[Music] [Music] for the water quality management committee to Thrill you excite you
challenge you um I notice we have two Selectmen on on board tonight so uh let's be very careful of what we say we can do or not do because after all we only advise them um we have Amy who she's going to talk a little bit um we have a person named Bob Whitten or Whiting whing okay um I'm going to give you some leeway Bob because usually we like to see before we let anybody speak what they're going to talk about out and I know you didn't submit anything so as people in this
room will tell you I'm not afraid to say you're out of order and your time is up so hopefully you've got a good presentation and it's on topic and if it's not that's cool too just come up to the podium introduce yourself where you're from um uh Bob Whiting from you you must watch our meeting so you know who the people are on the I don't watch the meetings but I follow the activity in the Enterprise every week well you haven't seen anything K Ken Ken Ken
Foreman is our is our uh very filtered in the Enterprise reminder of what time it is and why he's not here often um Ed lives in the Heights and uh has been active in town Affairs and his you know he's he's the hard number guy in this group he he's got the things Steve Leighton is our philosopher um he's always got he's always got something I'm just going to warn you he he will look at you and say I know you're going to agree with me and then he's going to launch into something that you like I I don't agree with you um uh John
Waterbury is the uh ameritus reins he's for how long john 30 years you've been saying we need an outfall pleas um we have our senior scientist on the board now I guess Tom I think John Senor certainly knows a lot more than I do yeah I made himas but I'm going to make you that and then uh one of our most recent Edition is uh Jonathan Kaufman who's um he's just he's just brilliant I mean every time he does something for this board wait I'm like amazed um no
pressure and Kristen does does our sort of technical support what not how long do you need let's kick it off with five minutes and see if it goes any further than that that's fine we I hold to a strict 2hour long meeting perfect okay perfect and I'll hold myself to a strict five minutes and you tell me if we go to six or S I think I'll appeal mostly to maybe to our philosopher at the moment not hopefully not the money guy um I'm going to get you Stone by the way philosopher
of stone never mind so again Bob whaiting um I live at 420 shwood Drive which is in uh the great Harbors uh Community uh moved I've lived there for five years but moved down here full-time about a year and a half ago and through that time have followed um kind of the the nitrogen load the Estuary cleanup and I'll just say I'm I'm a super fan of everything that everybody's trying to throw at this from flushing of the estuaries to uh nitrogen reduction alternate I think I
think solving problems like this do come with like a full toolbox three things struck me one is some of the numbers I see are um it seems like a these are all the right things to be doing but some of them uh certainly take a lot of time right sewering is going to take a lot of time and it's going to take a huge paycheck um and it's going to be in my best Boston accent Wicked disruptive right we're going to have the streets dug up everywhere I don't disagree with it mind
you I don't disagree with it but um it got me to thinking like is there just another way to look at how this might work as well and here we go to our philosophy right I I pondered whether we could look at something that could be done faster maybe less costly and and again stop reducing the nitrogen in the Estuary faster um if we looked at kind of human waste the same way we look at our own trash can cans or recycling right the way I looked at it
is is right now when I have my septic tank pumped it's the advice is every 2 to three years and uh it's a cost of about 250 bucks so I've got my waist sitting in there for two to three years with that nitrogen just flowing in not a scientist but fundamentally that's the way I thought about and I thought well what if we could speed that up instead of 2 and A2 years or three years what if we collected that waste and got it out
of my septic tank um faster like four times a year or even monthly would there be an economic model could be could there be an infrastructure way to do that and there would be be an economic model that allowed us to do that in a way that was again e equally as expensive or less expensive um I think the answer is maybe so when you think of how the trucks get dispersed nowadays right they've got one they're doing the the septic up in north
fet then they're in East fou then they're in rcoid ETC super inefficient look at how the dump trucks go around our neighborhoods one house at a time right in great Harbors we're only about a third that are full-time there so maybe X number of times a year you're just running around house by house for those houses that are full-time and maybe there's a little increased service there during the during the summer at 250 bucks right some of that expense that I'm paying is for the septic person
to dump that and I think they pay the town of fouth to get rid of that so septic and I think it's 105 bucks aund a thousand or something like that so maybe there's a way to eliminate that cost to the septic guys and make their Roots more efficient that they could get to maybe 50 bucks a house just some back of the cocktail napkin numbers if they ran at 50 bucks a house I'll give you another number that I think I saw in the newspaper which is if we do the alternate uh septic systems
I think the the fee was around 15 to 25 Grand 15 to 35 G for the alternate septic systems somebody can challenge me on that number um and there's about 5,000 homes that might be suitable for that so the total there is 100 if you average it out 25 Grand it's 125 million bucks if we took that same number right if we could get this down to $50 a household um it cost us about 250 Grand to pump those 5,000 homes and they're all condensed right they're all in these
neighborhoods around the estuaries that would make the annual cost the annual cost if we pump those houses a million bucks four times a year right so if we then go if we then keep on going we say all right if it's a million bucks four times a year right we could do that four times a year for 125 years and still meet that same $125 million or we could just get more efficient on how we do that we could pump it 12 times a year year I'm going to I'm going to stop there
um I just think there's a model there I'm I'm about to tell you there's a fundamental flaw good in your concept a septic tank works like this when you flush your toilet that water goes into the septic tank and then it overflows into the leech field yep okay the tank is not an empty tank it's a full tank okay the nitrogen is in the urine it's not in the solid matter which collects
the the septic tank yeah that's primarily carbon okay the what you're sort of quasy proposing with would be what's called a tight tank which it every time it gets 23s full an alarm goes off somebody's got to come out and pump it down having sat on the board of health and having seen people who Title 5 doesn't allow tight tanks except by a variance of the border of health and when that happens I will just give you an example um the
folks at the tides Motel down there right on the end of the harbor yeah in know Harbor they had an issue about getting their new septic system in and we let them go to a tight tank they literally were pumping that almost daily in the summertime so you go to a tight tank it there's a lot more pumping than you're identifying yeah and then if you don't go to a tight tank you're not getting the nitrogen so you're not helping out the fundamental problem which is the nitrogen in in the PE and the urine which goes to the septic field and then goes into the
ground and is the tank because it's not a tight tank does that tank fill up just naturally because of groundwater and rain water or is it the when you buy your tank it's empty you get it pumped out yeah it's empty and then you got to put they're usually 1,500 gallon tanks so you if your toilet's dumping out couple of gallons at a time and you're taking some showers and using the dishwasher or whatever washing dishes it might take you a week to two weeks to get it back up to the
point where it's now functioning as a septic system solid settle out urine urine and water go out to the septic field yeah and that all made that all made sense um I tried to jam in some averages right if it's average around 50 gallons a day per person per household I'm a family of three we're at 150 gallons a day that's every 10 days we'd have to be pumping every 10 days and Miles that's not enough if it was every you know I just thought
there was a model there but I understand what exactly what you're saying anybody from coming in I just the the what your proposing is that we capture the carbon yeah and we don't need to capture the carbon we need to capture the nitrogen and and right out of the gate I appreciate just the town and stuff where I can come in and present like that that's good so thanks for the time we we always give people people a chance Ed facts and figures I don't have a question for you but I have a comment on what you said there are systems that people install that are two tank one is
for the gray water and goes to the tidal 5 type of leech field and the other is a tight tank only for the solids and the urine and they're pumped based on averages and an alarm that says it's full so it does take all of the urine all of the solids and puts it in a tight tank you need two tanks to make that work the whether is for your showers your sinks and and your laundry and what
have you so it's a two tank system and there is at least one installer in town that pushes those and has some of them out in the field and so but you know it's it's an expansion of your concept but that that's what you would need to make that work yeah you'd have to pay for the excavation of the tankage by you know at which point you may as well put the I anyways I'm going to ask Corin a direct question Corin um with the Buzzards Bay Coalition and they did a
demonstration project hard to the Corin with the Buzzards Bay Coalition and they did a a a a demonstration in West Falmouth where they looked at a number of different things I think we had a couple of gray water or tight tanks as part of that do you want to speak to any experiences sure um so we had actually 11 of them go in um so quite quite a few of them only on the board of health only permitted
permitted them for seasonal homes um if the alarm is operating properly and homeowners Don't Unplug it uh they can work very well at isolating the nitrogen in the Blackwater tank uh we have had some experiences uh where homeowners will unplug it or neighbors will unplug it or it'll get unplugged at the end of the season and forget to plug it in and so what happens is that the black water spills over into the gray water and that's how we catch it is cuz
we we're sampling that gray water for the the total nitrogen do you have a sense of how frequently in the summer they have to pump them out so for seasonal activity probably two to three times a summer t a summer and those are 2,000 gallon tanks 2,000 okay yep okay thank you anybody else on the board questions on this concept okay thank you appreciate the opportunity good you there people at home that were thinking the same thing yeah oh yeah
no to see you yeah sorry have a flat not on my truck on the center's truck uh what I'm going to run through now
