Environmental Services Commission - Regular Meeting

Good evening, everyone. It's 06:30, and I'm calling the 03/06/2025 Environmental Services Commission meeting to order. First off, we'll do a roll call for each of the commissioners. Chair Vanya Kanezvich is absent and excused. Commissioner DuPertis? Thank you. Commissioner Letterman? Present. Thank you. Commissioner Laxon?

Present.

Commissioner Margolis? Present. And commissioner Hainosh? Present. Thank you. Well, welcome to the March 6 environmental Commission meeting. First up, let's approve the agenda. May I have a motion to approve?

I move to approve the agenda.

Thank you. May I have a second? Second. Thank you. Are there any requested changes or modifications to the agenda?

If not, then the agenda is approved as motioned. We're gonna move now to oral and written communications. Joe, are there any written communications tonight?

There are no written communications.

Alright. And I see we have no one registered for this portion of the oral communications. We do have someone registered later on, for the public hearing on the draft stormwater management plan. If anyone in the audience would like to speak, please, and if you're dialing in remote, please use the raise your hand function in Zoom. Or if you're dialing by phone, press 9. Or if you're in the audience, please come up. None. None? Okay. Very good.

And moving right along. Council member Lee was not able to join us today. Are there any other updates from any community council board or commission, Joe?

There are no other updates.

Alright. And are there any staff reports this evening?

Well, just a quick comment to thank everyone for their understanding when we canceled the snow and ice meeting for last month. I hope that worked well for you, and just wanted to appreciate all the streets work that our transportation department did. Having said that, we felt it was a smart thing to do to go ahead and cancel. So thank you for that.

No. We appreciate that. They're looking out for our safety. Alright. So having canceled the February 1, we're now approving the minutes for the 01/09/2025 meeting. May I have a motion to approve those minutes?

Move to approve those minutes. Thank you. And a second.

Thank you. And are there any requested changes or modifications to those minutes? No? Okay. So the minutes are approved as motioned. We have no unfinished business, so we're gonna move on to new business. And first up is an update on the environmental stewardship plan. Good evening.

Good evening, commissioners. Thank you for having me here. My name is Justice Stewart. I am the sustainability program manager in the community development department, and I appreciate your time this evening. I'm gonna, navigate over to my presentation.

Alright. Is everyone able to hear me alright? Okay. Great. Thank you.

So I'm here this evening to share with you the environmental stewardship plan, which is also referred to as the sustainable Bellevue plan update process. We are in the midst of updating this plan right now, so we wanted to come and share with you what that process looks like, where we're at in the process, when we're gonna be coming back to share more information with you, and so forth. I will start by noting this is for your information only. We are requesting, any feedback you have for us, any discussion that you have around this. We'll be, you know, happy to take that feedback and incorporate it into the ongoing and next phases of the plan planning process, but we don't need any official direction this evening just for information.

So the agenda really quick, I have a short presentation for you. We've got some time for questions afterwards, and I'd like to preserve as much of that as possible. So we're just gonna give you a little context, talk about sort of the timeline, the outreach that we've been doing, and then a little progress to date on implementing the current plan, and then we'll dive into the update topics that we're here to share with you, which are really focused on materials management and waste and and natural systems. So for context, the current plan so the sustainable above view plan that we are currently implementing was adopted by council at the 2020, and so that runs through the period '21 through '25. So these are it's a five year planning cycle.

So we are still working on implementation. We're in the last year of implementation for this plan while we are simultaneously working through the update. So we will spend all of this year updating the plan. We anticipate I'll get to the the timeline in a moment here, I guess, terms of when we're anticipating adoption of that plan. It focuses, as you can see, on these five focus areas.

As I said, we're going to be really focusing in tonight on materials management at waste and natural systems, but the other three focus areas are up there. The plan sets goals and targets for 2030 and 2050 for community wide actions. It also sets goals and targets for 2030 and 2040 for municipal operations actions as well. I work more over on the community side, so we're gonna be focused on that this evening. If there are questions about municipal operations I can't answer, I'll be happy to take them back and get them answered for you.

So for the timeline, the phase that we're in right now, as I said, focuses on the the high level elements of the plan, priorities, goals, and targets. The next phase, which we are just about to dive into, is where we dig in and start to develop and or update strategies and actions, so we start to get specific. We anticipate bringing this as a draft and final plan back to council in the fall about a year from when they kicked it off. So if that timeline holds, then this will be adopted in October and November of this year. And then this will become our 2026 through 2030 sustainable Bellevue plan.

We do intend to bring this back to this commission. We have been bringing this to all the boards and commissions, including bringing it to groups like the youth services board, for example, as well as all of the boards and commissions that guide our work in transportation and planning and so forth. So for the second phase, for strategies and actions, we'll be coming back and sharing our progress with you on that as well. I don't have a date for that, but we would anticipate that being probably on the current timeline, late May or late June, somewhere in that in that time frame. I do want to note that because this has come up on previous presentations, when we say draft in this timeline, we mean it as a verb, as an action, not as something that we have finalized.

So when we say phase three July draft plan, that means in July, that's when we anticipate beginning to draft the plan. That's not when we will have a draft plan ready, just to clarify that point. In terms of how we've been conducting outreach, just in in broad strokes, the thing that I really wanna highlight here is outreach that we always conduct with any planning effort to residents and community, we've made a real effort to find ways to try to extend our reach into the community and get input and hear from underrepresented community members, communities that we may not have had the level of interaction and input from that we had wanted in the previous plan update. And the way we went about that was we have partnered with two community based organizations. Those are East Side For All and Little Masters Club, and they have been really great partners in helping to extend our reach into the communities that they serve so that we can hear from more people.

