Rivanna River Basin Commission Meeting   3/19/2024

We have to get there now.

I mean, gosh, I hope so.

But that board, Lindstrom, Charlotte Humphries board, they did a lot of wonderful things.

He's enjoying being out in the back.

Yeah, sure.

Hopefully we will get.

Isabella, did you get RSVPs from

She kind of goes to the line.

OK.

I did ask.

OK. And I called.

But I know somebody is in court.

It's been sitting court.

Marvin Moss has a cold.

And he's also a supervisor.

Say it now for the moment.

I found one at the back gate the other day that we're going to have to assassinate.

And our neighbor has one just on his side of the fence.

I was reading about the VOF replacement thing.

But of course, when I went to sign up three or four days ago, it was all sold out.

Or it all accommodated.

They probably had 20 when they could have used two now.

I could point the back down.

Well, I was disappointed yesterday to learn from the D.O.S.

worksheet, one of the things that's going on in our bios today, coming up now, one of the things that's going on in the election, but that's what they say about the Olympics too, except we eat 20% vinegar on the Olympics, so it takes two years to even graze your nose, also.

I'm tempted to try that.

The other one is less dangerous because it will tend to blow.

Exactly.

That's what I'm thinking.

I've got a set of career that's still in power until various functions of the RRBC, if things do come up.

We used to take the tiles down and have them fit.

No, I know you're really right.

You have to announce his notice.

It's like a golf pad or something and put vinegar on that and then put the foil on top to put it all in there for the law firm.

The strength of what you need.

I don't have my peer to that part.

You see all these grounds people out hiring to go do stuff and they're not wearing anything.

And they're owners, they're employers.

I'm just putting them at terrible risk.

Hugh Lane, I'm not sure what the grade's concerned about, but if you were ready for all four of them to decide, I mean, we have a few good expectations.

People used to not like you.

I already have.

I know, right?

Then you take a knife and your children come and squirt on your back.

Kind of close because they wear it all day long.

Back and forth.

Thank you for being here, Michelle.

Then we're going all the way down here.

Yeah, oh yeah, really.

It's really helpful to see the initial story.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, we can't know how the clock got in, but why did it get in?

It should be no oil, stuff.

We're studying it.

Work day and night as I'll say to get that set up.

and then just took it all apart.

So it's quite an operation, really.

OK.

So maybe we can give it just two minutes.

All the time.

So building our different things.

Even my laptop is wrong.

Yes.

So I will.

We have one after on my phone, so we'll wait another minute for that person to get here.

Those are our introductions.

Just one minute.

All right.

Can you tuck the tail in under the side?

Welcome everyone to the March 19th meeting of the Red River Basin Commission and we'll jump to item 3 on our agenda.

Please, step right up.

I'm Dave Sly with Wild Virginia, and frankly, I noticed that you had on your agenda something about DBAS and things that we had brought up, and so I figured it made sense to come.

I really wanted to answer questions that you had on, but I have some paper for you.

I know you don't need any more paper, but just in case, you know,

We brought up the discharge from the Scottsville wastewater treatment plant because it's being processed right here.

And, but we had got data from the authority, the safe water and sewer authority, showing that they had de-exaggerated wastewater plants.

And, you know, frankly, we were grateful to them for doing the sampling and for giving us the results, because most of the, as far as we know, most of the wastewater plants throughout the state haven't sampled for us.

and are not anxious to do so because they don't want to get the results, frankly.

So we were happy that that was there, but then it showed that there were PFAS in those discharges, which frankly doesn't surprise us because an awful lot of these plants are going to have PFAS.

But what we've been doing on a larger scale is we've been telling DEQ, you've got to do this because the ether permits that you issue to these wastewater plants and

So far, they've refused to confront.

In fact, in the permits that we have commented on and the permits that we reviewed, they won't even mention PFAS in their supporting documents or in the prevents.

And that's not allowable.

Frankly, they're not living up to their legal responsibilities.

And so they're the primary target of the comments we're coming up with.

But again, since we had some data for the authority here,

We wanted to raise it.

We made comments to the DEQ, which I have copies of here, but we also wanted to reach out to the authority.

We've done this in other places too, because we know that municipal authorities of towns or cities, they're not creating this stuff and they're not bad guys here.

They're just confronted with a situation that they're going to have to deal with.

And in the long run, dealing with this, in our view, makes sense to start now.

instead of waiting six months or a year or five years, even though DEQ is not enforcing or affording anybody to do it right now, we think it makes sense to go ahead and figure out what's there, figure out what to do about it.

And the fact is that, you know, the federal government is starting to take it seriously.

And in fact, they have allocated a bunch of money to help people deal with it.

And from my experience, when the federal government has some money,

If you're there early, you have a better chance of getting that help.

And so, again, we want to work with the authority here.

We want to work with municipalities around the state, which is what we're trying to do.

And that's why we've reached out.

As far as the Rivanna, again, we know, Scottsville is not in the Rivanna Basin.

It's now going into the James.

But those other three plants, I'm pretty sure that we have data for it.

They are something to be

to be thinking about for the Rivanna.

So I'll stop there.

I don't want to give you a speech, but I'm glad to answer any questions you have.

And I'll pass these around.

There's way more I think they would need.

But maybe you start them without doing so.

But again, any questions you have, I'm glad to try and answer them.

Again, I'm Dave Slott.

She's the...

I want to reiterate with Dave the thing about how the Department of Environmental Quality has the authority under the Clean Water Act to establish effluent limits in pollution discharge permits and that they are not taking that initiative even though in December 2022 EPA directed states to use their Clean Water Act authority to do this and it's making your job harder to keep our waters clean.

So we want to work with you in pressuring the state to take action and do what it's legally required to do.

What was your name again?

Daphne Goodrich.

Thanks for joining us.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Waste water discharges are somebody else from drinking water.

So we all have to be involved in that.

I know that we're finding in a lot of biosolids.

I don't know the quantitative kind of, you know, what you've had in waste water versus what Siobhan opens was.

And the fact is,

There's an awful lot we don't know.

And again, that's to me, the reason to start trying to figure out right now, because there's so many doubts.

And that's another reason we're not saying that anybody's a bad guy here.

You know, we didn't know.

I've been in water quality my whole life, more than 40 years.

Nobody ever heard of this, you know, 20 years ago, 15 years ago.

And frankly, I've never paid any attention to the last several years.

And so we just want to help figure it out.

But we're not tolerant of DEQ.

And we won't be.

And the fact is that they will eventually require something in their permits and with their application.

Yeah.

It's important to know that other states are already doing this.

Colorado even last week just put limits in a permit for a large industrial discharger.

and George Carolina has been doing it for a few years now.

So Virginia is behind.

And what you're seeing is that where the state isn't taking action, you're seeing citizen lawsuits starting just the past couple of months.

Pretty much every week since the beginning of the year, we've seen yet another lawsuit in Alabama, Georgia, you know, just Texas.