this is a draft I'm looking for your input talk for a while as we were developing Geo boundaries for all these watersheds where would we go with it and I said that you know in the early part of the year I wanted to try to get in front of the selectman explain to them where we're at with you know Watershed planning and Geo boundaries and everything else so Watershed planning approach how will Geo boundaries be
implemented quickly um are the mass DPS nitrogen sensitive areas there are 30 of them on the cape 14 of them are in Falmouth some of us know that but just make sure and then the big picture is that a watershed plan has to be created by the town and approved by the D for each of those 14 watersheds the big items in the plan thank you Jonathan for summarizing this I I've C your notes um there has to be a description of all
planned actions to achieve the necessary nitrogen load reduction that can include a number of things not just sewers or IAS and then there has to be an implementation schedule with activities that have to occur within fiveyear increments so there's on a 20-year cycle once you get your plan approved year five year 10 year 15 year 20 you have to see where you're at if you miss your targets if you miss your targets you have to have already set in place what's
known as a contingency plan and the contingency plan can't count on shellfish or Inlet widening or fertilizer bands or storm water management it has to be done with sewers and IA systems that's that's what they tell you we also has to be a monitoring plan that goes into it and you have to have the costs associated with doing that I had an opportunity last night to go down to
um Brewster uh to the Brewster Pond Coalition they're one of the signatories onto the Watershed plan for Pleasant Bay they they've actually crossed their fiveyear threshold and some have done their update plan because of the land use there they're primarily in Brewster relying upon a reduction in fertilizer use at two large golf courses one Municipal one private and they've actually achieved their first five-year
objective so um just identifying that so in essence what we've been doing on the water quality over the last uh several months since last summer um going Watershed by Watershed is looking at in essence the contingency plan you know what what does it look like if you don't get credits from anything else um again kudu to Jonathan for producing this graph I've used it multiple times now um it's the timeline our first plan needs
to be prepared and submitted by 2027 initially that's going to be for Great Pond and uh Little Pond the next one after that is 2028 2029 and 2030 going across the top there and we staggered them out because the monitoring and the follow through is such that if you did all of been one year you'd really be overloading every five years of workload to get there so there's some time between where we are now and when we have to go in there
but the town still needs to retain a consultant Amy I think you have an article coming in you put an article in I know it's not the warrant is not finalized the war is not finalized but the Wastewater Department did submit an article for the first sort of Step of getting funding to hire somebody and start making these plans because the plans will in incorporate other things Beyond uh what we've been doing we'll have the cost they have some other things in them so what we've been doing under this
contingency plan is evaluating how big an area may require IIA septic system upgrades we evaluated each of the 14 areas we assume that sewers will go into those areas defined by the comprehensive Wastewater management plan which at this point is quite um it's it's a well seasoned plan um and we are revisiting whether or not there are additional sewers have an advantage over
doing all the IAS but we're not quite at the point to March forward with any of that we assumed that the advanced IA system reduces nitrogen to 10 milligrams per liter we essentially looked at the contingency plan which I've already mentioned twice okay um at the level we're working on so far we don't try to take any credit for fertilizer uh actions aquaculture storm water management per
reactive barriers um tight tags uh um and um urine diversion is in my my mind urine diversion shows up once it's approved by the D as an advanced IIA not as an alternative so that's why I didn't list urine diversion at this time okay we used water consumption records for individual Parcels um if you use the me data you get to one number if you use the Cape
Cod commissions number you get to another um but they're they're not that far apart in terms of the thing so we're getting the big picture here so geob boundary deal delineation um for each Watershed we have delineated the number of parcels that would need to upgrade to an advanced IIA the boundary around those Parcels defines the limit and known in the geographic information system GIS Parlin as a Geo boundary and event the final delineation of the geob boundaries will be determined during the development of
the specific Watershed plants so by the Numbers there are 20761 Parcels in the 14 watersheds townwide I think there's in the range of 23 to 24,000 Parcels total so this is a pretty substantial amount of the town there are 13,716 single family homes in in those watersheds there are 7,258
Parcels within the proposed Geo boundaries of which 5,833 are single family homes with the proposed Geo boundaries and for those of you that have an interest in it we've posted at our website um each one of the watersheds that got analyzed there's much more data and information on loads nitrogens you know loads for household water usage and everything else so where do we get to we get to this this map in which you see the
existing sewer service areas are um that's sort of purpley color I should learn what these colors are um there's planned sewer areas which is the Tasser area we're working on now there's proposed sewer areas which fall out from the comprehensive Wastewater management plan going towards the east uh long 28 uh and generally south of um 28 then these areas in blue going with this contingency planning sort of approach
that we've done um are the suggested IA Geo boundaries so that's where we've gotten to with the work we've been doing up in front of the board of Select in front of the board of Select because there's a couple of big items uh out there and um I just feel it's incumbent for our board to tell you what we've been doing and then get from you some feedback on how we can approach a couple of things there's two big questions that are yet to be answered one is how do geo boundaries get implemented I'm not asking anybody to
make that decision tonight but I think it warrant some discussion going forward because once we start writing Watership plans we are going to need to identify the steps that we're going to have to take in order to implement those GE boundaries I've got three ways I can conceptualize that happens one is through something involving town meeting and a vote of the general public you know to accept them and and agree to them that could be zoning overlay districts or
um some other mechanism um the other one is the Board of Health regulations the Board of Health is currently uh finalizing uh an initial public health regulation for new construction and certain other specialized conditions inside these areas that they would have to update um until we get the plans in place and the other big question is what is the cost and who pays and the water quality management Comm has been rested with that a little bit um we're in the
early stages of trying to develop more complete overall schedule of where sewers would actually go in what projected costs by the year that they might go in and then there would obviously have to be a meeting with the finance uh folks to figure out for the cost how does it get paid and how much gets born by a homeowner how much gets picked up through some other form of subsidy so that's that's basically what I came to tell you all about tonight um I probably should throw a slide there
that says comments or whatever reaction it's a great plan so far yeah again I'm looking for some feedback if you think that there's something that we didn't say that needs you didn't say I don't okay I'm going to Ping Jonathan you're next so the only thing is you have the contingency where we're looking at sewer plus IIA but in the base case plan we'd
be doing other activities that would yes in theory reduce the need for as many um IIA homes things like that so we know the other towns are successfully implementing these other types of ways to reduce nitrogen so it seems likely that we'll be able to take advantage of those too so that would be almost a worst case scenario for how many homes we would need to use IAS for try to be clear that when we actually make Watershed plants they will include widening Agriculture and those other
items which will reduce the geob boundary but we still going to need to find a mechanism to implement the geob boundaries and the other I was just going to make one more quick point on on the town of Falmouth website there's a mapping tool link rgis I think it'd be really good to get some of this information the watersheds the proposed Geo boundaries so people can start looking at these and understanding where they fit in the grand scheme knowing that it will Chang somewhat but some of these are fixed boundaries and I think the more they're educated as to where
these boundaries are the better off will all be quick comment to that um the town head of GIS coordinator who has since elected to move on I think she's working one day a week right now so until we get a person in there getting things added to the town's GIS layers is um other things are sorted Tak in priority but we'll we'll get it there you have a comment I do have a comment
um it's important to note that the contingency plan is based on the me present load reduction requirement and doesn't take into consideration any growth or future buildout so we have to work into the Watershed plant correct so those are the 20year old numbers that that's working on which is the initial Target now I'll come back to Ed now a couple of points that you know it's a huge problem as and I think the more we can educate people and town government
bodies about this the better and the sooner is is much better the whole concept of Geo boundaries is something that we've worked on since last summer Watershed by Watershed the Board of Health is considering as Steve mentioned a rule that will require IAS possibly townwide um for all new construction that's the first and easiest lwh hanging fruit trigger for where IAS would go in
there's a whole series after that of well when else do you require them how will you get 5,000 7,000 10,000 IAS installed when will you require people to do it and in considering that Geo boundaries would be the minimal number maybe even a little lower Watershed WI which some have espoused would be a larger number and townwide would get into the 15,000 plus
the costs are astronomical who pays all of the issues associated with that it's it's nice to have just the bullet points because that really summarized the key decisions but in each one of those is a massive amount of decisions guidance and recommendations that will need to be adopted and paid for so there's a lot of elaboration beyond that I think to Jonathan's point of getting it out there
for more of the the public to see it's one thing to go to the town website the water quality management website to see it but I think it makes sense to start a publicity campaign you know poster boards with the geob boundaries and the watersheds in the library in the town hall Lobby maybe other places around town that may get more traffic um because yeah the public is just starting to hear about this and
