Environmental Matters Committee - Regular Meeting

All right, good afternoon, everybody. I'm calling to order the June 11th meeting for Environmental Matters. For the record, we have old woman Taisha Conte present. For the moment.

Is he there? Oh, is he virtual? We can't see him, yes.

Oh. So we can get Alderman Huntley on roll call. All right, so for roll call, We have Alderman Conte?

Here.

Alderman Huntley?

I'm here.

All right, thank you. And we have approval of the agenda. Is there a motion?

Motion.

Is there a second? Can I get a second to approve the agenda?

Second.

All those who approve, please say aye. Aye. Motion carries. Thank you. Next up, business miscellaneous approval of the minutes from May 14th. Is there a motion to approve the minutes?

So moved.

Second.

Motion's been seconded. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Motion carries. Thank you. And then general discussion. I'm going to The privilege of the chair to reorganize this a little bit because it did tell, I think I believe I told Public Works I'd get them out of here soon since they're doing us a favor and coming today. So I want to start with ID 3426, State of Spa Creek. So do we have somebody who's willing? So the reason this came up, you can come on to the table or the, if there's more than one of you, you can come up to the table. So thank you for joining us today. Where this came from is that we have received over the past few months, various concerns that have been raised by the public and the committee and elsewhere about the quality of Spa Creek. And so I wanted to just actually hear from those of you who are actually monitoring and seeing the watershed every day to see what the data shows and to find out from you if there's any way we can assist you in those efforts. And so with that, if you could just introduce yourselves

I'm Amy Clements with the Spock Creek Conservancy.

I'm Tammy Domanski with the Anne Arundel Community College Environmental Center.

Would you have a presentation you'd like to give to us?

So I have the presentation, the PowerPoint that I used for the full presentation.

Make sure, you can each take a mic.

But I'd like to shorten that a lot and just give the highlights, which I'm sure you will all appreciate a lot also. So we've been monitoring on Spa Creek and Bat Creek for 10 years now. And so the process or the program has expanded a lot over those years. and so when you look at this map this map shows that the the goal is really to hit all parts of spot creek and back creek so we have a couple of sites cherry grove and children's museum cg and sem that are up in the headwaters non-tidal to barely title and then through the rest of spa creek we have several sites that are shore based and several that are midstream all the way out to the mouth And then it's fewer years, but we still have now going on four-ish years on Back Creek with the same idea. Really, we have some sites that are very close to shore and then a couple of midstream sites. The concept being that people get into the water at the shore, so we want an idea of what the shore is like as well as the midstream area where you're going to get more flushing and more dilution, more movement, everything. So for the assessment of the water, one thing that we don't do, so when we think about the report every year for Spock Creek Conservancy, or Spock Creek, I don't think about it as a letter grade. And I know the slide makes it look like we're showing letter grades. The Mid-Atlantic Tributary Assessment Coalition, for a number of characteristics, parameters, have developed this grading system. Depending on what water body you look at, everyone uses different parameters for the report card. So we really think about it as a year-over-year comparison, looking for changes, not really trying to give one grade. For example, even the Chesapeake Bay now, they're adding things like social awareness and engagement, things that we don't include in our assessment on Spot Creek. So the big point is, and there's a slide I took out of this, is that it really is about the rain. We don't have, I'm getting way ahead of myself probably, but in the last couple of slides, there's nothing usually that happens on Spa Creek that is extremely unpredictable. When those things pop up, then it really is a red flag that something's going on. For example, when there was the oil blockage in the one pipe and the bacterial, and there was a backup, sewage backup, and the bacterial concentration was very high. But usually things are relatively explainable. When we have more rain and when we have more rain that's close to when we do the monitoring, the values look poorer. Over time, as there's erosion and more, I should say, impervious surface, we see that after rain, the effects are worse, right? More impervious surface, more issues. So oddly, even though 2025 was a dry year, we sample and monitor on Thursday. Well, every time it did rain last year, it was Wednesday. So the data really show that. If anything, last year really showed the effect of what rain does to the values. So this slide, I know it's very busy, but what it does is we look at, instead of just straight concentrations of bacteria, we look over the season at what's called a geometric mean. And that geometric mean helps to sort of dampen down some of the extremes. And there is a threshold. You'll see the red line. The threshold for the upper threshold for the water to still be considered healthy or the healthiest it could be is the 35 colony forming units per 100 milliliter volume. here is that when we look at spa creek title in orange when we look at spa creek non-title upstream areas and even on bat creek with all of those we said all of them exceeded that value for 2025. this was not an improvement this got worse from 2024 but again what i really want to focus on here is that the takeaway is really the rain we had nearly half of the 2025 sampling days were affected by rain and one-third were affected by more than an inch of rain. So if you remember but when it rained on Wednesday it rained hard and then it didn't rain for a long time and which also can cause problems when we don't have rain for a while anything that's sitting there whether it's pet waste whether it's, well, the animal waste, fox, deer, you name it, it sits there and then we get one good rain and all of it gets pulled downstream into the water. Surface salinity, this is, I'm gonna say very little about this, but years when we have Even parts of the year when we have more rain, or I should say average rain, we see this pattern where early in the season, around when we start monitoring, it starts off relatively low and the salinity goes up over the season. Because it was relatively dry most of the week, we still saw that the salinity stayed relatively low, but then it started to go up toward the end of the season. Temperature. With temperature, we also saw less than what we've seen as the highest values for the water temperature. I also think that this is more a reflection of when sampling was done. You get a cold, you get rain, the next day the temperature goes down a little bit. I don't think there's any massive change in the overall pattern and our waters are getting colder. I think this is much more. caused by the timing of the monitoring. And then we have multiple related characteristics. Total suspended solids, that sediment can come from a lot of runoff. That's a big place for it. It also can come from algal blooms. So that really just tells us what is suspended in the water. And this contributes to then the water looking dark. This contributes to things like dead zones, right? Light can't penetrate. So when we look at this, this is a concentration of the amount of things that are suspended in the water. And Spa Creek is in gray in this bar graph, and Bat Creek is in gold. In Spa Creek, things got worse. Again, you sample it the day after rain. In Bat Creek, things stayed pretty stable. One thing I want to focus on, and I know I've been talking a lot about last year, is when we look back to our early testing, that we are seeing overall that there is a significant decrease. There are a couple things that contribute to that. Some of it does have to do with the work that's being done on Spa Creek. Some of it also comes from the fact that we have additional sites now that are midstream. The suspended solids are going to be more concentrated at the shore or in headwaters areas. But in general, we are seeing an improving trend when the rain holds off. Secchi depths is a characteristic that many people are aware of. It's just clarity, put the disk in. So it's related to total suspended solids and other things that can be in the water. So if we look at this, this is using a scoring system that the MTAC, that group I mentioned, used. And the score, whoops, the score did go down last year, or I should say the percentage, but it's still in what the MTAC considers the D range. For the characteristics that I'm talking about, in many cases, this isn't a presentation about the Severn River or about the bay, but our values in a lot of ways reflect what's being seen on the river and in the bay. There's nothing extreme that we're seeing on the creek that we're not seeing on the river or the bay. Chlorophyll and algal blooms. So chlorophyll is an indicator of algal blooms. Three years ago, I think it was when there was the huge mahogany tide that persisted early season for like a month and a half. We haven't really seen anything that persistent since, which is good news, right? Increased nutrients can... promote the growth of algae and cause these blooms. We haven't seen anything large and persistent. I will say just last week and two weeks before, in the very headwaters of Back Creek, we saw a substantial bloom of... bacterial, of a species that's not harmful, but is often, its growth is promoted because of increased nutrients. Had a lot of dry weather, everything sits there, rains before this happened, things wash in, headwaters of Bat Creek, nice tight area, not a lot of mixing, and it was the perfect environment for this. Self-oxygen. This is a lot of data, but this is also a score, it's not a concentration, so when we look at a scoring system, it did go down last year, Prior to last year, when we monitored, it seemed like always the wrong day. We really are seeing an improvement overall in dissolved oxygen levels. We are fortunate. Things like Spa Creek is relatively shallow. We don't have these very deep water where we tend to see really low, a lot of anoxia or hypoxia. It's nice to see a greater majority of the values above our key value of five milligrams per liter, which makes all the aquatic organisms. Last year was a relatively disappointing decrease in the score for that. This year we're hoping there's going to be a bounce back, right? Last year, I keep saying this, I know the rain really affected things. Potent nitrogen, this is a lot of data. I can't help myself from putting a lot of data in, but the takeaway is we had one very unusual spike at one site where we don't usually see that. But if we look at all of the sites, they ping-ponged around up and down quite a bit. In 2024, which was a more typical year for rain, there was kind of a trend lower. But in 2025, if I overlaid on here when there was rain, we see this sort of like rain and a spike, rain and a spike, rain and a spike. Again, that predictability after a rain event. So total nitrogen and total phosphorus grades all on here. Again, the nutrients, which can be problematic for causing algal blooms and really reflect this runoff that's coming. Overall, the scores did not, the scores did decrease, but at Bat Creek, Bat Creek we actually saw the scores that did not decrease very much. encouraging. Back Creek we think about always having this a lot of challenges, but Back Creek really does seem to be stabilizing over the past handful of years. And Spa Creek, the overall long-term trend has been an improvement in several of the characteristics that we're looking at. some major takeaways we have stressors these priority sites are questionable sometimes we really do is look for places where in any given season there are things that we would a trend in the wrong direction but the things everything is rising water temperature Again, absence of last year when it was affected by the cool, by the rain that came in. Low dissolved oxygen, nutrient pollution, which results in excess algae and high chlorophyll. And one of the things that I see is sediment and turbidity. I think that's one of the biggest problems. Everything else kind of contributes to that, but that sediment and turbidity ends up contributing to all of the other detrimental factors. Good news, and last year I tried to focus on this because last year the data did not show a lot of straight good news, but as I mentioned, it's a coherent system, it's not chaotic. There are things we can predict. We look at last year's data and immediately we're like, well, It was a drought overall, but it seemed to rain every day the day before we sampled. The biggest driver appears to be physical, not runaway nutrients. We're not seeing such extremes with nutrients that we're seeing repetitive, very long-term algae blooms. Several sites are stable or even improving a little bit over time, and highest priority sites are really a few of them. You know, it usually turns out to be the ones in headwaters areas or areas that we already know are challenged, where in several cases there are already restoration projects that are either in progress or being planned. That pretty much concludes the comments from last year and overall. And now I'd be happy to take any questions.

