Well, It being 4:30, I call to order the meeting of the water quality management committee. Um the first uh Steve Rafferty is has family issues he's working on today.
Um the first item is Chuck Martinsson who's going to give us an update on Falma's aquaculture plan. You might have to turn it on. I'll be on set. Beware. Dave, I'll be going after him. He didn't put me in the agenda for
some reason. I'm up right after when he wraps up. What are you talking about? The oysters. For how long? Yeah, that's fine. I don't know. 15 maybe. Good evening. Um my name is Chuck Martinson. I'm the deputy director
of marine and environment. Um the uh thank you so much for inviting me this evening to to give an update on the aquaculture plan. Um what I figured we'd kind of do is I just I I had the this is a final draft of a final report. It
doesn't say final draft on it, but there are some minor modifications we're going to be uh working on, but I did want to kind of get that out to the committee. Um, so that was emailed over to everyone. It's uh voluous. It's probably, you know, 40 40 or 50 pages. So, I didn't want to cut down any more
trees than we needed to. Um, but what I'm going to do this evening is go through some of the highlights of where we're at and uh kind of looking forward. Um, just as a is kind of uh to frame this. Um, I just kind of get everyone on
the same page in the audience and on the on the board. Um, the town obviously looked at a number of different alternatives or additions to to sewering. Uh, shellfish being one of them. Uh, that was what I was uh tasked with was kind of running that piece of
it. Um, we this program's been going on for some time. We'll get into the timeline of things. Um, as of late, the uh town meeting had voted $450,000
um for the completion of a uh full-scale implementation of uh the aquaculture/propagation program for the town of Falmouth. That's a mix of both public and private fisheries uh uses.
Um we prior to the funding going out we uh had gone out and done a kind of a first phase uh glance at the areas and kind of looked at how they would how they would pair up. Um before this funding we did the three initial test sites which have been very productive.
Um I know Tom's going to be speaking a little bit on that. They're producing 1.3 1.4 million oysters a year. um far exceeding uh the goals um that we look at and really some of the standards in the industry. Um before we got moving on
the on the funding uh through uh town meeting um I really wanted to kind of do a public outreach and get out into the public's uh you know the public spaces before we started moving forward with the actual permitting. Um, I was pointed
uh to this uh program that MIT holds um uh from our uh liaison um uh who deals with all the uh sustainability in the town of Falmouth. Um and and she pointed me over to uh to MIT's program and we
applied to MIT to their master's program um to have uh two of their MBA stu or an MBA student assigned to the program. Uh it was um I gotta say I got up there and I I wasn't expecting the competition that we had. We were competing against
Colgate Palm Olive. We were competing against, you know, the Boston Red Sox, Bank Capital. Um some real heavy hitters. I walked out of there and I, you know, I tried to handle it with humor. I said, "The people that got their business degrees down the road at SUFFK now come back here to get their
problem solved." And I think a mix of humor and um more importantly the interest in the program uh really drew a number of students uh interest and piqu a number of students interest to kind of jump from the private side to the public private side and work on this program.
Um we attracted about four students um we ended up with a chint and John uh who were had both applied and they were the lucky two that we got. Um there were other ones who reached us to us afterward that did not get the placement. Um but you know as you can
see the both of these two uh gentlemen that worked with us uh had their own private equity uh medtech uh logistical supply chain stuff from the military. Um now they're wrapping up their MBA uh at MIT and um pursuing also a
sustainability uh certificate. Um, so we were really able to fuse some on the ground boots on the ground with some really high level planning. Um, again, I'm not going to go through the whole program, but I thought this would be a good kickoff to kind of, you know, explain where we're at. This is roughly
the outline of the work that they did. Um, we basically uh did a an overview of the leasing. Um, reviewed the support of the program and the town uh both from a financial and a permitting standpoint.
Um, we discussed the E River projects. Um, and then the MIT folks started engaging members of the public. It was great to have the MIT folks doing this because it really was a third party that was doing the engagement. So, you know, if you go to someone and ask them how you're doing, they're probably going to
say you're doing usually pretty well. But if we could have a third party do that, it really adds a lot of credibility. Um, so we had them do private um engagements. Um and we worked through a rubric um for selecting new
growers um and a timeline for the expansion. Um just to kind of review where Falmouth is at. Uh back in 2011, we did some trial runs with growing oysters. Um and you know proceeded up to where we are today with 2025 where we
have the three test pilots and we're leaning forward now with the funding. Um we have uh gone out and um uh selected the use of um science wares to work with
us uh to permit up uh anywhere uh upwards of approximately uh 80 different farms. Um these again are a mix of both public and private farms. Um what we're what I'm really here to tell you about today is kind of what we're looking at
for the next six or eight weeks and where that is is we've engaged science whereas we are having weekly meetings uh with science wares and we're trying to thread that needle to figure out if we're going to need to file a full direct environmental impact report or if
it can be handled under an uh in ENF uh which would be much less uh labor intensive and could allow us more resources on on the back end. Um, some of the things that we're also addressing are the functional pieces of
getting out there to survey. We're building up survey rafts. Um we're um we got some additional funding outside of this for about $25,000 to design a survey raft which can both survey and process surveys and photograph and do
that real um integrated stuff that we've done before on the first sites so that we can process areas quickly and not get held up on the kind of data processing from the sampling perspective. Um that will however be driven how much of that takes place will be driven by what we hear back from the regulators. Um we
will be opening discussions up with them probably in a week or two. Um as far as uh you know as far as you know the the trajectory of where things are at I think that we're looking at you know I I
want to see everything in my end permitted at once but I don't think the roll out is something that we can do all at once. Um but I think we want to permit it at once and then extend those permits out. I would like it if we tackled it and, you know, ripped off this band-aid at once, uh, and did it
all together and not peacemeal it through. So, that will likely be our strategy moving forward. Um, just to kind of review how things work. Um, this is self-explanatory, but eventually um, you
know, we've got multiple kind of ways that the shellfish work their way through this program. Um, and that and this kind of lends to that. Um, so, uh, as far as how many sites exactly
we're going to have, we're not going to know those numbers yet until we actually get out there, uh, and, uh, do those final surveys to see where we're going to be able to um, put these sites where we have standing crops of shellfish that are not going to exceed certain
triggers. Um but what we are also going to be looking at is you know looking at areas where say farms exist now but they're not as productive if they could as they could be and trying to talk about building up the productivity on farms that also exist as well that are already permitted. Um my hope would be
to get back in front of this group uh again in you know three or four months to kind of you know sometimes I go maybe every year or every nine months till I present. I can click that up a little bit as we're moving through this because I really think it's a critical time for
me to be hearing um from the water quality management committee. the committee has been extremely supportive through the life of this and um and you know now that we're you know kind of we're up to bat we want to we want to we want to hear from uh you know from the
captains here you know so um uh and what I thought would be good and Steve and I had tal I mean uh Tom and I had talked um Tom was going to jump into a little bit of the more acute stuff of how things went this year with the trial farms um so first I think maybe before
Tom gets up I'd just like to take any questions and and you know probably if it works well probably try to do a 3 to four month check back um and just as things are going on you know kind of fill in the group where we're at and keep the public as well informed. Any
questions from the committee? Ken, uh are there distribution in space? Do you have a map or anything? Sure. Um I can forward some of those maps over. Uh those were initial first run maps that
we went out and we did um you know low-level grabs. So you know if it was an area that was you know say 200 feet by 500 feet we might go in there and do seven or eight grabs. Um we can get you all of that data and those
maps as well. Absolutely. Um that shows the 10,000 foot view down. Um there might be some additions to those but those are you know pretty inclusive. I'd say 80% of what's there will be the outline that we'll be working from. We
might find some stuff when we're out sampling where if we shift things a few, you know, different ways it might work um better in some areas, but that that I will get you that. Yes, absolutely. Sure. First of all, I'd say, you know, outstanding initiative to get MIT Sloan
involved in this project that that took a lot of wow, let's go fight for this and you got it. Fantastic. Uh well done. Do you have a feel for Chuck how much potential acreage expansion we could have? You know, I know there's from Tom's reports and yours previous a lot
of limitations on where you can put these things. Any feel for how much growth opportunity we have in Felmouth? Sure. That's a great question. So, the range I would say is somewhere between 80 acres and upwards of maybe 140 acres.
