Environmental Services Division - Regular Meeting

All right, it's 5.30, so we're called to order. Quick roll call, Vice Chair Loeschel, Member Groh, Member Blair, and other member Blair is absent, and Member Chandler. So we have a quorum. So with the agenda, would you guys entertain a change in the agenda where we move the Bee City report to right after the presentation on biosolids? Any other changes to the agenda? Okay, agenda is approved unanimously as amended. Does anyone have any changes to the minutes from July? Those minutes are approved unanimously. And with that, we'll go to Mr. Silva for the presentation.

Sorry, give me one second. I thought it was up.

Good afternoon, Board. My name is Joshua Silva. It's nice to be here in front of you guys all tonight. So I'm going to talk a little bit about biosolids composting and what we do. down in the canyon at the wastewater treatment plant as far as composting biosolids. So here's my presentation. I did this a couple years ago. I don't seem to remember any of you guys. If you were here, forgive me for forgetting, but we'll go through it again. Next slide, please. This is just a little bit about me. Like I said, my name is Joshua Silva, wastewater treatment plant superintendent. I've been at the county of Los Alamos for 10 years. I have 13 years in the wastewater field. I'm currently certified as a level four wastewater operator, a level three wastewater lab tech, and a level three water systems operator and hold a compost facility operator certification, all from the NMED. Next slide, please. A little bit of history, composting in the county. Currently Los Alamos wastewater treatment plant Construction began in 2005, put online in 2007. The decommissioned old bio plant is where we are currently composting the biosolids and the horse manure today. Prior to 2013, composting operations were done at the ecostation. And during that time, there was no biosolids in the composting process. So the wastewater treatment plant was hauling biosolids to the landfill and paying a ton of money in trucking costs, as you can imagine. In 2013, composting operations were then moved down to the current facility, which was the site of the old bio plant, and biosolids were introduced into the process. In 2023 and 2024, the site was expanded to allow for the addition of biosolids being produced by the White Rock Water Resource Recovery Facility, which was put into service on May 15th of 2024. Today, composting operations are a joint effort between Los Alamos County and the Department of Public Utilities to reduce waste and provide beneficial material to the residents. Here on this slide, you can see some pictures of the expansion that happened to make extra room so that we could process. When White Rock went online, we added about a third more of the biosolids that we were, to our total, right? Next slide, please. What are biosolids and why compost them? Biosolids are a nutrient-rich organic material that is generated from the treatment of wastewater and residential septage. So all we're doing at a wastewater treatment plant is we're taking what Mother Nature was going to do with the waste and just speeding up the process. We're cultivating bacteria to treat all the viruses and harmful bugs and everything. And when we compost it, we're essentially turning all that stuff back into dirt. A nice rich soil amendment that is beneficial for people to use and grow crops and pretty flowers and stuff. As to why we compost them, like I could just sit here and say because we have to. But it's a little bit more to it than that. Part 40 CFR Part 503 establishes requirements for the final use or disposal of sewage sludge biosolids when biosolids are either A, applied to land to condition the soil, which is what we're doing, or fertilize crops and other vegetation grown in the soil, be placed in the surface disposal site for final disposal, or fired in a biosolids incinerator. So with the process, the composting process, we're doing the first part of that, applying it to land to amend the soil and fertilize crops. Next slide, please. What is compost? Compost is a natural process of recycling organic matter in this case such as biosolids, horse manure, and wood chips. This is accomplished by mixing and aerating the windrows to create a controlled environment suitable for bacteria to grow and thrive in in order to consume and break down the waste. Anything that grows decomposes eventually. Composting simply speeds up the process so that we can turn multiple wastes into a beneficial material for the citizens of Los Alamos County to grow grass, flowers, et cetera. Here's a picture of our windrows that we produced down there. Next, please. Materials used. We're using biosolids from the wastewater treatment plant. Each year we process roughly 200 dry metric tons of biosolids from the Los Alamos plant alone. Horse manure we receive from the parks department at the North Mesa Stables and it gets included into our mix and roughly 450 tons are kept out of a landfill annually. wood mulch that's grinded up and hauled down from the ecostation. It's all residential yard trimmings that are turned into mulch, and roughly 400 tons are composted annually. So if we weren't doing this, all of that material that we're talking about right there would be hauled either to a landfill or off some other place, right? So we're taking all of that and making it beneficial for everybody to use. Next slide, please. The process. Biosolids are dewatered at the wastewater treatment plant, hauled to composting facility where it is then mixed with the horse manure and mulch. Once all the material is onsite, it is combined and stacked into long windrows, then mixed with the compost turner, in this case a scarab, so that the material is thoroughly mixed together. Microscopic organisms then start to feed on the carbon, nitrogen, and bacteria that is all present in the windrow. During the process, the internal temperature of the windrow will begin to rise due to the biological activity and the windrow will come up to temp, as we call it. Once the windrow reaches 130 degrees Fahrenheit, we are in the active phase where we must mix it to aerate and keep the temperature above 130 degrees for a minimum of 15 days. After the 15 days have passed, the windrow will start to cool down in temperature due to the lack of food being left. All the bugs have then by then consumed everything. and it is called the curing phase. During the phase, the windrow cools down, and like I said, a majority of the food has been consumed. In this picture, you could see the big scarab, the windrow turner that we use. That is what mixes and aerates the windrows every time that we go through it. There's a huge paddle right there underneath, right behind. That's Isaac Chapman, our I don't know if any of you know him, but yeah, we go through those every other day while they're in the active phase and we're just mixing it up. We have bugs in certain parts of the windrow and we're just giving them food and bringing it all closer together and giving them some air that way they could thrive. Next slide, please. The final steps. After the windrow has completed the active phase and during the curing phase, the windrow is then sampled and eight random samples are composited forming a representative sample of the windrow. A dilution is then performed and a series of vials are incubated for 24 hours in our water quality lab located at the Los Alamos wastewater plant. If E. coli is present, bubbles will form in the vials and a calculation is done to determine the E. coli presence. Class 1A compost requires E. coli levels less than 1,000 MPN per gram. Los Alamos County is consistently less than 50 MPN per gram. Once results are determined to be passing, the windrow is then screened onsite to sort out anything larger than a half inch in diameter. And anything that's smaller than that is what we consider the finished compost and we haul it up to the ecostation and people can go get it and it's distributed from there.