We've had a number of great events with them already, and we will have we'll have more, of course. On the other side, the left there, I also wanted to point out that we are also continuing an ongoing relationships that we had in the previous plan update with our sustainability leaders group, which is also a community based organization, but it's also a lot of our business partners, some of our major business partners, but also small business, the Bellevue Chamber, the Bellevue Downtown Association, the Bellevue School District, and a number of other institutional partners as well. So that's also a great group that helps to inform the plan update process. Alright. Shifting gears, I wanted to walk through just a couple high level points on progress to date on implementation of the current plan and looking ahead to 02/2050.

This chart is shows, I think, pretty clearly the story of emissions in Bellevue, which looks a lot like emissions in the rest of the region, which is to say that we saw a major decline in 2020, which is presumably more or less entirely due to the pandemic, and, things have been slowly creeping up since then. So emissions are climbing, as we come out of the pandemic. The last year for which we have data, 2023 is a few percentage points above 2022. Not a not a lot, but it has been creeping up every year. The overall reduction compared to our baseline is 8%, but I will note that we've seen 25 population growth and almost 35% jobs growth in that time, so it actually translates to slightly more than 25%, 26%, I guess, reduction in per capita emissions.

So there's a different story there when you account for growth that we actually have been fairly successful in reducing our emissions on a per capita basis, but because of the growth, it is a much more limited impact in terms of the overall emissions reduction. Our 2030 goal is a 50% reduction, and our 2050 goal is a 95% reduction, which is effectively carbon neutral or net zero. Those are in line with the state best available science, King County targets, and those targets are adopted in the comprehensive plan that was adopted by council last fall. So those are the the city's official targets. So based on these numbers, you know, we're not really on track for 2030 and 2050, but we have been doing a lot of good work locally.

We're relying a lot on state and regional laws and efforts as well, things that are not within the city's control, like the cleanliness of the grid, the electricity that Puget Sound Energy provides, for example. So as those things change, as the fleet changes over toward electric vehicles, for example, we expect all of these numbers to improve in addition to the things the city is doing. I will not walk through all of these recent successes. If there's anything up here that people have questions about, I'm happy to answer them after, or we can bring back answers as well, written answers afterwards. But there's a lot of, activity that we've been doing in the last, five years in implementing the current plan.

As you can see from that little chart on the right, as of quarter three of last year, we have either begun implementing or have completed or have integrated into ongoing programs almost every action in the plan. Out of 78, there are only 10 that weren't started for for a number of different reasons. But we have either completed or begun implementing pretty much every part of the plan. This is another way of looking at the information. Excuse focusing in on the materials management at waste and natural systems goals, which are written there very high level, and then the metrics that we use to measure progress, and then you can see the progress against the targets there.

Achieving a citywide tree canopy of 40% has actually already been completed, and so part of the plan update process is revisiting that to see whether that remains the correct target. And do we look at maintenance of the canopy and forest health? Or in addition to maintenance, do we also look at at revising that? So that's an ongoing conversation. For the other ones, we're making really good progress, we are on track for those for the for the twenty thirty targets.

As far as proposed updates, we are in conversations ongoing right now about adding a second metric, so a second way of tracking progress for the materials management and waste, which is looking at overall waste generation, not just recycling rate. The numbers that are up there for 2050 and 2030 target are our current numbers. Those are subject to change as we continue to refine and evaluate. Excuse me. And the basis for that is the current King County solid based comprehensive plan.

For the streams, stream health has been a difficult goal to associate sort of a useful and easily calculated metric. And, in working with our partners in utilities, we've hit on this benthic index of biotic integrity, which is something that gets measured on an annual basis. So that's a proposed new metric, and those are the proposed targets. Again, that's all subject to change. So it essentially looks at the benthic layer, so the, basically, top layer of the stream bed and looks at the how much, you know, how much biological activity, the health of the biological activity that's happening there.

There are probably folks behind in the audience that could give you a more scientific answer to that question, but, basically, looking at the biological health of the of the stream bed as a as an indicator of the overall health of the stream. And then for water conservation, this one has actually already been updated a bit. I can share that with you now. We have been working with, again, our partners in utilities, looking at the targets that were established by the Cascade Water Alliance, and what they measure is water savings. So our current proposal is to find an appropriate target to measure Bellevue specific shares since Cascade Water Alliance has sets regional targets to look at what the Bellevue share of that might be an appropriate target to set for water savings in Bellevue.

And measuring water savings is a way to help us set a target, but also, as I described with greenhouse gas emissions, to account for the growth that we're seeing where we expect water use to increase, but we'd like to see per capita water use decrease. So that's a way of trying to get at that. As far as phase two, we're not gonna talk a lot about that. In the agenda memo that we provided for this plan update, there is a table at the end that actually lays out all of the strategies and actions if you'd like to look at them in more detail. But as I mentioned, that's the next phase of this process.

So we're just kicking that off now, so we don't have any new information to share on strategies and actions. But, of course, we'll use all of the outreach and engagement and all of the analysis that we've been doing in the first phase to inform the development of those strategies and actions in the next phase. There are a few that are under consideration that we put up here. We just wanted to share a few examples of strategies and actions that are already being discussed, but of course, there are many more as well. As I mentioned, the current plan has almost 80 specific actions in it, and we'd like to winnow that number down just for the sake of helping to focus work.

