Environmental Advisory Board - Regular Meeting

Today's meeting of the Environmental Advisory Board is called to order on February 19. Welcome everyone. The members of the Environmental Advisory Board were appointed by the City Council. We serve voluntarily. The Board's objective is to provide citizen insight to the City Council and staff on environmental activities within and affecting the City Of Clear Water. Agenda of today's are on the wall at the entrance to the chambers. Please turn off your cell phones and electronic devices. And to ensure a complete record of the board's actions, we ask each individual wishing to speak to clearly state your name and spell it for clerk. Thank you. Will members of the board and staff please introduce yourselves. To my left.

Hello, I'm Kelly Dobbin.

I'm Glenna Wentworth.

Jared Leone. Jason Drizd.

Cassie Cordova.

Thank you. All right, our first order of business here. The minutes from last meeting, I am looking for a motion or are there any changes or corrections? I noticed just one tiny errant letter was at the end of a name and that would be changed. So noting that change, I'd be looking for a motion.

I'll move

that we accept the minutes. Second. Second.

All in favor? Aye. All right, none of those. Minutes pass. Okay. We'll go on to citizens to be heard regarding items not on the agenda. If there's anyone here to speak on items not on the agenda, please come forward and state your name for the clerk. You'll have three minutes to speak.

Hi, my name is Brian Beckman, and I just wanted to mention a few of the items I sent in an email that you may or may not have been able to catch up to. The first item was, as you know, I track and obtain information the city makes publicly available on solar permits and which lead to installations. And we've been on the watch out here knowing that a 2,000 installation or permit would be coming, and that happened here in February. So looking at the data from the first through the January 14, January 1 to the February 14, hit the 2,000 mark. I think 2,001 is what it actually is.

And I saw in that list the Clearwater's large solar installation for the waste transfer station. So that was exciting to see that. I also mentioned a couple of things that are happening in Dunedin, obviously, nearby city of ours. And a reminder of that they have a continuation of their solar rebate program as well as a new program that is helping from an energy

the company. The

And we other kind of a strong fun thing foundation

that we set out to do.

And And so we started it at least, we being Sierra Club, where we're geo mapping the different solar permit data and trying to see where those installations are at. So if you're in neighborhoods, you could see those and you could, you know, go to the trouble of writing all that stuff down, but that's all data that can be mapped out there. And the thought being to try to match that up to low income areas as defined by things like HUD or the city of Clearwater to see how many installations fit in those parameters to possibly line up with one of the city's Clearwater Greenpoint two point o goals of a thousand residents having a low moderate income having solar by 2030. So we'll do some more work on that and share that with all of you. And my anecdotal evidence of being out in neighborhoods knocking on many doors is that there's a lot of installations in those low income neighborhoods.

I don't know if it's a thousand, it equates to a thousand, but I imagine that it is a lot that I I think tracking maybe really well towards a thousand resident goal. So those were the things I just wanted to share.

Do you have any insight into why that might be that we're seeing a very large amount of lower income installations?

It's you know, it's a value proposition. And when one person in a neighborhood has solar, that tends to lead to more people becoming curious, talking to their neighbor. And, you know, I don't know certainly in all instances. I know in some that are people I know, friends of mine, financing is available, and they take advantage of that. It may not be as attractive financially as buying it outright, but it's still an attractive proposition overall when you look over the life of the panel.

Great. Thanks for putting all this together, Brian. And I think as part of that, I attended the city, had a strategic planning meeting the other week and community development block grant money was mentioned and being able to map where these installations are or aren't within those boundaries too can help kind of direct funding that's available to people that might need it. So, I think to what Kelly's saying, I think that there are number of opportunities available between the co op and other programs, financing that maybe that's what we're seeing is people taking advantage of those opportunities. So that's great and thanks for bringing up the Dunedin program as well.

I think that's a really great opportunity and something that the city's talked about in green print having funding to help for other, you know, hardening of the housing and being able to couple that with state state money that's available can really make, you know, differences in in people's homes. So thank you for that. Do we have any other citizens who'd like to be heard or items not on the agenda? Okay. We'll move on to our next item then.

Review the 2025 legislative priorities. Thank you for putting this together, Cassie, putting this on the agenda. When I was at a city council meeting, I think it was late in December or so, this was on the agenda. This was approved. I think there's probably been some changes since then in terms of interest.

I'm not sure, think the Living Seawall was something I had heard at a different meeting that might not have as much interest, but I saw a lot of items on the state legislative agenda and the priorities that our city council wanted to put forward, And I thought a lot of those are there a number on there that kind of aligned with environmental advisory board and just wanted to share this in this venue, so we could, if there were anything that we might need to support and write letters for in support, we can discuss that or just again have the knowledge that these are some of the priorities our city council has. Thanks for putting this on the agenda. Cassie, was there anything that you can share with us about the items on there?

Obviously, you know, we had the sustainability and resiliency items on here. I can't hear you, I'm sorry. So we had the sustainability and resiliency items that, you know, we contributed to. So working on the statewide climate resiliency plan, asking for that to be prioritized, increasing funding for resilient Florida. I think those were the ones that we put gave input on as far as the sustainability team.

All right. And I have a question. I'm not clear on where this priority stand. I understand that they were voted on in December. December. So are they set now? Are these all accepted or are they proposed? This is a draft, right?

This was a draft, but I feel like now that it's been voted on, because I pulled this, well actually you sent it to me, but it's the agenda attachment item from the December meeting before it was voted on and accepted.

Okay. So this was accepted. This was voted on

In December, yeah. Okay, awesome.

Yeah. Yeah, that's why I thought it was a really great thing to for our board discuss, because there were a number of things on here that I think our board in the past has brought up. The Living Seawall was one that kind of stuck out to me and I was curious if there was more information on that or on what we can do to promote more of that type of development when projects are coming forward that they would have some type of a living seawall as part of that, you know.

So as it's mentioned on here, we have applied for the Gulf Futures grant. And by we, it's within the public works department but it's not the sustainability division. So that's our storm water engineering division that's pushing that forward. They had a really strong application. So they haven't heard back yet as last time I checked. But I feel like they have a very good shot at getting that.

Okay, that's great.

What was the name

of it?

The Gulf what? Gulf Oh, Futures

I see.

Okay. So, it's a grant specifically for Gulf Coast communities. And they put a lot of work into that and they've looked at what other communities submitted and they feel very confident in their application.

Where would that be? Where would that Living Seawall project?

I think it's going to be citywide. I haven't like I really haven't had much time to talk to. It's Sam Riley is the one that's working on this. I've been meaning to get more information from her. She's very busy, we're very busy. So and until the grant until we hear about it. But if we do obviously get the grant then we can certainly have her come in and give you all some more information on it.

Sure. Okay, yeah. I just when I hear living seawall, I think of like Edgewater Drive, Park, how that is kind of I think that is best of a living seawall that we have in our city, if I'm wrong.

Isn't that Dunedin?

Until it's the city for half of it up to Union for about two miles. It's welcome to Clearwater sign. So, you know, that's where all the mangroves are and just the grass goes right into the Intracoastal Basin. Yeah, Yeah, from Union to Sunset Point, that's Yeah, the true. That's the living seawall that I can think of that the city has currently.

I didn't know if this was, to improve that or anything like that. Was a little curious. Then I saw on here about allowing local governments to regulate tree preservation removals and replacements. Do we have any more information about that? I think the city and trees has been a very hot topic in years past.

