Environmental Services Commission - Regular Meeting

It's 06:30PM, and I call the September fourth Environmental Services Commission meeting to order. First, we will do a roll call. Commissioner Letterman? Present. Commissioner Dupertis?

Commissioner Dupertis absent at the moment. Commissioner Hainosh? Commissioner Laxon? Present. Commissioner Margolis and commissioner Tyson?

Present.

Thank you. Good evening, and welcome to the September 4 Environmental Services Commission meeting. I'd like to take this opportunity to introduce our newest commissioner, Mary Tyson. And I'll ask Mary to share a little bit about herself, her background, and her interest in the Environmental Services Commission work. Mary?

Thank you. I am a longtime Bellevue resident for more than twenty five years and a business and nonprofit exec. So I have spent fifteen years at Starbucks managing joint ventures, creating new businesses, and really enjoy the business aspects of planning, capital planning, really making investment decisions that benefit the greater good. And currently, I serve at a nonprofit where we support low income students all across Washington state, and we really look at issues of inclusion and diversity. And I think that's a great lens to bring to the work here. So it's a pleasure to work with you all. Thank you.

Thank you, Mary. Next, we're going to approve the agenda. May I have a motion to approve the agenda?

Move to approve the agenda.

Second. Thank

you. Are there any anyone who wants to make any changes to the agenda? No? Alright. Then hearing no objections, the agenda is approved as motioned.

Commissioner Juan de has joined us.

Okay. So, just noting that commissioner de Purdis is now present. Thank you. Alright. We're gonna 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 subject matters encompassed within the power and duties of this commission. Persons participating in commission meetings must not engage in speech or conduct that disrupts, disserves, 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.

And given the fact that we're in an election cycle in the 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 of or oppose a candidate for an election, which includes your own campaign. Any speaker who begins discussing topics of this nature will be asked to stop. Joe, are there any written communications tonight?

Alright.

And do we have anyone registered for oral communication?

We do.

Alright. Alright. Mister Zimmerman?

Yeah.

Please.

I'm always crying. I don't know why. Maybe because it's stupid? Oh, okay. Okay.

No problem. Yeah. My dirty damn Nazi pig. Yeah. You are a pig. You spend almost one hour for free dinner right now. You come here three minute, four minute before meeting. No one civilized person in my experience who have a business, you know what this mean, come to table and speak three, four minute before. You are a pig. You're born in a like a pig.

It's exactly who you are. But nothing different from people who choice you. And I give you right now a very nice example. I wanna speak about agenda number nine about calendar. It's very interesting what is everyone speak. So for the last four months, from May to September, Bellevue Council don't have eight meeting. Eight meetings they don't have. Is this a pig? They are real Nazi pig. They are real bandita and criminal.

Eight meeting, not present. Last Tuesday, no meeting. Why? Why is this happen? Why you identical to them? Because they choice exactly people like you. Here, you know what this mean? When they are not a Gestapo pig who not care about people, so you come four minute before, so you say I'm absolutely identical. Pig. Pig. Pig. Yeah. You're pig. You have good food. A good food only for pig is exactly who you are.

So I want talking about this because it's very reflect what's happened right now, not only in King Bellevue, in all King County right now. It's a serious problem. I give you something information what is absolutely critical. I never see like this before in my life. King County right now enlist of Trump. There's only one King County who enlist of Trump. Yes. We have Chicago, Los Angeles, blah blah, and other Western city, you know what this mean, but only one King County in America in his list. Why? Because you are Nazi pig.

I come and spoke almost for a year. I know who you are. Yeah. You all identical. Nazi Gestapo fascist Democrat mafia, a bandita who killed people, killed thousand. We were Trump. We were new American revolution. Stand up, freaking idiot. You very much. Forgive me. I'm old man. Alright.

That is the end of the registered oral communication. Now would anyone in the audience like to speak? If so and if you are attending remotely, please use the raise hand feature in Zoom. Or if you're joining via phone, press 9.

Nothing remote on 9. Nothing.

Okay. Thank you. And I don't know if there's any members of the public still here, but I just want to let the public to know that the Environmental Services Commission does not condone hateful or offensive speech from any individual. Why would while we would prefer people refrain from making these types of comments, the commission respects individuals' First Amendment free speech rights. Individuals are allowed to express their thoughts or feelings whether we agree with them or not. Next item on the agenda is update from city council. Council member Lee, do you have any updates to share today?

Thank you, mister chair. It's my pleasure to welcome our newest commissioner. We appreciate your dedication and commitment to serve the community, to volunteer time. I've said many times that, you know, our most precious commodity in the cities are volunteers such as yourselves, the commissioners that dedicated tirelessly without pay, without the conversation. So, you know, I don't think we said often enough, but I think, I wanna take every opportunity is to say so.

And the concert just take a very brief summer recess. So now we are back, ready to go, and so we look forward to working with you. I know there's, challenges, you know, as always coming up. And, but our utility department is number one, bar none, as far as I know. And, the staff, everybody is just so wonderful.