Thank you. That was a lot of information. I will open it up first to my colleagues from the committee. So do either of them have any questions? Okay, Alderman Huntley, this is your award, so go ahead.

Thanks. First of all, really do appreciate this presentation. It's kind of similar to Alderman Savage. Something I think about a fair amount of my day job, but you guys are the real experts, so appreciate getting to dive even deeper. My one big question for you is, I'm a big proponent of being able to go swim in the creek. And I just sort of follow the rule of if it's rained in the last day or two, don't do it. Do you think we're ever going to be able to get to a point where even if it rained the day before, it's possible for us to go swimming? Or is that not what we should be shooting for?

The guidance will always be don't swim for a day to two days after it rains. There are sites, there are limited sites when we, We do sample and monitor even the day after it rains. So we know that there are sites, if you look at out at the mouth of the creek, right at the Eastport Yacht Club, even midstream. So if you're on a boat and jump in the middle, there are several places where because of dilution, the dilution factor, even after a relatively significant rain, the values are well below the threshold. But without having that detailed information, the guidance is always going to be to stay out of the water. It's just without being able to get rid of all impervious surfaces, without being able to make sure everyone cleans up after their pets, without making sure everyone, that even, you know, wild animals, that that's not being cleaned up after. It's just, it's not really, it's not a reality to expect that every site would be swimmable after.

Well, I take that as good news because I didn't realize there were any sites that were snowmobile right after rain. So not sure I'm going to go test that anytime soon. I'll stick to my give it a day or two, but I appreciate your answer. Thank you for explaining that.

All right, thank you, Alderman. So yeah, I do have a number of questions on my end, and bear with me if you address some of these questions, because I was trying to, which I heard what you were saying, but also figured out what I wanted to ask you based on that. So first of all, before we get too far, can you just explain for the committee members as well as public who may be watching, explain some of the connection between the dead zones and the nutrient runoff?

So nutrient runs off into the water. It does a couple things.

One of the big things is that it's going to... And define the nutrients, I think, too, for back up even more. I want to make sure everybody's on the same page.

Okay. So the main nutrients that we're talking about with runoff are forms of nitrogen and forms of phosphorus. So there are multiple forms that can be tested for. On Spa Creek and Back Creek, we test for total nitrogen and total phosphorus instead of the different forms. Part of that came from TMDL guidance to kind of just get the full picture. When those make their way into the water, a big concern, one of the biggest concerns is that it promotes algae growth. Algae, which are photosynthetic, produce oxygen. Initially, people think, oh, it's a wonderful thing. You know, it produces oxygen. That's what we want to happen. But algae have a very quick turnover. And so they're going to, when they grow to a very high level, they end up creating almost a mat on the surface. And consequently, then light can't make its way through. So light's not going to reach them. for things like plant growth or underwater grasses to grow. And so consequently, you have that oxygen that's produced at the surface, not any that's being produced at the bottom. You have less that's actually be even able to dissolve in the water. So then that, as the algae start to die off, You're not getting that oxygen. But the other problem is as the algae die off and they kind of sink down, then organisms that are going to break down and utilize the algae, they actually suck in oxygen to do that through respiration. So you not only have the problem with the oxygen that's not being produced, but you have oxygen being sucked out of the water as they finish their sort of life and then die. Nutrients, the reason that we use the term nutrients is, you know, nitrogen and phosphorus are necessary for life, and the more you have, the more it's going to promote the growth. This is why people like to put it on their lawn as fertilizer. But the problem is that when you get too much, it results in an overgrowth of the long-term effects or produce a long-term effect. of oxygen. And then without the oxygen, then the aquatic organisms, as you get below five, you're going to start to stress some organisms. And when you get down below two, that's when you really are getting to a condition of being a dead zone.

Thank you. And when you mentioned nutrients, I just want to be clear, reiterate for the public again that those nitrogen and phosphorus come from lawn fertilizer. They come from both human waste, so sewage, come from dog, pet waste, as well as you're saying from just wild animal waste. Birds.

But, you know, geese are a big source of them in some places.

Have you identified in this watershed what the main primary source of nutrients are?

That's the only question and the answer is mostly no. So we have done in conjunction with some work with one of the offices in Appleton, we did the public works with source typing. Now for source typing, trying to do it with Reasonable cost. We reached out to a private company that said that they could do the testing for us and that was not successful and they kind of owned up to the fact that the testing was poor. We've since talked to some researchers at Smithsonian Environmental Research Center, done at CERC. They We could potentially do a collaboration with them to do better testing, but the challenge is gonna be that it is gonna be more costly. The idea is the first time we tried that, we got what we paid for, which was bad information, or I should say almost no information. And so to do it correctly, it would be more costly. In general, what we have seen is that In most cases, it's not a sewage system problem. When we have those problems, when there was the grease backup, the concentrations are enormous, and it becomes very localized, and you can tend to track it down. We have not really seen any indication that there's any specific site, that there's some... Having said that, the areas in the non-tidal, Cherry Grove and at Children's Museum, which is right at that border, those values are significantly higher. We use the same threshold, the cutoff, for every site for simplicity for the population, for communities. Those are not swimming sites. You're not swimming in those sites. even the threshold for what's considered acceptable, if someone's thinking about that, is significantly higher for sites where there's not full swimming going on. Now, often those two sites even exceed those thresholds, which I can't remember off the top of my head. They're in the hundreds, though. They're not 104. They're around 500 to 600. We have some guesstimates of why that might be happening. Up in Cherry Grove, it's a very narrow, small creek. You have a suburban area. Any animals tend to make their way down to that area. So it seems like a common place where animals are going to go and defecate. We don't have firm data on that yet because of the source typing that we're still trying to figure out.

We did talk on the State of the Creek report about doing some wildlife surveys up in the headwaters because the numbers are so bad and we haven't been able to identify. We do know there's a lot more wildlife up there since the restoration of the stream from people telling us. you know, of all the animals that they see. So we haven't figured that out yet. We're thinking of wildlife cameras or something to try to get some data from up there. And we're still, as Tammy said, we're still going to look into the DNA testing, is that what you call it? The DNA testing to try to identify those, you know, what that is. But I know we've, you know, we've worked with the city and with Public Works and everything to check for sewage and they haven't, that has not been the issue that we know of at least in the past.

Yeah, so a lot of questions coming out of that. it'd be fascinating to see the DNA testing, because I am wondering, I've done deer management studies before, and I am curious if as our deer population gets larger, if that has any kind of corresponding impact on water quality. I know you said geese, there may be some, are there areas in the watershed and the headwaters that have a problem with resident geese?

Back Creek have that. We see that in a lot of other areas. I don't think Spa Creek, we see a lot of that.

It's difficult to really determine a way forward as far as helping to reduce the nutrients without understanding the exact source. I think we know generally good practices, but it would certainly be helpful to be more targeted once we have that information.

The county has tried things like doing public outreach for dog pollution, for dog waste. It's hard to measure the results of those because of all the confounding things like weather. You need very high frequency testing for that or else weather gets in the way or weather, it's always weather. Weather can confound everything. For the, what I will say from the DNA testing that was done, they're, There was nothing really conclusive. The markers they used for human sources were for human DNA, not for DNA that would come from the bacteria in a human gut. And people touch water all the time. Like our biggest argument, you can't, just because people are in the water, that's like saying, you know, people, you shed DNA all the time. um there did not seem to be a strong signal for um for much of anything in the dna that we had done by the private company which was the big red flag we know it's coming from somewhere um and you can't say nothing matches so it could have been a probe problem the sequences they were looking for but um yeah it is not that was very

One thing I would like to add, if I could, for good news, we think. So we are in the midst of a stream restoration design in upland Truxton Cove. And are doing, first we're doing water monitoring there. Tammy and her group is doing that. But we also had to do a benthic survey of the stream. which we'd never done for any of the other streams before the restoration. And the grade was poor to very poor, which is good for funding because, you know, hopefully they'll, you know, it's in terrible condition. But the good news is, I'm assuming the headwaters was probably the same and probably Hawkins Cove, and the headwaters and Hawkins Cove I mean, we get so many reports from people for seeing all kinds of fish and tadpoles and lots of creatures, not just deer and the normal, but lots of marine life in those streams. We know that the nutrients are not so bad that these are not surviving. And then we do fish surveys in the creek itself too. So we know that there are creatures in there that are surviving and that are getting up to the headwaters and getting up to the Hawkins Cove stream. And so... you know we think that that that's a positive even if the numbers like don't show after the restoration they're not showing that the creek getting you know markedly healthier as far as those numbers you know anecdotally at least we we think it's better

And just to reiterate, you're testing for DO, dissolved oxygen, water temperature, bacteria, nutrients. Am I missing anything else?