And so, I was curious what that would look like. Is that turning back priorities that the legislature has had in the past? Because I think that's where we are now is that the state said that cities can't tell people how to remove trees, something like that. But I thought that was, you know, good to see on our project list. I don't know if anyone else had any other comments or thoughts on?

Well, on the living seawalls, have to try to think about what, I mean, just saw a presentation last night on living shorelines. And, you know, I'm trying to visualize the different kinds of shoreline designs.

So this living seawall is an actual it's like a technology. So it's not just a living shoreline. It's not just a typical living shoreline. So there's a company that's building these living from what I understand, it's like a three d printed kind of sea wall that allows for organisms to grow directly on it. It's like designed to do that. So it wouldn't just be, you know, planting mangroves or various other living things. This is an actual seawall that's made to encourage.

Yeah. So it's more hardened than, I mean it is, it's a seawall made, but I don't made of some kind of, like it could

be It's like a man made seawall

that It's a man made seawall that is is rocks or could it be big stars?

It's actually three d printed from what I understand. So it's three d printed to have these kind of natural crevices that will then encourage things to grow on and I think they perhaps plant certain things to get it to become like

It sounds like what they have down by the skyway, those large like rocks that are set there where it encourages crabs and other types of marine life to grow.

I think that's a living seashore. I think this is more hardened than that.

Think it's based on the company and like I said this was just a very brief meeting we had with him many months ago. But there's a company, I wanna say down Fort Lauderdale ish area that they have kind of started this and that's what this is based off of. Somewhere down in South Florida.

Interesting. Yeah.

Think that's a and especially after the storms are community faced, I think figuring out, you know, other options opportunities to just, know,

stop erosion and not get washed away. Something to be resilient in a storm. That's interesting. I I, you know, I love the sustainability and resiliency goals here that are the priorities. You know the language, because I mean this will support our green print plan, it sounds like. So I mean it addresses that. I'm not familiar with My Safe Florida Home program.

Oh, I've just I had mentioned that with Brian. That's a state program for home hardening. So it is assistance for if you replace windows, doors, number of different projects for around the house and the state will give I think it's up to

two Single thousand family homes and as well as there's a small amount I think for multi family homes.

And that's a state program? Oh, okay.

I think it's quite limited, the funding.

I'm sorry?

I think the funding is pretty limited and it's over

It's a priority to increase funding

this

next session and

I think it gets filled up Yeah.

They've into four tiers and it was already basically went out before the tier was even filled

last

year. Yeah, it's extremely popular. Other comments from the phone?

Oh, like the home rule one.

That I think is always on there. Oh, that's good. Year.

That's you know, what gets eroded every year. Also the offshore drilling, like this priority that we're making there.

Yeah, I think that's one that's on there every year too. All right, any other comments about the legislative priorities? I just want say thank you again. Okay, do we have any comments from the audience? Please step forward and say no. Alright. We'll move on to our next item then. Review a presentation about flow toe voltaics. I think this is something that, Glenna, you had asked about last year, I believe. Is that how we got about? That's what I thought or heard about this.

Okay. So just I don't know.

Okay. Thought it was you. Well, we had a No.

We did. Just a little back story on this.

Well,

thank You you very all had

asked for some information about photovoltaics. And I had reached out. You had mentioned City of Orlando and so I reached out to City of Orlando as well as Orange County because they both have some projects. They were not able to come, you know, themselves, but they did recommend D3 which is the company that they've worked with. Just wanna be very clear that this is not us promoting D3 Energy, it's just kind of an informational session about photovoltaics, and hopefully we can learn some great stuff today.

Thank you. Thank you very much. Good afternoon, everybody. My name is Stetson Chvijn, I am the Managing Director for D3 Energy. We're actually Florida based out of South Florida, Miami to be exact. So, today's kind of the idea is just to give you guys a floating solar 101, just so you kind have a better concept of it. A lot of the questions that we typically hear, what about the fish and how do you anchor it, and wildlife and algae and everything. So, to dive in real quickly, just quickly about D3, we are a floating solar developer. So, we're pretty unique in this space because this is exclusively what we focus on. I can proudly say that we've built the most systems in The United States.

And with Florida being our backyard, naturally, this is where we focused, especially our early efforts. We've got over 10 systems in the state of Florida. Most of those up in kind of the Central Florida area, Orlando, Orange County, Altamonte Springs, we've got a couple down in South Florida as well. But when it comes to just everything floating solar, that's really where we shine and where our area of expertise is. So what is floating solar?

If you guys are familiar with solar systems in general, whether it's on the roof or in the ground, exact same electrical equipment that you would see. Right? Same solar panels, same wires, same inverters from an electrical standpoint, essentially the same equipment, same technology. It's just an alternate way to rack it. So what we've seen, as solar has continued to get more and more popular and specialized, has been this idea of, especially if you look in the state of Florida, real estate is just too valuable, agricultural land is too valuable, and the one knock on solar in general is that it needs a lot of space.

And so, you continue to hear a lot of this pushback, whether it's the utilities, or private contractors eating up hundreds of acres of land to deploy large scale solar. This idea of floating solar has become more and more appetizing. Because, obviously, Florida has a lot of inland bodies of water, typically man made, storm water retention ponds, things of that nature. And so this idea of, hey, keep it, save your valuable land, avoid putting it on rooftop space, and deploying it on bodies of water has become more and more popular. So there's kind of a diagram of what the actual floating PV system is.

It's HCPE plastic, so the same type of plastic that you drink your milk or water out of. So there's a lot of research that has gone into that this system is not leaching any toxins or anything like that out into the water. Can see there on that diagram, the larger float to the left is where the solar panel actually sits, and then you have these secondary rows in between, which are there both for buoyancy as well as walkways. So think of a giant jet ski dock, kind of extrapolated for acres, with solar panels on top of it. From an installation standpoint, I jokingly always say that these are essentially built kind of like a giant Lego set or, you know, Kinect set.

They're all built on shore and then kind of built row by row and fed out into the water. So from an environmental standpoint, there's very little impact to the shoreline, there's no heavy machinery needed, you're able to go ahead and deploy these systems relatively straightforward in that regard. Build it kind of go back to my Lego or puzzle analogy you build it in sections and then float it out into the water and then connect it out on the water. And so whether you're building a couple 100 kilowatts or a couple megawatts, the installation process is essentially the same. Anchoring, this is obviously a big one here in Florida especially.

So the entire system is fully secured and anchored all the way around. We've used a variety of different types of anchors in the past, depending on soil conditions, the water depth, obviously wind load is a big one. We did do one for Miami Dade County back in 2020, that was at 158 miles per hour winds, so category five hurricane. And these systems are pretty they're very resistant to high wind events because of being on water. Typically, most of your bodies of water are going be a little bit lower than ground level.

So they are protected more so against high wind, and then as well as the tilt of our panels. So, with a floating PV system, you're at about a five-twelve degree tilt, where with a ground you're at usually 20 plus degrees, so it's a lot more wind load on the backside of that panel. So we had one that we did for Duke Energy in 2023 that's here in Bartow, Florida, not too far from you guys. The eye of the hurricane went right over our system and had zero issues structurally in terms of it being secured. So a very important topic for us here in Florida for all of our projects.