And with the commission like you have and your commission that's just your yourself, we're very, very blessed, very lucky. So, there's not much to report as far as we're concerned. By the way, I'm looking forward to great things, you know, especially in addition to a very current, talents we have and with a new addition. So thank you very much again, and I hope you have somebody mentioned to me maybe the summer's over, but I thought, well, let's keep it going. It's with us. Thank you.

Thank you, council member Lee. Now it's a staff reports. Joe, I believe you have some staff reports.

Yeah. We do. Couple couple items. First off, wanna also welcome commissioner Tyson. Thank you for joining us. We're looking forward to working with you as part of utilities. The other two announcements are after the meeting is concluded, we'd like to swap out your iPads. If you have it with you, great. If you don't, we'll we still wanna give you the new one, and we'll get the other one when you come back for the next meeting. And then the third one is Linda DeBolt. You many of you worked with her. She's retired, and we have hired our new engineering assistant director. Dave Biesch is here tonight, and I've asked Dave to say a few words about himself.

Hey, everyone. Hello. So I'm a civil engineer. Been doing it, really focusing on utilities my whole career. I'm coming from the Port Of Seattle where I was managing actually all the civil infrastructure for Seattle Tacoma International Airport.

So that included the utilities, water, sewer, storm water, industrial wastewater systems, and then also the roads and pavement for the airport. So very excited to be here at the city and bring my expertise. Prior to that, I was in private consulting, so I worked for an engineering firm focusing on utilities for municipalities. So in fact, back then, when I was doing design work, Bellevue was one of our clients. So I I did some some water main jobs, design. So very excited to be here, and join this great team. And we have a lot of experience in-depth that I that, I get to help, be a part of. So nice to meet everyone.

Yeah. Yep.

Thank you.

Welcome, and thank you. Okay. Next, moving on to the approval of our minutes. May I have a motion to approve the 07/10/2025 meeting minutes?

Move to approve July 10 in twenty twenty five minutes.

You have a second?

Second.

Thank you. Does anyone have any changes or modifications to the minutes? Hearing none, the minutes are approved as motioned. And then we move on to our sole topic tonight, which is the storm and surface water system plan update.

Good evening, commission. My name is Eric Lafrance. I'm the planning manager for utilities, and I'm here, once again to talk about system planning. So one of my biggest tasks is to make sure that we keep everything straight because we are doing all three system plans at the same time. You may recall earlier this year, we came to you and gave you a brief update on the progress we're making on our water system plan.

Today is storm and surface water system plan. And in a couple months, we'll be back talking to you about wastewater system planning. But today, the star is storm and surface water system plan, and I'm excited to have Divya Pasipuletti talk to you about the good work that we've started on this. I like system planning in my career. I've seen the impact that it can have.

The one thing that's kind of a bummer is it takes a long time because there's a lot of work that we have to do. And so this presentation is kind of in the early part of our process, so we don't have a lot of results to talk about yet. We've started our public outreach process, and we have a public outreach plan, which is very important. We'll touch on that a couple times tonight. But this is really just kind of giving you a foundation to start thinking about storm and surface water.

And then we'll be back in front of you probably a couple times in the next year or so talking to you about some of the things, the the nuts and bolts of the system plan and and in having you help us shape some of the policies that we're gonna be tackling. One of the things that I think makes it easy to differentiate the storm service water system plan is that, unlike water and sewer, which sometimes you may have heard them called the invisible utilities because we only see them or hear about them when they go wrong, storm and surface water you can see our facilities sometimes. A great example of that is a stormwater pond, But a future example of that may be something like a stormwater park, where we've decided to do some type of treatment, but also get some potential ancillary benefits with partnering and getting different functionalities and, you know, creating green space in areas that may, not have that. And so that's kind of an exciting thing about storm and surface water is that we we are doing things that you can see, and hopefully, we're doing things that will beautify, and make us feel like more you know, we are sitting in the park, but, you know, we wanna increase that.

And that that touches right on, you know, the council's priorities of building natural environment. So natural environment has a natural crossover to our stormwater, and that's that's why it's different. One of the other things that makes us a little different is that we do have policies in our comp plan that says that we'll we'll do system planning, and then we'll update them. Now this update is not mandated by any outside regulatory agency, not like water, who has the Department of Health. We have to make sure we update that every ten years.

But we still think ten years is a good cadence for updating the stormwater plan because a lot can change in ten years. Development can change. Regulations can change. Priorities can change. One of the things we talked to you earlier this year about was the watershed management plan.

Now that plan had a lot of good ideas, and we'll have some proposed projects that help us do an environmental lift for our streams and the lake that we have here in Bellevue. And so that's that's different than than sewer and storm. We're gonna be we're gonna be talking to you about those things that we may choose to do and not have to do. Whereas most of the mandates that we have that govern water and sewer are kind of have to do. We want to provide clean water, obviously, but that's regulated.

Whereas stormwater, we do have regulations. She'll touch on some of the regulate there's there's quite a few regulations, But there's gonna also be some choices that we're gonna be making when we come back to you and talk about some policies. And those choices have, you know, a lot to do with environmental projects that we may be proposing that wouldn't be required necessarily, but do meet the priorities of of us here in Bellevue. Because of those choices that we have to make, the public outreach for this system plan is beefier than our water and sewer, which are rare they're very prescribed. We we go through steps.