getting concerned and saying what the heck are they talking about so the more we can get out there to better are you suggesting a subcommittee that you want to [Laughter] chair I I I think I'm willing to work on that whole need with u hopefully some other folks you know I know Jonathan's done some yman work with getting these things together and you know simple poster boards that people can stop and stare and look at or maybe a running Loop of um Scott mcan's
explanation of what sewers and IAS and septic is that the Community Access channel was running for a long time uh on a regular basis they they kind of stopped but it was about I don't know I forget now 15 20 minutes where he gave a beautiful class in the technology the need and how this all works but something like that that might be playing in a loop in the town hall Lobby in the library so anyway I'll shut up Tom went back and forth you're best all right
um I hope people will excuse this I know football season is almost over but I'm going to use some football analogies the absolute most important thing we can make clear to our decision makers and the public is what's the goal line the goal line is to reach the tmdls for each Watershed healthy estuaries right So within each of our 14 watersheds we need to reach that goal
and that that goal line is moving because as you already alluded to we're using data that's over that's 20 years old and I can promise you things have changed the other part is what's the game plan and I think the underlying game plan since last summer when we started drawing the Geo boundaries was what's the absolute minimum number of households that we can demand this
upgrade from and reach the tmdls so I would maybe have slide four really focus on again it's a poor analogy but I'm calling that the goal lines and the game plan how we're going to get there CU I people and people do stop you on the street in fou it still and say what the hell's going on as as Ed has already pointed out a couple times um we need to really make it clear
what the forcing function is here what's driving this thing and and how we're doing our very best to get there with the minimum financial and physical disruption possible whether it's putting in sewers or whether the individual homeowner is going to have to dig up his yard to upgrade and I'll stop there Steve um if can you go back to the slide with the number of parcels water shed was by the numbers um it doesn't if if I was on the
select board my first question would be where does sewer where's the line for sewers there and does Geo boundaries include the sewers or is it the nitrogen sensitive is it just the IAS this is just the IAS I I need to be clear by that yeah I I can make this IIA Watershed I Watershed IA is by the number something and and then my main question would be you have said correctly several times
uh I mean I'm pretty sure I take your word for it that I'm sure I'm going to agree with seers take out twice as much nitrogen per household as the good IAS yeah roughly yep and uh you can draw a graph of the cost of IAS and the cost of sewers versus lot size and there's a crossover point but I would ask you how and if you
don't want to give it to me in the talk give me a written report in a week um you don't want me on a select board um that would tell me how the decision is made for the number of sewers versus the number of IAS for instance if you increased the sewers by 20% maybe you could decrease the IAS by 40% it how do you make that economic tradeoff we that will be
forthcoming Kristen's been looking at Street by Street number of lots distance between homes linear footage and and and has been building something around should the sewer what happens if we decide to add more sewering then we currently have agreed to what's that look like what's the respective cost and as you say there's a spot where the homes so far apart it costs too much for each home to
justify it so we're working on that decision point is critical to the whole timeline it is it is and it's sort of a danger to posting things in the library until you've made that decision because you'll get a whole lot of questions from people who won't be in the well we we could we could defer any further conversation on this till after we've hired a consultant and get Watershed plans cuz the water plans will delve into a lot of that stuff so that means it would be we're 18 or 20 months
away before we can tell anybody whether or not they may or may not have to put an IIA in and you have Realtors and homeowners and property transfer going on and people are like how How likely am I going to have to do this or not and I would say that a reasonably intelligent person can look at any one of those geob boundaries and if there's smack dab in the middle of it they probably should be considering as they go forward that they're going to be in the zone if you're on one of the outlying fringes of
the contingency geob boundary you you might want to gamble it say I'll I'll I'll do that when my time comes and and we will get there in the Watershed plans and the last thing is I totally agree with Ed that you should mention what the Board of Health is thinking of doing and what the fresh ponds committee probably wants them to do okay tell them to ask the French the fresh ponds committee what they want
right Best For Last John um I'll just make one comment could you go back to the one that shows the Geo boundaries so I think as we worked we started working up in West fouth on the Buzzard's Bay Side and we're working our way around and all of a sudden when we got to the southern facing ponds uh the geob boundaries got enormous y and one of the things that I would encourage people to think about is our original
comprehensive Wastewater plan is now many years old I don't know what the date of it is it's at least 10 years old and so when we're now thinking about we had a plan uh in that comprehensive Wastewater plan to sewer those areas in in green and and red eventually but I think it's a we're at a point now now having looked in a preliminary way at the geob boundaries that we need to rethink that in a major
way what should be that ratio uh of sewering to IAS and when I look at those huge blue areas I think you know we really need to take a hard look at how we've decided to do that want to come up to this you want to go that micone I Doug Brown select board I would
just make an observation that the um the language says PL sewer area for the tiit and uh acap pescuit area and proposed for the uh Sea Coast but if we subject the people in the proposed sewer area to putting in IAS now and sewers later seems like that's really unfair I know that the Board of Health has got language that says you you won't have to do it you
won't have to do the IAS if the sewers coming with it five years but I don't think that that's a practical approach I think all these homes that are targeted for sewer I'm pretty sure we're going to be sewering those so I think those people should get some sort of variance and I think the Ia implementation should be in the areas where we don't think we're going to sewer just an observation CU it's going to be hard to convince people that they should pay twice in a short span of
time maybe we'd have to accelerate the planning did you make the joint meeting can't remember I did not I was out of town so uh we've got minutes from that we we wrestle quite a bit with that so um your concern is valid the five years is a tough one yeah yeah maybe we can accelerate the timeline I think they exceeded to 15 years but I personally think even that's too short I only saw the r five so I think it should be 20 or 30 okay you guys are having a discussion back and forth that he's not on the
microphone anybody else would care to make a comment over what we might say to the select board Kim um Kim comart the F Coalition just one other observation in terms of game plan is you know one of the uh things we bumped up against with urine diversion is not having appliances just a practical issue and uh and we then we think about Workforce and who's going to install all these things
so um I think attention should start you should start giving attention now to Workforce Development if you're going to if you're going to install one I if one IA septic system got installed every day and you did 7,000 of them it would take it did 250 days a year it's work days a year it would take 28 years so you've got to have a lot of installers who get trained to do this work and a
lot of the installers what I'm learning are retiring a lot of them are retiring so you got to you got to start thinking about Workforce Development getting into the vot ed schools get people trained to do this work because you can have the best plans but if you don't have people to install these systems it's not going to happen I got you
next Matt Hanley surara Foundation if you look at this map you can see like in the southern watersheds you can see the the Ia system stretch right to our boundary and that we have nitrogen coming in from Otis Air Force Base or Joint Base Cape Cod whichever you choose you when it comes down to paying for it I'm quite sure Doug you the board of selectman is looking at the base saying like you need to start paying for your contribution to our Pro our nitrogen
problem I'm going to cut you off because previously the base did a study on their nitrogen and they previously gave the town a large sum of money as an offset for their nitrogen and they've been monitoring what they've been discharging since then the numbers have come down oh okay oh I'm glad to hear that um other thing is I just don't want you go on and on yeah no no that that was about it the other other thing I've brought up multiple times is that we need at large nitrogen cont contributors um and we need to stop
saying households it's not single family households this is a town problem the single family multi Family Apartments nursing homes schools everyone's contributing nitrogen and each one of those need to be called out separately and I don't know what the cost is per person or per bedroom and how they do it for larger facilities but we need to look at that so you come back to the buy the numbers mhm I distinguish between 7,258 Parcels that are within the
boundaries that will have to do something M so that includes the apartment buildings the more commercial establishments on and then I just have to single family homes because some of us have been focusing on the cost per homeowner not on the cost for uh an apartment or or a condo or whatever okay I appreciate that you uh clarified that but from I go to these meetings I've been coming to these meetings for three years straight and I I didn't I didn't read that properly so people following at home they're going to have questions
so when I make statements I'm I'm speaking for the homeowners at home that don't have the experience of the board or myself try to be more more clear when I get to that point I appreciate that thank you Amy Amy L Wastewater superintendent uh Kristen you said that the Geo boundaries are like the tmdls they are to to address the the current load um and so they they don't take into account future I was could to be
reminded of that um and I just wanted to reiterate the the question of sewering and how how potential how changing plans for sewer May might affect the IIA boundaries and how you talk about that to to the select board um you know if if you're giving this presentation before those things are resolved how that gets addressed in there um this makes it sound like you
know this is the IIA area and there is some flexibility I'm more than willing again folks want us to hold off until we get somebody on board and look at all this stuff on Watershed by Watershed we can come back in two or three years and revisit you know where where this G the GE boundary is going to be I just I feel like we've done a fair amount of work to sort of start you know not hard def finding it but you know I go