Um, and how many acres are you at now? uh townwide I don't I don't have the number in front. In other words, you're talking about 10% more doubling more than times 10 or I would say a magnitude of uh where we're at
now probably a magnitude I I I not going to do the numbers right off my head. I can it I would say more than quadrupling what we have now. Um what is important? So that that was a that was a great question actually as well. Um when we
initially looked at what we could use for areas, we were thinking in the terms of adult shellfish going to a market and there are um constraints that we have uh classification of shellfish areas being the largest one. The state classifies these areas in different ways and
there's some areas that are open part of the year and there's some areas that are closed all the time and there's some areas that are open all the time. You know, you got that whole range within that. There are certain shellfish that can be harvested in those areas even if they are closed. One of which are
scolops. Okay. So, to answer your question, we're also looking at other types of shellfish beyond just oysters. We're looking at multiecies. The town increasing how much cohogs we're putting out. Um we overwintered scallops in Falmouth Harbor this winter about 20,000
animals. Uh got them up to second year. They're in Great Pond right now trying to pull them through a full second year. looking at those types of things. Um, which we've never really been able to do before. So, um, before it was more restrictive when we were just thinking about, you know, utilizing adult
oysters. Now, we can possibly use, you know, first year oysters in areas that would not be able to go to growth and then move them to areas where they could be at growout and we could have much more flex in our program. So, great question. John,
that talk I'm John I guess. Is there a goldilock zone when you expand the program to you have too many oysters being produced and you're flooding the local market price goes down or is that not a concern? So yeah, it's a it's another great question. Um just for
perspective, there's two large providers of oyster seed um in New England and each one of them does about a half a billion oysters that they produce each year. So think of the magnitude. So you're looking about say just just those two
companies are providing a billion seed. So when you're looking at just oysters and a billion seed, ours is just a blip on the radar. When you will notice it is when we dump it. If we were to dump oysters, which we did for a while on a public market and then we would allow it
to be harvested, you would see pulses starts and fits which would affect local markets. if you can provide those oysters throughout the year, you will have no issue whatsoever. Um, so great question. Um, I think it does require some ramping up. The ramping up is also in providing the materials. It's also
getting the markets able to to move into those um, you know, spread out and be able to make the sales. But, um, there's when you look at I mean that and that's just two. I mean, you're probably looking at like 1.6 billion a year that are actually put out. So, you know, it's
really in inconsequential, Mike. Uh, I have to go up and introduce yourself. Former neighbor. I'm uh Michael McGrath. I'm a retired civil engineer. Um, and when I
think about oysters, they you you my understanding is they grow on a hard surface. And I was thinking that maybe the thing to do is if they're short of areas, they could go out and go underneath peers. So, it's I don't know enough about the oysters, but I know
there's an awful lot of peers out there and there may be some old established peers that you could easily do this with. So, just a suggestion. Any other questions from the audience? So, you want to have Tom? Sure. Yeah,
Tom. Yeah, absolutely. All right. All right. Um, Chuck's talk opens with the phrase nitrogen insinuation. And if you notice the very last box on the last slide he shared with you and I have been removed from the system. And that of course is the main reason the water quality
committee is is interested in this project. And these systems there have been extremely successful at removing nitrogen. Um the first two years I put down to sort of the learning years. It's been actually running for five years. It
started with the pilot project off Washurn's Island in 2020 some of you remember something called COVID restaurants closed no market for oysters. the system that the project failed that year but 20 since then there
was a 50% gain in productivity number of animals the first second excuse me the second to third years and then the third to fourth year there was another 50% increase so they had two and a half times as many oysters the very best year was uh 1920 excuse me I'm way up by a
century 2023 um and then last year it fell just a little bit to 1.3 or 4 million oysters. The year before it was 1.5 million oysters. Um I'm not so concerned today with the actual number of the oysters
other than telling you it's a tremendous success. But um you can see here and this includes the two not so good years and the last two really good years and this is per acre. This is only for for
an acre of what's called 40,000 square feet of of floating bags. 39,000 liveweight animals harvested and the nitrogen extracted has
been analyzed at.3% of the harvest weight is 117 kg of nitrogen 117 kg of nitrogen. Put that in context. That's over 5,000 lbs of
5105 long fertilizer. And I don't know how many gallons of urine. I was hoping our people here could do it, no pun intended, on the fly and tell me right away how many gallons of urine we were talking about. But anyway, it's a very very large amount of nitrogen. And my
interested in interest was in how we might value this nitrogen on a dollar basis because everybody wants to know how much is it going to cost and why is it worth pursuing and everything else. And so I apologize for this table because I've I I've it's not the most
rigorous analysis out there because I've I've had to look at several different things in several different ways and and make some assumptions. But the nice starting point is the Cape Cod Commission. You can see in the fourth line there um the average nitrogen
discharge from the single family house I don't know what exactly the average pod house looks like is 4 and a.5 kg a year. So now the nitrogen sequestered by an acre of oysters in Eel River is the
equivalent of 26 the nitrogen emitted by 26 single standard issue whatever you want to call them average houses on Cape Cod which is pretty amazing. The drawback is this is like putting a band-aid or a
tourniquet on someone and still being slashed by someone attacking because the nitrogen in large part has already done its damage to the ecosystem, right? We already have alma blooms and everything wrong. But we are capturing that nitrogen and getting it
out. Oh, thank you. I guess is this on? Is it working? Um, where was I? Oh, the nitrogen has already been released into the system. And of course, we would like to get the nitrogen before it gets into the system. So, for the purpose of this analysis, I
wanted to see what it might cost to intercept the equivalent amount of nitrogen at the household. And the simplest approach I've taken is urine diversion. One QB per household. That's why I put in $80 there. One cubic per
household, 26 houses is $2,100. $2,88 for an acre of oysters. On the other hand, if you're going to put in an IIA, an alternative septic system, the numbers are all over the place. 25,000 to 82,000 were quotes
I've seen in the past year for people putting in IAS. I went sort of middle of the road with $45,000 per installation. And suddenly that acre of oysters has collected over a million dollars worth of nitrogen. And the
important thing which Chuck hasn't emphasized yet, people are making a living off of this. Our oyster growers are doing quite well. Doing quite well. They're they're producing hundreds of thousands of oysters per per contractor per year.
Now if we go beyond IAS and look at installing conventional sewers, Felmouth was very lucky several years ago with the little pond project. Houses were very close together on small lots. The collection cost per consumer
was relatively low and I don't know the exact number Amy can came in somewhere around $20,000 per household and there we're talking about a half million dollars. But now if we look at Great Pond phase
one at $73,000 per household and again that can be you don't like that number. Seems high I mean nothing's exact. That's why I said I'm taking a flyer here but just to put it in context suddenly we're
looking at $2 million $2 million worth of nitrogen trapped by these oysters by one acre of oysters. And if we look at MASHP, MASHP has launched a very ambitious, brand new
plant at I think right now, I don't know what this year's number is. It's $160 million last year. And that works out to $94,000 per house. But that's an upfront capital cost. As they add residences to
their system, the cost per residence will go down. But that puts the value of an acre of oysters at $2.5 million. And Barnstable announced a 30year 1 and a half
billion dollar project, major upgrades all around. And I promise you, 30 years from now, they will have spent a lot more than 1.4 billion dollars. But if you plug that in to their present 12,000 houses they're planning on servicing with that, it works out to
$17,000 per single family resident or the oysters are trapping nitrogen that potentially would be worth $3 million. And why am I doing this analysis? Chuck has reached has pointed out that we're trying to expand the system. The system that works here in
Felmouth is floating bags. They worked beautifully, but for them to really work and for it to really pay out for the town of Felmouth, we've got to expand the spatial extent of these. We can't really go vertical. We have to go area
wise with them. And one of the things I would like to be pointing out to people of Felmouth because some property owners, some water users, and other people are going to say, "Well, why are we turning over the surface of Felmouth's coastal embainments to oyster production?" And this is I think just
another way of thinking about it. Now again my numbers my analysis is not absolute and every town's project is different and even projects within the same town are quite different as I'm sure Amy could tell you very quickly become quite different. And I'll um I'll
stop there. I've sort of put all my oysters in one basket. I guess we could questions from the committee first. John, where are we starting? I'm going the other way this time. John. Yeah. Sorry. Yeah. What what uh jurisdiction
do homeowners who live on the water have in terms of um voicing their opinion against this and actually having a voting block against it? Is that a concern that the voters and the homeowners are going to sort of veto this? Yes, we have occasionally run into
buzz saws of opposition, not specifically on aquaculture, but other situations in town going back 50 years to the sewer plant that was going to be the treatment plant that was going to be built on Fay Road, which went all the way through to finally a townwide
referendum and then failed. So there there there's opposition. Um, there was a big ongoing dispute in Mashby for quite a while over a commercial shell fisherman that just wanted to have a few racks out in one of the one of the bays over there and the neighbors finally
made it so bad that he gave up. But it's on town property. The the water, the coastline where they do this is the town. It's public property in Massachusetts. Yeah. If it's navigable water. And I think if you could float a canoe. We'll get to you in a minute, Mike. Sir,
um Mike, I want to go through the committee first. I just want to say that low low water belongs to the public and generally the uplands. Thank you. Good point. Are you John?
That's that. No, that's great stuff. Okay. So, I'm just curious. This goes back to my initial question to Chuck is exactly what percent of the pond area we're talking about with this expan proposed expansion.
Um we've had several pie in the sky discussions about what it could be versus what it might be. Um and I'm thinking maybe tens of acres.