We make sure that we're we're hitting all of our marks. You know, we we wanna we have those mandates. But for for Stormwater, we want to make sure that we're getting enough public input so that we can come to you and say, these are the priorities that we're hearing from the public. These are the things that we're hearing that make us propose to do this that may not be required, but we think it's important to the to the residents of Bellevue and to our mission for a high quality built and natural environment. And for that reason, we'll talk a lot about public outreach.

Divya is gonna talk about it, but I did wanna just kinda touch on the role, your role as we move forward. Tonight, it's just listening. This is just an early update in the process. But, within the next, you know, year, probably early next year, we'll be coming to you with some of those policies that are gonna help shape our storm and surface water program moving forward. We'll also review the twenty year, capital improvement plan with you that'll be part of this plan.

And then later next year, our goal is to kinda get this finished up by late next year, maybe early twenty seven. But later next year, we'll be bringing the draft plan to you, and we'll review that draft plan and then finally ask you if you're you know, would make a recommendation to counsel for adopting this plan. And so those are the those are the things that we're gonna be partnering with you on as we move forward. And I think that covered all my notes. And with that, I'll let Divya get started on our our formal presentation. Thank you, Divya.

Thank you, Eric. Good evening, everyone. It's nice to meet you all. It's, my first time meeting all of you. So, yeah, as Eric mentioned, I'm here today to talk about the city storm and surface water system plan update.

And once again, today's meeting is just an informational briefing on the process involved in the plan update. There's no decisions to make. No approvals required. You'll be given a chance to ask questions and provide feedback at the end of the presentation, but feel free to interrupt me during the presentation if you have, you know, questions on a particular topic or slide. So here's our agenda for today.

First, I will provide you with some background on the storm and surface water system in Bellevue, and then I'll tell you about the purpose of the storm and surface water system plan. I will then talk to you about the process involved in updating the system plan. And lastly, I will talk to you about where we are in the update process and the next steps. So here's some background information. You all know what stormwater is.

Right? Stormwater is nothing but rainwater falls on the ground and flows towards a ditch or a stream or some low depression in the ground. Stormwater can be a great resource because it replenishes our lakes and streams and water bodies. But it can also be a nuisance because when storm water flows on the ground, it collects and transports pollutants and deposits them in the water bodies. Sometimes storm water can also cause flooding and erosion.

So how do we maximize benefits of stormwater and minimize the negative impacts? We can do so by effectively managing stormwater. Effective stormwater management can help us enjoy the benefits that stormwater provides while controlling the damage it may cause. So Bellevue stormwater utility first became operational in 1974 to manage stormwater runoff in the city. The city has certain objectives when it comes to stormwater management, control flood damage, protect surface water quality, support fish and wildlife.

So how do we go about meeting these objectives? What actions do we take? Storm and surface water system plan was developed to meet city's objectives for stormwater management. The plan is updated every ten years. It was last updated in 2015. I mean, it's about every 10. Not every 10 years precisely, but, like, about every 10. So the last update was in 2015, and so we think we are due for another update. Update. Now let's talk about the purpose of the storm and surface water system plan.

How does the plan meet city's objectives? Storm and surface water plan is nothing but a guidance it's a guidance document that describes the management and operation of the storm water system in the city. It identifies system needs. What is the system lacking? Does it have enough capacity to meet current and future needs?

Does it need repair and replacement? Once the system needs are identified, it also plan also provides recommendations for system improvement, fixing those, or meeting those needs. It also identifies financial needs and resources, which is very important because it's not just enough if we have recommendations or solutions. We need to identify financial resources. Whereas how do we fund, projects or how we fund these improvements.

Right? And then it also recommends suitable maintenance practices. How do we, maintain the solutions or improvements that we are proposing? We've talked about the purpose of having a system plan. Now let's talk about the reason why we need to update this plan every ten years or so.

We need to update this plan because of all the changes that are happening around us. There's substantial growth and development in the city because of which our landscape has changed. There's more roads and bridges and than there were than there were ten years ago. We have changing climate conditions. Our rainfall intensities and durations have changed. There is more snow melt because of rising temperatures. Then we have evolving storm water regulations. State and federal agency regulations have become more stringent over the years in an effort to protect the environment. We have emerging technology and practices. We have newer and better technologies to manage storm water now.

And lastly, there are updates to the city's comprehensive plan. As you all know, the comprehensive plan is basically a foundational policy document that guides growth and development in the city. This document was last updated in 2024. And, the document actually has several policies that are specific to storm and surface water management, such as use of low impact development practices. So because we want to support or, we wanna keep our storm and surface water system plan aligned with the city's comprehensive comprehensive plan.

So when there is an update to the comprehensive plan, we need to make sure that's reflected in our plan as well. Now I'm going to talk to you about the process involved in updating the system plan. As you can see, I mean, it's a multistep process. It's a multiyear effort. The process was, we started, the process late last year, and we hope to get it done by the end of next year.

