Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

Good morning everyone. Gonna call the Montgomery County Planning Commission meeting for Wednesday, April 9th to order. Uh let the record show that we do have a quorum of board members. U we are still waiting on Nicole and Sandre joining us by uh Zoom. Um with that, I'm glad to see we have a good crowd. I'm assuming everybody is here for the household hazardous waste and recycling update. That was actually the thing that got me up this morning and I and I had to use I had to use a separate hard drive for all the questions I just let me go. No, don't like the sheriff. Um, with that, um, we have a couple things to deal with, uh, this morning. Um, the first thing I want to do is, um, um, pass over to OED. Um, OED would like to address planning commission and the board before we get started. Yeah, thank you. I would like to read a letter uh, for you this morning. Good morning, everyone. uh their planning commission board. It has been an honor to serve on this board and through it to contribute to our county and its residents. I deeply believe in civic responsibility and in building a better community for both today and the generations to come. As an immigrant, I have grown to love the place I know call home now. I strive to give my best to it particularly to the efforts on in education, the arts and environmental stewardship. Currently, the immigrant community is facing significant challenges. As a community leader, I find myself increasingly called upon to answer

questions, offer guidance, and support various organizations working to build stronger relationships with the immigrant populations, particularly those of Latin American heritage. Because of this growing responsibility, my my availability has shift. At this time, I must prioritize the serving of the immigrant community more directly. That said, I hold this board on highest regard. If the opportunity arises in the future, I will be honor to return for now. However, I must step away. I am deeply grateful for the support and encouragement of Commissioner Valerie Arush who invited me six years ago to be part of this board. as well as for the leadership of Scott France. Thank you Scott and Steve Klein and Dulio Falaherti who has been extraordinary leaders of this board and I'm grateful to both of you and to all the board members. Please know that I remain an ally and a friend. Thank you. Gracias. Yes. Thank you. We'll take your energy and your talents. We're right now during you and thank you for sharing that with us so we feel more a little bit more connected to what you're doing and your rationale and we will miss you. Yeah. Thank you so much. And uh as you may know this morning actually I'm going to the school district because they are holding a meeting regarding immigrant students immigrant families and I having called to be there and I just saw Ernest

in in one of the sessions with um uh health part where both we presented you presented in one at the same time. Exactly. Therefore, that is what is happening. But feel free to visit Sakate whenever you want and I will include in the in the if it's okay with you in the newsletter then you will be aware and I will be supporting also um Nelly who is in the new office of immigrant affairs and she will she and me will be in constant contact helping the community. Thank you so much. Best of luck. Thank you so much. We'll work together again. Yes. Yes. Thanks. So, with that, I wanted to also introduce our new member to the board. Kyle Spe is uh coming to us from Whitpain. Um and was appointed last week by the board of by the county commissioners. Um and I'll, you know, leave it up to Kyle to give us a little bit of an introduction and to the board and also to the staff members that are here. So, welcome. Sure. Thank you very much, too. And thank you. Nice to meet everybody this morning. Um, and I really appreciate the opportunity uh that the county commissioners have given me here to uh to join your board um and contribute and and learn. Um yeah, as Stephen said, I I live in uh in Whip Township right now. I was born and raised in Whip. Actually, graduated from Wick in High School. So, um a local boy to some extent. Married a girl I started dating in 10th grade at Wick. And so we are uh committed where you're rooted committed to the local community. I do a lot with the uh my mom was a school teacher in Wicken for about 30 years and and I do a lot with the Whip Recreation Organization uh uh where I live. I have uh four kids between seventh grade and five years old. So um again deep deep roots here and and continuing to grow.

Um my uh work experience for 20 years has been mostly in housing development. um and much of that in affordable housing development. So um I worked for two large affordable housing development companies uh that um do uh uh a lot with the low-income housing tax credit and work work closely with PHFA. So um that's kind of my background and and on the work side um I chair Whip Township's zoning hearing board right now. Um and appreciate the opportunity to work with Mr. Blue and and a few others in that regard. So, um, that's my background, but I I really am am, uh, looking forward to learning from everybody around the table. I recognize what a what a great group of professionals and staff it is, and so I'm I'm here to learn and and just contribute as I'm able, and I I really appreciate the opportunity. We're welcome. Welcome. So, with that, we'll move on to approval of the minutes. Uh, do I have a motion to approve the Montgomery County Planning Commission's regular monthly board meeting minutes of Wednesday, March 12th, 2025? Second move. Is there a second? Second. Second. Are there any comments or corrections to the meeting of this? You can't say denied when we're trying to approve. We think we think it's the presenter that's getting not the information. Any comments or corrections to the meeting? Seeing none, all those in favor? I. and I oppose. I abstain because I was meeting motion to approve there. Um, is there any public comment uh or staff comment before we get started with our agenda item? Public or staff? Anybody in the room? Online? that then we are going to move on to

another piece of information that we want to share with everybody and that is the impending Drew Shaw retirement. We have to let him go. Yeah. On the vote on that. Um I have the uh I have the pleasure of reading a resolution and I was told that I I can't improvise. how to use big words for good reason. So why why don't I don't sit down and do that. Me too. So, Montgomery County Planning Commission resolution of appreciation for Drew Shaw this whereas Drew Shaw AICP began his tenure at Montgomery County Planning Commission in September 1985 and has dedicated over 39 years of service to the planning commission and Montgomery County and its citizens. Whereas Drew was who was first hired to work in the county planning as there was no environmental planning section has served as environmental planning manager for many years after advancing and having several titles during his tenure including the role of Montgomery Countyy's first recycling manager. And whereas Drew's first project was an update of the county land use map using colored pencils, a scale, aerial photographs, and a big county base map

base mapap has had countless achievements in ordinance preparation, water resource management, resource protection, and a myriad of plans and projects. And whereas among his many accomplishments, Drew is most proud of the natural areas inventory, the whisten water quality improvement plan and stream bankank restoration project that made real improvement to the environment. And whereas Drew has serve Drew served on an original MCPC library committee, helped to initiate play to work day at the county, sang in the Montgomery County Courthouse Choir for many years. You were the best. Well, certainly not Patty. And is among a handful of staff members who remembers playing on MCPC's baseball and volleyball town. I didn't know there was a baseball and volleyball team. and with the MCPC golfing group at Montgomery County golf outings. And whereas some of Drew's best memories of MCPC, besides finding baked goods in the MCP kitchen in the morning, holiday parties, staff picnics, and having a chance to be a little goofy with co-workers, all are all of the great people at MCPC, especially those who he worked with in the environmental planning section. the flexibility to work on issues that are that are emerging or needed at the time. Working on projects in the field and seeing the results results years later and will continue after your your influence knowing that they improve the environment and will continue to do so. Look at that. I just had to read the next sentence. Excuse me. And being a part of planning efforts that benefit municipalities and public. Now therefore, be it resolved that on this ninth day of April 2025, the Montgomery County Planning Commission ward

acknowledges Drew Shaw for his significant contributions and thanks him for his dedication to the betterment of Montgomery County. Furthermore, we wish him happiness in his retirement as he spends quality time with his family, continues to serve as leader in his church, and takes time to enjoy traveling, biking, hiking, coral, coral singing, and gardening and kaying. Welld deserved. Thank you. take a step to the left. Perfect. I am going to seed most of my time to Veronica's presentation. No, I just want to say thank you very much. This is uh means a lot. I appreciate that. Uh and when I when I started here, some of you heard this, but when I started here in 1985, I feel very old saying that, but in 1985, I thought three years, maybe five, and then I'll jump to the private sector and make some real money. And it's it it never happened. There was always uh something to to keep me here. a different project, a new thing. Um, you know, the development of the environmental section, you know, I've taken that out of the county planning section. Um, I did not take my colored pencils with me when I left. Um, there's always something to to keep me going here. And even when it came time to retire, I remember thinking, well, you know, we've got the the Perkyan flood study and the Whissy Hickens study, and

maybe I should finish them and then I'll retire. my wife who's smarter than I am said you know what there's always going to be another project there's just always going to be another project and that's a good thing um but it you know I just felt it was time to time to retire and yeah I I am you know proud of the projects that we accomplish but I'll tell you what the thing that I wish the most are the people the board very responsive board wonderful people on this board the staff excellent wonderful people I've known for you know almost 40 years some of them. So it's going to be very different retiring. Um I hope I'll find some excuse to come back. John, if not if when the uh hydroelectric facility is installed on the dam, just let me know. I will come to the ribbon cutting the big pair of scissors. I'll be the one with the kayak. Yeah. So again, thank you very much. I appreciate it. It's not by coincidence that Drew is will be will be coming up a couple of times during this agenda. That was by design. We couldn't do without. Yeah. So, with that, we're going to get started on some of our uh normal business. Um first up, we have the Narstown Planning Assistance Contract and we'll call on Eric. Good morning, Eric. Good morning. Good morning. Drew was part of the interview team that hired me, so you have him to blame. So, we have a short-term community planning assistance contract with Norristown. They approached us to help them update their subdivision land development ordinance. We actually wrote that for them, uh, fully updated it back in 2012 as part of our regular planning assistance contract with them. Um, and they ceased that contract, but they want to come back and and have us update the uh the ordinance. uh their engineer has identified a number of cleanup issues

that they would like to have done. Um they also want to relook at the landscape section uh which we've been updating a lot of subdivision ordinances for. Uh and so those are the two primary elements, but we're going to take a little bit of time in the beginning also to do an audit of some past developments which we've done for other subdivision updates. Uh we're going to go out and look at the built environment of those developments, go back to the letters, see what waiverss might have been granted, um what the standards were for the landscaping, how they look in real life, and and after four or five years of growth. Uh and just identify if there's any opportunities for changes uh to the ordinance as part of that. Um so it's going to be an eight-month contract starting in May through the end of the year. um will be doing it mostly staff to staff with their engineer and uh planning staff and then bringing the updated recommendations to their planning commission and council for adoption. Again, hopefully wrapping that up prior to the end of the year. Maybe maybe it'll take a little bit less than eight months, but we just want to give ourselves plenty of room and time to do that. Um so that will be initiating next month. Then you have the resolution. Uh it is a short-term contract so the fee rate is 3% higher than our 30-year rate of our normal contracts and the cost share is 7525 75 municipalities 25 for the county before I ask for questions or comments by board members or state or public um before us read into the resolutions before us we have MCPC resolution 25-4.1 short-term contact resolution of April 9th 2025 uh contains contract number 692 municipality is of Norristown contract is May 1st, 2025 to December 31st, 2025. Total cost of the contract is $8,262 and once again, as Eric said, is split 75% to the municipality and and 25% by the county. Is there a motion to approve the resolution? Is there a second? Second. There any comments or questions from board members on this contract? I I have a question.

Does any of the work that we're doing uh focus on all the changes in the um around the hospital state hospital grounds and all are all is that all now set in stone? Well, so I think we actually just saw zoning change for some of that property. So we think that property that plan got final approval. Um so it won't won't come under any of the new standards that we developed as part of the ordinance. Um, so that'll just be once they adopt the standards, any new subdivision land development will come under the new standards. Um, but you know, it's subdivisional land development, so a lot of that is waiverss and negotiation to any degree. But, um, but my my interest is always how we get ourselves connected more comfortably with the planning decisions ongoing future. So again, the contract ceased I think around 2015. I think that was no dissatisfaction with their services. I think there were some other political issues going on at the time. Um, but we did have a discussion with them about obviously going to a full contract. Um, they wanted to just get the subdivision ordinance updated. Um, they have some council changes that are going to be occurring um, I think going into 2026. So, we're auditioning. I I didn't want to put it that way because I don't think I think they understand we're we're very good at what we do. I think it's just more about the fit for them and and their current and their current administration. trust also. Yeah, I think so. And and so what we did talk about was some potential for redevelopment, revitalization, economic development. Um that would really look at it maybe even more as a team, maybe involve some of our commerce, housing, planning commission, and and uh really take an aggressive look. Yeah, we went into that meeting for to discuss this, but also discussing the longer term future. And without you know putting any staff people on the on the spot that we talk to um we know there'll be new board members and I feel you know new opportunity uh to I think pursue further strengthening of that relationship.