Chlorophyll, salinity. specific conductance, which is related to salinity. We also, in the past several years, have done, we now do turbidity separate from total suspended solids and CDOM, this color dissolved organic matter, to compare to some other programs that are going on doing this analysis on some other rivers. Again, CDOM CDAM, the color dissolved organic matter, the SECI, the clarity from SECI, the TSS, the turbidity are all related to stuff in the water. They can just potentially come from some different sources. So to be consistent, we kind of do all of them because some of them are just a wavelength using a spectrophotometer. So it's very easy. So we add them in. One thing that I didn't put in the 2025 report, and I wish I would not put it in to send to you, is the year before I had done very busy slides, which is why I didn't do them for 2025. of just a scattered some of the scattered data for um whole seasons for some of the sites and for example hawkins cove which has had some restoration that for several parameters there really is an overall improving trend when you take out sort of the background scatter the um again i would have to pull that i can send you that powerpoint um and the uh it in several cases it is even significant now right these are fluid dynamic systems, so it's not like doing it in a lab where you see this extremely low p-value, but there are some things that really are showing consistent and even some significant improvements over time.

Have you seen any improvements related to implementation of the no discharge zone? Which for again, those who may not be aware, the no discharge zone is where we don't permit boats to discharge their untreated waste.

I don't recall what year was it.

It was maybe three years ago now. I don't know if staff remembers or Jackie, do you remember?

Four years ago.

Four years ago.

Okay. Then there was another system for larger boats that went into place about, I want to say two years ago.

interesting to see because we may need to do more put more signage or public outreach in that effort um but again without knowing the source of the nutrients and bacteria it's but probably a good idea regardless to do some more public education on that

So I could do an analysis with the, I don't remember, all of the data before, all the data after this went into effect, and then even kind of peel out the rain data. Because for that, the cleanest way to probably look at that would be to just peel out, take away all of the rain-affected data and look at sampling days that weren't affected by rain and see if there's any trend before and after that went into effect.

Yeah, it'd be interesting to, if we could actually quantify the effectiveness of our policies would be interesting for a number of perspectives. So with all this, I guess I'll ask you another basic question for you. So the connection with, could you explain more about the connection between the bacteria? I think most people understand the negative impact of bacteria on human health, but can you explain the connection between that and some of the metrics that you're testing for?

So bacteria is somewhat different than a number of the other metrics. So for most report cards, bacteria are not even included in most report cards. There's a push to try to include that. I'm not sure if they've yet decided if they're going to start putting it in the Bay Report because communities, individuals can readily identify with what that means. We see there are correlations that we can see, causative, right? Not necessarily there, but correlations with spikes of nutrients with spikes of bacteria. But again, that's all typically because of the rain, right? The bacteria really are being brought in with the runoff. The one thing that I try to also would like to get a handle on, which takes some post-storm sampling that we thought about is, Before we started seeing improvements, there were some reports saying things that bacteria, they don't flourish in this water. They survive. They survive for up to two days. You see this death over the two days. But there were some reports saying that if it's a really highly increase in nutrification that they might have enough nutrients to even be multiplying and maintaining for a while. We have not really seen that. So I don't think we're anywhere near that extreme place where they consider its media and food to be in the creek. So that is good news. But it is a pretty straight line between those. Other things, one of the reasons that we're measuring CDOM, this color dissolved organic matter, and that's it, that's how I'm gonna define it, I promise, is that there are indications in some of the work that we've been able to do supporting CIRC, Smithsonian Environmental Research Center, with this Chesapeake Water Watch program. That's a lot of letters. We've supported a lot of the work they're doing, and they're finding a really, a very strong correlation between high CDOM and high bacteria. The reason that could be important is CDOM, we take a sample and can measure it instantaneously. Bacteria, we can tell you tomorrow what it is today. So if enough data can be accumulated that can give a strong enough relationship between those two, we might be able to say on the given day, take a sample, and that day say CDOM is really high, we suggest you stay out of the water. Right now, There's not a strong enough connection to say that confidently, but that's where that work is going. Along with that, bacteria are not, enterococcus that we test for are obviously not the only bacteria in water because they're not typically, that's not a reservoir for those. Reservoir is the gut of mammals and some birds, et cetera. That's why we test for it as an indicator of other things that will be in the water that could potentially be more harmful, more pathogenic. But it doesn't hurt to also stay aware of other bacteria. The bacteria that are typically in the water at varying concentrations, like the vibrio species, some of the mycobacterium species, those are there anyways. And there is not good correlation data about relating a specific concentration to health risk. um but those are things to definitely be aware of that's why we always tell people you know don't just look at the number it's not just yes no red green you have to know your own health status you have to know if you have open cuts and also noaa has a nice predictive model for times of the year when some of those pathogenic but normal residents of brackish and saltwater are present

And so correct me if I misstate anything, but one of the takeaways I think would be, if I heard you correctly, that the bacteria counts are not really an issue in the deeper areas of the creek, as well as you haven't found an issue for the most part at the beach areas. Is that correct? So I think you said you find most of the elevated bacteria in the headwater, shallower areas? Truxton.

Beach. And the street and parks as well. We're midstream at Truxton.

Yeah, so at Truxton, yeah, we're midstream there. But as you move, so to be clear about this, when there is a lot of rain, every site is problematic.

Right.

early samples this season and a number of times last season when we were getting those one inch rain events all you did was see red we use red when it's over the threshold you see red everywhere um uh for no rain or a smaller amount of rain even up to sometimes a half inch then we do see like at the um the mouth of the creeks at spot creek and bat creek that there aren't problems and midstream like um we do midstream where But we have old capital yeah, I say YC is there but if you move closer and closer to the headwaters even midstream, it's more Unpredictable rain or no rain like midstream at Truxton that one is mid That one can still be problematic it's still toward the headwaters and relatively shallow and something problematic but you said

that the bacteria levels do decline rapidly after a day or two?

Yes, if they've gone up because of rain, they will decline rapidly. But some sites, even without rain, can be high. But the rain from runoff, that is going to die off in a couple days.

So if it's not elevated because of rain, why do you think the bacteria levels are elevated?

Diesel... I think there's still runoff issues, right? When you get into the headwater, well, when you get to the headwaters, so even stream flow, maybe I should talk about the flow that's coming in from the headwaters. I guess maybe that's not officially, it's not officially runoff. But if you have a really high, if you have a lot of animal activity up in the non-tidal creeks, you know, like where Cherry Grove is, or even upstream from Truxton, where we now have the, does that have its own name up there? Truxton Cove. Upstream Truxton Cove, that you don't need a lot of flow, but if you have a lot of contamination from animals, dogs, then that's still going to make its way into the main stem, but it's going to be the biggest effect closest to those headwaters.

Could that be? Irrigation of lawns who after application of. Fertilizer for nutrients.

Definitely right. And, um, yes, for nutrients. Definitely.

But is there a connection between the nutrients and the bacteria?

That's going to be much more after a rain event, right? And so if. Trying to get what you're asking. So when we see the main time that we see the spikes of nutrients and bacteria everywhere is after rain, right? The sites that are high regardless of rain, those are more sporadic. and this is one of the reasons we're trying to also figure out the exact source of this right as you go to the headwaters and you have these creeks coming in yeah that little trickle right that that comes in if you have animal activity that's how you're getting the bacteria if you have um storm if you have outfalls i should make the outfalls and people are irrigating watering washing their cars anything that's going into those um storm drains, that is also going to come through the outfalls. We've had conversations about tracking where all of the outfalls are. We've looked at some of the maps. We don't have a map of where every single outfall is on the creek.

Well, I guess I'm just getting at trying to narrow down some of the source of the bacteria between rain events. So, you know, there could be IDDD, illicit discharge detection elimination. It could be illicit connections that could be contributing during certain events. Could be issues with our sewage system. But I presume that would be more of a heightened issue. level of bacteria um so but again i'm asking these questions because we did have some public concern regarding our our efforts to increase the amount of public water access points on the creek uh and there so again there was concern about that and so i want to be able to provide a more clear answer to the public It seems to me that there isn't too much to be concerned about between storm events. I'm assuming that the heightened bacteria levels are going to be in those instances in the shallower headwater areas, right? Because at that point there's no flushing, there's no source other than direct wildlife as far as birds outside of that. But is that generally correct?

