Environmental Services Commission - Regular Meeting

Good evening. It's 06:30, and I'm calling the June 5 Environmental Services Commission meeting to order. First, we'll do a roll call. Commissioner DuPertis? Thank you. Commissioner Letterman? Present. Commissioner Laxon?

Present.

Thank you. Commissioner Margolis is absent. And commissioner Hainosh? Thank you. Good evening. Welcome to the June 5 Environmental Services Commission meeting. I am looking first for an approval of the agenda. So are there any changes or modifications to the agenda?

I move to change the order of the agenda and have the election of the ESC chair and vice chair be last.

Okay. Are there any objections to approving the agenda as amended by commissioner Laxon? No? Okay. Hearing no objections, the agenda is amended as motioned with the changes of moving the elections to the third item under new business. K. Next, we will move to oral and written communications. Oral and written communications are now open. Remember that there is a three minute time limit per person and thirty minutes total per meeting. Public comment shall be limited to matters relating to City of Bellevue government and to the subject matters encompassed within the powers and duties of the commission.

Persons participating in commission meetings must not engage in speech or conduct that disrupts, disturbs, or otherwise impedes the orderly conduct of any meeting. Disruptions may include and are not limited to failure of a speaker to comply with the commission bylaws concerning public comments. In compliance with Washington state campaign laws regarding the use of public facilities during elections, no speaker may support or oppose a ballot measure or support or oppose a candidate for an election, which includes their own campaign. Any speaker who begins discussing topics of this nature will be asked to stop. Joe, are there any written communications?

There are no written communications.

Right. I see we have one person registered for oral communications, mister Zimmerman.

Thank you very much. I appreciate it. Yeah. What are doing, Jim? Because you show my ass. You show old people ass. Yeah. Nazi think it's exactly what they say so too. Many times before. Yep. Why are you doing this? What is no one civilized city in a state doing this? Nobody know. I will explain to you why you're doing this. Yeah.

No problem. My dirty damn Nazi, Gestapo, fascist pig. My name Alex Zimmerman. I support Trump from beginning. I have 5,000 times speaking consul chamber from Tacoma to Everett. I have six thousand day of trespass. In Bellevue, prosecute me five times, a Nazi pig. First, what is I wanna speak about is absolutely duotic situation. You are talking about this for many years. Are you freaking off the generativity? Show us asses? Where you gonna show us faces? Where is problem? I spoke with manager city. Doesn't time.

She don't do nothing. Guys, you understand about your talking? You acting like a you acting like a Nazi pig. You are. It's number one. Number two. So for last few meeting, the most 25 people, one speak in council chamber. Emery Robinson cut cut this. You understand? Cut this. 10 people, thirty minute. This right now situation very critical because we have right now time for election. So when 25 people want speaking, she cut this. It's totally cut us right for honest election. Is this exactly Trump talking for many year?

And I talking about this election rigor. Do you know what this means? It's not honest election. It's number one. And number two, they don't give chance speak because we have freedom of speech. Guy, you understand who you are. You unique. I never see I spoken dozen city. I never see like this before. It's only in Bellevue. There's nothing surprise me. So people in Bellevue can be in console position for thirty five years Olympic champion. Guys, make me sick so you freaking all are the generative, the ideology. Very quiet. Why quiet?

You don't understand what is I'm talking? You don't understand? It's exactly what is I'm talking about. So you freaking acting like a Nazi pig. Yeah. You support. You commissioner government cannot ever control you, but people who care control you totally. So when you are zombie or slave, are the generativnic idiots, this is a normal. This is exactly what's happened in Bellevue. We were Trump. We were new American revolution. Stand up. Stop this Nazi pig. Thank you very much. And stop showing us asses. You absolutely. Would.

Right. That's all the registered old communications. Otherwise, would anyone else in the audience like to speak? And if you are dialing in remotely, please use the raise your hand feature in Zoom. Or if you're joining via the phone, press 9. None remotely. No one remote, and no one in the audience is raising their hands. So, that will conclude our our oral and written communication, and that's a very nice feature having the timer on the screen. So great job there. Council member Lee is not here today, so there will be no city council update. Are there any other community council board or commission updates, Joe?

No. Can you swap that? Get the screen on to the to the other. Just a touch note. We had a water main break over at 1 48th in Northeast 20th. You probably saw on the news. Really good collaboration between Redmond and Bellevue getting that water main restored. The the road is pretty beat up right there. 12 inch cast iron water main as I recall. 10 inch. Okay. And so I'm sorry?

A 10 inch AC.

You're right. 10 inch AC. So what we're doing out there is, we're gonna work in collaboration with Redmond and, try to get all of that old AC pipe in that intersection replaced before we spend a lot of effort to repave the road in that intersection. So that's if you notice it, it's it's taken a while to get it repaved. There's a lot of work going on under this under the road, if you will, under the scenes. So that's the goal there. But good work by everybody to get it back online.

Thanks for that update, Joe. So that concludes all the community council board commission and staff reports. The next item on the agenda is approval of the minutes. So we are approving the May 1 meeting minutes. May I have a motion to approve or any changes or modifications?

I move to approve the May minutes. Thank you.

Second. Thank you.

Minutes are approved, and there are no unfinished business from the last meeting. So we're gonna move on to the new business. The first item is sustainable Bellevue ESI plan update.

Alrighty. Can everyone hear me alright? Okay. Thank you, commissioners, for having me. It's a pleasure to be with you tonight talking about the sustainable Bellevue plan update. My name is Justice Stewart. I am the sustainability program manager for the city of Bellevue, work in the community development department, and we're part of the planning division there. I'll note that this presentation is from information only. We are interested in your input, your feedback, so so we'd love to take your questions. And if there's any discussion about the material we present tonight, we would love to hear it.

There is no direction or other official action needed on this plan from this commission. Our objectives, this evening are to provide you with a general update on, where we are in the plan update process, the timeline, the engagement that we've conducted to date, and, what's up next, in terms of the plan update. And then, I think for the bulk of the time, as I said, we're really interested in hearing your feedback on, the draft strategies and actions that are currently under consideration that are relevant to the work of this commission. And the agenda mirrors those objectives. We'll walk through progress and timeline first, touch on engagement conducted to date.

We'll talk a little bit about some upcoming engagement opportunities, and activities, and then we'll dive into the more, material plan update topics, some draft strategies and actions, in three different areas. We're gonna be talking about, the materials and waste category, natural systems category, a few items there, and then we're gonna talk a little bit about, some of the climate resilience topics as well, which, you know, some obvious intersections there with, some infrastructure interests and with the natural systems area as well. So, to begin just with a reminder, sort of an update, we were last, in front of this commission on March 6, and, we presented on the, first phase of work for this plan update. So we talked about the goals and priorities of the plan update. We talked about some of the targets that we've set, within 2030 and 2050 time frame.

I will note here because it's relevant, that we're gonna be focused, as I am representing, the community development side of this work, the community facing actions and strategies. That's, what we're gonna be talking mostly about. So if you have questions about some of the, applications of this plan for municipal operations, that is, run out of our finance and asset management department. Obviously, we're working very closely with them on the plan update, but it's a different body of work. So I'm happy to take those questions if I can't answer them, which I probably can't, but I'll do my best.

But we can certainly bring them over to our colleagues and fam and get answers for you. And and they have a different set of goals, of, sorry, of of target dates. We look at, 2030 and 2050 as sort of our two main, target years, and they look at 2030 and 2040. And, that just has to do with the city trying to, lead by example and, hit our targets and our deadlines, and our you know, those those milestones that we're trying to set for the whole community to hit them in city operations first. So we have these five focus areas.

As I mentioned, we're gonna be focused on, the climate resilience aspect of climate change, natural systems, and materials and waste. And, yeah, this is the five year update for this plan. So the the update will be done, by the end of this year on its current timeline and, will then be in effect, and we will be working to implement it 2026 through 2030. So just to touch briefly on, the goals for the plan update, particularly as they relate to, again, these areas. Achieving zero waste remains the, 2050 target.

I should note these are the 2050 targets, the long term targets for this plan, in materials and waste. Continuing to realize the city's vision as a as a city and a park, stream health, and water conservation falling out of the natural systems, and then, the climate resilience of the community at large and, also of the city's critical infrastructure. So I touched on this briefly already. The plan update was initiated by council last October. It'll be done this year in three phases.

So we are in the midst of the second phase right now. We are hard at work, developing those strategies and actions. We'll talk a little bit about what that process looks like. You you, of course, are a critical part of that process, and we will have that part of the process wrapped up. This is June.

We'll probably, there's some overlap between the phases here, so we'll probably have that wrapped up in July. But we will also be beginning to draft the plan, in parallel to that. And and that drafting of the plan will run all the way through the presentation of the draft plan to council, which is currently scheduled for early October, and then, the expected plan adoption by council in November. We presented this slide, last time we were here. So just as a reminder, one of the things that we sought to do with this plan update was to really broaden the reach of the community engagement that we were doing.