That's relying on the Clean Water Act.

Sin for 2022, you said, through EPA.

Okay.

Well, the authorities to deal with them as pollutants have been there for a while.

But what the, what EPA did is they said, okay, we're laying out what they call a guidance document.

Well, but they call it a pathway or something like that.

There you go.

Yeah.

And I'll say, we commented

on the Roanoke Wastewater Unit, which is a big wastewater plant, which has tons of flow going into the Roanoke River.

There they've already had PFAS problems in their water supply that they've already spent millions of dollars dealing with.

And although that's upstream of their discharge, you know, they clearly got a problem.

They measured it downstream in the Smithmount Lake, which is miles away.

So like you say, if somebody's water supply is already involved, that's the Bedford water supply.

And so again, we said to them, let's not wait.

Let's not deal with tens of millions of more cost on drinking water.

Well, the producer pays, which is the DuPonts and the 3Ms, is the

Fairway, rather than sticking it to the end user and treater and customer as usual.

So hopefully we will get there as well.

Any other questions?

This may be in your letter that I haven't read yet, so apologies.

But the data you provide from RWSA is in nanograms per liter and everything from the EPA to parts per trillion.

How do we how do we get on the same page the exact same thing?

Yeah.

Yeah.

And they can only measure down so far.

And once they can measure down farther, they're probably going to go even lower.

No, no.

Just to, you know, continual conversation.

And if we can give you information or if we can give you support or whatever, that's part of what we're saying is if the water authority is going to have to do things, they want the public behind them.

It seems like it's a correlation between at least two, one in Glenmore and one at Scottsville, June and July.

And I mean, it seems like there's a high rate, all percentage.

Is it because of dry season?

I think we don't know.

Again, that's just one of those things.

One of the things you don't have there, they gave us the spreadsheets with all the data, and each time they monitored, you know, in a certain month, they might have sampled 10 specific kinds of PFAS.

You know, people are saying there's probably 20,000 kinds of PFAS, and we're only measuring, probably at the most, people might measure 40 of

That's what EPA's recommended.

So it's a different mixture of different kinds from one month to another.

So figuring out, and you'll see that the numbers are higher with going out of the plant than what's coming in.

That's a little bit of a mystery.

I mean, there are theories about why that happens.

One thing that happens is in a system, they change forms.

You know, so it's complicated.

People, obviously it's an interesting topic.

Waterfront and the wastewater front.

I'd be glad to come back and talk whenever you'd like about those things, because we're here to solve all the problems, but we look for EPA and the Virginia DEQ to give us guidance.

Right now we don't have any, so we're on our own.

But if you're ready, Ann.

Go right ahead.

Thank you.

So 2024 has been a terrific year for us so far with a number of challenges.

This is the Morse Creek Wastewater Treatment Plant.

Making sure I'm using this.

Yeah.

And I-64 is right there headed to the west at the top of the page.

So we're tucked over into Belmont area of Albemarle and Charlottesville.

and this treatment plant process is about 10 million gallons a day in wastewater.

And we call it wastewater, not sewage because it is a common collection of rainwater that gets in the system.

It's from the household domestic waste.

It could be from businesses like Pepsi Cola bottling or they wash down their machines or a brewery maybe.

I don't know that we have breweries connected to our system, but in theory,

Washwater from Industries.

They are, okay.

So that's why it's a combination of all those things equals wastewater.

So it's not just pure sewage from domestic purposes.

We process about 10 million gallons a day here.

And let's see.

So we had a very unfortunate event on January the 9th, where after a large rain on the 9th and evening of the 9th, our largest

Wastewater Pump Station was overwhelmed by wastewater and the areas of it that were supposed to be dry housing the pumps became submerged and the pumps went underwater.

And a few days after that, they stopped working.

So we've had to build what we call a bypass around the pump station so we can continue to process all the wastewater that comes to us every minute of every day.

and we've successfully done that.

So we have two major pump stations at Moore's Creek and one, the largest, the Rivanna, we call it the Rivanna Pump Station, serves the yellow area.

So it's about half, the northern half of Charlottesville and all of the developed areas almost out to green.

The blue area is served by a second pump station we call Moore's Creek.

and that serves the southern half of the city and some of the southern developed areas of the county and the wastewater from Crozet is actually pumped back to Moore's Creek and we process and treat the wastewater from Crozet at Moore's Creek treatment plant.

So we have two pump stations.

Okay, here are the two.

We have Moore's Creek, which is sort of near our entrance

The Rivanna to the north side.

This is Morris Creek.

This is a Rivanna pump station.

So what is a pump station?

A pump station is a facility with pumps in it, mechanical machines, which help us to lift water to a higher elevation.

It pumps it to a higher elevation.

So the Rivanna pump station was built in 2017 for a little over $30 million.

and it can lift and pump up to 53 million gallons per day when it's operating properly.

And it is designed to lift wastewater 110 feet.

So the Rivanna pump station's here and we have to pump the wastewater up

So the Rivanna pump station is right here.

And if wastewater doesn't get through the pump station, it would back up in the sewer line.

And this is the sewer line that follows the Rivanna River from Darden Town Park past Riverview Park.

And so we have a big pipeline that feeds and flows into the Rivanna pump station.

And actually, when we had this tragedy or damage happen,

We had an overflow of wastewater at the five stars there.

And one of the things that we have data on was during the storm, the Rivanna River rose rapidly into a high elevation.

We think it overflowed its bank and possibly flowed into our manhole at Riverview Park.

This picture shows wastewater coming out of the manhole.

So not what we want to happen, but that's what did happen.

I'm going backwards now.

All right.

So the wastewater, this is a bird's eye view of the Rivanna pump station.

And the wastewater comes in in a 60 inch diameter pipe right here from the red arrow into what we call the wet well.

It's an open pit area.

It's actually like a swimming pool down below.

Half of it is seven feet deep.

and the other half is 17 feet deep.

And our pumps are sitting, we have two pump rooms.

In this area is what we call a dry pumping room and this area, dry pump room.

And those pumps, the pipes extend into the wet well and then they pull the water out of the wet well through the pump and it exits out of the pump station on its way to the head works.

So,

This is a view down into the wet well where we have these aluminum covers and the water is supposed to stay below the covers.

This is either seven or 17 feet deep at the top of the aluminum covers.

When we had the deluge, the water exceeded the height of the covers and went much higher in the wet well.

So this is when we were building the pump station in 2016.

This is where the pump is under construction and the piping here goes vertically and that's part of the pumping and elevating the wastewater in the pump station.

This is a picture of the new pumps shortly after they were finished.

We have three pumps in each of the two pump rooms.

So there's six pumps

They run at different speeds and at different times depending on the amount of wastewater we have coming into the station.

So for example, if there was 10 million gallons, maybe three of the pumps are working, but if there's 50 million gallons, all six of them might be working.

This was what we saw January the 10th where our pump room was submerged with wastewater.

Not a pretty sight.