Yes, I think so. Again, the thresholds that are set are really set for beaches that are associated with bathing beaches, which usually we think about as more open water, a lot more mixing. So the fact that that threshold is a convenient threshold for people that want to get into the water and a number of sites that they fall under that threshold is good news. I know I come with data, and I always talk about some of the things that need improvement, but there's the concentrations of bacteria on the creek in many cases are good, are relatively good, even when they exceed the 104 threshold. It is a continuum. 105 is considered right over the threshold, right? But that is nowhere near as risky as 10,500. So that's where we're always talking to people about being aware of what the different value.

think if you're talking about like children's museum which is which the city has identified as one of the public water access sites i'm sure that people would be concerned about that but i think that that's being thought of as only a like a kayak or you know something because it's so shallow up there anyway i mean i can't imagine anybody would go in the water there although i don't know they might but um

you know that would certainly be more problematic because it's right there at the title interface where we get really high counts most times that the children at the bridge there the pedestrian bridge regardless of rain event yeah yeah and it is it's tight there it's narrow and then you get an area that's somewhat marshy even right out from there and those areas attract wildlife and and things so those are often problematic for bacterial cancer i thought it was

so residential you know you have so much um you have all the truckston heights neighborhoods all up in there that are that's behind the children's museum so they're all coming in at that same place into the headwaters and all of everything along west street that borders the the creek there so it's highly residential areas there too um yeah i guess the city might want to keep in mind just different types of signage at I've talked about that with Betsy and other people in the city about signage in English and Spanish, which they do have. There is a sign at the Cherry Grove Bridge, and I think there's one at the Children's Museum, the pedestrian bridge at Bates, because those are, Bates one especially, is very well used by students and kids. So I think signage is a really important piece of all this, for people to stay out of the water.

But to be clear, I think somebody walking their kayak in, as long as they don't have any cuts, should be fine.

It's a risk factor, right? It's a risk factor. So in general, yeah, especially for the entire caucus, right? If you're walking your kayak in and, you know, the guidance we always give is whatever the value is after you've been swimming or have a lot of contact with the water.

so again one of the reasons why i'm asking is because we had this we had a great swimming event first year for um swim across spot creek but we've gotten a lot of responses from people about just very surprised like oh my gosh how could you swim in in our creek and i think there's a public perception that things are a lot worse than they actually are um but i think if we can get the message out there they just don't swim you know a day or two after it rains and um you know perhaps longer in some of the shallower areas their chances of any kind of negative impact go down drastically because i think we all want to see more people enjoying and using the waterways but we have a lot of work to do i think as far as the public messaging so just a couple other questions i'm going to wrap up here is there a particular level of storm event that you see that where it doesn't have any kind of, like is it over a certain frequency duration of velocity, of rain event, like over half an inch, over an inch an hour or something like that, where you see a large spike, what kind of storm events don't lead to any kind of significant spike in bacteria? Do you have any kind of data?

So the guidance that's out there is actually pretty good, the half-inch rain guidance. We tend to, the closer it is to half an inch within 24 hours, they say to limit access or to limit contact 48 hours after half an inch or more, but we see the most dramatic effects on the water quality if the rain has been within 24 hours. And that's when we'll see increases that are reasonable increases, right? They'll go up to, you know, maybe some of them close to 1,000. When we get a full-on storm, like an inch of rain, that is also this very high rate that we get in a very small amount of time, like an inch in an hour, that type of thing. That's when we see the values that shock everyone that are like in the thousands at every site. And that is just such a washout. And then the timing is very significant. one thing that we're looking at this season is really tracking from a lot of weather stations when there is rain not only how much rain was total but the exact time the time it started the time it ended and what the peak rate was because that's when we're seeing that our anecdotal evidence is the harder rains within maybe like 10 hours see this huge flush where we see these really

And have you seen any kind of change in some of these metrics in some of your testing sites that may be more forested, better, healthier forested buffer, or the same end in outfalls that may have the step pool stormwater conveyance or some other restored outfall?

so hawkins cove that was the first place that we we started the testing before the construction at the hawkins cove stream restoration we had not start we started after the whole headwaters so we don't have any before numbers there but we saw like right after you know the year after the numbers yeah we saw an incredible we saw an incredible difference yeah now some of that

back cut a little bit, but there's going to be more restoration there also. I would say there are things that are more surprising to me. Back Creek, which has one of the highest concentrations of marinas, et cetera. We've seen improvements, significant improvements over, I should say gradual improvement and stabilization even on Back Creek that's been encouraging and there's not as much forested area, right? There's a lot of marinas. Back Creek, really the biggest thing is when you have the flushing and moving toward the mouth. I don't, there's nothing, I think it's where it's developed enough that there isn't any one area where there's a really large area that's forested enough. From other places that, other locations on that creek.

With the stream, with the... upcoming stream restoration in Truxton. We have started testing on the pedestrian bridge there too at Truxton Cove, you know, that goes over to Truxton Heights. So hopefully that will, you know, that will give us before and after numbers too. So then we'll, you know, maybe have, you know, some kind of parameters at least. At least that's probably the most forested part of the creek would be that area. The headwater was not really forested too much in the headwaters, but more of a marshy, but that should give us some, hopefully give us some answers.

Yeah, because it sounds like, yeah, so again, just trying to get some of that data to help support our policy. We are spending a lot of money in the restoration world um and so yeah and reforestation so the more we can support that with the data the better off we'll be uh last question and then not cutting down of trees so we don't have to reforest exactly yeah i did have legislation coming up on that um and then so last question would be for now would be anything else that the city can do to help

Signage would be great. and we've talked about that before, and I think the county actually has some good signs. I've shared them with Betsy, but I sort of lost track of where we are with that, of what they use on their sites, and I think that that would be a big help, only because, you know, in the visible spaces, the visible places where, because we, I live near Spot Creek close, and there are people down there crabbing and fishing and, swimming whatever we put up even if we put up signs they're going to be doing that but at least you know we have some kind of educational um i think signage would be really important so all right uh so i'm turning the mic the committee first um any other questions from the committee members all right i turn to staff deputy city manager do you have any

Good afternoon, Jackie Gile, Deputy City Manager. So when you say, I was wondering what you meant by signs. So you're talking about signs that say no swimming and no fishing, right? I thought you also were referring to signs that say like drains to Spa Creek, things like that.

Yeah, no, I mean mostly it's the no fishing and no swimming.

Because I know you at one point were active with stenciling drains.

We were looking into that.

Okay.

Yeah, we never really.

Okay. Okay. So is there a grade that was applied to Spa Creek as part of this?

No, we don't do a letter grade. Okay. Because it's just no two creeks, rivers, bays are consistent. Right. Yeah. I was going to make that point, but I was curious.

And then if I can read my own writing. Okay, so if people are subsistence fishing, which you see them do, you see them doing the Anacostia too, do you make any efforts to dissuade people from doing that? I'm often asked, are waterways fishable? And I say no, but I don't have the data. I mean, you guys have the data.

I have never. was ever in eastport the other night waiting for the water taxi and there was a guy crabbing at the bottom of this street you know right it yeah and by the yacht yards and stuff i mean you know i understand that and then there's people that fish off of the amos garrett dock all the time but i have not all right um well because fishable and swarble we

Make sure you speak into the mic.

Sorry, it's a different set of parameters.

Right, but I know, again, Anacostia Riverkeeper and the Lower Potomac Riverkeeper, they did make an effort to, an education effort around subsistence fishing and putting it in different languages, of course. That's something the city's never done. Something we might want to do is more education about what you should do. Okay, let me see what else I had. Oh, I was wondering, do you know how Spa Creek compares to like Back Creek, College Creek, Williams Creek? In water quality terms?

We know Spa Creek and Back Creek because we do both of those. You do both? Yeah, we have 10 years of data on Spa Creek and about four years on Back Creek. Back Creek, when we first started testing, the quality seemed significantly, I don't want to say lower, it seemed more challenged. Why don't you sound positive? I always tend to look at the things that need to be done. Well, Back Creek has been in many ways stable and has shown some improvements at the Headwaters area. So Spock Creek and Back Creek are comparable. For College Creek, we don't do... For bacteria, there aren't any sites. I don't even think... Because SRA, Severn River Association, does monitoring. They don't do any bacterial testing. The bacterial testing done on the Severn are sites that we go to, and there's nothing there. And I do not know for physical parameters, dissolved oxygen... clarity, what you can do with a YSI. I don't know if they have sites that go into College Creek and Williams Creek. I don't know for sure. They could do Williams, I think.

Okay, I'll double check with them. So they no longer do Back Creek SRA?

I don't know if they might. They're doing the mouth maybe. Yeah, they might do one site, but they don't go all the way in because we have that covered.

Okay. All right. Maybe the mouth. All right. So, you know, you're saying that Spa Creek has improved and Back Creek is stabilized, if not improved in some places. So am I clear that, do you think that's because of stream restoration projects and afforestation or preservation of forest? And what do you attribute it to?

But yeah, since we don't have, I mean, 10 years is not very long, I guess, for data. And so, you know, that's the only thing that we have is the numbers that we have in the last 10 years. We could see the results from Hawkins Cove. Right. Because of the before and after. Right. So we, I think one of the things Tammy always reiterates is it's not getting worse. I mean, except for the rain events. So it's stabilizing or getting better in some ways.

