Public participation is required by law or allowed by the board chair. And with that, I call to order the November 19th, 2025 meeting of the board of regional commissioners. And please join us for a pledge of allegiance. 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 could we have a moment of sil silence to reflect on the bravery and sacrifices of all those who put their lives on the line in service to our country, protecting our freedom, our safety, and our democracy. Thank you. Uh, is there any public comment?
Seeing none, we will move on to the approval of minutes. Madam Chair, I move that we approve the regular meeting minutes of November 5th, 2025. I will second that motion. All right. All in favor? I I. And now on to general business. We're going to hear about the community wildfire defense grant update. And with us is Michael Magcguire, cooperative extension director. Good morning. Good morning. Uh Mike Magcguire, director cooperative extension. Um well, it's nice that you're coming
here with happiness. Yes, I know. I know. Saying there's no hard work. Yes. Right. No, this really has been pursued for a while. So, this has been uh something that has been a commissioner's initiative for a long time. I know um we've discussed this many times between all of us. I know uh commission or uh chair Lions, you and I were in um Turo in August discussing this. Uh Commissioner Forest, we've discussed this many times and Commissioner Bergstrom, we have as well. Um so in uh between 2008 and 2012, the county had undertaken the first of its kind regional wildfire
plan. Uh actually the first in the country. We did a great job with that plan. um implemented many of the recommendations in it. But over the past 13 14 years or so, we've seen a significant change in our forestry demographics, uh the maintenance to those um open spaces and the ability to use AI to look at uh maps and do modeling and predictions. We've also seen many many wildfires across the country impact communities significantly. And I think we're all very concerned about what might
or could happen here on the Cape. Um over the past 5 years, I've submitted several wildfire planning grants to update the existing plan. We have not been successful up until this past round. Uh so the US USDA wildfire program that we just received a $139,500 grant from um there is a $15,000 match from the county that I had placed in my budget and uh you and the assembly had approved uh for this year anticipating the award of this grant is going to go to match it as well as $45,000 from Mass
uh DCR. Um, so, uh, in total, it's about $199,500 that are now going to be available for us to hire contractors to run, uh, the next, uh, 2.0 version of the regional wildfire, uh, planning grant, uh, or plans for all 15 towns on Cape Cod. Those all those plans have to be vetted individually in each town. We're going to have hearings in each town. We'll make sure that fire chiefs, conservation agents, all those professionals are consulted. We have public hearings so that the
public can come in. Uh we're going to have state and federal officials uh attending these meetings as well. And with the idea of each individual town adopting a plan that works for their town uh that is uh just like we do with with uh groundwater is wildfire isn't going to respect boundaries either. So, we're going to have a comprehensive plan that incorporates uh abundant communities to make sure that all of the uh wildfire plans are cohesive. And what that allows us to do once this
plan is complete is compete for federal and state funding for implementation. It's very hard for us to do the implementation when we don't have an up-to-date plan. So obviously plan first, get the highest priorities uh identified, then each individual town can make decisions about how they want to allocate funds and then the county will also be pursuing that on behalf of the towns to get implementation funding in once we have this um accomplished. I did ask um uh Chief Leblanc
from Haritch to be on the call. I'm not sure if he's made the call yet and Josh from uh DCR. Um, and neither one of them may I know they're both very very uh engaged. You know, we had some really rough things happen yesterday, too. So, uh, with that trench collapse and I know most of the fire departments were involved with dealing with that. So, um, they they may not be available on this call right now, but uh, we do I do want to let you know that the Cape Islands Fire Chief Association was uh, one of the largest proponents of this. They're all aware, all the chiefs are aware.
are on board. They're going to be major players in this. So, uh um Chief Levlan Haritch is the um is uh the the vice chair and JJ Burke in in Sandwich is the chair and they're both uh very very supportive of this. And we've also worked with the National Seashore, all our park um partners. Oh, there's there's the chief now. Um officially um the seashore is Yeah. so we can welcome the chief to the conversation. Um, good morning, Chief LeBlanc.
I think it's um, what do we what does he have to do? Unmute or I think does he see that we're recognizing him? Okay, he does. Looks like he might be able to Hi, Chief. Oh, muted again. Muted again. Did you hear? You would think. Is that working? Yes. Yeah, we got it. You think you have to run? You would think by now. My computer restarted this morning and it everything's broken. So,
we we Sorry. Sorry for being late. Like I said, I had a little bit of a conflict, but u I'm happy to be here and and uh you know, throw the chief's association support behind us. It's a a project that's long overdue and a lot of ground work went into getting it to this point. So, Chief, I I know every town has um you know, joint jurisdiction. You know, in Harwitch and Brewster, we've got the Punk Horn. You know, we've got other spaces uh that are shared. And I was just telling the commissioners about um you know, when you're dealing with wildfire, it's much like
um groundwater. So, we have shared resources and with the mutual aid that you have, you know, I I was wondering if you wouldn't mind talking about the coordination you have between the different uh towns and how you'd approach a wildfire. Sure. So, uh you know, Bonville County is unique um as we're all aware because every all our mutual aid, all our resources can really only come from one direction. So, you know, we're we're limited in in what we can pull from the lower cape up, but we have a really robust mutual aid system. We all work very well together. Um, a lot of combined
resources, a lot of combined training. And then folded into that is uh Department of Conservation and Recreation uh for wildfires, huge resource who's also well integrated into our system. And then statewide, we have um forestry task force part of the um statewide mobility system that can bring resources onto the Cape like we did last year for uh the big wildfires at Joint Base. So, there's already a really good system in place and and a lot of planning, but it's it's a plan that
um is outdated, obviously needed to be dusted off and looked at and and see what other things we can bring to bear, what other areas that we need to focus on to make sure that we're as prepared as we can be with all of our partners uh for this event or for an event like this. Right. No, this is excellent news and uh I do understand the role of DCR because mainly because of that um that talk that we went to in Toro. So you know on the outer cape they're all uh people get very
concerned because of the amount of forest there and uh it's sort of in its natural state at all times which means you know when trees fall over they fall over and just decay. So um I do think you know that was a very educational thing for me but I'm very happy that this is here and I'm very happy to have the support and involvement of the chief association and does anyone have any questions for the chief or for Michael? No I um if it's okay I can I I just want to thank
uh thank David for joining us and for um the the support of the fire chiefs. Uh this has been a very high priority for us. Um, and we're not looking for just an updated plan, but we're anxious to play an active role in implementing the plan, helping with ongoing training, any additional equipment. Um, we know that DCR is is a great partner, but we also know that at Joint Base Cape Cod, they have resources there and they can be another important partner. Uh we've been getting briefings on the work that they're doing out there, the capabilities that they have, and I
think together with the county's involvement, the involvement of the chiefs and these other partners, I think we can put together not just a strong plan, but the capability uh to respond to almost any situation that might emerge. I like the idea in the planning process of identifying ways in which we can help through our fire departments assist homeowners in doing things individually to reduce risk. Um there are things that they can do and uh in some communities that
work is going on where that kind of education is being provided through the fire departments and I think that's terrific but there are other towns that probably could use um you know some help in terms of developing that kind of capability. So, I think there's a lot of good stuff that'll come out of this. And I once again want to congratulate Mark Mike Maguire for being just so persistent on this and uh keep in and just being relentless in pursuing funding to get this off the ground. So, thank you, Mike. Yeah, I don't want to jump ahead because I know you probably be looking at these
things, you and the chiefs, but I I assume that you're going to identify the areas of greatest risk here on the Cape. In other words, are we talking about heavily treated areas like the Ponghorn? Are we talking about grasslands and scrub areas like the National Seashore? You know, and is there any kind of historical record where, you know, oh, wildfires have come up? But I mean, uh, like like Mark and J, I applaud this effort, you know, and looking into this because, uh, you know, if if an incident does occur, you have to know exactly how to respond. You know,
if it's a grassland fire, do we limit it? Do we try to put it out? Do we just protect do we protect you know physical assets like houses or do we you know so yeah there's a lot there's a lot into it and I appreciate that the efforts of you and the chiefs and looking into it and then making those decisions so hopefully it it won't happen but if it happens then we got to be ready well you know already with drought and that sort of thing we've already had some brush fires that people really don't even are aware of because they are taken care of so swiftly and with collaboration
so and I know that from the Art of Cape. I I'm one of those fearful people that are always looking at my woods. And I also know that there is that uh ability and hopefully it will be enhanced of uh being able to go to someone's home and saying, you know, you have too many trees or they're too close and kind of give advice on what how they could protect themselves best they can. I know that you have a busy day ahead of you, Chief, and I know that you've had a busy day yesterday. So, I don't want to um take too much of your time, but we really do appreciate your help on this effort and
your further collaboration and input in and that of your association. Yeah, thank you very much. And and uh you know, Chief Burke wasn't able to be here today, asked me to to sit in and um you know, just I we want to express our appreciation to everybody involved for for getting the you know, getting this move forward. I think one of the the big things that you I've seen in my lifetime in my career in the fire department on the Cape is our resources have changed as fire departments. We've gone away from you know Harwood started out as a forest fire department and and it wasn't until
1929 that we officially became a fire department. And when you go back through our annual reports, we had we had trailer pumps and hose packs and we were putting out fires that were set by the trains and everybody had brush breakers and you know the the great fire in 55 in Plymouth where you know Barnesville County went to Plymouth. Now there's very few breakers left on the Cape. There's very few tankers left on the Cape. Our resources have changed because our environment's changed. We have a lot more houses. Exactly. Um but last year showed with the drought last year and
what happened offcape, you know, that that urban interface, that area where residential houses and and commercial buildings abut wooded areas really needs to be defended and protected along with, you know, having a capability to put the fires out. So, you know, the environment's changed, our capabilities have changed, and it's really time that we put a fresh set of eyes on it and came up with a plan that that's going to work with what we have in, you know, in our current environment with an eye toward the future. Absolutely. Thank you, Chief. Well, we all look forward to working with
you and we thank you again for your for all your efforts and for everything you do every day. So, thank you. Appreciate it. Thank you so much. And uh thanks, Chief. I'll let you go. Um, you know, just to hit on a couple things too that were mentioned, uh, the Americanore program does play a a critical role in implement implementing this. And, uh, we've had a fire core in the past with Americanore. And, um, through DCR, we have had Americanore members that have studied um, and recorded all of the wildfires that have happened in in many of the towns on the Cape. We
have reports on that. And the the ability to take that and then use that to project in the future, it can't be understated. We're going to continue to uh utilize Americanore members in that capacity as well as doing the implementation work once it uh once we get these plans in place. They're very good at uh reducing uh or creating fire breaks, reducing the amount of fuel that's on the ground um you know and provide critical labor to assist the towns that are in need. So, it's going to be another large component. And uh Commissioner Forest, thank you so much for bringing up the
