30. So gavvel in the planning commission on October 7th. Roll call, which I suppose. Do you want to call her? Do you want me to? I can call her. Okay. Um, Commissioner Lady here. Commissioner Banilla Bonia here.
Bonia. Commissioner Mahammude here. Commissioner Fueling here. Commissioner Kermes here. I let her I let her have a pass. Um next time I'm going to get it. Be perfect. Um so looking at the meeting minutes
from our last meeting, August 12th, did anybody see any substance changes in those? If not, I'd be looking for motions to approve. A motion to approve. Yeah. One motion to approve and two two motions to approve. One from Commissioner Fueling, one from
Commissioner Bonia. Uh all those in favor say I. I. All those opposed. Meeting minutes from October or excuse me, August 12th are approved. Okay, we'll move on to number four, ordinance revisions for MS4 permit public hearing.
Would you like to speak before we get to it? Thank you. I would. Thank you, chair. Good evening, members of the planning commission. Uh my name is John Herdigan. I'm the city engineer for Newport. I don't get the opportunity to address the planning commission very often. So thanks for providing us or providing me some time
to uh to go through these ordinance revisions with you. Um I've uh I guess maybe just a little bit of background because again I don't uh get to get to chat with you folks very often. I've uh I've been the city engineer for Newport for about 13 years, 14 years now. Uh our
our company's represented Newport for a long long time. So, we have a lot of history, a lot of a lot of great memories with the with the community and looking forward to continuing that. Work uh work very closely with Nathan and Allison and the Bolton and Mink staff on
a lot of the uh the plan reviews. And so, every time you see that little engineer said uh this type of comment that you guys can uh discuss, that usually comes from uh me and and our staff. So, again, pleasure to be here tonight. Thank you for uh providing us some time. The item on the agenda in the
in the public hearing that will follow has to do with our MS4 permit. So the MS4 permit is a municipal separate storm sewer system permit. Just about every community in the metro has one of these permits. They're required to there are specific requirements uh that uh direct
how we manage our storm water in the community. Uh there are a bunch of different uh best management practices as well as uh public notification as well as those the storm water requirements themselves for new developments. And then post
construction, how do we manage our storm water? How do we treat the storm water uh before it gets to the end receiving body? So periodically uh usually once every about 5 years the state will update that permit and give us a bunch
of new requirements that we have to uh uh build into our into our normal practices as well as regulatory mechanisms that or ordinance revisions that require developers and the and the public to um to provide the well to
provide the city with the ability to enforce the requirements of that permit. So, the city recently went through an audit uh earlier this spring. They identified three areas that we were our ordinances were deficient for the new permit. Uh and so we have some suggested
uh language uh revisions. They're all ads. So, we're not taking anything out of the ordinances. We are strictly adding additional language to help provide uh the or the required regulatory mechanism for the city to be able to enforce the new requirements. So
the first of which is in section 34-197 that's regulating how we would store ice and de or sorry salt and deicing chemicals within the city. Um this mainly uh pertains to public works staff. They are by far and away the uh
the largest uh I guess store of ice or deicing uh materials and uh and salt. But if anyone was to come into uh Newport as an as an industry that stored this material, there are specific requirements like keeping it on a paved
surface, how you manage that. So with the idea that during rain events that that does not get washed into the storm sewer and ultimately out to the uh receiving body, which in our case is the Mississippi River. The second item uh is in section 36-
uh 516. These are infiltration prohibitations. So uh we one of the mechanisms that we use to treat waste or storm water is to allow that to infiltrate back into the uh back into the soil and kind of mimicking an
undeveloped area or undeveloped area. We want to promote that infiltration rather than uh just transporting that uh storm water from one point to another. So, but in some cases and particularly in Newport, there are areas of high bedrock
which if you do try to promote infiltration, it can go directly into the groundwater. It doesn't have that soil to uh seep through. So, uh there's a number of uh uh that's one example of an area that we would prefer not to have an infiltration uh practice. Uh there
are several others. I think there's items uh A through J. I won't go through all of them. uh if you have questions, I'm certainly happy to uh to speak more on them. But uh again, we're looking at providing that as very specific language
for a potential developer so that we can say, well, no, we can't really put that infiltration practice here. Let's put it somewhere else or let's let's try to find a different location for that uh for that storm water practice. And then
lastly is uh section forgive me I switched too fast. Oh both in the same section 36 uh-516 we had uh outlined the requirements for off-site treatment. So in some cases
where there are no options for storm water management uh they have an opport or a developer would have an opportunity to implement a storm water management um uh device or practice somewhere else within the wershed generally within the within the city of Newport hopefully u
so we can gain that that storm water benefit but it does outline where that must be when they need to do those improvements and I believe there's information in there Again, if there isn't any uh ongoing project that makes
sense to do another uh storm water uh implementation project, they can do a cash in lie of that treatment uh where we can many times we've partnered with the wershed. they have a large project going on and we can contribute or developers can contribute to that
project to provide the greater good for a larger area rather than trying to uh implement an improvement on their site which is either or maybe isn't feasible or very cost prohibitive. So those are the high level of the three additions to
the uh to the city code that we are uh looking to uh for um for the planning commission to comment on. We'd like to open a public hearing as a requirement for any ordinance revision, solicit public feedback,
and then uh make a recommendation to the council uh to uh to hopefully um uh enact these um revisions at their upcoming meeting. I believe that's on October 20th. It's their next meeting, forgive me.