Despite the fact that we have more development in the area. Yeah, and there's always development. Right. So the reason I ask, obviously, we put a lot of money into stream restoration projects and other types of stormwater control projects, both the city and the money we give to the trust. So you want to justify that. Yes. So that is the perfect way to put it.

Yes. should actually be on one of the slides, is looking at the optimistic side of it, that when we think about, you know, why aren't there even bigger, why isn't it getting better, faster, or bigger improvements? But in reality, the other side of it is, it's surprising that it's not getting worse with development.

With stressors from development.

That's right. So the wins are the fact that it's not getting a lot worse over time because of development.

and perhaps what we need to do is since you you know all the groups that work on restoration in the city's work that we do on stormwater controls and things like that we need to probably hit the public education hard about what not to do on your lawn and in your driveway and things like that so that especially at the headwater level we don't have as many nutrients and bacteria etc we have a lot of those brochures we can share okay thank you amy but

the city's uh been funding are all these projects up in the headwaters of upland of truxton cove um nothing's in the ground yet but two projects are coming up because they were funded by the whole watershed act and that's a submerged gravel wetland and um a BMP, a rain garden, and North Green, which is a neighborhood off of Hilltop, right across from Pitt Moyer. So all those design and stuff has been funded by the city and by NIFWF, but mostly by the city. And now with the whole Watershed Act, they will probably go in the ground in the next year. So since we're doing the testing... Tammy's doing testing along with the whole watershed act in a couple places along that stream and all these this the submerged gravel wetland is right on the stream right along the stream so hopefully we'll see some improvement you know at least we'll see some numbers we'll have some before numbers and after numbers right and down going down into the cove where we're testing now on that pedestrian bridge you know that

So I would, this sounds like a great topic. If we get the Creek Cabinet reconvened, I think it'd be good to share some of this data and your findings so we can focus as a collective group of watershed organizations to talk about how we can all support each other on the education component. And again, identify these policies that we think maybe seems like might be working. But just a quick comment on the signage. I would really encourage the city to be careful with the signs. I don't wanna deter people from fishing or swimming or using the creek. And if they see something that just says no fishing, no swimming, they're gonna be just deterred. But I think we would have to be clear that it's only after, just be careful after storm events. Don't eat so many fish out of the creeks, whatever. Yeah, I just want to make sure we...

I know they might be safer than what you get from the farm aquaculture. There's all sorts of nasty stuff about aquaculture.

But it's certainly a takeaway of mine is that I think people are safer in our waterways than they realize. I mean, I'm not familiar with any kind of... People use the creek.

That's our whole goal is for more access and more people in the creek and on the creek. that I'm talking about would say, should say within, I guess, 48 hours of a rain event, don't swim. And then fishing, I guess, you know, I think we were just talking about the swimming part. But, yeah, the fishing, I don't, I'm not quite sure. It's the same.

It's the same reason why I want to get the sign as changed at Troxton Park Beach, which, because it talks about potential water shocks because of the pier, not because of...

The Director of Parks and Recreation called me immediately on Monday, very worried about the fact that you were swimming. Really?

All right, so before we wrap this up, I want to open it up to the rest of the staff in the audience.

Any staff have any... Alderman Huntley.

Alderman Huntley, go ahead.

Thanks. I just wanted to point out, as we're talking about signage, that my understanding is Mr. Lashinsky has been working on this for a little while, and I think he was hoping to have these new signs put up by the end of the fiscal year. I might be a little ambitious, but that was what I heard from him last. And they would be welcoming and say, you know, like, for instance, take Amos Garrett Park. It would have a sign and say, You know, these are the park hours. We welcome you to use it. Maybe here's history about who Amos Garrett is. And it would also include the recommendations around when you can swim in the creek. So just I want to make sure we're not spending too much time talking about what we should do if Eric's already doing it. That's all.

That's true, yeah, that's part of the public water access plan is putting the signs up and especially as part of what Eric's doing is making sure that the ones that are parks are marked as parks. So we have a bunch of street end parks that don't have signs that people are not aware that they can dingy up there or fish off there or jump off a platform and communities often use them as their own private parks when in fact they're public.

so that's part of what he's doing is making sure everything is marked that's public i forgot about eric but he was yeah i was communicating with him too harry about those signs any questions from staff or comments no all right i did think of when you asked if there's things that we need when we're talking about the source typing if there's one thing that the city could potentially invest in it would be There's an initiative now to do some work to look at some source typing. I've been in contact with the group that's doing that. So I'd be happy to have a conversation, bring the groups together, and look at what that pricing looks like to do some of that. But if there really is the desire to do some of the source typing, that is the group that would be able to do it and do it well.

that'd be great to know because we could work that into the watershed fund if we need to but also reach out to some of our partners who might be interested in making a donation to support that effort um all right thank you uh thank you so much for taking the time it's been very helpful i spent more time on this than i expected but it's very interesting work you had a lot to to get into um so again thanks for taking time and maybe we'll make this regular every year or two

get an update from you thank you can i do one thing real quick before tammy knows about this because i've been trying we've been trying to give it to her and it was only because i was going to see her today but we have a um a crab platter to give to uh tammy from the conservancy with a plaque on it which is i didn't even put it attach it yet but it says dr tammy demansky for a decade of dedicated comprehensive data collection your work has been vital to safeguarding the health of spa creek for all its residents both the community who enjoy it and the marine life that relies on it so i wanted to thank tammy very much for all this work that she's done

Your willingness to donate your time to help support the city is just incredible. Well, donate is two strong words, Packer Conservancy, Dunkirk Foundation, Sometimes the City, oh my gosh, East Port Yacht Club, Live Water, East Port of Rocking. There have been a number of entities and people that have supported this work.

Some private citizens have paid for some of the testing sites, so...

So Amy and Tammy, I just verified that I was correct. It's been four years. So the no discharge zone went into effect July of 2022. Okay. All right.

Thank you. And Public Works, welcome to stay, but we're going to move on to the Urban Forester update, ID 136-26. I don't want to... Thank Mr. Adams for joining us today. I know it was relatively short notice, but for my colleagues' background information, we have some state legislation that passed I guess it was maybe a year, two years ago that actually we just realized we need to fully implement. And so I thought it'd be helpful to get some background on that from our urban forester, because you'll be seeing this legislation probably at our next meeting, because we have until the end of July to... get it adopted. So, Mr. Adams.

Right. Introduce yourself and then go ahead. Sorry. Yep. I'm City Forester, Planning and Zoning, Bryan Adams. So yeah, the state has over the last couple of years been implementing different pieces of this legislation, but we are up against a hard It's supposed to take effect July 1st. And if the local jurisdiction doesn't have a new ordinance passed, we'll just have to revert to the state legislation in the gap. But just going back. The changes are not substantive. They're not big changes. They're pretty minor tweaks. Some of the things we were sort of already doing with the legislation passed in the city, I guess that's been eight years ago. But just to give a brief background, this is a law that was passed in 1991 at the state level, and it was sort of a first of its kind in the nation. And it was designed to minimize forest loss during land development and it required developers to sort of evaluate the site and put the health of the forest and the property early in the planning process. So it applies to, parcels of 40,000 square feet or more, commercial residential. And the main sort of features of the law were the creation of the forest and delineation, which is sort of a professional evaluation of the site, the resources on the site, the environmentally sensitive areas, And then you sort of prioritize, you know, which are your better stands of trees, where your sensitive areas, your wetlands, and design your site accordingly to sort of preserve as much of that as you can. And there's, you know, they want you to not only preserve and if you do have to remove some of it, there's mitigation requirements. So that's been many years, and they saw that over time we were still losing forests. And I think the last, before this update, in 2013 there was an amendment That their goal was going to be no net loss and there was just some small changes in that that were aimed to sort of improve the conservation of the more contiguous forest. And so this this 2023, there was 2 bills and. They did find that they were continuing to lose forests over time. Um. And so these two bills, there's House Bill 1511 and Senate Bill 526. And I think 2023 is when they were passed. And they were the result of a lot of different organizations and nonprofits in the state really pushing for stricter legislation to slow down the loss of forest. And so, let's see. The major policy change from these two bills is that rather than looking at no net loss, they wanted to look at a gain or see a gain in forest. And so the goal is to increase the forested land and tree canopy rather than just break even. and they wanted to give the local jurisdictions some more flexibility to try to meet those goals. So House Bill 1511, for the most part, was about timelines for implementation, and this has been a sort of a slow rollout. They've had some changes that took effect over the last couple years, but again, all of this goes into effect July 1st. So just a quick update on some of the major changes mostly coming out of the Senate bill. So the major change in policy was moving from no net loss to increasing forest as measured every four years. The state's going to be conducting measurements and ensuring that we are gaining tree canopy. They've added a number of definitions. Degraded forest, that's forest that's lost its natural structure and function and ability to regenerate. They've defined forest land. Planted green infrastructure is new and a new afforestation or mitigation technique. They've defined tree canopy and qualified conservation, which is conserving all or a part of an existing forest in long-term protection. and enhancing it in some way, whether that's through invasive removal, soil remediation, planting. And then stream buffers were already included, but they've defined those further as 50 feet for intermittent streams and 100 for perennial. Some of the bigger changes were the exemptions they've added. And one of those is that solar facilities are now exempt from afforestation. Obviously, we can't have an effective solar facility with a bunch of trees on the property. They've included tree farms and orchards and managed forests, which the city really has none. Federal government facilities to employ at least 2,500 people. That's an interesting one. Transit-oriented development, they've reduced the mitigation rates from one to one to a quarter acre reforestation for every acre removed. And then multifamily housing of 25 units or more, and again, that's reduced mitigation to a quarter acre per one acre removed. Changes they made, that the city was actually, our ordinance already had this provision, which was to move to a one-to-one mitigation ratio. We passed that with our last update and we've been operating that way for some years now, but the state has finally come around to that. And so, The mitigation rate will be one to one, and they've also removed the forest conservation threshold, which I won't get into, but essentially, it's making all mitigation one to one. You remove a tree, an acre, you replant an acre. Another big change that I'm happy to see is that urban forests or urban areas have been included as a priority retention and protection area. You know, these are... forests that are providing habitat, water quality, mitigating flooding, mitigating the urban heat island impact. And so the DNR has developed a map, mapping our urban forests, what they're determining as urban forests, and that is now going to be a priority for retention. which will impact development in the city quite a bit because I believe most of what we have is going to be considered urban forest. So that'll be a priority. One other change, so in an effort to increase water quality on a site with riparian buffers, they must be afforested or reforested completely. There's some new notification requirements that we have to notify landowners, adjacent landowners, before approval of an FCP. And departments are now required to provide written justification for any clearing of priority retention areas. And then finally, they've added some alternatives for jurisdictions for the reforestation and afforestation. And so those include restoration onsite or offsite of degraded forests. So again, that could be soil enhancement, invasive species management, tree planting, and then planted green infrastructure or environmental site design practices is an alternative. I'm not clear exactly how that will work, and the DNR is still sort of figuring that one out, but I do think it's a good alternative to provide to jurisdictions, especially in an urban area. sometimes struggle with meeting the the one-to-one reforestation rates but caveat to that is that we can have these alternative um alternative the restoration goals but they must increase or maintain our canopy over a four-year period so every four years the dnr will evaluate whether we've lost gained remain the same and if we're losing canopy they may restrict us and take away some of those alternatives. Street trees, that's been an approved alternative. It's one that we rely on quite a bit in an urban area. So this goal, this legislation really is, It's not a big change for us. We've got our tree canopy goal. We're working to increase it. And we were already meeting the one-to-one mitigation for our forest conservation projects. So really this makes some fairly small changes and provides some new exemptions.