military base as well. The Joint Base Cape Cod has some great resources. they were a partner on this proposal as well as the seashore. Um so you know any anyone that's a player in this region has been involved with the proposal and uh you'll hear a lot more from me once we have this plan in place. Um and we will be actively seeking additional resources to get to the towns whether that's equipment uh person power um uh you know any of the any of the things that we have here at the county that we can lend to them. Well, we're here to offer our support and help any way we can and
we look forward to uh working on this and I think a lot of people will be relieved to hear that it's uh been awarded and we're going forward. Uh thank you so much. Um and then if I I I might ask I don't know if I if I this is allowed if you would like me to wait but um you heard the buzzer. I might have to go. That was it. Um, so I we did we did just receive word that we received another grant. Typically that the announcement would come at the end in staff announcements, but um I would if it's okay to talk about it now and go out of order. Um as I a hot off the
press is um the Mass Department of Environmental Protection just uh awarded uh our our department sustainable materials recovery program. Uh it's a a $90,000 grant. It's the largest amount awarded uh in the applicant pool and this is for uh food rescue. So the concept of food rescue, you know, we talked a little bit last week and we've talked recently about um challenges with delivering food to people in need in this community and we do have a food access coordinator that's been
working on that system. So a food rescue, the concept of it is we know that there's food in uh wholesale distributors. We know there's food uh at restaurants and and uh grocery stores that's nearing the end of its life. And so from Mass D's perspective, they don't want to see that food in the trash. Right? From our perspective, from a food access perspective, that food is very valuable, but it has a very short window of life and not all of it is created equal. So there's many different food rescue programs. This grant is going to take what we have
now and bring it to a whole new level. So there's three components of the grant. We're going to have a regional food recovery portal. So it'll be an online portal that'll be you know only limited to the part participants whether they're a uh you know a distributor that wants to give us food or one of the food pantries that wants to receive it and deliver it to the community. That's going to be an online resource that's funding through this grant. We we're going to have a coordinated food rescue operations led by the Cape Cod Council of Churches. Uh we're going to hire a food rescue
program manager to help implement that and we're going to have outreach and training for business and volunteers to just discuss the concept of the program and how it would work. So this this $90,000 grant from Mass D's perspective is going to keep a lot of the almost 20% of what's in our trash is food. honestly like it's a unfortunately it's the the reality of um the world we live in and a lot of that can be diverted. They're going to be happy about that side of it and we're going to also benefit greatly from uh having this food go to people in in need and get it to them quickly
through a coordinated system. So that that's excellent. That really is great. Um I was cleaning out my pantry the other day and I'm you know you have these things that are just near their expiration date. You can't bring them to a food pantry because they are near that that expiration date and and imagine use it quick or right imagine if your grocery store restaurant you know and you have this massive quantity and and they all have distribution systems to try to assist with that but they're not as efficient as they could be and we know that we can really move the bar
with this. So uh those are so you heard about the wildfire you heard about this one. So those are the two bits of good news for today. A lot of a lot of good grant writing there, Mark. I mean, Michael and uh thank you for all of that effort. Very happy. Yes. You know, talking Sheila talks about cleaning out her pantry and so often I'll go in every once in a while. I say, well, I better look at this cabinet in there and I look and you find something that's expired or close to expired, you know, and the question is why didn't I make that decision two weeks ago if I said, "Hey, I've
got this here. I'm not probably not going to use it, you know, right? Sit there until it expires. Maybe we can get it out to someone who can use it. So that's I know I know that doesn't amount to much compared to restaurants and food stuff, but eventually it does though. I mean that's our comm in the end. What we saw with SNAP and the federal shortfall is that if we want to have a resilient community, a community that that can handle these things, we we can't rely on the federal government. We we have to be able and and thank goodness we had so many people step up during that
shortfall. Uh you know, we saw a lot of people in need uh get served locally. Um, but you know, the Greater Boston Food Bank delivers 5.1 million pounds of food to Cape Cod pantries every year. It's a lot of food. A lot of food. Um, and that's out that's one outside resource coming in. So, you know, and we're I just want to say we're a disposable. We We don't think anything about this, you know. Well, I got that on sale. Now, I can just throw it away. And we have to change that thinking as well. I'm sorry, Mark. the uh I'm glad you brought up food insecurity because it
um you know and congratulations in terms of this funding but um you know I appreciate the fact that while the news has been breaking um you know regarding SNAP funding and the federal government basically dropping the ball and providing food to people um which is is just unconscionable what's been going on. Um, I've been impressed with the extent to which cooperative extension has been incredibly visible and uh out there in the press and in the media as a resource for people
that need to some guidance and help in terms of where to go. And I think that's um, you know, we have so many organizations on the Cape. I guess that's my sign that I have, but we have so many organizations here on the Cape stepping in to help out that sometimes you just don't know where to go. for the cooperative extension to be so visible, so engaged in this I think is is has been terrific. So just kudos to you folks. Um I'm curious if at some point we need to revisit
this topic, if we've learned from this crisis, if there are things that we need to be doing um so that the next time hopefully there isn't a next time, but if indeed there is, we're prepared. You know, I would be I think once budget season's over, we should have Andrea from uh my office, the food access coordinator, come in and do an update for you. Um because there's always a crisis. There's always a crisis with food. It's how we respond to it. And the the concept of having the food access coordinator, we don't and I try not to toot our own horn horn because there's
hundreds of of groups working on this in the community. It's not just us, but the the problem has always been trying to sync all of the efforts and find efficiencies. And when you're a little food pantry, you know, you're open two days a week and you have a couple volunteers, you don't have the time to look at the big picture, and that's what we've been trying to do. Yeah. One last thing while you're here. Um before you came in, there was a brief discussion with staff um regarding the challenges that farmers are facing. Yeah. These days. Yes. And I think this is probably
another topic that we may want to spend some time focusing in on particularly since you're you play a role in interacting with a lot of the farmers, a lot of the people that are producing food. Um I was explaining that you know in Yarmouth we had a town meeting on Monday and we took some steps to ease to make it easier for lobstermen to to sell live lobsters in the town of Yarmouth. It generated some very interested interesting discussion, but I I think we need to pay closer attention to the needs of our fishermen and our farmers because they don't necessarily have the
resources to comply comply or follow the more conventional forms of compliance and management. There's nothing wrong with a lobsterman selling live lobsters from their home and particularly if they've been doing it for years, but sometimes there are bylaws and there are regulations that are do it just from the sake of a of a land use. So, um, the thing that I'm hearing from the fishing community particularly is that there are communities that are less and less fisherman
friendly and I'm also concerned that we have the same issues with folks in farming. Yeah. And and so I think we just need to have our ears close to the ground on some of the challenges that farmers, fishermen are having because they're our food producers, right? They are. I mean, so on the one hand, we want to make food available to people, but on the other hand, we I think we just need to be extra have a real close ear to the ground in terms of the challenges that our food producers are having in terms of getting food into the hands of the people that need it. Quickly. Yeah. Yeah.
Quickly, I just Yeah, I understand where Mark's coming from. You know, I'm part of the food chain, my business. And unfortunately the big kahuna is the FDA because they determine they want to know if you eat something they want to know where it's coming from. And so the the the uh tendency is to try to basically paper over every transaction which is what the resistance is to having people sell their product and I think we can overcome that resistance with some reasonable look as well. That's the role of our office and the by fresh local grant that you just signed
off on recently. There are big components. There's grant writing for farm writers. There's resources uh technical resources that we the $100,000 from Mass Department a resources goes into buy fresh by Local. It's not just all advertising. It's technical assistance to farmers. Any farmer that's out there that needs help with paperwork. That is our role like contact extension. We will do that for you. And I'll I'll have a presentation set too for uh later in the year for you on that. That's great. That's great. I appreciate that. And that's something that really get out into the consciousness of the town's people because then they will support that and and highlight
it. So all good stuff. We look coming back with a lot more information. I think uh something's up with that radiator, but maybe it's not a bad thing. I have a buzzer right here that I think it's doing fine. Okay. Thank you, Michael. Thank you for your time. Congratulations. Thank you. Okay. Moving right along. Uh we are going to go to the mun. No, we did. Oh, no. We are the municipal uh fire training PAS remediation site project update.
Here's the team tackling this awesome problem. Did you hear from anybody the independent a couple of weeks ago? Okay. But I'm I mentioned your name and then I regretted it. We'll talk about that afterwards. Good morning everyone. Good morning. All right. So, I'd like you to introduce yourself and your team here. Yep. So, I'm I'm Paul Rosala. I'm the assets manager for Barsville County and I'm joined here with our consultants, GZA. Um, John, you want to give a Sure. I'm John I'm sorry,
I'm trying to figure out how to show show you my slides. Um, I'm John Pacman. I am a a principal level hydrogeeologist with GZA geoenvironmental. Um for this project I serve as the overall project coordinator and principal of of uh principal in charge of the project on GCA's behalf. Um I've met with you before. Yes. And I want to welcome you back but we can't have you known for the public. So Sure. Sure. Just and and I'm joined today with by Jennifer Mckne. Yes. Hi Jennifer. Hi. I'm a senior project commander with GZA. Um, and I'm running the assessment portion of
this project. And if you recall, we broke up the project for efficiency sake into three teams. So, she's running the investigation team uh part of it. I will I will pinch hit for the remediation team and and and the and the data team as well. Okay. Um, so if you go to teams, I am trying to sh go to the teams and then click on that or click on this box right here. and then hit share. And we also have on the screen Bill, right? Oh, yes. Bill. Yes. Yes. Yes. So,
yeah, we can't get Bill. Oh, we had Bill. There he is. He's still there. Yeah. Bill still here. Still here. Yeah. I'll give you a quick intro. You We brought Bill's company. Bill's company is GHD. Uh we brought them in to to support us as a subcontractor for the risk assessment work. So, Bill, do you want to introduce your your technical background? Hi, sure folks. Uh, morning commissioners. Good great to be here. Um, I'm involved in my township work. So, it's kind of neat to see how another um commission works. So, this is really great to join you. Um, so I'm
an ecological risk assessor. So, what that means is I basically assess the residual contamination that's out of sight. So, whether it's surface water, whether it's soil, whether it's sediment, I assess the risk to ecological receptors. So, the birds, the bugs and bunnies, for lack of a better way of putting it. Um, so I've been I've been working with a group at GVA uh assessing what's left at the site after a after cleanup uh to determine what the ecological risks are. And I'll be presenting on that in a little bit. Great. Okay. We're all we're filled with anticipation.