Next slide, please.

Benefits of composting. Again, we're turning materials that are considered waste into beneficial materials by producing a soil amendment that is rich in nutrients and will promote the growth of new plants and healthy soil. Since the compost contains three primary nutrients needed by garden crops, nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium, it also includes traces of other essential elements like calcium, magnesium, iron, and zinc. Instead of relying on synthetic fertilizers that contain harmful chemicals, composting offers an organic alternative. We are also reducing greenhouse gases. When compostable waste goes into a landfill, it gets buried under other trash, cutting off a regular supply of oxygen for the decomposers. The waste then ends up undergoing an anaerobic decomposition. During anaerobic decomposition, biogas is created as a byproduct. The biogas is about 50% methane and 50% carbon dioxide, both of which are potent greenhouse gases. Another benefit there is we are reducing truck emissions associated with the long haul to a landfill, which are about 80 plus miles away from us here in Los Alamos. We are reducing water usage. How can compost help? Research has shown that water retaining capacities of soil increase with the addition of organic matter. Each 1% increase in soil organic matter will help the soil hold up to 20,000 gallons more water per acre. These pictures here show some grass that we grew down at the plant. Generally, we tell people to take the compost and mix it in with their native soil around their house and stuff. This, we laid four inches of compost down, threw some grass seed down, and started watering it. And you can see how well the grass took their... Next slide, please. Challenges. You can see in that top picture, it's an open... facilities so we're subject to rain whenever that happens nowadays and snow if we are lucky enough to get any but those will disrupt the the bugs in the process in the in the windrow because it's extra moisture so balancing moisture content with environmental conditions from summer to winter excess water fills the pore spaces impending diffusion of oxygen through the compost materials and leads to anaerobic conditions so we'll have to turn it more to get that extra water out of there and create the poorest environment that we need the air to be able to enter the windrow through. Too little moisture and the windrow will lack heat and there will be little evidence of organic material breakdown. And in the bottom picture there you can see a bunch of trash. We ended up buying a vacuum so when we or screening this material, we're vacuuming out the trash that makes its way. And you could see it all right there in a bag that's pulled out of a screened windrow at our facility. Trash and plastics cross-contaminated from various sources of materials. Next slide, please. How are we doing? The top table shows the max limits issued by the NMED and the EPA. Those are all just different percentages. concentrations that we have to meet or exceed in order to be compliant. And the bottom table shows our results for 2023. I don't know why I didn't update this, but it hasn't changed a whole lot. And you could see that we're well below all of the limits that are set forth in the top table there. Next slide, please. Future challenges. Changing regulations. Currently, EPA has a draft guidance on PFAS and compost. So that's something that's fairly new. And, you know, as we know, that's an issue in just life in general nowadays. Forever chemicals are not going away, and we need to figure out how to deal with them. We have emerging contaminants such as pharmaceuticals, microplastics. There's nothing really out yet on those in regards to compost, but it's coming down the pipeline. So we're trying to watch that stuff and be more aware and familiarize our stuff with that. That way we can be kind of proactive instead of reactive when this stuff, when these regulations hit us. Next, please. Questions. That's all for my slides. So if anybody has any questions, I'll be happy to answer any. Yes.