This, as I'm sure you know, is always a consideration that that we bring to all of

our

projects. We are always looking for ways to try to extend our reach further into the community, to reach people we haven't heard from before, to let more people in the community know about the work we do. Bellevue is such an extraordinarily diverse community that, you know, there there are innumerable ways, including ones I'm sure we haven't thought of, to to reach out to the community and to communicate and to get people's feedback. So, one of the key things that we did differently with this plan update, differently than we have done in the past was we engaged two community based organizations, Eastside For All and the Little Masters Club. And through those two organizations, they really helped to work with the communities that they serve to really broaden the reach.

And we've had some really great activities and interactions with those groups. We've also had a great relationship throughout this plan update with the Bellevue School District, getting a lot of students involved and getting a lot of youth voices, in terms of providing input for the plan update. So on one side, we, ex really extended our the reach of our engagement and, heard from a lot of different people, than we have previously. And then we also, of course, are are also working with institutional stakeholders. We have a sustainability leaders group that is formed of, environmental advocacy organizations within Bellevue, business interests within Bellevue, large businesses, small businesses, the development community.

So a really broad spectrum, of groups. The the chamber, the Downtown Bugby Association, the school district are all also members of that sustainability leaders group. So we have a lot of different organizational voices, represented there as well. And I'll just touch briefly on this. We have a whole outreach summary report that's available.

So, I have clearly distilled this down significantly for this presentation. We heard a lot of things from the community. But two of the ones that really rose to the forefront that I wanted to share are, we had a very high percentage, I believe it's around 80%, of, people that we heard from in in response to a survey and and, when we're out tabling in the community or, we had a town hall event. So all the different ways that we've been gathering information from the community and and through our, our CBO partners as well. People understand that climate change is here, and it's happening.

People believe that they have felt the effects of it in Bellevue already, in terms of heat events and storm events, and, you know, heavy, historically heavy precipitation events and and things of this nature. So, people are really aware of it. They're really concerned about it. And the other thing that we heard, with a surprisingly high proportion of people, who told us that this is a really a pry high priority for them, and they believe it should be a very high priority for the city. And they believe that, you know, things requiring significant investment, are gonna need to be done and should be done by the city.

Obviously, once you get into the specifics, you know, people's opinions get very diverse and nuanced, in terms of prioritizing, you know, specific actions. That's the part of the plan update that we're working through right now. But the idea that the city should should make significant investment in making the community and our infrastructure more resilient to climate impacts and to reducing emissions, was a was a large majority of people that we talked to. This is also, from last time, so I just wanted to share this again, just as a reminder. When we presented on goals, metrics, and targets, we presented that, we had added a goal to the, or or a metric rather, for the zero waste goal.

For materials management, we also, had added a couple of metrics, different ways of looking at or a different way of looking at, stream health, new way of measuring that, and, setting some new targets for 2050 and for 2030 and then a a water use goal as well. We do not have the, targets finalized quite yet, but we do have our approach at least for determining, what those twenty fifty and twenty thirty targets should be for water conservation, which is essentially to align with the Cascade Water Alliance's regional targets for water savings and then determine what the proportional share of that for Bellevue is. So that is that's the current approach, for determining those. Alright. And then, we're gonna move into draft strategies and actions.

Apologies if I just say draft over and over and over again, but I do wanna let everyone, know, make it clear, that these are actually, under development right now as we speak. And as I said, we'll I'll I'll go through very briefly sort of what that process look like, which is that we, have a consultant who's supporting this work with, the analytical side. So, they're looking at best practice, for sustainability planning, climate planning, but they're also looking at what are the high impact actions, what are the things that are really going to move the needle in terms of reducing our emissions or achieving some of our other targets, making the community more resilient. So they're doing the evaluative work and generated an initial list of high impact actions for us to work with. We some of that was based on information that they had gotten from us as staff, the subject matter experts on the sustainability team itself.

We also, you know, have been, then working with the subject matter experts across the city, all of our all of our colleagues, to discuss those actions, to, you know, amend them, work work on the wording, see if there is anything missing. So all of that vetting process and that discussion, the the real nitty gritty of working through, what the actions that this plan ultimately proposes, you know, the the work that we propose to undertake for the next five years, what that all looks like. So that's underway right now. We've had a lot of those conversations. There are a few more to have.

Those conversations also happen, you know, at the level of division directors. Eventually, we'll do department briefings and be sharing it with department directors and getting input. Your role as as the boards and commissions to inform this work are also very important. So we take all of this into consideration. All of this helps to really shape what the final product is gonna look like in terms of the plan update.

And when we focus on high impact actions, these are the three lenses that we use. So if there's substantial near term reduction in emissions, that's sort of the looking at the 2030 target. If if this is an action that we can implement quickly or if we're already implementing it and we're just suggesting perhaps scaling it up, you know, increasing its reach, then those are sort of the first category. The second category are things that are gonna take longer than twenty thirty to show up in the data, essentially. So there are things that we propose with longer timelines.

They maybe involve, capital project, you know, or, you know, capital, which is necessarily long term, especially if we're talking about major infrastructure, utilities infrastructure, transportation infrastructure, with long planning and implementation timelines. We also may be talking about things that are going to take a long time to work through the details with stakeholder input and with all of the internal stakeholders to the city as well as external stakeholders. So there are some things that are gonna take a lot of time to to sort of hash out what exactly the action wants to look like, what the parameters of it are going to be, working out the details, in other words. So the action in the plan, since this is gonna be adopted this year for this second category, essentially says, here's what we're gonna do in the next five years to lay this foundation because there's a lot more work that we're gonna need to do. So we wouldn't expect the results of those actions to show up in the data by 2030, for example, but we would expect them to really help us get onto that trajectory, onto that pathway to hit the 2050 target.

So there's one near term category, a longer term category, and then the third category is just meaningfully enhancing resilience. That's the resilience of the community, resilience of our infrastructure, and resilience of of our natural systems. Are sort of the three categories of resilience that we look at. And then to dive in sorry. I didn't realize this was gonna read quite so small on the screen.

So please let me know if you need any of these read out. For materials and waste, so the the way this is structured, hopefully, is fairly intuitive. We would like it to be intuitive is that the strategy level is a bit broader and more categorical, and then we have some slightly more specific actions, within that. So under the materials and waste, focus area, We have, waste diversion, continuing the city's efforts to divert as much waste as possible from landfill. So, that really focuses on, recycling, existing recycling programs, and also compost.

The state has a new organics management law, and so, you know, it was not our view developing these actions that the city necessarily needed to recreate any reg new regulations or requirements around composting, but rather to look at how can we support residents and local businesses, and particularly the the really challenging areas of commercial buildings and multifamily buildings where we have seen, you know, lower rates for recycling and and where a lot of these buildings, if they're if they're not new, may not have the space for composting facilities and things like that. So there's a lot of support that we think that the city can offer to help people comply with this law and to help continue to raise those those diversion rates. The second strategy is about prioritizing zero waste opportunities, and there's a couple here, that we thought might be of particular interest, to this commission. And so the first is, incorporating sustainability requirements, extended producer responsibility requirements. That's another recently passed state law, and zero waste requirements into the future solid waste contract.

So, this contract is, as you are well aware, and probably know much more about it than I do, coming up in 2028. And so staff are already beginning to work on, you know, thinking through, the ways in which that contract might might wanna, change from the previous contract, how it might wanna be written before the RFP is issued. And so, we're working, you know, closely with them to think through, within the purview of, you know, a solid waste contract and what, you know, utility rates can be spent on and and being cognizant, of those rates and and where they get set, you know, in terms of cost, how we might be able to work with, whoever ends up getting that contract to to have have the language of that contract and the negotiation of that contract with with whoever ultimately ends up winning that contract include support for increased diversion, for supporting the extended producer responsibility law, and really helping to drive the city towards our our zero waste target. So that's a pretty big one. And then this is one of those, where the action is to is to conduct the evaluation rather than to do the thing.

We're not, again, necessarily sure that creating a new deconstruction policy at the city of Bellevue level rather than working, like, with King County, for example, on their deconstruction policies, is necessarily the right move. So what we would like to propose with this plan is, to to do that evaluation and work with stakeholders and see if it makes sense for the city to have its own deconstruction policy. And and that's targeting construction and demolition waste, specifically the the demolition side of construction, demolition waste.

We pause just for a second in case there's questions?

Yes. I think it would be best to take questions. If they can't wait, I'm happy to take questions as we go since we're gonna jump to a new focus area after this. Yeah. So alright. Any questions?

Just can you tell us about that new organics management law?

Oh, I can tell you a little bit about it. Okay. There are other people that I would should probably defer to who know much more about it than I do. And I I would be happy if there are again, if there are specific questions, I I can certainly work with John Geyer, for example, or others.

Yeah. And it's something I had not heard about before. So in general, you know, what is what are we talking about here?

So I can tell you a few components of it that I know are that of the things that it requires now is that space be provided for three way streams, which was not the case before. So I I mentioned space before. There because there were no space requirements, there are a lot of buildings that have trash facilities, and they have recycling facilities. And they don't have any space for organics, and that actually prevents them from adding an organics diversion, you know, to to their building, which means that the tenants or the residents actually can't do that, within the building or, you know, challenges that I'm I'm sure you're well aware of where things get sort of added, in in places where there isn't actually a space within the building designed for it, and there ends up being conflicts, you know, with traffic flow or other other things. So so space is is a big one.