Great. So I I I I won't go into a lot of background because we talked about that before, but you know, just to little refresher, you know, the whole project is is focused on complying with the Massachusetts contingency plan, the MCP. You know about that. uh and you know about how when we came on board, we we took a very holistic or regional approach into looking at this project because it was such a large project and there's so many other sources nearby um with plumes, you know, converging and mingling and we had to look at the big picture here in order to to to achieve
our objectives. Um and and one of the things that we've done and continue to do is bring the the public together on this project. So we we you know have routine discussions with with external stakeholders including um you know including folks from the airport including folks from Silent Spring including folks you know Tom Camareri who's been representing the Hyannis civics groups civilian residential groups um we've had people from Yarmouth you know chime in and and and
help us out and give us their thoughts. So we've really brought through D shows up, USGS shows up, we brought a lot of people together to all give us, you know, input and we share our information with them, they share theirs and and we approach this thing as a team and I think that's been very productive in the past and I hope it continues to in the p in the future as you know that's our goal. Um so just to give you a little refresher on on the layout of the land so to speak on the site, here's the fire training facility here. It's on the eastern shore of Flint Rock Pond. Um the
the to the uh east of the site and hydraulically downgraded groundwater flow is generally from the the upper leftand part of the screen down to the lower um and I'm following my cursor that's sort of falling groundwater flow down to the lower u right hand corner of the screen. Um we have um the mer as I said the Mary Dun wells. We have um some an additional water supply well here called the airport one well which is used intermittently on a seasonal basis. And then we have the airport
here who as as you know has its own PAS uh plumes problems that they've had and they're addressing and and we're working closely with them on that. Then we have the Marwells further down here and we have the Mil Creek uh area marsh area down here as well. And then the other the other uh pertinent uh landmark to point out is the the Barnesville waste uh water pollution control facility or their wastewater treatment plant is down right down here. Um and and and so we've got you know lots
of lots of things going on in this area. A lot of contributors. A lot of contributors. Exactly. And and you know there's been also talks of maybe some additional PAS sources in this area and up here as well. So there's a lot of things to look at here. Um, but I wanted to just set that that that uh map into your mind so as we go through our conversation here. Great. Um, so I thought I'd bring you up to date on our recent work since we last met. Um, so on the investigation side of things, we've installed 16 additional multi-level monitoring wells. So not just shallow wells, but
wells drilled all the way down to the lower clay layer that I spoke of before, which is which is serving as a lower confining layer to this plume. So those are not cheap to do. To get down deep in the drilling conditions on the Cape takes special drilling takes a little bit more time, but we, you know, we got that done. They helped us fill a lot of data gaps that they existed. If you recall, the first thing we did is look at what are the data gaps here and what do we need to do to fill those data gaps. So we've done that. That gave us a lot of information. We're able to pretty much define
the extent of the plume uh very well actually coming from the fire training facility. Um what it also did though is that it identified another plume further south of us that the source of that is not well known right now and the the airport had originally identified it. Didn't really pursue it too much. Uh but we've identified it and and the the question now is is it related to the fire training facility? We'll talk about that a little bit more moving up moving. Can you go to
the map John and just show us the area that you're investigating? Yeah. So, so we have a plume. That other plume, that other plume is is down in this area here. Okay. I'm having trouble following you. It's down here right there. Yeah, it's down here. And Jen has some better maps, so we'll show you as we move forward. I just wanted to set the stage in your mind. Okay. Um, and the groundwater flow there is is sort of from the west from the west to the east. But it's complicated because and we'll
talk about that as well because of the water treat the water treatment facility they take a lot of water that after they treat it and they in reinfiltrate it into the ground using all each of these little squares are infiltration beds. So they're using that to reinject the water into the subsurface so as to not waste the water. But that creates a big mound in the groundwater flow field and water flows downhill. So if you big mound, the water flows in all directions off the mound. So that creates a big groundwater flow direction mound there that creates more slightly complicated
groundwater flow directions there. So it's like changing the the flow of a of a watershed in a sense. It is. Am I thinking of that right? It is. It is. It's like putting a hill in the middle of a watershed. Now that hill creates its own little watershed in the middle of the valley. Right. So if those discharges were not there, the water would be flowing in a in a different direction probably a bit more southerntherly in a local level. Yes. Yes. Can I ask what is the what is the rate of the groundwater traveling through the subsurface in that area? It's approximately 1 to
one and a half ft per day. That's pretty fast. But it's the Cape K. It's Cape K. It's all sand. Very permeable sand. It's the most homogeneous material that we have around here. It's often referred to as a big sandbox and we're seeing that that very high flow rates and we've we've quantified that. We've we've actually done tests on that. Okay. And yeah, so I I just want to, you know, give you that layout as we present the rest. Um, so we've also gone in and we've instrumented a number, as you've
noticed, you know, there's a lot of little ponds over there. Uh, these ponds I've considered kettle ponds. They have chunks of ice that broke off but during the deglaciation and then they melt out and you end up a little kettle there and ground water flows through them now. Um and and so they're in direct communication with groundwater. So we can't look at groundwater without looking at the ponds because the ponds are in this case a surface expression of groundwater. So it's all it's all interrelated. So we have to look at everything. Um most of the ponds the kettle ponds
are an indication of ground water. Are they not in this in this part of the world? Yes. Yeah. Um and so we've done that. We've also put in little mini pisometers in there that allow us to measure, you know, the groundwater gradients in the ponds and below the ponds and actually sample below the ponds and things like that. Um we have uh developed a numerical groundwater flow model. That's a mathematical model of this situation here. It's a very detailed model and very big. Uh rather than have to deal with the complications of just cutting a little circle or a little square
around the site and having to deal with those boundary conditions of that little square. We took the USGS's capewide model, kept it as a capewide model and just refine the geology in the vicinity of your site. And that gives us more control and it gives us more resolution because we cut back the grid spacing there. that model so we can look at it more closely. And then we brought in the local geology that we've actually encountered at your site and around your site um to bring it in because USGS didn't have that amount of data when they developed theirs. So
we've been doing that and and updating the model with USGS on our calls and and letting them know what we're doing. And I'm very happy that they're happy with what we're doing. In fact, we met with Dennis Leblanc who was involved with the original model way back when for the USGS. we met with him at the the site a about a month ago and he was great to to uh to talk with as well. Um so that's ongoing. We'll talk about that a little bit more. Um and then um as you know, you know, we've been looking at the data from a for a a forensics perspective. Can we separate out the
fingerprint of the of the water quality at your site from that around your site to try to separate out those plumes? Is there a unique fingerprint there based on the the the concentrations and the type of constituents that we're detecting? As a refresher, when we say PAS chemicals, we lump that in as a general grouping of chemicals. But the fact is there are thousands of PAS constituents that are all part of the PAS world. Okay? And literally thousands and like 5,000. And
and so we only test for a small subset of those. That's what the laboratories can do. Right now, we test for about 70 or so total. And we really, in this case, what is often done in Massachusetts is we're looking at uh six constituents that Massachusetts regulates. So, we're looking at trying to see is there a unique fingerprint there using those six initially and then looking to branch out and see if can we get anything else from the other constituents we're looking at.
I hope the message I got with that conver convoluted discussion is this is complicated, right? Okay. And and so what we're going to present to you reflects that. Okay. Yes. Um so that's what we're doing on the investigation side. Um on the ecological side, as we said, we go to the ecological side. Yeah. The fingerprinting, how are we doing? I mean, have we figured that out yet? Uh it's not it's not as clear as we'd like it to be. Let me say that. And I'm not sure that we're ever gonna get to a point where we can crystal, you know, clearly say
this is ours, this is yours. There's been too much mingling, co-mingling at things over the years, over the decades and the use of different phones makes it difficult because we don't know what phones they used and there was a mix decades of use. Exactly. Multiple phones were used and we don't have records of that. If you recall, the folks that used the facility in the past were the individual first responding agencies. They brought their own materials. We don't and they don't have records of when we brought logs of right those that those logs are with they do exist. We were
hoping we could tease out some sort of fingerprint with the data that we have. We actually brought all the data into one database and and are we done looking at that? No, we're not done. Okay. But so far we've looked at it in a few multiple different ways and it's the thing that's becoming very evident is this is complicated and we may not be able to get tell you with any certainty that there's a unique fingerprint here and I'm being honest with you. Can I just jump in here because I know a little bit about this for reasons I'm not going to go too but um it it become what
you say about not being able to determine where the stuff's coming from. know it because it's so complicated. I'm convinced that within the next decade or so, we're going to realize that this is a national problem and that identifying point sources is going to be a waste of time. You're going to have to deal I mean to to stop the flow is is obviously a you know a goal but to try to put liability on individual organizations and so on. I mean, you know, it's it'll it'll teams of lawyers will make a fortune on it, but that's a risk. I'm not going to get anybody disagree. I'm
leading I'm leading in your direction. I think you're right. Disagrees, Ron, about us being a national problem. Our problem is absolutely but providing enough resources and funding to help do some of the investigative work and the remediation work and to have some liability uh and accountability from the manufacturers. That's been a huge debate. No, they were hearings actually. um I listened to some some of it and I'm trying to re recall I can listen to too many things and read too many things but um they did just have you know there was congressional hearings are of the like
uh states sector hearings in meanwhile enormous financial liability is being placed on organiz on town on towns I understand what you're saying on some somebody and you know and it's as a as the the minimum standards keep being reduced, the liability and the expense goes up and up and up beyond the ability of those individual entities to cover it. I mean, and I think we're all understanding this a big problem. It's going to have to be, as Mark says, dealt with nationally,
but meanwhile, we're in this box where, you know, Yeah. and at the state level. And in fact, we've actually reached out to the state, and I'll talk about that a little bit later on to help us with this this conversation. this question of what can we delineate and how you how far do we take this okay we'll talk about that uh so that's where we are on the investigation in terms of what we've done and Jen will talk about the details that came out of that um we as I said we we we brought in GHD to to to support this project we felt that GZA although we do that our staff
was stressed and and or stretched to the limit I should say and we weren't sure if we could give you just the level of service you needed within the time frame that you needed. So, we brought in a subcontractor to support us. GHD has been great to work with and and I think you'll walk away from that once once Bill gives you his update. Um, what we've done on that side is is GZA's continued to do the the field work since we have crews here and GHD doesn't. Um so we have collected some additional so sufficial soil samples to assess the extent of of PAS constituents in those soil
samples near the pond and at the site and and near the site. Um we have done some fish sampling which sounds as much fun as you expect it to be and people fought over that task. Uh and uh that is simply going out fishing for a day and testing the fish right uh nice work if you can get it. Uh, and so we've done that in Flint Rock Pond as well as Mary Dunn Pond and we have those results and GHD's looked at that. They'll talk about that. Um, we've done flying insect sampling. If you recall,
we talked about that last time I was here. We've deployed light traps over the ponds and we're able to collect literally buckets of of insects overnight and had those insects tested. That's important because insects are the base of the food web, right? So we have to look at that to see how is that impacting um you know other other animals. Um and then we've also done benthic organism sampling. So those are the the worms and the and the bottom dwellers in the ponds and things like that. Those results are being tested right now. Um and uh so so we've got our data now and and with
with GHG's input we also expanded our database where where they felt that we had data gaps. So, we've got our database now and we've done our initial screening and now we're working on the rest of the of the ecological risk assessment. Okay. Uh, so with that, Bill, do you want to discuss the ecological work? And I've got your your your uh table showing. All right. Perfect. So, um, what you have here is a table and it's a list of different types of
species that we looked at. So whenever we look at a site, you have to understand what are the kind of animals that are going to be at the site, what are the kind of what what the plants at the site, what media are impacted. So we've got the surface water, sediment, soils, and the biota themselves. Uh but if you look at that first column, receptor types. So these are these are things we call trophic guilds. These are just general types of organisms that you might see. An aven piscore like a blue heron, an aerial insectoore might be a tree swallow. So when you're doing an ecological risk
assessment, you have to identify the critical species that could be at your site. And so not every site has every species, but this is a list of the types of types of uh organisms you'd see there. The ones that we are looking at um when we do our modeling to do determine the risk, that's the second column. Those are the surrogate receptors. So in other words, for um for an avian like I said a Navy Episcopore, you might have a great blue heron. So we use a great blue heron as a model. Um, the thing to think about is most of these organisms we turn into a
mathematical model. It's a black box. I could get into it, but it's I don't think it's worth how we do it. But there's a lot of calculations that go into how much are they getting through the water, how much of the contamination are they getting through their food, how much contamination are they getting through incidental ingestion of say soil. So, uh, just to, you know, go back to 30,000 ft again, this is the list of our receptors that we looked at. It's the list of the different media we looked at. And so John and his team have been great for getting us the the right data. Here we
have surface water data. We have sediment data. Really good quality data sets. We have soil great quality soil data sets. And we now have the biota. So normally when we were doing we would do this uh we would do it without knowing what the biota is and that introduces a lot of uncertainty into our numbers that we come out at the end. So, so the fact that um we've been able to go out and get this fish, get the aerial insects, get, you know, get the soil invertebrates or sorry, the uh benthic converters that has really helped in reducing the uncertainty related to the numbers
that we're going I'm going to show you on the end uh in the next slide. So, so this is the list of receptors that the the exposure media we looked at and this essentially characterizes your site to the extent that the MCP wants. Are there any questions here? Yeah. So, it's it's a it's a pretty pretty thorough evaluation we've done. It's very me next slide, please. Next slide, please. Yes. Um, and this is where you get the good news. Um so what we do when we assess risk is we take a
value let's say it's a dose like you know you take a you take a a a pill for uh for acetaminophen or ibuprofen it has it has an amount in it um so we we we have two ways of looking at things we look at what is the dose that let's say a great blue heron is getting during its during its day or what is the concentration for something that lives in a medium So benthic invertebrates live in a medium. Um plants live in soil. Earthworms live in soil. So we there's a direct comparison between a known
value that's toxic and a known value that's possibly not toxic. For for organisms that uh have a dose, they eat a certain amount or get a certain amount of a chemical uh per day. Those are calculated per doses. And anyway, we take the either the dose or that safe concentration and we measure it against uh sorry a dose or or medium concentration and we measure that against a safe dose and a safe concentration. So when you see our let's take Flintrock Pond. So with Flintrock Pond
um we we know that let's look at the red fox. It's a good one because it's at it's at the bottom of the Flintrock Pond. We have a no effects number. Okay. So we know we have a dose that is out of the literature that is accepted that says um at a certain dose this is safe. The number here reflects the ratio of the dose that the uh that the organism is getting to the safe dose. So anything less than one is good news. So as you can see everything here is less than one under
the no effects. This is so this is absolutely no effects. This is totally safe except two uh two of the um receptors. The first one is the benthic invertebrates in Flintrock Pond at 1.7. I have it underlined and bolded and the robin for sight soils at 1.6. Now let me tell you within my world of risk assessment those are only what we call very minor exceedences. In other words, the no effects level you're just above it. you're just a tad above the no effects level.
