Environmental Services Division - Regular Meeting

Alright. Good evening, everyone. We'll go ahead and get started with today's environmental sustainability board meeting. It is October 16, and we'll start with roll call. So Rebecca, do wanna start first?

Rebecca Paley Williams, present. I can't hear them. Joe Chandler.

Sue Barnes. Shannon Blair.

Eric Lachelle.

And we are missing Kela Romero. Alright. So we'll move on to agenda item number two, public comment. Just a reminder that this section of the agenda is reserved for comments from the public on items that are not otherwise included in this agenda. Do we have any public comment in the room?

Doesn't seem like it. Anybody online? Chair, there's

no one online to make public comment.

Alright. Sounds good. We will move on to agenda item number three, which is approval of today's agenda for the 10/16/2025 meeting. Do have a motion to approve the agenda?

Chair, I move that the Environmental Sustainability Board approve the September agenda for this evening. I read the wrong thing.

I second.

Well, wait. Hold on. That was the wrong date. Sorry. That's okay.

There isn't a motion. I move that we approve tonight's agenda as presented. Okay.

I second.

Okay. Alright. All those in favor? We'll just raise hands since we're all in here. Alright. Agenda is approved. Alright. We'll move on to an item agenda item number four, which is approval of minutes from our September 18 meeting.

Do we have a motion to approve?

Or any any edits, I guess, that need to be made. I didn't see anything. So alright. Anyone wanna make a motion to approve? Oh, you weren't here. Yeah.

I move that the environmental sustainability board approve the September 18 twenty twenty five minutes as presented.

I second. Alright. All those in favor? Alright. So minutes from our last meeting are approved, and then we can move on to item number five, which is board business. And the first thing that we have on the agenda item is the fleet conversion plan and community wide EV charging

updates. And, Chair, I'd like to start by introducing Josh Schat, who works with Stantec. He is on our project team. He's serves as the transit and zero emissions advisory consultant, and he has a strong experience in geographic information systems and data analytics as it as it relates to citywide electric vehicle fleet transitions. So we're happy to have Josh on our project team.

We also have with us tonight Greg Wallingford and Annalee Castillo, who is our project manager with the team. And I just like to thank Pete Mondragon who's here. He's our fleet manager, and he's also on our team. And Sue Barnes has been, also serving with us. So happy to present to you tonight this update on where we are with the fleet conversion and community wide EV charging plan. So I'll hand it over to Josh, and I believe you're gonna share your own screen. Right, Josh?

Yeah. That'd be great. Can you hear me alright?

Yes. Awesome.

Then I'll also make sure that you can see my screen. How's that?

I don't okay. We can see it.

Awesome. Great.

Thanks so much, to all of you and to the board for having us here today. My name is Josh Schott. I'm calling in from Seattle, Washington, and it's, been really exciting to work on this project. I'm happy to share some, results and some context about it for you all today. I think I will just quickly let my colleagues Greg and Annaly also introduce themselves so we don't have to do that in the middle. Greg?

Hey. Thanks, Josh. Hey, everybody. My name is Greg Wallingford. I work in Stantec's management consulting, branch, and I'm here to support Annalie and Josh. And and just making sure that they are supported in the practical application of how this gets implemented into the county, in support of their, in support of Urals community wide EV charging plan. Thanks so much. Nice to meet you.

And good afternoon. My name is Annalie Castillo. I'm the senior mission technical lead with Stantec. I have been, part of this group and leading the fleet conversion from the beginning as well as taking as project management for, the overall project. So we're really excited to show share with you guys the updates and answer any questions.

Awesome. With that, we'll jump right in. A little background on this here. This is a two part project. We have two pieces that we're gonna be diving into today. The first piece is the actual fleet conversion plan, and the second is the EV charging plan plan for public electric vehicle charging. But the goal is to kinda walk you through, maybe, Ryan chew a bit about the the context background here and then share some of those initial results. So our order of operations, we're gonna start again with that reminder of kinda why we're here and what this project is all about. I'll pass to my colleague, Annaly. Annaly will talk about the fleet side.

I'll come back on, tell you a bit about the results of the EV charging plan, and then we'll make sure we leave some some time for discussion and questions. So first, the purpose of this project. So on the fleet side, the goal here is to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions that are coming from the county's fleet vehicles. On the charging side, this is about increasing the accessibility and the number of, public charging points throughout the county. And then across both pieces of the project, our goal is to engage folks internally, externally, anyone who's impacted by this work.

And a little context here is I'm sure all of you are very familiar. A key driver for this project was the New Mexico clean car rule, and that states that by starting next year, 43% of all the light duty vehicles, 15% of all the trucks need to be in compliance with zero emission standards, and those numbers only rise over time. So this project is about closing the gap between where the county is now and where it needs to be. And today, there's already some significant EV adoption in the county. These numbers you see on the screen are based on vehicle registrations in the state, and so, they just give us a a fairly loose snapshot of where we are now.

Now I'm gonna pass over to Annalene. She'll tell you a bit about the fleet conversion piece first piece of this project.