It so it it my understanding, again, not my area of expertise, is that it requires organics collection. It requires that buildings provide the space for that organic collection for three separate waste streams that and that those be, you know, equally accessible, essentially. And besides those two things, if there are other elements to it, I would have to find out and get back to you. So

Are there other cities that have their own deconstruction policies that you can evaluate, or is this kind of, like, first of its kind for a region?

I I believe it would be the first of its kind on the East Side. That's it's a question that I would wanna verify. I don't know that for sure, but I'm not familiar with any. So King County has been working on deconstruction policy for quite a while. They've been working with the city of Seattle on deconstruction policy.

And one of the one of the main issues with this is that there is not a there's not a robust secondary market at the moment. So you can require deconstruction. You can require that the materials be preserved so that they could be reused. But the, building materials reuse market, doesn't really exist at the moment, and there are some very practical considerations like space. If you're, you you know, requiring people to save, you know, facade materials, siding, windows, you know, all these kinds of things, it takes an enormous amount of space, obviously, to to store these things.

So that's something that, city of Seattle and King County have been working on, and it's something that I know, some of the folks at the city of Bellevue have been really interested in. So there have been conversations around it, but I'm not aware of any other cities, at least on the East Side, that actually have their own separate deconstruction policy. Thank you.

More questions?

Can you give me a layman's explanation of extended producer responsibility? Sure. Happy to. So extended producer responsibility is is the idea that all of the burden should not be placed on the consumer to keep waste out of the landfill. So extended producer responsibility, the idea behind that is to place more responsibility on businesses that are providing producing goods to actually have to so the the sort of layman's term that I think most people are familiar with is take back programs.

So a take back program is an example of extended producer responsibility where, you know, it may be that after you're done using a product, you actually, you know, send the container, the packaging, whatever it might be, back to that company, and they're actually responsible for either reusing it or recycling it or taking care of it. So the idea is that is to shift, not all, obviously, but some of the responsibility for materials diversion back up to the companies that are that are producing the goods in the first place with the idea, which has proven out in in places where this has been done, that in order to keep costs low, those businesses will often change the way that they produce materials. So

Thanks. And then last question for me. Is there any thought of emphasizing e waste in that? I don't know if in that strategy, anywhere in that strategy since e waste is obviously, we use a lot of electronics, and they get outdated every quite often.

Yeah. Thank you. I know that e waste is, I think, one of the major focus points for extended producer responsibilities specifically, but we have not talked about calling out e waste specifically, within the contract, for example, or or maybe identifying a separate action or something. So I've made a note here to to follow-up on that. That is a really, really important one, yeah, because these things turn over so quickly and contain a lot of toxic materials as well. So there has been a a pretty big focus on food in terms of organics management just because food waste is significant contributor, of of methane, so greenhouse gas emissions. So

Alright. Thank you.

Thank you. Alright. I'm gonna move on to the natural systems here. And these, I think, are things that this, commission will be very familiar with. I'm gonna move through them a little more quickly. The first strategy has to do with low impact design, low impact development. So low impact development. I will take note of that, correction. And, anyway, green storm water infrastructure. We're familiar with the city's current requirements.

We know that the MPDES code that we're required to meet. And so the action here is to think through whether there might be additional code requirements or land use incentives or potentially both to help to increase the amount of low impact development that we see in new development and redevelopment, to to expand, green water green stormwater infrastructure, to to more of the city and and so that it takes up a higher proportion than it currently does of the overall stormwater system.

What what do you mean by low impact development here? Is that

So this is just a green storm water infrastructure. It can be bioswales, other bioretention. So So it it's primarily developer kinds of initiatives? Yes. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. This is the hence, the the focus on new development and redevelopment Okay. Here, yeah, is that, yeah, this this tends to be implemented when the the land use changes when a development comes in. Yeah. Or when when streets and sidewalks get torn up.

As as opposed to municipal operations we've talked about.

Correct. Okay. That's right. Yeah. We know that the stormwater capital investment projects, retrofits projects, that that that list already exists of projects that have already been identified and already been prioritized. And so having an action, to focus on implementation of that, which obviously, requires funding to do. So that's part of that conversation. And then for reducing water use across the community, again, I mentioned tying this in terms of the targets to Cascade Water Alliance, regional targets and determining what Bellevue to share if that would be. One piece of this is developing new water storage systems. This is actually in the comprehensive plan, as you're probably aware.

And so this is one of those places where you can start to see that there's real overlap between, you know, the natural systems actions that are being proposed and climate resilience. So, this is one that could probably have gone in in either category, because this is a way that, you know, we can help to, reduce water use by storing water, but it also, you know, puts water supply a little closer to home, which could be very important, for, for the overall resilience of the community. And then, accelerating the uptake of, low water and sustainable landscaping practices. So we know the Cascade Water Alliance is working on a, like, lawn conversion program, for example. Rain gardens are another potential part of this.

So, again, exactly what this wants to look like is not determined, but the action would be to, determine what the city's role is in sort of helping to accelerate, landscapes that use less water.

I'm sorry. This is not intuitive for me, but how does new water storage systems reduce water use?

So new water storage system, this is a good question. Essentially, it would be, increasing the overall amount of storage, which would then be decreasing extraction at times of heavy use, for example. So working, I have the the best metaphor I can come up with is a little bit like a battery. So, storing water when there is a lot of water, for use when there's not a lot of water so that the drawdown is not necessarily happening at the thirstiest times of the year or or rather where it's being drawn from changes to a source that's been, that's been stored.

So it's not really reducing use.

Correct. It's not necessarily reducing overall use. It's reducing sort of use, from a source perspective. Yeah. Yeah. It's a good point. We could probably work on that language a little bit to make that clear. Any other questions about these ones? Okay. Finally, wanna touch on the climate resilience ones.

So, again, we have the, community and infrastructure, the two, major ones here. We also have the third category for these, as I mentioned, which is the resilience of natural systems. There's quite a bit of overlap. There'd be some things here that I think this commission, could potentially be interested in. I believe that the natural systems ones are being presented, however, to the parks board.

So, you know, these are distinctions that make sense, but they are admittedly slightly artificial because there's so much overlap between the things that we're proposing here, which is intentional. So in terms of enhancing the Bellevue community's resilience, you know, an emphasis on communications tools, we already have good communications tools in our emergency management and our fire and emergency services departments. And so this is really leveraging those to focus on climate disasters and climate impacts specifically. Resilience hubs. I believe we talked a little bit about this last time, but a resilience hub is the idea is that you take something that functions as a community center.

It's already a trusted space. It's already a known space. It can be a school. It can be a religious institution. It can be a library, places like this where people are or one of our many community centers, a place that people are already familiar with and already go, and know to go, and may already be in some kind of communication with, whether that's, emails, you know, or text alerts or anything else that they that they receive that they actually read, and that those places be equipped to serve, in addition to serving the community with the programming that they do on a day to day basis, that they also be equipped to serve in times of, again, climate emergencies or climate impacts.

So having masks, for example, during wildfire smoke events, being able to hand out air filters that people can take and put in their homes, people that don't have air filtration in their homes, for example, things of that nature. The preparedness and response training, for city staff and partner programs, goes along, with that first one. And then, considering a community level wildfire protection plan. This is one where, again, the action really would be to evaluate whether it it is makes the most sense to do this at the city of Bellevue level. The state looks at already looks at wildfire protection, and King County is working on a wildfire protection plan.

So this may be, end up being an action that is a little more about, partnership and making sure that that information gets really, trued to, the reality on the ground, you know, which we could do through, partnership with with the fire department, for example. And then finally, the infrastructure resilience. So low or no emissions backup power and energy storage. So this is a really, really critical one. We learned a lot during the bomb cyclone event last winter, and we have a lot of conversations as well about the energy grid.

And, you know, as we push to electrify buildings and we push to electrify vehicles, we push to electrify everything for the purpose of reducing greenhouse gas emissions as well as we are still a rapidly growing city, and we put a lot of strain on the electricity grid. And so, thinking through how we can continue to add, backup power and continue to add energy storage that is not fossil fuel, that's not a natural gas generator, essentially, in order to provide in order to provide that redundancy and resiliency, so that if the grid goes down or if the power goes out somewhere, we don't, you know, lose our whole capacity to respond, which is obviously not something that we would do. But as we're looking to get off of natural gas, this is a really critical one. And then finally, just upgrading facilities. This is on the municipal operations side as well, if it's a similar one, and this would be really for community facing facilities, and helping critical facilities with upgrades for wildfire smoke to to protect the people inside.

So that was a lot of material. We just ran through. I'll take any questions about this one.

Yep. Any questions from the commissioners on this slide? Alright. I'm gonna ask a question then. So two questions. One is wildfire protection plan. Can you be a little bit more specific on what that entails? Is that going out and reducing brush and fuel for wildfires, or is because we're so far west that doesn't it's a different thing for us? I'd love to know what that is.