It's up over top of the pumps and the vertical piping is here that you saw coming off the top of the pump.

So we had to build, initially we built a 10 million gallon per day bypass pumping system and we had to bring piping in, contractors came in,

We even had in this picture, we had to put our guys in a boat down in the wet well, because we had to pump all the water that's above the covers first.

And this was, it was a temporary pump here, and this is the pipe bringing it out so that we could get down to the covers and remove the covers so that we could get other larger pumps all the way to the bottom of the swimming pool area, if you will.

So first we built a 10 million gallon per day bypass.

And what we had to do is on the, what we call the front of the pump station, this is the pipe that comes out of the pump station on its way to the head works.

We had to dig it up, take the elbow off, which you can see here with new pipe, you can install a new pipe and build

The manifold, this is the top of the cone of the manifold and these guys were working at night.

We worked 24-7 trying to get this put together.

This is the completed 10 million gallon per day manifold.

So these pipes are coming out of the wet well all the way around the building.

Then the flow goes down in the ground to the

existing force main pipe that takes it over to the head works.

I'll try to show you better pictures of that too.

This is our guys in the snow, in the cold.

We had bitter cold a few days and nights during that period they worked.

Here's a picture we got the

wastewater pumped down to the top of the covers.

You can see the aluminum, what we call the covers.

And we've taken a cover off and now this temporary pump is down below the cover so we can start getting the wastewater out of the pump station below the covers.

We had to get a team in and go down and spray the whole wet well to the covers with steam to clean it off.

and we put in, in this picture you see one, two, three, four temporary pumps.

We also had installed these steel beams because the 50 MGD bypass was much larger and we needed structural support.

So that was on January 26th.

This is one of the large 13 million gallon per day temporary pumps.

I wish we had a person standing next to it because it's well over six feet tall.

Very heavy, we had to have a crane to come in and handle this equipment.

and this is the new piping for the 53 MGD pumping system.

So in this case, let's see, they're building, we had to replace the orange cone manifold and build a new larger manifold for the 53 MGD bypass system.

And now we've got the big 53 system hooked up

and down in the wet well we have one, two, three, four, five, six, seven.

Seven pumps are now installed below the covers and this piping is taking the wastewater out of the wet well and around the building.

One of the problems that we saw was there's a door access into the wet well at the top of the covers and the wastewater just blew that off its hinges and the wastewater went into the stairwell

and we think it came through a duct penetration in the stairwell and that's what let it get into the dry pump.

So this is a bird's eye view.

Again, our wet well, it's got the temporary pumps below the covers, the piping up here to a combination piping and then we pump it around the pump station into the manifold, down in the ground and then it goes on its way to the treatment project.

This is what we would call a bypass.

We were bypassing the permanent pump station and going around it just like in traffic and roads.

And the Route 250-29 bypass goes around Charlottesville.

This is the same concept.

We're bypassing the main pump station and pumping all the wastewater through temporary piping to get it back into the permanent wastewater treatment system and on its way.

We had contractor had to dress in all the appropriate personal protective equipment after we got the water down to go in and start inspecting.

These pictures are after the water's been drained out of the pump room and the pumps don't look too bad, but clearly not as clean and nice as they were before they were submerged.

So we estimate it's going to cost 20 to $25 million to repair this pump station, about $6 million for all the temporary work and possibly about $15 million to replace pumps and controls and electrical conduits and all the different devices that became submerged from the wastewater.

We are working with our insurance company,

and the great hopes and expectations that they're going to pay for the lion's share of this cost.

But first we have to figure out what caused the submergence before you can go into the property insurance policy and figure out if it's covered and if so, how much, are there deductibles, this and that.

But we, the incident occurred on January the 9th.

By the 26th, we had the 10 MGD bypass in place.

On February 14th we had a 53 bypass built and since then we've been dewatering the rooms, testing and inspecting the equipment.

The pumps, the six pumps now we're taking, we're dismantling from the mounts and we're shipping them back to the factory to have them inspected to see what's reusable on the pumps and the motors.

The motors are doubtful because they're electrical equipment.

The pumps themselves possibly could be reused but with new motors.

We expect to have a report.

We have an independent engineer who's evaluating it

and we'll get their report and make sure it's accurate from what they determined and then it'll go to the insurance company and they have their own engineers been up inspecting and then they'll assess whether they agree and then hopefully we can all agree on what caused it.

Was it the river high flow, mechanical failure of a pump, electrical failure of the controls?

Did the controls just get overwhelmed because the water rose so rapidly in the wet well?

or a combination of the above.

And then you go into policy and decide how much the insurance will pay.

I see you have up on February 8th through 13th initial testing of pipes.

Again, on the piping in the pump room.

Yeah, we did some testing of those pipes.

to make sure that they were watertight and they weren't the reason, water wasn't spewing out of them somewhere in a joint.

And that was what caused the pump station to flood as an example.

And we have valves in there, check valves.

And did they cause the pipe to fail somehow?

Oh, you know, I'm not sure.

On the gas line, they run a 3000 PSI.

And I mean, when that valve is open,

I'm not sure what PSI we tested to, but we have seven temporary pumps in there now.

The pump rooms have been dewatered and cleaned.

We're testing equipment.

We're going to send pumps back for reevaluation and our engineers are doing a causation investigation.

We did have wastewater come out of the manholes back on January the 9th and 10th.

We actually, when we pumped the pump station to empty it, we had to do a purposeful discharge back into Morris Creek.

And, but that ended on January the 9th, there were about 24 hours.

We had to pump it through the Creek because we had nowhere else to put it.

And we had to get the pump station empty or lower in order to get the big pumps in place.

If it's river rise.

Well, after we figured out what went wrong, obviously we will fix those problems.

Was there something wrong with the controls?

We know that we had that heating, cooling duct penetration in the stairwell that we likely became a pathway into the pump room.

So we've already blocked that off so it can't happen again in the meanwhile.

But that HVAC is in there because the stairwell would be what's called a confined space.

If there's no air going in, we'd have to put people in respirators to go in the wet well, go in the stairs to go down in the wet well.

So that's why that's put in.

So it is not a confined space.

We have air circulating.

It's not a confined space.

We use different types of pumps like submersible pumps that are designed and could survive underwater.

That's something we're going to explore.

Controls seem to be an area that we're really focusing on, the controls.

Did they operate correctly?

Because the controls went underwater also.

So is there something we can do to make sure they operate properly if they do go underwater in the future?

We have a large gate that we

at the 60 inch pipe and that would not shut fully when the incident occurred.

So obviously we got to fix that as one means if we would ever think the pump station was going to submerge again, we would shut the gate and not let any more water in and all of it would overflow into the river.

I thought you'd mentioned that

A few of them did intermittently.

They would run for a few minutes and shut down.

And we had a guy sitting there all night and he would push the button and restart them and they would run for a few minutes and shut down.

So they were working underwater, which they're not designed to.