These are all the steps involved, in the update process, and I'm going to go over each one of them in more detail in the upcoming slides. The first step in the plan update process is data collection. It is important to collect all existing data to see what we want to update. Right? We wanna look at the old plan, the existing system plan. What strategies and policies were recommended ten years ago? Are those policies and strategies still valid today? Did any of them get implemented? And if they did, then did they work as intended? If they didn't, then why didn't they work?

Right? We wanna look at all this information, gather this data so we know what to recommend and what not to recommend in the new plan. Next, we want to gather all the existing asset information. What assets are working? Which ones are not working?

What needs to be replaced? We want to look at water quality reports because we want to know what kind of pollutants exist in our water bodies and what solutions can we recommend to treat them. Reviewing flooding complaints is important to determine where our system lacks capacity and what can be done to improve the capacity. And last but not least, aquatic habitat data. This data helps us determine whether the habitat is thriving or it's not.

And if it is not, then what can be done to improve habitat conditions? So it's very important to collect existing data. Next step in the plan update process is public outreach. This is yes.

Can I interrupt with a quick question? On the data collection slide, does that do in all of those five categories, does any of that include, collection of best practices by other utilities across the country?

Best practices by other utilities. When you say other utilities, you mean

Other utility departments in other cities city. Not just in Washington, but elsewhere. I mean, our plan hasn't been updated in ten years. We're we're not the only utility that handles stormwater. You know, we shouldn't just start from scratch in figuring these things out. I mean, I think these are good categories to look at, but also other people have done work too in their respective corners of the country and I'm sure have, in the last ten years, evolved their practices so we don't have to start from scratch? So that's the question.

One of the great things about, Washington State, King County in particular, is that we're a leader in the country in stormwater. There's, Prince George's County, I think, in, Maryland is also another leader. And if you think about it, we're both on large sounds, Chesapeake Bay and Puget Sound. And so it's very important for us to understand the impact stormwater is having on our water bodies. And so, because we kind of are a leader nationally, Divya is part of a stormwater committee for American Public Works Association.

And in there, they get constant presentations, in which they new and emerging technologies are presented. Also, the Department of Ecology has a program in place in which they can test and, on a pilot basis, allow for new technologies to be used to see how did that work. And so but one of the biggest things we do is that we've partnered with a consultant who has experience doing this from multiple jurisdictions. And so we will help. We will be relying on our consultant to help give us that perspective that's, you know, outside of Bellevue.

Thank you, Eric. So, yeah, public outreach. This is the next step in the system update process, and this is actually also a form of data collection. And it's a very important part of our system update process because we want to know what's important for the people in our community when it comes to storm and surface water. What problems do they want resolved?

What benefits they'd wanna see or what benefits they'd wanna enjoy? So we reach out to our community to get their feedback, and we have several ways of doing this. First one is we attend in person community events. We attend these community events. We reach out to people.

We go face to face. We talk to them in person, and we explain to them what the city plans to do and how their input can help shape the plans. We gather information on what's important to them and then the areas where they wanna see improvement. We also post on social media and city newsletters where we provide the public with links to the project or the system plan website. There, they can read about the plan, ask questions, and register for, surveys and focus groups.

The surveys and focus groups are usually conducted virtually over a Zoom call where we invite a few select people, and we tell them about the plan. We ask them questions, and we get their feedback. It's kind of like a discussion. So we get we get to know what's important to them. And while doing all of this, we try our best reach to diverse audiences, especially people from underrepresented communities because we wanna give everyone an equal opportunity to be educated and provide feedback.

So we recently conducted a tabling event, during the international festival at Crossroads Mall or Crossroads Park. Sorry. We engaged with more than 100 people from different ethnicities and age groups. We had a poster board that listed some priorities for stormwater, such as reduced flooding, improve water quality, protect fish and wildlife, maintain drains and pipes, plant trees for erosion control. We provided the pub public with some fun stickers and asked them to place the stickers on their on on the top two priorities. Can you guess which ones got the most votes? Which two out of the five?

A lot of butterflies there.

Reduce plenty. Is that one of them?

No. Actually, surprisingly, that yeah. You would think they'd want that first, but no.

Fish wild one.

That's right. That's one.

Water quality?

Nope. Well, I've eliminated them. Yes. Plant trees. Yes. Yeah. It's I think our peep community cares a lot about nature, which is absolutely great. So, before I go to the next slide, I just wanna pause, take a moment, see if anybody has any questions. Is the information that's being presented clear?

I I just had one comment. I was really happy to see that public outreach was so far up in the process, you know, because I think it's really important before you start these kinds of big planning efforts to just ask them what they want, tell them what they're gonna what you guys are doing. And so I guess I'm assuming throughout the process, you'll give updates or you'll give a, at the end, give a public presentation or something like that? Yeah.

Several different touches during throughout the staging.

Okay.

When we when we roll out the draft plan, that'll be another big effort to say, we've listened to you, and this is the result that we've come up with. And so that that, yeah, we'll have at least at least one big public meeting. And and probably, if I'm if I had to guess, I think we'll probably do some tabling events even with that draft plan, go go to specific populations and try to get their input.