You can see there on it can withstand varying water level changes. So think of like a mooring system for a boat. We'll take into account what's your lowest water level possible in that pond, what's your highest water level, and then you'll allow enough slack in those lines to be able to accommodate any changes like that. And it can even sit on dry retention ponds. So we've actually been looking at that more and more of, Hey, even if it's dry 90% of the year, you can deploy this system there, and then when it does fill up, it just floats right up with it.

Going back to the hurricanes, because that's a big topic for us. We had a great real world test last year with the hurricane that kind of ripped through Central Florida. All of our systems did not have any issues after experiencing it. I know there was a lot of ground systems that reported flooding and various issues like that, but even with the severe storm surge, I mean, our system just rose up with the surge and then when it subsided, it came right back down. So it was neat to kind of see it in real life there.

Environmental, obviously a big one that we get a lot of questions about as well. This is a white paper conducted by WRA. It's a big environmental firm out in California. This was conducted prior to any of the California projects being approved, and as you guys know, California is pretty stringent on a lot of these types of things. There's a couple of the bullet points that they came back with from their white paper.

Biggest one being the top one there, the minimal adverse effects to wildlife species. And we've been able to see this in real world too. We've done a project for Altamonte Springs, the city of Altamonte Springs just north of Orlando, and it's been a perfect test case for us because you've got two ponds right next to each other, one that we've deployed floating solar on and one that's not. So we've been able to kind of see the differences. Even the Department of Energy Florida Solar Energy Center kind of partnered with us to monitor the sites to kind of see.

And they came back and pretty much vouched for all of these points here. They didn't see any adverse effects to wildlife species. They actually said that the fish like to migrate underneath it. They like the protection overhead. We didn't see any kind of damage to waterfowl or any kind of mammals that were going underneath the array.

They were still able to come up for air. And then they said they saw a couple positive water quality impacts effects like reducing algae blooms, evaporation, things of that nature as well. So we've kind of seen environmentally, especially when you're looking at these man made bodies of water, it's been a really kind of blends well with the environment there. Operations and maintenance, I won't go too in the weeds on this. The one thing I will point out is that we've seen our O and M cost be at the same, if not less, than a ground system.

Ground systems typically, most of your costs come from land management, mowing the lawn, fencing, security, things of that nature, and obviously with floating solar you eliminate those costs all pretty much to zero. And then being out on water, what we've seen is just the panels naturally stay a lot cleaner. You don't have dirt and silt and things like that dirtying the panel. So, from an O and M standpoint, you know, we get a lot of questions on this from clients and what we've seen is it's equal to, if not less than, a ground system. You've got some additional advantages of floating PV.

I just referenced these a second ago, but the two big ones is reducing evaporation, which can be very important depending on the pond, and then also reducing unwanted algae blooms. So, you know, there's the famous story I always reference out in California. L. A. Water did like $30,000,000, those little black plastic balls to cover their drinking water to try to slow evaporation.

Exact same science here. Same type of plastic, you're covering the reservoir, but now you're also generating electricity on top of it. And this is a little bit more fun, but we've done two projects so far, kind of getting more on the creative side, call them floating billboards, if you will. The one there at the top is the one that we did for Miami Dade County and Florida Power and Light. The one at the bottom is that we did for Comcast, that's right in front of that's Islands Of Adventure that you see right there at the big theme park. So Comcast, the parent company, wanted their logo across the array. So there are some things we can get creative of doing in terms of the marketing side of these pieces as well. Performance. This is a neat one. So if you Google floating solar, one of the first things that will pop up will be this here.

It's what we call the cooling effect of the water. So the way a solar panel works is the hotter it gets, the less efficient it gets, the less power it produces. So what we've seen is because our panels are about 18 inches off the water, the cooling effect of the water and the wind coming off the water keep those panels substantially cooler, therefore more efficient, and therefore produce more power. It varies between sites, so we're always very careful to give out hard numbers as to what you're going to see. But from testing and kind of comparisons of neighboring ground systems, we've seen anywhere from five to 15% increased efficiency of the panel just purely due to that cooling effect.

So, it is something that's pretty neat and still being explored, but definitely something you want to point out. The system's got a twenty five year lifetime, very similar to a roof or ground system, very durable in that regard. And then cost, obviously another big part of the conversation. So what I tell people is that at this point, what we've seen with floating solar, we're very competitive with other types of applications of solar. In most cases, we're going to be equal to, if not cheaper than a rooftop system, right?

So the economics are very much there in that regard. And we're getting more and more competitive with ground systems. When explore the cost of land and things of that nature, then typically we could be either equal to if not cheaper. If you're going out in the middle of Texas where land you can find abundant, then maybe it's not the same conversation. But when he's talking about Florida, eliminating that cost of land or land prep can be a very, very large piece of that cost. And then the greater efficiency output, the lower annual O and M, and then some of the ancillary cost savings as well. So I'll try to go through that quickly. I'd like to kind of make it more conversational on any questions you guys have because I'm sure you have some.

Thank you very much for your presentation. Yeah, you. I'll open it up to the board for any questions.

Sure. I have a few. Yeah, fair enough. What is your oldest system in the state of Florida?

2016. 2016? For Orlando utilities in the city of Orlando.

Have you guys noticed any degradation of the plastics with the No.

Yeah. No. Not at all. And, I mean, can kinda go back to my my reference earlier about the floating jet ski dock. I mean, you think about a jet ski dock sitting in a canal for twenty five, thirty years, no problem. Mhmm. This is that exact same material with a 300% UV protection increase. Gotcha. So, we haven't seen any kind of degradation to the floating system at all.

Okay. Your systems, the few that you showed us here, they're kind of seem to more in commercial areas. Have you had any installed in more residential areas?

We have not. So I would say from us, from cost standpoint, really more that commercial size and up is where it makes more sense. If you're talking about putting this in the back of your house to kind of power your house, you're better off doing like a rooftop type system just from a cost standpoint. Some of the R and D projects we've done for like our land utilities and such have been those 25, 30 kilowatt kind of systems. So you can do it logistically, but I think from a cost benefit standpoint, you're more looking at kind of commercial all the way up to like utility industrial size.

Okay.

Any Just about the wildlife, I mean, so studies have shown that wildlife is not impaired, or ecosystems, birds, do you know, do birds?

Yeah, so we did a project for the US Army in North Carolina at Fort Bragg a couple years ago, and their environmental group did a pretty deep dive in that and kind of what they call the lake effect. So with ground systems, oftentimes you'll hear something called the lake effect where there's a concern. If you have a massive ground system, from a bird's eye view, does it look like a lake? And they kind of go crashing into that. So there was some concern to that. I'd go, Hey, does a bird think that this is a large lake? They go crashing in and slam into solar panels instead of water. And from all their research they did prior to the project being proved, as well as research that's been done since the project's been in the water, they haven't had any type of issue in terms of harming the birds. We have watched birds, you know, they get smart and realize the fish are underneath the floats, so they start walking around the floats and will grab the fish in between them.

And

so, think just utilize it, you know, maybe, you know.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, you know, we've watched little baby alligators sit there and sunbathe on one of the floats, haven't caused an issue or anything So like that as it does really kind of integrate well. A lot of those pictures you see there, like the aerials, it kind of looks like a solid table top of panels, but it's really not. Like if you were to pull the panels off, it's almost like an open checkerboard. And that design was purposeful because if you did have a mammal or something, you don't want them trapped underneath that large array. So they would still be able to come up for air and then continue on. So we haven't seen any kind of impacts like that negatively.