Yeah. Yeah, this is primarily focused on activities around communities that are in the wildland urban interface, the WUI as it's called. So that would be a lot of our communities that are in areas that are have very high tree canopy. So up against the parks in the, Northwest, for example, up by Northwest and Bridal Trails, but also communities to the South where it's especially very hilly, by Cougar Mountain, for example. So these these are areas where, you know, for the most part, Bellevue is sufficiently urbanized that we don't think about wildfire being a risk within the city itself.

Brush fire, certainly, those do happen in Bellevue. And there is a whole, you know, brush fire, alert and response program, you know, within the fire department to stay on top of that. So, the but the, wildfire danger, as things get hotter and drier, increases specifically at that wildland urban interface, and there are things that people can do to protect their homes and to protect structures. And so a lot of it is about, just educating and helping people understand sort of what they can do, to keep their themselves and and, you know, their homes and and buildings, protected on the off chance that a fire were to make it all the way, you know, that far in in towards an urban area, which is unlikely, but certainly possible. Yep.

Okay. And Thank you.

The fire department is doing at least two public outreach events this month about wildfire protection for for homeowners and residents.

Yep.

Good. And then my second question is it looks like the folks the proactive focus for both these strategies is on wildfire. And I guess you mentioned the one of the action items on the bottom there on infrastructure on backup power was partially a result of the learnings from the bomb cyclone that we had. I'm curious because the bomb cyclone had nothing to do with wildfire. Yep.

But it had to do with a lot of trees being blown down. And as you mentioned, Bellevue is got a lot of tree canopy, and that's one of the things that we're very proud of, and we have a certain minimum percentage. But, clearly, we had a lot of trees that fell. And are this I feel like it's missing something here as far as not wildfire related, but still protecting ourselves from trees that are susceptible to being blown down because climate, you know, hazards doesn't just limit to to wildfire. Obviously, it it relates to bomb cyclones as well and windstorms. Yep. That makes any sense.

It does. Yeah. And this is an area where some of the complexities of where the work that we're doing overlaps in ways that so this is a great comment because this is an example of a place where we will need to do a really good job within the plan to make sure that we are drawing some of these connecting threads, together if they don't necessarily, show up in the same place. So one of the places that you would see actually, part of our our response to that within the plan update is actually in the buildings and energy focus area, where we talk about energy redundancy as well. So we we talk about it here from the perspective of emergency power and backup power and making sure that those systems exist particularly for critical facilities as a resilience action.

Within the buildings and energy focus area, we talk about, continuing to support and build out, this solar power plus electricity, plus storage, local storage, in particular, plus electric vehicles. All of these become a new system, essentially, And there is a concept of having these systems exist in sort of a larger than the house, but smaller maybe than the whole neighborhood area, which is called microgrid. And the idea is that you start to build some redundancy in the grid overall, which is one of the things we saw in the bomb cyclone, right, is as trees come down and you're absolutely right that we're not proposing any solutions that involve having less trees in value. So, you know, as trees come down, as power gets knocked out in one place, having redundant systems where people can provide power on this sort of more local level at least limits the extent of those kinds of blackouts and means that more people can shelter at home rather than having to go someplace else. And it means that our emergency responders and PSC as well can really focus on those who did boost power first and foremost and sort of work outward from there.

So building out the redundancies of of the electrical power system is an important part of electrifying everything. Yeah. And and and addresses, frankly, a a point of vulnerability that's already there now.

I guess, just to follow-up on that, I mean, I hear what you're saying, but that still focuses on power and energy. And what I'm guess I'm more interested in is if we're looking at also and maybe this is taboo to say, but it is looking at the tree health within the population, at least trees near residences, communities. And if they are, you know, dead trees, diseased trees, high likelihood of falling over, you know, do we have any kind of ordinances? Or if it's on public land, do we have ways to go evaluate and reduce the risk to the community Mhmm. Of this type of climate hazard? Yep. So let's leave it at that.

Yeah. One of the actions that we're discussing with parks, does have to do actually with staff capacity, that is specifically dedicated to things like tree health and, you know, right of way trees, which are often right up against, you know, where our, power lines and and, you know, communications lines and so forth are running. So, you know, the extent to which that would mitigate that risk, I I couldn't say, you know, off the top of my head, but that is another one of the ones that we're looking at is, addressing the tree health question specifically. Yeah. But it's are there ways that we can kind of keep a little more of an eye on that and and address those things before the storm season comes, know, the winter comes?

Any other questions from any commissioners?

I had some on sort of the the broader questions. I don't know. Is this the last slide before Yeah.

Or I think I actually might have some oh, I just have a little the little next step slide. We can hit that last. Here we go. So

Okay. Yeah. You meant well, first of all, I wanna just say, I'm really glad to hear that you are engaging, especially the with the school districts and the the younger residents of the city. And I'm wondering if you've been in touch with our youth link group or if they're involved in it because they seem like natural leaders that really would be great to have them evolve. So good good tip.

Yep. Okay. And then the second point that was a little intriguing to me was that your feedback said that people were interested in okay. Maybe, you know, even if it it meant paying for more strategies, that sort of thing, they'd be open to it. So outside of utilities, which of course we are enterprise fund based, that sort of thing, outside of that, what other options maybe would you folks be looking at in terms of like, is there a climate fee or those kinds of things? Just curious if that has you've started those discussions.

Yes, we have started those discussions. I'd love to have a more satisfying answer for you. But we are actually running a, basically, funding strategy process in parallel to the plan update process where we're where we are looking at this question specifically of you know, if we're proposing all of these things, we're not proposing that the city just pay for everything. It's it's infeasible given the scale of, you know, of what we're looking at. So there have to be other funding strategies.

And so looking at, other funding mechanisms and, where things where those funds might come from to support some of this work is is happening in parallel to this process. So yep. Okay. Yes. Yeah.

Great. Well, I'll just touch on this really quickly, which is to let you know that we are going to be presenting a council on the, high impact strategies in July. And then I already mentioned the draft plan going to council, in early October, and that we are in this process now of, ongoing, you know, public engagement, stakeholder engagement, the staff vetting and and testing process. I did wanna mention that, within our overall, sort of outreach and engagement structure, this touch point with you all is the this is the last board and commission touch point. Essentially, we don't have another round of these presentations scheduled for boards and commissions.

So I just wanted to make sure you knew that in addition to public engagement activities, which, of course, you'd be most welcome, you know, to to attend and participate in, we have an open house coming out that we'll let everyone know about. All of this stuff goes out through our newsletter. So if you if you're not on our newsletter, it's at least a way to kinda find out, what, what events are coming up public events are coming up like Open House. We will have a public comment period. So, you know, again, we would definitely welcome, input there.

Any of our presentations to the council, we'd welcome input there. And and we have a, you know, engaging, Bellevue page, of course, for the plan update, which is another place that you can see when we're gonna be, doing what in terms of in terms of engagement and and where any future opportunities are to to comment on this or provide input. So okay. Thank you very much.

Alright. Thank you. Alright. And then with our amended agenda, the next item is the watershed management plan update.

Good evening, commissioners. Thank you for having us. I'm Erica France. I am the utilities planning, manager. And with me tonight is, Brianna Pierce.

She is, a senior, environmental technician, environmental data scientist. And so, we look forward to talking to you tonight about, watershed planning activities. Tonight's an informational briefing. We're not asking for any decisions, this evening. I'm gonna give you an update on the watershed management planning activities that we've been doing, the plan itself, And then we're gonna touch on some other watershed planning activities that we do here to to restore and keep the health of our watersheds.

You could see on the the figure there, we have some of our largest watersheds identified. Kelsey Creek is essentially in the center of the city and Coal Creek to the south side of the but we're gonna talk a little bit about what what is in a Bellevue watershed. And and I'd say to simplify that, it's just complicated. We have areas in the city where we have natural forested areas that receive rainfall, and then the runoff from that enters our storm water system. So now we have a water shed that's got natural flow, but now it's in our pipe. We carry it for a little while. We discharge it to a stream. Now it's a stream. It's natural again. And then farther on down, that stream gets picked up and is piped again.

And so our our watersheds include both our natural areas and our built environments in some instances. And just as a reminder of of of, one of the drivers of the activities that we're working on right now, so our 2015 storm and surface water system plan, basically identified some strategic initiatives. Two of those initiatives that I've listed here is the open stream condition assessment. And, Brianna won't talk about it, but she's one of the two people that actually conducted that. So she has walked it she has walked, the majority of our streams in our city.

I know that there's almost 80 miles of stream, and so that's not insignificant. And then so, basically, we want to understand what's what's our what's the health out that's out there? What's the current condition? And then, of course, the watershed management plan, its goal is to improve that condition. And so that's important for us to keep in mind as we talk about our watershed planning activities is that our goal is to help in instances where it's highly impacted, not worsen the stream conditions, but in instances where we can make a difference, actually improve the stream health that we have here in Bellevue.

This is a slide you may recall. You may not because it's a lot of detail, but this is a a slide showing the good work that we've done and how we're building on that good work now. And it and it will be, culminating, with the watershed management plan specifically to these things. So you see the open stream conditions assessment. So we we figured out, okay.

