to do it quick and efficient. Well, that was quick. That was efficient. Well, by all means, thank you for all that effort. Round of applause. And if I
could just say, Mr. Chair, if you need support on any of those initiatives and going to the state, you know, we're happy to back you and do whatever is necessary to do that. Well, I think it I think it calls for a motion. Go for it, commissioner. I move to approve the proposed changes to the household hazardous waste program as proposed. And I will second that. And uh it's proposed in the March 23rd memo which we all have on our packets. And uh so is there any more discussion? Any more
questions? Hearing none. All those in favor say I. I. I. Opposed. It carries unanimously. Well done. Thank you very much. Thank you and good to meet you. I'm glad you're on board. Yeah, I will. Thank you very much. Very good. Uh, if I need any help, I will definitely come find you. Please. I I think you I I know you will. Probably. All right. For the folks that are in the audience, this sort of concludes basically our sort of very public discussion. You're welcome to stick around for the next portion of our agenda. It's very boring. We're going to go through a
lot of procedural motions, regular business. Um, so feel free to uh but before you go, could you just join me in giving a round of applause to all the county staff that are Thank you. Okay, moving on to the next item on our agenda, number seven, new business. Is there any new business to come before the board of commissioners? Hearing none, uh we'll move on to commissioners. Item number eight, uh we have on our consent agenda a number of items. Uh they're
mostly um uh budget related. Uh apparently all of our submissions uh to the assembly were adopted uh and uh the county administrator has briefed us. There are no real highlights or anything to really of worth mentioning or going over. It's pretty much all straightforward. All straightforward. Correct. So, there's also just to draw to your attention the uh a memo in your packet regarding the health insurance eligibility policy for retirees. Want to make sure that you've all had
a chance to see that. Um and then the other items relate to awarding of bids and a lot of other financial business uh procurement decisions. Um, Carol did give us um some background information on uh the changes to the county health insurance and uh let's see what else do we have. We also on the consent agenda need to reappoint and approve the appointment of our uh clerk. Mr. Cheriff uh
Carol Capola, our finance director, is here and uh I do know there's one item G on your consent agenda that needs to be uh postponed. Uh but also uh she may want to speak uh to item F uh the general obligation bond anticipation notes. Um I don't I don't know if that would um Carol, would you like to okay with the commissioners come to the uh to the podium? Do you want to start off with item F on the agenda? Speak to that. I would be happy to. Thank you. Good afternoon.
I think you know you got to get that microphone. So I kept thinking people should have held it. Does that work? Yeah, it's better. Yeah, we can hear you now. Okay. On Monday, um we had bond anticipation notes that went to the market for sale. Um there were two biders. Um the one was Cape Cod 5. They bid 3.65% 65% and the other was Uni Bank that bid 3.15%. So, it's just a little over $2 million that are short-term notes that'll become due um within a year, 359 days. Um and and
um and so your signatures are required for the formal documentation that we will provide um to um the Commonwealth. Is there any special language that we need to vote on or adopt with respect to this motion? Anything that we need to read into the record at all? No, sir. We're good. Okay. Very good. All right. Now, the other item did we want to talk about that or was there anything else, Carol, that you wanted to flag for us? There are a couple of other items that um working with
um Justina Marzach, human resource director, uh we worked to get closely together on a couple of items. One was um a retirees eligibility for health insurance. And so really this is surrounding a retiree that may may have left service or an employee that may have left service um with Barnstable County and perhaps 10 years in the future comes back and wishes to join um the county's health insurance. Um and you can imagine that it could be quite a liability. Um this sets