I have two questions. What does MPN per gram stand for?

MPN is most probable numbers. So typically E. coli is read like in water in colony forming units. This is just a different test that the EPA has put out since we're testing soil essentially. They call it most probable number per gram. And it's just a value given. They give us like that 1,000. that's our threshold and we have to be below that.

Okay. And my other question was, what is the landfill that Los Alamos uses? Where is it located?

I'm not sure exactly where they're sending their trash now, but when we were hauling biosolids to the landfill, they were hauling it to Rio Rancho. I don't know where they're using them now. Cause like I said, we're not sending this stuff to the landfill anymore. We're processing it all here in the county.

Yeah. I was just curious.

Yeah.

Okay.

Thank you. No problem. Thank you.

I'll answer. So we send our trash to the Valencia County landfill. It's 120 miles away. And then when that's closed, we send it to Rio Rancho landfill, 90 miles away. One way.

Yeah. Um, how much do you produce a year? Do you know, like content wise?

Yeah, we're roughly 250 dry metric tons a year of finished compost.

Yeah. And then is that all, I mean, in the past, last time you presented, it was all getting picked up. Like it was being used up by like the local community, like the folks around here, but then also I think local farmers as such, is it still being used up? Like, or is it the excess material?

We'll haul it to the eco station. And from talking to the guys up there, it goes before they even know it and we're having to refill and refill. So, yeah, they're using quite a bit of it. Nice. Okay.

And then, like, you do have, like, the emerging contaminants, and you said, like, pharmaceuticals and microplastics on there. Do you know, have you heard any inkling about what those metrics are going to look like? Like, what's going to be measured in, like, for microplastics and then for, like, pharmaceuticals? Because PFAS, PFOA, there's already some stuff coming out. It's usually parts per billion, but, like, I wasn't sure if you've heard anything coming through. No.

I haven't, no. There is a little more talk of it on the water side, on the wastewater side. There's, you know, obviously pharmaceuticals are coming through. I don't know if you guys are familiar, but one of the tests we have to do on our effluent every year is, they call it a wet test, whole effluent toxicity. And so we're taking samples of the water, sending it to a lab, and they're introducing live fish directly into the water and seeing if they survive and if they reproduce and all that stuff. And there's been talk there about the pharmaceuticals making it through and doing different things, not necessarily with our samples, but just wastewater in general. Yeah, so I think it's a pretty safe assumption to say that that is also staying in the solids and then going into the compost. And then what is that doing at that point? Is the heat treatment that it's getting during processing enough to take care of that? Or is it leaching into people's gardens and such like that? So it's not quite here yet, but it's in the pipeline, right? Thank you. Yeah, thank you. Anybody else?

I just want to say how impressed that White Rock facility is, that how much of the nitrates and I forgot what the other major contaminant reduced was, but yeah, that's.

Yeah, thank you. That plant has been awesome. I don't know if you're familiar with the old plant, but built in 1965, our total nitrogen limits were 30 and during the winter when biological activity slowed down, we had a hard time meeting even that 30 milligram per liter permit limit. And now we're less than five milligrams per liter on the new plant, yeah. So we're getting rid of pretty much everything there. We don't have a phosphorus limit yet, but New Mexico is getting away from the EPA as far as NPDES permits, and they're developing their own permitting system that's going to kick off within a few years. So everybody's going to have a phosphorus reporting limit shortly. When we actually get a limit, like a maximum limit, that is going to be sometime down the road, but I feel confident that that plant can do it. Los Alamos, we might have to do a little bit, something different, figure that out. But White Rock isn't going to have an issue with it at all. All of our numbers over there have dropped at least 95% from the old plant.

That's incredible.

Yeah.

Sorry, one more question for you. Are you getting enough, so you have the biosolids coming in from the plant, of course. Are you getting enough feedstock in terms of horse manure and then the organic, like the yard trimmings? Are you getting enough to be able to constantly keep those piles?

We work pretty close with Terrence and Armando at the Eco Station. They keep us stocked up on our carbon source. Nitrogen we're getting from the biosolids, but we're also supplementing and getting rid of the horse manure that has seemed to kind of Slow down within the past couple years.