So what does it look like out there? And then we we spent some time on what could we do to to help it. So that was the the toolbox, identifying things that we could do to improve our stream health. And then, and then, actually, the toolbox kind of identified, and then we move up the pyramid, and we see that we've actually developed a document, over a 150 pages of the watershed improvement strategies. Actually looking at each one of our watersheds in which we categorized, and and identified some of the critical things that need to happen in that watershed, and that's contained in the watershed improvement strategies.

But, it will be, summarized in the watershed management plan that we are currently, working on. So since we saw you last and talked about the watershed management plan, I wanted to talk a little bit about what we've been doing since. So one of the things that the plan intended to do was to look at service levels, performance targets, and policies. And we we spent quite a bit of time talking with leadership and working with our consultants and other staff, kinda looking at alternatives, getting a little bit into we've actually kind of costed out some of these things. But what we found was when we try to land on something, we realized that when we're just talking about the watershed plan, we're kinda siloed.

And when we talk about, well, what what should we spend? What can we spend? We can't answer that within the watershed management plan. The we we kinda went around and around and around. We just kept coming up against the same walls that we have competing needs.

How do we balance those competing needs? And, we're gonna talk a little bit about it later, but we decided that the stormwater, system plan, the storm and surface water system plan, is the the place in which to consider all of those competing needs, and I will touch on that, a little bit. So we we have the watershed management plan, and we're we're currently, working on the draft of that plan. And since we've kind of pushed off some of that policy work, well, how is this integrated into what we're doing both now in the plan and in the system planning? You'll recall last November, I came and talked to you about our three system plans that we're doing.

I'm gonna just say for a shortness that stormwater, but it's actually the storm and surface waters. But So we have storm water, water, and wastewater. And so we actually this watershed improve or management plan will inform that storm and surface water system plan. In that stormwater system plan, it will recognize the competing needs that we have and and the opportunities that we have. But I wanna I wanna tell you that we are making certain that even though our watershed management plan isn't finished quite yet, it is informing that system plan.

And the good work that we're doing in our watershed health and helping to recover and monitor that, she's gonna talk a little bit about monitoring, It's ongoing. We're we're we're doing good work right now, and I just wanted to point that out. Speaking of the storm and surface water system plan, that has actually already started. We have a consultant on board. This effort will update the 2015 system plan.

This effort's gonna take the majority well, actually, all of '25 and '26. Our goal is to be finished by early twenty seven. And you you may recall on the second slide, I said it's complicated. Of the three system plans, the most uncertainty is in the storm system plan. We have our water system, as you might imagine, our wastewater system is highly regulated.

We, you know, we know what to do. And and and I'm gonna touch on a little bit later, but our public outreach is gonna be commiserate, more involved with the storm plan because there's just more variables. We're dealing with nature. We're dealing with elected activities. So our our water system plan, our wastewater system plan, we're told mostly what we need to do, the metrics we need to hit.

With our watershed management plan, the NPDS touches on it a little bit, but some of those and and Stuart mentioned earlier, some of those environmental recovery efforts, they're not necessarily mandated or required by law. And so there's gonna be a lot of discussion about how do we prioritize that. Is you know, how do we balance those competing needs? And so we're gonna be doing that through our public outreach in the stormwater system plan. Why are we doing a stormwater system plan? Essentially, it's always a good question to ask. Why why are we doing this? Well, you may recall that the city recently adopted the comprehensive plan, the citywide comprehensive plan. Within that, our policy is specific to utilities. I've highlighted four here for you.

But, essentially, it says that we need to manage our system efficiently. We need to plan for growth. We need to plan for replacing what we have, and then we need to look at our plan periodically. And so right now, we're on about a ten year cadence, and that's what we're doing. As a little bit of a reminder of of our last presentation on system planning, this kinda generally describes what we find in a system plan.

Basically, it's a description of our existing system. It's identifying what we need to accommodate future growth. It's looking at our current policies and codes and seeing, are those still the right ones? Do we need to make any changes to that? And then, how do we plan for replacing what we have and installing what we're gonna need to accommodate our future growth? And then how do we operate it? Those all things. So it's like, what do we have? What do we need? How do we take care of it? And how do we pay for it? So the system plan's early in its process. We just given notice to proceed in the preceding months. So we're doing a lot of data gathering right now. We're working on that public outreach plan.

And then we're definitely we're coordinating with the watershed management plan activities to make sure that that baton of environmental stewardship isn't dropped between those two efforts. And this is this is where kind of the rubber meets the road, on those competing need discussion that I talked about. So we're gonna be looking at code and policy recommendations within that system plan, and it's gonna consider the citywide comprehensive plan, make sure that we're in alignment with that. It's gonna look at what did the watershed management plan recommend for any necessary changes to help recover those those watersheds. We're gonna look at our mandates, which are mostly for stormwater come to us through the NPDES permit.

And then I I pulled out low impact development. It was mentioned earlier this evening. We pulled that out because it is a little bit of it's required through in PDES, but it's it's very, it's a subject of interest for our development community. And so we wanna make sure that we pull out and we discuss that, specifically when we're talking about the system plan. So, right now and and what we're going to be working on is determining what's the appropriate level of service for our stormwater plan.

And, again, trying to answer that question, how do we pay for it? And then looking at our current codes and policies, do we need to make any changes? Just to give you, tonight was a light touch. It wasn't intended to be a system plan presentation, but you are scheduled to receive one of those later this fall. It won't be the draft plan because like I said, it's gonna take us about two years, but we will probably start to talk about some of the policies that we are thinking about, and we'll be talking to you about that this fall.

So what are some of the other watershed activities that we are working on currently and have been historically? The one that Brianna's gonna talk to you about is the environmental monitoring program. It's essentially a way in which we can measure future success by understanding what's happening now and and in the past. And then I'm gonna just lightly touch on the National Flood Insurance Program's community rating system. That's something that we do within utilities, and it gives a benefit to, some of our residents. And so I'll touch on that. And with that, I'll pass it over to Brianna.

Yeah. I'll talk about our environmental monitoring program, tell you a little bit about what it is and why we're doing it. So as Eric mentioned, the goal of the watershed management plan was to improve stream health. The overall goal of the environmental monitoring program is to measure and interpret stream health. So a strategic target area, for the council is a high quality built and natural environment, and our streams really span both of those two realms. They're a natural system. They have their own intrinsic value. They're both ecologically and culturally important, very important to our community. And they're also an important part of our stormwater infrastructure. So our stormwater pipes discharge to our streams, and our streams essentially finish the job carrying that stormwater.

And then our open flowing streams will pass through pipes. They'll be open again. They'll go through, culverts. And so it really balances both of these worlds. And just as we need to monitor any of our our built systems, like our drinking water system, we need to monitor and assess our streams to make sure that they maintain good health and that they're resilient systems, especially with the competing pressures of, continued urban development and climate variability.

So Bellevue has a a really long history of stream monitoring, going back at least to the nineteen nineties. We're actually well known in the region, for this work that we do, and that is in large part due to the the effort and legacy left behind by, our former environmental scientist, Kip Paulson. She's the scientist on the pile of, wood over there on the far right and is also netting fish in the center. A lot of these previous efforts were opportunistic, or they were, intended to answer a single question, or address a specific issue. And, in the last several years, we really started, wanting to get an idea about some long term trends and answer some of these big picture questions.

How can we use our monitoring data to help us make data informed decisions? And we realized we wanted something that was a little bit more strategic, a little bit more targeted. And so, in 2022, we, kind of formalized the stream monitoring work that we had been doing into what is now known as the environmental monitoring program. And, we gave it a bit more of a, structured and strategic framework so that we could draw some of these long term trends and help inform, the work that we're doing. So I said that the goal of the environmental monitoring program is to measure and interpret stream health.

But what is stream health? How do you determine if a stream is healthy? Here in the Pacific Northwest, we tend to look to our iconic species. We wanna see our salmon, and, because salmon streams are healthy streams. But this can be a bit of a a challenge because a stream can be healthy even if salmon aren't present, and salmon can be present in a stream that's in trouble.

So to kind of answer this question of what makes a stream healthy, I'm going to use something that's called the Stream Functions Pyramid. And this is a strategic framework that was developed by the EPA that helps us understand and assess stream health. And the key feature here is that each tier of the pyramid is dependent on the integrity of the tiers below it. And I'm going to walk through each of these tiers so we can understand how this relates to stream health. And as I do this, I'm going to kind of tell the tale of two watersheds.

Here on the left, we've got a healthy, intact natural system, and on the right we have a watershed that's in more of an urban environment and all of the pressures and challenges that system is going to face. So at the very bottom of the tier we have hydrology and hydraulics, and this deals with the movement of water through the watershed. So as rain falls on our landscape, the arrows kind of show what happens to that water. And they're meant to be sized in proportion to the volume of water. So on the left, when we've got an intact forest, we've got healthy vegetation, a lot of that water is going to be captured within the plants.

It's going to be evaporated back up into the air. Another portion will infiltrate into the soils, and it's slowly going to seep and ooze its way downstream into our streams as groundwater. And only a very, very small portion would actually be surface water runoff. It's estimated that in an intact forest in the Pacific Northwest, it's usually less than 1% of the volume of rain for a storm and then runoff. Contrast to the right hand side where we have lot fewer trees, that evaporation and transpiration is going to be a lot less.