Well, there would be no possibility. Well, I mean, I don't know, vegetation can't grow under them really. I don't know if that's but you haven't seen that as an effect on with the ecosystem.

Yeah, and that's sort of why not all of our projects are doing this, but I would say a majority of our projects have been focused on more like your man made, you know, retention ponds or things like that, where you're not necessarily looking at some type of vegetation that would be negatively impacted for like an ecosystem. So not all ponds are created equal, and we look at each project individually to make sure that there wouldn't be any negative impact. But for the most part, I can say we've not seen anything like that that has negatively impacted the O2 levels of water, increased algae blooms, increased things like that. That's been a positive for it.

How do you clean the panels?

Yeah, well, so here in Florida, especially with as much rain we get, Mother Nature does a lot of the work for us. But when we do need to get out there, it's usually just with a brush dipping it in the water below you, and then you're just scrubbing the panels.

Okay.

Yeah.

Yes. They

had we had seen a presentation given to us in writing and it said that no detergent was used and not Yes.

Yeah. There's no toxins or anything like that. We're very sensitive to that and making sure you don't have anything leaching out to the water.

And has your company done anything out in the ocean?

We haven't. No. So that's being explored. It's definitely being explored over in Asia and Europe quite a bit. We've really, just from a company standpoint, focused more on inland types of bodies of water. But it is being explored. Mean, I think you're probably We have so many lower hanging fruits, if you will, down here in Florida with inland, and that just makes more sense than all of a sudden trying to put this out in the ocean with more of a natural environment and things like that.

Well, yeah, I mean, I had done a project looking at the ones in New England

Mhmm.

And there were so many whales that had died. I don't know if it's correlated or coincidence, but I might think it's

For offshore wind? Yeah. The

numbers were staggering.

Yeah, Yeah. And so that's why we like this idea. Because the real selling point on floating solar here in Florida is like, hey, we can put this on a body of water, right, right in the heart of clear water, where it's consumed next to site. Where if you get out into the ocean, now you're having to transmit all that power back and it just kind of changes the entire benefit of floating PV in my opinion.

Yeah. Well, I think the anchoring out in

the ocean

is That would be challenging, big right? Yes.

Yeah. So in your presentation that you did, you had those big boxes at the bottom. Are those just solely for anchoring or do they have electronic components in them?

Yeah. Those are just like a ballasted anchor system. So what we've seen so we've done a bunch of water treatment plants and typically those water treatment plants have like a clay liner or some type of liner, so we can't penetrate it with like an earth anchor or a helical anchor. So in those cases you'll do a ballasted anchor, which is essentially a concrete block resting on the bottom that acts as your anchor for the system. So every site for us is very unique in terms of what types of anchor we use, how far the anchors need to be driven, and kind of, you know, soil conditions, everything kind of is considered.

Oh, that's good.

Just curiosity of the waste to power Waste to energy.

To energy? Waste to energy.

That's it. The waste to energy plant in St. Pete. When I toured that, I don't know, I guess

it was it's

been a while now. They were talking about the possibility of doing this. They have a water a body of water.

Yeah, we've been talking to Pinellas County for Yeah, a couple of years now on they've been very intrigued with because they're kind of looking at a whole microgrid kind of option and trying to utilize floating solar as coupling it with that.

That is great. I was going to ask if there were any discussions with municipalities or the county here in Pinellas or Tampa. When you were going through the presentation, I just thought of there's those giant reservoirs and driving off Alt 19, there's a giant county reservoir there. I think in Tampa, there's the Bill Young Water Reservoir there. There's a number of opportunities where it seems like you could help ensure that there's power in case of an event to Right. Make sure water is still

going back to the land conservation conversation is so to give you guys an idea, here in Florida, need about five acres for one megawatt of power, Right? With a with a floating PV system, because we're so much closer to the water, we're much more compact than really a ground system would be, so we're about two acres. So when you start talking about, hey, you're to apply, pick a number, twenty twenty megawatts of solar, hey, we need a 100 acres of land, or we only need, you know, 40 acres of water. So, like, that conversation's been a big piece for a lot of these municipalities, whether it's Orange County, City Of Orlando, Miami Dade, has been, hey, we don't have that kind of land available to boil solar, but we do have a lot of bodies of water. And so being able to kind of utilize what they have, save the valuable real estate has been a big piece of this thing for them.

So you've had some discussions with Pinellas County. Are there any other municipalities in this area that you've talked about in this system?

More south, like towards the Fort Myers, Venice area as well.

Yeah. I think this is a great option and as the city is trying to bring more solar online, like Brian had mentioned earlier at the transfer station. Think Morningside Rec and a number of other places just kind of opens up a door for other possibilities. I am curious too in one other application, large scale apartments, condo buildings, they have those same type of storm water throughout. It seems like that'd be an opportunity there as well. Do you do this for those kind of projects?

Yes. We've looked at it with that. I mean, the thing you run into there a little bit would be some of the pushback you might get from residents. Like, I used to have a lakefront condo, and now I'm looking at a solar system. Sure.

Was my

first question. Yeah. So that I mean, and that's a fair fair point. But we have looked at that, you know, to power common areas and stuff like that for different residential. So, especially some of these parks that really have a lot of green initiatives and trying to get LEED certified and everything, it's a great application there too.

Once it's installed, who's responsible for maintaining them? I assume the owner, not you, right?

Yeah. So we've done it both ways. We have a services like a division, we can maintain it for the customer if it's preferred. We've also trained kind the water treatment staff the municipality staff to be able to maintain it as well. So that would really be a customer decision there.

What kind of permitting have you seen associated with these systems?

Yeah, so, it's a great question. What we've and this has gone through all different municipalities from Florida to Ohio to North Carolina, the feedback has pretty much been the same, which has been, hey, man made bodies of water, it's been a building permit and electrical permit. We've had to go through a couple of the water districts for approvals and variances, and each and every single time, they've never had an issue with it when they've reviewed it. So that that it's it's another kind of pro of floating PV is this idea of being able to deploy these a little quicker and not have to go through so much kind of red tape and such Mhmm. For it.

Now, if you were to look at putting this on like a recreational lake and things like that, I think you'd incur a lot more questions and approvals. But when we're talking about a retention pond behind a warehouse, then it's been a pretty straight forward process.

I'm familiar with storm water ponds and environmental resource permits without the state of Florida. So, I was just curious of how many revisions had to be done with that or how much have you got any pushback from the districts?

We have. And, I mean, there's been sites where it's maybe classified wetland that raises a lot more questions and things of that. For the most part, I mean, to date, I haven't had a project in Florida that's ever been stopped because of some kind of environmental or permitting problem. Okay. Thank you.

Okay. Great. Any other questions from the board?

I have a question.

All right. Yeah. Yes, please.

The cooling effect, could you explain that? Why is that an advantage? How does that make it more efficient?

Just because it keeps the panels cooler. Your panel you know, think about a panel out in the middle of a field or on a roof. It can get really, really hot as the sun's beating down on it. The hotter it gets, just like really any kind of electrical equipment, the less efficient it gets. So just we're about 18 inches off the water. Just we've seen and this obviously depends, like, how deep the water is, how cool the water is, how warm the climate is. A lot a lot of factors go into it. But what we've seen, depending on the sites, is that panels do stay cooler, and then there you see kind of the bump in efficiency and production in the power.

