Board of Supervisors Regular Second Meeting   7/21/2021

Good afternoon, everyone.

I call the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors to order for our July 21, 2021 PM meeting.

This meeting is being held pursuant to and in compliance with Ordinance No.

20-A16, an ordinance to ensure the continuity of government during the COVID-19 disaster.

The supervisors who are electronically present at this meeting are Supervisor Diantha McKeel of the Jack Jouett District,

Supervisor Donna Price of the Scottsville District, Supervisor Ann Mallek of the White Hall District, Supervisor Bea LaPisto-Kirtley of the Rivanna District, Supervisor Liz Palmer of the Samuel Miller District, and myself, Supervisor Ned Gallaway of the Riva District.

The opportunities for the public to access and participate in the electronic meeting are posted on the Albemarle County website, on the Board of Supervisors homepage, and on the Albemarle County calendar.

Participation will include the opportunity to comment on those matters for which comments from the public will be received.

We also have with us today our County Executive, Mr. Jeff Richardson, our County Attorney, Mr. Greg Campner, our Board Clerk, Ms.

Claudette Borgeson, and our Senior Deputy Clerk, Mr. Travis Morris.

And with that, board, if everyone would please rise for the Pledge of Allegiance.

Okay board, that brings us to number four, the adoption of our final agenda.

We do have some modifications to some minor ones to make.

Number 11, which is the Rivanna Water and Sewer Authority quarterly report that is going to be moved to the consent agenda.

Mr. Boyer was not available for the quarterly report today.

So that one, that's the purpose for that one being moved over.

Then under number 19, matters from the board, we're going to add authorization for the chair to sign a letter from the county to the state to impress the meeting for a prompt resolution regarding the impact of local law enforcement that the state's decision to not accept new admissions to mental health facilities.

And also under number 19 from the board,

Just a brief discussion update on the process for the disposition of the Lewis and Clark Sacajawea statue that was moved to Darden Town.

Are there any other changes to the agenda or items from consent that we need to remove?

And if not, if there is a motion to adopt as amended?

So moved.

Motion to adopt as amended.

Sorry.

Second.

Second.

We've got a motion and a second.

And if you would call the vote, please.

Mr. Galloway?

Yes.

Ms.

Ms.

Ms.

Ms.

Ms.

All right.

The agenda is approved.

And that will take us to number five, brief announcements by board members.

And we'll go through our speaking order for today.

Supervisor McKeel, you're up first.

I do.

I'd just like to make a couple of comments about areas that I think we, that our community should be focusing on.

I'm concerned about the new Delta variant as it is circulating across the country.

and I noticed just yesterday we had an update where 50, and the update says as of yesterday, 53.2% of Virginians were fully vaccinated, higher levels in metropolitan areas, lower levels in rural areas, which I think we're all aware of.

We in Alameda County have a 62.3% vaccination rate

In Charlottesville, 53.7%.

So Charlottesville has a significant, well, it depends on what you call significant, but certainly a lower percentage of vaccinations than our county.

I would hope we could all work together and get those numbers up in both of our localities, but it is concerning.

And I hope people have not thrown away their masks.

and that they are still using them, especially thinking about where they're going outside of their old, what you might want to think about as bubble.

It's going to be really important.

I also want to encourage staff and all of us to think about mid-August when the students come back.

And that's not for a discussion for today, but I do think I am concerned.

I just want to put it on the record.

And I would encourage everybody to think about masking,

and being safe.

And if you haven't gotten a vaccination, please do so.

The other item, and both of these are, I'm sorry that they're concerning, but the other item is that just this morning, the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality issued a health alert for Virginia monitoring our air.

We are now code orange

because of the quality of our air, the smoke that's coming from the West Coast, from the forest fires in the West Coast.

And for people with asthma and lung problems, that's a real concern.

It does look like, if you look on the map, that the Richmond area is having more of a problem than the Charlottesville Albemarle area.

Having said that, you can look outside.

and so on.

and environmental concerns seriously, because we have a health crisis right now, and we have an environmental crisis.

And they're happening globally, but they certainly are happening in our own community and in our country.

And I wish I had a positive one to give you right now, but I'm sorry for that.

But I really think we have to start recognizing and talking about it.

OK, Supervisor Price, announcements today.

Thank you, Chair Galloway.

I have two, one of which is going to piggyback on top of Supervisor McKeel's with regard to the pandemic.

99.2% of infections and deaths that are occurring today are involving people who were not vaccinated.

And over 80% of the current infections are from the Delta or Delta Plus variant.

We also know there's a Lambda variant out there.

I have had some constituents contact me and have asked about when the Board of Supervisors is going to go back to alive or as we're looking at a hybrid model.

What I've been telling them is that there are places, and now throughout the country, where the infection rates are on the rise.

And we're going to take a very measured, very analysis approach.

We're going to wait until after the UVA students come back.

We're going to look to see what the health situation is around

the county before we make a decision whether or not or when we believe that we can safely expand back to in-person or a hybrid so the board would be in person but members of the community might be able to participate either virtually or in person.

What we don't want to do is kind of a rubber band effect of opening things up to only have to retrench it again back and so the best way that we can help each other

is to get the vaccination and wear your masks in settings that we were hoping we wouldn't have to go back to.

So we're not out of the woods yet on the pandemic.

The second thing I want to bring up and I want to give some thanks, I want to do a shout out to Jack Maxwell down in Scottsville, the mayor and town administrator as well as

Major Reeves, and the Albemarle County Police Department.

We have had five major accidents in the Scottsville town area just in the last five to ten days.

Five serious accidents involving serious injury, death, and we are working to organize and schedule a town hall

to be able to address this safety concern with our community members down in the southern part of the county.

I was very pleased today driving up from Scottsville where I was down in the town first thing this morning to see that our Albemarle County Police, I saw three different patrol officers on my ride in and I really appreciate the fact that they've taken this so seriously and are trying to get the word out with a visible presence to encourage people to drive a little safer.

Thank you, Chair Galloway.

Oops, there we go.

Thank you very much.

I will also piggyback on the mask wearing with a slightly different take because there are five to ten percent of the population with immunocompromised systems either cannot take the vaccine because it would

and more.

being considerate and I think that's a good thing to do.

I'm glad to see the CDC is finally recognizing this very small cohort or relatively small cohort.

I think it's that of people who cannot

have the solution of the vaccine.

And I would really hate to see our country divided into those that do and those who can't, and everybody else gets to have their lives back.

So please be thinking about that.

In the very happy news, Amarillo County Fair is the Friday, July 30th, and Saturday, the 31st, and will focus on

livestock exhibitions and sales.

This is also the time of year when the 4-H clubs, who have been raising their wonderful animals, sell those as well.

I know that the Monticello 4-H group, to which many of the children in Earliesville belong, is having their sale at Pleasant Grove.

And I left the piece of paper at home, so please watch the news about the exact date for that.

But I think it's in early August that they will have their sale.

So a lot of our young farmers are going to be

taking their wonderful animals there.

I also agree completely with the drought situation.

We talked about the fact last meeting that it's much drier than people think.

I have heard reports during recent meetings from people in the countryside that their streams are drying up and they're having to sell their cows because there's no water available or pasture for them.

This is the same thing that happens.

It happens very abruptly.

People in different regions are in different circumstances, but we are needing to be very careful.

And for the grand number of residents who are on our wells, we don't have the option of watering yards or washing cars or anything else because if your well goes dry, you don't have water to flush your toilet or brush your teeth.

And so you have to cut your risk at this time of year.

And the last thought is for people considering open burning as I drive the area.

I see lots of brush piles piled up as people are starting to tidy up their yards.

This is a horrible time to be considering doing that because the wind can come up in no time.

There is no moisture in the surface soil to keep these things up to control.

I see lots of piles within a very short distance to houses.

So I encourage people to contact the Fire Marshal to make sure about the rules and that you're being safe to do this.

Yes, I just have one and I wanted to say we had a very successful opening at Darden Tow Park with the first permanent public pickleball court in the county so and we had a rival game with the city of Charlottesville and

unfortunately they lost pretty badly but anyway it was a lot of fun and thank you all for those of you that could be there and it's a wonderful thing I understand it's full all the time and the people are playing pickleball and they love it so I think that's something the people are very thankful for and I understand also that the milkweed is growing well too so

and the Monarch Motorflies.

Thank you.

No, I have no announcements.

All right.

So we will go to number seven from the public.

Matters not listed for public hearing on the agenda or on matters previously considered by the board or matters pending before the board.

Getting word that we do not have anyone signed up, so just confirming that they're in signups today.

That is correct.

Thanks Travis.

And we will go to number eight, our consent agenda.

And just as a reminder, when we adopted the final agenda, we did move item 11 from the agenda to the consent agenda.

That was the RWSA report.

Second.

The motion was made and seconded.

Ms.

Ms.

Ms.

Yes.

Ms.

Price?

We've got all the votes.

OK, we're going to our first action item, number nine on the agenda.

This is our SC 2021-21 Homestay special exception.

Good afternoon, board.

As mentioned, I am bringing the special for a Homestay 2021-21.

And let me go ahead and share my screen.

All right, so everyone, thank you for your time and consideration of this special exception.

This is for a homestay on Casselberry Court, titled the UN's Homestay Special Exception.

So just as a reminder, parcels like this are able to apply for special exceptions.

This is a 3.86 acre rural area parcel, 6850 Casselberry Court.

It is limited to two guest rooms by right, requires 125 foot setback from all parcel boundaries.

It may use accessory structures only if they pre-exist homestay ordinance and require the home owner to be on site during the rental at all times.

Additionally, for physical homestays, the property must be the primary residence of the owner, parking must be on site, and neighborhood notification is required along with annual safety inspections.

This applicant has not yet rented out the homestay, so there are no compliance issues.

There are four types of special exceptions available.

Accessory structures, 125-foot setbacks, number of guest rooms, and non-owner occupancy, aka a resident manager.

This application is requesting reducing setbacks on the front and western parcel boundaries for a homestay in a detached accessory structure of a garage.

Per home stay regulations, the exception may be granted permitted there's no detriment to any abutting lot and no harm to public health, safety, or welfare.

Since this parcel is located in a largely wooded lot in a cul-de-sac in the south west of Crozet, the application did include a notification to all the abutting property owners.

neighbor most impacted shown here with the home with the blue dot did actually submit a letter of support along with the application and wanted to make sure that we were absolutely we absolutely understood that she was completely in support of this application and

and she even called yesterday to reach out to me to make sure that we understood that she was in full support.

The image in our county GIS does actually show the garage almost over the property line, but we have measured using plats and

the building plans for this particular property.

And staff has confirmed that the accessory structure garage is 15 feet from the parcel boundary and not over it, as shown here.

Oops.

Sorry about that.

So this exhibit shows a detailed view with a different GIS tool that we have that does show the space between the

Garage, and the neighbor's property.

There's currently a large shade tree providing the only separation from the garage and the parking from the abutting property.

And the large shade tree is right on the line between the two properties.

So in keeping with prior board recommendations, staff does recommend approval of this homestay special exception with required condition of installing screening at the location shown on this exhibit.

As such, we recommend approval with conditions relating to parking, guest room numbers, and addition of screening as shown on the exhibits.

And if anybody was interested, I do have additional photographs of the property.

The rear, from the parking area, and from the street.

Thank you, Lynn.

We'll go through the supervisors to see if you have any questions.

I don't have any questions about this particular application, but I do have a question about process.

Are we receiving this today because of the use of the accessory structure?

Yes, ma'am.

OK.

I just wanted to make sure.

I'm trying to wrap my head around exactly how we're doing this.

Thank you very much.

I appreciate it.

Supervisor Price.

Thank you, Ms.

Brumfeldt, for your presentation.

I have no questions.

Thank you.

Regarding the screening, which is going to be needed, what are the directions given, requirements for size, et cetera?

That one tree you could blow over tomorrow.

Absolutely.

We have specific guidelines for screening in the regulations.

And those are referenced in the proposed conditions of approval.

So let me, I'm not going to pull up the code, but there are specific requirements that describe the types of screening that's available to someone who's required to have screening.