But it's likely to still be a fairly large number because the amount of work that needs to be done remains significant. I also wanted to mention we thought it would be of interest to this group that the current plan has a light focus on climate resilience. We talk about and sorry if this is old hat to all of you. In climate work, we talk about greenhouse gas emissions reduction. That's mitigation work, just trying to stop making things worse, essentially.

We also talk about climate resilience. In the natural environment, this is usually called climate adaptation. When it comes to the built environment and to communities, we usually talk about resilience. And that is just has to do with how we prepare to adapt to and withstand the impacts of the climate change that is already occurring and and will continue to occur into the future. We conducted a citywide climate vulnerability assessment in the 2023, and so that work informs the development of a goal and the strategies and actions that we might undertake to advance climate resilience.

This is also driven by state law. There is a house bill that was passed in 2023, house bill eleven eighty one. They're just doing the rulemaking for that right now, and that requires cities to account for greenhouse gas emissions reduction and climate resilience in comprehensive planning. So in the comprehensive plan that was just adopted by council last fall, we do have a significantly increased focus on climate change and climate policies in that comprehensive plan. And so this is also this this increased focus in the sustainable Bellevue plan is a reflection of that as well.

And as far as next steps, so we will be going to council on April 1 to talk about progress to date as well as, excuse me, our our work on goals and targets up to this point, a little of what I've just walked you through in terms of outreach and engagement. We will be returning, as I said, to boards and commissions with draft strategy and action updates in phase two. And, you know, as I mentioned, we have a whole lot of ongoing outreach and engagement still happening through our community based organizations, through those partners. We also have been conducting a great deal of outreach and engagement with our internal subject matter experts. So we have held one round of workshops.

We're about to schedule our second round of workshops. So we're gathering all of the brain trust of the expertise here at the city as well to inform this plan update. I don't think there are any departments at the city who are not involved in this plan update process. If if I can think of one, it might be HR, but I'm not even sure if that's true. But, certainly, when we talk about climate resiliency, we get into emergency services and emergency response.

So we've got fire and police involved. Of course, utilities and transportation are heavily involved. You know, facilities and asset management is heavily involved. So this really is a a one city effort to update this plan. So, that's the conclusion of the presentation, and, I'd welcome any input or any questions you have.

We do have a couple questions here that we're particularly interested in hearing your input and feedback on. One was the materials management and waste goals, particularly the addition of sort of new metric that we're proposing to track overall waste generation and trying to reduce that in addition to continuing to measure recycling rate. And and any other feedback on the on those goals, or the natural systems goals for that matter. So

It it looked like your proposed new metrics were per capita based rather than absolute number. That's the way you were leaning at this point?

It is an ongoing conversation. We definitely understand the value of measuring things on a per capita basis because when you measure overall, you can't account for growth in the same way. And so at minimum, we always track the per capita and overall reduction, both at the same time, like we do for greenhouse gas emissions. So that's an example of one where the target and the metric, the way we measure it, is an overall reduction, but we always track and report on per capita so that we can tell both stories since they're telling different stories.

So is there a thought to changing that metric to a per capita?

For greenhouse gas emissions, there isn't at the moment. It hasn't been proposed. If, you know, we hear from the community or other stakeholders or from council, you know, an interest in doing that, we will certainly evaluate, you know, what that might change, if anything. But we have a energy use reduction target as well, for example, and that one is overall. But similarly to water, as the city grows, energy use increases. So we also have to always tell a per capita story for that one as well.

Yeah. I'm just thinking it would make more sense to make it the primary metric so it's a better story.

Yeah. Yeah. We have heard that feedback from a number of people, so thank you. And, yeah, as I say, this is an ongoing conversation. We definitely have not committed to one approach versus the other. So thank you.

Hi there. I have a question about your materials management goals. Right? And, I mean, I'm all for recycling. I'm also hearing that, you know, the markets for recycling really aren't there. And so how do we, you know, balance that, especially the message that we're giving to our residents, recycle, recycle, where are those materials going? I can

give you an update on that.

Yeah. That's a great point. It's a this is a tough one. You know, we when we set targets for these, we are always using the best information we have, you know, through our evaluation and analysis of how to set goals that are simultaneously ambitious and achievable, and there are, for any of these, I could point out things that are within the city's direct control and things that aren't. So when we talk about electric vehicles, for example, you know, part of what we're trying to do for emissions reduction in the transportation space is to help to accelerate the transition to electric vehicles, but that's a market that exists totally outside of our control, right?

So there are things we can do, but the actual achievement of that, you know, depends on other forces, and and similarly for emissions, we're dependent on Puget Sound energy. So so one thing we're looking at is there are policies in the comprehensive plan, as I'm sure you're aware, that speak to composting. We've been working with our partners in development services and in utilities to develop land use code that helps to create new buildings as growth continues that have the space to do that. And so we're trying to address certain issues where we can in terms of making sure that there are composting facilities available in more buildings to try to make recycling easier, particularly in commercial and multifamily. But to your point, at the end of the day, you know, the recycling market itself is something that exists outside of the city's control, and so that is something that we need to account for when we are setting these targets to make sure that we're trying to look ahead and see where things are trending.

Yeah. No. I I appreciate it's really a difficult conundrum. Right? Because we really wanna have you know, give this message of recycling. But if external markets are outside of our control, I just wanna just to think about the message. Right?