Yeah. At some point in the process, I'd love to hear a summary of what the folks are saying. What do they consider the benefits? What would they be willing to pay more for? Not just the minimum. We've got to meet these regulations. But I think you alluded to that before, that we've got some choices.

Yep. So when we come back and talk about policies, we're going to be armed with the results of the survey and maybe even the focus groups by that time. Yeah. So we can talk in detail about what we've heard and what we think, you know, that the public is is prioritizing for us.

Great. Thanks.

I have a question. I'm just wondering. You mentioned some factors that have been affecting this area. And I'm just wondering, so as you do public outreach, is there an eye towards particular parts of the city or neighborhoods that have been especially hard hit with, say, change in climate, the floods, and the the wastewater or storm water getting more prone to flooding. So it's a little bit of a question also towards the outreach. Is there qualitative and quantitative outcomes that you're measuring from the public outreach, which ties to what Anna's saying?

Yeah. So I I guess, as our planning department, we all we kind of know where the flooding or where the problems are, definitely, for sure. So we are aware of those problems. But, when we do our public outreach, we try to go to, areas or events where our focus is to have diverse groups, you know, be informed and involve themselves. That's that's been our main focus so that, yeah.

I mean, we can go to just, you know, areas where there's more flooding and get input from them that I mean, which we probably already know. Right? Like, we already know that have that information. But when we go to these, events where we know that there's gonna be all people from all ethnicities or, you know, backgrounds coming, and, we might get to hear what we usually don't hear. Right? Different, perspectives. So, yeah, that's been our main focus.

And I I don't know that it's, a probably is a pattern that you can see in all cities, but I know you can definitely see it in Bellevue, is that the areas that we have that are the most diverse happen to be the most urbanized, some of the earliest developed. And if you blur your eyes when you're looking at aerial photograph, probably the least amount of green. And so that's one area in which stormwater can come and possibly offer some benefits. Like what we said, the tree planting and or stormwater parks. Some some way to introduce a cooling space, provide more shade.

And so, yeah, we do focus a lot on kind of that bell red corridor crossroads. But if you if you look at it, that's some of the most intensely developed areas that we have.

Okay. So I've been telling you all about the different steps involved in the update process. Right? I just wanna you know? So we don't get lost in the you know? And, you know, start wondering, okay. Why are we talking about this? What where are we in the presentation? So, yeah, I'm giving you an update on the process involved in the update process. I've talked to you about gathering existing data and then obtaining public input.

So those were the first two steps. And now, the next step, I'm gonna talk to you about all the next steps. Next is planning criteria. So once we gather all the existing data and public input, we start with the actual system planning. And the first step in system planning is to establish criteria and factors, factors that kind of drive future strategic initiatives, future policy recommendations, project prioritization.

So this slide here shows some of the, criteria that we use that we came up with for system planning, which we think are important. The first one is regulatory compliance. We wanna make sure that the projects and programs we recommend will align with state and federal regulations. It's very important. Right?

It's the first one. Next one is we wanna make sure we have reliable infrastructure, something that can sustain climate change, growth, and other development. Environmental stewardship is one of the most important criteria. Whatever we plan, whatever we build, we wanna make sure that we do not negatively impact our environment. In fact, we wanna make sure that we improve it and protect it from future impacts.

So we strive to develop and propose more environment friendly solutions. We surely want to account for maintenance in our system planning. While maintenance and operations cost cannot be avoided, we can at least try and recommend solutions to avoid huge maintenance costs in the future. Lastly, we have service equity. We wanna make sure that the pro projects and programs recommended by our system plan have the ability to benefit everyone in the community, including minorities and underrepresented communities.

Where does budget fit in?

It's coming. We have a separate slide for financial analysis. Yeah. So next one next step is regulatory compliance. So this slide here shows the some of the regulatory agencies and their respective programs that the city is required to comply with.

The first one is the Department of Ecology's NPDES phase two municipal storm sewer permit. This permit requires the city to eliminate pollutants and storm water before discharging to state waters. The permit is issued for five years, and the current term is from 2024 to 2029. So in the current term, the permit requirements change considerably, which means that our new system plan needs to reflect those changes. Whatever programs or projects we recommend in our plan needs to meet those new permit requirements.

The next one is Federal Emergency Management Agency, FEMA's National Flood Insurance Program. This program requires the city to satisfy FEMA's floodplain management requirements. Next, we have the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife's hydraulic project approval HPA permit. This permit requires us to minimize construction impacts to protect fish and wildlife. King County's Growth Management Act regulates land use to accommodate growth while maintaining environmental protection.

The US Fish and Wildlife Services Endangered Species Act requires the city to take actions to prevent further decline of endangered species. So these are just some of the federal and state agency reg you know, programs. There are several others also. And these these programs or regulations keep changing with time. Right?

Therefore, we need to review the current regulations and make sure our current system plan reflects these changes or complies with them. After looking at regulatory agency, regulations, we want to look at system needs and asset management. We look at our existing stormwater system assets and identify system needs such as capacity. Does the system have enough capacity to handle excessive rainfall and snow melt? Does it have the capacity to handle flow from increase in impervious surface areas?