And that can be either a

is there an estimated time at which a planted screen would actually be useful?

Because this is the first one I've seen where there's really been no effective existing buffer.

And so the little bushes one might put in might help in 20 years, but they're not going to help right away.

So I don't know whether, in that circumstance, people would be directed to put up a fence, which would actually provide the screening needed.

Or you're really going to put in a lot of substantial

Ranery that would be effective.

Absolutely.

We do have minimum standards for the types of planting.

And they're generally fast growing conifers.

So they do provide a fairly quick growth period just based on those particular type that are required in there.

And as far as the actual planting, we generally give them a few months, depending on what time of year it is.

If someone was to put in a tree right now, it would die because of the summer heat.

I just had one.

Ms.

Bloomfield, would you go back a couple and show the photo of the garage in proximity to the neighbor's house?

The other one.

The third?

I thought there was another one that showed a closer proximity.

And any others?

Well, no.

No, I don't have any questions.

It just looked like the house didn't seem as close as it did in the pictures as it does here.

But no problem.

No questions.

I have no questions and I'm okay with this and when everybody's done I can make a motion.

Okay, all right.

I move that the board adopt the attached resolution attachment G to approve the special exceptions with conditions contained therein.

Further discussion?

Call the vote.

Mr. Gallaway?

Ms.

Ms.

Ms.

Ms.

Palmer?

Yes.

Ms.

Aye.

Very good.

Motion carries.

Are folks ready for number 10, our work session on the Screen Health Initiative Phase 2?

And all kinds of windows just jumped up there also.

And we're ready to go.

Kim, I think I'm turning it over to you.

That sounds good.

While you're sharing your board on this one, there could be a few stopping points just for clarifying questions.

Not for discussion, but we would like to get through everything to the end to then have the bulk of the questions and discussion points after the full presentation.

But if there's a couple stopping points and there's something that's not understood and we need it for clarification, we will certainly have the opportunity to do that a few times.

All right.

Thank you, Chair Galloway, members of the board.

I'm Kim Dias Iuli.

I'm the Natural Resources Manager.

And here with me is Frank Pohl, who is the county engineer who's been collaborating with me on this project.

And today, we're going to talk about phase two of the Stream Health Initiative, which has been focused on improving stream health in the rural area.

So just for a quick refresher, this project grew out of the creation of the Natural Resources Program a few years back.

And one of the primary objectives that was established for that program was to conduct a review of the stream buffer requirements in the county's water protection ordinance.

and out of that work grew this bigger project and ultimately in 2017 staff were directed by the board to develop strategies for improving stream health throughout the county.

And because that's such a big task to make it more manageable the project was divided into these two phases.

Phase one being focused on development and we formally referred to that as the development area phase, but we've altered that language a bit because of course development occurs throughout the county.

And then phase two is focused on rural area land uses and developing strategies and solutions for improving stream health in the rural area.

So phase two is the focus of this work session today, but I wanted to put this here just as a reminder of the bigger picture and also to remind all of you that the phase one proposals that Frank has been working on with all of you for the past few years are still ongoing and that work continues in parallel.

So this is the timeline that we set out for phase two of the project for this year.

And even before this year, in the fall of 2020, we were working on planning and material development, development of the Stream Health website and the public input site, and also assembling our Stream Health team with staff from FES and from CDD Planning and Engineering and from CAPE as well.

And then as we moved into this year, we set out this timeline and divided the year into these four quarterly stages.

So the first stage was the discovery stage.

And during that stage, we were really focused on listening to what was important to the public and hearing from them through our public input site and doing a lot of education and outreach through the public input site and also through our webinar series.

And then as we moved into the second quarter of the year in the defined stage, we started to really work with our stakeholder work group.

And the members of the work group, of course, are folks from our community who had a particular interest in stream health issues and or had some particular expertise that they could offer to the project and were interested in working with us to develop some strategies.

So we met with the work group six times during that second quarter of the year and really focused on identifying and defining the factors that are impairing stream health in the county and also

You know, some of the challenges that we face, particularly in the rural area in developing solutions.

And then we set out with the work group to define a vision and goals for stream health in our community.

And then brainstorm some strategies that we could use to begin to address those goals.

So now you'll see we're entering this develop stage where that red arrow is.

And at this point, we're bringing all the work that we did with the work group back out to you on the board and to the broader public and hoping to get some feedback in identifying which of these strategies are the most viable and the most meaningful ones to develop into proposals.

And then as we move into that decide stage,

in the fall, we'll be bringing back these more well-developed final proposals back to you here on the board for some decision-making.

And then, of course, implementation of any of these strategies will extend beyond this timeline that you see.

So our goals for today's work session are to review the 16 strategies that were developed by the work group for the rural area,

to identify any strategies that are not supported by the board here today and to receive direction to move forward with proposal development on the remaining strategies, the ones that are supported.

And as I mentioned, our next step will be to return in the fall with some more well-developed proposals, and that will include staffing and resource needs and also more detail with respect to implementation.

So as we go ahead and start scoping these a little bit more clearly and have a better sense of what those resource needs are, then that will be included as part of a future budget request.

All right, so through our time with the work group, over 40 strategies were proposed for improving stream health in the rural area.

And so as we started to analyze each of these strategies and discuss them with the group and with our team, we ultimately put them into two buckets.

And those are those that we are not recommending for further consideration and those that are recommended for further consideration.

and starting with the ones that are not recommended and this is on your table too.

Generally, these are ones that we felt would have a low impact for stream health in the county.

We're generally not supported by the stakeholders, at least the ones that participated in the project and or these strategies had associated constraints that we felt would significantly decrease their likelihood of success.

And then in contrast, the ones that we are recommending for further consideration are ones that we felt had a higher impact for Stream Health, were supported generally by the stakeholders that we spoke with, and we felt would have a high likelihood of success, of course, with appropriate staffing and resources.

So there are a lot of other factors.

Those are the main ones that we considered.

But of course, there are a lot of other considerations that we've been evaluating as we look at each of these strategies and will continue to as we move into the proposal development stage.

And another consideration that I just want to mention that's really been central to this work and to our discussions with the work group is Albemarle County's goal for the rural area in the comprehensive plan, which, of course, all of you know is ultimately about balancing support for rural communities and rural economies with protection of all of the different and important resources that occur there.

All right, so I'm going to start going through the strategies.

And this is table one in your packet if you want to follow along.

And so to organize this discussion, we took the strategies for further consideration and put them into three main categories.

And those are new or revised regulations, incentives, and voluntary opportunities.

And the third category is monitoring education and partnerships.

So just as a general comment about these strategies, through the public engagement, we did hear some strong opposition to applying the regulatory approach to rural area land uses like agriculture and forestry.

And so in light of that, all of those strategies that you'll see in category one do maintain those exemptions for agriculture and forestry.

And we worked really hard with the work group to come up with a lot of alternatives in the second two categories that would hopefully start to address some of those impacts that we might see to stream health on working lands.

And so because this is a lot of information to get through, I'm going to suggest that I go through the strategies in category one.

And then we can have a pause for any questions or brief discussion.

And then I'll do the same for the second two categories.

And then if there's any, as Supervisor Galloway mentioned, if there's any more lengthy discussion, we'll save that for the end so that we can make sure we have time to get through all of these strategies.

All right.

So the first category is new or revised regulations.

And you'll notice at the bottom of each of these slides, there's two additional pieces of information.

And the first is the next step, which will either read initiate proposal development if we feel we have enough information to do so at this time.

or it will read assess opportunities.

And that is for when we need to do a little bit more work and have a little bit more discussion before we understand exactly what implementation might look like.

And then the second piece of information below that is alignment.

And this is where this particular stream health strategy is overlapping with some of the strategies in the climate action plan,

and the Biodiversity Action Plan.

So hopefully that will help illustrate where some of those co-benefits might exist.

So in the first category, the first strategy is to reestablish countywide requirements for perpetual retention and management of 100-foot stream buffers with exemptions for agriculture, forestry and other limited land uses.

Strategy B is to strengthen restoration requirements and guidelines when agricultural or forest land is converted to residential use and for mitigation when violations of the Water Protection Ordinance occur.

Strategy C is to amend the zoning ordinance to clarify that environmental restoration projects and specifically stream mitigation and nutrient banks are permitted by right throughout the county, subject to consistent regulations for their review and approval.

And the last one in this category is strategy D, to review existing policies and regulations to identify opportunities for better alignment with the Chesapeake Bay Preservation Act.

I always find, I guess it's the way my brain works, but I always find these work sessions very difficult, and I understand why they're structured this way.

But I have a lot of questions that I'd like to ask.

And I don't know how to get at those questions if I'm just having to deal with this particular section.

And it's all relevant to upfront questions.

So I'm just going to ask, right?

For clarity, because I think that there are some community members as well as, I don't know, not necessarily staff, but some of us that have been around a longer time than others are aware that these discussions with our agricultural community didn't just begin.

They didn't just start in January of this year.

and I don't know who is the best person to respond to this, but I believe we've been talking about stormwater and stream buffers and water issues, specifically stream buffers and with the agricultural community for, I don't know, at least it seems like almost the entire time that I've been on the Board of Supervisors.

You've had multiple outreaches to them.

So while I'm really, really appreciative of the work that was done, has been done since January, I really believe that we have been outreaching to the community for many, many years, other than just the last six months.

Is that correct?

I mean, am I wrong on that?

And I'm not even sure who can respond to that.

Maybe Frank, I don't know.

This is not, I guess what I'm saying is the outreach to our community, right, in the rural area.

This is not a process that has just been happening over the last four to six months.

I will butt in to say we've been talking about buffers in the ACE program since the year 2000.

Yes.

And that's what I'm getting at is I don't want people to think that we've only been outreaching to the community since January of this year.

And I have another kind of bigger question.

When these regulations were revised and when staff looked at them, we have a whole new world right now.

We have a climate crisis.

And I'm wondering, when you review these strategies and determine the new or the revised one that you're recommending and you want us to choose from, were they looked at through the lens of

climate change and where they looked at through the lens of our newly adopted climate action plan.

Well, so I can try to respond to that in that that is partially what I was trying to get at with showing where there's alignment and with the CAP strategies, because there is quite a bit of alignment.

And I would say less so with the regulatory strategies, but as we go into the voluntary incentive programs and particularly conservation programs, there's quite a bit of opportunity for

Park, you know, retaining forest cover and, you know, minimizing development in the rural area, which has impacts for transportation and, you know, other associated, you know, implications that are related to the Climate Action Plan.

And I appreciate that.

And I really wanted to just because we're

there was a lot here.

And I'm looking at it from 35,000 level, right?

30,000 or 35,000 level feet up in the air.

And you all have been down with this for a long time.

And so that's what I just wanted to clarity around.

So you have in fact tried as best you could to marry this to our climate action plan and look through that lens of climate change and climate crisis.

So I guess to get to the question that you really have, you're asking us to look at A through D, I believe, right?

On that, the new or revised regulations and comment.

And I would say that for myself, I am honing in on letter D.

Letter D says, review existing policies and regulations to identify opportunities for better alignment with the Chesapeake Bay Preservation Act.

And for me, that's where my focus is.

I would like to hear more about that.

I would like to hear more about what that strategy would mean.

what the negatives would be, what the positives would be what it would mean for our plan in general because my sense is if we focus on D some of these others can fall away and rather than going through an adopting piecemeal it seems like D gets us to where we need to be in a time of climate crisis

I feel urgency about some of these issues to not just keep doing the same thing we have always done, but there is an urgency to what we're seeing in our climate right now.

And for me, D represents an area that I would like to know more about so that I feel like I can comfortably address or at least evaluate

what needs to be done to address our changing climate and the crisis we have.

Well, the reverse answer.

You're saying you want that one to continue.

Well, I guess I am focusing, Ned, and I understand they're asking questions, and I can go through

A, B, and C. And I'm not opposed to any of those.

But I am looking at D, because I think if we focus on D, we are going to really create

It will allow us to not have to piecemeal so much.

It will create a better situation for our community, a safer, healthier community, protect our waters.

But I don't know.

That's just my assumption.