K. Yeah. Absolutely. Thank you.

Any other questions?

Just had a quick question on the outreaches. I mean, do you have something that maybe prior prioritizes the feedback that you're getting from the community members? Like, what are they looking at when they think of, you know, sustainability? Are people focused on recycling? Are they focused on electric vehicles? You know, what's sort of the top issues that come out of your outreach? Sounds like you guys are doing some really tremendous work.

Thank you. Yeah. That's a great question. And actually, in between the time when I put materials together to bring to you, which was a little while ago at this point due to the snowstorm for the last meeting, And now we actually have completed a summary report on the outreach that we've been conducting, so we would be happy to share that with this commission. Excuse me.

That lays out, you know, in much greater detail, answer to your question. I will say, you know, the feedback we've been getting depends, of course, on who we're asking. We're hearing different feedback from different community members. There's been a lot of interest in the climate resiliency work. A lot of people are concerned about that, and a lot of people, you know, have had recent experiences of feeling a little more vulnerable than they thought they were, if you recall the bomb cyclone that happened several months ago.

So that is an issue of increased interest to the community, certainly. And we've also heard a lot of focus on equity considerations, which is a thing that we are also focused on, but it's helpful to hear that that's a been a major theme in terms of feedback from the community as well. When we talk about things like, you know, transitioning to a 100% electric vehicles, for example, people,

you

know, have provided feedback to make sure that we are accounting for equity considerations in access, you know, to vehicles and other forms of transportation, you know, depending on people's economic status and things like that.

Do any of these projects that go into driving these programs, are there any dependencies on federal funding?

Another great question. There are no dependencies on federal funding, I will say, at the moment. The main place where, we've been paying a lot of attention is on state pass through funding. So most of the state pass through funding to implement the current plan to do this plan update and some of our ongoing programs is state pass through funding that's already contracted and committed. But within the next five year implementation period, we would be certainly looking at additional grant funding, some of which does come from federal agencies like the EPA, for example, or has historically.

For the most part, you know, we just had a last fall, it was an initiative to overturn or to at least significantly impact the Clean Energy Act at the state level. That didn't pass, so, you know, that's not an immediate concern. But, you know, there are likely to be challenges to that that law or the Clean Energy Transition Act, you know, which affects Puget Sound Energy. So we are you know, when we project out into the future how we're doing and whether we'll be able to hit our targets, we do have to make assumptions about what state laws and programs and what state funding, including pass through funding from the federal government, will continue to exist, so I'll say mostly we are, you know, providing input and paying close attention to the citywide task force that's been formed to look at federal funding and where those dependencies are and see how those things affect us. So at the moment, I would say the impact is fairly minimal, but going forward, it becomes greater.

Yeah.

And and when for these kinds of projections, how do how does the the team think about confidence levels in these? A different way to ask it, I suppose, is, like, if you were a betting man, what would you bet that we would hit these targets? Which is a you yeah.

That's a great question. There are certain trends that are international and national where I you know, this isn't coming from me. This is coming from, you know, people that I pay attention to who who track these things at a much higher level, where it appears that the markets themselves have turned a corner of some kind. Electric vehicles would be one of those things where, you know, most of the world's major auto companies have already transitioned their pipelines over to electric vehicles, and they will be financially disinclined to change them back. That's one that, you know, it could go faster.

It could go slower, but it looks as though that's the direction that everything's headed. And there are other technologies, hydrogen fuel cells and things, that could come along and disrupt electric vehicles. But from an emissions standpoint, it looks like that's more or less a done deal, and it's a question of when. When we look at power generation, it's a similar thing. We know we have reached nationally and internationally cost parity with renewable energy and fossil fuel energy, at least in most places.

And so that also, you know, appears at this point to be a question of when, not a question of if. When we look at the cost curves of what's happening with battery technology, they're on similar cost curves to where solar was ten or twelve years ago. So those costs are plummeting as well, which is the other piece that's necessary for renewable energy is to have sufficient battery storage. So when we look at some of those really big picture trends, things look quite promising. I think the the real discernment and the big question marks come if we try to predict when these things will happen.

Will we hit our 2030 targets in 2030? It's a very challenging question to ask. Will we hit those targets? Almost certainly. But hitting them by 2030, you know, will require that a lot of things that are in place stay in place, and that we're also able to accelerate action, you know, where we can.

Other questions? No? I'll have a I'll just follow on on commissioner Margolis' question. I think you wouldn't be able to give us a good assessment at this point in time. But on the federal funding question, I think on the next update, it would be great. I don't think this commission will be, the only commission or even city council will probably be interested in the risk profile of the federal funding. Next time you update, we'll probably have a much better picture as political appointees start coming on and implementing their own agendas. How much of our work here will be impacted or is at risk? So I think that would be a great addition for an update. Then I I also wanted to ask a different question.

So as you showed the greenhouse gas emission chart and that, you know, we're creeping back up, but on per capita, we are doing better. So as you look at the next five year plan, is the team, taking that into consideration of what the goals were in the first five years and adjusting based on how much progress we are making or not making in the first five year plan? Is that part of the process?

It is part of the process. Yes. But for the most part, those targets, if they change and I I'll note that most of the targets aren't changing. There's some of them that are, but most of them aren't. But the ones that are changing are becoming more aggressive. Excuse me. Not becoming less aggressive.

Mhmm.