I hadn't heard of that, that solar panels got I mean, what is the I don't know the cause of that. I mean, these are mini inverters. This is a mini inverter system, I assume.

So the inverters are yes, so we do have inverters. Those are typically on land. So you've got all the DC power running from water to land and then you'd have all of kind equipment like the inverters and everything would be land side.

Oh, okay. So the inverters are not on each panel.

They're Right. We've done a project like that where you have what you call microinverters, which are out on kind of attached to the panels. But for the most part with large scale solar, not just floating, but most large scale solar, you're going to use what they call string inverters or a central inverter, which is kind of separated from the actual panel itself.

Any other questions from the board? All right. We'll ask are there any questions or comments from the audience? None? Please come forward, state your name and you'll have a few minutes to you'll have three minutes to speak. Stetson, can you stay by if you Absolutely. Have any Thank you very much.

Thank you guys so much for your time.

Appreciate it. Thank you very much for your presentation. I present from the floor? You have to speak here if you're yeah, and just give your name to the clerk. Thank you.

Hi. I'm Tim Hughes, a resident of Clearwater. And per the presentation, I was curious, have because so many retention ponds are very visible for condos and apartment complexes. Have you looked at the possibility of living floating solar where you have grasses, native grasses, freshwater grasses, things. Have you looked at that?

We've had companies approach us with some of those ideas, so we have kind of looked at it.

Oh, so important. You could start talking to the mic. Thank you so much. Do you

have I'm any other questions, not sure I understood the question. I didn't really

Some are more like the floating kind of living islands that you see that Could help kind of improve water you blend that with like a floating solar array where you have solar panels, Right? Is that the question?

And to support wildlife, marine life and the ecosystem

of that small water. Okay. Thank you very much. Is that it, Tim? Thank you. Yeah. And to

So, yeah, we've explored it. We have not deployed it There's not necessarily a technology out there that has blended the two, but it is definitely an interesting concept and something that I think is worth exploring.

Yeah. No, thank you for bringing up that. All right. Any other comments from the audience? All right. Thank you again. Thank you, guys.

Thank Thank you so much.

All right. We'll move on to our next item. Licht EAB officers for 2025. So, right? Here we are. Here we are again. I'll ask for a motion of continuation of the roles that have already been established for Glenn and myself as chair and vice chair. If the board has any other options or any other ideas, but that's the motion that I was going to put out.

Works for me.

Yeah, I second that.

Just be looking for a second. And then all in favor? Aye. Aye. Motion carries. All right, we'll go on to old business items. Cassie, do you have, I guess, any old business?

All right. So I just have our kind of running list of things we've talked about and that have been mentioned. So we've made some pretty good progress. Really the last, you know, we've talked we've gone over the phosphogypsum, the bands, the EV and solar development code update, the duck hunting, the marina project update, the improved CRS score, Stevenson Creek project update, the medians and landscaping in Clearwater was directed to the city council, artificial turf update, city hall update, green print update, city solar projects update and now we can cross off the photovoltaics. So the last things that we have left on the list is the Stevenson Creek feasibility study which has been completed and delivered to the city in January.

However, it has not been presented to city leadership yet. And I just got a date on that. I think I want to say the twenty fourth, there's going to be an internal presentation on that. So hopefully by next meeting we can get somebody in here to give you guys a better overview on that. And then if we can time it so that we'd have that as well as the Stevenson Creek Advocacy Group, the lady that had come in and used her three minutes to give us a little mini presentation.

I thought we would just pair those at the same meeting since they go hand in hand. And then Cooper's Bayou and Lake Bellevue were the other two remaining items that we don't really have a firm, you know, what presentation we could give on that. Cooper's Bayou, you know, Sarah who gave our CRS presentation. She was waiting for some it's been in design and she was waiting for some more budget and then I think it's gotten kind of deprioritized on the budget and they've reallocated some of that money. So I don't see that moving forward, honestly.

That's from the city side, right? Yeah. The state's supposed to have a water quality project around there as well and I think that'd be if we could get it up, Just anything Cooper's Bayou related because

Yeah.

There's The state was supposed to do a similar project that they did on the East Side Of Courtney Campbell on the West Side there and I don't know where things are.

Is that the Stevenson Creek water shed management plan? Yeah. Yeah. So Sarah said that that would be funded next year. So, but I think this was from a while ago that she said that. So I don't know if that means '25. So I could follow-up on those.

Okay, great. And I guess the Stephenson Creek, is that similar to I sent an email out with

Yeah, what you said. Okay.

All right. Because I thought that was just the slow speed zone. I didn't know that was the whole speed

That is as far as I know. The feasibility study is on the slow speed zone. Because I had a good conversation with Mike McDonald about it. So that, you know, the feasibility study has been done. They're going to present it and then it's going to be up to city council. Do they want to move forward with it? And then if so, it would become a project and Sarah will probably be on it, I'd probably be on it as well with marine and aviation. But ultimately, city council will have to direct that.

Yeah, I noticed in there it did mention a number of different supporters or stakeholders and EAB was listed there. And so that struck me as important and wanted to make sure that everybody got an opportunity to see that. So I think what they'd be looking for is like some letter of support for slow speed zone there, which I think makes sense. The city's already worked to put in no wake zones, 300 feet from all the bridges within there and this is just to kind of shore up those spaces between the bridges essentially from what I was reading. So hope everyone gets an opportunity to take a chance to read that and we'll hopefully be able to get more information at our next meeting on that.

I think that's really good. There's a lot of development going on along the creek, a lot of I guess, know, money going in around the water, and I think we want to ensure that the water is, you know, high quality. It's been improving over the years, I think, since the city did a project there and there's been manatees and other wildlife coming back into it. So it's important to continue that process of water quality there. I'm curious about a couple other old business things that we've kind of heard, but maybe there were

Can I ask a question first about the municipal electrification feasibility study? No, no.

I was going to talk about that in the director's report.

Okay. Mean When is the for artificial turf, when is the city? I understood it was going to be in March sometime.

I have not received anything from Lauren on that recently. So, I'm not sure where that is and I can follow-up on that.

Yeah, think community development is still

Yeah, kept still getting postponed.

That's And

that's what I heard but I just at the CNC meeting, Jennifer said that they were going to, it's going to go on the agenda in March.

Okay. Because actually Jamie was the one that was updating me on that and she's no longer with the city. So I'm not sure where it's, if Lauren who's now, this is interim planning director if she's thought to let me know because Jamie knew that you guys wanted to know so she kept emailing me every time it changed. And I believe Lauren was copied on those emails, so I would hope that she would let me know but

Oh, I have that here too. It really will happen in March is what I was at another meeting and I heard Yeah, say that too. So I'm not sure exactly when, but it seems like March is going to be the time when that's going to come up for more discussion. But as far as our old business, I was curious the vulnerability assessment, if there was supposed to be an update on that. And then also the community rating system, we wrote a letter of support. I think the city's been, know, after the storms, there's been a lot interest in that as a improving that score. So I was just curious about those two things just because I know we've talked about them, but there's been a lot of changes since then or some updates there. So I was just curious if that

could be something. Yeah, I was going to well, so I don't know really what the difference between old business now and my directors' part Yeah, I

guess they're blending together. I'll just

start talking. Yeah. So, CRS, that you guys did write a letter to support us moving forward with trying to lower our score as in improve the score, right, because lower is better. And I'm going to I did reach out to the county because we all know that, you know, they have the two. And we've tried to set up, you know, some meeting to see how we can learn from them.