Thank you Chair Galloway and thank you for the information to this point.

I'm going to just highlight two items.

Strategy B1 when agricultural or forest land is converted to residential use.

Communications with the Farm Bureau, that was one of the big areas of concern they had expressed to me that they believe that they are largely compliant with what the county desires but that there are some individuals when they decide to change the use of the property from agricultural or forestal use

to other development or residential that they may have exceeded what would be permitted for residential use on the land while they were in compliance with what they could do while it was agricultural or forestal.

And they don't want the entire agricultural or forestal community to be considered to be bad because a few people have, for example, cut closer to the stream bed while it was agricultural or forestal use.

I would be very interested in ensuring a mechanism for ensuring that an abuse doesn't take place there.

With regard to D,

My concern is the language that's found right in the middle of the analysis and discussion that full adoption of the CBPA regulations would include restrictions on agricultural land use that are strongly opposed by the stakeholder representatives that participated in the work group.

So I want to ensure that before we adopt any of the Chesapeake Bay Preservation Act regulations that we have fully

included those stakeholders so that we are not inadvertently adversely impacting the ability of our forest or agricultural industries to continue to be able to operate in the county.

All right.

Thank you.

Let me run back up my list here.

I guess a question that, Kim, you can share with everybody.

And those are links to the discussion meetings that were held by these work groups so that we may listen in.

I know as one person who tried to volunteer for one, I was told that electeds were not going to be participating in those.

But we would have the opportunity to listen afterwards.

So I'm now asking.

to listen into those six meetings and to hear because so many of the original strategies were thrown out by those members.

And so I would like to know more about those.

and what the discussions were.

Similar to what Ms.

McKeel was talking about, these items have been discussed since long before 1980 when there was a major down zoning.

And so we have to understand that we've been around around this merry-go-round quite a few times already.

I agree that the comp plan has conflicting goals, but it's not all one or the other.

just because there could be some rules does not mean the end of agriculture.

And so I think we need to have more information about specific items being discussed as opposed to just a general broad brush of that people will just say no changes to any rules are allowed because they feel threatened by that.

I've been having these debates with my fellow farmers since 1982 when we

go back in operation in Albemarle County.

So that is fine.

I agree that there's a tremendous urgency, as described by others, regarding all the issues we're dealing with here.

And we have been talking about these every four or five years or forever.

A, I support A. And I don't think what's being proposed is any change at all because of the exemption.

So we're going to have to be thinking about what levels of exemptions are reasonable and with the spirit of compromise.

But underlying all of my approach is that nobody has the right to damage a downstream property owner in any way.

What the natural rainstorms do to us is one thing, but operations should not be allowed to damage other people.

That's just my moral obligation.

Bea, the approach here should be that we don't take trees in the buffer.

I've had long discussions with the State Forestry Department, and they say that is the 50-50 cut, where you have 100 stems and you take the 50 big trees and remove the canopy and leave 50 tiny little trees, which are totally exposed to the full sun and have no protection from the canopy for rain.

That is one thing under discussion at the state level,

Hope we will not give up on that.

I can't remember what C is.

I support that.

I absolutely support D as well.

And that is another thing where I have been asking questions for years of many different people in the county government and across the state to try to get answers to what

Those rules are.

And the general response is, here's the link to the 300 pages of the code.

Well, that's not my skill or my job right now.

So I need to get in support of what was already stated about getting going on D. We need to know what options would be required if we were to adopt the ag and forestal chapters, which we have not yet so far, and what the changes would be and what the impacts might be.

So some guided discussion about that with some homework would be very much appreciated.

Regarding climate change, we can't claim that we're going to retain forest cover if we have no rules that require it.

Yes, thank you very much.

I concur a lot with what Supervisor Price has said.

I want to make sure, and this is a question if someone can answer it, but who are the participants?

I'm assuming we have the Agriculture and Forestall establishments participating because I think that would be very important.

I'd like to know if someone

hasn't wanted to participate because I think these discussions are extremely important.

I think it's important that everybody understands where we want to go, what we want to improve.

I do agree with Supervisor Mallek of not letting a downstream property be ruined because someone upstream doesn't want to do the right thing.

And noting that if you have natural disasters and whether

That's something you can't control.

But otherwise, I'm looking forward to hearing the rest of the presentation.

And I do think we're moving.

And I like the fact that we are moving.

I know this has been going on for many, many years.

But I do like the fact that it seems like we are moving on this.

And we're probably going to have to compromise on something.

Right.

So we broadly invited anyone who wanted to participate through the public input site and the questionnaires and so we had different levels of participation where

members of the public and stakeholders of the community could choose to be observers or they could choose to be contributors.

And so we had these different categories set out.

And the final category, well, there were two at the end.

One was technical expert for folks who might offer expertise.

And we had folks from NRCS and from Soil and Water Conservation District who volunteered as technical experts.

as examples but did not actually participate fully in the workgroup in all of the six meetings.

And so, yeah.

And then the work group was a little bit higher level of engagement.

And there were 40 people originally who volunteered to participate in the work group.

And we reached out specifically to some of the communities in the rural area that we felt did not have good representation, like the agricultural community.

And so we did some direct outreach to make sure we had those voices at the table as well.

Thank you.

So my first comment is on the Chesapeake Bay Protection Act.

It says in the materials that adopting the entire piece of legislation

was evaluated and rejected because of the agricultural community not wanting it and that I believe that it was staff time.

So I think it doesn't sound like it would be really difficult to share with the board that evaluation.

That's something I've wanted to see for a long time and since it's already been done and I don't remember it being shared I apologize if it has been shared with the board in the past, but I would like to see that

and clearly there are other board members that would like to see that.

I have some clarifying questions that I really need cleared up and I think that these are great Kantner questions.

When we redid the Water Protection Ordinance in 2014, our discussion was in May of 2014 and that was done in response to state changes in their laws.

and when I went back and read the minutes this morning from 2014, I really did not understand.

I was on the board at the time and I did not really understand the nuances here that we significantly changed our regulations on stream buffers

and it says perpetual retention and management of 100-foot stream buffers was required back before 2014 update.

So Greg, I have two parts to that.

Was prior to that 2014 update, was that only pertained that retention and management of 100-foot stream buffers?

Was that only for situations that involved land disturbance?

And why did we drop that 100-foot stream buffer on that update in 2014?

I think the better course would be for me to go back and read the minutes again.

I did look at them about a month ago.

So it's definitely not clear in the minutes why that was done.

So I'm just saying I read the minutes and it's not clear.

So can you tell me prior to 2014 whether the 100-foot buffer referred to all the, you know, did it refer to only situations where there was land disturbance

So it's contingent on those two triggers and it's based on land disturbance and that land disturbance has a threshold of 10,000 square feet.

and it says if you have a permit.

So when the permit's closed out, technically it no longer falls under the regulation.

So I have read the act recently and I've gotten up to speed on it and everything that I see in the act refers to updating subdivision ordinances and our site plan ordinances to enforce this buffer, long-term buffer regulation.

and not through a WPO ordinance.

It would act, and Greg mentioned this, excuse me, Mr. Campner mentioned this at one point where we need to look at this a little differently.

And I think the enabling authority is through our subdivision and zoning ordinances.

I don't think it's through the WPO, which is probably the issues with enforcement that we had in the past and we couldn't enforce it.

Because the VSMP program is focused and geared around land disturbance.

OK, so that's just something I've been kind of learning a little bit more here lately.

So thank you very much.

So I guess we need to know what our WPO actually does, because I don't know how much time we can spend on this right now, but maybe you can answer that.

Ours?

So when we do have a land disturbing activity, we are enabled to enforce buffers through the WPO ordinance.

But that is during the land disturbing activity period.

When that activity ceases and the permit is released, then that authority, in my opinion, the way I'm reading it,

And removing trees, just cutting down trees is not a land disturbance.

No, we have a definition, and it includes land clearing to be.

OK, because I read in some of the materials recently that you had to remove the stumps for it to be a land clearing situation.

So I apologize.

I must have gotten that incorrect.

So my next question is, so there really isn't, if I as a homeowner in the rural areas decide to cut less than 10,000 square feet along the edge of the river, as long as it's less than 10,000 square feet, I don't need anything.

I can just go ahead and do that.

Yeah, barring any zoning, which there is a zoning regulation that prohibits cutting within 15 feet of a stream.

Okay, so this is another question.

I think this is a great question.

When we talk about farmland or we talk about agricultural land, we've run into this before.

is that basically 95% of the county is zoned rural.

And so if you have a 50-acre or 25-acre or whatever piece of property in the rural area and you've got a big house on it, is that considered residential or is that considered

Just broadly, for the ag exemption to apply, it is the active agricultural activities that are exempt.

And they're listed in both the water protection ordinance and in state law.

It's the tilling.

It's the harvesting and all of those types of activities that are exempt from the requirements of the WPO.

OK.

Okay, so my house, because I'm not cutting hay or doing anything like that, I am, even though I'm in the rural areas, I have a residential property and if I did more than 10,000 square feet and I got to 15 feet of the, if I cut into 15 feet of the edge of the river, I would be violating county ordinance.

Is that correct?

All right.

So getting back to this list of things, my interest is really in buffers.

And so I would be interested in table one.

I am really concerned that whatever we do with our

Supervisor Palmer, if you can hear us, we cannot hear you.

I see you're muted.

And that brings me down to one of the things in table B. Oh, I'm sorry.

Yes.

Am I better now?

This is better.

Somebody just tell me if you can hear me.

No?

We'll get that sorted out and we'll make sure you have the time, Supervisor Palmer, to get in your points here.

Can you hear me now?

I can hear you, but you've got electronic and you're breaking up.

So it might be best to try to log out, log back in.

So what I think we should do, Jim, it looks like at this point on A, B, C, or D, we haven't really had any that we do not want to keep on the list.

Everything is going to remain.

That sounds good.

We can come back to that at the end also.

So I'll go on to category two, which is incentives and voluntary opportunities.

So the first strategy in this category is to establish a riparian buffer easement program focused on protecting water quality through new riparian buffer easements in high priority areas and by strengthening existing whole property easements with additional provisions to protect stream health.

B is to establish a conservation easement assistance program

to help landowners with the transactional costs of placing land under conservation easement.

Strategy C is to create a stream health improvement fund that offers assistance to landowners engaged in conservation or cost-share programs and to support specific restoration projects that benefit stream health.

And strategy D is to support existing cost year programs that promote best management practices to improve stream health.

And E, the last one is to explore options to encourage onsite treatment of stormwater and minimization of impervious surfaces by providing an incentive for low impact development practices.

So that is all the strategies in that second category.

Ned, would you come back to me?

I'm sorry, would you come back to me in just a few minutes?

Yes, I'm logged back on.

I got a note that said that the host had dropped me, and I didn't do anything about it.

Perfect.

What I think we should do then, since Supervisor McKeel has asked for a hold for a few moments, maybe we should just pick up and get all your points out that you were going to make and then we'll continue.

That's great.

So we're going back to the regulations and the things we're not going to do.

It said that reinstate 25 foot buffers for perennial streams on cropland.

and I am wondering why was that just dropped as a part of the whole redoing of the WPO and it says that only 4% of the land in Albemarle County is cropland and that that is one of the reasons why it was

It was dropped from the list of things to do, but I'm wondering how much of that cropland is actually in a floodplain.

And I don't know if there's an answer to that, but it's just been my observation as I travel around the county that a lot of cropland is in those

Flood Plains and along rivers and streams.

And so I don't know if there's a comment about that, because I would be interested in seeing about putting that back in, if that's the case.

Well, so that is something that was previously in the ordinance prior to the 2014 update.

And I think in our conversations with the work group, we did have some folks who worked for the Soil and Water Conservation District, now retired, and also for the county community development, now retired.

And our understanding of partially, at least, why that was removed was

was enforceability.

And so I don't think that it was being enforced by the county.

And then also, with respect to the general comments I've already made about the agricultural community, there is definitely some strong opposition to applying these regulations for stream buffers or otherwise to ag lands.

and so we put that one on the not recommended list for those reasons and then also just because of that small percentage of land in Albemarle that would actually be affected.