Any other comments or questions for our board members? Did you mention who was going to be assigned to this? Yeah so Margot Petruska she just wrapped up a subdivision ordinance update for Springfield. Um she worked on a landscape ordinance for upper Gwynid. Uh and Mike Narowitch who just wrapped up a subdivision ordinance uh landscape standards for lower pots grow are going to be a team on it. Marggo is going to be primarily the the lead though. Good. Thank you. Any other questions? Any any questions or comments? I'm sorry. Anybody online? We have any comments on this? Any comments from public or staff? Um, all those in favor I Any opposed? Great. Thanks. Thanks. All right. Next on our agenda is school district enrollment protection contracts and a call line and morning and morning. Steve, this is my only item on today's agenda. So, all you know, if you're retiring, we'd have the whole agenda here. Possible that I have Drew's colored pencils in my desk. So, come see me if you're looking for the I would have known the color pencils. I would have I would have had nice colored. Yeah, that would have been my presentation. Um so we are presenting to you today uh two additional school district planning assistance contracts that will start this fall. Uh one is for the Wizah Hicken School District and the other is for the Jentown School District. Whacken has done a couple of enrollment studies with us before. So this will just be an update of sorts, but it's been several years since we've done one for them. Um Chucky Town's a little bit of a unique

uh study though. They've never done an enrollment study with us before. And they are a unique little district. It's just Jenintown Burrow that feeds into the district. And they have one elementary school, one middle school, one high school. But um they have been presented with an opportunity to purchase a parcel of land that's adjacent to their school complex and are looking to get a better idea of what the demographics of their school district will be going forward. so they can get a better sense of what they could possibly do with this property. Um, so I don't think that it plays a factor in whether or not they will purchase it, but just, you know, maybe maybe it will play some role in the the future programming of that site. Um, the hicken contract is scheduled to begin on September 15th. Jenin towns will start on October 1st. Uh, this will put us at five studies for 2025. It is um an activity that is keeping me pretty busy and this I don't think we can do anymore honestly this year. So this will be the last time in 2025 that I come up here and ask for you to approve a short-term contract for a school district. So before we get into questions, so I'll read them. We have before us MCPC resolution 25-4.2 short-term contract resolution of April 9th, 2025. It contains two contracts. The first one is contract 688 with Whisten School District. Length of contract is September 15th, 2025 to December 31st, 2025. Total cost of the contract is $13,770 split 75% to the school district, 25% picked up by the county. Next is contract 691 Jentown School District. The length of contract is October 1st, 2025 to December 31st,

2025. Total cost of the contract is $13,770. Once again, it's split 75% to the school district and 25% picked up by the county. Is there a motion? Move a second. Second. Move and second. Any comments or questions from board members? Nope. Just one quick question. Did you mention an when was the last time was a hicken when did they do their first? Uh, I want to say it was 2019. I don't remember. And how many what is your staff um issue right now? Are you down how many? One or two? Uh, I would love to have more, but we're at full capacity for the county planning section. You're at full capacity for the work that's there or full for the uh for the slots that we've got. Okay. Any other questions by board members? Anybody board members online? Sandre, do you have any questions? Any comments or questions from staff or public in the room online? No one online. Seeing none, all those in favor. Any opposed? Thanks, Andy. Thank you. All righty. your cell phones away and your computers. Next up is our hazard is our household hazardous waste and recycling update and a call on Veronica. Good morning, Veronica. Good morning. Good morning. How are you? How are you? I'm well. I'm well. Hi to everyone. I'm Veronica if we don't know each other already. Um, let's do it. All right, we'll jump in. I first have to say whatever good things you all feel about the recycling program

and the hazardous waste program, I have to give credit to Drew for being such a wonderful boss and uh always being willing to hear all of my ideas and hear me out on everything I need to fix or change or start or end or Yeah. just just the best. So, um, thank you, Drew, for all of your leadership and working with me. Drew also comes to almost every household hazardous waste event and helps me direct traffic. So, you know, he's the best. I think I heard him say he would do that still. He did say that. Honestly, he's still coming to my events. He mumbled that when he came. He already signed up to help three of the six events for this year. after he retires. So he, you know, just just wonderful. Uh, and he was part of starting these events that now have been running for almost 30 years or more than 30 years, I guess. So So thank you to Drew. All right. Am I in charge of uh my slides? Yeah. Okay. Awesome. All right. So uh we'll just jump right in and then take any questions and comments as they come. Uh, so I know this chart just shocks you and a you every year. It's the most straight line boring chart ever. Cycling the chart. Yeah. Yeah. I actually like just cut years off because this chart like I have this chart for 10 more years and it's just it's all like this. So, um, you know, our population continues to kind of inch up in into the positive uh direction. the trash continues to kind of inch up with the population and the recycling is uh staying basically flat. So this will be

you know spoiler alert this is going to stay the same for the next you know hundred years unless we we make some policy changes or you know something really um comes into play as far as new recycling service or uh new recycling policy. So I I keep collecting the data, but you know, this is this is what it's going to be. Uh as far as the recycling rate, you know, this is just another way to look at that chart. Uh this is, you know, this is pretty much a straight line. Uh 33% is actually kind of the magic number for the state as well as for the country. So we're kind of just stuck at 33%. Uh again, you know, policy can bring that can can double that if we are serious about recycling policy, but uh you know, with the status quo, this is this is where we're going to stay. Uh I think it's always interesting just to think about where our trash actually goes from Montgomery County. This is where our uh residential as well as commercial trash ends up. And you'll see uh about 40% of it stays in Montgomery County goes to Reworld Plymouth. Reworld is the rebranding for Cobanta. Uh so that is the waste energy facility. Some of us visited the facility a few years back. This is where the trash is burned and then it has to go to a landfill, the ash. So it doesn't actually end in Montgomery County. about 20% of that trash ends up going as ash. Uh a lot of it is going to rolling hills in um in Delaware, the del which Delaware county owns in Burks County. Um so about 40% of our trash is waste to energy. The other 60% is landfill. Uh the biggest piece of it goes to Burks County. So you have Mascarero, the

Delaware County facility in Republic. And then we have a little bit going to York and Bucks. Uh the York County landfill is nearing its final capacity and so that's the only landfill in York County and it's going to be closing. So that affects us a little bit. But imagine that you're York County and now all of your trash has to go out of county to another site. So I like to bring that up just because these landfills do eventually fill up. you can build them up, you know, as high as a skyscraper and eventually you have a mountain and you can't build it up anymore and now you have to close it and you have to build a new one. So, you know, we don't really build new landfills anymore. No one wants them around. Uh you can see none of the landfills are in Montco. All of our landfills are closed. And I would place a wager we're not going to build a new one. So, we have to truck uh the trash further and further away and uh that's going to continue to be an issue. So, just something to keep an eye on. Um but these six land these six facilities uh that's where 90 95% of our our waste ends up. All right. So, uh what do I do besides collecting all the data that stays in straight lines? I uh also run some special materials recycling programs. So I say special materials because the municipalities are responsible for the regular trash and recycling. So the stuff that we put out at the curb, the stuff um that you know the either municipal trucks or private company trucks come to pick up that is actually overseen by the municipalities. They can choose to hand it over to fully private enterprise or

they can manage it and run it themselves, but that's a municipal function unless uh you know the municipalities made the decision to turn it over to the county. But in Montgomery County, that's a municipal function. So there's what we call special material, which means things that uh the municipalities aren't going to handle generally um that require an additional program. So uh that's that's where the county comes in. So the three programs that uh the county either runs or has some involvement in the uh campaign yard signs program, uh we're starting small to large. So the the little baby program is the campaign signs. Uh we also do a bit with the electronic waste and and textiles. And finally, household hazardous waste is our is our big endeavor. What's so special about campaign yard science? Yes, let's talk about those. We'll we'll start right there. Good job, Jonathan. He's a plant. Yep, he's a plant. Thank you. So, the campaign yard sign program, uh, we just run this every November after the general election. It's a oneweek drop off period, and then we have 16 sites around the county. Uh, the reason that we run this is because the signs and the stands are recyclable, but they're not recyclable with your curbside recycling. So, these can all just go in the trash. There's nothing hazardous or, you know, toxic about them, but the metal in particular is just really a shame to throw away. Those are steel stands. So, um, if we can get those steel stands and and plastic signs out of the trash, uh, they can't go in the regular recycling, but they can get

recycled. So, why can't they go into the regular recycling is is probably um what your question comes down to. So, regular recycling, curbside recycling is built for packaging and paper. That's it. Packaging and paper. That's what goes into your recycling. So, if it's packaging like a can or a bottle, uh if it's paper like a cereal box or a cardboard box or a piece of mail, that's what our recycling is for. That's what all the machines are built for. Uh that's what all the sortation is built for at the mer the material recovery facility. So imagine that your material your your conveyor belts and your sortation and your machines are built for metal cans, right? Soda cans and soup cans. And then you put in these metal stakes that are pointing up and down and going around and poking out eyes and getting stuck in machinery. So the metal stands would just shut the recycling line down. Basically, we can't have anything. Even hangers are a problem in the recycling line. So when you have something that's built for kind of roundish and flattish things, you can't put, you know, scrap metal and random shapes in there. So, uh, that's the story with the stands. This the story with the signs is, um, they're plastic. They're called corrugated plastic. So, they're plastic, but they look exactly like corrugated cardboard, right? If you can think of what they look like, it's it's basically the corrugation in between the two sheets of plastic. So the equipment in the MURF looks at a corrugated plastic sign and says you're a

box. I'm laughing because I was quoted on the news saying, "You're a corrugated piece of plastic." And they look at you and say, "You're a box." And now my family walks around and says, "You're a box." I don't usually like talk for third, you know, inanadimate objects, but you're a box is what or I'm a box is what came out on the news. Um, so anyway, I do have a college degree, but that that's what happened. So the these plastic signs would end up going into the corrugated cardboard. That's really the most of the money that the MURF makes is out of corrugated cardboard. The idea is it can only have 5% contamination, which is like a plastic bag or a flat pan that ends up making it through. So, if we suddenly had all of these yard signs getting stuck in the cardboard, that would be a big problem. Um the the last type of sign is plastic film, which is like a plastic bag. And the plastic bags generally have to go back to the grocery store because they just kind of blow around. They're lightweight, they're thin, they wrap around things. So, for all of those reasons, uh, the campaign yard signs cannot go into the regular recycling, but all three of those materials are recyclable. So, the metal and the plastics can all be recycled if we can collect them. So, that's why I run the program. Uh, it is a lowcost program. We use the uh county correctional facility uh staff and a community service program. Uh they help with the collection and sorting. Um Donna uh who is the other half of the recycling department. Donna and I borrow a truck from public property. We go around to the sites and help pick up signs. And um so we do it, you know, at at no additional cost to the county. And then we have uh a recycler that will

take the material. We get dumpstered from them. We sort everything and they take it. It's actually Kougled in Burg County who who does the recycling. So that is the campaign yard sign program. Um I have a little question. Yeah. You and Donna get a truck from public works. Yeah. Physically yourself. Yeah. You have to vlog that. You have to put a camera in there. Yeah. And film it. It is. It is. We kind of have like really heart-to-he heart conversations when these things happen. So, I don't know that I want no no audio, but you're you're sorting, you know, when we get to these things. That's a small pile. Like, it's usually a giant pile and it's me and Donna pulling them apart. 850. How many thousand people and you, the two ladies are in a truck doing this? I I would give you 10,000 views. That's my phone. That was long. It we have had some comic moments because sometimes, you know, it's rained and it sat there for a week and so uh we've had mice start building nests in the pile. Um which I'm an animal girl, so that's like I think that's great, but Donna does not think that's great. You're a mouse. You're selling this. I mean, I'm all in. Well, the other thing is spiders and then every now and then a snake because they can find their way. All these things are fine with me. Seat in the truck cab so I can take one more person. It's me driving a truck which is always so easy. So we, you know, you have to be scrappy when you're recycling and But I'm chained around. So this is uh you know this is really the heart of why we do it is all that metal like that

just would break my heart to see that go into a landfill. So um we do we collect a lot of a lot of the metal and uh you show up and you take that stuff out of that bin and put it into your truck. We put so the what we do is the what's in the orange is an example. Um that is um White Marsh I think. Um that's what we find in the back of the White Marsh parking lot. So we put that into the back of our box truck and then when we get to the uh correctional facility we have three of those rolloff dumpsters waiting for us there. And then the uh community service guys and me and Donna pull everything apart and put it into metal plastic corrugated and plastic film. So then we have, you know, three dumpsters full of those materials and then Kougall's comes and picks up the dumpsters and bails it and puts it, you know, into the marketplace to recycle. How many days does it take for you to go kind of go through and collect all of this stuff? So it's like a week. It's like a week. We I mean we go to 16 sites. So we can do two a day, three maybe. And then we have it's not just me. Sometimes it ends up just me and Donna if there's something going on at the correctional facility. You know if they're if they are having a lockdown or you know they're short staff then they don't get to come out and recycle with us. You know the the um corrections officers have to stay on site. But they're awesome. They help, you know, the community service guys are great and um yeah, it's a nice little program. I inherited this. This happened for a year or two before I started. Uh I don't know that I would start this program, especially knowing that I have to do the collection. But um we were the second county in the state as far as I know.