It's October 16th. 16th. Dang. Thank you, Melissa. So, with that, I'd be happy to stand for questions. And again, thank you for the uh for the time and letting me uh join your meeting today. Yeah, thank you. Uh one question is this already been gone over by city staff and everything and we we're fairly certain
that the way it is now fits in their new restrictions, that kind of thing. Yep. So, we've reviewed this with city staff. Uh we've also reviewed it with the uh with the representative from the MPCA who um who uh walked through our audit with us and confirmed that this is
the language that we are proposing and he confirmed that yes this is going to meet that regulatory requirement and the whole idea is to further restrict or further bring in line the necess the necessary actions if somebody gets in this type of situation. Correct. Yep.
Okay. And you're adding verbiage, not revising verbiage. We are correct. Is 100% ads. Based on what I saw, it looked good. I don't know. Is there anybody else has any questions? No, sounds reasonable. Okay. I just have one question for my own
curiosity. Nothing to go. So, um, when when there's a project going on and they they they just can't do anything with their storm water, then what? just goes right to the river and then they just
pay for somewhere else to oh we feel happy and good that they paid money here but really their stuff is just going into the river polluting it. Is that what I'm hearing here? Well, not not exactly. Okay. So, um in some cases, yeah, we some of
the some of the storm water infrastructure that we have directly discharges to the to the Mississippi River. Part of what the city is doing in partnership and in some cases led by the wershed is we're putting in uh BMPs or best management practices on our
existing infrastructure at the point of discharge. So for instance on on 17th Street as part of our reconstruction project that's ongoing in that neighborhood, we're putting in a grit chamber. So, we're taking all the storm sewer that we have and we're routing it
through a chamber that creates a a vortex or a spin and settles out the the sediment that's collected and garbage and and everything else to then have a single point where public works can go and and back that out. So, as of right now, uh when that project's done, we'll
have three of those and I believe we have six outfalls to the river. So, we have about half of those those covered. we're we go or the city as part of our larger projects, we pursue uh grants from the MPCA and partner again with the
watershed to try to get all of those um all of those outfalls covered. And then we can also, you know, it's it's again challenging because of the bedrock. It's hard to dig a hole to uh to store that water. So, we're we're we're moving more toward those structural BMPs, those the
manholes or the the pre-cast basins. So, I'd like to say that yes, we have all those bases covered. Um, but that's part of the reason why we would accept that uh the payment in lie of the actual treatment because that will help us
finish those projects or or get those projects moving forward with the help of other um project sponsors. That makes a little more sense. Yeah. To Tony's point, I think I agree when you said somewhere else, I think it's somewhere else in Newport. It's it's not another town benefiting from
somewhere here in lie of but to that point if it is some kind of a salt storage facility right we if they don't have the proper discharge we wouldn't allow them to build there yeah and the the ordinance language is specific to how they store the the uh
the salt they there aren't really any additional requirements storm water requirements that you're you need a pond this size or you need something physical to treat that salt It's more that it needs to be covered. It needs to be But if they can't do that, they wouldn't be allowed that use.
That is correct. Okay. That's where I wanted to go because if if they don't have a discharge, but yet we're pay they're paying 17th Street to get another one of those, well, they're just screwing with the land that they're sitting on, not messing with the river, right? And and that's that I just wanted to make sure that base was covered. And and
to build upon that is without this specific language, if that development came to the planning commission for consideration and they gave us a plan that we're going to this is what we're going to do with our salt. If we don't have this language, we don't have the ability to tell them no. Right.
So that's part of the So we're putting some more teeth in is what we're doing. Yeah. Correct. Good question cuz I was like what? Wait, we're going to give South St. Paul money for our water problems? Like no, but that makes sense. Does anybody else have any questions? No. No. Thank you very much.
Yeah. So, I think moving forward, we uh we open the hearing, uh solicit that public feedback, and then any recommendation that you'd uh be willing to provide after the close of the hearing, we'd greatly appreciate it. Sounds good. If we don't have any further questions, I would look for a couple motions to open the public
hearing. I'll make a motion to open the public hearing. Got one motion to open. I'll second that. I've got two. First motion from Commissioner Mahmud and second from Commissioner Bonia. Uh I call the public
hearing open at 5:43. Anybody wants to come up and talk, please state your name and address for the record and give us your comments. Don't all come up at once. No. Anybody? All right. Anybody
just give it there. We have to wait a minute. Yep. And I did. Um uh with nobody coming up, we'll go ahead and close the public hearing at 5:44. Is there any further discussion here before we make a decision? No.
No. Um does anybody want a motion or you want me to motion and then somebody follow? Go ahead. Okay. All right. Well, I have a motion to move uh this uh ordinance these ordinance revisions for permit MS4 to the city
council with the sole changes that have been made by the engineer and city city staff with no other revisions. Can I get a second? I'll second. Okay. I got a second from Commissioner Fueling. Uh all those uh any other questions? All those in favor say I. I.
I. All those opposed. All right. is so moved to councel. Um any updates? Anything? Just want to That's a formality. Don't get mad at me. Yep. So, nobody has anything that I'd be
looking to entertain a motion to adjurnn. Oh, motion to adjurnn. I got one motion to adjurnn and I will second that. I got two motions to adjurnn. All those say I. All those opposed. Meeting is ajourned. All right.