To your question about the floodplain, I don't know the answer to that.

It's a really good question though.

Well, I guess what I would wonder is an answer to that, because if it is in the floodplain, it's liable to be more important than 4% of the area, and it just doesn't

You know, I'm not growing corn in a floodplain, so I don't know.

But I would like to hear specifically from the farming community what 25 feet on the edge of a field is really going to, how that's really going to affect them.

And going back to this whole, we don't do anything because we can't force it.

Maybe we should be looking at enforcement.

We've talked before and I don't know about the legalities of using drones or whatever we use, but maybe that needs to be a portion of this whole stream protection process is to have some

some level of enforcement and clearly that requires hiring more people but we do have some options out there because enforcement has changed.

I'm very interested in that and as I was saying I won't take up too much more time on this but buffers are really important to me and I would like to figure out how we can strengthen our buffer rules in whatever program we decide to do and

While it's really nice to have everything as incentives and voluntary opportunities, there is not, as you've got in here, how many things were thrown out that were incentives because we didn't have the legal ability to cut people's taxes and give them a monetary incentive to do these things.

And so I just, I'm thinking we do need some level of

of uh, review on these things.

I don't know what that level of review is.

I know you can go crazy with it, you know, or you can do some um, moderate thing like a twenty-five foot buffer on the cropland.

Um, and uh, so I think I had a few more things in here, but I will stop on that and um, let us go on and hopefully I won't get kicked off again.

So we're back to section two now.

Let's see if I can go back.

Let's see.

No, I think we have those in front of them.

OK.

Thank you.

I appreciate it.

I'm back.

And I appreciate, I want to just start with, I really appreciate what Liz just said.

We have gone a long time with.

Encouragement, education, I think we may need to look at enforcement as well.

Maybe not for everything.

It doesn't happen.

But I really think we can't take that off the table.

And that's why I want to know more about the Chesapeake Bay Preservation Act.

That's exactly what I want to know.

I want to know, because that is enforcement.

And I want to know what the pros and cons would be, what it would look like.

And is there a way we could maybe temper it?

I don't know.

But we are, I can't say it often enough, we are in a climate crisis.

We have nine years, guys.

It's what the scientists are saying.

and to continue to do things the way we've always done it is not going to get us anywhere.

We have a climate action plan.

We need to get serious about buffers, stream health, and I'm just looking and watching what's happened.

In this community, we had people die a few years ago because of a rush of water that came down and swept them away.

Look at what's happening in Germany right now.

in some of the rain bomb situations that we have had even in our country.

Maybe we need to start thinking about buffers and giving more space to rivers and streams to be proactive.

So I am all with what Liz just said, and I am agreeing about.

So if I'm looking at the current list we're talking about, we're talking buffers at the very beginning, I am all for looking at buffers.

And how do we improve our buffer situation?

Maybe it's going to take enforcement.

So A, yes, I am in favor of that.

Bea is really interesting to me because it says, establish a conservation easement assistant program to help landowners with transactional costs of placing land under conservation easement.

And maybe, Kim, you need to help me a little bit.

We already have our ACE program, but I'm assuming that this would be taking it to a different lens to a little bit different level.

Sure, I would be happy to.

So the ACE program is currently a purchase of development rights program.

And so that is purchasing or partially purchasing the easement.

and this strategy that's suggested is more, it would be somewhat more efficient I think in that it would be more helping landowners.

It's something of an equity issue really for some landowners that can't afford these upfront costs, the transactional costs of stewardship fees or

attorney fees.

And so it would be a way to encourage more rural area landowners where those transactional costs might be a barrier.

And ultimately, with the tax credits and sometimes with purchase programs or grant programs, those landowners can get those upfront costs back in the end, but they don't have them to begin with.

And so that's what that's getting at.

And there is a program that serves as a model in Loudoun County that the Piedmont Environmental Council helped to establish.

And so that's something we could look to as a model if that were of interest.

Well, that's very helpful.

Thank you.

And I will say, I would be very interested in looking at this program.

Having said that, I think it's time that we take a look at our current ACE program, which I am supportive of, but it is two decades old, maybe older than that.

And I think we need to look at our current ACE program and see if we don't need to tweak it or change it, given our climate action plan, how can our current ACE program better support our work, right?

around climate change and what we need to do.

I am all in favor of protecting lands, but I am not in favor of having 20-year-old programs that have not been reviewed to see if they need to be adjusted, reviewed.

We have criteria in our current AIDS program that we don't even know if that is the criteria we would use given climate change.

So if I am very much in favor of Bea, but only if

It can be married to a review of our ACE program currently to enhance it and make it work better to do what we need.

We don't even talk about our ACE program right now other than are we going to fund it or not.

And I just think we need to get past that.

Again, we need to stop doing things like we've always done it and see what we need to do differently to adjust to a changing climate.

And I'm sorry because that's another workload, and I apologize, but I just think if we're looking at ACE, we need to look at ACE completely.

Create a stream health improvement fund.

I am not against that.

I'd like to hear how others feel about that.

We have a lot of things we're creating funds for right now, and I'm not real sure.

Cost share programs again.

I'm certainly not opposed to helping folks do this work, but I think we need to figure out exactly what we need to do first before like examining some of these programs before we start cost sharing and saying we're going to create funds.

Explore options to encourage on-site treatment of stormwater and minimize impervious surfaces.

and certainly I'm not opposed to that.

But again, my focus right now really is on buffers, stream health as it relates to the buffers in trying to marry our work, even with the ACE program, to climate change and how do we need to adjust our thinking and our work.

And I'm not opposed to enforcement,

I'm certainly not opposed to working with people, compromise, but at the end of the day, sometimes it takes enforcement.

And I'm not sure that the Chesapeake Bay Act, when it was passed east of 95, they have been living in that world now for at least a decade, maybe two decades.

Maybe we could take a look at how it impacted them and how it impacts them right now, the areas that are doing that because those communities are living under and working with the Chesapeake Bay Preservation Act.

Thank you.

With regard to all of the incentives that have a financial component, I guess the questions that we would have is how much would each of them cost?

Where would the money come from?

What are our odds or chances of being able to get that money?

And what would the impact be on our county budget in terms of the other things that we need to do?

And then in terms of the item E as an echo, on-site treatment,

I defer to experts on how much treatment can actually be done in most of our locations, but definitely support the minimization of impervious surfaces to allow more of the water to go back into the soil rather than simply wash downstream.

There we go, finally.

Okay, thank you.

Let me roll back up just a minute.

Oh, shoot.

Where's my table question?

OK.

So A, it says, high priority areas, where are they?

In the category two incentives involuntary to have higher standards for buffers in high priority areas.

I would assume those are all of our perennial streams, or is it just the watershed?

So I think what's proposed here is still to be developed.

So I think you could develop a really strong ranking and prioritization system that would apply to that to A, but potentially to some of these other ones.

For example, if you had the extreme health fund where you're funding specific projects.

so the idea is to have this ranking and prioritization system that's really focused on water quality benefits because right now there is a lot of conservation happening but it's largely opportunistic so you know where you had an application come in you might see you know how it would be where it's located geographically certainly in terms of you know the tmdls and the tmdl watersheds and then how it might impact the public water supply

You could also look at overlapping benefits from the biodiversity action plan mapping and climate benefits as well.

Okay, and B, transactional cost.

Back in 1989 and 98, when we did easements, there were agencies who did help with, back then it was like $1,500 or $2,000, but they did help with the transactional costs.

And so one of those you already mentioned up in Loudoun, but they were working here then doing that.

So what has happened to that program to help people sort of bridge the gap until their easements are processed?

I'd like to make sure that we're not just... I'm very leery of setting up parallel programs to things that have been ongoing, whether it's AS, Soil and Water Conservation District, or Farm Services Agency, NRCS, all those things that have been ongoing since the Dust Bowl, and already have the connections with landowners.

So I'm wary of trying to set up a parallel process with any of those things.

I know that

Loudoun County already has extra requirements for use of land use, which we'll get to that later on in the chart.

I guess those were things that you discounted, but they are already happening in other counties in Virginia.

So I think we do have the authority to do things like that.

C, I agree about what I wrote down the other day when I was doing the packet is modify and expand the ACE program to strengthen the effectiveness of stream health rather than starting a whole new operation.

But I will say that the ACE committee meets almost monthly and spends most of its time working on the criteria and making sure that they are evolving and strong.

I mean, that's basically what took so long to get the buffers into the required category was doing that.

So that is an important thing to recognize.

In D, existing cost share programs.

Yes, that's good.

That would come in with a regulated land disturbing activity.

So it would not apply to exempt activities, which would include agricultural or forest activities.

OK.

Somewhere in the chart, it talked about reducing runoff.

And so, of course, there are lots of green ways

to easily to be able to manage that.

And when you have space, as you do when you have fields, and you can have cairns at the corners of all your barns that capture all the runoff water and let it soak in, and also little natural dips that you let the water.

It may have six inches of water in it for a few weeks, and then it all goes away.

But all those things can be done, but it takes some regulatory structure to say this is what we expect of you, which is not the end of the world for anybody's operation.

So that kind of treatment, the treatment on site that I would understand would be the green ecosystems water treatment.

The plants are taking pollution out of the waterway.

And so any place where we can enhance retention and let the natural systems do their job, the better off we will be.

Wait a minute.

I'm all mixed up now.

Okay, I guess I'm on the wrong place because I have something like G on mine, so I'll stop with questions.

Yes, and thank you very much Ms.

Bassioli for your presentation and Mr. Poll also.

We have there a really good, as far as I'm concerned, vision and goals for Stream Health in our community.

I'm very trusting of staff to be able to know with our goals to be able to develop how we go about

each one of those goals and maintaining that.

I'm not in favor of really, I think what you have here is plenty and it's enough.

I'm not in favor of adding more because our budget's going to explode with all the extra

McKeel,

affected agencies who are actually doing the work there.

I'm not an expert in this area.

I don't want to add anything to what's going on.

I think if you are able to accomplish your vision and goals for the stream health, which I'm very concerned about, if you're able to do that for our community,

So far, I like what you've done.

I think you've all been doing a good job.

And I like the strategies that are presented for the incentives and voluntary opportunities.

Those are all my comments.

OK, so commenting just on

First of all on the conservation easements and getting additional conservation easements and even

referring to the ACE program as it is now.

One of the problems I see with that is enforcement.

We know and we're seeing with VOF easements as they age and properties are sold, there is not necessarily a willingness of the new owners to do what the original owners were doing when they put them under conservation easement and it doesn't appear.

at least in what I've been involved with that the VOF has the staff to deal with the violations.

I suspect as our ACE program continues, the properties in the ACE program now get turned over to future owners

that were liable to see the same type of problem.

And so before we add to our conservation easements of any type, I frankly would like staff to take a look at what the cost of making sure that we have the legal staff or the inspectors to follow up on complaints.

I just want to get ready for that.

Not that I'm against getting the

the easements for buffers.

With respect to the cost share programs, we've been hearing for years that the Soil and Water District needs more money to do what they are doing now.

So I'm assuming that you're talking about giving them more money.

If not, let me know.

But they are an established group, and I certainly would be against

something like that, obviously depending on how much it is.

The one thing that I wanted to mention is the low impact development.

While I think we all can be happy to support that, my concern is the state code that allows offsite water quality credits has kind of killed developers

incentives to do the low impact development.

And so could somebody comment on that?

Is that a correct observation?

And I'm not sure who should comment on that.

Supervisor Palmer, Frank Pohl, County Engineer.

Yes, it is a valid comment.

And that's why I think we're offering it as, or we're posing it as incentives

That's yet to be determined.

When you look at the state regs that allow this offsite water quality credits, is there anything that you would think should be changed?

Well, I think I mentioned this in the last board meeting that I came to for the adoption of the first phase proposals that the state has passed a new regulation that requires local stream credit starting, if you're going to purchase offsite credits, if you're discharging to an impaired stream,

and they have a map for this that you have to start with a smaller watershed and then work your way out.

So we're seeing that effect.

The effect of that is that we're seeing a lot more purchases from the local nutrient bank.