I don't know if the stables aren't as full as they once were but But yeah, we we currently keep having enough to to produce good compost my last question for you Sorry thought about one more um if we were to if the county were to go into a place where it started to food waste collection and Like, you know, obviously you need a far larger footprint than I'm guessing to handle that, but how ready would you be if the county started to collect, you know, food waste? I know there's other inputs that have to go into it too, but I just wasn't sure if like your facility could handle as is, you have the area to be able to handle food waste as well.

We could in a sense, but we can't. So, one thing we would lose with the food waste thing, which would be great, and we would be able to market it as all organic. But if we did it in the same area with the same equipment as the biosolids, we wouldn't be able to call it organic, right? It would be like a cross-contamination thing. But I think that the food waste plan is a really good idea and investment for the future. it'll be really beneficial to the county as a whole, but we wouldn't be able to mix the two. Yeah. I appreciate it. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you.

All right. Thank you, Mr. Silva. That was very helpful.

Yeah. Thank you. I got to run. I got to go to cheer practice. So we'll see you guys.

Thank you, Josh.

Thank you. All right. Our next presentation is Bee City. Ms. Dunharl.

Thank you so much for letting me spend some time here this evening. I do apologize. Next year, I promise I'll have a slideshow with some pictures. So it's all verbal today. My name is Britton Donharl. I am the coordinator for Bee City Los Alamos. And if you're not familiar with Bee City, we are an initiative that is was founded by the Xerces Society, which is a national program that works in invertebrate conservation. And one of their programs is Bee City USA. So we are an affiliate with Bee City USA. And the program is designed to provide outreach and education for communities. We work in partnership with the governing bodies of the community, so we work with the county. We work to also expand native pollinator habitat. We are in this for native pollinators. Why is that important when you look around? We have a lot of paved areas. We have a lot of grassy areas. We have a lot of areas that humans have taken away the natural habitat for pollinators. And so spreading the good word, getting the news out there that our pollinators, particularly bees, depend on native wildflowers is a really important message. If you ever want to nerd out about native bees, please call me. I love bees. And it's pretty fascinating once you get going. New Mexico is extremely diverse. We have more species of bees here in the state than the entire country east of the Mississippi. And in part, that's because we're a very big state. But we have everything from the deserts in the south to our mountains up here. And bees can be found in all those environments. They just need lots of wildflowers in order to live their best lives. So Bee City USA, or Bee City Los Alamos in particular, we do work with the county and community partners in order to work. The grant that funds my hourly time is housed at peak, and so we do work in conjunction with the nature center and the staff there. We are in our third year, and so that's very exciting. That means we've had three years. We're seeing a lot of momentum and growth. We've been in the community. My background is in education, and so educational outreach is something that I love to do. In working with partners, we have done programs with 4-H and with Girl Scouts. We teach public workshops about native plant gardening, I work with the master gardeners because we have many knowledgeable master gardeners in the community who can provide additional information about native plant gardening in the area. We have some partnerships that are also going on right now with the county. I'll get to that in a minute. I do want to say that we just finished our third year of the backyard pollinator garden program that we have. part of our grant funds giving away native plant kits to community members. And so there are over 150 properties at this point in the county, both in White Rock and in Los Alamos, that have received garden kits over the last three years. And our attempt at that is both the education and outreach, of course, to explain why this is important, but then to help create pollinator pathways. lot of our native pollinators don't actually fly very far we're very familiar with like the monarch butterfly that flies all the way from Canada down to Mexico but our native bees in particular live in a very small space and creating more avenues for them to have blooming plants within a smaller area is important and then connecting those properties throughout the county is an important way for us to support pollinators And again, that is a free kit. Our grant provides funds to go purchase the kits. It's 16 plants that, or it has been 16 plants the last couple of years. And it's enough to create a thriving pollinator garden about the size of like a parking lot space, if you can think of that. It's a pretty good start, honestly. We also have a pollinator demonstration garden. Currently, it is located... pointing in the right direction over here. It is in between the senior center and bathtub row behind the county cooperative extension office in that natural area there. However, it will only be there for about a week and a half more. We are going to move it with the help of volunteers. Everyone is welcome from that space over to the property at Peek. The ongoing drought has made it very difficult to really have it be a thriving space. There's a lot of deer predation, and so it's just not really thriving there. But by moving it, we can take better care of it. And even the deer are not quite as bad in the peak location, too. We also have a really exciting project that we started in September. We're working with Jason Tomko at the golf course. He's the superintendent there. And he's our county partner for creating a pollinator area at the golf course. So if you are a golfer, if I say the Bermuda Triangle, you might know what I'm talking about. It's in between courses or greens two, three, and four. And it was just a dead brown patch. And we went out there and with volunteers sowed a mix of native grass seeds and flowers. And it is blooming right now. It's gorgeous. It's beautiful. We are having a couple or we're having another maintenance event to go pull weeds because we do not promote the use of any sort of herbicides or pesticides because those are harmful to actually everyone in the environment. And it is publicly accessible on the golf course. They do ask that you visit it in the hours where it's a little bit less busy, earlier in the morning, later in the evening, and they're closed on Mondays. So you can access it. And I do recommend getting out there to see it. It's absolutely gorgeous. It's just a field of wildflowers right now. It's really, really neat. And every time I've been out there, I see native bees. So we're already producing some habitat that is... having a good impact on our environment. With our education and outreach, we do send out a monthly newsletter called The Buzz. And it includes some articles on native gardening. Sometimes we feature a garden in town. We have amazing gardeners who have gone far beyond our little patches of native plants that we can hand out. And we've got featured pollinators. So you can learn more about our native conservation. So our future. We are, as I mentioned, we are moving our pollinator demonstration garden to the new location so that it can thrive instead of just struggle along, which is what it's doing right now. And we are really looking forward to that. So we are having a volunteer event for that on September 1st. And the sign-ups are actually live right now on volunteerlosalamos.org. David, you'll need to sign up again because I had to make some changes to the old one. Sorry. So David was already signed up for it, which we're so grateful for. And we are also in the process of writing a renewal for the grant that has funded all of this great work. The grant does come to an end in October. We're really hoping that we'll be able to continue this work. Assuming that we either renewed on this grant or are able to secure other funds, we will plan to do another backyard pollinator garden project next summer and continue with all of the outreach. And we are going to continue with... The pollinator areas at the golf course, Jason is extremely supportive. I think he is actually, he may consider expanding some areas on his own, but Bee City can be actively involved in the labor involved in that with the volunteers we have. We have an excellent group of volunteers, and I'm really grateful to be a part of this program. So if you have any questions, I'm happy to answer them. And we do have, oh, I should say, too, that you can find us on the Nature Center Peak website. We have a Bee City page. You can sign up for the newsletter, learn some things about native plants and conservation efforts, that sort of thing.