to the map I mean there's areas in there that you know you're probably okay other areas particularly the great pond water shed I mean that's one of the biggest That Old kunet River and the load that comes out of that is a very very big load um same on the woid end they're big some of the other ones are a little more manageable but I just want I want to deal with the audience I'll come back to you okay whatever I just have a quick question
you have to walk up to the microphone because a quick question hopefully it's appropriate I know uh we're sewer installation septic installation I understand we're also uh doing widening the inlet on bournes Pond there as a nitrogen remediation as well I would then be looking at if I think of return and investment Roi right I'm like what is the ROI of doing that as well widening the inlet yeah um to create a better flushing so there
there's way back there's some information on that but if you're going down should we widen the other inlets with back at the me study they looked at the advantages of widening different inlets the only two that they found any advantage to it was for little pawn and for bournes pawn and on little Pawn the advantage of it was not at that time great enough to make that the primary focus instead we sewer that entire area um you know at some point as we come forward and do the Little Pond
Watershed plan I would anticipate whoever we hire is going to say you know if you widen the inlet you can get this other level of improvement to water quality and it's got a cost of yeah okay yeah cool thank you but there are also fewer IAS there because of the okay Kent so as I think about this Steve there's and we we have a couple of uh IAS that are established and we have this kind of
very different strategy of urine diversion that I think wisely you're saying let's make it into an IIA at some point if it gets there and if there are fixtures that people would find acceptable there's going to be such a huge cost differential uh between digging up your yard putting in a $50,000 you know tank system and maybe investing five to 7,000 in in fixtures and
plumbing to get an IIA that I I almost think we should break that out into a separate category that's hanging out there uh to maybe get some motivation to get it approved it's a good idea I can put a slide in I can add a slide in here about Ur diversion you know it's certainly gotten a lot of public
attention and I think people would probably appreciate it I would Steve you would have to help me to create that slide because I I don't go to your committee meeting so I don't I I don't know how to c how to State urine diversion where it is and how it fits in I think you know a candid assessment of what are the pluses what are the minuses cost is a big plus there's certainly plenty of challenges you do with all the urine and so for I think the elephant those committee meetings have slowed down to one a month
because we're waiting for the funding issue to be solved and there's no firm date on that because of the expenditure on private property but the the really big elephant in the room I mean I agree with you that they cost much less what isn't clear is how their performance expressed as milligrams per leader compared to IAS what that will be you need that so I as an IIA but I don't
want to keep going I I there are a lot of unknowns I keep saying we have to create Watershed plans and that's going to take you know we've been using Kristen on a you know a part-time basis to help to understand the scale of what we're looking at as the Watershed plans get developed they're going to pick up things like where is your diversion where where where is its approval status you know we've got like I said 20 months before the first one goes
out got you know two or three years so I would hope that between now and 20 months or now in a couple years from now that there is some positive determination on urine diversion and that can be rolled into the plans as they come out I mean I think in terms of the effect on en loading it's not going to get approved as an IIA unless it meets the equivalent of the 10 milligrams per liter right so we can just assign it that value I'm not
I'm not I'm not involved in discuss the cost issue that's where it really might become significant because if you're facing putting in a thousand you know systems on people's properties versus a thousand people upgrading their toilets yeah and again if if the UD program marches forward and they've reach to it some point where the D makes a determination on it and plumbing board
makes a determination on it and it's there then a homeowner has now got a choice of what he wants to do I I don't think we're going to turn around a mandate that everybody's got to put a urine diversion toilet in or mandate that they've got to put in something specific uh but Doug Brown again I think Ken's point is a good one and I know there's a lot of questions that can't really be
definitively answered and you're almost wondering if it's a appropriate time to do a report but this is one item where you could say it's not yet been determined but we suspect there might be great savings if we could get these things approved maybe the select board might consider sending a letter to who I'm saying I'm saying a slide that addresses pluses minuses opens questions it out between you and Steve create a slide for me and maybe that would be one action item that we could make you know
positive consideration Jonathan Jonathan got his finger up before you Ed so he's he's he's one year twoo um one thought is for for the maps here it'd be nice to see an alternative scenario that looks at increasing the sewer capacity up until the maximum allowable for the outfall pipe and then show on our Geo boundaries for that IAS how that changes as we increase sewer how that blue polygon
decreases in size as a scenario alternative to what we have now we are working on that and and expect to come back and show a revised Geo boundary for now what what what what we've gotten to is what I keep calling that um you know if you make year five and you're not hitting your targets right the contingency what might it look like the contingency plan um but but but again I I try to get to the end here right now it's to at least to me I don't
know how we Implement Geo boundaries it's a that's a little bit of a you know H how do how do the how does the select board Andor the town managers office whoever it is how do they want how do they how do they Envision or how would they like to go about doing that because it's going to have to be done okay you know there's a couple ways of doing it but how is it how is it going to get get done okay whatever size that Geo boundary
is uh Ed had his head up first yeah Jonathan mentioned one of the points I was going to make so thank you for that and the interest of time too I I think one important thing to remember is the goal is to clean up the estuaries and get them back to health I'd like to see that happen while I'm still on this side of the grass and you know looking down 2ear five year well maybe we'll get it approved in a few years we need to start
thinking about what can we do now and the Board of Health is expeditiously looking at a first pick of that lwh hanging fruit with new construction I I think just as a perspective what are some of the other towns around here doing Mash B our neighbor has put in an edict that within 300 ft of all surface waters uh and now it's within a th000 ft they've revised that but just two years ago you got to put in an
IA when new construction increased flow or system failure let's go across to the vineyard Tisbury has the tightest RS that I am aware of in 2022 three years ago I guess now uh Watershed District defined or and they are looking at possibly extending that boundary to 1,000 ft of any water body but they require IAS starting three years ago new construction increased flow added a
bedroom or something substantial Improvement to the house system failure and here's a big one transfer of property those are what we refer to as the triggers of when an IIA is required they require that they use they at that time they defined the best available technology 13 mgram per liter now we're looking at some systems that hopefully will perform at 10 or better and seem to be doing that we need to do
something quickly new construction is a start that'll give us maybe a 100 or so a year dog on the estuaries are a mess and we need to try and move forward with something that's going to happen and I think IAS is one of the things we're going to have to do it we're just dancing around not biting the bullet and putting in some mandates and triggers sooner rather than later there are already about 300 to 350 IAS in fouth there's almost 3,000 keepe
wide people have done it people are doing it some of the technology is a little dated and it doesn't perform better than 19 or 25 milligrams per liter of nitrogen uh output but dog on it we need to think about we got to move these things along quicker or we're never going to live to see it cleaner our grandchildren won't see thank you uh I guess I don't know between
Steve and Tom who had their hand up first Steve can go first and then I'll Steve um I like what John just said but I don't want it to be evaded by saying we're working on a fancy map in principle on the back of an envelope you know what the flow is from all the proposed and planned sewers I think 1.7 you know what would be could go up to with the proposed outfall so you know the
difference and by your 2:1 um figure you can immediately calculate with simple arithmetic how many IAS that reduces without worrying about where they are just a ballpark figure we need more ballpark figures without right away without waiting months for fancy maps that that gives people people something they can think with in all the other areas that need to be thought about at the same
time okay Tom yes I'm interested in this implementation and who decides when and where it's going to be implemented and Ed you may have mentioned in Tisbury how was the decision made to to set these standards was it Board of Health or was it that that was the approving of Authority as far as I understand it they made the final decision what other Town boards or committees had input into it
but the authority that has the power under State Statute is the Board of Health okay because that's the point I was going to make here the Board of Health can decide at some point enough is enough as you said in our lifetimes we'd like to see something happen and I almost had the sense in our joint meeting that they're sort of moving that way that and because they're a regulatory board we're an Advisory Board all we can do is suggest what should
happen um we could end up in a situation where the Board of Health says it's time to do something and this is what we're going to do and they'll hold hearings but they also have the legal right and responsibility to decide to to abide by their decision and require the citizens of a given town to abide by their decision if they can justify it so going do a fact check here Corin every other community that you're aware of has has
gone through the Board of Health yes sir yeah that's that that includes wam Mar and Mar yeah yeah so that the the the the model is the Board of Health yeah that's what I'm just want people in general to know that that's the 800 lb gorilla that's back in the closet over here I'm hoping that the select board has some insights on how they'd like to go forward yeah just a comment historically when the Board of Health sewered new Silver
Beach they did not decide by five people appointed by the board of Selectmen to sewer 230 houses in new Silver Beach they took that boundary to town meeting and had town meeting approv it right that's why I listed there there's there's a past history I mean Amy over the last C years has brought a sewer Expansion Project before town meeting several times and you know going for