But thankfully they did because that gave us, helped give us time to build the 10 MGD bypass without all the water.

just charging into the creek.

Yes, sir.

I helped do the with Angus and others do the Willow Mills Dam removal and we did a hydrological study that was required as part of the joint permit application for that removal in 2007.

And the hydrological study looked at the flood plain all along there and that's right atched

right above where Morris Creek enters the Rivanna, a couple dozen feet above there.

And the estimation was that you get five to seven feet, depending on what happens to the ground around the river, of additional flow advantage in a high event.

This was a high event, 20,000 CFS is what I saw on the gauges cubic feet per second.

but certainly not what I have seen at the Rivanna.

I've seen double that at the Rivanna in the late 90s during the hurricane.

And the only time I've seen it overflow the bank was Hurricane Fran in 1996.

So the idea that this river was out of its banks and penetrated into manhole knowledge, I think that is not credible.

I'm not saying I was there, it wasn't, but that to me is suspect.

How did you find out about the problem?

Well, we have staff there 24-7 and we do have electronic controls that bring alarms when something's not working properly.

And in a matter of an hour or two, it was working fine.

And at the end of that hour or so,

It was submerged.

It happened quickly.

And that's not another part of what we're investigating.

Did the alarms work?

Did we respond?

How did this happen?

I mean, let's say you did get the alarm.

Probably.

Shut the gate.

The backup anyway.

The pipes.

That's right.

And comes rolling out.

And the station is completely separate.

Separate pipes, separate everything to the head works, right?

and there was no backup there.

Well, it connects to the head works on the exit pipe from the building.

I mean, you got two pump stations, one failed, one didn't.

Correct.

Are the similarities, did they end at the pump station name or how similar are they?

How deep are they?

Why didn't the Morris Creek pump station fail?

Oh, I thought Morris Creek failed.

No, Rivanna failed, Morris Creek.

Right.

why did it work?

Okay, everything worked like it was supposed to.

The pumps pumped the capacity that was coming in and we'll look at the similarities and differences between the two pump stations.

The Morris Creek is much older than the newer one was the Rivanna pump station.

So it should be more logically advanced in that way.

We have about six that comes through Rivanna and about four that comes through the smaller Morse Creek on an average day.

But when we have rain, it goes up.

So I know it's too soon to ask this, but I'm going to ask it anyway.

Your insurance company,

is obviously going to make the call with their own independent investigators down in the butt well and dry well.

We'll go have a report, we hope, by the end of this month.

Yes, if they pay most of the cost, it would essentially be zero impact.

We estimated that if we had to pay most of it, that it would be a bottom point

Six increased to our charges to the city.

And I think about similar 0.5 increased in our charges to the Albemarle County Service Authority in FY 2025, which starts in July.

So I hate to say it's a small increase because it could be $20 million, but our five-year capital plan is $370 million.

So we would add 20 to it and borrow 390 instead of 370.

So it's like borrowing 10 to more thousand dollars for your home mortgage.

It changes the monthly payment a small amount, but again, it's a lot of money, but keeping it in perspective.

Small amount increase if we have to pay for it, but we're hopeful that the insurance pays at least most

If we make improvements by design, we want to make something better.

We assume they may not pay for the improvements.

If you wreck your 20, 20-year car, they don't buy you a 2025.

They give you the value of the 2020.

And so some of that will probably go on.

So that's why we wouldn't suggest that we're going to get 100% of the money from the insurance company.

Well, short on time, one of the things we included in our packet was wastewater funding opportunities for water authorities as well as local governments.

This one?

This one?

Oh, yeah, this one.

Yes.

Okay.

And by the way, we have gotten over $3 million in

Federal State funding for removal of PFAS and drinkings.

We got a grant from the Virginia Department of Health for that.

We're applying it at the Crozet water treatment plant, but we have granular activated carbon, which is one of the leading technologies to remove PFAS at all of our other water treatment plants, except for Red Hill, and we're getting ready to build it there too.

So we're at the

Forefront of PFAS removal, we just have to gauge it to the volume of water we have going through.

I think down in Cape Fear, North Carolina, as Mr. Sly mentioned, they have a huge PFAS problem.

They're down at the coast of North Carolina, whatever that river is all comes to Cape Fear and it's collected a lot of PFAS and I understand they're installing GAC filters, which is what we have.

It wasn't for PFAS, it was for disinfection byproducts.

When we chlorinate drinking water, it creates a byproduct, an acid that can be a negative.

And so the GAC helps to remove that disinfection byproduct.

And then coincidentally, it also helps with PFAS.

Thank you.

Thanks for coming.

Thank you.

It's terrible what happened.

So just one thing, probably outside of your purview, but do you have any thoughts on the impact of a previous surface and stormwater from developed spaces on these systems and the cost of that development?

Well, the cleaner water is in our reservoirs and streams, the less it takes to treat it to make drinking water.

But we're pretty blessed in our Rivanna River.

It doesn't have any wastewater treatment plants that empty into it.

No major industries that empty into the Rivanna River.

It's going from the Blue Ridge Mountains.

And therefore, we're pretty blessed in that way.

So runoff can have some effect, but you get a lot of wash away from rivers and streamlines just naturally.

Probably speeds up the flash of the velocity.

That's true.

That may have been what happened.

I understand it was only three inches of rain that brought us this impact.

And it had been May 29th, 2018, when we got 11 inches in

Yeah.

Yeah.

And it wasn't January when the trees and the vegetation are relatively barren, not soaking up in the waters or any water.

So everything that hit the ground headed to a stream as opposed to a three inches in July could be a different impact to the stream.

It would be no issue.

Yeah.

That's true.

People on the above.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Thank you.

Any car?

And let's take one second and run around the table and introduce everybody too because we have new folks and I'm going to tell what district you represent so we can all get to know each other.

I'm Isabella O'Brien.

I'm a planner too.

with the Thomas Jefferson Planning District Commission, mostly focused in environmental programs and staff support to the Rivanna River Basin Commission.

Welcome to the RRBC.

Thanks for joining us.

Hi, I'm Ruth Emerick.

I'm Angus Murdock, the Thomas Jefferson Soil and Water Conservation District, rep to the commission.

Second generation.

I am the board of supervisor for the Rivanna District in Savannah County.

Francis McGuigan, is that how you pronounce it, is also new Greene County Supervisor.

Okay.

Lonnie Murray, former Director of the Public Works and Civil Water Conservation District.

Assistant Director, and I serve in the Almonte County Planning Commission.

And I also serve in the Almonte County Natural Heritage Committee for a little guest here today.

This is climbing fern, Ligodian pomata.

This is actually a rare plant in our area.

This occurs at one county park in Almonte County, but it's a riparian plant.

As you can see, it's a wetland plant trying to be wet.

And so this is one of the rare plants that you might

When we have vegetative buffers on streams, this is one of the species that we'd be protecting because this is something.

And it also requires really, really clean water.

So if there's any contamination at all, this dies.