Center County started this. My predecessor got the idea and then he said, "Let's do it in Montgomery County." um got the got the correctional facility on board, but we only collect two or three tons of material and we spend, you know, a week doing it. So, the the cost benefit is a little questionable, but what I will say is the this gets more attention than my half million dollar household hazardous waste program. This gets more attention than you know all of our municipal come down and a trailer once you can see these two little ladies. Yeah. Do this in November, right? Yes. Not not both after the primary and I don't do the primary. People can hold them and bring them uh in November. But we we just uh Yeah. And it's it's great fun. I I I'm in and we got to figure out how to how to produce it. GoPro. GoPro. GoPro. So, does the the scrap metal have market value? I mean, is it sold? Yes, the scrap met. So, we make a little money on the scrap metal. We actually lose money on the plastic because it costs more to get the dumpster transported than we make on the the plastic. Um, but the the metal does make some money. The prison actually has a scrap metal program in place. So, the prison keeps that uh you know, the correctional facility makes whatever money they can make off of that, but they've also sent out a truck and staff with us. So, you know, well, they're just recouping some of what they put into the serious question. Yeah. Yeah. What the heck? The reality is by the time this stuff gets recycled, probably a big reason it gets attention is people are tired of looking at the political signs. It's like, "Okay, get them all." Yes. And it's kind of uh like a little

posit, you know, wherever there's contentiousness in the process. Everyone kind of gets behind this. The signs are from both parties for sure. It's not like only one party participates in this. Um I'm in touch with both, you know, the the Democrat headquarters, the Republican headquarters. you know, everyone's on board with this. Um, so it's just a nice kind of unifier. You know, I again the costbenefit, but it's for kind of public relations and getting people to think about recycling, it's it's definitely a winner. So, yeah, that's that is my it's it's the smallest thing we do, but it's like the most, you know, engaging. I think everybody's sick of seeing the things after time. Yes, it's true. And um you know, some of you know I do work on state legislation and uh one of the pieces of legislation that gets introduced every year, it's uh Ryan Bizaro introduces it. It's a a proposed law that after 10 days, if there's any signs that are still up, the candidate, not the staff, but the candidate has to go pick them up, right? Or else the candidate is held responsible, but and if they get, you know, charged that you're not picking up your signs, they have to go collect them. So, there's like a it never even moves out of committee, but it gets people people like to to talk about that responsibility. All right. So, that's um that's campaign science. The other one that that I like to mention is electronic waste and I'll I'll add in textile recycling because the services we've had have have dealt with both. So, for the past uh six years, we've had a contract with a

company called Retriever. and Retriever uh it was was kind of it was actually a pilot program and we were one of their first uh communities. The Montgomery County signed on uh as when they were in their pilot and it ended up you know we kept it going for these six years. Uh Retriever ended the pilot. So after six years they they decided to to end the program. um you know was wasn't it was hard to be profitable and uh it it was an at your door service so they usually had they had at least one guy if not two in every truck. If you have a big TV to pick up you have two people in the truck and uh you know they were only charging like $30 a TV. So it you know it wasn't a big money maker. They were also taking textile and it was especially nice for the county because it was an atyou service. So, you know, if people either didn't have a car or had a hard time getting the TV where they wanted it to go, you could just call and schedule a pickup. So, you know, it was a really nice thing to have, but you know, unfortunately, it was not not our choice. That ended for Billy was also in the contract. It ended for them. It ended for all of us. So, Retriever's over, but part of why Retriever ended was because uh Goodwill Keystone area started a new program that took a lot of volume away from Retriever. So, uh you know, whatever they were doing with volume really plummeted once the Keystone program started. So, the Keystone program uh started last year and the Keystone area for Goodwill is um I'm going to say 22 counties. So, it actually doesn't include Philly or Delo in this corner and then it kind of arches out into the middle of a state, but it doesn't include the west or or the uh the north. So, what this 22ount program with Goodwill uh put in place

was free drop off for electronics. So, you know, you all have heard me talk about the problem with dropping off electronics. And um what this program did was it said instead of just dropping off working TVs, which is what they had been taking and not the big CRTs, just working flat screens was the only thing you could take to Goodwill because they would donate them. Uh now they will take your not working TVs and computers and electronics. So they're actually functioning as a recycling drop off, not just as a a you know reuse uh donation center. So this is a big deal. Um the picture at the bottom is from January. We had we actually got an award uh from the recycling market center for Pennsylvania for the Goodwill program. And uh out of the 22 counties, they held it in Montgomery County and they held it in the East Nor. So, um, our commissioner was there. Uh, the lady in the green is the acting secretary of D. Uh, I see, um, Senator Capaltti in there. So, you know, it was was a big big ceremony in the Goodwill store. Um, if you don't know, the, uh, mascot for Goodwill is the big guy in the blue on the side. Um, and his name is Goodwilly. So, I learned that that day. That's Goodwilly. Um, so we have four stores in Monco, the East Noraton, Montgomeryville, Pottstown, and Trap. But our residents can also go to the adjoining counties uh, drop off locations. So, this is actually pretty good as far as convenience, and it's free. It's usually just a drop off that you drive up to up on the side, so it's not like you have to carry your TV into the store and

figure out where it goes. Uh so very nice program. It's just kind I I just let the municipalities know about this uh earlier this year. So Montgomery County residents are just kind of finding out that this is this is the new option. So we lost Retriever, but we gained Goodwill. And uh they, you know, Goodwill wanted me to point out that it's not just for electronic recycling. You know, they also want your textiles. So they they didn't want me to just say TVs to everybody. They also want your your clothing. I'm going to ask you to just try to push along because you and I are going to have plenty of time in November. We're going to talk on the truck. All right. Is it just TVs? Is it computers? Computers, TVs, pretty much any electronics. Yes. uh go on the website to see exactly, you know, if you're you're trying to push this out to people, the Goodwill website, they list all the different things that they'll take. Yeah. Yeah. Sure. All right. So, I will uh go very quickly through household hazardous waste. These are your toxic, flammable materials that are a threat to our health and safety. Um gasoline, mercury, pesticide, lead acid batteries, propane. Uh we ran six events in 2024. We're running the same six events in 2025. And are those dates out yet or not? Yes. Yes. They they start actually this month. So the end of um the end of April, uh Drew will not be there for that event, but the end of April is the first collection. Well, Slacker. So, uh, it is worth mentioning that after many, many years of trying, um, Drew and I have been working on trying to get funding from Reworld, uh, since I

came here from the waste authority. Uh, we did negotiate an agreement with with uh, Coventryorld that they are helping to fund the household hazardous waste program. Uh, the idea is that household hazardous waste should not be going to the burn plant. you should not be putting that into the into the environment. So, they have a vested uh reason to support our program and now they're financially supporting it. Uh we also get $100,000 uh annually from D which is supposed to be 50%, it ends up being 20%. Um, so we are working I do work on legislation to try to increase that uh grant amount and um Senator Penny Cook who is a Montgomery County senator uh is the sponsor for that in the Senate this session as well as last session. Um finally, municipalities and residents are not charged. This is a free uh collection. I will tell you that in other parts of the state this is not free and people pay uh per pound to to bring this in and municipalities are charged back for their residents to help fund it. So the way we do it is different you know than what happens in the rest of the state. Um but you know we we are certainly one of the biggest programs in the state. So not going to be labor this but you know again we're staying in straight lines. the the theme of the day is straight lines until we do something to change the program. Um this will not change. So, you know, we're collecting close to a um to $500,000. It costs close to $500,000. The de grant is, you know, about 20% at $100,000. The new thing is the reorld contribution. So, um the the negotiated uh payment amount is that will go up by 5,000 a year. So, next year we'll get

135,000 140,000. So, that's going to keep increasing and it is um a percentage. It's a calculation based on the amount of trash that we take to the plant. So, based on the fact that it's 40% uh we max out with them every year at you know the 130 135. So, um, but you know, wonderful, uh, ReWorld. We're very, uh, grateful to that they're working with us and that they, you know, came to the table to support the program. So, you know, there's a significant cost to the county, uh, almost, uh, around 6,000 residents. That's a car count. So, around 6,000 uh, households come every year. And, you know, it's it's close to $90 a car is what it costs us. and uh it costs about a dollar a pound. So household hazardous waste is very expensive. The option that I will keep talking about that uh Dulce can do for me my presentation um is a recycling center for Montgomery County that would be uh safer, more convenient, you have year-round drop off and uh also um be a community hub for reuse and recycling activities and education. Uh we are still looking at the uh closed landfill next to the reworld plant. Um we have not made forward movement on this. They have not developed this property. This is still just kind of sitting um waiting as as far as uh I understand. So that is the end for me. Are there any other are there other questions or other questions or comments for Thank you. your enthusiasm on your job. I have a box. Any comments or questions from board members? Online board members, no comment.

Thanks, Sandra. Anybody public? Crystal, just a quick question. Reworld takes 40 about 40% of our trash. Now, are they at capacity or could they take more? No, they they uh I don't have the sense that they're at capacity. they could take more. Uh, and they also, uh, Reworld also owns the Chester facility. So, there's a waste to energy plant in Chester and, um, there is a, uh, waste to energy plant that they run in York County. So, there's diversion. So, if our plant is ever down for maintenance or there is a a problem, um, then we divert. So, sometimes our trash does end up at the Chester facility. Sometimes the chester trash comes to Plymouth. So, it's kind of a system where they can flow to other sites if there's ever a problem, but I I I'm not aware of any capacity. And we used to send them like 60% of our trash. So, they have to now make that up with bringing it in from out of county and even out of state. So, um but capacity is not an issue that I've heard them mention as a problem. You have questions or comments? Anybody online? Thanks, Veronica. Right. Thank you, Truck. November. I'm there. I can't I I definitely video that and I'm there. All right. Next up is our uh perfume and flood study update. And we have uh Crystal as a guest. And as a guest from Representative Joe Webster's office and Drew Shaw, you starting off, Drew? Yeah. I'll just I'll just introduce and you can see why I enjoy working the planning energy so much because I get to work with Veronica and Donna and John and Ryan. Um yeah, this is the uh just wanted to update you on the progress we've been making on the perium and mapping and flood study. Um you'll be hearing from me in a little

bit, but I'm going to turn it over to Crystal as you heard. She's here from Representative Joe Webster's office. Uh and she's going to start off the presentation. Okie dokie. Morning Crystal. Good morning everybody. Can I do this? Yes, you can. Um, before we get into the actual study, I'm going to take it's very, very nice to be back at the planning commission. I want to say that first and I'm going to take a quick dive into some history. Um, before we go any further in flooding, we kind of have to understand how we got here. So, this is a map of Montgomery County and we broke down the path of development in three stages. We have a similar map for Bucks County. And what I want to look at here is what happened before 1970, what happened between 1970 and 2000, and what's happened since. And I'll tell you why in just a minute. You can see our historic development pattern here. All the gray is what's happened like from the beginning of time when settlers first arrived here uh through the 1970s. Two things happened in 197 around 1970 that had a big impact on not just storm water but on a lot of things. One is the type of development changed during the late 20th century. We got a huge burst of suburban style development and that meant big lots, lots of mowed grass, lots of roofs, big driveways, wide streets. All those things led to uh more storm water being um created as runoff. What we didn't have was an effective storm water management system. We had what I like to call bomb crater basins uh which are just big holes in the ground with mode grass. Uh they really didn't do much for um volume or velocity except to make it worse. So we had that changing landscape through the end of the 20th century. The other thing that happened in the 1970s was the Clean Water Act and it got

fought about for a couple years and finally enacted in the early 70s and it was focused principally on pollution. And if you remember incidents like the Kyogre River catching fire because of industrial pollution, you understand why it was focused on industrial pollution. regular storm water and non-point source pollution really didn't become um a big problem or come more of a awareness of the problem until later in the century. So we had all this suburban style development taking on lots of big um commercial type developments, industrial developments, lots of roof space, lots of generating u storm water uh runoff. And then you see the dark blue which is what's happened since 2000. And there's not that much of that. It's kind of infill. And you see the same pattern in Bucks County. It's a little more scattered in Bucks County. The green is the uh late 20th century development there. And I would point out that most of this part of Bucks County is within the Perkium wershed. So the green there is is part of the problem. It wasn't until the 2000s that MS4 kicked in. we started to really look at non-point uh source pollution and storm water runoff regulations started to change and we now have stormwater regulations that are really pretty strict for new development. So the point of showing you all this is that people like to say the reason we have all this flooding now, all this new development, if we could just stop the development, we wouldn't have this flooding. And I have to say that that's not the truth. The truth is we have huge opportunities to go back to all these suburban style developments and retrofit their storm water systems because what they did was they accumulated storm

water and forced it out through one outflow increasing volume and velocity and doing all kinds of damage to our creeks and waterways at the same time and putting more water into the system. So that is our history lesson for the day. a little shorter history. This is the USGH USGS gauge at Greater Fford. You can see where Hurricane Ida came through, but you can also see a pattern here. I have a I do this now. You can see the pattern of ups and downs, ups and downs, and it's about a 10-year cycle between the peaks. Um, so we have a couple years yet before we get into our next peak cycle to get some of this work done. The the flip side of storm water is drought. And if you look at areas here, here last fall and in the wintertime, we suffered some pretty significant drought conditions and we had wildfires different places that you don't really hear about in this part of the world. So, the drought situation has to do with the fact that we are forcing all this water into runoff. We're not letting it get into the ground where it uh goes back into our water table and nurtures our plants and our landscapes and our wells. by the way. Um, so we have two sides of the same coin that we're trying to deal with with this study. This is just another picture of the gauge, a little longer term, but you can see the peaks and valleys uh as we go through time. And I would point out that a 70,000 cubic foot per second uh rate equates to 2,100 tons of water a second. That's a lot of water moving at a rapid speed. that has a lot of power, a lot of pressure. So that brought us to the present. Uh after Hurricane Ida started and that was impetus for a lot of work around the state and the region, um Representative Webster went to the budget folks and got a million dollars