parameters of of notification to retirees or folks that leave um the county services and that you know they'll have up to a year to join insurance um the county's insurance and red really reduces the financial liability for Bernstville County moving into the future. Um this is not unlike other um governmental entities that have enacted such measures. Um and the other item is um a stipen that may be provided to employees that choose not to take health insurance with
Barnstable County. And this is just active employees. No retirees are eligible for this um benefit nor are elected officials. Um so um this would provide the stipen whether it's an individual or family stipen depending on the circumstances for an employee that chooses not to take health insurance as I mentioned and it's a considerable savings for a barnstable car. That's great. And that's for somebody who might have a spouse that they could join their
um plan as opposed to it's not like they're not going to have anything but they've they've decided to go with their other option. That is correct. which saves proof of insurance is required in order to benefit from this stipen. Okay, great. Any other questions? Commissioner? No. Um then we I do have one question. Yes, what is the response of any of the employees? Have you had a chance to discuss it informally with them and how do they feel about the policy of issuing a stip in lie
of healthcare? Well, indeed the human res um Justina human resource director did poll the um employees and while it's not a commitment on their behalf, um certainly they were in favor of this type of stipen. Great. So, uh would Commissioner Bergstrom like to make a motion? Yes, I would. I move to approve commissioner's consent agenda item 8A through 8 Z tableabling HG as listed on the April 22nd 2026 meeting agenda. Second. Okay, we have a motion and a second. Is
there any more discussion on this motion hearing? None. All those in favor say I. I. I. Opposed. It carries unanimously. Okay. Item number nine on the uh agenda is the approval of meeting minutes for the April 8th meeting. Do I have a motion? Uh Mr. Chair, I move to approve the April 8th, 2026 regular meeting minutes as drafted. Second. So we have a motion and a second. Is there any more discussion? Hearing none. All those in favor say I. I. I. Opposed. It carries unanimously. Uh item
number 10 is commissioner reports. Commissioner Bergstrom, do you have a report? Uh not right now. No. Commissioner Alliance, do you have a report? Um, no. Um, very good. Item number 11, upcoming business. I'm going to ask the administrator just to update us on the uh next meeting uh for May 13th and some of the agenda items that we've got coming up. Thank you, chair. Uh May 13th, Wednesday, May 13th is your next meeting. It will be at the county complex. Um and we will entertain
um Mr. John Kennedy from Cape Cod Regional Transit uh to update on some of their um initiatives. Uh we will also hear a report from our communications director uh Sonia Sonia Sonia um on uh electronic accessibility compliance. As you know, uh right now Cape Cod regional government is the only government on Cape Cod uh that needs to comply with um with um accessibility uh electronic
accessibility meaning uh basically our website. Uh other towns uh all the other towns on the Cape have until next year at this time to comply. Um so we are working towards uh full compliance there. So she'll give a little update on that. We'll hear a presentation by our health and human services regarding children's behavioral health uh and youth and uh and uh Carol will be back uh in front of you with uh quarter 3 results. Um and uh my hope well my expectation is that you'll
have the one last budget ordinance uh back from the Assembly of Delegates. Um and we will also um yeah that's it. That's basically u the gist of it. That's great. Any questions from commissioners on our agenda for May 13th? Okay. Hearing none. Um let's move on to the uh the county administrator staff reports item on the agenda number 12. Thank you uh Mr. Chair. I got a very short um report uh just from the assembly at their last meeting as you've seen in in the consent agenda
today. They approved the Cape Cod regional uh sorry the Cape Cod Commission budget uh as well as the county dredge budget and most importantly they uh voted unanimously to transfer $7 of ARPA grant balances to appropriate places. Um they also uh did postpone uh a vote on the county operating budget uh mostly because they were waiting awaiting a technical review uh to make sure that uh their interpretation of the numbers uh was in conformance with what our understanding is.