And so in in in our world, in the risk assessment world, those numbers don't trouble me at all. Um, so now let's look at the low effects column under the hazard index. None of them are above one. And matter of fact, they're magnitudes lower than one, which means they the risk is essentially dimminimous. It's um very incredibly low. And so what I've done is I've categorized each of the areas. Flint Rock Pond, Mary Dun Pond, the the the unnamed pond um that that's sort of the vernal
pool and sight soils and characterize those as to what is the risk here. What does it look like from an ecological perspective? Flint Rock Pond looks great. You have one minor exceedence and with benthic vertebrates under the no effects and and you're well under one for low effects. Um the you look at the numbers for Mary Dun Pond well below one orders of magnitude below one from a modeling standpoint and risk standpoint this is an incredibly safe area right now and keep in mind
um a lot of this is post remediation. So, for instance, the site soils, uh, these numbers might have been a lot higher prior to, you know, capping some of it with with asphalt, prior to digging some of the the dirt out, but right now I can tell you we've got very good news. Um, the site itself, Flint Mark Pond, Mary Dun Pond, u, and the unnamed pond as well as the soils all look good. Um so this approach was which is consistent with the MCP MCP the uh MDP should be very happy with this.
That's great. Any questions on that? Do we know what it was before any remediation? We don't have the data. We don't have Yeah, we don't. We don't have all that stuff. That's too bad. Anyway, yeah, it doesn't seem that there's a lot of accumulation through the food chain. In other words, you have the heron is eating the the fish and the fish are eating worms and so on. And you would think that it would accumulate through the food chain to the higher top organisms, but that doesn't seem to be
the case. No, it doesn't. And as a matter of fact, um the reason why it was good to get the fish data, for instance, is that when you model it, there's ways of modeling a fish tissue concentration from say water or sediment. There's ways of doing that and and those tend to be very conservative. In my experience, when you do that, you get much higher numbers than you do when you actually go out and collect the the the fish or the invertebrates or whatever the other biota is. So um it's better to have the data. We have the data and it's actually showing there is not a lot
of bioaccumulation and part of that's probably due to the properties of the sediments. For instance uh if they have high total organic carbon pests like to to be in that medium and they they become less bioavailable. PoA is a different story. that tends to wash out of a system and that may have very well happened here and it's is not as biocumulative as you might think it would be. This this is good news. Uh I appreciate this. Okay, any other questions here? No. All right,
continue please. Whoever is that that takes us to Bill's presentation. Bill is actually multitasking. He's on the West Coast at a conference right now. So, if we're done with Bill, we could let him go. We're going to let you go, Bill. And I want to thank you. I think we've met before because uh GHT works with Wealthfleet. So well well thank you for having me here. I'm happy to present the data to you. Hopefully it's it meets your expectations. It does. It's great news and enjoy your conference. It's a modern world that you can attend this meeting here.
Click of a uh key or in the west coast. Isn't that great? Yeah, it's great. Scary. Okay. Those are the good things about it. Thank you. Thanks. So I I'll make a general comment on the h you heard the ecological risk. I'll make a general comment on the human health risk. We started that that we're doing in house. We have a person who's doing it um is a PhD from Harvard public health, very qualified to do it. Um and she's been working for us for ever 20 some odd years almost, you know.
and um she's taken an initial screening on at this and we don't have all of her results yet because it's ongoing. Uh but her screening results are also favorable and the big reason for that is that you guys did the right thing in that you when when you knew when you learned about this you put in the wellhead treatment and that eliminated the major exposure pathway through drinking water. So when you eliminate that pathway that cuts out a lot of risk to human health. So now she's looking at other exposure pathways, things like, you know, contact with waters of the ponds even under the
the unlikely circumstances someone might go into the pond. Um things like that. So we're looking at those things as well. Um but the fact that you cut back the you know the the the exposure via the drinking water pathway is is huge and and so we don't expect to see I don't have all the results yet but I don't expect to see a lot of issues out come out of the human health risk assessment I don't want to be the you know I know a little bit about this I've heard it said that if
you drink the water for s you know that has some pas in that for 70 years you have a a one in a million chance of having an adverse health effect. Now I don't know if that's true or not. That's just a cliche. Yeah. But I I'm there's a billions and billions and billions of dollars being dumped into this whereas the actual health effects on the population are still not you know so at some point
we're going to have to try to bring those numbers together. What are we trying to do? Fully agree with you. Fully agree with you. I I don't know the numbers. I haven't looked at those studies. I'm a geologist, not a human health person. But yeah, I can tell you what goes on underground. I don't know about what goes on in the human body. But but I I I wouldn't be surprised. No, I mean I I there's no justification for dumping anything in the water that's injurious to people's health. But at some point, we've been doing this for hundreds of years. We have to and we only have even with the trillions of dollars that go into it, our resources are limited. So we have to understand
I'm sorry to be preachy but that's fine. No I have to understand as to what we're actually doing what we hope to accomplish within the money we have. Yeah. Okay. So so with that Jen do you want to walk us through the findings on the geology and groundwater and things like that. Yes. So this is a cross-section. So basically a vertical cut through the earth from west of Flint Rock Pond um all the way to east of Mary Dun Pond. Um and this yellow here um represents the glacial outwash
deposits that dominate this area. So basically sands with some varying amounts of silt and gravel. Um and as John had mentioned, underlying these at about 50 to 70 ft below ground surface is this silty clay layer. Um this brownish color down here that has a much lower permeability. Um so it's limiting um the flow of that contaminated groundwater vertically. It's a good thing. very good thing. Yes, I can see that. Yeah. And and we've characterized that sand now. So,
prior to our involvement, it was just speculative as to what the permeability of that is, how deep it was in some cases. A lot of it was it was inferred, right? Okay. We've actually gone in, we've confirmed the depths, and you can see we've got some resol uh relief in that that layer. We now have that built into our our analysis and we've actually taken samples of that material and and tested it for grain size distribution which allows us actually test the the permeability of that material. So we have actual quantitative numbers now which is much better.
That's great. So some of the information that you shared with Dennis Leblanc oh he gets he was I'm sure he was excited about that. He he likes what we're doing. I I can I can looking at this right now and I'm thinking, "Boy, boy, Dennis would have really enjoyed this." He enjoyed our walk through the other day. That's for sure. He came by to see the PRB being installed. We did. We're good. Great. Um this is another cross-section, but now we're going from Mary Dun Pond south um to the airport property. Um and you can see the geology is very similar. We still have this
um layer of glacial outwash sands in yellow and it's underlaying by that silty um clay layer. And moving on to um groundwater flow patterns. So John definitely touched on this earlier. Um to understand groundwater flow across this whole area um we've done quarterly groundwater gauging rounds. So taking depths to water at all the wells at the MFTtf site. Um and we also I lost my cursor. There it is. We also took ground um gauged all the wells at the airport um and at
the Barnesville water pollution control. So we're able to take these numbers and create um a groundwater elevation plan. Um this is for the shallow wells. So we have wells um that are set at the water table itself. Those are which we refer to as the shallow wells as well as some deeper wells below the water table but above above that clay layer. Um so these blue lines are lines of equal groundwater elevation or hydraulic head and water flows perpendicular to these lines. Um so we have flow as we had mentioned from um the MFTtf to the southeast
um towards the Mary Dunn um wells and you'll see there is some flow to the northeast um in the vicinity of the Mary Dun wells as they're pulling water towards them and then flow changes more to the south as we get to this air1 supply well and across the airport to those mar wells at um the southern edge and then y for the um for the the groundwater flow that's sort of from east to west. You can see that it sort of water moves in a northerly direction from the wastewater
treatment plant and the mound. Yeah, that's what I was about to mention. Yeah. You going to get into this? Yeah, just as John had mentioned um down at the Barnesville water pollution co just as he said um they're infiltrating water here. So we have this mound of water. So the water is flowing sort of radially away from it. So, we have this flow. We gauge the wells on this side. So, we can see the flow going to the northeast and to the southeast in this area. And I'd like to give a little call out to the folks at the wastewater treatment plant. They've been great to work with.