in the state budget to address these issues. We have recurring financial losses, not just to people, but to businesses and communities u around the region. We're losing people's lives. People are dying because of flooding. The first responders take incredible risks when they go out and do these uh rapid high water rescues and we forget about the pollution that happens when we have these big flood events. But almost 2011 wastewater treatment plants go underwater when we have these big floods and everything just washes right on through. So we have massive pollution concerns. It's a big watershed. It's the biggest wershed in the school region. uh includes parts of four counties, 55 municipalities, which we've been talking to all of them. Um all the five uh tributaries of the Percyan come together within a six mile region of Schwanksville burrow. So it's a big funnel and it all hits right at Schwanksville and goes downstream from there. And as I said, Hurricane Ida really prompted a lot of people to get on board with different studies throughout the region. So that's where we came to today. It took us a while. Uh the hurricane hit, Joe Webster got a million dollars in the um in the state budget. It wasn't until February, almost a year and a half later, that I got hired to work with Joe. And I spent the rest of that year browbeating McGomery County into accepting a million dollar grant that they did not have in their work program. Um the uh county commissioner at that point, Ken Lawrence, told Joe Webster, you know that Crystal, she's a little pushy. To which Joe Webster said, "Yes, that's why I hired her to push this through." So, I was really pushy during 2023. Um but we got things moving and in 2024, we were able to get Drew and I

working together. Got a a draft budget, draft scope of work, got the RFP out. We understood the county's new procurement system. And then in June, we finally got the RFP on the street in July 2024, three years almost three full years after Hurricane Ida, we finally get our crew on board to uh to start the work. And as soon as they signed a contract, we said, "Oh, by the way, that 18 months you were thinking about, no, we need it in 12." And they said, "Okay." So off we went. This is our team, uh, Drew and me and HRG. Juny Alum is the project managers. You're doing a great job. Uh, the Percy and Watershed Conservancy and the Center for, uh, watershed protection are on board for the public outreach. Uh, JMT is doing a lot of the modeling. We've been coordinating with the other uh, county planning commissions, conservation districts, and we were fortunate enough to have two people in our region who are very familiar with storm water management problem studies. Excuse me. And that's Dr. Rob Traver from Villanova and Robert Pace who's retired from the Army Corps. Both agreed to be on our steering committee to help make sure we were on track. And I think this is where I hand it over to Drew. Thank you. Right. I just want to give you an update on uh where we are and where we're heading. Uh just quickly to review the objectives. We are looking to identify uh document and then prioritize flooding issues in the entire watershed. The contract with HRG uh it says that they will develop planning level solutions for 20 of the sites but we're keeping all of the data that we've gathered from all of the sites because after this phase one which we're saying is the first 20 sites we anticipate it's going to continue. Plus, we're we're considering an act 167 plan for the entire county and the data

that's been gathered here will be critical for that. Uh so HRG is working on those put everything into an implementation strategy. There's money in the budget for one demonstration project so we can say look if you do this here's look here's the result. We have a model it'll show the result just to encourage people that these can be effective and to do get the municipalities involved in doing more of them. As Crystal mentioned, 55 municipalities, three other counties, coordination is is a big deal, but we've got to coordinate. We've got to get the information out to maintain stakeholder and public support because this is a long range implementation. How we gathered the uh information for the sites to select the sites, we had a couple surveys. There was a municipal survey that went to the municipalities in the Perky Omen. Then there was a countywide survey being done under the ARPA funded storm water planning update that some of the municipalities overlapped into the Perky wershed. So we surveyed them as well. Then the act 167 plans that you heard about Bucks County and the ones in the park, we selected uh the problem areas from them as well. So we gathered data on problem areas. Then HRG went out and studied them further to figure out what what's the what's the cause? The survey responses. put the cause unsurprisingly at you know mostly runoff but also look velocity and direction uh are significant factors in people's minds towards this. So when the creek makes a turn and the flood waters keep going straight like they do uh at Shanksville you know that causes flooding. So that was interesting to me and the fact that we all expected Montgomery County would have the most problem areas because we have the most land area, but uh Bucks County and uh Lehi County had significant problems and they're in the upper reaches. They're in the headarters area. So there's flooding throughout the wershed, not just down at the bottom

where the drain is. I'm moving along, Stephen. I see you're looking too much. Um so there's six flood hazard criteria that we use to evaluate these sites and most of them make sense. uh height above the nearest drainage. The second one that's just there's a lot of lowlying areas and we wanted to incorporate that factor into flooding. The curve number, you might not be familiar with that. That has to do with uh infiltration and pvious area gives you an idea of uh generation of storm water. And then lastly, we looked at population because when you have a a high population and concentrated area, you've got buildings that can be damaged, you've got people that can be uh injured or or even killed by flood waters. and we came up with a list uh and and sites around the county. You can see what Crystal was talking about. There's a band right in the middle where Schwanksville is. Uh that's where a lot of these tributaries come together. But again, look up in the headarters. There's lots of uh there's flooding events in those areas as well. And then we subjected these to the criteria. Uh you can't really see the colors of these dots, but they were ranked. uh the color indicates, you know, higher points for the the red and the darker uh colors and they're clustered where where we could uh HRG is looking at a cluster of problems and saying, you know, can we solve three problems that are very close together by doing one project. So, they're they're being very they're they're really helping us stretch the the money and helping us look at a number of product cases. Is there flooding every year? Uh it's not depends on the the size of the storm, but flooding does occur. Not like Ida, of course, but the these are areas we wanted to to look at uh county level problems. So like the street, the intersection that that floods a little bit, you have to go slow through it. Nuisance that was not Yeah, nuisance flooding was not what we looked at. We're looking at places where, you know, roads get closed or, you know, buildings

get their basement flooded and and so on. How often does that happen? That will happen again. It can happen every year. Um, you know, a few years back there was a unnamed summer thunderstorm that parked itself over, you know, Green Lane Marbor area and absolutely, you know, blew out the Green Lane Marorrow wastewater treatment plants pump station. You know, just a lot of water dumped in a quick location. So, it can happen every year, can happen pretty much any. uh when we talk about planning level solutions, this is the type of uh result that HRG is going to give us. These are not engineered, but they are con, you know, they're concept they're they're concept drawings on steroids kind of they they really give you a good idea of what's being proposed. There will be cost information involved. Uh they'll tell us the materials that are needed. uh and we really feel these are going to be a big help in getting grants because you can show the grant uh agency, you know, exactly what you're planning to do and then talk about exactly the impact that you expect from it. So these are we'll get 20 of these uh excuse me, we'll get these for 20 sites. Some of the sites will have more than one option and so we'll have more than 20 of these total. And where are we? Well, we've just we're wrapping up the technical analysis. HRG has a couple more sites they want to go out and get more information on. There is a model, the H&H analysis, H&H's hydra hydraologic and hydraulic analysis, looking at the volume and the and the rate of flow, the timing of the flow. There's a model that does that. And so they're taking that information, compiling those um planning level solutions, and then putting everything together in a mitigation strategy. Now, we do want the municipalities to adopt uh the plan to show their support of the plan. and that's very important with the funders as well. So, we'll be working on that in the spring. And then I mentioned

public outreach and how important that is. Crystal's just going to wind up with a discussion of that. Before you go, yeah. Are they are they looking at um conclusions that are centered around funding opportunities? Are are you asking if projects are being rated higher because there's a funding level that could support I'm asking conclusions and and sol and potential solutions are tailored towards known funding opportunities. Oh uh well for the most part I I think the short answer is no. uh because for the most part most of the funding opportunities will fund your typical green storm water infrastructure. If there is, and HRG is looking at this now, if there is a proposal for a more concrete and you know, steel kind of solution, some sort of dam or small. Yeah. Like the Fort Washington Dublin projects funding may not be as as available, right, for that. So that would have to be considered. So what they're looking at is really versatile in current funding. Yes. and and the focus is more on the impact, you know, just we we want to get the flooding under control. Well, no, I get that. But the impact it can only affect the impact if you have money to put some solutions in place. So, we are compiling a list of the different types of grant opportunities and we're trying to get people to think about how they can um accomplish two goals with one grant. Say for instance, you want to put in a trail or new sidewalk uh along a road, but that's a road that floods. So maybe you can deal with your storm water management the same time you add the sidewalk which puts you into Pendot's funding sources as opposed to like the green infrastructure type stuff. So we're trying to compile a broad list of ways people can approach this. I thought

you said is there monies for a demonstration project? There's money for one demonstration project within the the million dollars that Joe has that been identified. We're working on that. We've got a couple good sites. permanent wershed has a really good proposal for a site um in our south. We want to make sure that it it's it it actually demonstrates something. So, HRG is looking at the potential impact to select that site. We haven't selected it yet, but we're working. What What's the What's the design criteria for these particular projects? Because Ida was Yeah. probably what a 500 years we're not going to control Ida. We're not going to We're going to get flooding when something like that comes. Uh we should see, you know, the the the two-year storm that causes local flooding, local damage, loss of services, things like that. We should see an improvement in those flooding from those events, maybe up to the 50. But really there's so much development as as you know the math show there's so much storm water runoff already try to control the 100 year strong and above I think it's just it's a bike dream I think it's important in your studies that you outline that this is not a we're not designing for an IDA we're not designing for this yeah we are we are doing that Bob it's very important managing people's expectations because when you come into a municipality and say we're doing a flood study there thinking, "Oh, great. You're going to solve all the problem. Five minutes from now, there'll be no flooding." Um, yeah, that that's a big part of what we're trying to do with the public outreach. Um, first of all, we wanted to just increase people's awareness because people generally don't understand storm water. They think if their yard's wet that there's a problem and that's not necessarily the case. um we did want to uh ensure that when we come up with the

model and the results of the model they feel realistic to people. So we want to make sure that the model is ground truth enough that when we put it out there people don't uh treat it with skepticism. Uh we wanted to make sure that if we do need some of these large projects like the the big dam in um is it upper Dudlin Dublin um that we have broad support for those because we would need not just municipal support but county support, state support as well as local population support for something that large would require probably significant acquisition of space. But we also wanted people to know that no matter how large or small your property, everybody can do something. And uh and actually part of that process is under having helping people understand that getting the water that falls on their property into the ground on their property not only reduces runoff but it helps support their water table. And if they're on a well that's really important. So PWC was our main connection for most of the public outreach. They already had a network set up for the 4ount region to reach folks. We uh reached out further to um municipal officials. We tried to get chambers of commerce and school districts and those kind of folks involved on the advisory committee so they could hear what's going on. Uh the website has all the information has been made public. It's already out there. Last fall, we had a number of public meetings and we secured these big event spaces so that we could handle the big crowds and we had virtually nobody show up. Uh very very light attendance. maybe 20 people was the most who showed up for one of these. So, we're going to rethink our approach to public meetings in the future. We'll probably do something more on a Zoom basis so people can kind of zoom in from wherever they are um and ask their questions that way. So, that was a a learning curve. People don't do public meetings anymore. And that's really the end of this presentation. I did want to back up one quick second to