So I expect uh that budget to be voted uh at their next meeting. Um, and they also postponed uh the Aqua Fund uh authorizing the Aqua Fund borrowing uh due to um not hearing back from Department of Environmental Protection on very specific language for for that borrowing, but that will be back in front of them. Uh it's ready for a vote and I expect that they will vote that at their next meeting. Um, finally, I just wanted to let uh the board know that shared regional housing
uh is in front of the towns again for re-uping for FY27. Uh, I believe most most if not all or more towns will actually be participating uh next year uh than we have this year. We have uh 13 of the 15 towns um and next year I expect to have 14 of the 15 towns uh participating there. And finally, um I just let you know that uh our dredge director and I have been working towards uh some um trying to
uh get some relief from time of year restrictions. Uh and this came up because well it's it's been a chronic issue uh as you all know. Uh but this most recently came up uh because um there was some u some feeling among uh some um involved with the dredge that uh that all of our delays are weather related. And I just wanted to be very clear and make sure everybody was very clear that uh the the challenges that our dredge uh operation faces come uh not only from weather, which is always a
factor and always has been a factor, but uh comes from a tightening uh clamping down on some time of year restrictions not only for fish and certain crab uh but also for uh a couple of species of bird. Um so we are looking for some relief. We have uh we have talked to the regulators. They have been receptive to our conversation. Um and we will look to be uh adding some technology. Well, I think we'll be looking to add some technology to our dredges uh in order to provide um uh data to
the regulatory agencies so that we can uh extend the amount of time we can actually be on the water dredging. So, that's in the works, but I just want to let you know. Can you um update us on the uh meeting last night in Barnstable Village regarding the Superior Courthouse renovations? Yes. Uh we had a um a meeting with the Barnesville Village Association regarding uh upcoming improvements to the the exterior and a little bit of interior work on the Superior Courthouse in Barnstable Village. Uh we had a decent turnout. Um and uh Paul Rosala, our assets and infrastructure manager,
uh actually went doortodoor to hand out uh pamphlets and and leaflets letting people know what was happening and letting them know about last night's meeting. Um so I think we we had a good reception. Uh Paul went through all of the project, the time the timeline, the projected timeline. um and and very got got into the nitty-gritty about what what the impact was going to be, what the uh adverse impacts were going to be on the on the neighborhood for a period up to a year. We're anticipating le much less than a year, but we don't want to be
uh we don't want to be giving some false promises. So, uh so he was very very clear, very upfront. uh asked people asked a lot of questions and uh a lot of really good questions and uh and so they uh got I think pretty good answers and we marched. We did commit to doing this again once the contractor is selected and once the contractor has laid out a more specific timeline and and a work uh kind of a work process. So we will do it again once that happens. That's great. Any questions
from the commissioners? So, I just want to make a comment that I think that in the long run uh this renovation has um given us opportunity to engage with the neighborhood that we live in and getting to know the neighbors and it's uh so far it looks like you're doing a good job keeping good relations and uh thank you for that. But I think that's kind of uh exciting and fun. Yeah, I think what we've learned from the interactions is that they like working with us, right? Uh, and they obviously think the world of Robin. Um, so Robin's developed a great relationship with them.
So, and and they like our administrator and um, you know, they they enjoy us reaching out to them and talking to them, which I think is I think it's it's a great point, Commissioner L. Yeah, I think for a long time we sat there this building that, you know, they kind of looked at and grumbled about and we're not fixing it and that sort of thing, but it really I think this is a benefit. I will say one last piece. Um originally we had told the village association that we were anticipating a July 1 start and um as you can imagine with uh the 250th anniversary of this country coming up
and and the importance of uh the village parade uh in any random Fourth of July celebration uh certainly this one was very important um to them and so we we we have pushed off the parades are the parades are special. that they are very that whole corridor has the Otis family. I mean this is a historic one of the oldest and most historic corridors of the Cape. So good for them and I'm glad we can accommodate and I did hear that on the street. So people came up to me and said we
were at the meeting and you can't let that. Yeah. So do we have any more questions for our county administrator? No. Okay. Any other staff reports at all? No. Well, uh, before we move to adjourn, I just want to thank, um, everybody here in the town of Wellfleet for making us feel at home. Uh, all the IT staff, the the folks here at the, uh, the adult community center, all the other town officials that participated in in today's meeting. I thought this was a this is a wonderful meeting,
very productive, and uh, huge kudos to them. I also want to thank our staff for being here, Carol, Brian, Michael, and all of your uh colleagues and all the folks that that you brought here. Um, it's always nice to see our folks, you know, talk about the work that they're doing. I mean, we like hearing from Brian and we like hearing from Michael, but sometimes there's a there's a real it really helps seeing some of the other folks. I mean, we know that they do great work and trotting them out there and allowing them to sort of show off their uh their stripes was was
was very good for today. So, thank you for um your mentorship and your support for them and getting them here. So, it's great to see Brian as always. You, Michael, and Carol, thank you. And Robin, thanks for getting everything set up here for us. Well done. Well put together. And um I add one more thing. One more thank you. I just want to um apologize to all the exercise people of um of yoga and chair yoga today. I know that uh we bounced you and uh thank you for indulging us. Well, maybe we can do yoga and work that into our next agenda here in W. That wouldn't be bad.
All right. So, do I have a motion to adjurnn here at 12? So, move 30. A second. Okay. All those in favor say I. I. It is approvedly and our meeting is adjourned. Thank you.