We also want to look at the system condition. We have aging stormwater infrastructure in Bellevue. Many of our stormwater assets are nearing the end of their physical life. So to keep track of our system needs, the asset management program was implemented by the utilities department. This program was actually recommended by the previous storm and surface water system plan, which now got implemented.

And there are two other programs within the asset management program that pertain to stormwater. One is the renewal and replacement program, which identifies system defects and recommends renewal and replacement strategies. The second one is the culvert condition assessment program. In this program, culverts are inspected, assessed for defects and prioritized for replacement or removal. The picture on the slide is that of an old deteriorated stormwater pipe.

You can see that it is corroded and broken. Efforts made through the stormwater renewal and replacement program, also known as the r and r program, include CCT CCTVing the storm water gravity mains such as these to assist them assess their condition for repair or replacement. About 50% of the city's storm water pipes have been CCTVed so far under the r and r program, And we plan to, CCTV the remaining 50% in the next few years. Next, we have environmental stewardship. This is a very important part of storm and surface water system planning.

Whatever programs or projects we recommend, whatever strategies we adopt, whatever policies we make, we want to make sure that we are benefiting the environment with our actions and not ruining it. Listed on this slide are some of the programs implemented by the city to protect the environment. Few of these programs were actually recommended by the previous system plan, And, some of them have been implemented or and some of them are in the process of being implemented. The environmental monitoring program, which, yeah, which, for example, it's been implemented. And this program actually monitors and assesses the health of Bellevue streams to make sure that their, you know, the their natural function and resiliency are still healthy, you know, despite the urban development that's going on.

Next is a watershed management plan. This plan recommends actions to improve the health of our watersheds. This plan is, currently, being developed. It's, we plan to finish it by the end of this year or early next year. And, this will be a very important, piece of the storm and surface water system plan.

Actually, the watershed management plan feeds the storm and surface water system plan by recommending policies and projects for better storm water management in the city. Then we have FEMA's community rating system. The city, of Bellevue participates in FEMA's National Flood Insurance Program or NFIP, which aims to reduce the impact of flooding on public and private properties. Participating in the community rating system program means that we are actually going above and beyond, meeting the minimum requirements set by the National Flood Insurance Program. So in Bellevue, we do not allow any development or redevelopment within the floodplain.

Because of this and other several predictable actions we take, every year as part of the community rating system program, City Of Bellevue residents get a 25% reduction in their flood insurance premiums. Operations and maintenance. Operations and maintenance, they they play a big role in the reliability and safety of our stormwater infrastructure. Therefore, it is important that we have the right structure, procedures, and policies in place to ensure optimal operations and maintenance, sorry, practices. The storm and surface water plan describes the role and function of the utility department's operations and maintenance division.

This division is responsible for operations and maintenance of the storm and surface water systems, including system repair and replacement, emergency response, regulatory compliance such as, you know, the NPDES permit where we are required to, reduce, the pollutants or sediment getting into storm water by maintaining our facilities, and then lastly, managing operations and maintenance records and data. Then we have the capital investment plan. The utility department's capital investment plan is a six year spending plan, as of now, but, soon it's gonna be a ten year plan. So capital investment planning includes developing a list of recommended projects and prioritizing them based on select criteria. It also includes estimating resource and fiscal needs for the projects.

The storm and surface water CIP has several programs under its umbrella. Some of them include the flood control program, water quality retrofit program, and the infrastructure rehabilitation program. Projects are assigned to one of these programs depending on the project's purpose or goal. For example, a project a project that's proposing to reduce flooding will be assigned to the flood control program, and a project that's, trying to fulfill water quality goals is gonna be assigned under the water quality retrofit program. So why am I talking about the capital investment plan when this presentation is about the storm and surface water system plan?

It's because they're both connected. One feeds into the other. The storm and surface water system plan informs the capital investment plan by recommending projects that meet plan goals and criteria. All of the work we do as part of the storm and surface water system plan, such as identifying system needs and deficits, helps us in creating new projects to fix these deficits. For example, sometimes, the Department of Fish and Wildlife requires us to replace fish passage impeding culverts with bridges such as the one shown in the picture.

Because of this, a simple culvert replacement project might turn into a much bigger venture with significant significant cost. To be prepared for such high cost projects, we do capital investment planning. The storm and surface water system plan aids the capital investment planning effort by identifying these large projects. Then we have financial analysis. So what is financial analysis, and why do we do it?

Financial analysis is like a health checkup. We want to know how we are doing financially. Right? So we first look at our current financial status. We identify our revenues. We identify our expenditures, and we take a look at the fund balance. By doing so, we understand how we are doing financially. And after checking the current financial status, we look at future financial forecast. We look at how growth, inflation, and other factors might affect future costs and expenses. And this type of forecast is actually, routinely used by our utility staff to identify future rate increases and develop rate adjustment proposals.