Steve's question about um the regular flooding. Back we go. One more. Two more. There we go. Um, you can see how often the perk the red line is Rob tells me I have a pointer. Yes, there it is. The red line is flood stage at greater F. So, you can see how often the perky pops up above that flood stage listing. So uh regular flooding along especially along the lower perk is really pretty common and we know that this point here the ID to point is not accurate because the entire gauge was underwater by several feet at that point. So when it says 22 feet max it was really 25 or 26 feet. Um so the red line you're saying yeah at prison on the is that flooding like you know timing on some some that's over like basement flooding and property. It could be a lot of different things in a lot of different places. In Schwanksville, uh they get regular nuisance flooding pretty often on on Park Road where it goes, you know, down across the creek. Um it could show up a lot of different places, a lot of different ways. Could just be a blocked culvert or a culvert that's too small and the road floods. Um but that's flood stage when the water is out over the bank of the perk. If if you have uh Monko safer the the alert system on your phone, you'll see uh you'll at these gauge sites, they'll send out a message when uh the the water starts to rise, when it gets to a certain point, when it gets to near flood stage. So you can you and you get you I get notices several times a month sometimes and so it is kind of frequent flooding that

occurs. Jess, I want to ask one question. Um, you know, this is one side of the water issue that people just have to be more aware of. And hopefully when you have something as as dramatic as I do, you get people's eyeballs. The other is drought. And if you look over there, you see the issue with drought. And I don't think people are going to realize till the next several weeks what the impact of last year's drought was. You're still below. We're still below. And people don't see until their their favorite perennials don't come up till their the shrubs that they've spent thousands and thousands of dollars in don't green out. So it's important for us to understand both things motivated our voters and our citizens. When we've done polling, it's e when you talk about water, it's either the fear of too much or too little. We still have a lot of people in Montgomery County who are on wells. Yep. And I last year I happened well. One of the reasons I think about this a little bit more, but I'm on a public sewer. So you're mining your water. Exactly. But you don't understand that. Yeah. So as people understand it, they're more willing to support public initiatives and public funding for things that either curtail the water or bring the water. So I think when we tell this story, we need to always touch on the reality of not enough water, water in the wrong places and what we need to balance the two. Right. That's a really good point. I think one of, you know, when you're dealing with a a team of engineers, we got a bunch of engineers and I love working with engineers. You give them a problem, they will find you a solution. They're very black and white thinkers. If we have this problem, here's how we're going to fix it. Um and does that the planners kind of like to identify that gray area in the middle and get down there and roll around in all the gray you know issues rather than

just the black and white. So I think our challenge in managing this uh engineering team is to do just that to tell the story as well as the details and the facts and uh because people will um internalize the story and their eyes glaze over the facts. So uh we need to make sure that we do that. Yeah. Yeah. you get drowned by too much water, but you're in a place with a well and you don't have water and there's no possibility to get it. I know you're trucking water in. I'm in the same situation as you. I was I was watching my water used really carefully last fall. It's not just the residential for these municipalities where most of the the public most of the water is supplied by groundwater wells. You know, that's economic development too. You can't attract business if you Yeah. So the the decades old solution in development was to build these big storm water basins in the development. Now don't call me weird, but when it rains and I have time, I actually drive around and look to see if storm water basins are filling up. That's why I don't see anything. I have I think I have two pictures of basin with water in them. It's because the alpha pipe is so freaking huge and they're trying to just control that 100ear storm. So we have to retrofit them. We have to put a little wall in there. Is part of the solution like taking a look at them and trying to figure out to make them work so that there's some infiltration right there before any discharge or the water gets to them. Okay. All that. All that. And um I know when I was at the Perky Watershed Conservancy in the early 2000s, we did a project in Perky Township and we retrofitted I think five basins in a residential development and we, you know, took out the lowflow channels and put in native plants and did all the things you're supposed to do to help infiltrate that water. And if you go back today, most of it's mowed

off and it's back to being grass because we have been conditioned that green grass mowed to like 2 in that's maintenance. That's maintenance. The wild and woolly basin that has all the native plants in it that get to cut down once a year, it's too wild. We can't have that. So, so we have to recondition people's thinking too to accept mother nature is a wild and willy girl. uh she does not like things neat and we have to get onto her schedule a little bit more. Any other on I think you got competition. I could go with Jonathan to go at the same time. November. Come on. We can both You're always welcome, Steve. water quality update. Yeah, now I know what Ann leave a group feels like. What's that? Now I know what Ann lever feels like. All drew all the time. Um, that's the one, Robert. Thank you. I want to uh we're at an important milestone for the WIS and water quality improvement plan and I just wanted to take an opportunity to bring up to speed on where we are. Robert, this is uh the focus of the study is is the second wershed of course in the eastern part of the county. the watershed uh the headarters of the wershed are Montgomery Mall uh and it flows down through uh 13 municipalities eventually into Philadelphia and into the skook. So just really briefly the water quality improvement plan or quip is actually what's called the TMDL alternative in

the regulations. we're doing this work uh under the Clean Water Act that the EPA says this is an option. They put out a TMDL for phosphorus that was very expensive and possibly not even technically attainable. And when we objected to it, they said, "Well, you've got this alternative." So, the municipalities, the management committee got together. They're part of the uh watershed partnership and they prepared a water quality improvement plan. We gave that to the uh D and EPA a few years ago. They sent us back a letter with 25 major comments and we've been revising it ever since. And I want to just tell you what the update is because it's I I can't believe how much we improved this plan is. It's it's it's a it's a great plan. Much more data and mapping. Um Philadelphia Water Department did a herculean task of taking all of the data that uh I'll show you in a minute. um and compiling it and making sense out of it. And we have a really strong argument I feel as a result of it. The wastewater treatment plants D and EPA are very interested in in what they're doing to remove phosphorus from their affluent. Again, we don't feel phosphorus is the main problem like like the regulators do. Um we feel it's more storm water. That's why we're looking at MS4 type projects and green storm water infrastructure like you're just talking about. Um, we have to have metrics, we have to have updates, we have to show D and EPA that we're making progress. So, that's included in the quip as well. And then all of the all of the data that D and EPA wants to see, but most people aren't going to read, we put into the appendices. And this is just the outline of it. I'm going to touch on these sections. I'm not going to spend a lot of time on them. But the factual and regulatory background is part of the study.

uh we took you'll see in a moment a map that we made of partial development kind of like what Crystal just showed us earlier where the time you know the not only where the development is but when the development occurred is very important again we come back to this water quality impairments and the total maximum daily load the TMDL is a number it says there should be this much phosphorus in this creek there's actually this much more and then municipalities you have to get rid of that excess phosphorus which again is very expensive and technically not achievable. In some cases, they were looking at 98 99% phosphorus removal from wastewater treatment plants. I'm not sure we can do that, but uh so we came up with this uh water quality improvement plan instead. The partnership has stayed together since well, I guess this is our 10th 10th year. Um stayed together. No one's left. Uh no one's even talked about leaving. And I'm really proud to say that they have really stuck with this. Even Cheltonham, which has a very small land area in the watershed, has stayed with us on this. And they are they voted at the end of last year to form into a municipal consortium or a council of governments to help with implementation. They think they'll have better standing for obtaining grants and hiring uh contractors. So, but our goal has always been improve water quality conditions in the Wiziken Creek through an adaptive management approach. That means we do things, we evaluate them, we say, should we continue do them or should we tweak them a little or should we do something different? Adaptive management approach to controlling storm water flow rates and volumes because the hydraology is what is disrupting the watershed. Here, this is the the map of development that you saw. The orange and the red just shows development before act 167, before the MS4 program to for modern storm water

control. You can see it spread throughout the watershed up the various tributaries all the way up in the headarters and so on. We also updated the land cover map. Uh it's very important. Land cover density of development translates to imperous surfaces. On the flip side, the open space that we want to preserve and expand is also shown. So we can look at that. The D wanted us to look at repairarian buffers. So we identified where the buffers are and where they aren't. The highlighted yellow areas are potential projects and we can go and establish a forested repairarian buffer to shade the stream to reduce temperature uh and improve habitat for the aquatic insects, the aquatic life. The other map shows road crossings in the watershed and it's purposely uh difficult to read because there's just so many road crossings, so many bridges. We wanted to show them all. Those are opportunities also because the runoff from the road usually goes right into the stream and there's an opportunity to to fix that. The the the meat of the revised quip, the core of the revised quip is this reference watershed approach. This is something that EPA and D suggested we do. So the fact that we went back and did it and did it so well, I think is going to really carry a lot of weight with the regulatory agencies. They said do this and we did it. Like I say, we did it really well. Chester County has had a monitoring program in conjunction with the USGS since the late 90s. So they have amassed a huge amount of data on their streams. What we do with this reference watershed approach is we find wersheds in Chester County that are similar to the Wah Hicken but who are attaining their water quality level that D and EPA are looking for. And then we say, well, what's the difference? How

come Louis Hagen isn't when these similar watersheds are? And we gather a ton of data and the main focus of the data is what we call the IBI score. IBI stands for index of biological integrity and that's the last time I'll use that phrase in this presentation. Everybody calls it a bug score because we're referring to the aquatic insects. Uh there are some insects that if they're present that indicates high water quality. If they're absent, that indicates an impairment. And as you can see in Chester, in Chester County, I do this should be a one switch on the side. On the side, one bang it a couple times. You kick it, right? Yeah, you can point. Oh, wait, wait. There it is. Thank you, Robert. Uh you can see down here in Chester County there's there's a lot of these light green shapes and that's that's a high uh bug score. You see in the Wagen there's a lot of brown. There's a few sites that might be close to getting a good score but for the most part they're poor scores. So we want to look at these watersheds and say what are they doing that we can do here and we can get our bug scores up to where DP and EPA are satisfied. flashiness, hydrarology, storm water management. That's the issue. Um, not going to go into this. This is just showing the flashiness of the stream. Flashiness means the water comes up quick and then drops down quick after a storm. And most of the um most of the sites that are high on the flashiness index have a low IBI score, but there are some that are attaining and above that are relatively high. So we feel it is possible to have a good IBI score even when you've got the urban impact of imperous surfaces and runoff in your

wershed. The water chemistry is important too. There's a number of sampling sites that we're comparing so we can talk about phosphorus and other components in the in the stream. I I will note this is what this is what it's crazy to me. The groundwater under the whisten has a higher phosphorus level than what D wanted us to control to with their TMDL. How do how do you reduce phosphorus in your stream? The groundwater has a so it's just that's why residual Drew is that residual. What is it's it's just well it's not a very high level. It's just the D wanted us to reduce phosphorus levels so much that 98% that the groundwater would have been fighting us. And that's why I say it's technically not. That's what I'm saying. Is it a residual something about the it's just in the it's in the water cycle. It's it's from geology or some of it's geology. Some of it is you know runoff from parking lots and lawns and so on. So it's it just stays there and travels along through the water cycle. Anything have to do with the treatment plant? Well, the wastewater treatment plants are important and I'm going to get to that because EPA and D are focusing on the TMDL program focuses on wastewater treatment plants because it's a pipe. It's a point and you can regulate it. Right now, we're looking at runoff which is harder to regulate. So, D and EPA want to focus on the treat treatment plants more. So, we have a a good component of the quip that that does that and I'll touch on that in just a moment. I did want to just show this again and this is a great chart but the the purple oops put this down the purple you see here is the waen so we have the bug scores that are low except for a few of these that we've noted and they are towards the higher concentrations of phosphorus and then up

here there's other streams with a good bug score with high levels of phosphorus. So, we're saying phosphorus is not the issue at the moment. It might be something we can look at later on. We're not discounting it because the EPA says it's the issue. We're saying it's storm water management, hydrarology. Getting to the wastewater treatment plants, they did a lot of work back in 2009 and you can see it had an impact on phosphorus levels in the in the stream. Here's pre209. Here's post. So they reduce greatly reduce the amount of phosphorus in their effluent. But if you remember from the map earlier, we're still not attaining the IBI scores that D is looking for the bug scores. So dropping the phosphorus had little effect on the on the bug scores. So we're saying it's we need to manage the storm water. We need to restore the hydrarology as much as possible towards pre development levels. And I say towards pre-development levels because this is a developed water. It's an urbanized wershed. How do you can't get rid of houses? You've got to try through your storm water management, your green stormwater infrastructure to try to restore as much as possible. And so we have a bunch of projects uh under the MS4 program that the municipalities are working on and we have a bunch of additional projects that are selected and and we recognize that we're going to have to do even more than this over the 20 year implementation period. But this gets us started uh over 100 projects total uh where we will be working on uh installing green storm water infrastructure on private and public property. You know, the municipalities don't have enough land themselves to do all of these. So, we need to get out to the institutions, to the churches, to the synagogues, to the schools and say, "Let's do a project on your site and improve water quality and be educational." And of course, we have to evaluate what we're doing. It's it's an

adaptive management plan. So after we do, you know, three or four years worth of work, we'll try to assess the impact and then maybe tweak the program a little bit, then do another five-year phase and evaluate at the end of that. And thank goodness we have Philadelphia Water Department. Uh, as I mentioned, they they did the line share the work with the with the uh data sampling. We had six six or 700 sampling sites, 10 pieces of data for every site, thousands of points of data. And you know, DP selects their site differently than USGS does. So if you have a point in the stream and 20 feet down or 20 yards down is another point, are those the same site? You know, Philadelphia Water Department did what they call geo synchronizing. You're laughing. Yeah, it took months. They geocynchronized all the sites and they put groups of sites together so we could analyze the data. They did a huge amount of work and then the benthic bug the bug samples they went through you know 20 years of bug samples and looked at changes in the vertebrate populations. Wick and trails also monitors water quality. Uh and we as I said we we we have modeling. We can look at the impacts of our program as we go along. The metrics, the main metrics is something called area treated. All of that land that doesn't have any storm water management associated with it. The water just runs off into the stream. We're saying let's get that runoff and channel it through a green storm water infrastructure facility, whatever it is. And that would be increased area treated. If you have if you take 20 acres of land and now run it through a basin, that's 20 areas of area treated. 20 acres of area treated. But we're also going to monitor the number of projects we do, the linear feed of stream restoration, repair and buffer