Thank you, Mr. Adams. Any questions from the committee? Any at the moment? So I'll go ahead and ask a few. So just for, again, for my colleagues and the public sake, When we're talking about reforestation and afforestation, reforestation is when you cut down a forest and have to replace it. Afforestation would apply to sites that, for example, would be all asphalt or all developed currently, and they have to add forest, so new forest. Per the Forest Conservation Act, they have to add, well, per the base forest conservation is 15%. We increased that to 20%. about a decade ago. And so that has some importance later on, as you'll see. But I do think it's important to say that this is a change from the no net loss And that is something really I think the city helped to get rolling here. And this was even starting with the current mayor when he was on the city council and got our first Forest Conservation Act passed. And then when we made a true no net loss a year or two later, we really did get that rolling. But now it's interesting that the state's going even further. But what's the name of their new philosophy?

their goal, it just says increasing as measured every four years, the acreage of forest land or tree canopy in the state.

I think Alderman Savage, as I remember, the point was to go from no net loss to net gain.

Yeah, so net gain. Yeah, that's much better. So there is a bit of a loophole though, oversight, I think on the state's end I'll get into, but i do want to just say for my colleagues that there is an issue with there's going to be a push to get this passed quickly we've been working with mr adams and office of law on how exactly to proceed but the issue with having to revert to the state legislation is we do have a number of provisions and again dating back to what the current area got implemented even 10 years ago, I think that would create a bit of uncertainty with some of the developers that may submit an application because if we adhere to the exact process as far as timing, we're not gonna be able to get anything passed until probably October. So that means any applications submitted between them would default to the state, again, which is not as strict as our local regs. So personally, I'd like to try to avoid that. The proposal that we've been talking about with staff is, it's not quite a motion to suspend the rules it's more of a motion to modify the rules in that we'd be compressing the schedule all the steps would still be there but it would be compressed uh because technically we would have to wait for the planning commission to get their review to us and we can't even proceed with our work until we get their comments back but um again since this is a state requirement we're proposing to compress everything and so we should be able to get the planning commission comments before our next committee meeting so this will come to the committee the legislation next month and then we'll give our recommendation to the council and so we will hopefully be voting on this second meeting in July, and that'll help meet this July 31st timeline. And the mayor's team has been included in this conversation. I know that the deputy chief of staff seems on board with this idea. So just again, just being completely up front with the committee, that's kind of where we're going. If there are any concerns from the committee, please do speak up. but that's kind of what we're landing on. So the way the intent with this is to have it again, just nothing substantively new in this, just have it be restricted entirely to meeting the state requirements. But as a part of that, again, to be upfront, this is just hot off the press. So one of the loopholes, I don't know if that's the right language, but one of the oversights, I guess, from the state is that Mr. Adams referred to, they have two exemptions that will be applying. One is the transit-oriented development extension, which 100% support. We actually don't have any TOD areas designated per the state definition yet, but hopefully we will. That definition can apply to both bus or rail corridors. That's something we have to deal with, I think, in the future. We can update our code if we need to. But the other part of it is the exemption to multifamily projects that have over 20 units. And the way it's worded is, as Mr. Adams said, is it basically reduces their reforestation requirement. But the thing is, if they don't have to do any reforestation, then they're completely exempt from this act and so the consequence of that is if we have along an urban corridor for example a car dealership or something a developed lot they would be able to read or if so if they wanted to redevelop that and put up affordable housing and multi-family housing then they would per this exemption would not have to comply with any of the forest conservation act which means we would lose an opportunity there'd be no requirement on them to add street trees to put in look at putting in like a micro pocket forest or what are some of the other mitigation ideas that would lose out on But anyway, those kind of things would just not, they wouldn't have to do any of that. And so I don't think that's what the state intended because that would lead to a net loss of forest. I think it was a bit of an oversight, but what I am considering proposing is parallel legislation that would add a requirement in Title 17, which we do, that currently has forest law that triggers with any kind of permit, but we could word that to say for units over 20, multifamily units over 20 units in size, we'd still need to comply with Chapter 17, which we could put some requirements there where we would at least have they would at least have to provide for street trees, look at the pocket parks, pocket forests idea, or perhaps maintaining an existing onsite forest, but just to kind of make sure there's still some. I don't think that's gonna add a significant cost to development because street trees are not really that expensive, but just to be upfront, that's kind of what I'm looking at. So with that, are there any other questions from the committee? Okay, any questions from staff?

Yes.

Deputy City Manager.

Thank you. First of all, there's really good summary, very good summary of what the main points were, Mr. Adams. But so when the state looks at four years and thinks and says we're still losing forest in the state and it might all be losing in Howard County, but we're fine. Is there any indication on how they're going to impose stricter regulations or anything like that? How are they going to deal with some people are doing a good job and some people are doing a lousy job?

They are not clear on how they're going to about, what they've said is that they will be relying on our annual reports. I file an annual report with them every year with any projects that were approved, what the mitigation was, that sort of thing. So I think they're gonna use those, but yeah, I would think that they do some sort of remote sensing analysis and maybe break that up by the jurisdiction, but they haven't been clear about how exactly they're gonna do that.

just that they would be evaluating it every four years and i would think that you would see this legislation as providing you some more support for your efforts if we can't go backwards and the developers have to gain rather than just break even i would think that this is more support for you do you see it that way

Yeah, I do, yeah. And yeah, I think some of these definitely meet our goals, including urban forest as a priority retention area. I think that makes a huge difference for us. Making the one-to-one, like I said, we already had that, and then giving us some leeway and other alternative methods of meeting the mitigation.

Great, all right, well, thank you, Mr. Adams, for taking the time to...

short notice to come talk to us or hopefully it wasn't too in the weeds also brian do you think that that this is legislation is being much of a lift if you if we're pretty consistent with it no i don't see it being a huge change i mean it might add some time to review but not not significant no

Thank you. All right, moving on to our last item, we have ID 3-26, which is resilience and sustainability update from our deputy city managers. Ms. Guild.