However, they were very busy post storm and just said they, you know, weren't able to really help us out at the time. But I do have a meeting with somebody else over at the county on another topic, kind of our private pond maintenance. So I'm hoping to be able to get more on to that side now that especially now that the environmental division has kind of come under our umbrella. But there we are also working on developing a CRS working group within city staff so that we can start looking at more opportunities for points. We had a meeting, I don't know if it was this week or last week, with Sarah and Jean who's our new floodplain management manager who actually used to be our CRS scorer about a couple of topics related to CRS points.

So at this point, it's just going to take, you know there's a lot of new people that need to work together to start working on that. So I don't have anything definite for that, but it is something that we have the support to dedicate the staff time to.

Yeah. Well, that's great. Yeah, I just again, with there's really early in the budget process and thought that this is a good time again to find out what other updates and if there was more kind of support in terms of money to bring in or however or staff time, however to improve that score. So that's great to hear that there are those steps being made. And then, yeah, with the vulnerability assessment?

Oh, the good old vulnerability assessment. So we had a meeting today with Atkins to check-in and they so you know we've submitted all of our deliverables but FTP has come back with a lot of feedback that we need to change. And it's almost because we went above and beyond with our digital twin. Our city simulator really did kind of more than what was required. And you would think that would be a good thing, but what DEP needs is exactly what DEP needs because they need to be able to, you know, check the boxes and compare it apples to apples with every other vulnerability assessment.

So when we have something that's different but better, they keep asking us like we just need this map like this. So we've had to kind of go back and make it what exactly how they want it and that's what's been taking quite some time. So we did have a second extension, but that extension, our final extension, we have to have everything done and dusted by March 30. So we are confident that it will be finished on March 30. And we also did have to go in and add another task because it's I think I've explained it before.

We had a work order before we had the grant and then we had to our grant had a different work order. So to get those to match up as far as accounting has been very complicated. So what we've do is we've created an additional task in our grant work order to pull all of our admin into to make it match with our Atkins work order. Melody has been doing it. It's very complicated. I'm so glad that she's doing it and not me. But it should be done. And you know, we just talked about this with Atkins today. We need to get it done. We know that.

We need to get it done in the way they want it done. But more importantly, once we get done with FTEP, we want to then take this and start using it. And you know it's been a frustrating experience that's taken as long as it's taken, but we don't want that to taint the vulnerability assessment going forward. This is and you know, spent a lot of time invested in this and we want to use it. And we haven't gotten to really be able to get to that point because we're so focused on deliverables and tasks and grant and money and invoices.

So very soon, you know, we're going to wrap all this up and then we're going to start start to get some training on how we can use this and how we can really implement this and can we get this into our, you know, how we budget, how we, you know, do our capital improvement projection plans and things like that.

That's great.

That's my update on Thank vulnerability

you for the info Cassie. And it sounds like, you know, it'd be really maybe even useful to still keep that old information if those, you know, were so detailed and maybe compare those to the ones that the state I don't know. It just seems like if the city did already put that stuff together, we should be able to still

Yeah, that's what I said to Atkins today. Said we can give the FDP whatever we want, but everything else we're doing above and beyond, you know, we're going to use that. So it's all going to work out.

Yeah, that's great. All right. Anything else old businessdirectors report related?

Well, a few things and I think one was Glenna was asking. So, as you may know, the federal government has made some executive orders which have impacted some of our federal grants and congressional directed spending awards. So, we have three federal grantsdirected spending awards, congressional direct spending awards. One is our and they're all if it's a good thing or a bad thing, they're all through the Department of Energy. And so we have our EECBG which is the Energy Efficiency Community Block Grant and energy efficiency conservation block grant.

That is what we bought the four EVs with. We've received two. I drove one here today. You can come check it out after the meeting. And good news is the other two are coming soon as in maybe so we have the two Mach E's. The third Mach E may arrive as early as next week. And then the Lightning F-one 150 we're expecting March. So we'll be excited to get those in. We do have to wait till we have all four in to file for reimbursement. So it's a reimbursement grant.

Pretty confident that we're going to because that is a executed award, you know, we have a signed agreement, we feel that we're going to get that money. The other two unfortunately were not completely executed before these executive orders. So that would be the energy futures grant which was the one for the Pinellas County Electric Mobility Roadmap, the $500,000 that was going to be regionally used to write our individual green fleet transition plans as well as to do the regional electrical EV infrastructure roadmap. I've been in negotiations for that for over a year and we just we never signed we didn't get to the signing date. We were supposed to sign in November.

They never got to it. I don't know now looking back maybe that's why they kept postponing it because maybe they anticipated something like this. But they've now, know, it's on hold I would say. And unfortunately my personal opinion that one is probably the most vulnerable because it had a community benefits plan as part of the application. And that is specifically called out in the executive order anything that had DEI or a CBD which is a community benefits plan.

So that's the fact on that. The other one is our congressional directed spending award for the $1,900,000 for the solar that we actually it's a FY23 congressional directed spending award that we were awarded and we had gone through now, a congressional directed spending award is different than a grant. They allocate you the money but then they make you go through essentially the grant application process which I had been doing. And then we ran into the issue of not being able to have any BABA compliant solar panels. I think, you know, I had mentioned this probably several meetings where there just were no BABA which is Buy America, Build America, up compliant solar panels in existence because we do not make solar panels in this country.

The panels themselves, we can make all the other stuff but we don't make the panels and that so it doesn't get us to the threshold of the percentage of the entire system has to be built and made in America. But then there was a waiver that so we were on hold for a while. It probably is, I don't know, six or eight months. And then they finally came out with a waiver for the panels themselves, not for the inverters and the steel and all that but they said, we're going to do a blanket waiver for panels. So for about a week, we were really excited.

We said, Okay, we've got our $2,000,000 back. I started getting things going because we had to relook at where we were going to put these because we already went through with the ones that we had put on the grant a year ago, right. We had said we were going to do Morningside, solid waste transfer station, gas. And then we went and once that got on hold, luckily the city said, you know, we've already come so far. We've got this ARPA money.

We're just gonna go ahead and do it. So that was great that the city went forward with those. But then that meant we had to start over on our application. And so we had a short list of some great projects and I was working my way to get that through. And then not even two weeks later the executive order came out. So this one is tough to say because it's so old at this point. It's from FY twenty three. We're in you know, this is three years old essentially. But it wasn't technically ever executed, right. So I don't know what's gonna happen with that one.

So unfortunately basically the DOE has sent us the same response. We've messaged saying we know that we're aware of the executive order. What does this mean? And we've gotten verbatim, thank you for contacting the DOE. We will get back to you shortly or something.

They're not communicating with us now. The EECBG, like I said once we get those two other cars in, it's just a portal that we have to go in. So I think that one should be Okay. The other two TBA. Couple other things is we have worked internally to start shaping some strategies for Greenprint three point zero, if we're going to call it that.

Very preliminary, just Melody and myself and our intern, we've put together some new core topic areas, right. So we know that GreenPrint and GreenPrint two point zero have the same eight core topic areas and they have the then strategies within those core topic areas. So we've tried to keep it as similar as possible but, you know, we've made some changes to the core topic areas and some of the strategies. And this is a very preliminary outline of what we think, you know, we should move forward with. It's much it's very truncated.