Likewise, we've got all of our pavement, our roofs, roads and parking lots. There's a lot less space for infiltration. And so the vast majority of that water that's falling is going to come into the system as a stormwater runoff. And that could be in some of, like, our more urban watersheds up to 60% of the volume of rain. And so that's, rain falling on the landscape and just shooting into the stream rapidly, which then has an impact on, the tier above it, which is geomorphology.

As water moves through the channel it's going to be moving substrate, it's going to be interacting with the stream side vegetation, the riparian vegetation, the logs and wood, the boulders and it's going to start making the the complex, you know, physical structure of the stream. So it's gonna scour out pools. It's gonna deposit, sediment into, gravel, bars, and riffles riffle habitat. And in a more urban environment, like I mentioned, that water, that's coming through, as as that storm water discharge coming through fast. It's basically a fire hose.

It's gonna scour out these channels, our substrates, flying along. And then we also have challenges like, direct channel alteration. So we might have, you know, a channel that's been dredged or we've got string bank armoring. All of this kind of prevents that stream that on the left, see it's a natural flexible system. They can move and adapt.

And on the right, it's a little bit more fixed. These strings usually become entrenched, and have challenges with erosion. And we don't want them to move because we have infrastructure that they are going to go next to. So then our next tier is, chemistry. And so this involves nutrient cycling and the breakdown of organic material, which is gonna happen both in our natural system and in our urban system.

But then our urban system's gonna have additional, challenges with, pollutants coming in from stormwater runoff. So this is, you know, anything from fertilizers and pesticides to tire rubber and additional nutrients, greases, all of those things now getting, added directly into our streams. And at the very top of the pyramid, we've got biology. So this is the living life, what we like to see in our streams. Everything from the bacteria, the algae, the plants, the animals that spend part or all of their life in these streams.

So if these are so if we're wanting to get an idea of the health of a stream and kind of gauge where we are on this spectrum from really intact, healthy system on the left to a little bit more impacted, degraded system on the right. We want to be able to check-in at each level of the pyramid, each of these tiers, and kind of get the pulse to see how things are going. And so for our environmental monitoring program, we, collect indicators at each of these levels. And I'll start down at the bottom there. For hydrology and hydraulics, we're measuring stream flow, stream stage, and rainfall.

Rainfall helps us understand the context of that stream flow. For geomorphology, we're measuring the physical habitat. This is just the channel metrics, the width and depth, as well as the presence of complex habitat features like pools and riffles, the stream side vegetation, how much shading the stream gets, those kind of things. Then for chemistry, we're measuring, stream temperature and water quality, and these parameters will include, things like pH, dissolved oxygen, nitrogen, phosphorus, E. Coli bacteria that give us an understanding of the the chemical composition of the stream.

And those metrics can be added together. There's a regional indicator called the wallet water quality index, for small streams in Western Washington that we can calculate from that. That gives us a score that helps us understand basically what is the the health of just our water quality, and we can compare streams to each other and others in the region. And then at the very tip of the pyramid, we have biology. And so these are living things in our streams.

So, bendig macroinvertebrates is a pretty cool indicator. These are the bugs, the worms, the snails, the little things that live in the streams. And they actually turn out to provide a lot of information about the health of the stream. So there are some species that are essentially like the cockroaches of the stream, that they can survive anything. And then there's others that are a bit more delicate, they're kind of like the canary in the coal mine.

They can let you know, if you've got a healthy stream and if when they disappear, you know, something happened. And so this is another one that there's a regional index that's been created based on the benthic macroinvertebrates of the stream bugs that helps give us a score for the stream health. And then we're also measuring resident fish, so the species that are present in the stream year round, as well as our salmon when they come back spawn. So that's a little bit about what we're measuring and why we're measuring it. This gives us a look at when we're out there measuring, kind of a visual timeline through the seasons, And for our hydrology and stream temperature metrics, we have, continuous gauges that are deployed year round that are out there always collecting data for us.

We also deploy an additional set of gauges, in the summer for stream temperature to really get an idea of those critical warm periods. For water quality, we take monthly samples throughout the year. And then for arbindic macroinvertebrates, the stream bugs, that's just a sample that happens once annually every summer. Likewise, the, physical habitat and resident fish, surveys only happen in the summer, and those we're doing every four to eight years depending on the stream. Now it would be lovely if we could have this data every year, but these are at the very top of the pyramid.

And if we are hoping to, impact some form of change, it's gonna take a while before we can actually see a change in the fish community. So, basically, we're sampling. We're waiting a couple years, and we're going back, and we're seeing if we can detect change. And then for our salmon spawning, those surveys take place every week throughout the fall and early winter, aligning with the the Coho and Chinook runs. This is a lot of data that's being collected, and we are a very small team.

And so we rely on, collaborations and partnerships. We partner with, multiple different branches at King County to help us collect some of our data. And then we also have contracts with Herrera and Parametrix. And then for the, salmon spawner surveys, we get to do those ourselves. We used to contract that out. Last few years, we've now taken that on. And to kind of get the the most mileage out of our monitoring dollars, we have prioritized the streams in the city into three tiers. Tiers. And tier one are our highest priority streams. These are the streams that either currently host salmon or kokanee or, you know, historically hosted the most.

And so these would be Coal Creek, Kelsey Creek, and Lewis Creek. Then we have and these this is where our most intensive monitoring is happening in these streams. Then we have our tier two streams, which are, fish bearing streams but do not currently host salmon. And these get a a pretty broad set of, monitoring parameters there. And these include Yarra Creek, West Tributary, Valley, Vosso Creek, and Newport Creek, which is a little tributary to Coal Creek there.

And then we have our tier three streams. These are our kind of smaller, more impacted streams, and they are still fish bearing or at least potentially fish bearing. And they get a much reduced set of monitoring parameters. And these include Maidenbauer Creek, Golf Creek, Sears Creek, Idlewood Creek, Phantom Creek, Sunset Creek, and Lakehurst and Newcastle Creek. Now taking a look at where exactly all of this monitoring is happening throughout the city.

For hydrology, we have seven monitoring stations, that are at the, the circles on the map over there on the right, and monitoring throughout the year. And these are focused primarily on our tier one and a little bit on the tier two streams, and then rain gauges throughout the city. For our water quality, we have 11 stations in our Tier one and Tier two streams. These sample the full suite of water quality parameters. Then we have another nine stations in our Tier three streams that focus just on E.

Coli bacteria. For the benthic macroinvertebrates, so those stream bugs, this is the parameter where we actually have the best coverage across the city. So we have 33 stations, in 18 streams to give us an idea of the stream health, from our from our extreme bug metric.

And how do they measure the bugs?

So we have most of this, we actually contact contract through King County. So they're out there sampling, but we do get to sample one. There are basically these square grids that get placed in the gravel of the stream with a net behind it. And the sampler will go out, and they will, like, brush or rake the rocks, and it knocks the bugs up off the rocks and into the stream. And you actually, like, pick up a rock and brush it, and it collects into the net. And then those get

So it's a human counting of that

to Yes. Okay.

Yep. Okay. It's kind of a a tag team effort. There's the team out in the field. They collect those bugs, and then we ship it off to a lab. And then the lab will do the identification of I believe we have more than 400 different species that we've detected in our streams of all of these bugs. Yeah. And last but not least, our, fishing habitat stations. So we have 14 stations across 10 different streams for, both fish and habitat. Those, parameters are collected simultaneously.

And, this is the first year that this monitoring will be happening under this kind of new framework. So that's contracted and underway. Excited to be getting that data coming in. And then the, salmon colored line down on Coal Creek, that marks the areas where we do our salmon spawner surveys. Historically, we used to also do salmon spawner surveys in the Kelsier Creek watershed. Unfortunately, salmon returns have dwindled so dramatically in the last ten, especially the last five years. We no longer do professional surveys there. We do still have our stream team volunteers. They keep an eye on Kelsier Creek for us. And when the salmon return, we will be there ready to count them. But until then, we're focusing on Coal Creek.

Salmon. There

are kokanee in Lower Lewis Creek, actually actually outside of the city of Bellevue, but we do not have salmon actively coming up. I am excited for, the WashDOT is replacing the culvert under I 90, and it's currently a complete barrier. And we're excited to see what we will be getting. And our one, fish monitoring station on Lewis Lewis Creek is just upstream of that, culvert, so we'll we'll catch anything that comes up. So this is a lot of data that we're collecting.

Collecting. And And I I said said that that the overall goal of the environmental monitoring program was to measure and interpret stream health. But so far, I've only been talking about what we're measuring. But that second part, the interpreting, is really important and kind of the most critical and the most interesting piece. And we recognize that in order to make sense of all of the data that we're collecting, we needed a system to manage it.