So, not maybe 50 acres at the at the most, I'm guessing. I don't know, Chuck. Not shaking your head at me, but a little bit more than that. A little more. Okay. So, we're not talking. Are are you proposing areas that are significantly in excess of the maps that
Chuck showed a year or so ago? No. No, not at all. Okay. That that's those maps that we showed a couple years ago are the same maps that we're working off of. We have worked through that exercise. Gotcha. There might be, as I said, you know, 10% difference, 15%. So, you're
just talking about going from what it is right now to filling out those areas. Correct. Yep. Yeah. And those I mean, and those are that's that's best case scenario. And we all know right now that we're going to hit triggers in there that are not going to meet the standards
to be open uh you know to to be used to shellfish. And to answer your question, just uh not to jump around, I just wanted to clarify the one question you had. Um this will all go through the permitting process. Whether it's what permitting process it's going to go through is kind of what's in question. Either way, there is uh notification to
neighbors and abutterss and they are uh able to present uh information uh to you know the board of selectmen, the conservation commission, any number of you know division of marine fisheries, any number of agencies that weigh in on it uh will take public comment from the
from the neighbors. So there is absolutely the ability for them to comment on it. No different than if you were putting a dock in your in your yard and you had to notify your neighbors. So, and I'm going to ask if there are any questions from the audience, but I'd remind the audience that if you ask
questions that I subjectively deem to be irrelevant, your chances of asking questions on items that may be more important later in the agenda will be reduced. Are there any questions from the audience? Problem? Um, more comments more than
question. who you are, Matt? Um, Matthew Hanley from Thomas Landers Road. Uh, I grew up as a fisherman. I was, uh, I, you know, used to co-hog in Walk White Bay. So, this project has a lot of great appreciation for me because you know, with projects, you
know, this graph is kind of kind of basic, but there's always hidden costs and there's always hidden benefits. And some of the benefits here is the the oysters are pulling out nitrogen just in their from their process of filter
feeding. But it's my understanding that there also their waste gets into the gets into the bottom um I guess we call it soil or or the bottom sediment and that also that bacteria also has a
denitrifying aspect and like like Tom said like we're supporting our local fisherman and stuff like that. it's become very very hard to support a family here and um so you know these affordable jobs like these these
lowerhanging fruit jobs like being a shell fisherman a fisherman here in Falmouth that that's a that's a hidden benefit so I'm happy to see this and uh there's some other benefits like you know there's been talks about the um ability for these oyster beds to reduce
wave action which would reduce coastal erosion ion and stuff like that. So, I think the town of Falmouth by going forward with this all the great work that Chuck Martinsson's doing, the benefits are just astronomical when you take a serious look at this. So, I'm
very happy about this. Thanks, man. U Malcolm Donald. Uh Tom, uh am I correct in uh um calculating that uh the Gray Pond sewer project is 915
times as expensive as urine divergent? Well, Amy was kind of grimacing when I came up with this 71,000. Yeah, I get 57. Can you Malcolm, that's really not on the subject of shellfish. Well, I just
It's relevant in other contexts, but I don't Oh, I don't think we have the data to back it up here. Anybody else from the audience? Hilda. Hilda Mangay um precinct 8. Could we get the same maps that you will get be
getting from Chuck? Yeah. And they're public knowledge. They're public I Chuck specifically. I'm sure Chuck and Kristen know together. They're on the website. They're on our website. They're not changed at all. No. Thank you.
Anyone else? Okay. Thank you, Chuck. And thank you. Let me Next is Michael McGrath who's going to talk about nitrogen attenuation. Let me get rid of
this. I don't know how this new one. I don't have a slide. You don't have a slide. So, all right. Don't have to worry about it. Good luck. I'll leave this up here just in case they want you to use it. Um, my name is Michael McGrath. I'm a retired civil
engineer. And, um, I built the first single family residence denitifying septic system in Massachusett history. And boy, was I punished. Um, but I also did some other things. I helped with um,
two others invent MicroC. It's an organic carbon for denification. On most plants over 10,000 gallons, you have to add a carbon after you convert the nitrogen.
That's the phase uh from organic and ammonia to nitrate. that you had a carbon and um when I first started they were using u methanol which is a poison carcinogen explosive
and um you can't touch it you can't breathe it if you spill it outside the plant it's a hazardous waste but only in waste water would we use old old techniques I've described D as
having the finest grasp on 1920 science I did leave you copies of some reports. Um the reason I did that was I am never going to do another ruck system. I've asked them to take it off the website
and um the reason that I gave you the report is the total nitrogen that we measured in several residential systems was uh um 72 and a half milligrams per liter.
I know that the Cape Cod Commission has published 50 and it seems to have taken on a life of its own, but I also gave you a report of the Ruck CFT system and we found the raw total nitrogen to be 70.
So, I want to make sure you know that and because that to me is important. The reason I also came is that when I looked at the original maps that were published a little while ago by the Department of
Environmental Protection, it showed areas that I thought were way too far from the estuary to actually affect the estuary. According to the
um the Chesapeake, there's a regional planning agency equivalent to the Cape Cod uh commission. They actually have a formula that says from a septic system measured downstream in 100 meters, you
lose 60%. What's going on here is that soils are textured. there's a lot of bacteria in in a in a path and so there's alternating uh of u aerobic
conditions and and anorobic conditions so there is attenuation so when I look at the maps that D has published uh they're basically talking about extending these IA systems to to to
large areas and my point is that you don't need to do that. And Ivan Vala actually wrote a paper. Uh I only have a cell phone and I can't seem to download his paper from the MBL website, but he
did do a paper. You know, it's been a long time. Now, since then, they've changed the plumbing code, so the distance of attenuation may be longer. Now, if you look at one of my reports, it talks
about the ruck filters sometimes get colder, but once they're established, the the um the the bacteria still do the work. They
do the work at a slower rate. And um so the point of me saying that is that some people may say that Chesapeake has got different soil temperatures, but guess what? it's still going to attenuate. Maybe instead of 100 meters, it might be
120. I did send you an opinion um where I basically said that you don't need to worry about some of the nitrogen that is showing up on this best available measures maps. The perfect example is that if there's a molecule that's in the
water, it reaches the water table in a year it's going to go about a football field. At the same time, it's going to drop two feet. So, if you picture some of these areas, the bottom line is by the time it reaches some of
the estuaries, if there's a long distance to the estuary, it may be below the bottom. And there are several papers about how much nitrogen is removed when um in the
subterranean groundwater underneath an estuary. So my point is attenuation exists and the reason I've done this is that uh um my bottom line is that
uh if you go up to and drive Boxbury Hill Road, Hatchville Road, and some of the other areas that are far north and by some of this guidance that's coming out of D, they have to build these very expensive systems. It's not right. It's
not fair. it's it's actually in my mind discriminatory. So I urge you to um basically uh when you do these studies estuary by estuary please figure out some kind of
attenuation and as I said there are it's not just me as I said the Chesapeake has identified it and as I've clearly identified total nitrogen is concentration is much different because of the plumbing code and it's actually
referenced in one of the reports where I talk about how I started out at at an older system and then when I built the newer system, there was much more nitrogen. So, I hope that I've been trying to help. So, I'd be happy to answer any questions you might have
concerning what I've just talked about. Ken, questions from the committee. Ken? Uh, no. Okay. Uh, I think it's an interesting point, Mike. Um, do you have a feel for, you know, Cape Cod has a lot of sandy soil, how much does that affect
it versus Chesapeake, which might have more organic in it? Is that another factor that has to be considered in the concept? If you read the Chesapeake report, they identified it by geological areas and the number I'm using is
specifically identified to be within a coastal outwash plane. So most people think of the coastal outwash plane as one bed of sand, but in reality the there was um the glaciers
grew and and receded. So they were melting events, shall we say? And so I've seen them in some of the test pits that there's actually discrete layers. The texture change is very minor. It's hard to see, but I believe
that's why there's the attenuation in the groundwater because there are very small um texture changes. And um there are a few places where the sands are one big blob, but they in doing test pits, I
didn't run across that as often as you might think. John. Um, yeah, Mike, these are really good points, but we're in a game where we don't make the rules. We have to figure
out how to convince the state to decide based on some kind of evidence that that their model is is wrong. I mean, all of the watershed models on the Cape of what I've seen where there's no surface water involved have extremely low
attenuation. And how do we get the word out that well I'll be blunt. D threatened me because I sent them a copy of what I'm what I sent you. Okay. And they called me and said if I
ever said that again in public or presented this to you, they would punish me. So I look at it as they have somehow given themselves a crown and they're dictating to you. Right. Well, there's enough scientists down here to overcome
the bureaucratic regulatory science. So, that's what you have to present. And you know, the fact that I was threatened, the legislators and that represent this area ought to say people should be rebuked because no matter what I've done
a lot for I'm sorry, I'm kidding. Okay. But that is a concern on our part because we have to work within a pretty rigid framework that's laid out by the higherups. Well, the other ding-dong, they're wrong. The they've had this
report since 2009 and they're still going along saying it's 50 milligrams per liter. Hello. You ought to look at the derivation of biochemical oxygen demand. Look at how it came up with. It's from after World War I. The British
measured how much oxygen was uh demanded in order to make it look like it was unpolluted water. And they come up with a value. And then what are we going to call this constituent? Well, the average time for rivers to drain into the
English Channel is 5 days. So now becomes 5 days BD. Hello. Why do we use a constituent that's used in the English gen and salt water when we're discharging stuff into the ground? We
should be measuring total organic carbon and total inorganic carbon. Those tests are a fraction of the cost that can be done anytime. Now, a long time ago, I was operating training. We We've got to keep moving along, right? I'm sorry. I just want to say I was on operating
training and you could only do those BOD tests certain days of the week and they're very expensive. Yes. So, no questions. Thank you, Mike. Um, next item is Amy on the public outreach initiatives for the Great Pond sewer project phase
one. So, I'm assuming that this mic was only out here because you weren't standing next to this mic. And I'm going to turn this off. Yeah. Okay. Thank you.