So that's one positive change that has happened.

But to answer your question about how we would be able to do something to change that, I'm not sure the answer.

We did look at if we could

come up with more stringent requirements regarding nutrient credits and determined that we could not because it was not state-enabled.

Well, actually, and he should comment on that, but part of my question is can you see any way that the state regs could be tweaked to help us to make it

I don't have an answer at the moment but I can look into that.

I'm just curious about that.

We're always trying to figure out what we can do in relationship to the state and if there's something small that the state can do that we can ask them to do to make it better, I'd like to know about that.

I'm just running through the things here really quick.

I don't know about the Stream Health Improvement Fund.

It sounds like that's, I think Ann mentioned this, it sounds like a parallel program to me.

Maybe I'm wrong, but anyway, I'll stop there and we can move on.

For those who, there was a, I forget who made the point about the cost involved for these.

I mean when you're dealing with incentives to try to decide in which of these I would say well if I could only choose two or three of these to try to evaluate that having an idea of

bang for my buck is a consideration I would take into account because if one of these or two of these got us further for the money put into it versus the other two or three I'd lean that way.

So to just be able to pick oh I support these two or three or all of them without really knowing the financials of it is difficult.

It seems that number or E

the Explore Options doing the incentives for the low impact development practices.

I mean, I may be wrong.

I don't know what's involved with creating that, but that seems to me to be something that could be an easily implemented one that we could get something out of as part of when applications come in.

If that is an easy lift, then I would think that, I mean, then we should include something like that.

But otherwise this kind of lines up

A, B, C, D, E, almost in the way I would prioritize it if you asked me to rank these one through five.

This is real close to how I would do that.

You know, D, is there a way through other agencies or through other regional bodies that we have that could help with this?

Any time you see, I mean, we would, of course, support cost share

with our support or endorsements could maybe take the burden on to do.

But it seems that A, B, and C, I would be interested in at least those three continuing.

And then to go further, I'd want to start considering some dollar impacts.

I think so.

All right.

OK.

So the third category is monitoring education and partnerships.

So the first strategy is to develop a countywide water quality testing program for landowners that could also serve as a screening tool

to help identify waterways that would benefit from long-term monitoring or stream health improvement projects.

Strategy B is to assist with community engagement to help recruit new volunteers to support RCA's water monitoring program.

C is to review and update stream health resources on the county's website.

D, expand and formalize a new landowner education project.

E is to support expansion of education programs for students and a coordinated watershed-wide approach, especially at the middle school and high school level.

F is to explore grant opportunities to support stream health, restoration, conservation, and education projects and programs.

and G is explore ways to work with BDOT to reduce the impacts from public roads.

Sure.

Well, at first blush when you read these, Kim, it's really hard to be against any of them.

They all are very relevant.

They are all good suggestions.

I guess where the rubber meets the road is how much staff time and how much money are they going to cost, right?

And are you wanting us to actually pick out the one?

Well, it's hard.

Yeah, for me, it's hard to say we should remove any of these.

I will say that I do think it would be wonderful.

I always go to education in the schools, and E sounds very interesting to me because I think we could include our school system might very well be interested in helping us with this one, right?

I think that's great.

But they're all very worthwhile.

I think, again, and I'm not savvy enough to know which one of these would provide the biggest bang for the buck.

maybe I just don't know so I'm going to say I would support any of them having said that I'd like to look at which one would give us the biggest impact right and I would have to before I could go through and just pick for sure I think they do have implications for staff time and dollars it would seem like to me I'm not sure that I'm answering your question

But with that, let me just leave it with that for right now.

Supervisor Price?

Thank you.

I largely concur with Supervisor McKeel.

I think all of them are worthwhile.

If I had to pick one, probably because it actually talks about money, F, pursuing grant options would be high and almost all of the others pretty much could work in with the school board.

Supervisor Malek.

Certainly, enhancing the ability to have more knowledge about the water quality across the county is a really great goal.

I would not prioritize spending county staff time recruiting volunteers for RCA.

That's RCA's job.

We can certainly help them, continue to support them financially.

But I would rather not do B, which is what I understood that we would be taking over some of the roles of things that they're trying to do or getting ourselves into that.

Sort of a clearinghouse website.

Be careful what you ask for.

That is something that the River organization has been trying to do.

And we have a massive set of resources.

But to have it be usable as a usable interface is really hard without a dedicated person.

And so that will eat up some time.

If you're just going to have lists of links to other places that

are still in operation and they can go to RCS or whatever that way, that would be fine.

But I'm worried about the depth of what's being suggested here at sea.

The Landowner Education Project is excellent.

The FE, for years there has been a very successful watershed campout program for all fourth graders in the county.

I've participated in those for years and years.

And I think expanding that would be

Really, really terrific to get people to appreciate, children to appreciate what's out there so that when they get to be bigger, they remember.

And F, we are all competing.

All of these different agencies you're mentioning are all competing for the same federal dollars.

So my experience with that has been that,

The grants are usually released with a due date of 10 days away.

So you have to be sort of on the chosen insider list in order to get anywhere on those.

It's fairly infuriating.

But anyway, I think we may be lucky.

The River organization did get a big, huge NFWF grant years ago back in 2010.

And we certainly got a lot of great work out of it.

But that's a lot harder than it looks.

Gee would be fantastic because we know that VDOT is the biggest generator of stormwater in the entire Commonwealth, but I don't know how, without General Assembly orders or the governor's order, we are going to get anything to happen out of that one.

And now I have an H on my notes, but I can't find H on the

Thank you very much.

I like all of these actually.

I like G, but how does that work?

So let's say we do work with VDOT.

We develop a program to track the high-consuming gravel roads as well as a problematic section of paved roadways.

We say, okay, this is a problem.

How do you address something like that?

I mean, do you take out the road?

Do you take the gravel road and pave it?

I'm just not, it puzzles me as to, it's not that I'm against this, but I'm just, would like to ask the people that put it in, I mean, how do you address those impacts?

I can respond.

No.

Oh, OK, Frank, yeah.

Well, I'll go, and then, Frank, you can follow if you have anything.

I think that the answer there is you're right.

We don't know exactly.

It's largely situational.

But there could be instances where it's something very simple.

It might involve just working with VDOT's maintenance staff and doing some grading or installing some VMPs.

Or doing this.

Yes, best management practices to manage some of the runoff from those roads.

And it may just be communication as well and improving that and helping to identify where these problematic road sections are.

So we're not necessarily advocating more paving because there's a whole other suite of issues that go along with that.

Okay, because I do know that VDOT does have a boring machine that they are using in different parts of the county to ream out the culvert, so to speak, and so if this program would be more to identify those areas, then

That would be good.

That would be feasible.

Thank you.

I will, if I can jump in real quickly.

Frank Pohl, County Engineer.

It was one of the issues brought up.

that about gravel leaving the road and not just entering culverts but entering streams.

So that would be another thing that we would bring up with maintenance.

There would probably be priorities that would need to be set by the board about what issues to address that would need to be requested to be addressed.

Mike?

That is correct which is why they frequently or they have a program to reapply gravel because they're losing the gravel.

And that's not a good thing.

Where is it ending up, right?

So that's something we would talk with VDOT about and try to establish some priority.

And as Kim mentioned, it might be specific to the area or specific to the road, right?

So not all roads have the same problem.

But because my concern is where does the gravel and the dust from the gravel roads, where does that end up?

Unfortunately, it might be in our stream.

So, OK.

Thank you.

OK, I guess it's my turn.

OK.

With respect to the first 1A, I think that's great.

I would love to see county-wide monitoring.

I'd like to see it with RCA doing it.

Also, we can be assured that it's going to be biologically-based monitoring.

So they do an excellent job now.

We support them to some extent.

The Water Authority support them.

And I think that leaving it up to them with some, you know, it's amazing what they get done on the small amount of money that they get.

And I do think there's a lot of interest in the community to volunteer for that.

So I like that.

I'm not quite sure how much we should get involved in recruiting other than just sending anybody that asks their way.

But certainly they would need additional financial support.

I'm definitely very much in favor of the grant opportunities, of course.

I know Fish and Wildlife has stuff.

Ann mentioned the one a few years ago.

They are pretty problematic trying to get some of them.

I was reading the FEMA BRIC website last night to see their grant opportunities, and I noticed that it has to be the state that applies for those, so we would be a sub-applicant, and so that would require working with the state.

I don't know how complicated that could get.

But, you know, we have people on staff that look into grants now, and that's my understanding anyway, but maybe we don't have that person anymore.

And so, yes, education is important, and anything we wanted to do along that end would be

Very helpful and it needs to be an ongoing program, not just a temporary pilot or something like that.

It really needs to be embedded because people forget, people move in, people move out, that sort of thing.

I think generally speaking that I would say that from the comments and other things that I've heard that sections two and three I'm not saying section three is not priority but energy effort front load on sections one and two before three.

Anywhere here like the RCA where this can go out

for that agency or another agency to help, I would strongly encourage.

It seems to me that the volunteer recruitment one versus us, the county or staff taking on efforts to find, maybe we just need to recruit a couple of volunteer recruiters and then sick them at getting volunteers for things.

That might be it.

And you might have some people that'd be willing to do that and I don't know.

Policy.

If we have a website out there that has resources on it,

and it doesn't really matter what category it falls under, then that should be something that should constantly be reviewed and updated and it shouldn't be coming necessarily to us to say, yes, let's have that as a priority in the policy.

I get why it's here, I'm not criticizing it.

I'm just making the point that if we're providing lists of things that are information and resources and it's on our website, then that's a universal constant check and update to make sure that stuff's accurate.

So whoever that falls under, that would be my response to B. But that could maybe, or I'm sorry, C, that could maybe remove that off.

And then VDOT, I would hope, would be doing that on their own with maybe our incurring

I think the way to get some of these off of this particular list is to go, wait a minute, what is really under somebody else's umbrella that we could then focus on the things that we think are under our umbrella and then go specifically to those.

Those are my comments on that section.

Kim, you've been listening along here.

I know that we went over the allotted time and we started early.

So we put in a lot of time here, but we had the time, so that's fine.

You got a lot more discussion I think in questions throughout the presentation that maybe would have come up at the end if we did it that way.

OK.

well so I I'm hearing in general I didn't hear any opposition to any of the strategies in the in category one in the regulatory category it I did hear

A lot of interest in alignment with the Chesapeake Bay Preservation Act.

And I do want to clarify that the full adoption of the Chesapeake Bay Preservation Act, which was in our not recommended table, included the agricultural regulations.

And it includes additional regulations on development.

So strategy D is more looking at,

McKeel.

So I just wanted to make that clarification in case that wasn't clear.

I guess we would ask a follow-up question.

as a way to solve some of these other problems.

I think several other board members did mention this.

Rather than the restricted approach, which is only take a little here and take a little there, which we, as I said, have been doing for 30 years.

So please, others, pile in.

And as I said, I may be the only one.

Which is different than what she was reporting.

That's why I'm raising it.

I just want to say one thing really quick.

It says in table one that that was evaluated and rejected.

So I, at the very least, want to see the evaluation and why it was rejected because I do not know.

Chair Galloway, I specifically referenced in section 1D analysis and discussion the concern that full adoption of the CBPA was not concurred with.

It was opposed by some of the stakeholders, I believe principally the agricultural and forestal.

Yeah, I don't think it was the necessary blanket adoption.

It was let's get that in front of us, see the ins and outs, get into the weeds of that a little bit as it compares to what we're seeing in front of us.

Yeah, I never said a blanket adoption.

What I said was it was worthy of taking a look at, right?

I'd like to know the impacts and why, as Liz says, why we can adopt it.

What did the study show?

Because I think people east of 95 have been living with this for many, many years.

So, and Ken, you're kind of on the spot here.

I'm happy to

this would introduce additional regulations not just for the agricultural community but also on land development.

We identified that there would be somewhat of a high degree of complexity and additional staffing needs with respect to both administration and enforcement.

And so we don't have a detailed evaluation of all of that and that is something that we can do.

It's not included in the 16 strategies that we set out with intent for proposal development on this timeline.