And so this is ongoing work, that is funded in part by a waterworks grant through King County, where I'm working to, integrate all of these datasets, build a kind of a a data pipeline, a a structure and a format to, integrate, analyze, and, visualize and report all of these different metrics together. For the first time, Bellevue's never had this before, so we're really excited. And this will help us, you know, make the most of the data that we're collecting. So how are these data being used? All of the data from the environmental monitoring program, are being used to support the, Washington management plan, the goals and targets, and adaptive management of that, the plan.

We also support my team's, capital investment and system planning work. We also support operations and maintenance. So, through our our stream bug surveys, we can get an idea of the distribution of aquatic invasive species like New Zealand mudsnail, and then we can relay that information to operations and maintenance, and that helps them, inform their actions and their decontamination procedures that they have to do. And then we also provide data, following storm events. And then last, we, help support the Sustainable Bellevue and Environmental, Stewardship Initiative.

And as in the previous presentation you just heard, you might have noticed that the stream health metric in there, related to something that just said BIVI, that is that index from benthic macroinvertebrates. So that's coming, directly from this program. We're providing that metric. Now, I said that, the environmental monitoring program in its current form was really only formalized in 2022, which means that we only have two full years of, sampling. And it really takes some time to be able to establish trends with any confidence.

So there are some highlights that I can share from some of the monitoring that we've been doing a little bit longer. So I'm gonna focus in on our benthic macroinvertebrates, the stream bugs. And if we look at that, map in the center, each of those points represents, one of the sites that we sampled this past year, and it's colored by that score. And a yellow score is a bad score, and a dark green is a good score. So it's kind of on a gradient.

And you'll see that, like most urban areas, our streams generally have a poor to very poor score. There are some bright spots you'll see in, Upper Pole Creek and in Lewis Creek, we get, some better scores. But when we started digging into the data a little bit deeper, we did find some exciting trends. So even though we have overall some poor scores, if we look at the sites that we've been surveying for long enough to be able to establish some trends, there were nine of those sites. And six of those had no discernible trend.

They were not improving, but they also weren't getting worse. So that's something. But three of those actually did have a significant increasing score. And so I've highlighted one of those in the middle of Coal Creek. That's the chart on the left.

And you can see in the early two thousands when, we started surveying that site, it had a score that was that's in the about the poor range. It improved a little bit, and then there was, some local impact, and that score dropped down to the very poor range. And since then, it's been recovering, and it's now up in the fair and actually bordering on good. And this is a trend that we're seeing not only at, I said there were three sites in Bellevue. We've got a Coal Creek, a tributary to Coal Creek, and then one of our Kelsey Creek, stations are all seeing this positive trend.

But in, across King County, this is a trend that's actually being seen. So the, figure on the right shows a report that King County released where they looked at, some of their long term monitoring stations, including our stations in Bellevue, and found that despite increased urban development, we are seeing some improvement in stream health. And so that tells us that stormwater control, stormwater infrastructure, those best management practices, do actually seem to be having an impact. So that's a really exciting positive note despite, obviously, we're very urban and we are impacted. But that site down in Upper Coal Creek, the darkest green site that I've marked with a blue star, This was our highlight for the this past year.

That stream actually got the highest score Bellevue has ever seen. It was in the good and almost in the excellent category. So that is another site we haven't been surveying quite long enough to be able to do any statistical trends. But if you just look at the data, it is also trending up. So, I'm definitely excited that we can see a little little glimmer of hope in our urban streams.

And one thing that we've seen is that although these streams are urban, they are impacted. They also can be really beautiful and host an amazing array of life. And we partner every fall with the Muckleshoot Indian tribe where they take, surplus coho salmon that have returned to the Issaquah Hatchery, and then they release them into Coal Creek. And so that's a video that we're seeing here. These are adult salmon that have been released.

They will spawn naturally in Coal Creek and essentially reseed our salmon populations. Now, if we remember from that stream functions pyramid, this is the very tip of the pyramid. And so it relies on the integrity of all of those tiers below it. And so if we continue to make, you know, good policies, good actions, continue to invest in these systems, our streams might one day be able to support wild salmon look like this.

So how how many salmon were released in Coal Creek here?

So that year, I think that was this is 2019, and this was around 1,200. This past year, we released over 1,600. And, yeah, it's basically how many salmon they have, surplus left over. Yeah.

Thank you, Brianna. The last thing I wanna touch on is

Before we go

there, can we just pause to see if there's any other questions on Brianna's Thank you. Portion? Any other?

I'll wait. I'll wait.

You'll wait. Okay. You're okay.

Yeah. Because we're really close, actually. There's only a couple slides left. So the community rating system program is part of the National Flood Insurance Program. The federal government, not driven by things that happened in Washington state, but more things back east, established a program to provide flood insurance for impacted communities that receive that are frequently flooded.

Well, that's a great idea. But, also, after they paid out the same property a couple times, they said, well, wait a minute. Maybe we need to do something other than just repeatedly help this property. And so one of the things they did is they established the community rating system program. It's essentially a program that incentivizes communities to take actions to help monitor regulate their floodplains. So in Bellevue, we are really good about that. We don't allow any development in our floodplains. That's not the case in other places in the country. And so the community rating system has a point system and gives you points. And so we're we score really high on we don't allow any development.

There's other places that don't score as high. But when we add up all the things we do to regulate our floodplains, we get a a rating, and that rating translates to a discount for our residents that are located within mapped floodplain areas that have purchased flood insurance. We have about a little under 200 properties in Bellevue, mostly located on the shores of Lake Sammamish, and I believe Phantom Lake has some floodplain area. There's some floodplain area down Mercer Slough. But there's there's a yeah.

Less than 200 properties are getting national flood insurance, but they do receive a 25% discount because of the work that we do every year to certify, our floodplain actions and how we regulate our floodplains. And I I just thought I'd throw that out there just because it's it's something we do. It takes effort, and it and it ends up benefiting, our residents. While only a few, they do receive a benefit. And with that, talk a little bit about alright.

So, what's next for us? We are going to be completing that watershed management draft plan. Now that we've decided that we can't solve the world's problems using that plan, we're gonna push that off to the system plan. We, we can we can finish drafting our our plan. The system planning, I mentioned, is gonna be taking place this year and next year for the most part, finishing in early twenty seven.

Our environmental monitoring program work continues. Brianna does a great job on that, and I think it's really vital. And and I'm I'm glad that we had an opportunity tonight to share that work with you. Because if you dig into the budget, you might see, some numbers that that for that program, and now you'll know what we're doing with those dollars. And then, of course, we'll continue to manage our our flood insurance program, so that we can get the most for our residents. And with that, we'd be happy to answer any questions you might have.

So

why is there a separate waste, watershed management plan and storm and surface water system plan. If they seem so closely tied and King County seems to view that way, I noticed the money we're getting for the extreme quality is coming from that fund in King County. So can can you talk about, like, why would there why do there have to be two different plans, or can we have one plan that is able to resolve these inherent conflicts?

So the the theme of my presentation tonight is it's complicated. And so the watershed plan really is focused on stream health. But there are storm so when I say the word storm, think pipes. So our storm and surface water system plan takes into account both the surface water part, the element that the watershed management plan is dealing with, and the storm water part, the infrastructure that we have to maintain and take care of and provide, for future growth. And so the system plan is kind of an umbrella that has both our infrastructure, kind of our r and r program, our asset management, and then it has how are we dealing with the natural environment, how are we trying to recover these streams, and that's our watershed element.

So the system plan is overarching, and we've got different components underneath it. And that's why we have two different ones.

But if you made stream health one of the key pieces of the storm and surface water plan, wouldn't that do the same?

So the level of detail typically involved in system planning isn't does not get deepened as deep as we are with that watershed management plan. If you'll recall the the pyramid of work we've done, we've done, like, five years of, you know, good solid work to just support that watershed management plan. Now the system plan's looking at all the other things, the competing needs. Yeah. And so I I do think and I understand that the terms we're using are similar and can be confusing, but I I I assure you that they both have intended purposes, and I think they're they're both worthy activities to do.

And then just to get back to one of the statements you said, she she had King County up there as part of our we pay them. So they have staff that are are qualified. And so we will contract with King County so that they'll come to Bellevue and and do some of the monitoring for us. So that's instead of I believe that we can we can get some of that monitoring through King County at a more affordable price than we can if we used consultants. K.

Yeah. First of all, great job. And I love that presentation about the hierarchy and the pyramid that I'd not seen that side by side together, and that was really well done. Thanks. And then Eric, you made a really great point about the sort of unique aspects of stormwater management relative to regulatory requirements and what we must do versus other things, priorities like, you know, like, low income impact development, things that are more value based for our community.

And so I'm curious how we go out to the public with this message. Because I mean, I have worked with entities that say, We're just gonna do the regulatory stuff, right? And that's it. So how do we, I guess, position ourselves when we go out to the public?

I like how you're teasing what's gonna happen this fall. So right now, we're working on that public outreach plan. And so that that will be one of the elements that we'll be able to talk to you about when we come back in the fall. We'll have a more detailed idea about how are we helping people help us prioritize the projects that we have listed. And so, yeah, that's going to be a big plan. And because it's not required, there's going to be some, like I said, competing needs. And we want to always be mindful of the impact that our choices would have on future rates.

Right. Right. Okay. Thanks. Look forward to that.