funding and whatnot so there's better Town town meeting input and vote around the issues you had your hand up Amy I my question was time to move on okay good so I will take several suggestions here
somebody can produce a UD slide I'll add that in to hey I'll work on it Steve am I doing that with you I guess so I'll send you something and then you can pick it apart good [Applause] night um item three three is status of Outreach on septic tax credit changes uh brief
reminder this board went before the selectman and made a suggestion to the septic tax credit changes they said sounds good go ahead with it um Jonathan's had some time off I've just arranged with Jonathan to catch up with him on Tuesday next week to look at where we go but was it you Ed somebody today said that down Cape somebody put in an article David VI did he submitted the bill No but somebody else down Cape
put put one in two that's what I said no that was for a sewer connection and it's the same sort of non-refundable tax credit but it has less money than what's already in there per homes I don't see the point of it yeah so I think we're at the point where you know we've got a couple of months to make sure we've got support that means coming up with a plan to outreach to all the other communities on the cape all the representatives and whatnot so right Doug Brown has been instrumental in sort
of reaching out to the other boards the board of the cap Island Municipal leaders Association did agree that we're going to sorry I should just get you a seat up here and give you a microphone so the uh cap and all Municipal leaders Association of which I'm currently the president did agree that we're going to use our email blast to send that work that Jonathan put together to everybody on all the select boards and all the uh town councilors I thought it was already done but apparently it's still in the works
we have the uh Mass Municipal association meeting in this week I think little busy and and I I think it'd be good to be able to get multiple select boards to support it you know get multiple representatives to support it Dave is we're fortunate that Dave is a republican because he's on several committees whereas when there's a lot of Democrats on get on all the Committees that are important to us so and he and he's made a strong commitment to you
know work with us and help to try to get it through so one of the key things on this is the way the bill is currently written it applies to principal homeowners only one of the questions we need to kick around is should it apply to Second homeowners because we're really looking at getting people to do things thought occurred to me that that you could maybe leave the um type of credit that's in there for second homeowners but for the principal homeowners who are here all
year round and generating more nitrogen you make it a a little sweeter deal I don't I don't know how that might or might not work but um there's a lot of second homes that we're going to going to want to see get upgraded so I'm not sure that's where we're at on that one um like I said I was in um uh Brewster last night uh at their Pond uh Coalition annual sort of meeting or whatever I didn't speak publicly but afterwards I introduced myself and noted
where we were at with this septic tax credit and the town manager said to get back in touch with him and you know he'd helped facilitate it at at their end okay um the other thing that we've had rattling around in front of us is this question of fairness and setting aside the fact that we can't spend money on private property um thanks to Tom for working on the the
the wording of this um I don't know that we do we have this on a slide I can put it on a slide if you want it yeah I think that might be helpful so this is a sort of a a proposed recommendation from this board to the select board relative to um costs and fairness okay Tom do you want to you want to go
go read this um I'm hoping yeah I mean I could yeah I feel guilty reading it to people we we have we have an audience we have people sitting here so well that was why I was hoping it was going to be up on the screen and they wouldn't have to follow myed presentation all right Kristen just found it yeah yeah yeah so um just by way of
introduction underlying theme here I think that's concerned several of us is that the way the IIA upgrade procedure is going to work is that we're going to call on a large number of people but still it's a fraction of homeowners in fouth to undergo not just the disruption your life of having your yard dug up for the installation of an IA but some pretty substantial costs and
the costs all up to debate but e it's going to be tens of thousands of dollars and we'll just let it go at that the irony here is that the result of this upgrading of the septic systems is we have to assume is overall Improvement in water quality the environmental health of our Coastal ements whether it's on the Buzzard's Bay side or the ven downside of town and so what we've been wrestling with for quite a while is to
try to figure out a more equitable distribution of this burden where as I said right now it's set up so that a substantial fraction but still a fraction of people in F with are going to have to bear this burden uh in return for the town as a whole benefiting it and I deliberately cast a net with this and and and I apologize it is it is pretty um wordy but the opening paragraph
basically um repeats what I just said and um let's see am I set to run things yeah um the second paragraph talks about the negative aspects to the homeowner and we've mentioned a couple of these things already in meetings there uh and and today um there's tax credits there's um a couple of other situations where there
could be some Financial relief um but in the larger scheme of things it's it's small and in many cases many of the home owners you've heard discussion back and forth here about primary uh residences and principal owner occupied houses being only eligible for this and there's a lot of second homes here on uh not just in fouth but um capewide and so I added the sentence here current a phrase at the end currently many homeowners
won't be eligible for any financial help at all um and then in in the third paragraph um I'm calling for the fouth select board to actively pursue or encourage initiate you could use a bunch of different uh positive um verbs here um ways to really focus on how we might achieve a more
equitable distribution the burden taxpayers in general across Falmouth and the taxpayers that are having to be um directly burdened with this as I said some of it's just the disruption um the long-term effect is the financial effects and I think I hope everybody's had a chance to read through that and comments I did make a mistake at the end and and actually Ken is the one that caught me on this it's supposed to be affected homeowners I looked at it
three or four times I was rushing to get this out to to the U committee members last night and it should say affected homeowners instead of affected homeowners but first I guess comments from the board yep um start down with we'll start with Jonathan I mean I fully support what you've written so I have nothing to add that's good John um my only comment would be that I think the the board of the select board
realizes that historically when we've sewered areas that we have as a town putting in a lot of the the hardware at the cost of the entire town and also uh had a 370 split of the of the U cost of the individual townhous through their betterment and I think we need to think on that sort of same scale
of how we're going to help out those people who are going to be putting in I IAS and so that uh people who will be required to be sewered uh that there'll be a comparable financial help to the people that uh put in IA so and the challenge of how we do that is considerable so John what in this
last paragraph I could literally put in historically or as an example in the past the town has shared some of the cost of this by you know a betterment split or whatever phrase we could certainly fit that in the paragraph I'm sure the Selectmen are well aware that that's well I know they are I I actually if I could I I wrote wrote this in the tone of as if I was sent writing a letter to the Enterprise that was going to
get the it's good I think it's good you know if if you don't feel it needs John's no you know I leave it as is Steve I really like it I think it's really well written thank you I totally agree with what John just said that it wouldn't hurt to put in something about making treating IIA people fairly compared to sewer people yeah well I as I said that be comprehend that'll be very easy for me to add um and you also
might mention another good idea that John Waterbury brought up in an earlier meeting that and also lets the select board know that there's a some specific ideas that we've heard of that might help them desde namely John's idea of mass purchasing right which has the AU advantages of Maintenance lowering the price because it's a mass purchase and monitoring and and then I just I have
one nitpicking correction maybe no no it's really nit it's it's in the Fifth Line of the first paragraph Was it removed by typically employed Technologies I think you mean title5 pardon me but sewers is another typically employed technology for sure that you don't mean in this context um yeah I wasn't sure why you didn't just say septic systems
standard yeah I could say septic Technologies or something like that because I was that was the focus of yeah but I think it's great good I did have currently employed Technologies but then there's IAS and other things and so I struck that and put it in typically because it's widespread rafy I like it you like it Ed so Steve's point just you know you could just say
Title Five septic systems because that's the that's the technology the day yeah assess pools are pretty much gone as a few but title FES these are better than title FES just I I think the document you you directed it towards the select board right which is a governing body but I think it also needs to serve and will you know probably any Enterprise or on the cable TV at the very least and you know you're reaching out to the general
public and I think the the things that we have been doing people are starting to pay more attention to this issue over the past year year and a half you know we've been zeroing in on this thing and getting there we talked about the septic tax credit and you know I don't think the general public and probably a lot of people in the room are aware that Dave Vieira has filed a bill to revise that it's just a placeholder language to be determined but there is an actual bill on the docket at the
state house and that's something that we will be working with and I know Doug is doing some great stuff reaching out to the other select boards and governing bodies on the cape so I think the public needs to be aware of hey we're doing some stuff and that's an important step um the whole scope of that bill and the whole scope of any support has some key issues to be determined and a big one
is just permanent year- round residents or all residents bringing in the second homeowners which takes the number of people you would have to give some support to from a few thousand to maybe 10,000 or 8,000 you know it it's orders of magnitude increase and it so I think it's a very key question that the town fathers will need to be looking at because where the Hang is the money
going to come from this is not in the capital plan no the septic tax credit is state funded we're all taxpayers we're all paying towards that but it brings it to a much larger pool of resources financially yeah so if if we are successful in getting that made a refundable tax credit which means you get it even if you don't owe taxes it protects and helps the lowincome homeowner yeah as it's currently