And those are mostly driven by either state law or some kind of regional requirements from the from the King County level or or PSRC perhaps, or, you know, they're being driven by city policy itself. Again, the the greenhouse gas emissions target, for example, is in the comprehensive plan. So that's official city policy that those are our targets. So, of course, the plan is gonna reflect that. There's no no need and no benefit to setting more aggressive targets than that, but we certainly couldn't set, you know, any less aggressive targets than that or we'd be out of alignment with our own comp plan.

So some of the mobility and land use targets, for example, have increased and become a little more aggressive. Those are also in response to the new growth targets and some of the land use projections and things that are also part of the comp plan that was just adopted. So where things have changed, I would say the changes have been comparatively modest other than the greenhouse gas emissions goal itself, which was a pretty significant change. The others have been more modest, and they've all been in response to some kind of new information or new policy that's come in. So other than that, they mostly have held the same because they were fairly ambitious in the first place.

And although we've made good progress on a lot of them, unless we're really way beyond where we thought we would be, which we are for a few things. We have already achieved our 2030 target for greenhouse gas emissions reduction for municipal operations, for example. So there are places where we've where we've done really, really well and already exceeded certain targets, and so those we are revisiting for sure to see if we wanna, you know, make them more ambitious.

Yeah. Well, I guess that was my point. So if we're looking like maybe we may not hit the greenhouse gas emission target because of reasons maybe outside of our control even. Should we adjust the targets that we feel like we can be like the citywide tree canopy? We've already hit the target. Mhmm. 40%. So should we bump it up because maybe it'll be have a positive impact, to offset the fact that we may not hit the greenhouse gas emission target? So that's kinda what I'm looking at. And is there enough science evaluation behind that?

I mean, increasing the tree canopy by 5%, does that do anything, or what percentage point of that equals not hitting the greenhouse gas emission target? I couldn't answer that. Yeah. Hopefully, much smarter people in this area can, but that's kinda what I'm trying to get at.

Yeah. Absolutely. As a general policy, we tend not to walk back targets just because we're not on track to hit them. Instead, we try to look at what more can we do Mhmm. To hit those targets.

But we do evaluate, of course, you know, real world considerations, like what would it cost to do that extra work if we're try to do more, if we're gonna need to scale up an existing program or create a new program or if we're gonna try to, you know, do things that we aren't currently doing, if the cost considerations are just unrealistic, you know, for what we're gonna be able to do in that time frame, or if other kinds of evaluation and analysis that we do as part of the update process, if that reveals that we've set a target that's probably just unachievable, there's no real benefit to that. We don't again, we we always try to make sure we're striking a balance between ambition and achievability. So if if we were to hit on something that seems like it is just unachievable, that is an instance where we would probably walk the target back and would provide an explanation for why. Mhmm. We don't have any targets that fall into that category at the moment, but that's not to say that, you know, we won't uncover anything like that, you know, as we continue to work on this.

So but in principle, unless something like that is uncovered, unless something is practically or scientifically or financially completely unfeasible, then we're more likely to propose additional action, and then we will provide a cost for, you know, what that additional action is gonna require. And then we'd we would prefer to bring that to counsel and have them make a decision on that basis rather than walk the targets back.

Okay. But you know I'm not my my point wasn't necessarily walking the target back. It was more if the target is tenuous Mhmm. Can we be more aggressive in other targets that we may have been maybe not as aggressive, like the tree canopy Yep. And increase those to try to bulk up some other area to to further our sustainable goals.

Yeah. Particularly where there are overlap with these things. So, you know, that is part of the analysis we do is we do look at things like tree canopy, which provides a host of benefits, you know, having to do with all kinds of quality of life things as well as like storm water, for example, as well as carbon sequestration. So that has a lot to do with the health of the canopy, not just the existence of the canopy and so forth. So we do take those things into consideration in thinking about whether something like expanding or increasing that tree canopy goal, that probably does have, you know however modest, it has some kind of an emissions impact as well. So, yeah, we we do look across the whole plan at those things. Okay.

Thank you. I mean, I could talk to you more about it for hours. So I'll No problem. I won't take

up the commission's time, but thank you. I I will also note on the financial questions that, as part of this plan update, I didn't mention this earlier, we are conducting a financial analysis of the plan as well. So when we do come forward and bring this to counsel to say, you know, these are the targets and these are all the actions that, you know, will get us to those targets, we'll be able to provide in some kind of reasonable specificity, you know, financially, what is it gonna require to do all these things? So that is part of the update process.

Great. Thank you. Thank you.

Okay. Thank you very much.

Alright. K. Next up, we will get an update on the draft 2025 stormwater management program plan from Don and Tanya.

Alright. Good evening. Thank you for your time, commissioners. My name is Tanya McFarlane. I'm a senior engineering technician, in utilities and water quality. This is Don McWilliams. He's a operations manager in utilities. And today, we're gonna share with you a couple of different things. We've got the national pollutant discharge elimination system permit update that was reissued in late twenty twenty four as well as the stormwater management program plan. That's an annual requirement for us.

We were here last February, and Don did the presentation on that. So tonight, I'll talk about the stormwater management plan, and Don will give you the update on the the latest permit. K. So we have the draft, 2025 stormwater management program plan, on the Bellevue website now. It's in draft.

We're looking for comments and feedback. We'll give you, like so additional that's the whole perm the whole stormwater management plan is rather lengthy. So tonight, we're just gonna kinda hit the highlights. Okay. So just briefly, our agenda tonight, give you a brief history of the NPDS permit, and then Don will go through the 2024 through 2029 permit requirements.