It's only at one of our parks that we know of.

And that park actually crosses the county line into an adjoining county.

Hi everyone, Jason Halbert.

We've already met our Virginia representatives, so that's wonderful.

All right, thank you, everybody.

And I so appreciate all perspectives here.

OK, we can now jump down to bylaws review.

Isabella?

We're cycling back.

OK, then we have approval of agenda.

And it's from the 22nd of August.

Are there any changes to the agenda now that we've already changed it around and put it back?

Any other changes to the agenda?

I see none.

All in favor of adoption of the agenda, please say aye.

Aye.

Any opposed?

All right.

The agenda is adopted.

And are there any corrections or additions to the meeting minutes from August 22nd?

Which was a wild meeting.

My brain was completely scrambled at the end of that, but it was wonderful.

All right.

I hear no corrections.

So do we have a motion to adopt the meeting minutes from 8-22-23?

And a second?

Second.

Second?

Okay, approved.

All in favor?

All right, very good.

Those are adopted.

And we've done our comments for the public.

We've done our more screen publicization.

Thank you.

This will be fast.

I just wanted to go over the portion that discusses elections as we move into that.

So the commission's officers shall consist of a chair, a vice chair, and treasurer.

Eligibility to be considered for an officer position is restricted to existing commission members and preferably should come from members representing different jurisdictions.

And their terms extend from the first meeting of the calendar year or the time of their election if later until the first meeting of the next calendar year.

They may be reelected for an additional consecutive term upon a unanimous vote from the additional terms.

Yeah, OK.

And then one other aspect I wanted to bring up about this is that per our bylaws, I had it all highlighted, but it seemed to have disappeared.

Per our bylaws, we're also allowed to establish an executive committee that includes two non-officer positions from across the jurisdictions.

And as we had determined in our last meeting, we've developed donations

Approval Policy so that we can accept donations throughout the year.

And also just thinking for building continuity and buy-in for our annual conference, it might be good to have an executive committee with those two additional members that can serve to carry out the functions of the board outside of our regular meeting dates.

And before we move on, so you would ask us to think about the adoption of the executive committee new membership for next time.

To do it this day, that would be great as well.

All right, but we'll do that after.

There's no pressure from the nominating committee to say anything on the executive committee.

We would like to implore Ann Mallek again as chair, myself as treasurer, but we still need a vice chair position in which we weren't able to.

We weren't able to find a candidate, so.

I'm worried.

We asked politely.

If you're very polite.

Alright, so we have our we have our slate unless there's anyone else that would like to.

The name of three of those positions.

Anyone really wants to be treasurer?

OK, right.

Is that what you're looking for?

Yeah, so I mean, I guess it would be up to you to call for a motion.

Is this for all officers?

OK. All right, then I will call for a vote.

First of all, to make you sure, are there any other volunteers who would like to get involved in this action?

All right, I don't see any.

So all in favor of the nomination slate, please say aye.

Aye.

Any opposed?

All right, we are now squared away on leadership.

I just pulled up a bit more information about that here.

The only requirement is that they'll meet once between the regular full commission meetings or as necessary to conduct business.

OK, great.

Well, that's a wonderful start.

All right, good.

We're going to have three.

Maximum of five?

Okay.

I'll have to look into the violence, but I'm sure that the rest of the commission can attend those meetings if they would like.

Just that's our standing membership.

So we have to.

OK, yes, voting on the executive committee.

Any other volunteers?

All right.

Any opposed?

All right.

It carries.

We are set.

Thank you.

Thank you all.

Great.

Now, discussion items.

For our new members, I just wanted to do a refresher on the purpose and also just make you all aware of some of our resources available to you at www.rivannariverbasin.org.

We have an entire website with an About Us page that covers the history, establishing statue of the RRBC, more information about water quality and land use in the Rivanna River Basin,

and there's also a few resources available for commissioners under where you all are listed.

I encourage you to review that.

Additionally, plans related to the Rivanna, like Stormwater reports, the urban Rivanna corridor plan are also available on our website for your review.

And I won't read through this, but the establishment and the purpose of the commission is available for you to review as well there.

And welcome to the RRBC.

Okay, so west of 29th.

Yes.

Okay, cool.

Very good.

Okay, great.

So this I pulled from our five-year work plan which takes us through fiscal year 2027 and it's just a brief description of what our annual conference will consist of.

There's not too much defining exactly what the topics are going to be or the location and so I thought this meeting could be a good opportunity for us to reflect on the past two years

of our conference and what we like about it, what we might want to change or consider for our upcoming conference.

So make sure I can see it on the left here.

You can see our values that we defined as part of our work plan development process.

And I think those are good buffers for us to consider for the topics that we might consider for the annual conference.

But this portion I really was hoping could be discussion based.

So starting strong on the positives for their aspects of our previous conference that you found most valuable.

So to refresh your memory, we covered PFAS in our September.

I know some of you haven't been there, but PFAS from a range of different stakeholders, we had EPA, the Rivanna Water Authority, the Western Virginia Water Authority that dealt with PFAS in their area.

the Virginia Department of Health and DEQ all come to speak about their aspects of study and regulation development related to PFAS.

We had a panel discussion at the end, which I think went pretty well.

We did not have tabling organizations from local water nonprofits like we did two years prior.

And we did also partner with the Rivanna Conservation Alliance to have a second event, which was a community science workshop where people could learn about how they could volunteer with the Rivanna Conservation Alliance and help with their water monitoring efforts.

Comments about what you learned, what your reactions were

most recent one, which was in this building in the auditorium.

And then I guess, and perhaps we can throw it in comparison.

The previous year was at Louisa Clark Exploratory Center and that was about solar mostly.

Okay.

I thought it was very, very, very informative for me.

In addition, I thought there was value having DEQ and other state agencies there to hear kind of specifically from them

and I think the speakers were all very good so I enjoyed that.

One of my thoughts was that having the other community organizations there like we did in the Solar Conference kind of helped build attendance but also provided more opportunities for people to learn about the different nonprofits that serve our area.

I feel like the location kind of we didn't want to table too much in the main

Albemarle County Office Building lobby.

It didn't make too much sense to have within the auditorium itself.

And we didn't have the outside portion of the conference, which was nice.

The Lewis and Clark Center, we were able to do the walk, the river walk at the end of the conference.

Which is wonderful as long as the weather's decent.

I'm always suffering terrible heartburn about weather when we plan things in and out.

or five years ago, we did have in 235 next door, we had all the community tabling there and also down the hallway.

So if I think the tabling is wonderful, if people are interested in coming and maybe having missed a year, we will also get better response from people who are interested in coming back.

But I would not.

Worry about the inability to have it within only because it is 95 degrees or it's raining.

I love being inside and then go outside later.

My own, I love being at Lewis and Clark Exploratory Center, except the sound is awful.

And they need to be hanging, fell, things from the ceiling because the echoes and stuff are really difficult over there.