structured it only applies to permanent yearr round residents but you need to have a tax liability and I think you know people are slowly hearing about that but I don't think we can repeat it enough to get it socked home it's part of you know one of those educational slides maybe that we might want to do and that I'd be happy to work on but I think that's an important decision point Point that's going to fall on the governing bodies of this town we just recommend and suggest and point out caveats maybe based on all of
the work we've done um enough Ken well uh I already I I second what Steve and Ed said about uh first of all let's make it specific to title FES right yeah that's I think that's easy to do and uh I you know you say a large number and we have some numbers from Steve here on number Parcels in the proposed Geo boundaries it's not broken
down I don't think by how many would be on sewer and how many would be yeah I deliberately that table was only about IAS not okay so you're saying 7,000 more than 7,000 Parcels might end up being so I don't know why not use that number because it it really conveys the magnitude of the problem right I was I was leaving it deliberately I just put a specific number there because that number will continually change no no no I I I'm not saying it's be exactly
I'm saying you could say thousand as many perhaps as many as or more than you could say impacts thousands of thousands of homeowners yeah or in currently but you know this is an opportunity to also educate and say look here's the size of this problem a large number well a large number could be a couple hundred you know right well that's why I sort of held off with a general statement on the cost the I but what I'd like to do I just I want to frame this a little bit
so there's three things that we're trying to bring before the selectman in the you know relatively near future one is the thing that I just did to talk about where we're at Geo proerties which has got a little more spec specifity if that's a word to use here we also did the thing where we looked at our charge charging document and we that's with the town manager's office to review and decide if they like it want to change it and when it goes on to the selectman and then we have this which is a a motion by this committee I I'm in
favor of keeping the motion to the point that we think there's something inequitable we think that somebody's got to find a way to look at this and find a solution for it without so I like it the I I don't want to tweak it that much I mean like a couple small items there I'm not proposing tweaking it uh I'm proposing making it a little more concrete so you want to make this a standable document in addition to the other stand I think it should dovetail and if you're saying there are 7,258 sure Parcels within the Geo
boundaries that might be subject to uh you know alternative upgrading to Alternative ons sites I don't see a problem with saying more than 5,000 more than 7,000 you could say how about if I split the hair and say yeah as I did with my other thing say that several thousand or just thousand thousands of local homeowners how's that this is seven why not just say currently this is the number yeah you could say
that we estimate so what I'm going to suggest is that it that I not make the motion this evening and I'll or you can just twe it and rework it because anyway this is this I didn't think we'd get to a full motion tonight because we all just got this from you and right so and then I'll I'll bring it to the next meeting and I didn't ask the audience out here for questions or the last bit Tom I wanted to say is I agree with
Steve on the idea of uh mentioning the idea the uh concept of acquiring the hardware as one strategy well we've asked I again I cast a widen net and I think if you mention one or two specific things then some people might read into it and say that's exactly what they want it's not what we want scroll down to the B he says SC says to look at financing Alternatives yeah right financing
alternative covers a an awful lot of things and other practical actions right so so and you could put for example EI either either we either we have to make a list of all of the things that we might do right I'm trying not to do that singling one out I mean there's there's multiple things I just don't want it to be so vague that it can be yeah I trust our selectman right good idea I'm I'm I'm giving them a channel that wide to go down I do I I don't want to
keep going with this much longer with Steve's permission but any one of those select more information the better Mr Brown well I would agree with Mr Foreman's comment that you should probably make mention of it because it's a key element that you're wrestling with and we've been IED by Town Council it may not be legal it's a big Challenge and that's what the S board's supposed to do so if we say we want to do it then
we'll have to figure it out and if it's legally can't be done we'll have to figure out if we can find a way do we want to mention the sewer sewer utility districts and having the county do all of the sampling that could save some money maybe I mean I would identify the key questions that are important to be answered and addressed because if we just say this is this is a great document and we say okay then we don't really address anything happened but so you know sampling and
testing are not getting the solution in there what's getting the solution is providing the hardware okay all right any interest can sure go right ahead he's at the's he's he's he's really like this and I trust Tom he's certainly not going to make it worse I don't youd be surprised no I mean I don't mean at all mean that in the sense that it's so bad now that it couldn't be wor I mean that you only make things better
and it's now very very good okay thank you um and um I'd like to vote to approve it that how about that you're allowed to make little any number of these little changes that you want to make and that then we start working on a companion document very good with all the specific suggestions a supporting supp the philosophy y I'm super happy that we got
this far with the philosophy it was a long time when people were saying they were opposed to the philosophy yeah so let's give this to the selectman as soon as possible and then give them a follow-up document I definitely agree with that call it a supporting supplement or something so so I I I would not I would not be comfortable these aren't like minutes where we vote vote vote the minutes as received subject to the minor changes this is a fairly substantive
position that we're taking let's get the wording right and then vote it at the next meeting we meet frequently we call a special meeting all we need is three days good okay thing from here yes ma'am come come up to the Lector sorry I'm dropping lucenda Keith and I want to say thank you very much um I'm a retired
teacher my money that I have I worked very hard for I'm one of those people that didn't start saving right away and when I look at the expense of possibly having to put in an IIA it would pretty much wipe out my savings and that's very hard for me I actually have thought that I may have to move because I don't want to spend all my money to
put something in the ground which is just I mean it's a waste of my money everybody says when you get to my age go out and have fun my fun is ripping up my beautiful yard taking away my gorgeous native plants and putting in an IA so I thank you whatever the technical things are just do it all right thank you I I thank you very much for expressing your thoughts you're the exact sort of
constituent that we are wrestling with trying to figure out how to relieve you of some burden on this we town has an obligation to its citizens the state's got an obligation to their citizens um got to balance things but you know we're all trying to find a way to get there all right so I'm going to yield the lecturn to what what do we have left minutes oh we got Amy right oh Amy yes you're going to update let me get rid of this um I think this will work so this
is draft so Kristen we got something for the next [Applause] meeting so at the last uh water quality management committee meeting in the um updates of committee members and town
staff I listed some recent things that had happened including the um the fact that the town had um applied for a groundwater modified groundwater discharge permit and uh Mr Henley had um responded to that and um asked and had asked more for more information um and so uh Steve raford had asked me to give an update at this meeting um I don't have a detailed presentation but uh I
thought I'd talk um just review the process uh that we've gone through so far and and where we are um so um we met with the D uh the Department of Environmental Protection last year and discussed with them to the definition of the scope of work for a hydrogeologic report a hydro ologic report is the prerequisite to the groundwater discharge permit application um we then sub developed
that report and submitted it to the Department of Environmental Protection last August um we submitted the groundwater discharge permit application in December of last year so just a month ago or perhaps less than a month ago um the groundwater discharge permit modification application so we have an existing groundwater discharge permit and it allows us to discharge um a certain amount of flow to uh existing
open sandbeds 1 through 13 and in another amount to uh the northernmost Beds which are 14 and 15 uh under this uh proposed modification we are proposing to discharge an additional 200,000 gallons per day of flow from the Great Pond Phase 1 sewer project uh to the existing open sand beds 14 and 15 um those beds have the capacity to
handle that additional flow within their existing footprint um so we do not need to or plan to expand those beds in any direction as part of this project so our groundwater discharge permit modification application that's a lot of words but the application to modify our permit is really just to increase the flow to those existing beds we're not we're not proposing any design changes
any bed expansions in the last couple of years the DP Department of Environmental Protection has been struggling with how they want to evaluate groundwater mounding um associated with groundwater discharge um groundwater mounding is just the increase in the uh the aquafer water level in the that's that's related to the groundwater discharge and potential interactions of that mound with um
Wetlands um this process has affected the the schedule and the permitting process for other towns on the cape um I'm aware of Dennis and Dennis and mashby in uh as recent examples um so the DP has requested after we reviewed the scope of work for the hydrog report with them and after we submitted that report to them um they came back several months later and and
requested additional or different modeling for under that Hydro Geo report so we are now doing that modeling and um and uh working with the D to resolve the next steps to finalize that hydrogeologic report um that will likely involve some addition Wetland evaluation uh the scope of that has yet to be finalized so after the review of the final hydrogeologic report and the
groundwater discharge permit application groundwater discharge permit modification application the DP will issue a draft modified groundwater discharge permit and that modified groundwater discharge permit will be um uh will undergo a public review process it's it's printed in the environmental Monitor and and public com comment is solicited on it um and uh there's a public review process for that so that's