Thank you, Ms. Denhal. Are there any questions or comments? I want to point out a couple things. One of which is that the LA Daily Post did publish the article.

Oh, yeah, today. Yeah.

Which shows Ms. Dunn and Harrell standing in the Bermuda Triangle and the wildflowers. Yeah. It's pretty cool because in the last weeding that we did, you know, we were cautiously optimistic, but oh, my goodness, it's beautiful. So thank you.

Yeah.

And then also Bee City does use compost from the county on all its projects.

Right, right, yes. And that's why I'm here, because the county is a fantastic partner. We're really grateful to be working with them. The efforts that can be put into Bee City, especially because this is not a big moneymaker, it's really nice to know that the county supports these sorts of efforts.

And also, if you show up to any of the work events, you always come away with wildflower seeds and other plants. Like, I have milkweed now, among other things. Thank you so much.

Thank you. Thank you.

All right. Our next item is work groups. And the first one is on local food systems that we like to get started. And the second one is on the commuter trip reduction program.

So the climate action plan calls out for year one and two, 13 actions. And these are two of the actions that we'd like to focus on this year. One is to support the local food system. So this would help strengthen local and regional food systems and improve food security. And potential areas for the working group to explore would be supporting and promoting the local farmer's market. and other opportunities to purchase locally and regionally produced food, supporting community and backyard gardening, identifying local and regional food resources, programs, and organizations for the county to better support or connect these efforts. A lot of things are already out there. So it's just like we should identify what's already out there, where are the gaps, and where can the county contribute to this effort. And then, you know, part of this work group would be to develop recommendations for practical actions the county could consider to advance this action item. So, like I mentioned, there's lots out there, including like Gaia's Pantry, who's collecting food and giving it to those who might need it, right? We already have a local farmers market, so what can we do to better support them? So Carly is really interested in the local food systems. This is something that she brought forward as something she might be interested in. And I mentioned that it would be a good opportunity for the board to get involved in research and then bring forward recommendations for this item. And then the next one is developing a commuter trip reduction program. We know from the greenhouse gas inventory that some of our top emissions are coming from transportation and probably a lot from commuters coming up from off the hill. So this program would be specific to the county employees, but it would be an initiative or a plan to research what other communities are doing to reduce single occupancy vehicles. and then promoting carpooling, biking, walking, teleworking, other things that would help get single occupancy vehicles off the road. And that would include possibly incentives and things like that. And I know the lab is doing a lot in that space right now. So you all are excellent at researching. So these are just two opportunities that I could use your help with. you know, to keep moving the needle forward for climate action plan implementation.