They've g shared their reports with us. They've given us access to sample and gauge their wells. They've been great to work with. Great. I have a question. Does development change the direction of the flow of groundwater? Mean like residential development? Yeah, residential or even, you know, uh, commercial if it's, you know, you're pounding, you know, we had, there was one house that just pound, you know, put it on stilts in a sense pounded, the house is gone. Yeah. However, um, you
know, I keep thinking uh, if we did that to a lot of different um, businesses or something to anchor that's not going to have an impact. No. All right. No, you have I think the development impacts are on they're already reflect no they're reflected in the broader dimensions of this analysis in that the amount of water that is pumped to provide a water supply. All right and the amount of water that's discharged and affecting the flow. So if you have massive development that contributes more
then you will see those impacts in some degree. It would have to be very large. Yeah. Have to be centralized as well that if those reinjection if you have a number of septic systems all injecting a little bit all spread out. It's it'll have some impacts in a very very localized area but on a regional level not so much. And if you look at these walls, these walls are producing at a fairly large rate large volume. So the amount of water that we're talking about to make this
kind of influence in groundwater float is quite significant. Absolutely. The other thing Yeah. Well, what I'm intrigued with is is that you add the discharge in one location or the multiple dischar How many wells do they have to discharge? How many at the treatment plant? They don't use wells. They use infiltration beds which are those square shaped square sheets. How many of them are there? You can see the beds. I don't think I ever counted them but a bunch of 10 plus. Yeah, 10 plus. Yeah. Right. So water is discharged through those. And they and they use them they
they don't use them all at the same time. They use certain beds at certain times and while they're re refurbishing others, they let them dry out. They they skim off my understanding is they skim off some of the sludge that might develop on them or something like that. They have their own procedures. Am I up on all of them? I'm I'm not. So, please understand that. But I know that they they use different beds at different times to to to to comply with their needs at the time, their operational needs at the time. Does the data show that it's all kind of moving generally in one direction or do we see we don't have enough wells to give us the resolution to do that? Okay. So,
we look one facility. So, we know there is some flow. Yeah. moving water in the sort of northeasterly direction. Exactly. And general talk, we're hoping to help refine that in the next couple of months. She'll talk about how we're going to do that. One thing I would just add to as the town of Barnstable continues to expand their municipal sewer system west, they're further going to collect, you know, that water that was dispersed maybe through septic systems into a municipal system, routing all of that water now back to this plant or another
alternate disposal site. So the mound that we have depending how they manage it could could change over the next few years as they put more people online and definitely 10 or 15 years. Um so this this model is you know it's it's never going to be you know done. It's going to reflect the development the change in the system and change. All right. Um so as I mentioned that was the groundwater contour plan for those shallow wells. We also um created a plan for the wells that are screened below the water table which we refer to as the intermediate and deep wells. As you can see
the groundwater contour plan looks almost exactly the same. We still have the flow to the southeast toward the Mary Dunwells to the south toward the Marwells and we're still seeing a mound here um with a little bit of radial flow from the Barnesville water pollution. Um flipping over to the more exciting data. If you go to presentation the image I don't know if we can stand it. Yeah. Can I move this? You can drag that appear and see that it's part of the screen. But maybe if you go
and click on the presentation, maybe that'll make the image bigger. There you go. How's that? Oh, much better. Okay. But you can't see my cursor anymore. That's Oh, you can. Okay. Oh, yeah. Even better. Um, so this is um the results of our sampling of the groundwater. Um, the blue shading is the PAS 6 sun um in groundwater. So, John mentioned in Massachusetts there's six regulated PAS compounds. Um, and we looked at the sum of these. The drinking water standard
um is 20 for the sum of the six. Um, so the darkest blue here is um represents concentrations over a,000 nanogs per liter. A little bit lighter. The next blue is 100 nanogs per liter. And then this last contour is 10 nanogs per liter, which would be half of the drinking water standard. Um, so this is from a sampling round conducted in May. We collected samples from over 80 wells at the MFTtf site. And we coordinated this with the airport who did their own um groundwater
sampling around across the airport and we're able to put all this data together to kind of look at the plumes on this more um regional level. Um, so this is for the shallow wells. Um the plume stretches from the MFTtf site to the southeast to the these Mary Dunwells and a little bit past Mary Dun Pond. Um you can also see the two plumes at the airport which the airport um is addressing. Um and then can you just stop right there for a second? Yep. So we've identified that there's an
area that is not contaminated between the plumes to the north close to the it's at least below 10 nanogs per liter. So it's might be there may be some people there but it's at levels. Yep. And this is in the shallow. So just keep in mind I'll flip to the deeper. One shouldn't assume that there are two distinct plumes there. They could be connected in some way diffusely connected. Yeah, it's possible. Right. what we're delineating are the higher concentrations of right and then
as John had mentioned before there's this offsite plume that the airport had also identified but the source of this plume is unknown at this point um we've dubbed that the mystery plume actually the airport originally dubbed it as a mystery plume if I recall correctly so it seemed appropriate for us to continue to use that term so are you also certain that there's a break on the roadway headed I mean there's this No, this is unclear. We put a bunch of question marks here. There's just no wells in between. We're not in the area. Wells in the middle of the road. Yeah, the middle of the
flake pattern where they're going to land, right? But we do have some data that suggests there is some separation between the plume for the for the that's coming from the fire training facility and the mystery plume. We have we have enough data that we feel pretty comfortable that separation probably exists. Can you put your cursor around the mystery plume? It's weird. I keep losing my cursor. Oh, and it switched. This is the mystery plume. That that whole area this whole plume.
Yeah. The zone of contribution. The green the green dash line. Yeah. So, well, if you look at the water flow and you look at the existence of the treatment plant, to me, the treatment plant would certainly be a potential candidate for the source of that default. Correct. It is. So, I'm not I'm not saying anything crazy here. Yeah. I'll let you let's look at the intermediate deep well uh plume map and then I'll talk about where we are on that. So, I while we're doing that, I have a you know, we were talking about um wastewater and how we're going to deal with it. And they
were talking about the different pipes and how all the pipes are now lined with plastic. So, I said, "Well, doesn't that just just the flow of that going through that plastic? does that pick up Pas because POAS is in plastic and he said I was waiting for that question this was not GHD another uh group and so even if we have everything if we're putting it through plastic are we just kind of defeating is there is there a residual that yeah I haven't studied that or researched
it but the first thing that comes to mind for you yeah yeah I'll put that in my next change Yeah. No. Does it have an impact? Uh, what the first thing that comes to mind is just depends on the type of plastic because not all plastics are the same, right? And so for our sampling work, we rely heavily on something called um high density polyethylene, HDPE, because it's low or non-existent in PAS. Okay. So, and I think most of those discharge pipes are made out of HDPE. It's
the dark black stuff and that's typically HDPE as opposed to LDP which is low density polyethylene. There's a whole bunch of other plastics out there. You know, I'm not a materials engineer but um that's the first thing I would be thinking about. And if it's HDPE, I'm less concerned about it. Okay. So, there are differences in the plastic and it would make sense that they used the least. I would hope I would hope too. I would hope. Okay. That's I know like and I'll take it to another level. Um when when the whole key thing came up um laboratories were under the microscope
because a lot of the laboratory instruments used teflon for their tubing and their sealants and everything like that. So the laboratories had to go in and basically deteon all their equipment so that you know they weren't contaminated. So they had to deal with that as well and they were able to do that using better plastics and better sealants and things like that. Okay, that's good to know. All right. Um so this is um the PAS 6 concentrations in the intermediate and deep wells at the site. And you can see the plumes look different um now uh to the west of the site. Uh to
the west of what site? To the west of the MFTtf site um and Flint Rock Pond. You can see that we're seeing detections above at least 10 nanogs per liter. Um which we didn't see in the shallow. Um, we did look at the flow rates of these two, um, Barsville Fire District supply wells to see if they could potentially be pulling water back from the site. Um, but based on our numerical modeling, it doesn't appear that they would be pulling contamination all the way back from the MFTtf. It
appears that there's some sort of offsite source we have not identified yet that is contributing um, PAS to this area. are if the groundwater flow is from the west to the east then how did that get there right right I mean if we're thinking that the MFTtf is the source it would be moving to the east but mean for for the Barsville fire district well is that yeah so so that looking at that area I don't see how that comes from the MFTt we agree with you and and we went into this
you know skeptical u because our you know other folks had comment mented that they didn't think it was coming from us, but we recognized it was right next to us. Maybe there was some pathway we looked at as well. So that's a little bit in terms it's another mystery plume and exactly and and mystery plume number one. Mystery plume. Well, multiple sources. It doesn't really surprise us because there's so many potential sources of PAS out there in the world. You think the concentrations there are conceivable to come from some of the industrial area that's northeast? It's
it's possible. It could also be also coming from the wastewater treatment plant. Some of our modeling work suggests that that the mound is sufficient that we could be pushing some amount of constituents up that far. That's incredible. So that's something we have to look at a little bit further. We don't know. We don't know yet. It could be coming that's coming in. I like your way of thinking. Um but but that is something we have to look at. So we've already started that. So and I'm sorry to get out of sequence, Jen. No, you're good. The green the green dashed area indicates
a zone of contribution from the wastewater plant. It does. So the green line is for this um Barnesville Fire District 5. This is a water supply well here. That's under extreme pumping conditions. This would be the zone of influence. So it does potentially go all the way back zones, Paul, the zone of contribution, right? and zone of contribution to the water supply and then there's the zone of influence in terms of the waste water. So that's to the well that's that's the zone of
influence to the well. So that's how far the well is reaching out to pull its water where's the well those green boxes that are there. Yes. Um this well here wells are those are the fire district. Got it. Okay. So there's a source of contamination affecting those wells that is not that's still a mystery. We don't know where it's coming from. Is it wastewater treatment plant or is it another source nearby up further upgradient or not? So what we've done is you know start you start with
the easier simpler things first is we ordered a a commercial a uh company that keeps records and and they usually do it for property transaction stuff. So, we requested from them records for street directory information throughout this area and and that came back with thousands of names of people that own properties or own properties in the past. And then, you know, using our younger, smarter people than us, they did some AI work and smart searches and everything else and they've
been calling out those properties that are not likely to use PAS, like residential properties and doctor's offices and things like that. And and what we're what we're trying do use PAS, but not in the country. not enough that we're going to worry about, you know, but we're what we're looking for are things like metal finishing facilities or or other manufacturing facilities, things that are significant, right? And so they're working on that now and we're making progress, but what we're trying to do is identify other potential sources in that area that might be
contributing to this. As again when we look at these investigations, this is this is where the challenge for our work where we begin where we're going to have to start drawing the line a little bit. Exactly. We can only you know from my point of view we can only go offsite so far. Exactly. And then after a while someone else will have to pick up that work. Fully agree. I would assume the the the water district is probably concerned about You want to jump in here? Yeah. Prefer the MCP. You know, John, as far as now you have the question marks of the water district.