Tom was wandering. Tom was wandering. Tom was walking around. That's why he kill that. I don't need another one of those. All right. All right. Well, thank you for
the chance to talk uh about the Great Pond Project. Uh I'm Amy Lel. I'm the wastewater superintendent and um I I I heard the title in your agenda is specifically public communication. Um I just thought I would take the chance to
do a bit of an update as well. Um but Ed Jallowick has um has talked in in uh several of the water quality management committee meetings about how uh more public communication is um is appropriate and is needed at this time.
So um we're going to we're going to focus on that a bit in the presentation. Uh the project status as you know is that town meeting voted uh the appropriation for the project and in May town voted to fund the project. So we're moving forward uh which is
terrific. Uh there I I did want to update you on one final design change which is that there is no lift station or gravity sewer now in Falmouthport. Um the Falmouth port will buildings will
all be served by grinder pumps. Uh and this decision was made because it reduces the cost of the project by about $2 million by more than $2 million which reduces the betterment uh for all. Um so
that is uh a change that you'll you may notice when you look at some of these figures. So a reminder about the project um the black boundary is the collection system area um the expanded collection system area for this project. There is now one lift station as part of this
project which will be at the north end of the Augusta part parcel which extends between Ticket Highway and Brickilm Road. The lift station will be up there at the north end of the parcel. There will be a dual dual force mans to convey waste water from the lift station up to
the plant. One of the reasons that I was um I I didn't know how you came up with the numbers, but one of the reasons I was sort of shaking my head about the cost number is that a significant portion of the cost of this project is
um will benefit future sewer projects. So that that lift station and that dual force main will both will both be used by future projects. So it it just um it affects the cost distribution when it's presented that way. Um the sewer service
area, this is just zooming in on this service area a bit. It's approximately 600 parcels. Um the number of sewer equivalent units is to be determined uh based on the betterment policy. Uh this is a draft map of the sewer
connection types. Can I ask a question about that? Yes. Go ahead. Yeah. So, why isn't why aren't those two numbers the same, I guess, is my question. Um, so that's a good question.
Sewer equivalent units are um it's a Betterment term. So, uh, a single family residential unit, much of this property, much of the areas, much of the many of the parcels in this area are single family residential homes, which all
contribute roughly the same amount of wastewater flow to the wastewater system and approximately the same, you know, roughly the same nitrogen load. But some of the parcels are um multifamily or commercial uh and they're and contribute
more flow and more nitrogen load. So the betterment will be distributed not based on parcel uh it would be based on sewer equivalent units. I think you already knew that you're helping me ex well I didn't entirely understand it to be honest and
the number I heard was there's approximately 800 SU and I'll talk more about that a little bit more but go ahead. Yeah. So I I mean in simple terms if you make produce twice as much flow as the average household then you are two as is it done
relatively scientifically or is it 50% policy? Let me keep going and we'll I'll talk more about that. We you can ask why don't you ask more questions about it at the end if if you want to but uh there is quite a bit in this presentation about that. Um, so this is a first draft of a map of
of sewer connection types. And I know that there are some errors on this map. So, um, I'm just showing you that there will be a map like this that shows, uh, what's in green here will connect to the sewer by gravity and what's in tan or brown will connect to the sewer with
grinder pumps. Um so what you can see now is that the entire um tig path peninsula is connect is a low pressure system and those properties will be connecting to the sewer with um grinder pumps. Um much of Marra Vista the higher
part of it uh is gravity and then the ends of the um streets where the where the road drops down a bit will be uh low pressure and we'll have grinder pumps. There is at this point only one property highlighted pink in this um map and uh
and the pink is intended to show that um the engineers don't know at this point without more evaluation and it really actually in the in the end will be determined by the property owner's engineer whether they need whether they can get there by gravity or by grinder
pumps. So there will be some properties where it's not clear at this point in the process whether they can connect to the sewer by gravity or low pressure. Uh so next steps for this project um we'll be sending out a project information letter to all
property owners in the sewer area this month. Um the permits for the project will be complete uh this month or early July. Uh the permits include for example mass DOT permit for uh constructing in
the in route 28. Um the conservation commission even though this project is all in roadways some of those roads are within uh the the 100 foot buffer to um resource areas. Uh and planning site plan review by the planning board will
happen in the next month. um executing the easements. There are a couple of easements still to uh complete here on the project and they are very close and we expect to execute them in the next month. We will submit the state revolving fund loan application in the
next month or month and a half. Um the I'm we are tenatively on the select board meeting agenda for June 30th to talk about betterment policy and grinder pump policy. Uh and I have some preliminary discussion of that in this
presentation today. Uh there'll be a public information meeting in July and I'm stating here that I I would like I would appreciate water quality management committee help with that um meeting uh and potentially with future
meetings like that. there'll be a lot of people uh potentially in attendance and it's uh it might be I' I'd appreciate your thoughts ahead of time on on the format and the kinds of things that we ought to do in those meetings and um and maybe uh attendance not of everybody but
of a couple of people to help with answering questions or giving some of the background on the project. Um we plan to bid the construction contracts in August uh and award the con construction contract uh within by by
November. Uh the Betterman hearing would happen after the contract is awarded. So by the end of the year in uh dis approximately December 2025. Uh I've listed here some later steps. So not immediately next, but uh
part of this is to convey that not all of the public information needs to be conveyed at the same time. There's public information that is most important now at this phase in the project and there is information that we need to focus on in maybe a year or so.