I emailed the resilience updates for June to you as well as printed them out for you. And I wanted to just highlight some of the things that are new. The staff, the environmental program managers have been doing a really good job with focusing on transit and building energy efficiency, but also on solar and really focusing on how in this with our tight budget in the city and less federal support with grants, are we going to be able to move the needle forward with reduced energy costs and more energy efficient practices and energy efficiency within the city? And so we've been looking at, you know, other kinds of grants, technical support grants, the Resilience Authority helping us tagging on to some of Anne Arundel County's existing contracts, but they've been doing a great job at getting us grants and finding programs that already exist with some of BG&E's partners and other groups that are, for example, with community solar and finding things that aren't costing us any money but will reduce emissions and at the same time reduce operating costs. so um which i know the city always likes so um one of those is that um we have partnered it's on the page one with the solar inventory and strategy coordination with anne arundel county and the resilience authority um the the individual county already had a contract with council fire through the resilience authority to evaluate different um Facilities county facilities to see if they were appropriate for solar and we tagged on to that work that's already being done with council fire to look at the city properties that could be good projects to do technical evaluations for rooftop solar installations. So that's what we're doing with the county and resilience authority. And then right underneath of that we have a new. grant we received for the Maryland Energy Administration for an audit of the city street lights. And that was something that was, we did a presentation today to a group about the city's own project we did last year with Tenco Lighting. The council provided $10,000 to do an initial evaluation of our lighting and whether the city should consider buying the lights that are BG&E and whether we should assume our own maintenance. And that showed that we could save quite a bit of money um over 20 years period we could we could save about 1.8 million dollars and but to purchase the lights that we do not own currently we'd have to put out about 800 000 out now we could do that in But there was a law that was passed in 2022 or 2023 by the General Assembly that provides the right to local jurisdictions to purchase their lights from utilities, from BG&E. for fair market value. We still have to negotiate that, but we have the right to do it and they must comply. I'm not saying it'll be easy because there's three jurisdictions that have done this nationwide already, and I think there was some wrangling back and forth with the utility. But it shows with these jurisdictions and with the initial analysis that was done for the city that we can save quite a bit of money. In fact, about all the older light posts along Main Street were being double billed for those, the audit found, that they're being counted twice. And then there were, I think there were 110 streetlights in Annapolis that don't exist or out of commission, or they may have been somewhere at one time, but they're no longer there. So the city is losing a lot of money on... Still getting charged? Still getting charged for it. So and also the maintenance costs and everyone we spoke, we had a meeting of the MC4A group, the cities and counties for climate action. So this is all the different jurisdictions in Maryland. Everyone had the same experience that the maintenance their utilities whether it's pepco or bg e was very expensive that we could do so much better by having owning them ourselves and performing our own maintenance with a third-party contractor um so that's where the savings comes from um the 800 000 that we would have to put out to actually buy that's an estimate to buy um the street lights the city does not own and to do um to verify them, check them and convert them over to LED. So that's a little over 800, getting closer to a million, but we would recoup those expenses within 4.4 years. And then after that, it's just savings for the next 16 years.

Like they should just give them to us if we've been overpaying. We've been double paying and paying for non-existent lights for years.

And we can negotiate that as part of it because I think they're worth more than we've been overpaying. We can prove that, back that up with data and we can negotiate that. But we were told by some of the jurisdictions in Maryland that it's not always an easy process. They fight back a little bit on what they consider fair market value and what they should be sold at. So just so you understand, the members of this, Committee, the City has three groups of streetlights. You might remember this from a presentation we did two years ago. We have streetlights, a very small group of streetlights that we own and maintain. Then there are those that we own, the City is we, the City owns and BG&E maintains at a very expensive rate. And then there are those street lamps that are owned by BG&E and maintained by them. Our street lights that are on Main Street are all the, you know, down West Street furaways are all the ones with the tobacco leaf on them. Those are more expensive to convert over than the Cobra heads, but we mostly have Cobra, about 80 to 90% of our street lamps are Cobra heads. So it's expensive. the cost of those historic lights is very small compared to all the lights that we own. But this is, with this funding we have from MEA, we can get started on the next step, which would be do a more detailed audit of our streetlights. So this MEA grant allows us to do that. So it was good news. We were like, how are we, we didn't want to, this year especially, come to council to ask for the money to do it, but we got over $400,000 from MEA. So we could start doing some of this work.

Alderman Holley, do you have any questions? I think you have. Yeah, thank you. I did.

Yeah. So this seems like a good financial decision. It requires a bunch of money up front. Therefore, it might make sense for us to borrow money to do this, but then that starts impacting our debt capacity.

Right.

So what I'm thinking about is I know of a I know of a company, actually, funny enough, I'll say them because they're headquartered here in my ward, Hannon Armstrong, that did a bunch of work with the Pentagon, this is years ago, where basically they funded and financed the replacement of a lot of light bulbs at the Pentagon to LED bulbs. And they got, you know, sort of some share of the savings over time. but what i'm and i'm certainly not saying we have to use one company even if they're located right here in downtown annapolis but uh my question to you is can we look into something like this can we have somebody else finance it so that the debt is off of our books but we still end up getting the savings and maybe instead of after 4.8 years, it's six years, but then we're still generating all the savings. Do you think that's conceptually a possibility? And is there a pathway that your office could look into that?

You are thinking along the same lines I am, Alderman Huntley. I was trying to think of novel and innovative ways to finance this, but I can keep it off the city's books and plan to speak with the Resilience Authority about that as well. I don't know if Anne Arundel County is also interested in doing the same. They would have a much bigger jurisdiction to cover, but their savings would be that much more. And it's such a big jurisdiction, I imagine there are a lot more land posts that have been taken out of commission and are being double charged. So they could be also interested in participating in something like that. Yes. I think it's something very well worth looking into.

Right. So what's your next update?

Okay. So.

And just keep in mind, I want to try to get out here around 5 for people.

Oh, I'm not going to go that long. I'm just going to hit some of the things we're doing that are new. So we also empower Maryland, which is a way to get rebates through BG&E, through our utility. Our staff has been working with central services with BG&E and the empower program that includes no cost LED lighting retrofits and upgrades for businesses, including municipal buildings. So a matrix solution was the contractor selected for this pilot project. And our pilot project was the forest drive fire station. And we outfitted them with all LED replacements. That was completed May 13th. And now we're going to start looking at doing the same for the Taylor Avenue Fire Station, Gorman Street, the building Gorman Street, and 161 to Gloucester, which is across from City Hall. So the cost savings for this project are projected at Let's see, over $12,000 for Duga Gloucester, close to $50,000 for the Forest Drive Fire Station, and with Gorman, about $85,000, just in electrical costs from switching to LED. And we are still working on the Taylor Avenue Police Station data there. But again, a way to save a lot of money over the years with LED, which lasts much longer than regular light bulbs. And then that was a free program.

Do you know how that's, maybe the finance chair would know. I'm curious how that's captured in the budget.

Our savings?

Yeah, I mean, they would have to update their estimated, their projections for, energy use. I just wonder if they're actually, they should be doing that. If you can quantify the savings, they should be able to build that in.

Right. These are their projections. And then once we have a year of data, they should be able to do that. Or I don't know if they're open to doing it with just projections. They may not be. But we have several projects where we will be saving quite a sum of money on our utility bills. Another one is that we just recently, a couple months ago, entered our community solar contract right at the end of 2025. We finally got that done. And the agreement is with a company called Sun Central. They're working through the state to promote community solar and get jurisdictions to sign up. The project is projected to save the city between $66,000 and $127,000 a year on our utility bill. So over a 20-year period, the city could save between $1.3 million and $1.9 million in energy expenses and reduce metric tons of CO2 by over 51,000 metric tons. so this does not cost us anything we're um in a 10-year contract we can give um i think it's about six months notice if we want to end the contract but we should be seeing um the cost savings come through on our next utility bill And what I really like about that solar field is that they built it on top of a massive warehouse in PG County. So it did not take up any green space whatsoever. It's on an existing building. And then we have a brand new this week residential solar program where we are partnering with Solar United Neighbors, again, no charge to the city to do this, to join their Switch Together effort. This has been known as Solar Switch and Capital Area Solar Co-op, you may have heard of those. So this provides interested residents and they can come as a group, as an HOA or individually and have a solar evaluation done under the roof. If they decide they want to go forward with solar installations, they can get them at a co-op or competitive price because what Solar United does is it bids that it will bid out the project or multiple projects if it's a group. and they could get a much lower price. So they find the lowest price that they think is going to be done correctly with the installer, and then they move forward with that. There's no obligation if you decide, no, I don't wanna do this, I don't like the price. You don't have to, but it's a way for homeowners to have the installations done, and then they own the installation. And it's because they're paying for it, but at a much lower price. And again, today when we were having our discussion with other jurisdictions, the little town of Washington Grove, that's kind of near Rockville and Gaithersburg, they said they've been doing this for a while and they have about 30% of their residents are participating in community solar now. and which is, it's pretty impressive. Someone else mentioned that 40% of these funds are reserved for low income, but that's the hardest group to get involved. And also a lot of people are in apartments, but their apartment, there's another program they could be, their apartment owner, building owner could be going through. A couple other jurisdictions said that they offer incentives to their residents to engage in community solar or put in heat pumps or buy electric cars. And if they do any of these things, they get a $1,500 rebate from the city. And they can stack these on top of Empower or other programs. So they're trying to get more and more people incentivized to put in different kinds of heat saving, energy saving, and electric car types of initiatives. So we just started doing that this week. We just entered into that agreement. And then our proposals for the feasibility study for the electric streetcar are due this week, June 12th. And we should be hearing from the Resilience Authority after that period to see how many and who and if anyone has submitted a proposal for the streetcar feasibility study.

But you haven't heard any update on?

I have. So far there are none that have been submitted. But sometimes people, you know, often I've found that people use the full period they have to submit their proposals. I checked in today.

Have there been any meetings for the potential bidders?