Are we at the point where we won't have to explore anything for we know that we're being contributed, you know, from that it's traveling toward us. For our site specifically, we we essentially draw a line. Hey, there's some other plume coming from that area. We don't know what it is. We'll hand it over to D. If D or the water district wants to look, they can look from there. Exactly. So, that's one one interpretation. So we're at that point now where we have enough information about the contamination where we can begin to see where maybe some others will have to yes. What we're
trying to do is is strengthen our argument with a multiple lines of evidence approach. So we can have one line of evidence that is a hydraulic line of evidence groundwater flow directions. That's good. But then we have another line of evidence that says not only do we think it's it can't get there because of hydraulics, but there's also these other sources that are upgradient that may be contributing. So it becomes a multiple lines of evidence. And you know, I was always taught if you get multiple lines of evidence that all point in the same direction, it increases the probability that the truth is there. Yes. Okay. So that's what we're trying to do to give you a stronger argument
for why we don't think that that belongs to us. Right? Does that make sense? original mystery plume. The original mystery plume though, there's still um some data to be investigated. Yeah. There because it's it's a wide it's a wide gap. Yeah. Yeah. So, what we're trying to do there, actually, I'll let Jen fill that in and then I will chime in after. Um Yeah. So, moving on to the mystery plume. Um and the intermediate deep, you can see it spans across at least the western portion of the airport all the way down to the mar wells. all of the wells in here that were
sampled at the time. Can you just put a cursor on the marwells? I just want to make sure that for people that are watching they can see that those are the Marwells. They're in green and they are getting peas treatment. Right. They all are. Now, are we paying for that? No. That's it. Yeah. No, we have a settlement with just Mary done. We have a settlement. Just Mary done, you know. So, that's on that's on the town of Arnstable there. Yes. And there's wellhead treatment on the airport well, the air1 well as well. But that well only operates seasonally because as we understand it from Hans
is that that well is not u uh winterized. So they can't operate it during cold months. So So I think they use it on an as needed basis. And the Mary Dunwells just for education purposes, can you just put the cursor on those? Mary Dunwells are up here. Right. The green box is right up there. Bingo. There we go. Okay. And we're taking care of the PE. That's part of our settlement. Correct. All right. This is great work. Yeah, it is. It really is amazing. So, this off-site plume we're
we would like to understand better um you know the extent of it and where potential sources for it. Um when we created this um plume map only I keep losing my curs. Um the air [ __ ] had only sampled um three sets of wells over here. They're highlighted in yellow. This set, this set, and a set up here. So this is based off a limited data set. Um so we did get permission from the airport to go ahead and sample um all of the wells in here um so that we can define um this plane
better. So how many public water supply wells are in that area over here? None. None. Okay. What we're trying to do here is define, you know, the source of that mystery boom. Is it coming? So, those are monitoring walls. Those are Yes, those are all monitoring. Correct. Investigation of the and they were installed 10, 15 years ago by the airport. They don't go down as deep as we'd like, but they're a good starting point. So, since they haven't been tested for a long time, let's test them now. Unfortunately, you know why they put the walls in? When they were doing their
initial investigation, they tested them then and stopped. They concluded that it wasn't needed to do long-term monitoring of them. So, they did identify the offsite plume. It did identify that. Uh, and they concluded that that plume was not likely associated with their sites. So, that's where that stopped and and I understand and I respect that, you know. Um, the question now is what is the source of that? And and it it comes in in that, you know, we we can't forget that
the fire training facilities plume made it into the Marwells. That's how they detected the fire training facility plume is when it was found in the Marwells. So we know that for some period of time, I'm sorry, the Mary Dunwell, sorry, sorry, sorry. Uh it made it into the Mary Dunwells and and so we can't ignore that. And so for some period of time there was PAS constituents from the fire training facility getting into the into the distribution network and that water then would
have ultimately been been discharged to mostly the wastewater treatment plant for you know for those that use municipal sewer. Um and therefore the question then becomes is the mystery plume an expression of the the the secondary source of our stuff being discharged at the wastewater treatment plant or not. Now, my understanding there was some controversy over the rate of pumpage of those Mary Dunwells. For quite some time, they were being pumped and withdrawing water at a
fairly excessive rate, which I'm sure played a role in drawing in some of the contamination. Uh, I think it was going to go there anyway. And we see I disagree, but I think to some degree, if you're talking about um those wells and how they were utilized, I mean, there's an interesting history there. Yeah. I mean, you look at our model and our model shows that the majority of our plume from the fire training facility goes right into the Meridon Wells and that's a natural point. I don't I don't I don't dispute that the liability and the fact that we need to take care of that and
we've been doing that. So, what we're trying to do now is assess the source of that mystery. Well, mainly because, you know, is it tied to the wastewater treatment plant or not? And that's a fair question. If it's tied to the wastewater plume, the mystery plume, I'm sorry. If it's tied to the wastewater treatment plant then you know what contribution is from us over the years. Okay. And that's going to be a tough one to figure out is headed towards the Marwell. Is it it is there could be multiple sources. It could be multiple sources. Understanding what the concentrations are
in this area. Um sampling both at the airport and we'll also sample the wells at the farmable water pollution control should help us understand what this plume looks like now pumping at 3 million gallons a day roughly. Right. Isn't there a zone of contribution that's been identified associated with those wells? I'm sure there is. Yeah. Right. And I'm I'm sure that might help answer the question in terms of how we might be contributing or how the M MFTt Yeah, we're
we're less we're not there yet. We're not there yet. Okay. Because the question is how much got past the Mary Dunwells and and made it down to the Marwells. Okay. And that's what something we're trying to sort out. That's that's a difficult it sounds easy, but it's a difficult thing to quantify. Okay. Without having the data because they weren't monitoring for it at the time, right? Um and and and then you know the question is how much of the mystery plume originated through the secondary introdu introduction or discharge I should say discharge of the hyenas water district
water through the wastewater treatment plant. Okay. Because the wastewater treatment plant doesn't treat for PAS. That's not something that is it treating it now. I don't think they do right now. No, I don't think that's the instrumentation. And that's common. That's common. That's common. Is that Isn't that something that's possible though? It's It's all about money. Oh, so it could be done, but it's just not correct to our knowledge. The other huge contributing factor here is that POS, as we mentioned at the beginning, is everywhere. So there's a residential, you know,
all these industries that are hooked up to the the gravity sewer system. Hang on. if you had a you know a metal plating facility that was just dumping this you know whatever high volume of POS wastewater trans treatment plants pumping it along through too. So you start to really see there's there's been a huge contribution from others. We're not sure really where we that's where it gets very difficult into here is is how much of that if it's coming from the wastewater treatment plant and it's possible given the hydraulics that we have here. The question is how much of it comes
from us versus other sources, right? U that are just ubiquitous including residential people washing their scotch guarded clothing or you know that contributes PAS into their laundry machines that get discharged into the m municipal sewer, right? in one home might not be a big deal, but when you have this concentrated and we're having more density and neighborhoods being, you know, let me jump in here for a minute. You know, we have to do the science to understand how this
happened. But basically, the science is there to help us make the decisions down the road as what we're going to do about it. That's right. That's why we hired. That's right. It's going to come to us eventually saying, "Here's the situation. What are we going to do about it?" And unless, my understanding, unless we're going to do pump and treat systems on this, which would be very expensive, chances are we're not going to do much about the the plume itself. I mean, to clean it up. Am I am I wrong? I mean, well, we've already done something at Plume at your facility, right? Okay. Which I think will be very effective and and cost effective as well compared to pump
and treat. I'm not a big fan of pump and tree. It's very inefficient in this situation. Okay. But we haven't even started to think about anything else. The real question is, is it even feasible to separate out your contribution versus the all the other ubiquitous contributions in town? And that is that is something we're wrestling with and and so so we reached out to the D on that and we posed that question. Can you help us? You know, where do we draw the line here? Even if we were
to explore these secondary sources, how would we separate it out? Right? How do we quantify that? The question I'm asking is is that even if we do all this and we understand who's given me to what, it still comes down to is what are we what what is the threat here? In other words, what are we trying to what is the threat that we're trying to meet? Agree with you and that starts from the individuals affected by the individual homeowners, individual businesses. So we start from them. Now you said opening your discussion, we did the right thing because we we assured that the
ground the drinking water would be clear. Okay. So what do we do after that? In other words, my you know you you guys and and I don't blame you. That's what your job is to look at it from top down. This is what's happening. My job bottom up. You know I have people population there. You know what is the threat to them? We assess that threat and then we work backwards to say what can we do to mediate that threat and and having the science helps us because we can we can eliminate the point sources at least as best we can but then we have to anticipate over the next 20 30 40 years
it takes this stuff to head into Lewis Bay or wherever it's going that what can we do to min minimize any health effects and I know you're I don't know what the health effects are it's a big debate about that but ultimately I'm looking to apply this knowledge to to some kind of proposal, some kind of policies that are going to mitigate the health effects of right. We don't want to keep contributing just because we know we can fix it. And there's a financial there's a financial take to that because somebody reality is we're not contributing. We're remediating. We've
got a what appears to be an effective response with this reactive wall dealing with our site. And quite frankly, the success of our efforts could very well provide answers to the others who may need to remediate, take some action under their own. I think what I'm hopeful for is that with your discussions with D, we can clearly delineate how far we go and how where where our work exactly and give some guidance to the others because it looks like the town of Arnstable
uh the airport and other parties um you know have clearly some more work to do. But but how do we delineate that? That's something we're wrestling with is how do you delineate because it got into the wastewater treatment plant then it's dispersed throughout that mound that we spoke of where do we end and how do we and could we ever effectively delineate that. So we we we broached that question with the D high level D and and they acknowledge that this is a big question that the D needs to
weigh in on. Yeah. Because the MCP well to answer another question of yours is very much risk based. So that's good for you. It's focused on not remediating just to remediate but remediate to eliminate risk. That's good. Okay. And that's goes for what you were getting at. But on the other hand, it also requires us to delineate the the disposal site boundary. And right now it's hard to know how far we need to chase that if we're chasing it throughout the ent throughout Hyannis
or anything anywhere close to this wastewater treatment plant or other areas where groundwater may have been discharged. Right. So that's why that question's out there. They are looking into it. They are they're discussing it at the state level, the D and we're waiting for a response back from them. But they are very sympathetic for the situation we're in and very unique situation that we're in. And I say it unique only on a temporal level. It's unique right now, but I think we all, you know, think that this is something that could become more common in the future as other plumes
are impacting other wells, municipal drinking wells. You're talking about elsewhere? Elsewhere, other parts of the state. No, I think we we've had this discussion before about how serious the PAS Yeah. problems are. That's one of the reasons why we're doing, you know, well testing. That's reason why we're doing some other initiatives. You're doing the right thing for sure. No. And I think I'm I'm excited about the permeable reactive wall. And that's the next the next slide. I think that's right. Let's move this time here. We have any more time? Yeah, let's sorry two minutes. Probably two
minutes. We'll have to shut ourselves up for No, this is the most important piece. Okay. I just want to make sure we have time or um Yeah, we do. Okay. Sorry disappears. Yeah, I see. I hate it. That's why I brought the mouse. Um Okay. So, um, good timing. So, so update on the PRB, the permeable reactor barrier. The the the good news, it's done. It's installed. It's injected. Okay. We injected it between July and October. Uh, no significant issues while it was being installed.
We kept the D in in in involved and updated. They they made a a few trips out to the site uh and u showed even some younger staff around and you know did it as a training thing which is great. Love it. Okay. We had a a site tour with the public out there um including with with uh the Hyana Civic Group there and uh they were happy and and we brought the town of Yarmouth was out there and they participated. uh you as I mentioned Dennis and and Melissa from USGS participated, walked it.