Um so uh there will be additional public information meetings uh during construction regarding the sewer connection process and the permitting process. Um and when I say during construction, I mean uh as we approach the time where people actually would be
able to permit and and uh connect to the sewer would be clo would be more appropriate to talk about some of those things. Um cost and funding support information and tax credits. Uh, and then the information about grinder pumps. Uh, there's Felmouth understands
grinder pumps more than they did uh 10 years ago, but there's, you know, individual property owners will still have questions about how that works. Um, and again, I would appreciate water quality management committee input and help with uh additional public meetings. After the construction is complete,
which is expected to be November of 2027, the sewer would become available for connection and property owners are expected to have one year after notification to connect to the sewer. So, we wouldn't just notify them all at once. You know, we'd be leading up to that telling them you're going to have a
year to connect after that notification. Uh, and for some of the bigger, more complicated properties, it might make sense to give more than a year. We'll have to talk about that. like Felmouth Port is 210 units. Maybe it maybe they need more than a year to make those connections. We'll have to
see. Um, a little bit of construction summary for the Great Pond project. It's a two-year construction time frame from November 2025 to November 27. The work will be in in roadways to uh install the sewer pipes, and there will be multiple
crews simultaneously in roads in different places. Um there will be um and and the and the construction will go back through the same area a couple of times. So the contractor comes in to put in the sewer main and then they have a separate crew come back to put in the
laterals and then there's also paving. So the the the construction moves through the sewer area several times. Uh but it does keep moving um for the the pipe work. Obviously, there's a lift station to be constructed on the Brick Hilm Road site. And the Brick Hilm Road
site, as you know, is a town-owned property. Um, and we will be offering that for potential use as a staging area for construction. It has an entrance on the north and the south side, and there's a fair amount of area there. So, uh, that could be a staging area for for
that two-year project. Uh, the work will go year round. We don't plan to exclude the summertime work except along Route 28. Um, but this, you know, I know we're a summer community, but uh and the and a
lot of summer pe a lot of folks are only here in the summer, but this would allow the town the pro contractor to continue to make progress and it's what we did in the last project uh to get the project done as quickly as we are able. uh we'll
be developing an email list of people interested in updates on this project. So that's one of the things that'll happen at the public meetings is we'll be collecting uh email information from people so that if they want specific updates they can they can get those. We'll also provide during construction
weekly project update updates to the email list but also on the town's website uh so that people who are interested can see where the construction is where it will be in the next week. um betterment planning. So, as you know, town meeting voted a 7030 split of the
eligible project cost and at the next select board meeting, we'll be talking about what those eligible project costs are. Uh I've been reviewing the service area with the town assessor. Um we've been reviewing existing uses and the
zoning and uh potential sewer equivalent units which we talked about earlier. U I'm working on I'm been looking at the old betterment policy and um seeing what if any modifications need to be
suggested to that and uh considering fairness and implementability and that also will be discussed at the the next select board meeting. Um and again it's it's along the lines of um how do you how do you adjust how do you how do you
adjust the betterment charge to properties based on existing and even future potential land use um which uh can be a challenge can be a little bit complicated. We will be sending a letter to owners of vacant property listing
three options. We've done this on the previous projects as well. um they'll be paying a betterment for vacant lots. So they can just keep keep the lot vacant as is and they'll be charged a betterment for it. Um so I should say
vacant lots that are that may have development possibility. There are some lots that can be excluded. They're already clearly unbuildable as determined by the the building commissioner. There's some lots that can be excluded, but we'll send letters to all those
owners of vacant lots and say if you merge lots ahead of time, you can reduce the number of betterment charges that you're assessed if that's you know some people own multiple um uh lots uh adjacent vacant lots next to one another. And they can also apply a deed
restriction in perpetuity stating that the property will never be developed which may be the chance may be the case with some of those properties. Being charged a betterment does not guarantee that you can connect to the sewer. You still have to go through the permitting process in the town to get your
undeveloped lot developed. Uh so this I didn't I don't want to I don't believe it makes sense to get into a lot of detail on this map now but this is I just wanted to show you the kind of um land use um evaluation or information
that's available. This map shows all residential as blue. Uh I have asked the engineer to to highlight for for our use the um the residential properties that are more than single family to show
those in a different color. Uh yellow is either town or stateowned uh so is exempt. Uh green is um open space uh I believe deed open space. purple is commercial and uh the red is
multi multiple use on the same property. So just to give you an idea of why why you need why we need to look at betterment charges for different types of properties. Um this I have another couple of slides which I'll um which you are familiar with from previous meetings
but um because this is a public meeting on television I'm going to go through them again. Um so the select board has three major betterment steps uh coming up over the next few years. Uh the first is to vote how sewer equivalent units
will be assigned to different types of properties and which project costs are applicable to the betterment. After bids are open, which would be in the this fall, uh the select board will vote an order of betterment assess um order of betterment assessment, which will include a betterment plan and a list of
properties to be bettered and an estimated assessment per property. That's an estimated assessment. It's based on the the um the bid cost and the known cost at that time. Um and but the the cost can go down from that point. It
cannot go up after that point. So after the project is complete which is expected in the fall of 2027 uh the select board will vote to certify the final SEU value and um as I said that number cannot be higher than that in the previous order but it can be lower and
then at that point um it will uh go on to the collector's office and it would start appearing on tax bills. Um so tax bills wouldn't be affected until 2028. at the earliest. Um the previously
estimated range that we've discussed and presented for Betterments is 27 to $40,000 per sewer equivalent unit um which is expected to be a single family home. That number will be lower because
there will be more than 810 sewer equivalent units. But I don't I don't have that number yet. That will depend on this this betterment policy that the select board votes. Uh the betterment cost factors are of course the pro project cost the number of sewer equivalent units which costs are
determined to be applicable to the sewer area and the loan forgiveness amount. We now know that we we are getting the 25% loan forgiveness from the state which is a very big help. So that puts us uh closer to the
$27,000 end of this range to start with. That betterment will be paid may can be paid off over 30 years. you can property owners can pay it off sooner um but they are allowed up to 30 years to pay it off and it's at 0% interest if that's the interest rate that the town gets which
is what we expect. So at that cost range that would be um at the 27 to $40,000 total that betterment value would be about $900 to $1,300 per year. Uh again, the cost to service area property owners are the betterment, the
cost to connect and to abandon their septic system, and then their sewer charges on their water and sewer bill after they're connected. Um I won't dwell on this now, but there is assistance to sewer service area property owners with their sewer
connection cost, and we will have more information about that at um at any public meetings on this subject. Um I the last thing I wanted to talk about in this presentation is a uh is the grinder pump
policy. Uh this these next few slides are based on the current I'm just talking about the the way I the way I'm envisioning the sewer the uh grinder pump policy moving forward and it's based on the existing with primarily
clarifications. Um, so I am potentially, this is an outline of what I'm imagining recommending to the select board at the end of June. Um, that the town would provide pump pumps for properties that are single family residential or residential condo units uh and developed
before the project is closed out. Uh what that means then is that owners like in the last project, owners of commercial and multif family or apartment properties and of properties that developed after the project is has been closed out um must purchase and
maintain their own grinder pumps. So that that's been the policy for the previous project, but it wasn't explicitly stated um that clearly in the uh select board um policy. Uh, as far as maintenance, as
before, it's I'm imagining that the property owner will own the pump uh and must protect it from damage due to activity on their property, which is um a public information effort that I want to um make sure we we get out there as
well. This is something that comes up every time there's a building permit on a property that has a grinder pump connection. Um the town I expect to m I expect that the select board will vote but it's it's up to there this will be discussed at their meeting uh that the
town would maintain the pumps and uh continue to reserve the right to charge property owners for maintenance due to misuse of the pumps. For example, dumping um uh plastic toys, clamshells, grease,
uh all kinds of things like that down the sewer line. The town will replace the pumps when necessary. This was the commitment that was made previously. And the property owner would pay for the electricity, which is estimated to be about $50 a year. Uh it's not a lot of money, but I do want to be clear about
that upfront. Um the property owner may So, as far as uh the power outages, the property owner may purchase their own generator. Many people do have a home uh have or do buy a whole home generator or portion of their home generator. the
town uh may continue to provide pump down service during power outages when and where feasible. And I I want to be a little more clear uh about how challenging that can be and the limitations on the feasibility of that. Uh but that is the intent is to to the
degree feasible uh to provide pump down service for grinder pumps in a power outage. Uh we're also looking at um how to at our options with the control panels um to make it make the service a little easier to coordinate um for
problems and for when the power is out. So again, that'll be discussed more at the select board meeting on June 30th. Um so that's a review of the kinds of topics uh that will be discussed at the select board meeting and at the and in a
different way at future um public meetings. Thank you, Amy. Excellent. John, I guess Amy, how how do you think you're going to go about um handling the burden of the cost on the first phase of the project um in
terms of the lift stations and and um force mains that you say can be used for later stages of the project. So, it seems like there's a an element of fairness that a lot of the early stages are getting hit with these upfront costs, but the other people will benefit too. Is there a way to even that out
down the the extent of the project? Right. So, it's a it's an important question and we that $27,000 cost was based on uh excluding the lift station and the force mains from the total project cost to be
charged uh to the betterment. Um so I'd said earlier in this P in this presentation that sewer equivalent units um are maybe I shouldn't be bouncing around in here. I'll go back to the end. The um
sewer equivalent units are um based uh you start with the total applicable project cost, right? And so the select board need to vote on whether that's an applicable project cost. And if they vote no, then that cost is
handled. That cost is removed and it's paid for by the town as a whole. Okay. Um and and it is not a part of the betterment cost. What is it as a fraction? Just roughly. It's about half of the approximately half of the construction cost. Not half of the total
project cost, but it's half of the construction portion of the total project cost. Half is the part that clearly is attributable to particular properties and the other half is the half that maybe should be amvertised over two or more. So what's what's the
ratio of 20? It's like so it's a little less than 3/4 of the total project cost is applicable to the property to the bettered properties and and a little more than a quarter is this lift station enforcement. When I
said half and half, it's half and it's about half of the construction cost, but there are all kinds of other costs that are that are um applicable to the project as a whole, which may or may not be part of what like what uh design um
grinder pump purchases, um police details. I don't have the total project cost in here, but yes. So, the select board will have the opportunity to um make a determination of which of those pieces of the project cost are
applicable to the betterment. Just one more question if I Yeah. Um I think the town of Barnstable has this system, a website where there's an address lookup where you can pump, you know, plug in your address and it'll tell you if you're in a sewer zone or what's required of you. I think with our
website be nice where a homeowner can just plug it in. I know there's going to be letters and other things, but I mean the town website should be a really, you know, main source for information and if they can just plug in their address and they can see, yeah, I'm in the gravity or I'm going to need a grinder pump. As soon as you know that, it'd be useful
way of letting people have a at least, you know, a heads up of what's coming their way. Yeah, it's a it's an interesting idea. I think Barnstable has they have a you know a plan a bigger plan for the whole for larger parts of town at this point and so they're
probably also able to tell what phase you're in at this point. Unfortunately, this next project is a you know it's a pretty limited sewer area and um I think people can see from a map where you know whether they're in that or not. People would rather I think a lot of people
like to especially some of the older folks who maybe aren't comfortable looking at maps in your address. Just type in your address and it tells you what's required and then you just expand it as the project expands. We know what's going to happen with sewers, IAS or whatever. It's just a simple way to have it out there for people.