Based on data gathered so far, we are not anticipating any radical changes to future expenses and rates, which is great. So once we have an idea of our current financial status and future needs, we develop a plan to fund the capital investment program. And potential means for funding high priority capital projects and programs include reallocating funds from low priority projects, obtaining grants, and then, increasing or adopting storm and surface water utility rate increases or using funds from the renewal and replacement program. Next in the financial analysis process is determining funding for the renewal and replacement program. Aging infrastructure is one of the biggest drivers of utility costs today.

We want to avoid service disruptions to customers and high emergency repair costs. Right? So in order to do that, it's important that we replace our aging infrastructure before they fail. The renewal and replacement reserves were established by the city council to plan for replacement of city's aging utility systems. Because of our robust asset management, capital improvements, and r and r programs and extensive financial planning, Bellevue Utilities currently does not have any outstanding debt.

Our goal is to cash fund our CIP needs. Based on the city's financial policies, debt is reserved for changed circumstances in order to maintain financial flexibility such as, when I say changed circumstances, it's like if, to recover from a major catastrophic event. Like, if a major earthquake damages infrastructure, we will likely have to issue debt. The good news is that we have high bond rating in case we need to do this. Now I'm gonna talk about the schedule and next steps.

Like I mentioned before, the plan update process began late last year. We have collected and reviewed all existing data. We are currently in the public engagement phase, which will be completed this fall. We will then be starting the stormwater program evaluation process, which will involve all the steps that I just talked to you about. And this evaluation process will help us in providing recommendations and an implementation plan, that will be more suitable for current and future conditions.

And the final step in the update process is updating the system plan document itself, which we expect to complete by the 2026 or early twenty twenty seven. So Eric went over some of this. So what's ESC's involvement, in the plan update process going forward? We will come back to ESC next year with two more presentations on the storm and surface water system plan update. The first presentation will likely be around mid next year, and we will talk to you about proposed policy and code changes then.

The second presentation will be towards the 2026 or early twenty twenty seven, and we will review the draft plan with you then. And then ESC will be requested to provide their input on the draft plan and which will then be incorporated into the final plan. And then we will work with you, prepare a letter of recommendation to counsel for planned adoption. With that, I conclude my presentation, and I open the floor for questions or comments.

Yes. I had one, and I think it was on your planning criteria slide. Mhmm. You had several items, and the last one was service equity. Yes. Could could you remind us what you look at when when you talk about service equity relative to the stormwater utility?

Okay. Yeah.

So we also talked about how we we identify our list of projects, and we prioritize them. One of the criteria that we use to provide prioritize them is service equity. Currently, that criteria looks at low income areas and making sure that, if we have to cite a large project, you know, we wanna consider, those areas as part of our equity and social justice, making sure that not everything ends up in the cheapest neighborhoods to build Mhmm. Because that has impacted those populations historically. But one of the things in specific with stormwater is that, it's not part of this plan, but it's just part of what we're doing, is the Kelsey Creek Basin happens to be one of our most urbanized and one of our most diverse.

It's actually an area that we're gonna study in detail. We have received some grants to do a Kelsey Basin plan Kelsey Creek Basin plan. We're gonna be embarking on that, soon, and we'll be looking at how do we do we incorporate some stormwater improvements in those areas that have been most highly impacted by development, and also are the most urbanized, and also represent where our populations live that have been historically impacted. And so we're looking at all of those things when

That's we're really helpful. Yeah, this is exactly the slide. So also I was wondering, when you list these, is that the order of importance?

Or

and I just wanna make a point. I mean and it's sort of to to just sort of ask ourselves as we're doing this, why service equity seems to always fall to the bottom. And, you know, I don't have the right answer here, but it just strikes me when it's not only here. It's it's in other places where I've worked. We don't have even have service equity. So, you know, kudos to Bellevue. Right? We have service. We take that into consideration. But, you know, where should it be? Obviously, regulatory is

no questions. Right? That we absolutely have to do. Right? Regulatory compliance and reliable infrastructure. Those are the things that we absolutely have to do. We definitely want to have service equity, but it's like I don't know.

It's just something for consideration.

I I actually wrote it down that maybe we can consider relisting. I mean, I would say it's last but not least. Yeah. But it it is one of those like like she had mentioned, we we do have some mandates, and this is an area in which we have choice. Yes. And so it sometimes it does happen after we satisfy our mandates, but doesn't necessarily mean it's less important. Yeah. Thank you.

Could you describe more how you do actually prioritize? Because you've described a lot of criteria and factors that you have to consider. There's a huge amount that's going and thank you for doing this. How do you actually prioritize? You end up with a gigantic list of possible projects.

We we do have a gigantic list of we actually have something called the

So you've described there are kind of a lot of inputs and possibilities, but how do you actually prioritize?

There's a number of inputs that go into the list. We actually have something called a problems list. We meet regularly with our operations staff and say, what are you seeing out there? They're the ones that are on the ground. They're out and and so they identify problems. And then we say, okay. Can we address that problem with a capital investment? But how do we prioritize? So now we have a list of projects, and we go through one of the things we do is we partner with asset management. They have a risk model where they look at consequence of failure, likelihood of failure, and that helps inform if if we've got some projects that actually adds points in our ranking system.