Go through the different sections of the 2025 stormwater management plan. And then at the end of this, it will we have a public hearing on on this piece of it seeking feedback. So brief the brief history. So the first permit for the MPDS permit was issued in 2027 or, sorry, 2007. And it was based on the 1990 census of Bellevue, which put us at a phase two permit.

Almost every jurisdiction in the state is a phase two permit. There's only a few phase one permits, but that's based on population size. The permit is a five year permit, and this gives us, authorization to discharge stormwater, to waters of the state. And it is issued by Department of Ecology, under the Federal Clean Water Act. It's progressive and that it builds off the previous permit conditions.

In other words, we don't have any rollbacks. So every time a new permit is issued, the old stuff holds, and then they just layer new requirements on. So the next issue was in 2013 and again in 2019, and they each had one year extensions as they try to reconcile comments and whatnot. So the current permit was released. It's a valid it went into effect August 1, so at the 2024, and it'll carry us through most of 2029.

Okay. I'm gonna walk you through some of the changes for this permit term. So there's three key changes or three key sections that have changes in them. So there's one in the mapping section. There's one in the section called controlling runoff. That's for new development, redevelopment, so think of construction of developers out there. And then there's a brand new section called stormwater management for existing development or SMED because ecology loves acronyms. And this is the, also known as the retrofit clause. In the mapping section, you heard from Justice about the tree canopy in Bellevue. We've mapped the entire tree canopy for Bellevue, but now ecology is asking us, okay.

Of that tree canopy, we want you to identify which trees or which forested areas, serve the purpose of stormwater. Gonna take a rather conservative approach on this at first, because we only wanna identify those areas in town that we have direct control over. I'm not gonna put private property in there, for instance. So we haven't done that drill yet, but that's that's one of the new drills that we have to do. And then the second one, to identify and begin assessment of tributary basins containing stormwater treatment with low control for basins greater than a 24 inch outfall.

So these are for most of Bellevue doesn't have any flow control or treatment. Back in the seventies, eighties, there wasn't any requirement for that. Put the stormwater into the drain system, take it straight to the stream. And then in about the nineties, flow control was added or detention, retention, you put it under different names. And then in the February, treatment was finally came on board, and it's evolved since then.

So now I called you, wants us to go back and identify, which of those areas exist around town. And there's some different ways to map that, and we're considering options. So on the development side, so think of your your land developers here and your big developers. Developers. So this this is the folks that did get the permits out of development review down there.

So they're reducing the total square feet of pervious surface that is subject to storm water treatment and flow control. Right now, it's anything over, I think, 5,000 comes to mind. They're reducing that down to as low as 2,000. So this could hit some of our larger homebuilders, and they could be required to do additional on-site stormwater treatment for some of the the bigger homes that are going in around Bellevue. We don't know exactly how this is gonna play out, in the development review section until it actually goes into action.

We see it for a year or so. And then there's language around what they call replaced hard surfaces, potentially increasing requirements as well. So they have, they already have language in there about you have to do storm water treatment for any new hard surface. So think new road roadways, transportation projects. But now they've added language that says new and replaced. So I challenged ecology. So what does replaced mean? And it's all the way down to the subgrade. So if we rip a roadway up all the way down to the gravel underneath, that's replaced. If we just do a grind and overlay, not necessarily replaced.

And then here's the big one. So stormwater management for existing development, also the retrofit clause. We have to provide equivalent treatment to 24.6 acres out there. Calculations on how to do that, and there's two options that we have to do that. So we can either retrofit our existing system, meaning we can take something that doesn't have any treatment or flow control out there, and we can install it. We can upfit ponds. We can build new vaults. There's a lot of ways we can do this. And then there's the nonstructural side. So this is enhanced maintenance.

So we can do more street sweeping, more cleaning of the storm drain system. We can do internal pipe cleaning to meet this objective, but we can only take credit for the nonstructural exact investments up to 25%. So 75% of this has to be done through the retrofitting example. And we're looking into that with our planning section with our CIP folks of what that exactly means. And then we're talking about the last slide with the transportation about the the replacement of roadways. We're also looking at how can they play a role into this as well. So it's a citywide permit, so we have to think of it as a citywide basis. This one could be expensive. I don't have an exact number for you yet. Possibly next year.

Tanya's gonna walk you through the stormwater management plan. Alright.

Dawn, thanks for the update on the permit. Now this is the annual plan. So this is it's it'll it's a five year plan, but it's required to be updated annually. So we so we update the plan, and that draft is currently on the website. And it'll be finalized in March, and we'll submit it with the annual report report from how did we meet the requirements from last year in 2024.

We could do all of that, submit them together, and and send them off to ecology. So this what I'm about to cover covers the this next five year term, And there's a requirement that we provide an opportunity for public involvement. And so we put the draft plan out there. We ask for feedback. This is a public hearing.

We'd like to let the public know how we intend on completing the requirements of the permit. In addition, the stormwater management plan provides the guidance to staff because, as Don said, this is a citywide permit. Though utilities is the administrator of the permit, it does affect nearly every department in the city, fire, police, parks. This also provides an outline to the public on how we manage our NPDS obligations. And then as we go through it, the the format of that stormwater management plan just follows the permit exactly.