You know, there's a 139 strategies in Greenprint two point zero. We're not trying to keep that many strategies. We're trying to make it, as I've said before, more realistic, more achievable, more timely. And so I think we've got maybe about 25 strategies. These are all for the most part new strategies that we would be seeking. City leadership support, so starting with director up to assistant city manager, city manager and then city council just to see if this is if we're headed in the right direction. And then if, you know, they may say, yes, yes, yes. No, no, no. Yes, yes. I can't I don't know what they're going to say.

But we would just like to move forward and find out what they want us focusing on because ultimately we need city council approval. So there's no point of us writing a 100 strategies if they're going to say no to 99 of them. I'd rather write 30 that they're going to say yes to.

I have a question. When you're saying that you want to get their approval, is that you want to see if they like the idea of condensing them and making them more achievable or just the core focus of what the items are?

The latter. So we've already been given approval from city manager, you know, a year and a half ago to go ahead and rewrite it and condense it and make it more achievable. That was already approved. But we need to make sure that the strategies that we're going to put in there ultimately because we can write a plan but if city council doesn't adopt it, then it's just paper. So we want to write a plan that our city current city council is going to support and then ultimately, you know, fund and support us to achieve those goals. And they are, you know, supportive of a variety of sustainability and resiliency obviously issues.

What's the timeline?

I want to say we're going to do it in the next year, hopefully. Okay. We need to do another greenhouse gas inventory. So that is in the budget this fiscal year. So that would be this is kind of step one is getting, you know, this outline. Then the greenhouse gas inventory, of course we need to do that. That'll be it's time consuming. And then drafting the plan.

All right. What will there be a process of public input?

Yeah, we would definitely want to do that.

Yeah. That's normally the process, right?

All right, great. Anything else Cassie?

I was just going to mention, I'm not sure if you all are aware of the city's active transportation plan. Glenna, I think

you I'm on that.

I'm Okay. Yeah. So I've asked to be put on the staff project team for that. So it was brought to I casually heard about it through, you know, another division. I said, What's what what is that? I went on. So now I'm going to be on that as well since obviously walkability and bikeability and all that, I feel like is connected sustainability. So, I'll be able to keep you guys updated on that as

well. Awesome.

Yeah, great. Yeah, I think like at our previous meeting I had asked about transportation and green prints. So I totally agree that I think those are they've been diagrammed very well. Anything else, Cassie?

Just a couple of kind of outreach things. We are launching a what we're calling climate friendly commuting campaign. So that'll be internal as well as public. So that's what we're going to be focusing on for the next quarter. Quarter. We're We will be out at a couple of city events. So the Sea Blues Festival that's coming up. We'll be at the Market Marie in March. And then there's gonna be the sea turtle awareness day, late cleanup in April. And then of course a host of Earth Day events which is right around the corner.

So we'll be out doing some, you know, tabling for the Sea Blues. We'll actually be at the recycling center kind of guiding people towards recycling and then also talking about climate friendly commuting. So we're trying to get last year we really, you know, we're very focused on some some of these projects. So we kind of cut back on our outreach, but we're hoping to do some more outreach and promotion via social media on that topic, kind of to go hand in hand with the fact that we've got these new EVs. And then we are hopefully going to be doing a flood awareness week proclamation at the next city council meeting, believe.

That's we just we've email it. We've been emailing about it for a couple of weeks now and I think that that's confirmed today that we'll be doing that flood awareness proclamation.

Say that again, flood awareness?

Flood awareness week. It's a I think it's a state thing and we're going be doing our own city of Clearwater proclamation at the March 6 City Council.

Thank you for sharing some of those events and outreach. I was going to say later but I'll just bring up now. Can we make sure maybe if possible to do another Florida Arbor Day event? We had one I think last year.

I tried. I reached out Okay. Three or four times to the community garden out there. They did not respond. So, don't know. I sent several emails.

Maybe there's other organizations. I just wanted to say it was a great event last year.

I agree and I was excited about it last year. So, yeah, I guess come this fall we'll have to maybe start brainstorming who else we could partner with because they were not responsive this year. But now we're hoping to do we'll be last year we were in public works for the tree giveaway but we were really brand new and didn't know much. So we're hoping this year to actually be out there and maybe set up a table and be more interactive. Unfortunately, the Moccasin Day, Earth Day and the tree giveaway is on the same day.

Again this year they weren't going to be on the same day. One was gonna be on the I think the nineteenth and one was gonna be on the twenty sixth and then I forget which one changed but now they're both gonna be on the twenty sixth. So we'll have to divide and conquer.

That's April 26 for

the Yeah.

Tree giveaway.

I think that's a Saturday, right? The twenty sixth, I believe. Yeah. So they're both gonna be that day. The tree giveaways are early in the morning, you know, eight to one and then the Moccasin Lake I think starts at eleven or twelve and goes to three. So, we'll probably be going to both, you know, try to go to both.

Okay. Yeah, I just wanted to bring that up. I thought that was a really great thing. So it sounds like if it can be back on the radar, that's great. And yeah, don't forget the tree giveaway then if it's April 26 to go out there and get your two free trees.

And there's going to be we're working, you know, we do every year. We put out the myclearwater.com/earthmonth. So that'll be up probably in the next couple of weeks. But we've already got a spreadsheet from, you know, the library does several events, parks and rec. There's several other department that do events. So we'll because we'll be meeting again before well, I guess our meeting will be in April. But yes, so just keep an eye out for that.

Okay. Thank you. Anything else, Cassie?

I don't think so.

We got through a lot of things. All right.

Yeah. Anything for Neighborhoods Day? Neighborhoods Day, I mean I don't know.

I know. I've got to save date on my calendar. Now that we're not with neighborhoods, don't know. Last year even as public works, I went out, know, I hit all the countryside ones because it's close to me. So I'm sure we'll go out, but we're not necessarily involved in the planning as much as when we were in the office Yeah, right. We're not

doing a recycling event either. Yeah, the

composting I've tried reaching out to solid waste to kind of push that again Cause we did that in November '3 and then I tried pushing it. I know I guess we did it did we do it again in 'twenty four I feel like? But I've brought it up. Unfortunately, we've lost Savannah and she was really the champion for that. Her position has been replaced though. So hopefully, we can work with solid waste. But I have brought it up a couple of times to them to make sure that that is, you know, it says in green print we to have an annual compost giveaway.

It would be nice though to have, you know, somebody who's doing to pick the compost up like because I mean, last year, I didn't think we there was anybody, you know, like

Oh, for the neighborhood stay for the Yeah. I think they did two years ago, actually had people pick up the compost. Yeah. And then last year, they gave out the compostable stuff but they didn't I don't think they had I think the company that did it the first year no longer. Some reason that seems to be a tough space that residential composting collection hasn't really worked out for a lot like across the country. There is very few municipalities can really seem to make that work.

I know Dunedin tried to get funding funding

for for it. It.

San Francisco has a very successful program.

Yeah, there's a couple of San Francisco.

Oh, it's hard.

All right. So we'll go on to board members to be heard. We'll start my left. Kelly, anything?

No, I don't think I do.

Okay, well thank you very much for everything. Glenna?

Just one announcement. When we're meeting again in July?

April.

It would be April.

Let me

pull it up.