Jamie, did you want to weigh in?

I think I saw your hand up at some point.

Yes, please, Chair Galloway, Jody Filardo, Community Development Director.

We've been having some back chats among staff while this meeting has been going on.

And we believe that what we can provide pretty quickly to the board is a summary of the Chesapeake Bay requirements for you all to review and to have at your disposal.

What I heard listening in on the meeting is that there's interest in exploring more detail on that and further that there is interest in where the act may align with our climate action plan.

And so I think that is probably information that we should bring back to the board at a later date.

With our item D, under new or revised regulations, we intended to look at existing policies and regulations to see where we could align.

Section two.

So section two.

I heard support for all of the strategies, I think, except for D, supporting existing programs.

I'm a little confused on that.

Yeah, we're, no.

Yeah.

I disagree with that summary.

I think that there was tremendous support for working with existing partners and not recreating parallel options.

Yes.

So maybe some parts of aid that we can stuff in with existing programs.

And there was support for cost sharing.

I'm sorry.

Excuse me.

I just want to make sure I was looking at the right chart.

Section 2, incentives and voluntary.

OK, great.

So I think then there was support for all of the,

The consensus was for general.

I think I might have been the one that said I would prioritize in this list of rank order, but the top three over the bottom two, that didn't mean it bumped out of support from the consensus standpoint.

Thank you Chair Galloway.

I think I brought that up maybe, Jody, and I am in favor of B, right?

I just use that as an opportunity to say that I think our ACE program, as it currently is established, could better, if we could look at that in relation to this at the same time, I think we could be served better if we updated it to a new reality, because it's very old and hasn't been tweaked in a long time.

That's all I would say.

Does that make sense at all?

And I know it expands this a little bit, but it's an opportunity for a 20 year old program.

We now have a climate action plan and the criteria in our ACE program doesn't even match to some degree what we're doing.

They do work on the criteria regularly, but not to get into that discussion, but the other issue that I brought up was enforcement going forward when our ACE properties are repurchased by the next group.

And I would want, before we add it, I think it's good for the board to know before we start adding conservation easements how we're going to look after those.

Are we going to inspect them when they're sold?

Is there going to be some education and follow-up?

I mean, that's staff time.

That's money.

And I think just looking at what the VOF has gone through recently, I think we're going to need that for our ACE program and any other conservation easements that we start to acquire.

And Jody, what Liz says gets to what I'm talking about, right?

It's updating what we're doing and making it more relevant because it's a program included with this.

And I don't know, but I don't see how staff is going to do any of this without more support and more staff, right?

Ann, can I ask you to stop the screen?

I can't see everybody, and I'm starting to get

because it's hard to get through this kind of thing without just having some open discussion.

Jody, you had a response there?

Supervisor Malek, you had your hand up prior.

I guess just in summary, using existing programs and updating things, enforcement, and I am not ready to support

setting up a several hundred thousand dollar fund to pay transactional costs at $10,000 a pop.

So I would have a lot more learning to do on that and have been in communication with the Soil and Water Conservation District in the last day or so to try to understand a little bit more about what that meant in the staff report.

Thank you, Chair Galloway.

To Supervisor Mallek's comments and also to comments Supervisor Price made earlier, I'm also hearing that you all are interested in us pursuing all available funding sources for partnership opportunities and looking for budget impact information as we come forward with these as well.

And I also heard support for enforcement, that you all were willing to talk about that rather than shy away from it.

So those are two other points I just have noted in this section.

All right, section three.

You have what you need there for section two?

I think so.

Well, and let me clarify, it wasn't that I was opposed to those things.

It was a matter of maybe putting a twist on how to accomplish it or get it done and where the onus lies or the responsibility lies.

But yes, I think you had broad support across the board for those.

Was there another comment?

Oh, Supervisor Mallek, you've got a hand up.

Well, what I think I'll do, if you get everything you need, let me just do one final pass with everybody.

Sure.

And you can get your final comments in.

I just want to try to come to consensus on whether or not there was broad support for reinstatement of the 25-foot buffer for cropland, folding that into the list.

And then maybe we could address that briefly as you go through your final round of comments, everyone.

on that particular one.

So I'm just gonna go through our order and then you can use those for your final comments, questions.

They could come back later and then we'll see if we can get this wrapped up.

I guess to answer Jody's last question, yes.

What Liz mentioned, yes, that's quick.

And I wanna just say that this was an incredible piece of work and staff worked really hard on this.

and you are suggesting a lot of changes for us and I get that.

When I talk about having to do things differently and not keep doing the same things, I'm trying to say to the public, we just can't keep

There's a sense sometimes, I believe, that our streams are in great shape.

And if we just keep doing what we're doing, we're going to be OK.

And the public has to understand that we have to do some things differently to address climate change resiliency.

And that's what I'm referencing.

But staff has done a young man's job.

This is wonderful work.

And I really appreciate it.

So I just wanted to say that.

One other quick comment though, I'm going to agree with one of our residents, I don't know who made the comment, but they talked in the document about the order of our vision statement.

And I personally agree completely.

It says, Albemarle County will have clean, healthy stream systems that allow for safe utilization in support of diverse and resilient natural resources, on and on.

The quality of the water areas will safely allow for recreational use, swimming, boating, fishing, and drinking water protection climate are at the very end.

We should take that statement guys and flip it on its head because what you say first is what people, even though there was no intent to prioritize this, right?

I get that.

We should be saying first

benefits, I'm sorry here, drinking water protection, climate resilience, biodiversity, and then go to all those other things.

In my viewpoint, recreation, if I had to prioritize, while it's important, it's not nearly as important as our drinking water and our biodiversity and those other things that we're striving to take care of.

so I would really like that flipped and I don't know if anybody else has any thoughts on that but and with that you all have done a wonderful job and I really appreciated the good discussion and thanks for trying to to be being patient with my confusing thoughts and my hammering that we've just got to do things differently because our community has to recognize we're in a climate change and we're in a global pandemic and we can't just keep doing things the same.

Supervisor McKeel, that was a great comment there about prioritizing the way they're listed.

I totally agree with that and I also totally agree with the great body of work that has been done by the county staff here to get this to us.

Any areas that I might have somewhat different thoughts are largely on the margins and I didn't feel it was necessary to address that.

One concern I have with regard to setting firm and fast boundaries, such as the 25 foot, is the concern that the topography of different locations may be such that a fixed 25 foot may be more than adequate in some areas and far from reasonable in others.

And if I'm using the terminology correct, BMP's best management practices, rather than an absolute rule, would in my mind be much more practicable.

and so I would say the 25 feet perhaps more as a guide, but subject to the ability of a property owner to demonstrate that it may not be really the best for that particular landscape.

Thank you.

I will just push back to say that with the original 25 foot buffers that were in existence for 25 or 30 years before they were removed,

It was the overall average.

If there was a place where you needed to go closer because of a hillside, that was never an issue.

And I think that for the fence outs and things now that are happening for livestock exclusion, when we have a 35 feet on each side from the center of the stream, that is to protect so that the fences don't immediately get demolished when there's a flood.

You push them back a little bit so you have a long-term survival of the whole cost-share process.

which generally cost like $50,000 to $75,000.

And it's very, very challenging to do and maintain.

So there were very good reasons why.

And it did that even though 25 feet doesn't seem like a lot, if it is the only area that is growing up in tall, warm season grasses, it will hold onto the soil when it's inundated so much better than if the soil is all exposed and growing corn.

and I think having seen the beautiful bottomland on the James in Ms.

Price's district where we have an inch of topsoil in the northwest corner and she probably has 10 feet down there, it is something we are obligated morally to protect and I hope we will.

So I support going back to the way it used to be.

There were very successful farming operations during that time and that's no problem.

I love the suggestion about flipping the vision statement to get to the real core issue first, which is really great VDOT, I think maintenance of gravel roads and culverts and all that is their primary maintenance issue, so I would

suggest we not prioritize inserting the county in the middle of something where two or three times a month I'm out meeting with landowners and VDOT representatives on particular problems.

Many of them don't get solved for the first three years because what they try doesn't work.

and also with the kinds of rains we're having now, the old methods do not work anymore and you get truckloads of gravel down in people's pastures and ruining their machinery because they can't mow anymore.

But that is VDOT's responsibility and so I would suggest that we not have county CBD staff trying hard to focus on that as the highest priority.

BMPs are nice, but they're not required unless you are participating in a cost share program.

And the federal agencies have a great ability to keep track of all of us who are under federal contract for maintenance of our buffers, et cetera, for the 10 and 15 and 20 year intervals.

And so I would hope that we will leave that to them and go back to our rules that Frank and his staff can happily enforce.

We just need to give them the ammo to do it.

So thank you all very much.

And this was sort of 10 years worth of jumping up and down summarized in three hours.

And that's pretty, pretty exciting from my perspective.

So it's a terrible burden for you all to carry, but I'm really encouraged that we're making this first step.

Yes, thank you very much.

And I'm really heartened to hear what Supervisor Mallek said regarding that the 25-foot buffer is an average.

Because actually, I think that that would come under maybe best management practice.

It's more of a hybrid approach.

It's not hard and fast.

But if it's an average, that seems to be able to work with the topography of the land.

Other than that, I thought everything that was put together was really good and I do see the point regarding VDOT's responsibility and I agree with that because I have called them regarding gravel on the side of the road being washed down and covering the culverts.

So as long as they do it or we bring their attention to it,

I think that's good.

But I do like everything that has been presented.

And you've put in a lot of work into this.

OK.

Yeah, I agree that it was a lot of work.

And thank you very much.

I did watch all the instructional videos on the website.

One that Frank and Greg Harper gave, I watched more than once.

So thank you for all that work.

As far as the 25-foot buffer, the reason why I asked if most of the cropland was actually in floodplain was because I think that it could do some good.

In a trip down the James River recently I noticed that some of the corn fields were right up against the very edge of the river that surprised me because I would think that that was actually a situation where the farmer would lose more land.

You know, so why would you plow and plant all the way up to the edge?

It doesn't seem like a

Good thing to do, but then I'm not a farmer.

And so my picture just went off.

That's interesting.

So before you cannot hear me, the host is stopping me again.

Oh, you can.

OK.

So I'll just wrap it up then.

That's all I wanted to say.

And I guess we're going to go for a break.

So I'll sign out and sign back in since it says that the host dropped me.

There I go.

I'm back again.

OK.

Well, Kim, little did you know you'd be walking into a board running ahead of schedule with a ton of cushion and time behind the topic on an issue that we wanted to, well, I was going to say jump in the water, but I don't know if I should say that.

Look at the water from the safe distance through a buffer.

But I appreciate all the work and the effort put through on this.

And I do say that the next time something like this comes before us,

or to maybe take this to the next step of my own thought process that the costs, I think there's nothing that could maybe start tightening up a priority.

There's when board members start looking at this and go, oh, this one costs this, this one costs this, this is how much we have to allot to this.

And you can start getting sometimes priorities made through that way as well.

But that's kind of where my head will be the next time I start seeing these things for what it's worth.

But thank you.

Thank you, Frank.

Thank you, Jody.

No.

I just thank you all for your comments today.

And I think we will include that when we come back with our more detailed proposals and the staffing needs and also costs.

Good.

Thank you very much.

Thank you for your work.

All right, board.

So we can move to, I saw Gary logging in, number 12, our Albemarle County Service Authority quarterly report.

I think we should just go through and knock this out because then we're going to have a pretty long recess up until the 6 p.m.

hour.

Greg, we still do not have anything for closed meetings.

Thank you once again for the opportunity to speak with the board.

I'll continue with the water theme, obviously.

I sent you some written updates.

Most of that I've talked about in these sessions before, so I want to deviate from that a little bit, but I'm glad to answer any specific question that was covered in the report.

The Elmar County Service Authority, ACSA, or Service Authorities, we call it.

We're in our 57th year since 1964.

The average water and wastewater facility life is about 50 to 60 years.

So most of our facilities, pipes, pump stations, and including Rivanna treatment plants, et cetera, need replacement.

So that's a major effort that is going on.

We serve 21,000 customers.

We just reached that plateau.