establishment and uh protection of open space. The treatment plants have committed to optimize their treatment process to remove as much phosphorus as they can, but every I mean they remove phosphorus by adding chemicals. You add a chemical, it removes the phosphorus. Now you got to get that chemical out too. So it's it's it's a difficult thing, but they're doing the best they can. And then we're going to look at these other uh uh metrics associated with uh good quality habitat for the bugs, dissolved oxygen so they can breathe, pH, things like that. And phosphorus is included in our analysis because again we want to satisfy the regulators. We just can't add bugs, you know, to get count because that's never been a problem. Introducing new bugs. in interestingly enough um you know early on in the process that that came up why don't we just get the the the sensitive water quality insects that D is looking for and raise them and put them in the stream you can't do that uh the municipalities have committed to projects policies and programs the projects we talked about policies are things like let's establish a uh uniform repair and buffer ordinance throughout the entire watershed or maybe look at land conservation ordinances. So when development occurs, you're getting a chunk of open space along with it. And then programs can include subsidy programs like Amler Burough and Philadelphia Water Department have where if a person wants to put a rain garden in or put down spout planters or some other greentorm infrastructure, they can apply to the program and get some funding for it. We're looking at the 20-year implementation period in five-year increments. Again, towards the end of each phase, we'll be evaluating it as our adaptive

management strategy uh and tweaking it as we go along and hopefully maximizing our impact. Uh the management committee, as I mentioned, is becoming a consortium for implementation. Whisk and Trails is going to be much more involved. They're going to develop the work program. They're going to be securing grants for us. Um they're going to be managing joint projects because the burrows don't have the land they need. I have to cooperate with the larger townships and do the project together and get credit. Uh we'll continue to facilitate the committees and Philadelphia Water Department is taking on the monitoring and they're also continuing to participate in the management committee. So, we're at a point where, as you can see here, ne tomorrow, the management committee is going to vote on endorsing the quip to be submitted for preliminary approval by the regulators. It's kind of an interesting or convoluted uh process. The municipalities don't want to adopt a plan that the regulators haven't because they're afraid we'll adopt it, they'll change it, and then we have to adopt it again. The regulators want to see commitment on the part of the municipalities. So which do you do first? Well, what you do is you have preliminary approval from the regulators. Then you go to the municipalities and say they're ready to approve it. They're not going to change it. Adopt it. Then you go back to the regulators and say they adopted it all. Go ahead and improve it. Approve it. So that's the strategy anyway. So is this causing you to retire? Is this one of the things? This is one of the things that almost kept me right here because it's been such I mean I know it's taken a long time. Yeah. But it's been such a good project. It's a wonderful process and just the fact that we have the support of the EPA and D. They're not fighting us on this. We're basically telling them that they're wrong because they've been saying phosphorus, phosphorus, phosphorus, but they continue to support us in this

pursuit of let's get the hydrarology under control and then looked at other factors with phosphorus. I remember going to the first meeting over with the municipal manager was over at the DP building. Yeah. Yeah. I remember attending that with uh with the manager at Abington. Yeah. Was also Michael. Yeah, it was all starting to come together. It's fascinating to see and and having gotten the updates over the last 10 years, it's fascinating to see where this has gone, especially with some of the initial um push back we were getting from EPA in terms D early on that they just wanted. Yep. They were they were pushing that and they also went, you know, they said, "Here's this option. You can do this water quality improvement plan, but oh by the way, there's no real process in place to do one of those. And oh, by the way, we're not going to help you do it either." Well, that was the thing that really put everybody together was they were they were dictating TMDL, but that was not achievable through current technology. The phosphorus TMDL brought us together. Nor was it achievable in most of the wastewater treatment plants. even if they renovated, they would have to poured day out and rebuilt in order to even implement some of the stuff. So to see where this has gone and and the optimism that's that's among the among the group consortium to try to get some of the stuff done and work together and it almost kept hearing. I remember when there was push back from the municipalities, right, to even early on there was push back from PWD. Yeah. And how do we make sure that when we when we do how do we know we've done enough? How do we know we you know arrive there? Is DV just going to keep giving us more and more standards to pay? Right. Well, that's yeah that is a big issue. How how to get people to pay for it? But we're working through um understanding that this is a completely

different water issue than the perkomen project. Is there opportunity for a demonstration project out of this to kind of help the Well, there's no we don't have the million dollar grant in uh but the municipalities are admitted to it and I think the demonstration is going to be more using the model and PW's monitoring to say okay we did all of these projects because the municipalities are doing projects under their MS4 program then we have additional program projects as Well, we've done all of these and according to the model, it should be doing this for the watershed. It's hard to do something and get immediate results. Okay. So, we'll be monitoring. Okay. So, so perhaps as another positive outcome of your efforts um when it's not raining, I go fly fishing for trout and my friend caught his biggest trout in the Wizah. It's probably 25 in long. It was an oyster. We can you share that with me? Absolutely. But he got it in the Wiz. That's great. Like right down the road from where we live. So it was fantastic. Yeah. And you're not going to have trout there if you want the insects to the book store, right? Any other word comments online? Sandra, you have any comment before we move on to public? No comment. Thank you. Just wanted to say both the the things that Drew and I were talking about today kind of opens possibility for a conversation about storm water authorities. Nobody likes to talk about another layer of authority over everybody and another layer of fees. But storm water authorities in some of these places would allow um for funding to be provided for the match for the grants and it would also allow for groups of communities to work together and everybody take responsibility and credit

for the MS4 projects that get done using money from these storm water authorities. It kind of jumpst starts the ability of folks to get on board. It's not a tax. Any other uh comments from anybody? Thank you. Do you want to do the next one also? Drew's last presentation. Okay. Next up is our white marsh flood plane restoration. We haven't had enough. Yeah, I think you're getting the trifecta today on But we're gonna stay in the whiffs of Hickin. How you doing, buddy? I'm doing well, but I'm really upset that you think I'm not the best singer in the choir. You're the best alto. Thank you. I'm not sure about that either. You'll be the best. So, just remind me which clicks and which points. So, that right here's your laser point. Okay, great. Thank you. So um so we are going to be looking at um one more things. This has been your it's been your environmental um board meeting I guess. Um okay so we have Brett and Emily are they they are going to be they're online. Yes. And I'll be introducing them in a few minutes. Um yes. How exciting. I don't think here. Oh Bill's here and Ellen's back here. Yes. So this has been an interesting unique project for us at the planning commission. Um it's been an opportunity for um for my group, the design group, the environmental group um and open space and trails to sort of work together on a project that we all have a vision and a passion for. Um but came about in sort of a different sort of ways. So

um I'm going to go through today um I'm going to do the first few slides and then I'm going to hand it over to our consultants who I will introduce in a minute. Um, we're going to go through the project details, the existing site conditions, the concept design approach, the next steps, and then some questions. Let me start with a few details about this property. So, this property is in the Waheen wershed. It's in White Marsh Township. Um, uh, more up to date. I'll go back to history in a minute, but right now we're um, design started in April of 2024 with our consultants. We anticipate construction will be in 2026. um and flood plane restoration. The primary goal is to improve the flood plane storage um and provide aquatic and terrestrial uplift as well as water quality um improvements. The drainage area to this part of the whisten is about 40 square miles. Let me give you a little bit of history on this. Wait, I got to ask Russia. Go back to that slide, please. Yeah, go back. Are those taken dur at different times of the What? I can't see what it says on the bottom. Yeah, so that top picture very good question, Stephen. Let me not rush through this slide. This top picture was um September of 2020. This um so let me give you a little um let me situate you a little bit here. This is Skipback Pike. This is Mgherk's um tavern. Um the Fort Washington State Parks over here. We have the uh it green ribbon trail that goes around here. Um and cross county trail will coincide with that at some point. And you can see this is a wooded site and we call it a wooded wetland. Um, it is a county park. So, one of the reasons that we are pro we're in this project is that it is a county facility. It's a county park. It's not one of the big ones with the big name. It actually just says county park area. I think on the sign there's a small parking space, but it is really popular with fishermen. I guess they um matter of fact, I was just talking to John Sinker in our office a couple days ago and he's I don't he didn't go here because there was

everyone the bank was lined with people fishing. So, it really really is popular for um for that as well as um well, we hope for other things, but the fishermen really like this spot. Well, why was it clearcut? So, I'm going to get to that. I'll tell you that in a minute. This lower picture is what the condition was in March of 2022. And I'll give you that history in just a minute. So, it's just it's a little deceiving, too. Yeah. No, I'm glad you asked that question. I'm glad you asked that question. So, um, this gives you a slightly bigger context of where it is. Again, White Marsh Township. You can see, um, you can see the, uh, turnpikes here. Uh, there is a SEPTA, there's a train trestle here. Um, we also have, um, Pico lines that go through the site. This, this, this, this, this, this, this, this is the site right here. You can see Fort Washington State Park. This gives you sort of like the the environments of where it is, but that's that's its location. But let me give you the history of what happened here then. So in 2020 September of 2021 um IDA came through and um had a lot of damage. There were a lot of places all over the county that were damaged along with some of the tornadoes that came through at the same time. County had a contract with a with a company out of Texas to do cleanup and they did it in a lot of places all over the county. Um pretty much trying to clean up anything that was in the way of roadways or in streams to that were a danger. um that started just shortly after Ida. They had them on contract already so they could start right away when they realized the level of the emergency. By the time about end of November, they got to this particular property. Um and when I showed you before what the property looked like, um you can see its shape and that the stream is right here on the lower edge and the road's right here. And then there's only a small little parking area. And so this the woods were still there but they were very damaged and there was a lot of debris in the stream.

That's what they were there to clean up. What happened however was they company decided the best way to do that get to the stream was to clear cut the property um and haul everything off. So that happened in late November of 2021. Um the county and the township started getting a lot of phone calls and um about this and uh wondering what was happening. So there was a particular day that Bill and I were called into an emergency meeting with Blake Clifford and others about what to do with this property. There was they realized there was an emergency. D had was going to cited us that we had done clearing without doing anything for erosion control, erosion sediment control. And so if we didn't do something immediately, we were going to be in trouble. So we went out. So, we first had a meeting about it with um a couple other departments of the county and the contractor found out kind of getting the background of what happened. Um and then and then pretty right away, Bill and I realized that that and Dave did Dave as well said that we need to pull in somebody to do this. We need to pull in somebody on our on call list to do something. So at five o'clock on a Wednesday or on a Monday, Dave and uh Bill and I called one of the called one someone on our on call list and by Wednesday we had them out there. So Donna and their truck, they were the ones that came out. That was really good. So a lot of money So it was a screw up that they clearcut this area. Yeah. I mean they so I'm just not going to comment on that because there are there's there's um it's still some legal things going on. So I can only say that that that was they saw that as the most efficient way to do it. Yeah. So um just as an aside they also were able

to sell anything they lumbered. Gotcha. And that's a again as a fisherman that's a popular place to fish. Yeah. And without trees along the stream right there, that sort of ruins it for the fish in the stream. Yeah. And the fisherman who want to catch and Right. Right. So, but we're hoping that in this particular case, we can make lemonade out of lemons. So, this that's where we're that's where we'll be going into the next part. So, this was this was the day that we were out there on the site walking around with the consultants um and uh seeing what we had to do. what we really had to do immediately was a temporary erosion settification plan which they they it was RK they turned it around really quickly they put it in place um it was supervised by MCCD we we had a lot of partners that helped us get this done and get that to that point however while we're walking around that site you know there was a conversation Bill myself Drew Dave wouldn't this be great if we could do something more than just put seed on it and replant Is this an opportunity to create a better flood plane management here and to have a restored flood plane? So that began began about a I want to say two and a half year process with our commissioners with our leadership to convince them that this was worth spending money on to do something to make a demonstration project. So what what can be done? That's great. And as part of that, so it started with a memo in late 20 in 2022. Um, we had the great idea of getting going for an LSA grant to um, help with this. We got a local shares account. Sorry, local shares account. Um, our lo the local senator and representative are responsible helping us get that. It' be Mary Joe Daly and Senator Cuse. Um, and then when we got that, that's when we said, well, I guess we better start getting some

people in place. And that's when we started the process of um, bringing on a consultant. So in um late 2023 we um this is a little bit more about the site conditions where we are. In late 2023 we put out the RFP um and um brought on um a company called Biohabitats in 2024. Give a little bit background about them before I introduce them. They are the ones that um did the design for the headquarters of the Whisten up in Upper that we gave an McGomery award to. So this is a a team that has done a lot of this. They are very very familiar with Alyssa Hicken and they have award-winning project. So I'm going to stop sharing or we're going to stop sharing. I'm going to be introducing so you're going to see on on they're going to be sharing their screen and the two people from biohabitats who are going to be presenting the rest of it and it's a great you're going to love the visualizations of flooding. Um Brett Long is the senior water resource engineer and the project manager from biohabitats on this project. And um Emily Beam is water resources engineer working with her and but they're going to now take the stage or take um control of this and show what they're um what what they're doing as part of their design what where we're going with that and then we can take some questions at the end or during it, however you want to do it. But I'll stand up here to help um monitor that. So Emily and Brad, morning everyone. Good morning. Good morning. I just want to make sure. Can you all see my screen? Yes. Okay. So, thanks so much, Patty. And really, this whole day has been a um perfect setup for our project and a perfect introduction. Um I'm going to dive into some of the background work that we've done on this project so far and then we'll talk through the concept and our next steps. So, uh, we began our initial fieldwork last summer and, um, the intention of the fieldwork is to sort of document and record the existing