And Alex knows this, so I'm not talking behind your back.

But I think it was wonderful for that organization as well to bring people in and have them see who might not have been there before.

So we did, I think a good thing for them at that point, but with a larger crowd,

I really hope that we can continue to draw larger craft when we have the next one, and that we will need more chairs and easier space.

I don't want to make more work, so shoot this down if you think it's a dumb idea.

I know that each county has only a percentage of their land in the watershed, not Albemarle.

Charlottesville's 100%, but Albemarle.

But maybe moving it around the planning district

It might be a good idea, at least sometimes, not all the time, just to, you know, go up to Greene County and look at what things are happening there.

Do a field tour up there maybe or something.

So I thought that might be a good idea.

I think it's a good idea.

One thing I was saying, it would be nice to have something specific on low impact development and better stormwater practices and maybe even have like a tour of where you could actually.

Yeah, like a field trip, right?

Be kind of fun.

Particularly if you sort of cast it in ways like you reach out to, you know, things like neighborhood associations, home builders, you know, different.

Think about, you know, because I think a lot of people know that things should be done differently, but they don't know what those things are.

And I think it's interesting when you have a community that's very informed and they know what the choices are, then they tend to advocate for those choices.

Like I remember a while back, they were, there was a development of Crozet, so long ways back, and someone in the developer is proposing a retention basin.

And they said, no, we don't want a retention basin.

We want a biofilter.

And so being able to understand the difference between what those options are and why one is better than the other is, I think, an important

Interesting.

I think in celebration of a closeout of the NFWF grant, we did a tour because each county had a demonstration project.

So the constructed wetland in Crozet, the garden at Charlottesville High School, and there was also a garden in Greene County.

And what did we do at Pleasant Green?

Something.

whatever, it's not Pleasant Greece, it's something that people did sort of truck around, which was great fun and a way to celebrate.

Is this the 10th anniversary?

Because I was just thinking back to the 40th anniversary for the PDC.

And for the five months during that year, we went to, had a major meeting in each of the jurisdictions and big thing at the,

when what was then the brand new Levana High School.

So that was really cool to be able to have tour there.

So that might be a way to also if this has happened to be 10 years, then we could do something perhaps in addition to maybe just one day to have visits at the various partners throughout the summer.

And I don't mean to say five times the word either to say we're gathering here and we'll have a presentation and all that extra press will help to build the people.

Miss that one.

I can go to the next one.

sort of thing.

I was going to suggest that, you know, Wollan Mills, that whole area might be kind of a whole place to do it, just because I don't think a lot of people have really explored it yet or know, you know, it's just one of those areas.

It was RWSA.

Roland Mills is a development that was done.

It was down marketed a long ago.

Just kind of cool.

It took an old...converted it right by the river there.

You could host a lot of people in there.

Well, and it's possible that, what's the name of their company that is in there?

Oh, Willowtree.

Willowtree.

They might offer space as public service as well, too.

We'll cover the rent on the property.

That would be okay.

Well, that's a great idea, Tony, because there are trails all around and lots of projects in progress, both across the creek and the Rivanna, as well as

It's just a very small random thing.

But at both conferences, obviously, I think the information was of a lot of interest and value to the broader community.

And it would depend on the venue and format whether it would work.

But our public access TV station is always willing to come to events and film them, which will put it not only on TV, but it streams and there's a permanent record of it online.

So that would just be an easy, free way to get a recording of it that's on TV and also online.

Thank you.

More people than I always think watch public access TV.

Especially when you're not.

OK, we have to move on.

We're a little bit over time for the agenda.

I pulled from your email to me to share this information.

So feel free to hop in wherever or take over.

I think we're a little past this part of the heat agenda for our place.

But if you all are OK with discussing this further, maybe we just squeeze our roundtable time a little bit.

So as they mentioned, Wild Virginia received an update from the Water Authority, which included data from the influenza and effluent from four of their wastewater plants.

And they found over 16 types of PFAS.

This does not include their testing for the drinking water.

And like they mentioned, they focused on the Scottsville permit because at the end of this month, it's due for a re-issuance of its discharge permit

And their effort is to push DEQ to keep these substances out of state waters, not to wait until they show up in our surface water and water supplies.

So you got a deeper look into their data there, but I just shared the mean, the minimum, and the max of some of the influence and effluent at the Scottsville wastewater treatment plant.

and as they mentioned, their proposed re-permitting would not require any sampling or controls of PFAS for their influent or effluent.

Again, as I said, I give

the authority here credit for actually doing any because as far as we know the vast majority of them probably haven't done any.

In fact, we asked DEQ, do you know what discharges around the state have done monitoring?

And they said, we don't really know.

We'd have to do a deep search and it costs you $850 for us to look for it, which is a survey of course.

So we're now undertaking a search

We're reaching out to all the discharges around the state and asking them for their data to see who's got it.

But the upshot is I don't think many of them have done the monitoring.

They're basically waiting for DEQ to order them to do the monitoring and so far they're not doing that.

Can I just follow up on a question that I think Mr. Halbert said before was, am I asking the commission to do anything?

And I didn't.

originally intend to, and I'm not sure how to phrase this, I've been communicating with Mr. Tungate at the authority and he's been very, very communicative and I want to keep doing that.

One of the things I asked him on behalf of the authority was to tell DEQ that it should hold a public hearing over this permit because that would widen the public

you know, knowledge and give other people a chance to weigh in.

We don't pay attention to the legal notices or the DEQ's notices.

And DEQ can have a public hearing or they can't, and we can't force them to, but the more folks who weigh in and say, you should do it, the better.

So if mission or individuals wanted to do that, I would urge you to do it.

But they can administratively hold it over.

And in some of the other cases where we have been involved,

I'll share, Mr. Slye had shared their presentation, they had a webinar about this and a document that had some proposed comments on who can be shared to DEQ.

But if they have a public hearing, then that opens a new chance for people to speak.

But for folks like you who have a position in the community, let DEQ know that they should have a public hearing.

Let me say as far as your conference, the only reason I knew that they had any data was because I watched the video of your conference last year and they mentioned

that they had some, which is the reason I reached out to them.

But, you know, and I don't know, because I haven't asked them what prompted them to go sample the wastewater.

But I suspect it might have been, but hey, we got shown up in the river, we had children up in the drinking water, so maybe we should look for it.

And again, thanks for giving me credit.

One other thing that I'll mention, and again,

I've communicated this thing to Mr. Tunde and I was kind of giving him the chance to respond to me and I didn't want to feel like I was kind of blowing up his head in a way and I don't want to do that because he has been cooperative.

What is that called?

OK, it's proved.

It's kind of strange wording.

It's not mandated by EPA.

When they cast, do they just write it as just as it gets to the stream, waste more?

Well, that's an interesting thing and you'll see some discussion in our comments there.

The Scottsville plan actually discharges to a small ephemeral stream that probably only runs part of the year.

Then it goes to what's called Mink Creek and then to the James River.