Would you like to lead food systems? Sure. And I would like to be on that one just because I either grow all my food or get it at the farmer's market or . So, yeah. Oh, okay.

I'll do the commuter trip reduction plan.

Excellent.

Can we, I can talk to you more about this in Helica. I just, like you said, like the laboratory is already doing a ton of stuff that's related to this. And I know you said this is purely for county employees, but instead of just reinventing the wheel, I just need to figure out where that bound is, what I can reach out to and talk to the laboratory about.

I mean, you can reach out as much as you want just to gather research and information.

Okay, cool. Okay, sounds good.

Yeah, that would be great.

Yeah. And when we're assembling our work groups, we can also reach out to other community members. Like the commuter trip reduction, I mean, obviously the person that pops into my head is Herman again.

Mine too.

Yeah. So...

I was just thinking it would be good to put a timeline on this so we, you know, kind of move pretty quickly with the recommendations so we could do hopefully some implementation of it fairly quickly, right? Of the recommendations.

So the goal would be to have some implementation this year so we could take credit for?

Yeah, I think it would be great to do like a quick study, right? Nothing too lengthy. I think there's a lot out there and then come forward with recommendations so we could implement fairly quickly.

What kind of timeline do you think?

I'm not really sure. I don't know. What do we consider quickly?

We just don't want to drag it out for too long, right? I don't know how much time you would need, but I'm not saying like a month, but maybe... 60, 90 days for research and then, is that too short? You tell me.

We could aim for that and then I guess let you know if it turns out to be too short. Or maybe we could just say two months.

It's three months, 90 days, right?

Yeah, give us like November would work for, I think November sounds good to me. That's 90 days-ish. So November works. And again, not reinventing the wheel on this one. And we already have information on county commuters from...

The CAP survey.

Exactly. So it's not like I have to start from scratch with that information. It's just kind of moving forward with it. So yeah, quantifying it, not quantifying it, synthesizing it.

Yeah, and Kukyong McNaughton is interested in the local food systems. her that you might reach out to her so she does she runs guy's pantry and she started b city which is pretty amazing i can get that for you and then i can help out eric on the transportation yeah yeah i think we moved like fairly quickly with the bag ban ordinance so you know that was setting that same precedent of like moving quickly. I don't think we need to reinvent anything because of course, so any of your recommendations will come back to the board for, you know, like, yeah, we condone that. And then we might have to go up the chain a little bit if anything costs money, but we'll be presenting these probably more internally to leadership for like, what can we do to support local food systems? And what can we do to you know reduce single occupancy vehicles so that'll be a big push and of course some of those ideas might pour over to um just general people that are commuting from off the hill you might find that category too so so as long as we have less than three members then we're okay that's yeah you have less than a quorum of the board so you'll be okay

All right, well, that was easy.

Yeah. And I'm here to support you. The way that normally works is just invite me to your meetings whenever you have time, and I will join the meetings and support you with any resources I can at that meeting. So that worked pretty well, too. So, yeah. Good. Thank you.

All right, our next item would be a report from the Board of Public Utilities, and Sue's gone and Shannon's gone, so we won't have that tonight. Did you do that? Oh, good, good.

Yeah, sorry, Carly, I'll update this.

Oh, yeah, we just, I took over August when Sue left the board, so, and I'll be doing September as well. Um, okay. So the work session on August 5th, they had a presentation of a study that researched what it would take to transition households from natural gas to electric as part of the Los Alamos goal to voluntarily move all residents off of natural gas by 2070. And then they also compared electricity usage of people with and without solar panels and the impact of that load on the grid. They discussed the water rate ordinance. They had a presentation on the electric coordination agreement. They presented on plug-in solar panels. So they explained the need, evaluated the safety, considered options, and discussed customer considerations. And then they had an annual wastewater presentation. And then the regular session yesterday, August 19th, they had an extensive review of the 2026 electric coordination agreement. And then another extensive review of the long-range water supply plan contract. Um, so updates to the 40 year water plan, and then they discussed the Foxtail flat solar updates. Um, yeah, and that was basically it.

What did they say about Foxtail?

Um, I think they just kind of talked about, he was, the chair was saying that he flew over it and they were kind of just discussing, I guess, the progress. on it. Yeah.