conditions of the site both for our design purposes and for permitting purposes. So, here you can see a close-up photo. Um, can you see my pointer? Hope so. Um, of the site. Emily, are you able to maximize the screen? It looks like you're Are you in presentation mode? be easier to see if it's a little bigger. Oops. Can you There we go. Is that that helps? Okay. Okay. So, the fieldwork we did had many parts and a lot of different team members. Um, but one thing we did was called the wetlands and the waters of the US delineation. What this does is establish the regulatory water for permitting purposes. You can see that we had one wetland on site in the vicinity of the tributary. And the other thing that the waters of the US delineation does is record the official length of the whisten through our property. We also assessed the stream condition and generally the stream is entrenched meaning it is disconnected from the flood plane in um an everyday flow condition and the stream is experiencing moderate to high bank erosion particularly along the left bank in the downstream half of the site. We also assessed the soil condition on the site and this is sort of had a twofold purpose. One was that we are talking about a restoration project that includes some significant amount of excavation. So we were trying to determine if the um the cut the removal

from the site um would be clean fill for for putting it elsewhere and also the cut as we excavate uh would it be plantable? And the answer to both of those questions was yes. So that is great news. We've got good soil on the site for both for removal and for replanting and reestablishing um a a wetland condition. We also assess the trees and the vegetation. Uh, as Patty introduced the project, we know that there is pretty little tree cover and tree canopy on site. And as far as the shrub layer, we had a predominantly invasive understory. Um, however, we are directly across from the Fort Washington State Park as you saw. So, another thing we did was take a look at the native condition over there and record the um extent of the native species over there to sort of influence and help assess our planting pallet uh for the restoration itself. I'm going to turn it over to Brett now. All right. Continuing along the lines of our um site investigation to get you all familiar, um there are utilities um on this site that um we had we needed to consider when we were developing our restoration concepts. In particular, there is a overhead Pico line um that runs parallel to the to the bridge. Um, and we are in contact with Pico and have gotten their design guidelines for working around their infrastructure as as well as uh after some effort digging up an easement from 1926 to see the extents of uh that easement coverage. Um but maybe more significantly for the

project, there is a um Texas eastern soco gas line that runs through the middle of the site under the stream. Um so certainly we have to consider that and work around that to some degree since it runs um right through the middle of the site in our proposed flood plane restoration area. Next slide. And just to highlight the um the parking area um that Patty mentioned, the existing parking area that will continue to be the primary access um for not only park users but also our construction. And as part of this project, we hope to make some improvements uh to welcome the public a little more. Okay, so that was sort of the on-site work, but uh there was also some background computer assessment we did. Uh we already heard this term today, but the hydraulic the hydraologic and hydraulic analysis. Um so the hydraologic is sort of how much water and the hydraulic analysis is um how that water moves. So, uh, we are super fortunate to have a USGS gauge right on our site at the upstream limit of our site. So, um, what we did is essentially download all that gauge data and do a statistical analysis to determine, um, your standard, you know, two-year storm, 50-year storm, 100red-year storm, etc. Um, and here in this table on the left, we've listed the top 10 water years, and you can see how Hurricane Ida and Hurricane Floyd are on that list. Um, I will say that at our site, a 100year storm is 15,900 CFS. Um, so it's actually larger than either of these two. That is specific to this site. That isn't um,

you know, generally for the entire county. Um, with this data, what we did is we sort of we run this storm through a 2D model of our site um to sort of watch and assess how the uh how the stream is flooding. So, we're going to take a look at a couple videos of the existing conditions assessment for the 2-year storm peak. So, what you're seeing before I click play here is a screenshot of Hecraz. Um, this is the software that we use. And up here, you'll be able to in this top right corner see the time click by and then down here is a uh a legend and we're going to watch the rising limb of the 2-year storm. Um, so this is, uh, what we're looking at is velocity, and we're going to watch the water essentially, um, peak during a two-year storm event. So, you can see the water tops its banks and begins to flood the property. is the left bank looking at the map is the left bank considerably higher or was it just not modeled? Um great question. So the flow is moving this way downstream. So this is the left bank. Actually, if you're looking downstream, like if you were standing in the stream in the boat, um this is the left bank. This is our site. This is the right bank. This is much

higher. I don't know if you can see the topo lines. Um but this is a much higher bank. And actually a fair amount of this bank is protected with like some existing bedrock. Um this is the the Fort Washington State Park here. Yeah. I notic they probably just didn't know if the gradient was such that or wasn't modeled, but it sounds like it's just the grade. Correct. It it is modeled in this model. Okay, I'm going to go to the next slide. Okay, this is a similar video. So, this shows the peak of the 2-year storm. So, you can see the total um right now what we're looking at is the total extents of where the water gets during its two-year storm. And the color here represents um the depth of the water. So obviously in the stream we have a darker blue because it's deeper water. And up on the flood plane we have a lighter blue. I'm going to click play. And what you're going to see um is some flow arrows moving. And those sort of show you the path of the water that it's taking. And the speed of the arrow represents also the velocity. So you can see water going under skip back pike here and then some slower water moving up through the flood plane. And you can sort of see the path of that water. Okay. And this is just a screenshot here, but this um is the 100year storm uh peak velocity. So, the 100-year storm is obviously critical for regulatory purposes. Um, and we just wanted to show the full extent of the water. So, you can see that the entirety of Skipback Pike is flooded. The majority of that is upstream of our site obviously. Um, but we do have this tiny little parking lot, you know, island.

Um, but again, the majority of Fort Washington is um not within the 100year flood plane. Do do the bridges have any type of um impact on your flood study or the backwater or anything? This bridge uh the railroad bridge I believe is backwatering um the entire stream through this area is uh essentially a deep pretty still pool. um this stream at the upstream limit. Um I don't know Brett if you have any thoughts on whether or not that's backwatering. Yeah, certainly um those crossings of Skipak Pike don't have the capacity to convey the 100red-year um and also I'll point out that Mather Mill tributary um you know further southeast on Skip Back as some significant flooding shown in those larger storms as well. Right up yeah right upstream from that bridge at Skip Back is Mather Mill which was a state um site now is no long but again it was a mill and that's there is there's that is that often get that always I'm sorry that always was that that small spur road between Skip back and Beth Pike I mean that's always yeah you see it's underwater there's the two-year and you can see yeah not too long ago I'm Sorry. I thought they did some storm water work on that area. I don't think Well, I know that there's been talk about it. I'm not sure they really did anything. Yeah. Washington made that. Okay.

So, back to Right. Yeah. Sounds good. So, now that we gave you some some history and some studies that have been done to date, let's talk about the fun stuff. The um you know, the proposed restoration of this site and I'll take some time going through some of these um project elements. I will say um we just finished up the we call the preliminary assessment and concept phase and took this to a public meeting and got some input. Um now we've moved this concept into formally developing some engineering design plans but our our concept figure um is is much easier to look at uh from a high level perspective. So um there may be some minor tweaks to this as we move forward but the the big picture will remain the same. So to the you know the original site damage was uh the clearing of the repairarian buffer and and all the impacts that that has to you know the local ecology and the storm water management and just kind of the eyesore on the site. So, you know, a big part of this project is just restoring um the vegetation and we have a few different zones that are um proposed which will be um you know native species for the different I'll say hydric zones um you know how much water we expect in each location. Um, for instance, uh, up around the parking area, we have Upland Forest proposed because that's a little higher and drier spot. Um, kind of on the the slopes, um, between the parking area and down to the lower flood plane. Uh, we're proposing a pollinator meadow, um, which will require some maintenance, but also provide, um, you know, a lot of

wild flowers and kind of sweeping views of the site. and um you know food for pollinators um which is definitely needed in these times and um will just kind of be a a draw maybe from Skip Back Pike as well um to get people into the site and then as we progress uh closer to the Wistah Hickin and the lower flood plane uh we'll move into a flood plane forest which would be your more typical um repairarian or floodplane forest. immediately adjacent to our Pedmont streams. And then um in the lower wetter zones, which I'll talk about a little more right after that, we'll transition more into um you know wetland type species that like to have uh their feet wet periodically or their feet in the groundwater. Um so you know we talked about another primary goal of the project was to restore the flood plane and you know get some additional storm water uh reaching that flood plane and being temporarily stored on that flood plane. And you know that's the the heart of this project. You can see um well, let me have Emily kind of point to that central gas line through the middle of the site. um the gas lines kind of forcing the ground to stay near the existing elevation there. But on either side of that, we have the opportunity to excavate out these really nice large uh flood plane wetlands where you know we can have the whisten um as it comes up during a storm say you know we have one inch of rainfall is kind of a design goal for us. If we have a 1- inch rainfall, water can rise in

the whisicken and spill out onto the flood plane in these um flood plane wetlands that we're going to create and you know temporarily store in those areas. Uh infiltrate, evapo, transpirate, you know, settle out some of the the sediment and attached uh nutrients like phosphorus that that Drew was talking about. Um and you know in addition to all those kind of storm water and water quality benefits also create a lot of nice flood plane habitat um you know for local wildlife uh which was something we really heard from the public um that that should be a priority goal for this restoration. Um it this site's a little unique um in that you know we're not proposing to immediately access uh the flood plane from kind of the upstream edge of the the site. We're actually kind of back feeding into the downstream end of these wetlands um via these these rock we um that we'll proposing to install. And uh one of the reasons for that is uh we we anticipate that it'll be a lot less uh energy energetic flow to feed these wetlands than if we were kind of spilling everything right onto the flood plane from the upstream end. And you'll be able to see um some of that from this additional modeling that we'll show. Um a couple other really important project elements. This is a county park, so we, you know, wanted to think about um other things like the the fishermen

and just local local use. Um so we wanted to identify um places where we could enhance the trails. Um, I think we've settled on a a fairly uh informal approach to trails, but um consider those um with respect to our planting locations and our restoration components. Um but one other key connection um that's included is a pedestrian stepping stone crossing across the Wahhiken because um you know currently you can't get from this park area over to Fort Washington State Park uh without getting your feet wet. Um so we we thought this would be a great location to connect to the park in the Green Ribbon Trail. Um couple other things worth mentioning is um the Whistahick and stream bank itself is um pretty severely eroded on I'd say the the downstream half of the project reach. Um, so we're proposing to install what we call an engineered log complex, which is essentially a mix of um, you know, large wood and some rock to prevent that that bank from eroding and sending that sediment downstream um, post restoration. And one last note on this one, you know, I just wanted to mention this site is it's 12 acres. Um, so these these wetlands are large. It's a it's an opportunity to really make a big impact. Um, each of these flood plane storage area wetlands are are multiple of acres. Um, so it's it's a real, like Patty said, making lemons out of lemonade.

It's a park parcel that um doesn't have buildings on it. So, we could really um do some great restoration work at this site. So, next slide. So, here's a a cross-section through the site. It's a um a little difficult to see the change in vertical um on this, but a couple things to highlight is we're proposing to keep a bit of a higher area or burm um immediately adjacent to the whisten. Um and there would be a informal trail on top of that. And then behind the burm is where you get into that lower um flood plane restorationwetland storage area. And then you know the the right side or edge is where we start to slope back up towards skipac pike um to kind of tie more to the roadway or um parking area. And um we have I think right now we're sitting around uh like 5T 4 to 5t of average cut within in the deepest part of those wetland cells. So, you know, compared to the existing grounds, um, coming down that amount to be able to create that that connection to the whisk and in a lot more rapid way than currently exists. Um, that existing bank is in the highest points u maybe six to seven feet tall. So, we need to come down a good bit to be able to get flood water to that flood plane a lot more

rapidly. And then, um, just a couple pictures on the bottom. Wait, I think we have a question. Is that usable? Is that usable soil or is it contaminated or anything? We did do the clean fill testing um, in several geotechnical borings and test pits on site and all of our testing showed that it's clean fill. Do you have an estimate cubic? Sorry. Do you have an estimate of how much soil's coming out of there? We're we're working on that now. We had an estimate from our concept. We're actually trying to reduce that a little bit now to reduce cost, but we're talking, you know, potentially in the range of 20,000 cubic yards. So, a large volume. Would it be would it be used for the burm? Um, no. The the burm is essentially either staying at or coming down slightly from its existing location. So, we're almost entirely in a cut condition for this project um to be able to get that flood plane reconnection for from a cost standpoint. Uh if there's if you check around to various contractors, nine times out of 10 they will truck it, you know, the your excavation, let's just say it's 20,000 yards. You could get a trucking company that could take it for just the trucking fees because if you're trying to get rid of that without working some type of compensation for from contractors, you'll go broke on that project. Wait. Yeah. So, they need to find That's That's fair, right? Exactly. That'll be Yeah. Our next stage of doing Yeah, that's something we'll have to manage. What's the timeline? Huh? What's the timeline? Um the timeline is starting