So it's easy to kinda see how this is this is the requirement, and this is how we're gonna meet it. So here are the nine sections that I'll be covering at a very high level. The next few slides are very dense with information. So I'm I'm really just giving you an idea of there's so many different pieces to it, and I'll call out one or two for a slide and then encourage you to look at the the plan the draft plan for further information. So getting into the meat of it, one of the sections is the stormwater planning, and we we will be convening an interdisciplinary team, this year.

Currently, we we do have, an interdisciplinary team, and it consists of the watershed management planning team. And then Justice talked about tree canopy, but we have a specific tree canopy goal in this permit, and we're gonna try to use our existing canopy, the work that's already been done with that, and find out how it fits in with the permit here. So we're not doing duplicity. Under public education and outreach, we're required to annually select one audience and one subject to do outreach and education on. We have already started a pilot project with homeowners and teen car care.

So we'll do the evaluation, and then it's required to be implement that strategy by September 2025. In the public involvement and participation piece, we ask the public annually to comment on our draft stormwater management plan, and then today's meeting serves that purpose. And then we will gather comments and then submit the final the final stormwater management plan in May. K. And then then under mapping and documentation, Don mentioned a little bit about the 24 inch pipes and diameter.

So we'll be doing a mapping project with GIS, making sure that we have mapped all of those basins. And then there's a new requirement to map our stormwater infrastructure along with tree canopy and overburdened communities. So we'll be doing a big mapping project to put those all together. For the illicit discharge detection and elimination piece, we have a robust program in place already. There wasn't a whole lot of new requirements under the latest permit.

It's it continues to be ongoing. They require us to screen 12% of our storm system every year, and we inspect 50% of them every year. So well above the target. For stormwater management for existing development, we have a new appendix 12 in the permit that has lots of different requirements. But how we're meeting that is we have formed a team of internal and external subject matter experts, and we're meeting to discuss how we're gonna meet these goals.

Got a little bit of time on those. And then in addition, every year, we're supposed to provide a list of projects that we plan on, that we're scheduled to fund or implement. So we provide that list of to the to Ecology every year. Okay. Source control for program for existing development.

That was a new requirement under the last permit cycle. We've since ramped that up. It's a robust program, which we do outreach and education to businesses within Bellevue, and there's some required updates to the utilities codes. It looks like we're already our codes already reflect what the new requirements are, but we'll double check and vet them and make sure that our code is in alignment with what Ecology is asking. Ecology They're requires us to do inspections of 20% of all of our identified businesses, and we have about 1,500 sites within this with the program, so it gives us a a requirement to inspect over 300 sites per year.

And operation and maintenance is a well run, program that's been ongoing for a long time. Not a lot of new requirements right away with this one, but there is a new stormwater maintenance manual for Western Washington that was released at the same time this permit was. And we're required to adopt it or equivalent standards by June 2027. Our practice has been to administratively adopt that stormwater manual, and that is our current plan. We just take that and administratively adopt it, and we'll roll that out in a couple of years.

And then just as a a little ending here, some of our accomplishments in 2024 that will be in our compliance report. We've inspected over 10,000 public stormwater facilities. We have cleaned 2,100 public stormwater facilities. We've been inspected 735 private drainage inspect facilities. The highlighted one zero six is a is a very low number.

I think that was from 2023. Our current number is over 300. I that number is still pending, though, for our source control inspections. We completed 220 illicit discharges investigations, and we've completed a multiyear dumpster outreach campaign.

Dumpster outreach campaign? That's a cool one. So Laurie Devereaux, our outreach specialist. If you get a chance, just just go Google it. Dumpster outreach, storm water, something like that, and you'll find it. It was a regional effort that I wanna say there was about 12 cities in it, and and then a whole bunch of cities adopted it as well. So it's become much bigger than it originally started, and now it's on the the statewide storm water site, as an example of a successful behavior campaign, and it's it's it's getting a lot of attention. So it was a good effort. So congrats to Laurie on that.

Yeah. Their slogan was shut the lid.

You said shut the lid.

It's shut the lid. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. Exactly. Alright. So that's a lot of information to cover. I encourage you to look at the the plan, the draft plan that's on the website, and and also reach out with any questions. And anything else to add, Don?

No. We'll take comments from I think I think we take comments from the board first, then we put it out to a for the public hearing. Is that correct? It is correct.

I think

it is correct. Well, let's look at that. Hold on.

I move to open the public hearing.

And provide them to the city and the NPDES coordinator for consideration. After the public hearing is closed, the commission will comment on the draft SWMP plan. Both the public comments and the commission's comments and recommendations will be provided to the NPDES coordinator for consideration to include within the SWMP plan. So with that, Joe, are there any written comments that you received before tonight's public hearing?

There are no written comments. Okay.

Then we're gonna go ahead and start the public comments. As a reminder, comments will be recorded as part of the public record. Comments will be limited to three minutes, unless you're commenting on behalf of an organization, in which case they may be five minutes. I'll ask you to please state your name and your address for the record. And if you're representing an organization, please state the name of the organization, and please state how the organization's position was developed.

Alright. So with that, I believe we do have one person signed up, to speak in this, so you're welcome to come up. Yep.

Early. And I

Please have a seat.

Yep. I am a

resident of the Eastgate community. I've been there over forty years, and I wanna applaud the commission for all the work that you do and the engineering that you do. The report sounds really great. I'm here for more education, not just a complainer, but I wanna learn more about it because I live in a community where there are probably eight to 10 construction projects going on, and I'm really concerned about the stormwater process that goes on with contractors. I'm not the sheriff of my street, but there are two of us that really pay attention to the stormwater management.