Suggestion. Hey, I meant to introduce Chris Syriak is the new assistant wastewater superintendent. Uh Chris is coming from Bellingham and need need uh wastewater superintendent experience and lots of collection system experience in both of those places. Um, so he's here
at the meeting to begin to uh learn all the playerselcome helping out on these projects. Has Amy painted that bullseye on your back yet? It's coming. Tom, do you have any questions? No, I'm fine. Oh, well, I
just congratulated Amy on this. This is so amazing and so complex and and Ken brought up the issue of suddenly what are other costs? Well, there's a big spiderweb of things running out every direction on different timelines and it's just and it's a small project in the bigger scheme of things. Yes, it is.
It's a big project for the town, but it's but there are there's a lot more going on as well. Yep. Yeah. I want to second um John's suggestion about the website, especially because you have a lot of out of town owners. Uh who will may only be here in the summer. Yep. And
may not want to go to meetings. And there's there's no exc meetings are important and we should work hard on it, but there's no excuse for not having an excellent website. Yeah. Yep. So, yep. There is a lot of information on the website, but we need to get um more
current information about this project uh out there and then keep updating it. This is, you know, something that obviously has a lot of complexity. Amy's done a a great deal of work um and has even more to do going forward. Um we've
got a whole new select board that's never really been through a project like this. Uh we've got a bunch of citizens that have heard some of the things from the history, but a lot of new property owners are involved. So, there's an awful lot of things to do and the big kickoff will be select board in the end
of the month hopefully. Um, and you know, as a member of this committee and someone who went through the process in Little Pond and very intimately acquainted with it, I anything I can do as a member of the committee and as a uh
my experience in it, I'm ready, willing, and able to attend the meetings, help with meetings. So, um, I'm going to be here to help as much as I can. Uh, I think this is a great start. I think there there's so much more coming. There's so many more. uh I'm going to say permutations to the policies. I
build on the the history and the policies that worked well for Little Pond and with some tweaking I think can work well for this so that try to learn from that experience and make it an even better and seamless process for those who are going to experience the sewering. Um the whole things about
cost. There's been a tremendous amount of misinformation about this project on social media and letters to the editor at town meeting. I remember one town meeting member saying, you know, well, you got you're stuck with this betterment. If you sell your house, you got to pay it off. You can't transfer it. Well, actually, you can. I've
transferred it twice in my moves from one property to another in Little Pond. I transferred and assumed another betterment. Banks may not let you do that. But, you know, that's the kind of misinformation that's there. And we want to get the message to people. Here are the facts. There's some grossly inflated
cost information that's been, you know, put in the paper that the actual cost experience was a fraction of what's being stated. You know, $40,000 or $30,000 to connect your house to the the street main. No, it's it's never
anywhere near that. The high, I think, was about $7,000 and the low was about 3,000. Actual experience connect to the sewer. So, we want to counteract that misinformation with outreach like this. This is a terrific start. Um, and there'll be a lot more coming. As far as
people attending meetings, you know, summer residents, boy, they're going to want to go to those meetings. They did when Little Pond happened. There was a series of meetings over the summer and into the fall. Um, website utilization. A lot of the towns have some great website stuff that I'm sure we will be
able to copy and learn from. So, a lot of things to do. The more people that are going to get involved from this committee, um, the better, I think. So thanks Amy for a great job and look forward to working some more on this. I just want to comment on I think there's a semantic problem in the phrase connect
to the sewer. It can either mean the physical connection part connecting paying to have the pipe run from your house to the street or the concept of all the costs involved in having your property be in a sewer district as
opposed to an IIA or a UD or nothing. Mhm. So some people when they say can the cost of connecting to the sewer mean just the physical pipe connection. Other people mean include the Betterment,
right? But uh you know that's that's an important part of the education. Here is the Betterment. Well, the Betterment is not eligible for anything except you can spread it over 30 years. You can't use the state tax credit for the betterment, but you can use that up to $18,000 tax
credit for your connection costs, right? But historically, those connection costs weren't anywhere near the amount, you know, they they weren't anywhere near an $18,000 potential tax credit. And you can only use it for the the actual connection, the plumbing, the digging,
and the putting the dirt back in place. So, if you've got a fancy patio over your septic tank and it's got to be broken up because you got to go down there and break up that septic tank, well, you know, that's not eligible for the tax credit. So, those extraordinary
landscape costs can be extraordinary, but it's the the core connecting and going through the the process because most people are grinder pumps. It's a lot simpler than what I personally went through. 120 ft of 8 ft deep by 8 ft
wide trench running through my property in August, the driest August that we've had. No rainfall whatsoever. It was quite a summer, but you get through it and you learn from it and people are going to have, I think, a
good experience. and anything we can do as you know town officials Amy's spearheading this and people on this committee contractors plumbers um you know there's a lot of people to get involved educated and on board to this so we've made a great beginning Ken uh
so first of all great presentation uh the the full range of complexity emerges as you lay this all out um I I completely agree with Jonathan on the idea that it would be nice if there
was a way individual property owners could go to a town website and see where they stand. Okay. Uh so that's something worth putting some time and effort into. Um I'm picked up on the idea that we have project eligible costs. That's an
important distinction to separate out that general cost of the force main and lift pumps and so forth so that the homeowners aren't burdened with something that future uh projects are going to take advantage of. Do you feel
that the selectmen are sympathetic to that? Is there anything this committee specifically should do, any of us to emphasize that point? Um, so it's a new select board in several cases or there are several new
select board members. Um, and I mean the previous select board I certainly heard uh sympathy your interest in that um in that way of looking at it. I think um so it it might be helpful if if we chimed
in in some way as a committee uh about that. Yeah, sure. either either before or during that meeting. Right. And then my my last question is um construction phase 25 to 27. When do
the first connections become operable? Likely after the end of 2020 or at the end of the project. Okay. At the end of 2020. Um okay. In the past project, we had two sets of availability. I don't think we're going to do that this time.
I think we're going to do it all at once. Oh, I I have a question for you that you must have solved for the Little Pond project, but I don't remember what the solution was. There's the one-year period for connecting. How do you
incentivize people not to procrastinate? So, a couple of things. Some people because if you get to the end, then there aren't enough contractors to go around. That's one thing. Some people want to connect. they have septic system issues or they just want to get it done or whatever. So, a certain number of
people just connect. Um they one if the select board is going to have a grinder pump reimbursement again um I will propose that that be
um connected to or contingent on closing out your permits. So, uh, one of the issues we had last time was that folks weren't permits weren't getting closed out and having that pump reimbursement. Getting that money, uh, back being
contingent on, um, closing out your permits will help a lot with that. That actually doesn't answer your questions specifically, but it is a way of of getting people through the proc to complete the permitting process. Um ultimately, yes, the it
is it is advantageous to plan ahead and and get these things done sooner so that you're not competing at the last minute and losing chances with uh the contractor that you most wanted. Um the last thing is that what we did at the
end of the last project was uh issued fines to the final people who were not connected. That is a last resort, but that is something that we did and we will do again if we need to.
Any questions from the audience? Malcolm Malcolm Donald again. Um, I'm curious if you were aware of all the misinformation that you referenced, why weren't the facts made clear to the sewer unit
owners and uh, town meeting members and the general public before town meeting and before the ballot question. That's my first question. Who are you asking? you the the committee
uh I I don't have ready availability of any error fililled information that we had. You'd have to give us specific. I'll answer it because I what happens is people don't pay attention. There was a
lot of meetings we had talking about this project before town meeting before the ballot question. A lot of things were published in the enterprise, but not everybody reads the enterprise. And if they do, they gloss over, oh god, so they just don't even want to think about
it. And people did not avail themselves of the opportunity to attend these meetings to watch the rebroadcast. They did a few of our earlier meetings on uh live, but now it's just you can do it on the on demand, but how many people take
advantage of that? and town meeting members didn't do their homework. It's unfortunate, but then numbers are thrown around and comments made and there's no opportunity to address it as it's being given. And there had been some attempts
to put correct information into the paper, but again, not everybody's paying attention. Not everybody's doing their homework. And that's why I believe it's very important now to reach out directly to those who are going to be impacted by this, the people that are going to have to connect so that they can ask their
questions in a face-to-face forum with breakout sessions and maps and uh things about the equipment itself, the grinder pump. There were number of questions raised about that 10 years ago in Little Pond. Nobody knew what the hell a grinder pump was in the town.