the summary of of where we've been and where we are on that I would suggest that once you get to the point where they are going to have the the draft permits issued maybe this committee is a good mechanism so everybody knows that there's a comment period out there if they want to become involved absolutely comments from the board on the where we're at with the I I refer to it as as we're changing the hydraulic loading rate but we're not physically changing anything up there
correct it's the amount of gallons per square foot that we're applying Jonathan you have any comments no I mean all you're doing with the mounting is raising the top of the groundwater the water table and you're trying to see the interaction of that elevated groundwater with the surrounding marshlands yes with the surrounding Wetlands yeah okay and what's what's the negative implication that could occur what are they looking to see well that's part of the question I'm I'm I'm the DP is is is working to
they are working through this process uh as we go there's a federal case in out in Hawaii that said that uh a groundwater discharge the mound from it would change the groundwater elevation and it was impacting wetlands and wetlands are protected under federal law okay it's called the Maui decision and the criteria that people have been working with is if you are in a sensitive receptor not every Wetland is going to
be a sensitive receptor but if you are and you raise the groundwater level on average by more than 0.1 feet it'll negatively impact the Wetland it potentially so potentially I think the the main thing at this point the main thing that is the DP wants you to model this in a certain way and they have been fig figuring out how they wanted to do that so that's why we're going back and redoing modeling many months after we issued the or submitted the report so they've been figuring out
how they want you to model this in my in it's it seems to me extremely conservative in a number of ways but this is what they want to This Is How They want to see it and then they want to consider potential impacts to Wetlands so they want to look at the types of wetland communities that are out there and consider it so that's where we are so Dennis Dennis did get a groundwater discharge permit with
conditions relative to what they have to do in terms of measuring and monitoring um so there at least there at least is something out there that that that indicates the D is working the way to how to how to permit Endor monitor this and again keep in mind that we're we're looking at something that is likely to be we'll need it for 4 to seven years right we'll need we'll need that capacity for four to seven years right so we do the context of this groundwater
discharge permit modification is that we're trying to make progress while we uh pursue an outfall we're trying to make sewering progress while we pursue an outfall but our big the town's real Focus for the future of groundwater dis or excuse me the future of treated Wastewater discharge is an outfall so this is we envision this as a short-term permit as you said six seven eight years is the goal obviously we can't know that for certain but that is that is the
goal to my right any any concerns comments do you have a feel for the timeline of when that would be submitted to D we're talking months or a year or I'll know more um I don't know for certain it's not a year um and the goal is to do it as as quickly as possible so we'll we'll have we'll have a lot more information we'll have more information in the next couple of weeks it's an ongoing process um I'm wondering if you so total
discharge from the plant once this is done will be so our current permitted discharge is total is 710,000 gallons per day we are requesting a total discharge limit of 910,000 gallons per day and uh is there do you have monitoring Wells south or west of the disposal beds and if so or is there is DP going to make you do more we have
lots of monitoring Wells um at this point the what I Envision is um um a a a look at the Wetland communities that are out there and there may be there will likely be some long-term monitoring I don't know what that'll look like Steve um when you used the word conservative before were did you mean that well let me ask you different
way have you or anyone you trust done a backof the envelope calculation such that you're not worried or you're worried or you're unsure so she doesn't trust me but we we have done the back of the envelope calculation and you're not worried not worried no I mean because Ken just ask a question about flows Amy told you what it's permitted for actual flows are not 700,000 right now okay yeah so all the way along through our planning and
process we've consistently had a projected number a requested number a permanent number then the actual number has always been something below that we're not we're not bumping up against any limits in any way shape or form that's the bottom line okay I'm G I'm going to let Matt do you want to go first
yeah and then I have you Corin next um Matt Hanley from Surf Rider but I'm a direct a butter to this project I asked uh the board to make this presentation I wish it was better prepared so we could get a visual representation of this discharge and and where it is geog you know where it is what its impact is going to be I was I've been involved in Wastewater since 2009 and I've read basically every document that ghd in the
town of fouth has has put out there and I've went through the TSA report and um you know there's a lot of questions I'm happy to hear that you know the town feels that it can use the existing sand beds 14 and 15 um and that they will absorb the the amount of flow that the town of Falmouth is looking at um I had a lot of concerns about the area around those beds um that I had brought up with
mass D I've been working with mass DP for three years now um and asking for my questions to be answered um you know I really feel that a lot of stress and anxiety and could have been relieved if my family questions were answered because this this idea to go to additional discharge without without
expanding the beds it had to be known this summer but to wait until today to announce that news you know it's a little cruel you know that that as a butter I've been asking what's this visual impact is it going to butt up to my property as the toss a report showed um it's a big relief to finally get some answers um you know groups in
Falmouth like the buzzes Bay Coalition and the Falmouth ponds Coalition are going to have their own concerns about the impact of that additional discharge on Crocker Pond Wing um Wing Pond uh Herring Brook Mash put Creek and Snug Harbor but you know that's really not for me to say you know these people have you know very dedicated experts that are going to have to work with the town um and address those issues I will ask that
there be a professional presentation um I believe the town Amy can you correct me if Town's going to be going to town meeting about additional funding for for construction or are you going to wait what's the what's the framework the time frame and the Order of this permit coming to town meeting construction are you going to get the permit first or you going to go to town meeting first and then hope
for a permit so we have an article on the warrant um for the April town meeting and there will be discussions over the next month about um the overall permitting status and that article um so yes we have an article before town meeting and we will know a lot more in the next month about the time frame um to provide context for that okay the reason I asked that question is because Massachusetts is very strict
about the rights of a butter um so at a certain point Amy L and the water quality will have to do a press um professional presentation with full explanations about the flow where the flow is going to go so not only myself as a butter I'm also a an advisor to the West fouth Village Association they're very interested in this and their impact to West Falmouth um Salt Ponds estuaries
are very interested in you know what the impact is going to be to Crocker Pond um and I'm quite sure the residents of North fouth going to have questions as well so you know on a big sewer project like this it's you know we don't want to take nitrogen from one Watershed and discharge it another one and cause a now we have two problems half the nitrogen's remov from here but you added nitrogen load I won't get into that like I said you know that will be um for another meeting but I want to thank the board
you know I I've seen a big difference in the board the tone the transparency the acceptance the the willingness to look at ultimate Technologies you know the town of fouth as far as Wastewater has come a long long way from where it was in 2009 you know John Waterberry has been here since the beginning you know I'm quite sure you could speak for how much how much the the board in the town and the
technologies have improved and I feel like we're in a really good place thank you Corin uh Corin Peterson buzs Bay Coalition um so the town discharges 450 or is permitted to just charge 450,000 gallons per day to beds 1 through 13 um it's limited to do so and it's limited and that generates 4,100 pounds
of nitrogen to West Falmouth Harbor every year this increase will exceed what the town discharges to West Falmouth Harbor so 460,000 gallons will be going to beds 14 and 15 and 450 will be going to beds 1 through 13 so you increasing the flow to Crocker Pond and Herring Brook now the town knows the um impact that
the treatment plant had um on West fouth Harbor um the town upgraded the wastewater treatment plant the effluent coming through the groundwater right now is much cleaner but it is slow the groundwater moves very slow um the Buzzards Bay Coalition is very concerned about the long-term impact a discharge at 14 and 15 are going to have on Crocker Pond and
Herring Brook the impact is not going to be seen tomorrow or next year or likely even five years from now it'll be I'm afraid that the town is creating a legacy pollution in the future as it did in the past with West fouth Harbor so would would it be the your position for the town not to do any more sewering not to increase any flows until there's an outfall do nothing to improve the estuaries that would not be the position of the Coalition we have said we would absolutely support the expansion of
sewering um in East fouth we would support a town meeting article that pays for that sewering um if the town so chooses to increase the discharge at Herring Brook then the Coalition would ask for offsets um if the town chooses to increase flow to 14 and 15 the Coalition would ask for offsets um in those Weds to ensure that there is no impact um to the downg gradient what's an offset so if the town is discharging
4,000 lbs into uh beds 14 and 15 find an existing 4,000 PBS to remove do you have any suggestions where we find that not yet yeah not yet there's upgrades to existing septics systems in that area all that first M okay or simultaneously so yeah no thank you
other comments on the beds I would say that we're probably going to know whether or not we're going to be successful with the outfall within the next year or two right I hope so it's hard it's hard to March March 15th okay good year well this year March 15th so
um the Marine we have all the permits in place we need to do the Marine bants of everything we've looked at on the outfall the one thing that we don't know is what the soils are and the concept of directionally drilling for the outfall we think I'll defer to Jonathan because he did a great thing about the geology and whatnot we think that we have the soils that are accommodate directional drilling okay we get the borings last week of February first week of