Other questions? I think I have a question for Brianna on the environmental monitoring. I couldn't quite determine whether the program is more, a assessment of Stream Health, or does it also dig into the causes to try to feed into the overall plan. So as an example, you talked about on the urban side, there's lots of runoff that brings pollutants into the streams, and I'm familiar with some articles I've read about tire rubber and a certain chemical that goes into the water and kills a lot of the fish, including salmon. So does your program also do that analysis, or is it more of the salmon's come back to, you know, Coal Creek.

It hasn't quite come back to Lewis Creek and Kelsey Creek, but you're not doing the cause analysis?

Yeah. So we are primarily monitoring measuring and monitoring health. We are inferring cause. So it's not designed to look at, like, a specific stressor and measure that. We're kind of looking at the watershed as a whole.

But one thing we have been, we are well poised to do and have discussed through the Washington management plan is actually look at effectiveness monitoring of a specific action. So if, you know, a stormwater park went in somewhere that was specifically supposed to reduce pollutant levels, then we could add that level of monitoring to try to address those specific questions. But the, environmental monitoring program as a whole is really just about gauging stream health.

Okay. So to help answer your question, and I could have touched on it a little better on this figure. But the monitoring you know, think of the monitoring as the base, the open stream condition, but it's not just that. It's other monitoring she talked about. But you'll see the watershed assessment reports that helped us look at our watersheds and identify what's impacting them.

So we that's where we take the data, and we make the inferences on this watershed's being impacted by uncontrolled releases from stormwater runoff. It may be an older neighborhood that doesn't have as many stormwater ponds as our new regulations would require. And so that watershed assessment report looked at all of the watersheds and said, what is impacting this specific watershed using the data that we're getting in trying to identify those causes. And then the watershed improvement strategies came up with ideas on how to address watershed specific problems. And so the watershed management plan will be assembling those, and then the system plan will be balancing those needs with our other infrastructure needs.

And going forwards, the environmental monitoring program, every four years is gonna be doing a synthesis report where, basically, we bring all of the data together, and we say, you know, what is the status of our system? And then that's where we can do a little bit of the inference of what we think might be, the, you know, causative factor because we can look at, you know, the hydrology from the base of the pyramid and then see how that could potentially have, impacted some of those higher tiers and the impacts that we see there.

Okay.

Yeah. No. That's important because I think, you know, the the monitoring, the science behind it has to drive us to, not just an inference, but actual this is the cause of this poor stream health in order to help us prioritize where we put our dollars to alter infrastructure change, runoff direction, or put in, you know, I don't know, natural. I think we did this, Joe. I mean, somewhere, I remember telling us.

So we went to a field, visit of you know, we put in some median so that the water would go through, natural soil to filter down, right, and and eliminate some pollutants. But how do we know where to put such stuff or where is gonna have the higher impact to protect the living organisms in a stream versus somewhere that doesn't have as much impact.

And and Brianna mentioned it, and and it's the phrase is adaptive management. And the monitoring is going to help inform our adaptive adaptive management, how how we what are we doing? Is it is it having the impact we want, or do we need to change a little bit? So as we move forward, the watershed management plan has an adaptive management strategy that it's gonna identify that uses the information that we're getting and helps us, be flexible and, like you said, put the dollars where they make the most difference.

Yep. Okay. Thanks. I just have to call out. I don't know if it's a coincidence or not, but that green dot that you said was good, close to excellent, looked like it was really close to where the utility department installed the new culvert along

The bridge. Yes. That wasn't a habitat project. I

don't know. Just a coincidence, I guess. Alright. Any more questions? Alright. Thank you very much.

Very much.

I no. No problem. I just wanna throw in compliments on the presentation, and I was thinking as you were asking questions, the work they did, it's that whole show your work. You know? Show how you got here. Show your work. And we've all been through that in college, etcetera. And then to vice chair Juan's comment, show the benefit of your work. And so I'm really excited about this work.

Yeah. Yeah. For sure.

Alright. Now we move to the dull part of the meeting, which is the elections. So bear with me. I'm gonna read through some of the, process, and, I know it might be a slightly confusing. If so, please ask questions.

The ESC bylaws state that there shall be a chair and vice chair elected from the membership of the commission. The bylaws specify utilizing Robert's rules newly revised for the election. This process identifies that, one, nominations do not require a second. Two, any commissioner may nominate any other or self nominate themselves. Three, the current chair will close the floor to nominations when no other nominations are forthcoming.

Four, nominees may decline the nomination or position before the vote. Five, nominees will be voted on in the order in which they were presented. As soon as one of the nominees receives a majority vote and given tonight's attendance of five, that would be three votes, if I can do my math correct for majority, then I'll declare that person elected, and no other votes will be taken on the remaining nominees for that office. Commissioners must cast their vote either yay or nay for each nominee. Failure to cast a vote means that your vote will be counted in the affirmative, meaning yay.

And so I will go and open the floor to ask for nominations. Once again, you can nominate someone or and I also encourage you to self nominate if you haven't talked to anyone about your interest and you are interested. I think that's healthy for our commission. Once we finish all the nominations, I will then ask each nominee to confirm they are interested in proceeding, with that nomination and if they would also like to say a few words about candidacy to the rest of the commission, but that's not required. And then we'll go ahead with the votes for each nominee, and we'll do that for the chair position and then for the vice chair position afterwards.

Any questions? I think we've we've, at least, as a group, this group here, done it once before last year. I can't believe it's already been a year, but here we are. Okay. So with that, I'll open the floor for nominations for the chair position.

I nominate commissioner Wong for the chair.

Alright. Thank you. Any other nominations? No? No. Going once. Going twice. Alright. Then I guess I am closing the floor for nominations. There's one nomination.

I I humbly accept your nomination. And so we'll just go ahead around, and I guess I have to take the votes. So so for our note taking here, commissioner Juan, me, I've been nominated, and there are no other nominations. So, we'll go ahead and vote. So I'm gonna call out each commissioner, and please respond with yay or nay. So commissioner, Dupertis? Thank you. Commissioner Hainosh? Commissioner Laxon? Yay. Yay. Commissioner Letterman?

Yay.

Alright. And I will not vote for myself. So it is a four zero vote, and that's a majority. So thank you. Then we will then move on to the vice chair nominee, and it will be the same procedure. So I will go ahead and open the floor for nominations for the vice chair position.

I nominate Kurt commissioner Letterman's. Alright. Alright. Very good.

Any other nominations? I haven't had I've missed the last two meetings, so I haven't had a chance to talk to all of you. But I'm also gonna go ahead and nominate commissioner Laxon, but feel free to decline as we go through this. Can I decline? You may. Alright. Very well. Any other nominees? Okay. Then I'm gonna close the floor for nominations. Then we are voting on commissioner Letterman for the vice chair position. So I'm gonna skip commissioner Letterman. Commissioner Laxon?

Yay.

Yay. Commissioner Hainosh? Yay. Commissioner DuPertis? K. And commissioner Juan, I also vote yay. And so with a four zero vote, commissioner Letterman has been voted as vice chair. Congratulations. Alright. Well, that was rather painless.

Okay. I think I've gone through all of that. Then, Joe, shall we review the commission and council calendars?

Yes. Thank you. Moving on with the commission calendar, July 10 is our CIP tour. So we'll pulling together similar to the o and m tour, walk, take you around town. I would say three to four projects, most likely. I don't know if we've identified them yet. So that's on July 10. Note that it's the second Okay. It's the second Remind me.

This is the second second Thursday.

Okay. And and that's the first is July 4. Well, that the math doesn't work. We wanted them we wanted it so you wouldn't have to have the July 4 the next day

8PM.

If the math is right.

Yeah. Lower 10. It's possible.

That that was the thought. And then, Eric LaFrance talked about those storm water storm and surface water, system plan coming to the commission in the fall. Right now, we have that we've targeted September 4. Lot of planning, some COSA, cost of service analysis in October. So busy year. And then budget is next year. It's coming quick. We don't have anything going to council on my list right now. In June, July, we have these two projects. And then August, council has one, one council meeting before they go into recess.

So that's going quick. I do have a quick follow on announcement for the for the vacant position. Met with council member Lee earlier this week, and he has asked the the, council office to set up some some interviews. And one of the benefits of being chair is council member Lee has asked that the chair of the SC join him on the on the interview panel. K?

So wanna put that out there, and thank you if if you're able to attend. And then Lucy or I will be on there as well. Historically, that's the way we've done it. So I will close with that.

And, Joe, have I don't remember seeing it. Has that been announced that there's an open position on our commission

through the Yes. Went through the process. There were a couple other commissions that had openings. We had candidates apply. Some some candidates or applicants, I should say, they'll apply for multiple often. So we're coordinating with the council office to get these interviews set up. So you timing wise, based

on the fact that it's been posted and we've received applicants, you expect interviews to happen this month in June? I I would I would hope in the second half.

Mhmm. And we'll wanna work with you on that. Alright.

Yep. Thanks. Alright. Well, that, I think, concludes our meeting. May I have a motion to adjourn? Thank you. Second. Thank you. Then we are adjourned at 08:26PM. Thanks, everyone.