We're growing 1 or 2% a year.

We serve over 80,000 Albemarle County residents in the urban areas, Crozet, Scottsville, and a small system in Red Hill.

I've often mentioned, and some of you have mentioned this as well, in the past our theme of safe, clean, reliable, and at a good value.

And I thought I would briefly drill down and explain each one of those a little bit further.

So safe.

We're fortunate to have an extremely high quality water sources by all measures.

Our annual water quality reports just came out to our customers.

It's also on our website with all the water testing results and everything is good, actually excellent.

We meet every standard out there and generally exceed it.

We conduct 400,000 tests annually on water.

A number of those are in the field at customer locations.

We manage the system by law of those tests as well to make sure that everything is going well.

Granter activated carbon water treatment is really the gold standard in treatment and as as we go further forward with various contaminants things like PFAS and EPA contaminants none of those are there but GAC would stand as another barrier

We talked at the last Rivanna board meeting about microplastics and GAC is another treatment barrier to that kind of thing.

So we sit in a very good place, high-quality water, no lead issues, no PFAS issues, none of the contaminants that you might read about that other parts of the country are having to deal with.

We have a long-term water supply plan.

Most of that has been implemented.

You're well aware of the pipeline project that would be another leg of that.

Additional expansion and observatory treatment plan to take advantage of Ragged Mountain.

is another piece of that plan.

So we're very well positioned infrastructure wise to handle long term growth, long term supply needs, and also redundancy in our water supply system if we have some kind of emergency or a major drought.

And that's been the goal for a number of years.

Right now, for example, with the dry weather, Rivanna has started switching to the Ragged Observatory side of the system as the Sugar Hollow South Rivanna Reservoir is starting to show signs of not being full.

Hopefully we get some rain to alleviate that.

But that gives us the flexibility to take advantage of that that a number of years ago we couldn't.

On the clean side, there have been extensive advanced wastewater treatment processes that have been added to deliver clean water by all standards to the area's streams.

The finishing step in that process is ultraviolet treatment.

There were major environmental upgrades in the early 2000s, as well as an enlarged capacity and a major focus and effort to reduce infiltration and inflow.

and overflows, which happens during wet weather.

We just completed a comprehensive sewer study that will be publicly presented probably in the next month that shows the success of that.

It's really a major success.

Dr. Palmer probably remembers some of those days of overflows and all kinds of issues with the sewer system, and we've really moved past that hurdle.

And that study is done every five years to assure that we're on top of the sewer system and making sure that it's being well maintained.

There was an agreement that was done that the county was a part of in 2014 that looked at the flow studies and encouraged reduction of I&I in the peaks and wet weather and part of this analysis is to take another look at that and we've been very successful with it and I think it has been an incentive

both for the city and Rivanna and the service authority to be very aggressive.

The city in particular has been extremely aggressive in trying to reduce their peak flows.

There's also a whole set of maintenance projects, rehabilitation projects.

We have two crews that go out daily with CCTV cameras, little

portable robots to take a look at all of our system to make sure that it's sound and if we find problems we immediately try to address them and then we go through formal drainage basin studies to take a good hard look at each section of our wastewater system and I update those in the monthly or the quarterly reports that you get.

On the reliable front, we've made major investments, as I just said, in wastewater, but we're now making major investments in the water facilities, particularly the water treatment plants.

There are major upgrades, and in most cases, pretty expensive upgrades at all five of the water treatment plants that serve our system.

We've kept safe water flowing during COVID and wastewater treated.

Again, by all standards, I think that's pretty remarkable given the complexity of COVID and what we all have had to do with various scheduling and we're now having supply issues and all kinds of things that are occurring.

They're continuing investments to assure reliability in the next five years.

For example, Rivanna has programmed $165 million.

The service authority has $50 million or $215 million or close to a quarter of a billion dollars.

So there's a lot of investment that's going on to assure that reliability as well as the safety of the water.

We have a number of waterline replacements.

That's the major ACSA capital project focus.

I outline those in the report that you get, and we'll continue to keep you updated on those.

But that's our major capital investment.

Most of those are older systems, 50, 60 years old, that are in need of replacement.

And we have daily preventive maintenance activities that go on.

We have a 35 person staff at the service authority to try to address those in a very proactive and scheduled manner.

The last part of that equation is add a good value, which I think is going to be our biggest challenge over the next few years, given the large projects that we have.

But we're trying to provide the best quality value to our customer.

for the water that they purchased from us.

Easy said, harder to do.

I mentioned Rivanna's projects in particular, major investments over the next 5 to 10 years, maybe the next 15 years.

So we're taking a hard look at how we best accomplish that.

The ACSA comparable bills are still below the statewide average.

They've consistently been below that in the past.

And that's a goal of ours to continue that, even with the major investments that have to be made.

And we continue to be 22% less than a comparable city bill, buying from the same supplier.

We're planning on doing a rate study this fall.

We do one every five years.

We'll look at the future financial picture and a huge amount of debt.

Dr. Palmer will remember those days.

So we'll look at rates, revenues, connection fees, and really anything financial that has to do with our operation.

Plus, we're going to investigate

Using bonds, we typically pay cash for our capital projects, but this may be the time as we get into some major investments to look at bonding for the future.

So recognizing time limits, I'll have one last set of comments.

You might have seen this in some of our literature.

We're starting to promote a program called MiWater provided by ACSA.

MiWater was a new initiative this past year as part of our strategic plan as we center on improving the customer experience.

in all kinds of ways.

We focused on improved customer communications, quarterly newsletter, social media web.

We're in the midst of producing a new video to go along with our advanced metering project.

So we're trying to find ways to better keep our customers informed.

But our big focus has been on efforts with technology and how we can better serve customers through that.

You're well aware of the advanced metering project that we're looking to the fall to start that.

Its major advantage is instant leak notifications.

I'll give you one example of the power of this and we've just done 500 meters out of the 20,000.

We had one customer that we identified a leak one morning that afternoon they stopped it but the speed of the leak would have been 360,000 gallons in a month's time.

So that's the kind of thing we're trying to take advantage of technology.

We'll have a new customer portal when we complete everything.

Individual customer data will be available online in all kinds of ways.

We've been asked for that.

I think it will be an outstanding product once we get all that finished.

We, in June, started a new online bill payment system.

Our old system was very clunky, out of date.

We've gotten critique out of our customer surveys for that.

So we've put that into place, gives people all the modern options that you might find in any other kind of online payment system.

We dropped the credit card fee as part of doing that, which is another incentive for people to

Look at electronic payments.

That was another complaint that our customers had.

And we're in the works for a customer online service request system.

So a challenge for us is going to be we're going to have a lot of data over the next few years is to try to take advantage of that data, be able to use it to improve customer service and improve our operations.

So that'll be another focus once all these systems are up and running.

And over the next two or three years, probably part of a new strategic plan, we're going to try to take another focus on our customers' needs, any kind of new initiatives, and really look at what other utilities are doing around the country to try to improve their customer service.

So with that, I will stop.

Glad to answer any questions you might have either from the report comments I made or as you know I sit on the Rivanna board.

Thank you, Gary.

I'm up first.

Thank you, Gary.

That was great and I know all of us are just so appreciative.

We do.

And I understand people with wells.

I see them buying bottled water all the time.

And I just feel very sad that everyone in our community can't experience the wonderful water we have.

Your staff is so very responsive.

Every time I have a constituent with a concern, you or your staff are very, very responsive, and I really appreciate that.

Website is great.

Website is really great.

It took me a couple of minutes to figure it out, but I'm slow with technology, but it's really great.

I have a couple of questions that I just want to ask while you're here.

I do remain concerned about the length of time it's going to take for completion of the pipeline.

We've all been in that really bad drought early in 2000.

We know what it's like, and it can happen just in a nanosecond.

So maybe that's just a comment or a concern.

and I remain very concerned that that pipeline is not going to be completed until, I think it's 2034.

32, I think.

32, I don't know.

Anyway, 32, 34.

And Bea and Ned had a lot of people up 29 North that are going to be dependent on that pipeline.

We have water.

The problem we know is moving it around.

Can I mention one thing?

So there are a couple pieces to that.

One is the pipeline project itself, which connects two reservoirs, raw water.

There's also a new project we're calling it the central water line that would connect the observatory and South Rivanna water treatment plants that during emergencies or droughts or whatever, it gives the ability to move water, finished water, drinking water.

around the system, which may be in the near term as important as the pipeline will be in the long term.

But both of those projects give us backup and redundancy and the ability to move water around.

And the other one is the expansion that's going on in the observatory treatment plant.

It independently, with Ragged Mountain, could serve the entire urban system once that project is finished.

So all three of those are really key pieces.

Part of the issue with the pipeline is funding.

Part of it is being able to get all these projects done.

It's on the Rivanna board agenda next Tuesday, I guess it is.

To approve the engineers to go forward, we're starting to look at some final design sorts of things that have to do with the intake and the piping and all those kinds of things.

So that part of the project is moving forward.

But all that's going to have to be figured out in detail and all the easements acquired, which we're getting close to, to really consider starting the project anytime early.

Well, and I understand all the projects.

And I appreciate all that.

And I appreciate the concern on pricing.

I will say, though, that you are correct.

We have the best value in this community for water.

but that people are going to say I would have been happy to have paid more if I could have water during a drought.

I'm just saying.

So I was in a meeting just this last week where someone made the comment that in the neighborhood of, there was a neighborhood in another county that is paying more right now for their water than for their electricity.

So we don't have that problem in this community, but I do think we have to think ahead because we can have a drought very easily.

And just saying, I'm concerned, but I appreciate the response.

The other question I have though, and I'm sure you all have probably talked about it, what is the discussion or are there discussions about using gray water and

We have so, so many irrigation systems in our development area.

And I know other communities have moved to some degree to gray water.

If we could use gray water and not use our good drinking water for irrigation systems, and I'm sure it's much more complicated than just saying we're going to do it.

Where it's seriously discussed, which is mostly out west, where you have major droughts, where you don't have much supply, you in essence have to build a whole new piping system to be able to do it.

But graywater can be somebody takes the dishwater out of their sink and goes out and waters plants with it.

But the concept is to take the finish, once it's been through the wastewater treatment plant, to hook a pipe to it and

circulate that back.

I think the expense would be tremendous to be able to do that.

I guess it's not impossible.

But because our supply is so good, and I think in the future with the two reservoirs being able to function with the pipeline and the treatment plants being economically probably makes it pretty difficult, if not impossible.

OK.

And there are places that, I think San Diego's won, they're taking wastewater and turning it around to put back in for drinking water.

Well, all of these things can change on a dime, and I'm just asking if it's ever been discussed.

It does seem a shame to take good drinking water and

And I know it's not a trade-off, but we have people with wells drying up, and other people are putting good drinking water on their yards.

And it's just, and one can't solve the other, and I get that, but it really seems kind of whack-a-doodle.

Anyway, one other quick question.

I am becoming increasingly aware of a lot of the older apartment buildings where we have lots of showers and toilets that have not been upgraded.

And I'm assuming that we don't have any control over how they upgrade them or when they upgrade them.

dependent on what they want to do.

It just seems like protecting our water is really critical.

And I'm just asking, what's the ability or is there something we can do to change an ordinance or to encourage that?

Are they grandfathered?

So we have a toilet rebate program.

We've actually applied it to some apartment projects where they're doing renovations.

If there's any kind of physical renovation and they're replacing toilets or fixtures or those kind of things, they're going to be low flow fixtures that are the new ones.

But we have that incentive.

We worked with a number of apartment complexes.

Many of them have already done that.

Maybe it's worth our while to go back and look and try to promote that again with some of the apartment owners.

One of the difficulties that I'm finding with apartments is a visit is their water bills are handled by somebody in another state that doesn't have anything to do with the owner.

So they're not paying attention.

But we were probably more proactive, quite honestly, a couple years ago of talking to all the apartment complexes so they knew about the toilet rebate.

Well, and you and I have talked about one specifically in the urban area that just they just refused to even talk about it.

And I just think, again, I would love to figure out a way to encourage them.

And the toilet rebate program has not been doing it.