Yeah. And people have to educate themselves. They have to ask the questions and that's what needs to happen. That has not happened and people just didn't do their homework. That that's my simple answer. Amy, did you have an answer? I think what it says. Okay. I think I think the simple answer
to that is the town committee town meeting vote was about 90% in favor of the project and the election was about 80%. So, uh, I think that speaks, uh, wonders for how well the town is
prepared to go ahead with those project. Well, that's that's not exactly the issue, John. Uh the issue, John, uh is that town um if you had at least three meetings and opportunities to uh correct the
misinformation that was out there and um do you have some specific bit of misinformation that you're um alluding to? No. Um we well it was brought up uh by you this evening that there was a lot of misinformation. So I don't know what the misinformation is. Well, as I
stated, there was a town meeting member that was talking about the project and was against it. And one of the things he said is, you know, you're going to be stuck with this betterment. If you want to sell your house, you're going to have to pay off that 30 or $40,000. That's not true. But if someone
had done their homework, they would have realized that's not how that system works. That's that's not how Betterments work. The information was there. It was done 10 years ago. it was available if someone asked that question ahead of time numbers about the cost that the
other example I cited was it's going to cost you 30 or $40,000 to connect your house to the street main that's not true the history it was just discussed I believe at our last meeting or the one prior to that and said here are the
actual costs averages and extremes of connecting to the sewers for little pond a low of about 3,000 for a grinder pump simple install and a high of about 7,000 for a complex gravity
install which happened to be been mine. Um that information was there. People didn't pay attention. They didn't do their homework. They just I think there was a tendency Malcolm uh to try and throw out anything that might sway voters to go against the
project. The project is approved and as uh Mr. Waterberry stated by overwhelming numbers at both town meeting and in the townwide ballot. It's time to move forward. It's time to make sure people are informed and know what's going on. I
don't think it makes a lot of sense to look back at why, when, where, and how. It's let's get the correct information. Let's give people the opportunity to ask those questions whether it's via website, email, coming to these meetings, going to theformational
sessions. There were informational meetings I can remember at Little Pond that were extremely heated. People yelling and screaming at Julian Susso, the town manager at the time. a lot of inflammatory things said and it took a while for people to understand and ask
and listen to the answers and realize, okay, it's going to be okay. We're going to get through this. It can happen. The costs aren't as bad as anybody thought. The complexities aren't as bad. The grinder pumps turned out to be a very, very successful
concept. And I myself questioned it as an engineer said, "Really?" And I became a believer because I educated myself. But I think we want to get the information to the people that need it, who want it, and we'll ask those questions. And if they ask the question three times, that's okay. I'd be happy to give them the answer three times. And
if I don't have the answer, I'll I'll make sure I get it for them if at all humanly possible. That's what we want to do going forward as a town, as a DPW wastewater department, Amy and her new assistant and her management, the town manager, the select board and members of
this committee move forward with positive information and correct information. And if somebody's got a concept in mind that's incorrect, ask us. That's why we're here. Yeah. Well, I'm answer why I'm asking the question is that uh I believe there are going to
be more sewer projects down proposed down the the road and uh going forward it would be very nice if um the all the misinformation were cleared up before town meeting and before the ballot. Um,
no. My question number two is why weren't property owners informed uh individually as uh prior to the ballot question. Why is it now after the sewer has been approved that now we're going to um reach out to those property owners
and tell them how much they actually owe. Thank you question. I don't know how much they're going to be owed. We are following the process that we followed previously for the betterment. This is this is not this is
not a different process for the betterment than it was last time. Um and there just responding to the previous thing the the a lot of great information was put out there. There will always be
internet discussions that contradict what's going on officially and we cannot battle all of that and I don't try we put out in we put the correct information out there and uh and we make make it available on the website and we
do not try to fight by battles online. Um I did want to also just clarify on because it's come up several times on the the betterment um how the Betterment is handled at the time of sale depends on the banks the the lending
institutions involved. So there's not an absolute answer to that. It varies um sale to sale depending on the the rules of the lending. The point is that the town doesn't block it. The town is not the limiting factor. Town is not the limiting factor. It is
the lending institutions on each side. Thank you. Malcolm, could I just address your last question just quickly? Yeah. I think going forward for phase two of Great Pond, I think once we do have a hard and fast map and we know the residents that are going to be out
there, I think we can improve and make sure that on the website again, whatever system we use that people will know, you know, as soon as it's possible to know when the final sewer um map is drawn. And I I agree. We should get that out right away so there's no surprises for
anybody. Everybody knows what's coming down the pipe if they're going to be affected by it. Well, I contend that there's going to be a lot of surprises now that the uh ballot questions been uh passed and now that uh people are going to be uh notified as to what expenses
they're going to uh going to going to be um liable for. And it seems to me that even though if you're even if you were following the uh the last protocol, uh it doesn't mean that the last protocol
wasn't flawed as well as far as um notifying individual owners as to what their their expected uh costs were going to be pri prior to um the ballot question. Um so they were they would be
educated voters and uh yeah I don't know um but that's yeah and then number three uh goes along with that also is why weren't public meetings held before town meeting and before the
ballot question. Why they certainly were. I mean every precinct has a public meeting prior to uh town meeting at which questions are addressed. Yeah, but um yeah, that's uh in my pre um precinct
meeting um all of about 15 minutes were devoted to the uh information about the sewer. Plus, there have been many meetings of this committee which you and others have intended, but you represent a tiny fraction of the population. Some people choose not to inform themselves.
Yeah. Well, um why do you think they're going to want to inform themselves now that there's a sewer coming in? Um don't you think they're gonna have you made your point? I think we have to move along other is so going forward on the on uh if there is another sewer sewer
project I would propose that uh you do these uh three things that I've asked uh then thank you. Thank you Matt. Good evening, Matt Hanley from Thomas Landers Road. Um, I'm not going to get
into the saying arguments that Malcolm made, but you know, I did also have some concerns, but also I do have concerns as a member of the East Falmouth Village Association. you know, um these zero interest loans, is that just can anyone tell me if that's is that just for homeowners or
will businesses especially like be able to apply for those loans as well? The zero interest loans go so the what we talked about so there are two two uh things that we talked about
at 0%. One is the Betterment. The Betterment payment uh is at 0% interest to the town over 30 years. And that's for anybody who's paying the Betterment, whether they're a homeowner or not. The
um the county loans um have a number of criteria and they're not available to all. Um so I would I would have to def defer to the county on what their rules are for those loans. They're not available. They have um they have
criteria based on um income and on um seasonality. Uh and so I doubt they would apply to commercial and they will not apply to all residential. Yeah, that was that's what I was afraid of. You know, I grew up in Falmouth and
and there's some some old family businesses in this section like the Great Bay Hotel and um you know, the Clippership Apartments, um Cedar Meadows Apartments, you know, these these family businesses, you know, are going to be
impacted by this. They're going to they're going to have more than just a a regular SE, you know, not just one sewer equivalent unit. They're going to have multiples, you know, and and some of these like developments like the Clippership Apartments and and Cedar
Metro Apartments, those those are affordable housing units, you know, these, you know, and those management companies are going to be forced to put that betterment back on their on their rent, you know. Um, and so, you know, these are like some of the concerns that
I've been bringing up, you know, for a long time. And I think they really should be paid attention to. And I don't think it's fair that the town's properties aren't being are getting a free ride. They're exempt. you know, the the the you know, Amy said the the
Fmouth Public Schools building, which is a big municipal building that has that has toilets for the ball fields and for all the staff members in that building. You know, is that building getting zero payment? They're not paying any
assessment. Correct. No town uh building, no town property would pay a betterment because the money to pay that would come from the town. It'd be the town paying itself. So there's there's no the equivalent of changing the betterment
percentage to 69% or 71%. I well schematics, you know, you you could say, you know, the force mains aren't going to be on the betterment. The the pumping stations aren't going to be on the betterment. this this structure is not going to be on the betterment, you
know. So, we could assume the taxpayers of Falmouth could assume that structure and what that what they're contributing that the amount of sewer equivalent units of that structure would be assumed in this larger infrastructure portion.
So, the betterment is reduced for these for the for the homeowners, the single family homeowners and for the businesses. You know 7030 split is already arbitrary. What 7030 7030 of of the betterment not the the greater
project the fact that the betterment is 70% and not 75 or 65 or 100 or zero. Well those numbers need to be discussed as a town. Yeah. So you know I'm not I I don't want to get an argument with with the board. I'm just saying as a town member and was someone that grew up in
East Felmouth and as a business owner in East Felmouth, these are these are questions that need to be answered and I I feel it's only right to raise these issues in front of this board and in front of the newspapers representative to say like these things need to be addressed. I I hear you made your point.
I'm not sure it's it's the purview of this committee. I I suggest the select board, right? C can I make a comment on that? I think Matt brings up a very good point about some of the affordable housing developments in that uh within the sewer service
area and if the costs are going to be burdensome that might be another way that the selectman could partition costs or think about some subsidy that might help with that. I I think you raise a
good point there. Yeah. Um I'll say that in the previous project there were several large lower um income or reduced income properties there. The Tatakut uh apartments is was in the last
uh sewer project and um they were assessed a regular betterment a standard betterment I mean based on sewer equivalent units they they we did charge 02.25 25 or a quarter of an SEU per
bedroom for those, which ends up being um a lower cost for them than it would be for single family homes per per unit because many of them have um um it's basically a single family
home. You're often it's a what am I trying to say that it's um that a larger apartment building may be many more units with fewer bedrooms. So it is a on average a lower bet betterment per unit but it is still u 0.25 25 seu per
bedroom was what was charged last time and I would likely be what would be charged this time of any uh apartment um rental those the the apartments um and do also think that the apartments um
contribute a larger share of nitrogen load to the to the um water body and benefit from the sewer connection I appreciate the information and I'm going to attend the rest of the meetings and ask these, you know, to the select board and the appropriate groups. I just
want to bring it to this board's attention, you know, because I know everyone on the board tries to gather as much information and and maybe you haven't thought of this previously. So, um, thank you. Thank you. Any other questions from the audience?