I'm going

to be out of the country in April, but So, on March 18, there's a, the Sierra Club is having a, I think a very interesting program on rebuilding and renovating sustainably after a storm. And so the state's actually coming here. We're gonna be there's gonna be hors d'oeuvres, and it's gonna be a bit of a social and then a program, and it's gonna be March 18 at Mount Zion United Methodist Church on Sunset Point in Clearwater.

What was that? March 18? March 18.

It's a Tuesday night, the March, 06:30 social 07:00 program.

Okay. Great. Thank you. So, have on our calendar April 16 would be our next. Are you going to be in the country?

I'm not going to be in the country. Okay. Yeah.

If we're not going to have a quorum, then maybe we'll have to reschedule that. It depends on I guess your other the other four's availability.

I think everyone

That is going to be a tough day for me. I'm at a convention that's ending around five in Tampa. Okay. Just not sure how it's going to go.

Yeah.

All right.

We'll send out an email to make sure everybody can make it or not and we'll determine if we'll have quorum or if we have to move things around at that time. Any other comments from?

I just want to thank our presenters today and Cassie for always providing us great information. And I really want thank the community for coming out here and bringing topics to our attention. I mean, this is a very community Clearwater is very large and our eyes only see a small portion of it. So, things that you guys can do and bring to our attention, I really greatly appreciate. So, thank you to the community as well.

Great points, yeah. Thank you very much. I talked about a number of different things. We brought up a number of different things that were on my items to bring up. There was only one other thing and it kind of piggybacks off of what Glenna was saying and I wonder if that'll if it'll come up at that March 18 presentation, but I was sent this.

It's called, it's a program that if anyone here or on the beach or, in our coastal area, might wanna look up. It's called Elevate Florida. It's through the Florida Division of Emergency Management, and it's a, first of its kind groundbreaking statewide residential mitigation program. And so it's a I guess you can fill out an application and have to contribute 25% to the program or the project's total cost and they'll pay the other 75%. But I think it's projects that will raise your house, things that in our area might be interesting to keep people who are deciding if they want to stay in their house or not and how they can stay in their house.

This might be another avenue or option to help them. And it's called Elevate Florida, the Florida Department or the Florida Division of Emergency Management's Residential Mitigation Program. I can send out the link I have and if it's of any interest, you guys can share it with others and anyone watching can look it up as well. But I thought it was another opportunity for especially people who live in our community to be able to stay living in our community. If there's I

have one question.

Oh, yeah, sure.

Another one, just come. Do you do we have an opening on the EAB?

No. Okay.

All right. That was my question.

Okay. All right.

Well I do have one more thing. Okay. I forgot. Because let me see. Jason, you had emailed me and given me a couple of suggestions for topics moving forward.

And I had looked in, so I can just share with you Okay. He was looking for some information regarding the remediation of Marymount Park which was used as a debris collection site after the storms. He was questioning why it was used and what the progress on those sites, the remediation is. Also interested in hurricane and storm water preparedness activities that the city was doing and now obviously how is that going to change moving forward now that we've been hit by these two hurricanes. It's kind of a lessons learned going forward.

So, an update. So, Joe DeCicco is our environmental specialist that does all of our remediation work. So, he's in the environmental division now that reports to me. He has been assigned with that remediation project but he's just been assigned within probably a week before you sent that email. So he's working on it but he really said he didn't have much to report as of yet but that by April he probably could either come in himself or pass on something for me to share with you all.

He didn't have any knowledge on why that particular site was chosen or how we choose our sites. He said basically it was probably very impromptu, you know, obviously we weren't expecting that amount of debris. And then I did reach out to our storm water team to ask about the kind lessons learned. Storm And again, we can maybe build on this again. But he said that we need to prepare more debris sites and look at the types of surfaces to use for those sites.

We need to the traffic in and out of the sites because that obviously became an issue. And then sandbags, distribution, distribution, having them strategically located and looking into prefilled sandbags for the future. So those were just a couple of things that he was able to mention.

What was the first one? I didn't catch it.

The debris sites, kind of. He said, We will need to prepare one or more debris site and look for sites that have hard surfaces that are capable of handling the loads and traffic that is associated with debris hauling, sites that have good access but can be controlled and can separate the debris piles. So, if you guys are interested, you know, I can try and build on this a little bit more.

Yeah, I think those are great topics. Thank you for bringing those up. Yeah. You can find out more for our next meeting in April. Figure out when that is.

So I'll go ahead and add that to our list kind of hurricane lessons learned.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, perfect. Yes, certainly Kelly.

Well, just if I wanted to ask Brian if it's okay if the Sierra Club had any opinion or anything about the floating panels. If you wouldn't mind, I'm just curious to know.

So our team hasn't had much experience just like, I guess, across the state hasn't. We've been paying quite a bit of attention to solar that's getting stalled as parking canopies because that's a you talk about where to put solar, whether it's on a roof or another location. So we're very excited, for instance, about another canopy installation that's at a church in Dunedin. If you have to stop by and see that one. That's First Presbyterian Church, I think it is.

So we see that as a very valuable option. It's really, as the gentleman that came and presented, it's still not a new I mean, it still is a new type of implementation. It seems to require a certain water situation, you know, placed in the right area, the right size and other dynamics like that, that still make it quite a bit unique. And like I'm I heard the question asked about the county, I had heard as well that the county had been looking into this for a while. So you got the update there today.

I'm hoping that something really happens there so that we could get in the county of Pinellas some firsthand yeah, some firsthand experience. Because it certainly as that again, gentleman said, there's a lot of opportunity, it seems like. But I also understand of treading lightly to make sure that there aren't environmental implications unintended there as well.

Yeah. So I mean, that was he obviously is making a very nice presentation with all the benefits and advantageous aspects. So I was just wondering if you if there was anything we weren't aware of

that maybe now. Heard I anything different than what than what he's than what he presented. And I

don't know if you're gonna have open

to be heard for your last agenda item or not.

Our board members to be heard?

Yeah. Just whenever whenever you

Do you wanna have something? Sure. Yeah. Please please speak, Brian. Okay. While you're here.

I think don't you wanna do that for the prior agenda item or not? So I just wanted to comment, Cassie. Thank you so much for all of your hard work across many fronts as I heard you talk about the Department of Energy and the interactions that you're trying to have and and how difficult they they are right now. And I was reminding myself, and I'd like to remind all of us, I mean, those projects were there not just to be there as projects, but they're to deliver savings for the city and for residents and to deliver health and environmental benefits for the city and the community. And it's a loss when those are not being moved forward for our community.

So I'm hoping something, you know, still happens on that front. And then the last comment is more of a question. So I think it was at the prior EAB meeting presenting on City Hall. I wasn't sure where things stood with solar possibility there. I know that that was, if I understood it correctly, not to be not being included in the current plan as it stood, but to be revisited later. That was one component. And the second component was on the lead situation about trying to obtain potentially a few more points to reach the next level. So I was curious on if there's been any changes to on those fronts.

Thank you, Brian.

So, City Hall was obviously one of the new options that we were going to put on the grant since the timing was going to be good for that. So, as far as I know, it is not definite that solar will remain on city hall as of right now due to some budgetary concerns.

Okay. Hopefully that can

Hopefully that will change.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. All right. Nothing else. And we'll hopefully see everyone April 16. Safe travels if not. And we'll adjourn. Thank you very much.