I mean, it's just not doing it.

So I was just curious.

All right.

Supervisor Price, any questions here?

Yeah, thank you.

Thank you, Mr. O'Connell, for your presentation.

And as you all really do great work and as someone who's on a well that I'm concerned about drying up, I hope that your customers really appreciate the quality and regularity that you provide high quality water to them.

My only question is in your report, you indicate that with Rivanna charging a 15.5% increase, you're looking to charge about 5% increase and you're going to use reserves to sort of soften or lessen that impact.

So we're anticipating Rivanna rate increases of 8 to 10% over the next five years or longer.

Our board's goal is to try to keep the rate increases at about a 5% level.

So part of our financial plan that we're going to look at this fall is how long can we use reserves to help cushion that increase.

Looking at bonds is another method to do that.

But to try to come up with a financial picture that we can look at all these big projects, what they're going to cost, and what the rate impact is, and how do we best use the reserves that we have to help cushion that.

And it's a bit tricky just given that, I mean, Rivanna's looking at $165 million worth of projects.

And I appreciate that and I think we'll all be interested in seeing what your projection and plan going forward on that will be.

Thank you, Mr. O'Connell.

Thank you, it will be

Not a surprise to Gary to hear me say that our water is too cheap already.

And so I want you to charge ahead as fast as you can to get these projects done.

Because Ragon Mountain has such a small watershed that it would not take long at all for that big bathtub to be in jeopardy, just like South Fork is.

And so the sooner we can get that pipeline done, as I mean, we've been pushing Liz, and I know she's pushing as high as she can, pushing the rock up the hill to get this to be speedily done.

So I hope you will all continue to push on that.

I remember very clearly the wonderful meeting of the four boards when we were overturning an earlier decision of Rivanna to go with chloramines instead of the granular activated carbon and dozens and dozens of people of the 300 who came to the meeting talked about how they didn't care if their water went up 10 cents or whatever it was because they wanted water and they didn't want all of their fish and children and grandchildren to get sick.

So I have not heard one peep from anybody in the Crozet water system about the cost of water, ever.

So what I've heard on the street is, why is it so cheap compared to where they lived before?

So I know I appreciate you're trying to be moderate and everything, but I want you to also jump on whatever opportunity you can to get the best building done at the cheapest

Price when things are going so strange.

I sort of cringe when I heard you say we couldn't do some sort of higher technology thing because our supply is so good we have too much.

So I also feel a moral obligation that we not ever be wasteful and we don't encourage

our customers to be wasteful because as Donna said, there are 60% of the residents in Albemarle County who are providing their own drinking water and their own septic for $10,000 or $15,000 for a well and $15,000 for a septic tank and if it fails, it's on their neck.

We just can't have anybody thinking it's okay to just throw water all over the place, and I know I've picked on you for years about the whole irrigation program because I really think that's inappropriate for good drinking water to be used, thrown around on grass.

You know, I might try to pull some water out of my lake with a bucket to water my stuff when everything is going bad, but it's

It's hard.

So anyway, thank you for what you're doing.

And I'm so grateful that you're planning ahead so well and taking on these capital projects, because I know when Liz first got on the board all those years ago, it was not the case.

And so all of you have done a good job to turn the ship to be able to be proactive about all these capital projects.

And I think that's great.

Thank you.

I'll just remind you, anybody that's using outdoor water generally is going to be at a rate that's four times the wholesale rate.

There are some that don't care.

I see them watering the road every day, all day long, Gary.

Yes, I have been schooled by Dr. Palmer.

So whatever you do with the water, I've been indoctrinated.

I'm a total water file now.

And please, if you need more money, whatever you have to do to get it.

Just continue doing what you're doing and let's make it happen because really that is the source of all life.

We need that.

So thank you very much, Mr. O'Connell, for your presentation, for what you're doing.

Move forward.

Thank you very much, Dr. Palmer, for making sure that I understand everything and all those hypes.

Appreciate that.

Thank you.

To the reservoirs, I mean.

Bye bye.

Glad something I'm doing is working.

Anyway, I have a comment and then a question.

Something that we learned at the Rivanna meeting last time that Gary brought up about the microplastics, it was interesting to me that the presenter said that

There is a significantly higher amount, there is basically no microplastics in our water that can be measured at least.

But bottled water has a significant amount of microplastics because the plastic that the water is in deteriorates from the sun or whatever and so if you don't want to drink microplastics then stick with municipal water out of the tap and not out of a water bottle.

So, Gary, my question to you, we know that the ARP money is out there.

We know that authorities cannot apply for that and that you need the county and the city.

Rivanna, you need some fiscal agent or you need some

government to apply for that money.

Rivanna is looking into that.

They have hired a consultant to try to pinpoint where they should be applying, how they should be applying and for what projects.

I'll start first with what we're actually doing.

We're operating the CARES Act customer assistance program for customers that were impacted by the COVID economy and it was $180,000 that we work cooperatively with the county staff to apply for that.

Recently, Rivanna was asked by the Department of Health to submit a couple projects that were shovel ready, so to speak, already designed.

So they submitted a couple river crossings for some possible federal funding.

We've had conversations with the county staff about the board's interest in

connecting septic in the urban area and have provided some background information on both eligible individuals as well as eligible areas.

and I think Bill's on the forefront of this but we're trying to follow what's happening with federal dollars for infrastructure and would any of that apply to whether it's Rivanna projects or our projects.

I'm not sure yet which ones will but that's something to watch and some of that's going to be priorities that the Board of Supervisors has.

I mean the message I've gotten is there's very much interest in the sewer connections

and we're more than glad to work with the county staff to present to you all a program that may work.

There may be some other priorities.

I'm sorry, go ahead.

I'm thinking about these bigger projects Rivanna has and applying for the state ARP money in the funds.

And you've said, Bill, Rivanna is in the forefront of that.

And I want the board to know that this is going on.

And the hope that Supervisor McKeel brought up, we'd hate to have to wait till

you know, 3032 to get the pipeline finished, but there is a

a problem with the amount of money that Rivanna can borrow at once.

And the board has gotten a lot of info, the Rivanna board's gotten a lot of information on that.

And what I'm thinking is some of these projects that we have on the CIP now for Rivanna might very well, very nicely fit into an application

for the ARP money on the state level, that larger fund, not our 21 million, because we're still waiting on broadband and a group of other smaller projects and hopefully connecting solar for individuals in the county.

But I just want to bring that up, that there is this larger amount of money on the state level that's available for these kinds of infrastructure projects that could really help

our rate payers by taking some of that cost on this huge CIP that you talked about that Rivanna has off the table so that we could accelerate some of these other projects that might be a little longer term because we've got a lot of shovel ready designed projects out there that or maybe not completely shovel ready but design projects that I think would fit very nicely into that ARP money some of the

projects on rehabbing water treatment plants and the central line and things like that that are in the CIP in the more near future.

So I'm hoping we're kind of all going to get together and that the city will work with us too, because I'm sure that if it's a more regional application to the state, it's going to be more favorable.

A couple thoughts, you might be aware of this.

There's a new Water Association, Municipal Water Association that has just gotten created the last couple months.

One of the things they have as a lobbyist, one of the issues that they're trying to pursue are the regulations around the ARP funding for water and wastewater infrastructure to try to qualify some of these projects.

So there's some efforts statewide looking at those projects.

Rivanna has on its agenda next Tuesday a presentation that's really talking about all the federal funds and what's available, what Rivanna is doing to try to track some of those, what might be eligible or not.

It's kind of early in that process to some extent because a lot of the regulations haven't been fully vetted to know which projects actually would work.

And they've got longer term, probably federal funds that are coming for infrastructure work.

And there'll be some strings attached to that.

And that's all I, just because authorities can't apply, I think it's really important that we realize that we can all work together.

And, you know, if they don't change the rules and let authorities apply,

then we should be all able to work with the county and the city and get that done, I'm hoping.

And so anyway, I guess that's all I need to say right now.

Oh, and one other thing, I just wanted to mention one other thing for some of the questions about ACSA's ability to the rate stabilization fund.

When I first got on the board,

ACSA, they were the ones that actually had the reserves.

Rivanna didn't have much in the way of reserves.

They weren't allowed to early on until really, I guess, post-2004 or 2005, something like that.

But I was amazed at what ACSA had already done with respect to reserves back in 2006 when I first got on the board.

And I was told we've got a lot of infrastructure needs ahead of us.

It's going to go on for several years.

And that's why we have so much money set aside.

And over the years, when we had the consultants come in and say, oh, you've got too much money in reserves,

You know, it was always pointed out how much we've got to take care of and that was a very wise decision over the years to keep that going and just good financial management over a long period of time and it's really appreciated now that you can, where some of these really expensive big projects are coming in, that you're able to, hopefully for several years, keep the rate increases to a minimum.

So thank you for that and I just wanted to mention that that's kind of a long-standing financial management tool that the Authority's been using for many years.

And I'm glad Rivanna has changed their structure quite a bit over those many years.

It's hard to believe it's been that long.

But anyway, thank you.

Gary, thank you for the report.

Thank you.

We will see you in another quarter here at three months.

Thank you, sir.

All right, board, we are at the point for closed meeting.

I do not believe visit

So we will be going on recess until our evening session of 6 PM.

The only thing I could suggest is the county report could come up.

We could knock that out now, if you would like.

And then since we've got a big break, is there any objection to moving that forward?

Sir, I'm prepared to do that.

I'll just ask.

My partner, Emily Kilroy, if she would mind bringing the report up.

And Mr. Chair, that's a good idea.

I can do that now.

And I will have it up in just one moment.

Emily, thank you so much for turning on the dime.

We should be ready to go.

This is the July 21st County Executives Report.

Mr. Chair, members of the board, appreciate the opportunity to be here this evening if you can advance the slide.

I would like to start this afternoon to take a moment to share some sincere thanks to our COVID-19 incident management team.

I've shared with this board that my longest emergency incident prior to COVID-19 was 18 days and that was while I served in the city of Asheville and that was a number of years ago when we lost water service to our community for 18 straight days.

and that was my longest stint in a true emergency management situation.

Due to the sustained low incident rates and high vaccination rates, our COVID-19 Incident Management Team held its last meeting on July the 8th and that was our 486th day of the COVID-19 emergency.

In the first several weeks, members of this team met daily.

This slide in front of you has names of people who have served as section chiefs supporting our incident commanders, Trevor Henry and Doug Walker, as well as regional partners to include Ryan McKay of the Blue Ridge Health District and Sonny Saxton of our Emergency Coordination Center.

He's the director of our ECC.

As we learn more about the virus and how it spread and how to manage our response and support for our community, we're able to reduce daily meetings.

And we first went four days, three days, and then two days per week.

This is separate from the coordination meetings that we also held with our key partner agencies to include the city of Charlottesville, the University of Virginia, the Blue Ridge Health District, and other key agencies that I

and I don't have a list of currently, but they helped us on a day-to-day basis.

An incident management team is a parallel organization, so I know this board has allowed us to talk before about the amount of resources and dedication, but as parallel organization, these folks whose primary focus was in incident response and working on aggressive timelines to ensure that tasks are completed, communication is clear, and that our needs are met.

Not everyone on our list served for the full 486 days, but every person brought their full selves, their full attention, their full talent, in addition to continuing their regular jobs at work.

And so I again give a sincere thank you, and we will be recognizing these people separately, but I wanted to bring this to the board's attention this afternoon because

I did sit in on the last IMT meeting on July the 8th and it was an almost weird feeling because these people felt like for the last 486 days they've spent a ton of their time together including evenings, weekends, and it's all in serving our community and being able to execute fast under the emergency ordinance and that's what it's designed for.

So thank you very much.

If you could move forward.

Before we transition to a wider opening of the building, to thank our employees who've been working during the building closure period.

We held a cookout in front of the county office building several weeks ago.

Doug, Trevor, and I started grilling that morning around 9 45 a.m.

We wouldn't have had anything to grill if it hadn't been for the support of Cheryl Skeen, Jerry Morris, Melissa Gardner from Facilities and Environmental Services.

But we were making go boxes and fixing food for people in the field.