March we also need to know uh us gs's evaluation we're over that okay we don't have their final report okay but we've we've seen a draft report from them we've taken it by the the Water Resource Commission folks but my point is not so much exactly all those details but just that if we find out that we are not likely to be able to pursue the outfall we're going to revert back to the Allen parcel or some other parcel maybe the Old Country Club uh property so we have
other options and we'll pivot if we have to and this discharge won't be permanent regardless of whether the outfall comes into play or we have to do something else so I mean we have a lot of paperwork to do right on the outfall still but we haven't come across anything in in my opinion we haven't come across anything that would say you can't do this this is this is a bad idea that sounds good with the exception of the borders but everything we have so
far indicates good well I think it's for maybe Amy it's it's just a question do we have a map that shows all the potential discharge locations for um the waters that are treated are there any that drain to the east it seems like everything's going to Buzzard Bay to the west but looking at our you know gradient maps of hydrology are any of these beds potential beds will drain in a different direction the report yeah so um there are a couple of maps one that there's a map that shows all of the sites that the town has ever evaluated
which is I don't know 30 or more sites that the town's ever evaluated for discharge the the three sites that the town evaluated most recently in most detail one is existing beds 14 and 15 one is the Allen parcel which is um um on the in the Watershed to the Eastern Southeast uh Coastal bodies and the other was the Augusta parcel or it's between brick Hil and 28 which also is is on the east side of town the problem
what we learned though in that evaluation process is that all of these sites all of the ones that have ever been evaluated have very serious drawbacks um for and for example the Allen parcel is upgradient of um keset River and uh several Pond several freshwater ponds and a grape Pond uh and I believe also another pond in river to the to the east Amy yeah Amy we should
get him there's there's a couple of reports and whatnot in a map we should just yep I can I can get you the background my point is yes we have evaluated many many sites no site is is perfect and in fact every site has major hurdles so we ended up with this plan of going going to beds 14 and 15 as an interim a short-term solution while we pursu the outfall with the idea that once the outfall is available we would
cease discharging to all of the existing beds and switch to the outfall in the address of time make be be quick we've got other things on the agenda and we're out of here in 14 minutes I also wanted to applaud the town for pursuing the outfall with as much Vigor as you have I'm really happy to hear that March is sort of a go noo date if it is a go date when does the town anticipate going to town meeting to fund the outfall good
question good question wa we there is an outfall sort of working group we we've been focused on what's right in front of us and you know there is a placeholder in a capital plan but we haven't gotten down to the specifics of what that project looks like or how it goes forward that that'll that'll that'll unfold over the next six to nine months
I would say Okay sooner rather than later in my world the fact that we lost two months and as long as we're giving platitudes so thank you for contacting everybody to get the Army Corp of Engineers to agree that we were covered by a comprehensive General permit that we originally asked if we could be done took them what five months to make to say yes you can do it under the general permit whatever I shouldn't go on all right I'd like to move on to um quickly reports of members
and staff we have minutes of couple of meetings I have two very um quick items to offer up to everybody one is as Amy just noted there is going to be an article at town meeting much like the last time when we divied up all the town meeting members among ourselves to make sure that they were well aware of what the article was what it was for and why it was beneficial for the town expect over the next couple of meetings that I'll be producing the list and that giving you all assignments to contact town meeting
members and anything else you need us to do Amy let me know okay that's the first one the second one is um I was curious as to where the Saxon Partners were on um their uh application for a groundwater discharge permit um CU this board as you all recall we put a statement out there asking folks to have a A system that would perform at least at the level that the town's system does
um they they have shared with me basically what they they they submitted and applied for they are applying for a high quality system um they're they're a little Larry of promising the three but they're not Larry of promising the five with with work to the three which is in some ways similar to the town's permit we don't actually have a three limit we have a target of three um so I I was happy to see that yeah they were asking for a system that would would function
good they have requested an opportunity to come in here and talk to this board about their Wastewater plan and where they're at with the amount of nitrogen they will produce and and what's going on with that so again in future media and expected that you'll see them on the agenda to come in and talk about some of that they are in some some mitigation arrangement with the town because of of things but they they've indicated they can come and talk about what they're doing because they've put a per permit
application into the D okay that's good isn't it in their interest to do this you got otherwise the Board of Health could come after them five or 10 years now it's outside the Board of Health they're over 10,000 gallons they're not under the Board of Health okay um they have to do it it's not optional for them they they they they they I just said they they appropriately responded and and came up with a good system with a you know a mine basically on it to knock
it down would you like to provide an update on um you or Kristen provide an update on um prb proposals so Kristen and I collaborated on submitting a uh uh initial letter of intent uh to submit a proposal uh to the National snap right Kristen am I getting that right yeah it's the national estuaries program so that's any uh to get funding to put in a
prb around the key parts of Snug Harbor where the major uh flows of nitrogen are currently occurring and went very well knock on wood but you know it's a long shot we think the project is about 400,000 and 100,000 of in kind services from the town right now that's about right yeah roughly okay Ed what do you got um that that's
what I was going to mention that you know the Grant application went in Kristen worked like a dog to get this thing together and pull Paul's inut because you all have a lot of comments Paul dumbrowski from mych provided a lot of work there support coming from the town and via the DPW so yeah whole program is uh 6,430 some odd of a Federal Grant and the rest is matching from various sources um next Target is March 7 they
will let us know whether we've passed the first Gauntlet and would proceed then to a full proposal which would be a lot more work for Kristen and Canon Paul primarily Kristen so okay Steve anything on on UD no no okay got anything John or any no I'll just continue to monitor what the Board of Health is doing with uh and and bring
updates yeah it' be nice to see an update after we had all those comments from them what they want to do nothing from me well you're in charge you're in charge of the minutes so we'll get to you next oh okay thanks um and and you you're our sort of Point person on you know getting getting the tax code revised I know you've been away and we'll meet Tuesday in map out where we're going to go next the only thing I was going to add was I worked on a shortened version of the overall presentation that was given um that should just be distributed to everybody
Christen if you haven't haven't done that already yeah thank you for reminding me yeah yeah you I think if you've got a committee that you want to go talk to or present just let us know who who you want to go to um you're working from Facts it's always good to work from facts good starting point I am going over to the moth's meeting commission tomorrow evening um just to provide they gave me a slot just so I can tell them that the town of fou is looking at an outfall how
serious we are about it how we got to why we're doing what we're doing and the scale of what that is so that you know one of the key next steps in the outfall project right now is making our initial Meep of filing and when we make those filings a number of agencies and other folks will get notified and trying to catch up with them before that me filing happen so that it's not like gee what is this you know what what are they trying to do what's going on
so minutes Tom um Kristen did her usual fantastic job and I did my nitpicky job afterwards and I think people have had a chance to look at them it's a little complicated because um you know we also have the minutes from The Joint meeting on the 13th included here too so maybe separate motions or separate motions be best you want me to
bundle them yep separate motions separate motions okay then I'll I'll move that um the committee accept the draft for the January 8th meeting as presented is there a second second second any discussion on the minutes all those in favor of accepting the minutes simpy I saying I all done and I'll make the same motion for the joint meeting of us and the Board of Health on the 13th of January I'll move that those minutes be
accepted as presented second moved and seconded any discussion on those minutes Steve's got something this isn't really a criticism of the minutes but it's because I think it's accurate but I just have a question and we don't have to have the answer now it may be involved it says um this was dealing where the Board of Health was proposing um how many what what fraction of
Falmouth to include and says chairman Rafer noted that the charge of water quality is to focus on the nsas which of course is true and thinks that the water quality committee cannot comment whether they think a townwide regulation is the best answer or not but is not challenging the Board of Health reasoning um I would like to have a discussion of that in the future certainly why we can't comment on you don't have to answer it now but
yeah I'll I'll reach out to you right good point just one one last thought if I could when you're done go ahead just uh thinking about the um John's idea of getting the one type of septic so everybody has the best performing and I wonder if there may be some uh way we could like license to have a town-owned unit on their property that way we're not giving something to them and we
could still you know get an agreement where we could go on and do the monitoring yeah maybe maybe that's another way yeah yeah yeah yeah I think this at some point is a you know a small working group sitting down in morida find out you know how how we get from point A to point B and and and and remain like compliant with state laws want to try to keep that idea alive it's probably a good good way to go all right thanks guys all right thanks I will take I will
entertain one more motion can you vote on the on the oh we didn't vote oh no I'm sorry we didn't vote on The Joint we have motion made and seconded no comments all those in favor signify by saying I I thank you so so move and I'll entertain a motion to adjourn so moved second no no no no discussions allowed on on a motion to adjourn all those in favor of getting out of here actually ahead of schedule signif saying I hi hi what happened it was boiling hot now it's
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