And DEQ did not even, except for other pollutants that they do assess,

They skipped over those other streams and said, we're only looking at how it might impact the James River, which is improper.

And we have called them out on that in our comments, but the sampling happens right where it goes into that first little stream.

The thing there is that little bitty stream goes under the soccer fields right through the park there.

It's accessible to anybody.

I know you have water.

around the recreation area, it's plain water.

Smell chlorine water.

Well, you can smell the chlorine.

One thing about that, even once it hits the James River,

You think, well, you've got this small discharge and it's diluted inside the whole James River.

The fact is, it hugs that thing right down to the boat ramp and beyond.

Well, of course, the nature

You can let me nerd out here because I used to be a prepare fighter, so I know.

But the nature of the discharge and the nature of the river are usually a little bit different.

So it might be slightly different temperatures, slightly different kind of conductivity.

So it just naturally takes it a while to mix in.

So the concentration is greater in the river than the discharge?

No, I'm not saying that it's greater.

But I guess my point is if the stuff that's going into the river has a lower level than what's existing in the river,

It may not be a problem.

First of all, I have his contact information and we also share information.

The two extra handouts that I shared with you all were related to grant opportunities.

So just out of respect for everyone's time, I just encourage you guys to review those.

We've spoken about this in previous commission meetings that we should

continue to bring great opportunities up for discussion to see what might be relevant to our region, perhaps to the River Basin Commission.

And I included some additional ones focused just on the wastewater treatment plans since two of our discussion items today were related to that.

But the others are available to homeowners, to local governments themselves, to neighborhood associations, and the like.

So please take a look.

And then in my follow-up email to you all, I'll be sharing our new member orientation packet that we just updated, which includes the summary of the statute, the bylaws, some resources specifically for you all to better understand organizations within our region supporting watershed.

The TJPDC developed a green infrastructure toolkit designed just for local leaders to have a better understanding of

the water quality landscape in our region, so that's available for your review.

A bit of a historical timeline for the history of the RRBC and the water related regulations and responsible government agencies.

I didn't update that one, so that's a few years old, but still encourage you to take a look.

As part of our five year work plan, this is

just pulled again directly from the work plan.

We decided that we would hold stakeholder advisory group meetings to promote coordination, communication, and education within the basin as it relates to our water quality and other natural resources.

Last year in February, we held our first successful meeting related to the TJPDC Stewardship Mapping and Assessment Project to better understand the landscape of environmental groups and nonprofits serving our region.

and that will provide us with a network map of how these organizations are connected, their survey responses with information about what type of organization they are, what work they do, and then a map of their turf and where they're specifically carrying out environmental projects.

So we had a range of environmental groups come for the first meeting and then you all voted last October

to discuss the Chesapeake Bay Preservation Act and considerations for opting into the BSMP.

But we reached out to a few potential speakers for that and just never panned out, didn't work out.

And so our plan for moving forward with the stakeholder advisory group meetings is to focus on our own initiative.

STUMAP is wrapping up now, so we're hoping in the next month we'll be able to have the first stakeholder advisory group meeting of this year, which you all

are welcome to come and join in.

And we'll be gathering feedback on the data visualization of that project that's been going on this whole year.

And then for future, as part of our five-year work plan, we are going to begin in fiscal year 2025, the Rivanna River story map and historical timeline.

So we'll host the Safeholder Advisory Group meetings focused on that or other topics that come up.

And that's all for me.

Great.

On a round, on behalf of Thomas Jefferson Southern Water Conservation District and ongoing, and it's primarily focused on on point source pollution control, preventing erosion from

Farmlands, but I'm recently also doing urban conservation landscaping and green gardens, that type of thing.

And it's remarkably well funded at the moment.

Is there a deadline for applying for ACAP money or VCAP money or whichever it is?

I think, I mean, you can apply any time.

I don't know the deadline.

It's half the time.

It has been ongoing funding for the past several years, especially on the AG.

Doing pretty well.

One of the big things with VCAP and any of the programs really is to apply for the money before you need it.

because you have to to qualify.

You have to be approved for the practice before you can spend any money.

So if you think about like, you know.

One of the programs we pay for is replacement of turfgrass with native native plants.

Well, if you're planning a gardening thing, you know you need to plan for that before the season starts.

Now you know we get a lot of calls around springtime because people are thinking about gardening right now.

Really, they probably should apply

several months ago said that money would be available for now in springtime.

That's just sort of how the cycle ends up.

Yeah, there is a review process and yeah, it's not.

You're going to walk in the door and get it.

But there is plenty of money in this year for for the urban practices and.

BCAP was sort of started in our district and in Culpeper.

That expanded to the whole day.

And that's a statewide, officially statewide program.

We're going through the program right now.

Yeah, I think it's reimbursement based.

I guess most of you probably know that part of the river rafters are doing an operation in Fluvanna County now.

So if you want to enjoy the recreation of the river rafters, you can now do that coming into the Fluvanna side as well, different parts of the river.

I haven't done the kayaking myself or the rafting, but to get from Charlottesville all the way down to Fluvanna, apparently it's a very long, long hike.

So this will, I think, attract some more people from Fluvanna's side using the river, which will be very important in that standpoint.

The James River Water Authority, which is pooling water just right near the Rivanna there, is getting close to being a done deal, which is

Other than that, the big news for us, specifically to the Rivanna and Fluvanna County in particular for members that have Aqua Virginia as a water and sewer company is that the county has

Join with other counties to be a petitioner in the SEC, upcoming SEC hearing to raise rates.

The council wants to raise rates 30, almost 30%, which we already have extremely high rates.

So the rate increase that they're proposing is about half of what most people pay for their water and sewer to begin with in other counties.

on average of about $30 to $35 per household with bills already at $125 to $150 per month.

Which is four times what?

Forever two.

Right.

And the increase based on the analysis that Drew Brady does of storm, I mean of sewer, both private sewer and public sewer companies, the average rate increases

8% for most of the public utilities that are doing that.

This increases 33.8% in some perspective.

So the difference between for profit and not.

It's a big difference, but even on the for profit side, it's extreme.

It's extremely high.

They own the system.

Yes, they would have to sell it to us or go bankrupt in order to do that.

Oh, absolutely.

I mean, the long history of it is that Lake Monticello is a community of 4,500 homes.

Aqua, Virginia is one of the providers there.

Because it was a private development developer at the time who created their own water and sewer system, the lake did not maintain it

as well as they should have.

When the cost came up to do the maintenance, they decided to sell it to a private company with promises that rates weren't going to go up very much for the first couple of years.

But since then, they've gone up and up and up.

When we moved there 20 years ago, I think the water was $60.

And as I said, it's going to approach $150, $160 a month.

So that's the big news.

You'll hear some of that.

That's a matter related

We have a problem with water, a lot of problems, headaches, great headaches, people getting bills,

I mean, unbelievable.

And I think the meters are broken, a lot of the meters are broken.