I don't think so. I don't think she's had meetings with them. Okay. All right. And then the last thing I was going to touch on, update on the city electric vehicle equipment project. The city is partnering with the Resilience Authority in Anne Arundel County to install charging infrastructure. And the first place we are doing this is at the Annapolis Police Department. The police department does not have any full EVs. They have a lot of hybrids. But we're putting in the infrastructure there. Acting Chief Miguez drives a Rivian, I believe. She drives some sort of electric vehicle. So she's very supportive of this. initiative, but we can get them some of their support cars and administrative vehicles electric once we have the supporting infrastructure there. So the idea is to put at least one DC fast charge and two L2s, so six ports total at the police station, and then the fleet manager will work with them on more police vehicles. Right now, our biggest hurdle to the patrol cars being all electric is that we have a take-home policy, and the police officers want to feel that they can get back and forth on a full charge, which they... definitely should be able to do even if they live 50 miles from here um which i think only a handful do if any i think maybe two do um but i don't think i think if in a small area like the city we're not going to run out of a charge but we will have the fast charger there for those people who feel that they need that and they do support the county we do go into the county but we don't go very far So that's one project we're doing with charging infrastructure. The other is at no cost, well, $2,500 cost to the city, a detailed fleet assessment with a professional company that does fleet assessments. So they are looking at all of our replacement vehicle options, the maintenance costs, the potential energy and emission saving data, which cars should be replaced by electric cars and what type of electric cars, And this is a program that BG&E funds the balance of, because this is probably a $30,000 inventory. We put out $2,500, the city does, and then if we buy one electric car, we get that $2,500 back. I think we can buy one electric car this year, at least. But as you know, the budget did not include a lot of money for, or any money for electric vehicles.

Well, I was told that the exact distribution as far as how that money is gonna, which vehicles is gonna be spent on has not been determined. So that is something that I guess could be determined internally by the city manager's office.

And one of the benefits of the fleet inventory is that it's going to help us budget what EVs we should be buying, how much money, how many every year. So every year it helps the fleet manager put together his budget request. by this, supported by this fleet inventory. So those are the issues I wanted to hit with you mostly. Oh, electric leaf lower enforcement. I wanted to talk to you really quickly about that. Alderwoman, O'Neill has been always very interested in the enforcement part of this, so I suggested that she meet with me and Mr. Laconich and Mr. Manassa, who does our code enforcement, because planning and zoning inspectors are the ones who, during the course of their ordinary duties, are performing the bulk of the leaf blower enforcement. We did have a couple more of the inspectors sign up for after hours and weekend duty. And when they do that, they focus solely on leaf enforcement, blower enforcement. But we did, if you recall last year, with excess salary we had in the city manager budget when Mr. Malinoff resigned to fund a part-time position for eight months who would focus solely on leaf blower enforcement. That job description was put together and approved by myself and Mr. Jakubiak and provided to HR, but we did not advertise it. It fell by the wayside with Ms. Hopkins' departure and pending departure. So we could fund that position again. I don't recall exactly how much money it was. It was around $55,000. However, I checked with finance today if we could use money that we still have in our city manager's budget from salaries for FY26, and I was told no if it's not spent during FY26. So that money, it's about $255,000 in salary, will be going back to the general fund that we did not use. So we moved it up to council if they would be willing to appropriate one-time use funds for a part-time leaf blower enforcement position. That's the option we have with that. We also will be leaving, there's been a problem with not knowing who owns property, where we've seen leaf blower activity and if the inspector did not have a chance to verify who owns the property or whether it was electric or gas because some of the lower end electric ones are pretty noisy. We talked about putting warnings, leaving warnings at residential doors and business stores that you were observed. Someone was observed on this property using a gas powered leaf blower, what we believe to be gas powered leaf blower. And this is against the city code and there is a fine associated with it to help it help as a deterrent. And then, um, We've had a number of citations issued to businesses within the last week. Three were appealed and upheld in court this week. So we're hoping that again acts as more of a deterrent. And then we have about $30,000 left in the rebate program with the Chesapeake Bay Trust. We are offering lawn care and landscapers that have already utilized it one time to be eligible to go back a second time and utilize funds for a rebate.

Because we really want to support their transition.

and they can use it to buy battery packs, because that's what their biggest complaint is.

Okay, any questions from the committee on that?

I know Alderman Huntley's favorite topic.

Nope.

Not today.

Appreciate your work, Ms. Giles. Thank you.

Yeah, I would like to see some of the enforcement figured out. I would certainly love to see temporary position of some kind to do some more of that work, to figure out more about how to actually do it.

If we were to do that, I would suggest that we do that in the summer so that we're ready for the fall cleanup.

And two other things. One, just a quick one on the streetcar, just to get for my colleague's sake. the so state did also pass some transit oriented development legislation it only applies to rail tod rail transit but i believe if we do end up moving forward with this if feasibility study has a good way forward we can actually apply some of the benefits i believe to planned or proposed stations And so we could start to see some of the benefits well before it's even constructed. But that is something that I believe Resilience Authority was going to work in with whoever wins the proposal, the bid, work with them to make sure they include that in there.

Also, for Alderman Huntley and Alderwoman Conte's benefit, planning and zoning is speaking to some of the businesses along West Street, particularly focusing on the 8.5 acres of parking lots that are associated with car sales. yeah thinking more broadly about those areas and how they're utilized and how they could be better utilized for housing and mixed use so the um what is the one i said criswell so far is the first one that's um interested the first dealership that's interested in talking about that um with planning and zoning and um the trolley had the streetcar has been mentioned as part of this thinking more broadly and developing in mixed use in some of these areas. And that has definitely been an incentive to Criswell and some businesses to start getting interested. If we're gonna have people traveling by streetcar that will utilize their businesses. They're interested. So because Eric Lashinsky has been involved with the group that's looking at streetcars, he was able to brief Director Jakubiak on that. So Director Jakubiak could speak to that when he's talking to businesses about other benefits of the streetcar and utilizing their property more broadly.

That's great news. I think a lot of good things coming together here. One other question before we adjourn would be on the ferry, the hybrid ferry. Some slight changes, updates you put into your report, which would be, let's see, so...

your plan is to put out a request for information to get some of the information that's been requested by i believe the mayor and this committee and some others i think right alderman thorpe is very interested in what the business plan would be and what the fares would be charged and who would operate and who would be responsible for the maintenance and storage and we plan to get some of that information from the request for information and qualifications um and if It also whether that information we get from that process would need to be fed into the RFP for the vessel design build if we go forward with that. The landing improvement sites need to go to the Maryland Transit Administration, at least the one in Eastport that is proposed. We're not wed to any one site, but that's one we had in the grant. So we're, and it has been, there's been a conceptual design around it. So we'll go ahead and forward it to MTA so we could get going with improvements if it's approved and we go forward with the ferry. There's been some, we need, when we applied for the initial grant, um although the grant awards specified um in our in-kind contribution of 525 000 would have to be met with in with cash contributions prior to applying there were webinars and there were conversations with fta and mta in which we were told there could be some flexibility around that cash contribution and it could be in kind These ferry pilot programs are very novel, and the FTA and MTA understand there's some flexibility that needs to be brought into the process. However, with the change in administration, the freeze on the grant, and then allowing it again if we did a hybrid diesel electric, we don't know if there's going to be that same degree of flexibility. So the city has requested an opinion from FTA whether it has to be all cash or it had or we can do some in-kind contributions so that's going on right now we have to wait for a response from fta but at the same time um because of some development that was going on at the annapolis city marina and some concessions they wanted from planning and zoning there was a fee that was paid to the city of 250 000 dollars for street end improvements. Particularly, the idea was to do that for the Fifth Street street end regardless because it's in need of improvements. The bulkhead is rotting away and it floods. There's some other problems there. So that is... A cash contribution right there of 250,000 dollars towards the landings and then some of our other grants that have peers involved that we're looking at for landing sites. We could also use those grant awards as cash contributions.

Thank you. Yeah, so it sounds like. We will probably have to wait until we get that confirmation from. The state and the feds as far as matching, but again, just to. reiterate for my colleagues, at some point we're going to need to update the CIP sheet to properly document the grant as well as the match, however we're gonna do that. But contrary to what was said at the budget meeting, my understanding is this is an approved CIP. CIP has been pretty clear that the city is pursuing this. So unless the council makes a decision otherwise, It's gotta move forward. And we have, I think, we tacked our last committee meeting that we have to get this worked out by October, right, as far as getting an actual RFP put out there.

Right. Yes, because we only have until October of 2027 to encumber these funds. The project doesn't have to be completed, but we have to have a designer who's spending money and underway with the project with the vessel project as well as. Well, the landing improvements could be done pretty quickly. Two of them would be being done as part of other projects. And CityDoc actually counts as well. So anything we have to do to CityDoc will count towards this. Because there's contributions from the state and from the county. And there's one other one. whatever, if private donations are also put into CityDoc, we can count that as well, as it is cash contributions. So we have a number of other avenues besides just staff time and value of land.

All right, well, it is five o'clock, so any other burning questions from the committee? All right, hearing none, anything else from staff we need to know before we adjourn?

No, not at this time.

All right, is there a motion to adjourn then? All right, is there a second?

Second.

All those in favor of adjourn please say aye. Aye. Motion carries. Thank you all. Meeting is adjourned.