All right. Thank you. Next one. Before we do the next one, I want to just say that I did forget to do public comment for items not on the agenda as usual, but there's no public so I apologize. Next one's Transportation Board, and this month we just talked about general public works projects that are ongoing, big ones like Trinity Drive that you guys can see the early parts of it, and also the county has been doing a lot of restriping of crosswalks, doing different types of crosswalks. By the way, this is in large part to Mr. Geppert's input, so... Yeah, he's, it's great to have him in the community. Um, and they're putting more, um, bike lanes in our, um, the green, green pain. So I think there's one by Oppenheimer in central now. So next item is parks and rec for Mr. Member Chandler. Um, I assume no one took that this month.

No. And actually, can I get that delegated over to me on a future one? And I, I, that was on me. I totally failed it. I won't put it on Joe. I meant to go last week and I did not, but I will go next month. Actually, I have a DOT question for you or transportation board. Mr. Gephardt was always pushing for elevated bike paths. Is there any chance of that becoming a thing?

We bring it up because, I mean, in certain places it might be really useful, like at the bottom of Urban Drive where it hits Trinity, because people have a hard time remembering to stop or slow down. But the county's kind of pushing back right now because it would cause snowplow problems. So it's an ongoing thing. They pushed back at the pain initially, too, and then now they're all about it. So one of the things they're going to do is a Richard Skolnick petition for the crosswalks in White Rock, Grand Canyon. So they just did the slurry seal for Grand Canyon. So now they're going to put the first set of bulb outs there on Grand Canyon and Sherwood. So we'll see how that goes. Thank you. All right. Counselor Hand.

Good evening, everybody. We had a short meeting this last Tuesday and just a couple of items that I wanted to mention. We had some presentations by the Auditor's Tax Advisory Board. There's a slight decrease in visitors to Los Alamos. County due to, we're thinking it's inflation and possibly, well, we just don't have as many people taking day trips up here. But Bandelier National Monument still is a primary driver for visiting Los Alamos. We had a presentation from the personnel board from Chair David Hampton. And I did mention your message of what you're asking from council and mentioned that in my synopsis of our meeting to LA Daily Post. So, you know, in a roundabout way, we may get that message out to Los Alamos National Laboratory that we need to continue to work on addressing competition for worker resources and then also housing availability. More in line with some of the topics that you are talking about on the ESB is we had a briefing on the electric coordination agreement. And this is an agreement that is going to replace or revise something that we've had in, you know, we had an original agreement like back in the 80s. So, you know, this is clearly something that we need to update. and make sure that everybody is on board based on current operating procedures. you know, just our reporting requirements, et cetera. So that is in the works. There are a number of different attachments that you can find off of the agenda of county council that gets more specific on all those different aspects of how this coordination agreement is being developed. Let's see. Then we... Oh, I did mention, welcome Carly Blair and Jack Rowe for continuing your service on the Environmental Sustainability Board. I gave you a welcome through the LA Daily Post today, so people will know that you're continuing your service on the board. And then we had an introduction of an ordinance for granting cable franchise to Comcast Cable Communications Management. And lastly, we had public hearings where we discussed three different resolutions that will be ballot questions for the general election. And it's related to things that the county council received as questions things to improve for the boards and commissions. So, you know, it was a response to the input we received from the boards and commissions and the three areas that will be addressed is we're going to have a question to the public whether or not we should change from persons serving up to two consecutive terms to now three consecutive terms. So we'll see how the public votes on that. Then we have another one that is proposing to eliminate the party requirements, except for the Board of Public Utilities, Planning and Zoning, and the Personnel Board. So that would hopefully make it a little easier to fill positions on the boards because we don't have to worry about what political party people are from. We'll see how the public votes on that. And lastly, this was about utilities that they They have profits for their operations, and instead of transferring that money to the general fund, there's a proposal to just keep it in the utilities budget for their projects. So that's it. Anybody have any questions?

Thank you, Counselor Hand. Nope, that was very thorough and informative, so thank you. The next item is working groups. We've had Bee City present tonight. Are we going to continue to get something from Sustainability Alliance?

Yeah, I was going to see if anyone from the board wanted to be part of that. We do meet the third Tuesday of the month from 11 to 12, so if you're interested. Otherwise, I can... We could keep it, or...

Well, let's leave it open and maybe we'll have Shannon and Joe back next month, hopefully. I'm sorry, go ahead.

I'll just share some updates from the meeting that might be interesting to you. We're still working on the landfill permit at the ECO station. They need to do quite a bit of repairs on the landfill cap, so they're working on that. Elsa Noah, I think, she started, she replaced Abby Hayward as the Water and Energy Conservation Coordinator. And she comes with a lot of experience in the energy field. So it'll be great to have her. You guys will get to meet her at some point. It's gonna be quite a bit of like weatherization talks and ECAM updates. at peak so if you're interested in learning more about that I would join the peak site and stay up to date on that um kokyong so a bear attack guy is pantry there so they're going to replace you're going to buy like a bear proof container to put the refrigerator in if you don't know what that is they accept food cooked food frozen food all kinds of food and people come and take it whenever they want it's right here at the unitarian church or if you ever need something stop by there uh Let's see what else. And that's it. So that was a quick update from that meeting.