And so, periodically, I do call in and say, I think that we need a little more surveillance out here because there are things that the community cannot clean, cannot access. But I I applaud you for public outreach and education, and I've been involved in construction for a number of years. So I'm taking another look at how well you guys do and, you know, certainly wanna be an advocate for what you do. Thank you.

Thank you. Alright. That's the only person that has signed in on our sign in sheet to speak. Is there anyone else in the audience who would like to comment? And if you're joining this meeting by Zoom, please press the raise hand button. Or if you're joining by phone, please press the 9 to initiate the raise hand function.

None by Zoom and none by on the phone.

By phone. Okay. If that is the case, then the Environmental Services Commission will be forwarding a summary of the public comments provided to the city council for their review and consideration. Thanks, everyone, for coming and providing your comments. May I have a motion to close the public hearing?

I move to close the public hearing.

Thank you. And may I have a second? Thank you. We're concluding the public hearing portion. The time is 07:40. So with that, I know we didn't have a discussion yet, so now we'll open it up for commissioners to discuss and or ask questions on the didn't plan.

Yeah. I have a question. Don, you mentioned there's regional collaboration on certain efforts. And my question was, are all the other cities that border Bellevue, are they all on the same cycle, kind of doing the same things? It's not you know? And I'm just thinking, you know, rain doesn't just fall within sea jurisdictions. Right? It just falls all over the place. So, you know, if we're trying to do something according to our permit, you know, and Renton doesn't have to or Redmond doesn't have to quite yet, Just I'm just kinda curious about how the coordination efforts go with other jurisdictions.

So it's a Western Washington permit. So it's the same permit for all the cities, exact same timelines. We have a two groups locally. So we have what we call the NPDS Eastsiders group, is which us and our real near neighbors. So Redmond, Kirkland, Brent, come to that. We do that about once every other month to get together and talk about how we collaborate. And then there's a larger central NPDS coordinators group that's the Greater Puget Sound area, and that meets quarterly and with a with a similar but much larger discussion.

I had a question on the I think it was the MS four inspections. I think it said, like, the target was 11 or 12% inspections each year, and Bellevue's hovering around 50%. Is that, like, is Bellevue an outlier for that? Do you know what other

It's just the tactics

we take. So our operations and maintenance section is required to inspect half, roughly half of the drainage system. And so we have about 25,000 structures out there. So they they inspect a little over 12,000. In the section in that list discharge section, it it says you have to do 12%. But because we're out there looking at it already, one of our inspection checkboxes is do you see an illicit discharge? And we train all our staff on what that looks

like. Thank you.

Other questions? Any commissioners? No. I have one follow-up question, from maybe either last year or two years ago. I remember one of the earliest slides talked about us being a phase two permit based on a really old census.

Yep.

And we did have an updated census. I'm curious if we have moved categories given the growth in Bellevue.

No. So Ecology has no intention of of changing the the the phasing number based on the census. What Ecology is doing is slowly merging the two permits together. So, eventually, we will have the same requirements that Seattle, King County have because they're the phase one, they'll just be one permit.

That sounds bad for us. Okay. That was my only question. If there's no more questions, then thank you very much.

Thank you. Appreciate it. Alright.

Joe, I guess now it's time to review the commission calendar.

Yes. So let's go over the ESC calendar first. In April, we'll be looking at, the year end financial report for 2024. The books are closed, and so we'll have an update there. I suspect we'll have another topic in April. Wanna make sure we have enough, topics for that meeting. And then May, solid waste long term disposal planning. It's a status update by King County, SWD. We're making that. As well as so you heard Justice earlier tonight.

He was looking at May to come back. So he's as you know, these calendars are tentative. Yeah. We'll see where that goes, because that will feed into June as we start to think about in the off budget development year, we do sometimes split up the CIP and the O and M field tours. We've done that a few times, and then, in other years, it's they're combined just for expediency.

So we'll see where that goes, but I would consider a couple of these a little bit fuzzy on the calendaring. And then I'm I'm gonna get you through, July, draft watershed management plan. Don mentioned them earlier as one of our bodies that works on the NPS permit. The team that does that work is a part of that. So that could move as well.

And then the election of the chair and the vice chair, as you probably know, Vanya is, coming off at the May. And so, the timing of the election of the chair and the vice chair, is TBD. It it it could be on the field trip. I'm I'm being a bit metaphorical there, but it could be we do that before we head out on that field trip. So we'll see where that goes. I won't go any further than that. You've heard about the system plans that are coming up. And then in in on the on the council calendar, it's been a busy year already. February was busy. Got some work done there on on, ordinances.

Then, in March next week, timely, NPS on call settlement removal and cleaning services contract. That's an on call that allows us to meet a lot of those NPS requirements where we would do a lot of our video inspection and cleaning as part of that. Kayenta system mods, that is a a maintenance type of a contract on our billing system. Also, we'll probably get a few system upgrades as we do that work. And then the the chip grant process on the Terrapin Bellevue projects, that's connecting housing and infrastructure.

I'll get my acronym mixed up, but that is the one where we we work with a developer and the state, Chip Grant, to fund some of the utilities that go to support that housing project. It's a a very, very good, program. And then we get more and more into more capital projects. So I'll just leave it at that. Busy year going on. Any questions?

Nope. Okay. Well, with that, we're at the end of our agenda, so, let's close it out. May I have a motion to adjourn the meeting? You. And a second? Thank you. Alright. Meeting is adjourned at 07:47PM. Thank you.