So again, you've been very transparent, letting people see what you're doing and and people were very responded very well. Um so the the results of the pilot test are ongoing. Technically, our pilot test is a yearslong monitoring and so that's that's wrapping up now this you at the end of this year. Um and the results are shown in this graph and as you can see the graph you know starts out these are concentrations in the highest concentration at your site and do the pilot test
injected carbon is this vertical line here is when we injected the carbon and then the next sample that we collected was down here. So next those samples dropped to to very low to non-detectable levels. So it's working. It's working. Very work. Yeah. Okay. And they continue to, you know, the next two samples continue to show the same the same result. Okay. They're very we're testing at, you know, less than two parts per trillion or so on overall uh to sort of evaluate the performance
of the applications where they coordinated with the EP. They know they're we had a plan for that and uh they're we we're sampling um upgrade into the barrier within the barrier and downgrade to the barrier and and we also are sampling from high low you know shallow intermediate deep and and it's it's all very favorable and that's why those early favorable results that we were seeing allowed us to recommend to the county that they proceed with the full scale right away just
to get it done and and and and to use up the ARPA fund as well. You had time frames on on that. So, so we proceeded and injected the full scale even before we had officially finished the pilot test just because the results were just so favorable. So, so the full scale is in then the first post uh injection monitoring will be done in January, mid to late January. And we want to give some time there for the carbon to settle in and absorb to the soil. Right now, if you were to go out there
and start testing it, they'd probably be at some carbon and, you know, uh, suspended in the water column because it, you know, it's brand new. Okay. But this stuff is very, very fine grain material and, um, you have to let it stick to the soil grains. Okay. Forgot the name of the company. What's that? It's Regenesis. Regen is name. The name of the product. The product is called Plume Stop. Like that. I should have brought I should have brought my sample to show you. It's nice to be clear. Yeah. Yeah. What this is? Yeah. So, so that's all good. Um to to install that,
we installed 27 new what we're calling performance verification wells downgradient of the barrier. Uh and that's to allow us to have very specific monitoring points. Uh so those are in and we're s and we'll be sampling those u as I said in January. Um so that's where we are there. So that's a short slide, but it's it's a big activity on your part. Big slide. Yeah. Okay. Great. Uh so here's the alignment of it and and so the alignment goes down the the down gradient
eastern property line and and then Yeah. See you. I got to get this thing out of here. Uh and so the alignment goes down the property line. Actually the fence line is what we did. you kept it inside your fence line and then brought it, you know, to to the uh to approximate to the to the uh pond shoreline. Um, so that's that's good. This is the area of the pilot test down here, by the way. We what we did is we, you know, this is the highest concentration. So, we did the pilot
test right where your highest concentrations were. And and the the the PRB was was designed so that the amount of carbon injected up in the northern part is less than the amount of carbon injected in the southern part. And that's because the concentrations up north were much lower than the down below. So, let's put the carbon where we need it. So, we you know, we focus the carbon down there. Okay, sounds good. Um, and so where are we on uh on on on recent work on the timing
on this is not great, but the uh meaning my my my animation is a little messed up. Uh, but where we are on the on the recent work on that groundwater containment system that you have out there, you probably I'm sure you all know that it was vandalized this past summer. Those repairs have been made. Um, and by timing, poor timing maybe. Um, the lines for those for those lines were fully clogged. They had not been cleaned in 15 20 years since they were installed. They were fully
clogged with iron precipitate. We have high iron concentrations in all groundwater in New England for the most part. That's a that's a general statement, but absolut it's a general statement. Um they needed to be cleaned. So we took advantage of that time to to unear parts of that that line because it was built without cleanouts. So we had to go in and install some cleanouts and open up some connections. And we hired a jet cleaning company to jet clean it. That's 900 ft of jet cleaning. It's not a trivial exercise. Okay. So that's been done. uh we're waiting for the final
electrical connections for the uh the pump in the well and then we're going to restart that system. Um so, you know, we we continue to work with that. But one thing I want to throw out there is that part of our efforts, you know, commitments to you and our our our mandate from you is to continue to look at that system and does it make sense and will it continue to make sense now that we've installed the P the PRB. We may find that with the PRB it's so s so successful that operation of that waste know that I'm sorry that groundwater containment system the pump and treat system is no
longer effective cost effective or needed in which case we're going to recommend to you and to the D that we terminate that save yourself you know six figures a year 400 on the 400,000 magnitude exactly okay if it's doing nothing there's no point in continuing to operate Okay. Amen. Um so uh what are we doing in you know next year? Um well the big target next year you know you've
you've heard us for the last year is generated a lot of data a lot of field work a lot of data gap filling and things like that. Now we're looking at that data and trying to tease out as much as we can what does it tell us? Okay. and and this is the heady part of the of the of the project. Uh so the first thing is to complete the phase 2 comprehensive site assessment and we have issues there. We already talked about what is the disposal site boundary and that comes right into that whole discussion about the wastewater treatment plant, the secondary source issue and
all that. We have to sort through that. We talked about the ecological risk assessment that's looking very favorable for us. Um and then we we talked about the human health risk assessment. That's part of the the phase two and that also is I think is looking very favorable for us again largely because you terminated the source or the exposure pathway through the drinking waters. What's the time frame on your phase 2 report? It's hard to say because the big question is what's the time frame to get hear back from the D on the disposal site boundary. Understood. Take
some time. But and that's a difficult question. They're wrestling with it because it's a policy type decision. Exactly. So I don't know exactly when it you when that might be. Okay. Uh ongoing IRA work. We do have an ongoing IRA that that's related to the pilot tests um and the fullscale u uh PRB work. That work is you know the pilot test will be wrapped up officially. So, we'll send a completion report on that and then we'll have to do some performance monitoring for the full scale
PRP. That'll end up getting wrapped up ultimately into the um the the permanent solution statement reporting. It's an MCP jargon thing eventually. Anyway, and just because we're going into jargon, could you just say what the acronyms are here of IRA and Oh, Jen, Jen, Jen, you Jen, she can talk about the the IRA is immediate response action. Oh, okay. Um, so there was also an open still open IRA for the groundwater pump and treat system where we do regular monitoring for that.
the pilot test will be wrapped up and then as John said the fullscale PRB will eventually get wrapped up into our likely temporary um solution for this site. Good point. Not permanent. All right, we have to congratulate Jen. She just passed her LSP exam, so she's now a Massachusetts licensed site professional. And congratulations. So that's why I defer to her for those things. Yes, I should know all the stuff into action. Yeah, use it because you'll forget it. Um, it's a it's
a significant achievement. It's a difficult exam. Congratulations. Um, so then we move into phase three, which is basically a remedial al alternatives evaluation, a feasibility study using federal language. Um, and that's looking at what is the appropriate remedial response action here. And I think the answer is going to be the PRB monitoring that for now. And and Jen said we're probably not going to ever get to be a permanent solution here given it's a long-term type thing. It would be a temporary solution and and then keep you know continuing to evaluate new technologies
that are being developed every year. There are new technologies, new products coming on board. Uh so if something comes up that is a better fit for this, that's something you might want to consider. But for right now, the PRB I think is the right one. Go ahead. Now I I um we had a tour of what you were doing and I missed that and I did put forward a question. I think it was either to you or Michael and said ask if uh the PRBs would could this be used around ponds, you know, the safety of
ponds and the human contribution of people living around ponds. And I live on the other cape and but we you know people love their ponds all over. Mashby has their issues and now East just closed a pond for the first time last year. Is there and a lot of that is what we're allowing to flow in there just from the homeowner. Putting these around ponds would it would help capture like nitrogen and phosphorus going into the pond? No. No. Carbon doesn't doesn't deal with nitrogen
and phosphorus. It doesn't deal with that. Okay. It's not effective. Yeah. No. With the other. All right. I It's good for It's good for organic chemicals like petroleum, like PAS. In fact, a secondary benefit of the PRB is it's also going to uh limit the migration of the residual petroleum compounds you have out there. remember you still you burned not you mean the county burned tens of thousands or more of fuel oil out there as part of their fire training activities
right a lot of that got spilled and washed away into the soils and the like and it's residual there's still petroleum constituents in the soils out there so this and that's why Jen mentioned we have an ongoing activity there where we monitor for that as well so this helps with that it makes me think of what's around each fire in department. Um, we have smaller airports, one in Chadam, there's one in Province Town, there's the little field ones. When Sean O'Brien was the director
of the health and environmental department, we actually talked about setting aside money, right, to actually help a broader investigation of PAS risk around the Cape, identifying areas where we know, yes, this material was deposited or utilized in some way, other fire training areas. Most of them are either here or out at the the old military base. Yeah. So, I was told by a third part, you know, it wasn't directly the source, but they said that there was
within the last the one well that showed a lot was the fire department was the was the washing the clothes. It was the cheap I mentioned in in his area. Yep. Absolutely. That's common. Jen's working on the uh the fire training facility in Stow and I think you had to consider that also have they wash tons of gear there and it goes into their septic system which then ends up being
another source of PA. Is that the same? All right, we do have to start wrapping up here. Yeah. So, so the message you know the last thing is remedial imple implementation which is basically what you're doing right now. It's just a report to say that. So that's our focus this year. We'll be largely wrapping up the disposal site boundary and the reporting. Well, this is also great information for many other groups and people and so it's very exciting and you're doing a great job. We're happy to have you back again. Thank you. And one one day I Sorry to take up so
much of your time. No, no, it's weant. There's a lot of stuff to talk about and as I said earlier, it's complicated. The other thing is is that I I look at this project as sort of a an opportunity to to better understand ways to deal with people that can be useful for the other communities here. Yeah. Okay. But I think to some degree when we get done with this when we get to a point where we're about ready to wrap up and make an assessment as to whether or not the overall project was successful, I think, you know, we want we want to be able to somehow pull this together so that we
can educate others on what we investigated, what we discovered, how the treatments worked, and um what the opportunities or lessons are for other communities. Yeah. just just like to say first of all that it was a wise decision to bring you guys a board because I'm getting more information and more transparency now than I we did for years. Thank you. We given us even though you know we don't do the dayto-day uh oversight of this we gives us confidence that someone is you know
that you're out there and you it's not just us I can tell you we have a big team on this thing because that's what it takes for a project of this size. And the other thing is is that I think you have to understand that we are not alone in this. This is more and more spreading across the country you know and what we're doing especially what they're doing at the base which is where a lot of it the engineering started is going to be used as a template across the country to clean up other sites. So, we're helping ourselves and we're ensuring public health, but we're also, you know,
basically forging a path for other organizations and other places because I think we're just seeing the tip of the iceberg as far as nationally cleaning up this this. Anyway, thank you. Have a good afternoon. Have a good week. Appreciate you have a question. Oh, is there you have a question. Oh, there's a question here. I'm sorry. Uh TC, could you uh That's Tom. Tom Camberer. Oh, Tom. I think I would guess. Tom, we're you can unmute yourself. Hi. Um can you hear me? Yes,
we can. I've been following uh the meeting discussion today and working with GZA, the community members and Hyannis and D and such. Anyway, I just want to say very quickly um very pleased with the work that GZA has done. this this you hired a group of people with the right capability, strengths and experience and so I'm uh happy for the the situation and look forward
to moving forward on this critical PAS issue that has impacted the citizens of Hyannis and uh trying to get to the the bottom of things. Thank you. Thank you, Tom. Tom and I were uh sort of together in our concern for this whole thing way back when and uh having your stamp of approval, Tom, we're happy to hear it. So, the first time we've done a meeting like this without any questions. Same for us. We really appreciate his input. It's very helpful. He has more history here than
we ever He does indeed. Yeah. Excellent. Thank you. All right. Thank you everyone. Good work. the meeting at 1:30. So, I got to get keep moving here. Got the chair. I am. All right. We're going to go on to the uh proposed ordinance 26 to be named supplemental budget request. The registry of deeds. So, renovation project. I can give you a very quick uh introduction then
I'll turn it over to Paul for um a very lengthy uh slideshow presentation. Um so I think as you know uh the the uh county has appropriated money to do the exterior renovation of this building. Over the course of planning for that, we really we figured out that we're going to have to move out of this building in order to to uh to accommodate uh the workspaces and accommodate um the disruption that that will happen. So, we've been looking at alternative places. Um in the meantime,
uh we've I've been having discussions with the sheriff concerning the innovation building. Uh our IT department is in the in the upper level of the innovation building. they're going to have to move out uh by March and so we have some space constraints uh with that too. So this appropriation is designed to accommodate us both with this building um and with it's uh impending move. So I'll turn it over to Paul for for more.