construction in 2026. Money available to do it? It's in our budget. What What is What is your budget? What's your thought? So, um Bill and I have worked on this together. We're we're look this is estimated at around I don't know what was the last figure bill was it three. Yeah. Yeah. They have million we have a million dollar. Yeah. And that's all for construction pretty much. So that will offset that piece. Yeah. That's a great point. Yeah. I jumped over a few slides here that we can go back to. Um but um this was just to show the the anticipated improvements in flooding. Um so this is a similar video as what we showed before for the 2-year storm. Oops. Yeah, this shows after the design is put in place what it would look like. And you can see how the water's coming in from this lower edge right here. This is sort of the moment that we're trying to like capitalize on and really fine-tune our design to extend this time piece as long as possible. Yeah. But, you know, because of the level of flooding and say those those bigger like hundred-year type storms, uh, this area will still be pretty much everything will be underwater during that kind of storm, but we can capture those smaller storms a lot more frequently. Hey, Emily, could you run that one more time? Yeah, this is the

two-year storm. This is the two-year storm. Yeah. So, that was the idea. as opposed coming over the bank up here and eroding that. Yeah, you're going to armor that under bank there. I think that's part of that. Yeah, sort of that bank. Yeah. Yeah. Why Why wouldn't you come in on top velocity? Yeah. It's the velocity coming over here and how that can erode that and then this way. Yeah. So, so basically that area is going to be useless other than as a additional detention basin. Well, not useless when there's not a two-year storm. I mean, you can walk through it. There's the trails will go around it. It'll be a demonstration project as well. So, I think the idea is that plants Yeah. native plants that aren't useless that will survive that twoyear sto a countymaintained property. Do we have an estimate on the maintenance cost? We don't have the estimate on the maintenance. Although I will say that um on all of our part of the team that's worked on this internally is John Mandriia from the parks department. So um parks department has been full has been part of this project from the beginning um is in on every key conver key decision of how it's doing. So I know in the back of his mind he's working on that. Um he even said he couldn't make this meeting but he even said we'll figure out what that maintenance has to be of course but they we've made sure that the parks department is on board with how we go forward because they're the ones that are going to have to maintain it for sure. Yeah. Try to be low maintenance let everything just grow naturally. Well I you know with anything that's at you know if you think about that first establishment of plants the first three years is really critical to keep invasives out. So that's going to be a higher time higher maintenance time for sure. um the talk we've had about the trails again we've been having that conversation what's the kind of low impact trail you want to have but still

provide the access for the public to use it and that then John or David and David and his teams can manage it so again those are all conversations that are part of the part of this discussion and that maintenance contract also I don't know if it fits in there needs an interpretive signage for yeah even it's QR codes but sometimes just a visual sign to let people know there's a story with where we are and the pro progression of that story because it's going to really progress really dramatically over the first several years. Yeah. And so one of the one of the I think more of the sort of our ways of approaching this project. I'll see um we've had talks internally is to first get the flood plane restoration done but separate out then the pieces not that we won't do it but that'll be that'll be the next step is that the interpretive signage how we improve the parking lot and do other things to make it more um usable as a county park but because of the because of the cost of it we needed to kind of separate that out and do this piece first. So not that we're not going to do it. I just No, no, but I just think people need to know even if it's a QR code. Oh yeah, for sure. Now that's that's a good point. We there will be a pounding sign because that's how you capture people's interest and have them understand it's not messy. Oh, you know what? I was misunderstanding you. I I was thinking about signage after it's done. As the project goes on, even when we now when we do start that point where they we see people on site, we talk about what signage would be there, letting them know what's happening here with a QR code so they can understand. Sure. Yeah. Where do where do they um Emily or Brett I guess where do you stand with your Army Corps of Engineers joint permit? So the current project status is you know just in the past couple months you know we've transitioned from having this approved concept to developing these

detailed engineering plans. Um, and then we'll submit to, you know, the Army Corps, DP, uh, the conservation district and other permit agencies. So, we're not, you know, we're still in engineering plan development phase. And I'll say, um, we're about a month or two out from starting the the permit submission and coordination. So, in the near future, but we haven't formally submitted any permits yet. Have you done a scoping meeting with the Army Corps or the local conservation district? We have not done preapps with them yet. No. And I guess in that vein that you said the the Sonokco line goes pretty much directly through the That was that white on that concept. It was the white dash line, right? that that trail was on top right on top of that so was that within the area that would become part of the the flooded area and if so do you think the so is going to be all right with introducing flood waters on top of their line there's flood waters on top of their pipe now so that they've been in that condition all along for the two-year it doesn't top over that but in 100 year it will but yeah they've been there all this time so is that like a little birm dot over top of their line y and yeah we're in We've been in contact with them and you know we're going to not grade within a certain distance of that line and the plans will be submitted to them for for review as well along with Pico. Thanks. Any other questions for anybody? The U PHMC was listed as one of the agencies to coordinate with. Is that

because of the railroad bridge? No. Um, right about here. Well, up here is a um a little line kiln that we think we are avoiding it and we are staying clear of it. So, but the railroad bridge is not listed as historic. No. And actually, I think the railroad bridge isn't on our property. It's on Okay. Well, that would help because I bet it is a story. Okay. Yeah, but we're not touching it though. Yeah. any any project of this size would have to go through like at least a preliminary review by PHMC. Um that's probably the first permit uh that we'll actually submit. We should be able to ready to submit that within the next week. Um because we really just need this conceptual plan and they can check their files to see if they have any resources in the area that could potentially be impacted. And I should just mention on your you'll see on the schedule activities for the coming weeks there is a check presentation scheduled for Monday um April 21st at 1:30. So if anyone was interested to get out and see the site and learn a little bit about it um the two senators will are presenting the check um to our Yeah. Thank you for mentioning that, Ellen. It's on the 21st. 21st at 1:30. Everybody received that from Karina earlier today. You'll need to park at Merks and then um White Marsh Police and county rangers will help everyone get safely alert to the site. So, it's a it's an opportunity. It's yes, an opportunity. And again, I just want to give so Brett and Emily were going to come in for this meeting because we the check presentation was going to be later today

and then it got moved. So we felt that we needed to be economized with their time and so that's why the presentation this presentation was done remotely with by them. But um hoping that one of them can maybe come to the check presentation and be on site. So any other questions? Thank you. Thank you. Thank Thank you guys. Great. Thank you. Thank you. All right, Scott. Okay. Um, staff news. Um, again, reminder, the send off happy hour is at Von on Mecca a week from Friday, April 18th, 4:30 to 6:30. Um we'll have a complimentary uh taco or whatever else they have at the food truck available to any anyone who comes uh as well as cash bar of course very good beer say so um anyway looking forward to that and uh I want to welcome a new community planner Abby Cobber in yeah Abby Cobber uh she's filling the vacant created by Tim relocation to South Bend uh she's been with us as an intern actually over the last six months and so we were really happy to bring her on. She's been doing exemplary work as an intern and helping particularly with the Hatfield comprehensive plan. Um, so she got her undergraduate degree at University of Pittsburgh in sociology and then went and got her master's degree at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. And um, is any relation to John? No, we said hello. Well, he says hello, too. He knows this is not the not I love and she'll be

working on East Springfield transitioning into that community as well as Marboro Township and she's going to continue working on the half comprehensive plan with Adam. Great. [Music] Great. Um so we have three openings uh currently. A trails and open space plan has been open the longest and you'll hear news on that likely uh very shortly. Uh we have a transportation planner which hopefully fills an empty seat um at Edmond but back filling from the tree level and future environmental uh planner as we uh reorganize after due technically that's not over yet and the just a reminder the county is still hiring a chief sustainability officer. Uh that person will work with planning commission um um most very likely and John and I are helping with the interviews that are starting next week I believe. Um Mon 2040 grant program. Thank you to those who have served on that review committee. They've been through two marathon sessions um of so far. We have one last shorter session to really have been through all the applications and now it's time to uh you know make those uh difficult recommendations of where to go with it. Uh we expect it to be announced uh by the county commissioners at their May 15th board of commissioners that the whole process was finished. Um number three, Northtown Prison RFI has been extended 30 days. It is now a May 15th deadline. Uh we received a couple of applications uh prior to the original deadline of April 15th and a a request at least one request from uh prospective applicant to extend the deadline so they had more time and we know from previous experience you know it's not uncommon for even a winning or or or the the end result application to have maybe not have come

if if that did not had not been extended. We saw that recently at Northtown RP. So, uh, we're excited to get that moving, but want to make sure we've given enough time and and as much possibility as possible of good ideas. Uh, county commissioners last week had held their board of commissioner meeting in lower Maria. It's the third in their uh goal since the new board started to do uh away meetings at night and invite more members of the public to participate in and attend. Uh so this one is was in the backyard of commissioner Makija the board chair who lives in Laurian. Uh we were we were involved quite a bit of staff. Uh we did a premeating tour with the commissioners and several commissioners from Laur Marian as well as staff of Artmore to talk about all the development that occurred there and planning activities and progress when he led that tour. Uh and even stumbled into a grand opening of a new restaurant on parkour with cameras and ribbon cutting scissors. So you can't keep commissioners away from that stuff. They're not invited. That's right. Uh but it was a great time and then we came back held the meeting. Uh I just wanted to mention there was uh Bill Hartman presented on on an open space grant that was recommended by his board for a property in lower Marian expansion of the Riverbend Environmental Center. And we also heard two presentations from Lower Marian staff on their efforts toward affordable housing and sustainability. Both of those presentations really had a lot of shout outs to the county in our collaboration and partnership uh with those efforts. Uh certainly the sustainability John Lester and Anastasia were key parts of developing their plan and they're implementing it now. Uh and then the affordable housing ad hoc committee that and myself and Patty and others have come in and spoken to at various points. It was great to hear them acknowledge and and give the shout outs to all of

our staff and department as a whole. Um always great to hear in and truthful space. Um, next week the board of commissioners will be back in Nortown. Uh, we'll be we're on that agenda. John Leer will be presenting uh again a multid-disciplinary effort within the department on electric vehicles and the new website called Fully Charged. Uh, we ran this through you probably close to a year ago um when we were first planning this out less than a year ago. Uh, and it is finally ready to launch almost. It will be ready by Thursday. Um anyway, this is going to contain clear deadline. It's going to contain a model or an extensive model ordinance to help municipalities and officials with regulations and issues as well as educational components to talk about those issues. Uh and an interactive map that lets uh anyone explore where existing facilities are, where certain uh sites and demographics might indicate the need for additional sites. really all geared towards you know how we can provide the infrastructure which even in the face of you know uncertain funding for towards this effort um the success of from a market standpoint of electric vehicles highly depends on the infrastructure and the availability to charge. So we're not we're not pulling back from that at all even if u other circum directives maybe. So that's that. Uh on number five, I just want to let you know SEPTA is holding a press conference tomorrow. Uh it's probably going to be a pretty big deal and you'll hear about it. It's detailing the impacts of their budget position and uh what's happening to the state. Um there's a proposal um to bring them to I think the bare minimum. Uh but without getting that, they're going to detail all the things that will happen otherwise. uh this is under embargo so I'm not going to comment on what those things are and some of the early ones

that would take place in July have been out there uh but uh my understanding is this presentation will also talk about January where things get a lot worse and uh the theme of it within the term that probably will be used is the death spiral and without giving more details that's probably accurate um because as you start pulling back service and and you know the the the times between rides you know it just contributes to even less ridership and ability to make it. So, um our commissioner Makija is on set the board so he will certainly be have comments on the these issues once as they become public staff assisting in some. So, keep keep uh keep open keeping mindful when it comes out. Uh and then almost got events for next uh month. I think we covered most of them. Uh thank you for mentioning the rest the riven the uh check presentation for the white white marsh flood plane. Um staff is actually we if you recall in the last I think four years this will be the fourth year where we've done a community service project every year. Uh and we're returning to the sites of one our one of our earlier ones this Friday morning will be northtown's riverfront park and a cleanup effort. Uh this is a part of the percolan wershed conservy's uh stream cleanup event which takes place all up and down the wershed over the week from Friday on through the weekend. I'm a little worried about the weather right now. So it's touch and go honestly. Uh if we have to reschedule we will but um looking forward to that opportunity. And as always you're welcome to get dirty with us but I don't I'm sure you have your own uh efforts in your neighborhoods. Um, and then finally, the SRP will be in Pottstown uh for the April 28th board meeting. Every six months they do a anchor community

in-person meeting, so it's a little bigger deal. Um, that will be at the community college at North Hall. So, follow up with that next meeting how that went. And April 28th is also the Hatfield Burough Community Openhouse for our community planning effort to do their comprehensive plan. uh this was a a new community brought on this year uh or the end of last year and so uh they're moving forward with with that comprehensive plan. So that's also another high profile that community uh other lots of good stuff in that um uh sheet that went out this morning and that's all I have. Any other uh comments or questions before we adjourn? Scott report Thank you. Thank you. Uh annual report. Here it is. Sorry beginning. Um hot off the press, although it takes a while to put together, but it really exemplifies all the great work and all the staff efforts on all of our projects as well as the board. So, please uh take a look. I think we're gonna fully release it tomorrow. Just making sure nothing else comes out. [Music] and thank you and thank acknowledge thank you Rita Gita Patty um really pulling this together um and other staff contributed some of the content of course but it's not easy with that there's no no comments or questions forward then Um you stand adjourned. Thank everybody. Thanks. Thank you. Thank you.