All right. And then I guess we'll add the two new workgroups on there.

Yes.

It sounds like one of the products of each of those workgroups will be education and outreach, so.

Yes.

Yeah.

Great.

All right. Staff report.

Okay. Get to the fun part. Okay, so let's see. So the August sustainability newsletter focused on protecting local wildlife and we continue to increase subscribers and we have about a 60% engagement rate, so still climbing. We're almost done with our DC fast charging electric vehicle charger installation at Mesa Public Library. You've seen the parking lot is open, the pads are out, the stripes are down, the equipment is there. Last pieces are to, the transformer needs to come and then we'll commission, wire and commission the Equipment so we're still on track to be completed by October 8th so you'll see those up and running soon and then We have begun solicitation to hire a contractor that would provide collection and composting services for the county at an off-site location Yeah, so we've just hit too many obstacles here looking at our own county owned property so The next best thing is to see if there's somebody who might be able to do that for us off the hill. It's something that's still really important to the county. So that's the RFP opened a few weeks ago and it'll close September 1st. On bill financing, we're still researching that, but in a nutshell, you were all were there when I presented on bill financing. So we're still gathering the pieces the attorneys would like to see to further vet this type of program. The Coalition of Sustainable Communities New Mexico, we met, had our annual meeting just a few weeks ago. Melissa Alamos is a member to that. Memberships represent 50% of New Mexico's population. We reconfirmed our priorities to scale energy efficiency for low-income housing and to expand affordable and clean transportation for all New Mexicans. This is a statewide initiative that's trying to like, perpetuate sustainability efforts across the state. So it's really amazing to see all the work that's being done. I sent you all the Pathway to Zero Natural Gas presentation that was presented to BPU on August 5th. I would listen to it since we're in the field of, like, education and outreach, and one of our big initiatives is to, you know, make homes more energy efficient. This kind of is, like... what really drives our community members to make those switches. And it really comes down to a lot of people's homes just don't have the panel, like the panel size is old and outdated. So they can't upgrade if they wanted to. And that change is really expensive. So it has a lot of that information in it. The study was actually done by UNM economics department. So it was pretty fascinating. I'd recommend listening into that. I sent you all the link. Um, we had farmer's market today. We had a lot of fun. We were recruiting for a new member. Um, and we, when I walked back into my office, I had an application in my inbox. So yeah, that was pretty cool. Pretty fast results. Um, and then we'll be at farmer's market September 17th. Stop by and see us. Clean up LA days, September 19th, but we're cleaning up Cannon Rim Trail on the 16th. So please come join us. And then Science Fest will be the 26th. We'll also have a booth. We're going to be doing, take a climbing action pledge. We'll have a pledge wall. We'll have prizes. We'll have all of that fun stuff. And then lastly, our sustainability report for July. So we had a 27% diversion rate. Everything was slightly down. Your trimmings was the most noticeable. It's been really dry this summer, so we'll blame it on that. Yep, and that's it. Thank you, Chair.

So I noticed something new at Ponderosa Campground for Bandelier, and it looks like the campground host has an EV that they take behind their... big whatever they live in anyways it looks like so they it looks like they kind of put in three and i will i won't call them ev charging stations because it looks um substandard compared to what we're doing i'm just wondering if we collaborate with them at all on things like that we have not we haven't collab we haven't reached out to them in any in that capacity I know they probably could use some support, which is one of the reasons I bring it up. And that might be, it's still in county technically, I think.

Yeah, so when the fleet conversion plan was completed, we're planning to stick to that plan for implementation. And since we'll have these chargers and then mess the public library, we'll probably do like a mini pause to see how much utilization We're actually getting from these before we make another investment for a community charger. But where we are focusing our effort this fiscal year will be county fleet chargers. So we've been investing in the vehicles now we need chargers.

Thank you.

You're welcome.

All right. I guess the last thing is preview upcoming agenda. So Gary Goddard's gonna, is he gonna be next month, do you think?

October.

October, okay.

And then Corey, he'll be presenting on the integrated pest management plan next month. Corey Styron.

That's been a long time coming, huh?

Well, yeah, and he should have been tonight, but that was my oversight. So yeah, he was ready to present tonight.

Good, good. That should be interesting. And with that, we're adjourned.