They're not being, they never were checked right.

Well, I mean, some piping is breaking and breaking down there and the meters are not, we had to find them.

All kinds of things.

We're looking at 150.

That's what I was discussing when I unfortunately wasn't able to talk before you guys did the go around.

We're looking at 160 million dollars worth of water projects in the next five years for a service

Great service.

Well, one third of Greene County, it's only one third is on sewer and water strength.

So basically 7000 people, 3000 homes.

So it's insanity.

And unfortunately, people keep going down the route of insanity.

I have one other question.

So where's the implementation plan for the south fork of the Rivanna River?

The TMDL is done, but the implementation strategy to create a mitigation is in the process of being developed, right?

OK, thank you, because I lost track of that totally.

Oh, I thought?

No, that's all DEQ.

OK, OK. Well, thank you for asking, because I totally forgot.

Yeah, because I actually did a deep dive on this before I even got involved in this stuff.

And we've lost 10 streams in 10 years.

And it's all basically everything west of our development corridor, kind of between Lydia Mountain and Rutgersville.

And it's all due to phosphorus and sediment.

It's all bent neck impairments.

It's not, you know, E. coli or anything like that.

And I think that TDML was, we have to cut by 54% to make any progress.

Which runs into the South Fork, for sure.

Yeah.

They did my geographies off, but.

Yeah, we run the headwaters, I guess, Ron.

I think because you all are outside of the MS4 area, unless there's a direct white source water treatment plant that's causing all of this, what DEQ does is basically host these community meetings to get community engagement so that they're applying for some of the grants that I've included in the packet, but additional ones.

It takes a lot of public buy-in from the landowners that are contributing those

sources to be able to make the change.

Nezha McRae at DEQ was leading that program.

So there was one further upstream a couple of years ago, and then it's moving south this year, I think.

So, yeah, it's incredibly frustrating to just watch the wheels turn.

That's for sure.

Anything else?

Good luck with your independent water source.

The news is talk about endless wheels turning.

Hopefully this year we will have a stream map, stream overlay district that will establish buffers everywhere on the Streams Downwall County, basically returning us to where we were in the 90s and early 2000s.

And so I don't have a date of adoption for that,

I've been told it's coming, it's coming, but it's been that for like three years.

So I will hope that this will be the spring that we actually get there.

No, it will be removing the exemption for disturbances under 10,000 square feet, which has been a huge loophole that people have used for,

Well, it will be regulation of some sort.

It won't be in a special use permit.

Yeah, so back in 2014, we don't have enough time for me to go on this, but back in 2014, our ordinance was based in the Chesapeake Bay Act.

And then under the guise of a routine code cleanup, when there was these erosion sediment control

they merged the two together.

When they did that, taking our stream buffers and putting them under erosion sediment control meant that the ordinance not only applied with 10,000 square feet of soil.

Part of that they were permanent.

So what this is doing is taking it back out of the erosion sediment control ordinance and putting it on its own so there will be permanent buffers more in line with the CSPPA Act again.

So we're basically going back

And it was a big push in 2014 to make it as easy as possible for developers and I think Albemarle is the first non-tidewater locality to adopt additional provisions of the Chesapeake Bay Preservation Act like this riparian buffer over the district.

Yeah, cool.

Well, I mean, we were the first to adopt the Chesapeake Bay Act, and then effectively we left it in 2015 without anyone knowing.

And then now we're basically reentering it again.

Time to fight to get it back, that's for sure.

Yeah.

All aside from the State of the Basin Report, all of the previous planning efforts related to the Rivanna River on the About the Basin page.

I'll check with our comments.

I really didn't want that to sit on the shelf.

I probably have a digital version.

I'm not promising, but I may.

I'm a pretty good archive.

Oh, so then you know all in an archive, tries to archive every web page.

Yeah, way back, way back machine.

Yeah, way back machine.

Yeah, that's the

That's the mother or whatever you want to put analogy.

It's the, yeah, it's the grill for this group, I think.

And the update.

Get it out and wave the banner sport here.

That'd be good for all the communities.

All right.

Well, I'll just say,

This new city manager, I'm going to toot his horn.

Sam Sanders has really been, as far as I can see, and I'm a critic of the government the last seven, eight years.

He's been really putting in the time and effort and doing what he says it's going to do.

And we've got a lot more people hired.

And so as it pertains to this group, the urban forester person that the city's hired has been working hard and clearing out exotics in the park.

Planting trees, and he's making a good start at what has been lagging for a number of years.

I'd second that quickly.

I think the biggest thing I can think of is the city recently acquired 22 acres directly along the Rivanna River.

For those who aren't familiar, that is where the old circus grounds, that's where the Rivanna River Company is.

Where the Rivanna River Company sits would have been turned into a parking lot and there would have been 20 foot retaining walls right next to the river.

Fortunately, the city was able to purchase those 22 acres and in the short term it will basically be an extension of Riverview Park with the Rivanna River Company being preserved.

But longer term, I think it's a huge opportunity to think about how can it be activated while also preserving the Rivanna River

and the natural environment there.

And I think it could be a catalyst moment for the city actually implementing our urban revenue or river corridor plan.

So I don't know what, if any, role this body may play in that, but I think it's a very real opportunity.

And then the second thing is beginning in a month or two, our city staff is going to begin a process of evaluating and looking at all of our local environmental policies and including critical slopes, floodplain regulations,

and I hope it will be an opportunity to model some of what Albemarle has done and introduce as many discretionary decision points as possible along the Rivanna River corridor and in areas that are flood plains, which I think is a very important action to take in the context of the city having increased by right density throughout the entire city.

I think when we've done that, it makes a ton of sense to have

the strongest environmental regulations as possible as a component of that.

So I think the expertise that you have and members of this commission may have may be very useful to be a part of the city's process.

Quite frankly, I think there are many counselors and maybe staff members who haven't thought about or were engaged in these issues yet.

Not having building in the floodplain, not just the floodway, but the whole floodplain should be a huge step forward and would save the circus grass for you and be applied for, which was my shock when I heard that.

Exactly.

Yeah, that's that's a great development.

I also say I was years ago on the Assistance Committee on Environmental Sustainability, which was in many ways a cross jurisdictional committee that came up with some really great

Environmental ideas that continue to resonate now, like the LEAP program was invented by that committee.

And I was sad to see it disbanded.

And there was a promise that it was going to be reformed and it never happened.

Yeah, I mean, it would be great to see.

A quarterly meeting focused on something.

And the Natural Heritage Committee have also brought forward that there are plants that are rare in Albemarle County that are also rare at the City of Charlottesville.

One of them is is Virginia, sorry, is erect dayflower, which occurs on that property at this age just occurred, just purchased.

Fantastic.

Thank you.

That is another wonderful RRBC meeting.

Thank you.

Are you giving that away?

No, I'm not giving this away.

Thank you.

This is also the first plan that a conservation wall is constantly protected.

I mean, that's it.