If it's, you know, high consequence of failure, likely to happen, it's gonna rise to the to the top of our, top of our prioritization. And so the I think there's, like, eight categories that we score every project on. And then we go through the list and and then rank them. And we will review that in detail. That's that's one of the things that we look at with you when we come back with the CIP budget is that prioritization and and how we did that.

And you'll be able to so this plan will make a recommendation, you know, kind of a vision for the twenty years, but the actual rubber meets the road in our on our budgeting. And that's not part of this plan, but that does happen. That will be happening. We're just now kicking off our next round of CIP budgeting, and so you'll be hearing from us probably early next year on that. And and so we're going through our big list now. We'll be working and prioritizing that, and we'll bring that to you. And then we can we can talk in great detail on those how we prioritized those projects.

Eric, is it fair to say that when we developed the budget two years ago, almost two years ago, that we we floated the project prioritization criteria in front of the public? They gave us their rankings on how we did that, and we compared that with our rankings. Now things like I think service equity was one of those. Mhmm. Things like regulatory compliance and safety are things that we obviously are gonna care a lot about. But the public, by and large, mirrored with, like, seven out of eight, I think, were almost identical. So that's but that's a public engagement tool that we wanna go back and continue to look at. So those criteria are very important.

And these are some of the exact same criteria that are actually used in project prioritization. Some of them, actually. And one of these criteria, they're assigned weights.

That's what I was wondering about.

What are the weights?

Yeah. So I think they are listed in that order. So regulatory compliance, I think, and reliable infrastructure, I think they have I don't remember the exact numbers or the weight, but I think it's in that order. Yeah. Unfortunately, service equity falls to the bottom at the bottom because it's like it's not mandated. It's a choice. Yeah. They have weights assigned.

Thanks.

Any other questions? Or, DuPurtis, any questions from you?

Nothing here. Thank you very much.

Okay. I'll close it off then with one last question. As I thank you for your presentation, very insightful, and I look forward to the next phases of it. I just wanted to ask a question to see if what I heard tonight matches with what's ringing in my head. So is it fair to say that this plan will address the issue as a citizen in Bellevue, which is the base concern for me for stormwater, which is you said you went out to Crossroads and asked the public, and one of them was protecting fish and wildlife.

And I know one of the biggest things that we have discovered lately that impacts our salmon population is this tire dust that, you know, goes into the storm water and goes into our water bodies and then kills off adult salmons that are about to spawn, and then we have less salmon population. And we, that live in Pacific Northwest, very much prized and want the salmon population to come back in full force. So is it fair to say that this plan, given that it's a ten year plan and we now have new science that has shown us what we'll do, will address this type of concern that is in the stormwater system?

Yes. We definitely will take that into consideration because, like I said, this plan proposes projects to you know, we first look at our water system needs, what our water bodies need. Right? Like, what can we do to improve? And then we create these projects, and this is all part of that system plan. And, one of the projects is, like Eric just mentioned, the Kelsey Creeks Basin study. It's a very urbanized basin and a lot of, you know, traffic, heavy traffic on streets. So, yeah, we are looking at solutions to retrofit the stormwater infrastructure in this basin so that it can address things like tire dust Yeah. So we can, predict salmon. And, yeah, this is all part of storm and surface water system planning.

Great. Okay. Thank you. I look forward to hearing how you're gonna protect our salmon in the next update. Alright. With that, we're down to the end of the agenda. Joe, would you like to review the calendars, please?

Yes. ESC calendar for October, sewer cost of service analysis. This is we do we do these every several years. It's a way to look at the various, groups, commercial, multifamily, residential, and take a look at, the relative cost of service for those different groups. Bill assistance has been on the radar for for this team, this commission for some time now.

We've implemented some work this year. We wanna report out on that to you as well as, if you look at November, it's also coming back in November. It's a continued discussion because we're looking in 2026 to get some rec a recommendation out of this team this committed commission to council.

K.

So also in November, is the, wastewater system plan update as well as, we anticipate a report out on the, Republic Services. Right now, they they were delayed in the survey, partly due to the strike. And then getting into the year end, many of you have we have our our end of the year year end review and then the planning for 2026. I say this every year, spoiler alert. We'll be talking budget. In 2026. 2026. So it's it'll be a big year on budget. It's a biennial budget. Council calendar, September.

Kelsey Creek Regional Detention Facility is retrofit. So ecology, grant funding for a good chunk of that. This is the project that Eric and Divya just mentioned. Bread and butter, water main replacement, Tardmore Outfall stabilization, which is the goal there is to manage the energy dissipation of the outfall into a a Islandwood? Eric's not here. I think it's Island. The creek out there. Yeah. That goes up towards Redmond. And then more in October, defect repair, storm and sewer, pre standard, north managed flood improvements.

So and on we go into November, December. More projects coming out of out of engineering. Trying to address a lot of those lists that we have, you know, amongst the three utilities. Got it. Thank you. Alright. I wanna remind you, please stick around. We will be distributing those iPads tonight.

Got it. Alright. So with that, may I have a motion to adjourn the meeting?

I move to adjourn the meeting.

And a second?

Okay. I second.

Thank you. Alright. Meeting is adjourned at 07:38PM. Thank you.