Not too many questions everyone. Well, we may we may there may be some items here that we just have to I know we will. Thank you again. Thank you. Thank you. So, um, quickly here as Michael uh gave an introduction, just some additional context to the ordinance. Um, so again, we've been displaced, uh, or potentially be displaced by the Spir Courthouse renovation. Um, it'll include county administration and finance staff, HR, as Michael mentioned, our IT department is going to need space as well. Um, so we look at
this project as a uh space for temporary swing space for that project and also longterm space in the future. So in conjunction with our master plan um you know we have our hopes and dreams down the road of what we could do but in the short term you know transition piece we still have office staff needs. So, um, we met with, um, you know, Registry of Deeds, uh, Dave Murphy, Jack me to go over the space, how it was being used, what we could do to optimize it, and, um, you know, locate staff down there for both short and long term. So, the work includes a
3,000 foot renovation that would be led by the facilities department. Um but it it cons would consist of essentially um gutting the area you know and just new paint uh fresh carpet, some stick build offices, um eight um 7 foot by 9 ft workstations, um a 10 foot x 14t conference room with audio visual and then some minor electrical and HBC HBC work accordingly. Um, our estimated project cost is $170,000 based on some past uh you know uh you know projects
we've done of of similar similar magnitude or similar scope. So what with this includes a draft ordinance request and uh just before we go on um this is a plan view of the deeds basement. Not sure if if you know everyone has been down there or not, but the the the main entrance. Um you walk into the deeds basement now and you you take a right and there's all the uh deeds files that are down there that that needs to remain in place uh at least for the short term until we can
come up with a long-term controlled um you know controlled uh climate storage system. um where once that solution um you know ideally we're look we're originally we're looking at the old deal jail basement but potentially with the master plan that might not be the best location long term if we're going to say demo the building. So there's a pause in this area. The rest of the space we looked at as far as how can we optimize it there's really just an open bullpen there right now. Um not really I don't think it's ever really been thought through for for you know an application of
county staff um you know as far as say the finance finance and IT group being down there. So we show the the eight workstations um being located. We show the two offices. We show an area for copying um you know printing in a conference room with a kitchen break room. So essentially optimizing the space, come up with valuable swing space and a place for our staff to be at. So that essentially uh you know covers it all. We said this would be a short one. About the courts,
what are they doing? Are they doing with the Superior with with the Superior Courthouse renovation? Yep. So, we're we're I would say getting in the final stages of planning with them right now. Um they've brought in their own project manager. We just had a meeting actually yesterday um where we're looking at utilizing potentially the Harborview room, some on-site uh you know, mobile trailer space, and then really optimizing existing buildings, whether First District Courthouse, potentially Plymouth. Um, but there's so many requirements, regulations,
how they lay things out, right? We just really need to make sure we can accommodate every need, but we're we're getting there in the end where um I think it sounds like a future agenda item. Yeah. Oh. Oh, yeah. We we could go on for a while on that project, but we're we're in good shape there. Okay. Planning on there. Okay. Say no more about that. Is that it? So, this is Okay, that's great. So, do we have a motion? particular thing. Uh Madam Chair, I move to introduce the proposed ordinance uh 26- named supplemental budget request registry of deeds basement renovation project uh
to the assembly of delegates. Second. Okay. All in favor? I I excellent. Thank you, Paul. Thank you. Okay, go do that. We're just going to move on to the revised discussion about so Michael contacted me and said do we still want to do this since things have kind of changed but not necessarily do we know that's not that's still sort of in question about whether it's going to be in place or not as of January. So we revised our um what was the change that could I don't understand.
Well the change actually was just a uh line or how did we we did make a very minor change. Can anybody describe where the change? Yeah but sorry no we added we put in whereas whereas um so vulnerable populations whereas the funal is critical whereas there's 22,000 SNAP beneficiaries. I think that's what we added. Um, and that was a suggestion by that where that line. Yes, we that was it really. And um, it looks nice and clean. Well,
in the interest of moving this along, Madam Chair, I I I move to approve and execute the revised resolution adopted by the Assembly of Delegates in support of the SNAP supplemental uh, nutrition program for Barnstable County. Um, I second. Okay. All in favor? I I and I know Ron would too. Okay. All right. We're going to um All right. Now, there is schedule. We're going to have that. Um I would recommend in the interest of time um that um you know we have a a schedule a meeting schedule as
sort of proposed for next year um and uh you all have it. You all have a chance to look at it. Um, I don't I think if there's no objection, I think it would make sense um to work with Michael and staff to at least do some reconnaissance to see about whether the difficulties and challenges in implementing it. So, I think we should just move forward with it. I agree. All right. We might not have 100% success, but we'll have some. And I think it's good to let people know we're coming
to your town soon. Well, I think with with the ballot question that we have coming up and uh with all the things that we're doing quite frankly that have a positive impact on our towns, I think um it's it would be incredibly smart for us to take our program on the road. My only question is whether or not with all of the work being done in the courthouse that at some point we may want to do all our meetings uh on the road. I think that that would be the question is is I would almost want to take this a little bit further and that is should we just move everything we we may want
to have a remote location another location for our meetings on the first of the month that could be perhaps at one of the town halls they may be open to us coming in and doing our regular business meeting at one place in the beginning of the month and take the the other meeting on the road. So I just think that's something okay if it's okay with uh the board. I just assume um again I'm doing this assuming that you know in the succession of being chair that it would be my responsibility
in setting the agenda and setting things up to at least help investigate. I have no problem working with staff to at least start investigating these sites to see if they make any of them make any sense. Right. Okay. Enough said. Yep. Good. Okay. We should move on. We're going on to the 2027 operating budget uh statement and budget capital budget statement. So, Mr. I'll give I'll go through this relatively quickly. the um I'll start with the the operating budget and only tell
you that we decided since we issue and and develop and and uh and forward to the commissioners and then to the assembly a a capital budget every year which uh reflects our capital plan. Um I decided it makes sense to do a capital um you know for the commissioners to adopt a capital statement as well as as your normal adop uh adoption of of a budget statement nor general fund budget statement. So um essentially um sort of a followup to last year uh trying to keep things relatively consistent
knowing that we're going into a diff relatively difficult budget budget year uh for a number of reasons. But we're looking to uh adhere and continue to adhere to a structurally uh balanced budget. Uh we know that we we are going to have to go through um a reduction in staffing levels that I propose to do through attrition over a planned 5-year period. Uh we have know we have issues with uh health insurance. There is the potential um not quite sure what the odds are yet, but there's
the potential for a 25% uh increase in our health insurance costs and that's going to be reflected in how much of an increase? 25%. Can you believe that? Yeah. And that's in your towns, too. So, that's there's a lot of work going on right now to define, you know, what's what should be included in plans. This is all coming from what is what is and I'm sorry, weight loss. What is going up? health insurance% 25% that's absolutely yeah so so we'll see you know what how those numbers come
out it's too early to to say anything those great gads be happy anyway um so we know that we've got uh some realignment of departments uh to better to better um serve the county and to serve the programs that we offer to the towns and the public uh I would like to look at uh consolidating some of our technology ology purchases. Right now it's very decentralized. Every department budgets and and uh budgets for technology. Um and I think that there are much more efficient things we can
do there. Um uh I mentioned that uh we do need you know with the with the board's help we're going to have to clearly define the definition of structurally balanced uh budget. You know in towns it's very easy. You've relatively easy. you've got a very uh defined uh real estate property tax uh revenue number. Uh you've get very most of the time you eventually have a very well- definfined state aid number. Um and then so you're just sort of toying with what your local receipts are going
to be. Um on the county level we all of our most of our budget uh revenues are are very flexible. um you know, if we have a down real estate year, 75% of our of our revenues could could you know, substantially drop or could substantially increase as we've seen over the last 5 years or so. So, so we really need to wrap our hands around what what how to define that and then translate that to policy. And I know Carol and her team have been working on that uh pretty hard. Uh we need to plan for um an elected charter commission. you know, as you know,
the the commissioners had voted to uh get that on the November 26th ballot. Um and so we will plan financially plan for that and make sure that we're doing everything that we can do to make sure that um you know the uh county government is run as efficiently as possible. Um we capital needs uh we Paul just was here talking a little bit about some of the capital issues that have to do with the courts. uh our relationship with the state court system uh has been very good. Um I I think
probably one of the better relationships we have um you know that the county has with the states um state court system um among the the existing counties. Um I do know that we have we are tied to a lease as are all the counties. We're tied to a lease that is is getting to be quite antiquated uh and very difficult for for the counties to actually make any changes. So, um I think I think there's a need to develop a um a staff and political uh conversation uh about
fixing some of those uh discrepancies. Um and just again in terms of deferred uh capital issues, um we know that uh we rent space at market rate to house our departments at the same time that we are leasing our own space to the court system for well below market value. and and that's that's um that's not sustainable. Um we've uh we've uh spent a fair amount of money with the um clean
water center and uh we want to make sure that that is as successful as can possibly be. We also want to make sure that we are looking uh for additional aqua fund monies to uh to um sustain aqua funds so that that the the the spike in people uh needing uh loan funding to uh in order to cover the tie-in costs or the upgrade to their title 5 system uh that those loan monies that capital principal amount is there uh for us to lend. We want to make sure of that. Um Madam Chair, yes. Um,
this is a 12page document. Um, and and I feel and and Michael has put a tremendous amount of time and energy and effort in it. It looks like an outstanding document. and uh rather than have him recite all 11 12 pages in the interest of time, I'm very happy to move that we approve both and that um maybe we take up at a future meeting any areas that we'd like to discuss or clarify going forward, but we need to begin this process and we need to begin it right away. I agree. And I
just want to commend our administrator for doing an outstanding job uh in in preparing this. This is perhaps the most thorough and comprehensive uh budget statement uh both for capital and operations that we've we've ever seen and uh I'm thrilled with it. So that's great. Okay. So, do we have a motion? I have a motion that we uh approve the uh proposed um let me just pull it up here. I had it a second ago. I move to approve the uh the the the budgets the budget statements that
have been presented by the county administrator the for fiscal year 2027. Second. All in favor? I I Michael you really do do great work and thank you and uh we hopefully we reflected that in our last review. Thank you. Okay. So any new business from anyone? No. Okay. Um, commissioner's agenda. The first item I am going to read. So, I'm going to move to authorize the consent agenda items 8A
uh as listed on the November 9th, 2025 agenda. Second. Okay. All in favor? I I abstain. Going on to the rest. Madam Chair, I move to authorize the commissioner's consent agenda items 8Z through 8 I as listed on the November 19th, 2025 agenda. Second. All in favor? I I commissioners reports. Yes. Yes. So, first of all, I apologize having duck out and I need some water and turns out
we got it into a little informal discussion out there, but um this month is Thanksgiving and we're all going to sit and celebrate the arrival of the pilgrims and their first uh repass, but we have to remember that when they got here, there were already people here. Yes. And some of those pilgrims meant not quite there was quite a death toll over the first winter, but those who survived did so. do want to just say that you know many times in groups and meetings now you'll hear um we want to recognize that we are on the land of ancient you know peoples
and you know we want to respect this and yet we don't and uh I think that you know words matter when there's action and real intent behind them. So if we are going to say those words, think about what you're saying and actually try to live by it and protect the land that is so sacred and um and respect those values of those of those ancient and current people. Um last night I attended
something that was totally non-governmental. It was a sort of Thanksgiving celebration. was called the American Revival and it's something that's being put on by Nicholas Ma who is son of Yoyo Ma and this was a free concert. You had to sign up was at the what theater and unbeknownst to me they had a Thanksgiving celebration so it did involve the Wampenog tribes but Yoyo Ma was there and performed. This was all free. It was an amazing thing. Unfortunately, I had to leave it.
I had a slender voice meeting which I should have called in sick on because they could have I could have. However, it was a wonderful thing and I hope that I would like to think they um taped it. But just the words of it from his son was really about bringing people together and celebrating our differences and our commonality. It was really a lovely thing. And I could think of other things that are more government related, but I think that that sort of is government related. Mark, anything? I'll pass. Okay. Upcoming business, we see we're going to be having um I hope mass hire
can come. I am your liaison. I am been terrible at it. I will admit that upfront. Uh I hardly make some of these meetings, but when I do, I'm totally impressed. We are lucky to have them. they are out there changing training and helping people uh with uh job training and getting the jobs behind it. So I hope they do come. We'll have our capital budget presentation and we can go over some of our goals even then. Anything else? We're all set here. Anything else you want to add to this,
Michael? No. Uh nope, not yet. Okay. Not yet. Uh administrative reports. Uh very quickly uh just let you know that the dredge subcommittee uh looking at the permitting optimization study um met uh yesterday and uh I it was a good meeting. Um they're they're going to be prepared to make recommendations. The full dredge advisory committee and as soon as that happens uh I'll be in front of you uh proposing a a plan to adopt some um some uh changes to the dredge program.
Great. All right. There's only one thing left. Move to adjourn. Second. All in favor? I I thank you everyone uh for attending and thank you for all the work you do.