Hilda or I have a comment when Oh um I've had to go about Oh public meetings there was a lot of
discussion oh go ahead I want to make a Hild de Men Hatchville. I want to make clear that even though your meetings are public, it's not the same as a public meeting. They are very different.
So before the tow meeting or before especially the ballot question, I asked everybody who I met if they knew what was on the ballot question, if they understood the whole wastewater thing and I found not a
single person who could explain it to me. I asked a tow meeting member who was also on the finance committee if he could give me a short overview like a one-pager explaining exactly this whole sewer project so that I could give it to
people so that they would understand it. It took him two weeks of research to get back to me. I said it took me a lot of phone calls and a lot of work to get to it. And he gave me a pretty good one, but not a one page that I could use to
hand up. So that's my background. But what really stands out here is that in December, December 4th, Steve Rafferty mentioned in a meeting, and I'll read you what he said. Having worked out all
through the geo boundaries for months on end, it is a good time for all of us, particularly for anybody watching at home on TV to really understand the overall program, what we have been doing, what we are at, where we at, and
where we might be going. And I think that Jonathan's he had just given you a presentation has been doing a great job. As we move forward in the first year of the year, I look forward to doing quite a bit more outreach rather than just
these every two me week meetings. There was an Steve Referty said we should be doing a lot of public outreach. That never happened. Several committees then also discussed
the importance of Jonathan Kaufman's presentation and said we should make plans to give this to the public and there was a lot of discussion what kind of presentation should it be long should it be short should it be three phases whatever and I thought something would
happen nothing happened so the public meetings you are all aware of is different than this Because the day after the town had voted yes to the sewers, this meeting was the
day after and you said now it's time for us to give public meetings. So you all know the difference between these meetings and public meetings and I want just be made clear because there were no public meetings like we should have in each t each school have a public meeting
where people could ask questions so that these misunderstood understanding would not happen those never happened and that is really upsetting to the public because I've talked to a lot of people I've talked to people scientists not a single person could answer these
questions not a single one Woodwell Institute, MBL, Wood Oceanographic, the people who delivers to my house, everyone I asked, do you know what's on the ballot? Do you understand what's on the ballot? Do you know what's going to
happen? Not a single one. And that's not right. Thank you. Um, reports of members and staff. Um, Tom. Yes. Um, Maggie McGau is here. She
circulated, she's the author of the letter that circulated to the committee earlier this week about recent ongoing and perhaps future events in McCoy Bay. And um I just want to give you a heads up that we're hopefully going to have
some input from Webner on the 25th, the meeting 3 weeks from today. Um I hope everybody read Maggie's Yes. cry of distress. I don't know what else to call it. It was pretty bad. I I hope everybody saw some of the pictures. Um
was it yesterday you were out and things had dissipated some wind driven circulation or something? Probably. But I just wanted to bring that to people's attention and if you haven't read her letter, please read. You're referring to
the fact that there was a massive aluminum. Yeah. Yeah. That caught my attention. Yeah. Wait a second. Did Maggie did you want to say something? I was just Should I say? Yeah, if you want to. Chance in the
spotlight. Um Maggie McGaw white and a member of the board of citizens for the protection of walkway bay on on whose behalf um I drafted that letter. Uh and also a letter to the
editor of the um enterprise. Um so the algal bloom the algal mats were first reported um on May 15th as having been seen on May 14th and then I went out sailing on the
27th and that was the first time I saw them and and they extended uh east to west across the bay and from just right about Matoxit point down to great river. So it's an
astounding expanse of algae. Um the same expanse of algae was also observed two days later. Then we had the weekend of high winds. I went out yesterday. I went I looked at the
municus. There is still significant amounts of algae on the Municus, both north of the Meadow Neck Bridge and south. Um, and then the only other place I found um, anything that looked like a mat was tucked in behind the dock at the
town landing um, off of Seapit. I went to Matoxit Point. I went to the end of um, Sea Coast Shores. Uh, I went out to Well, my We've got only 15 minutes left. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. If Are you
proposing something specific? We don't need the specifics of every piece of algae. Uh I I am my my proposal or my um my cry as Tom says is that
the WQMC really prioritize making taking steps of all possible kinds to improve the conditions in Walkway Bay and and we are hoping to get a status report from the Webner
people in three weeks. Is that is that letter on the on the town website? No, not yet. Uh it it will be in the version of it will be in the enterprise. It apparently will be in the enterprise.
So why is it on the website? We just This just happened. This just happened. We just received it. The developing story, as Katie would say, Earl uh Earl Barnhart um Green Center. I would like to correct some incorrect
information that was presented at this meeting on May 21st, the last meeting. There were two things that were presented that were incorrect. One was one a statement that said that mass D would not allow urine diversion to be an
optional alternative in a situation where an IIA septic system is mandated. This has been stated several times publicly. That is not true. That's you're right. It's not true. It's not true. In the mass D approved CWMP,
there's a statement that says eco toilets in watersheds where IIA septic systems are the recommended solution for TMDL compliance. Property owners will also be able to select eco toilets that achieve the same level of nitrogen
removal as is required for an IIA system. It's in the approved mass DP Felmouth CWMP. Now the reason this was stated is that the second false assumption was stated that um the
effectiveness of UD probably won't be as high as an IIA septic system. That was stated as an assumption or an opinion. It is not based upon any facts. The actual facts are that the um best IA
systems are thought to remove 90% of total nitrogen. And there's a conference in November of the IIA people that stated that and gave evidence for it. The other point is that in the 2014 eco
toilet demonstration program in Felmouth, the best performing eco toilets have been shown to remove 90% of total nitrogen, exactly the same amount. I think it's quite possible that a person could make the case that the best diversion would be equal to the best IAS
and have the authority and the permission to choose that instead. Thank you. Any other reports of members? I was just going to say um I'm a newly elected precinct 3 town meeting member and that's obviously impacted by the sewers.
I'd like to join your uh support group that will reach out to the community. Yeah. Yeah. You you said you're looking for water quality members to support the effort and since it's I represent those people that are impacted by phase one and soon to be phase two then I'd like
to help out. That's all I'm saying. I appreciate you. All set John. Yes. No. Uh member reports and members and staff. Yeah. No. The only thing I would comment on is that I I've just in little
pond sampling and I noticed an unusually large amount of floating algae as well. And I'm wondering it's some larger processes going on out there that's stimulating blooms this particular year. Climate something from offshore. Who
knows? Are these brown algae? Um are these brown algae? Minutes of prior meeting. Wait, wait. I'm just going um we got an email from Pond Watch program. They are looking for volunteers for sampling this
summer. Um they are short a couple of teams especially on Green Pond and they're looking for somebody who has boat access or people who are interested in volunteering. So if you know anybody, send them our way and send them their way.
Anything else? I apologize. No, that was it. uh minutes of prior meeting. Uh Amy, did you want to I'm sorry, Steve. I just saw Amy. Yeah, fair enough. Thank you for raising that, Kristen. So, the the um the sampling
group, uh the pond watchers reached out to me today because they are low on samplers. They're missing somebody for Vineyard Sound and um for, as you said, Green Pond. They were also looking for help in West Balmouth Harbor. So, if if anybody's interested in sampling or
anybody who may be watching is interested in joining the pond watchers and helping out with sampling, they can uh email Kristen or myself, Kristen Wrathen um uh with the water quality management committee or Amy LOL, the
wastewater superintendent, and let us know. So, it's four sampling dates and it's mornings. It's two sampling dates in July and two in August. That's the commitment. Oh, and before I go to the minutes, um I have a tiny report on the urine
diversion. Um mass the mass test center received a $400,000 grant from D to do the urine diversion project. Excellent. It's huge. Yeah. Um just back on the previous topic, can you remind me where
the vineyard sound station is? Is it No. Oh, not exactly. It's with inside of land though. It's between Green Pond and Great Pond, I think. Oh, way way over there. Okay. It's either that or it's between uh Yeah, I remember looking at the map. I can't remember. Let's
continue that. That's a technical detail for whoever is actually doing it. Um minutes of the prior meeting. Uh any corrections other than the professional ones by Tom? Semi-professional today. I move
they be approved as uh distributed. Second. Second. Second. All in favor? I I Okay. Uh do we have a motion on item six? So moved to adjourn. Is there a second?
I'll second. All in favor? I thank you. Thank you.