Thank you, Josh. So over overall, having the goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions, the idea and ultimate goal for the fleet is to identify the feasibility, the timing, and the impacts that will have for Los Alamos County to transition their fleet vehicle to zero emissions, as well as analyzing the required charging infrastructure to support that. As part of that, we have been doing, a lot of work in in engagement with the different departments, Pete, the fleet management, and Inhelica. So the first goal was to establish an existing conditions, not only of the fleet, but also of the facilities. That would also allow us to understand the fleet operations and be able to simulate a model to the extent possible.

How will that transition look for the different vehicle operations in the different departments? That allows us to compare that to what's commercially available so we can identify not only what vehicles are a good fit, but also when depending on what's available in the market. What is work in progress is identifying exactly based on the vehicle replacement that has a lot of moving pieces like mileage, utilization, as well as budget to finalize that, which is the when, and update that with the facility assessment and charging infrastructure recommendations at each site, which is basically the how. And that also it's gonna allow us to get have an idea of the greenhouse gas emissions reductions that the count is gonna contribute to the overall state cost as well as identifying capital and operational cost, any gaps that are required to be able to make this happen from operations and also capital investment. In the next slide, as I mentioned, a big piece of our engagement has been creating that fleet existing conditions, and that requires site visit from some of our engineers and experts to assess what require what is required at each location, assess load connections, and help with the recommendations on how to install that charging equipment to support the fleet.

Like I mentioned, the market scan, which is married to the upper understanding the fleet utilizations assessment. So we had several engagement with the different departments. We were able to understand things like you might have a truck that is used very differently depending on what department. So not only what the truck and when it can transition, but also understanding and making sure that this the replacement of an EV will be able to satisfy those requirements. And that all has been put into an existing conditions.

And on the next slide, we have also developed a a very dynamic tool, which is a dashboard that is gonna not only allow right now to the the county to see everything that we have put into the existing conditions, categorize, organize departments, fleets, but also in the future to keep track of that transition based on our recommendations. And on the next slide, what is next steps is finalizing that phasing plan is basically went by the different vehicles. That is also gonna allow us to finalize the cost in greenhouse gas assessment, and then we're gonna put all that into a draft plan that we will come back to you guys to present in a final plan. And with that, I'll pass it back to Josh.

Thanks, Annalie. And, yeah, just to kinda level side here. So that was the first piece, talk about the fleet piece. Now we're diving into that second piece of the community wide EV charging plan. And the process for this EV charging piece looks like this.

First, we go about understanding all the existing plans and zoning in the county. And then the and this the real meat of the plan, doing the technical analysis to derive where charging makes sense in Los Alamos. Then all of this rolls into the final implementation plan, and the team is is wrapping up that plan now, and we're at the point today where we can start to share some the results. So when we start to think about where public charging should go, the methodology and the analysis that we do focuses on these three areas. So first, demand.

This is stuff like population density, right, EV travel patterns, where electric vehicles are actually driving in the county, household and commuting characteristics. Second piece is suitability. So this is like land use, where the utility infrastructure is, where flood zones are, right, where the rivers and lakes, and making sure that we don't put things in those areas. And then finally, the third piece, equity, and this is where the feedback from the community starts to come into play. So speaking of that feedback from the community, there were two opportunities for public input on this project.

The first was public visioning session that took place back in May, and then the second was held shortly thereafter. It was a a virtual survey that was sent out and and collected over 500 responses. And so the results of these surveys and the the public comment are diverse and, all extremely valuable to the project. We saw a wide array, everything from, significant enthusiasm about widespread charging to concerns about public investment in electric vehicles as I'm sure you all can imagine. But one of the themes that we wanted to share and one of the kinda key trends that we noticed was the complexity of these responses.

So for example, flashing up a a few different takeaways that we have here, but, two of them I'll pull out is that some people were prioritizing equity for residents who don't have garages. Right? So these are people who can't charge at home because they don't have a garage. They don't have anywhere to plug in.

Josh, we can't hear you. Hold on one

sec. Josh. I lost audio.

Are you muted perhaps?

I don't think so.

Maybe send him

a message

through chat.

I think he can hear us, but

I think he's recording his headphones. Employee.

He's I

think we might have had a headphone death there, guys. We'll Yeah. Two seconds.

We'll stand by.

No problem. While Josh is while Josh is doing that, just these are just some of the these bolded items are just some of the highlights that we had noticed that are really meaningful to sort of help steer where physically we our scenarios really sort of optimally place charges in the county, balancing that availability, affordability, equity with the preferred charging locations. And so off to the right, Josh, I don't know if you're back yet, but I don't off to the right, I'm in the middle column really helped highlight some of the top, physical location public charging, within the community.

Can you hear me now?

Yes. Yeah. That's correct.

Wow. Thank goodness. Pesky AirPods. Right? K. Thanks for jumping in there. Yeah. And and Greg's absolutely right. I'm jumping on here to some of the other kind of key trends that we saw. So we heard a lot about barriers to the ownership. Right? The most important being range anxiety. People need to travel long distances, and they need to be able to believe that their car can make that track. And we also heard about network priorities. Most importantly, that the equipment is reliable and that the availability of the chargers is widespread.

And then lastly here, I just wanted to give you a visual of kind of where we heard people actually requesting chargers be placed. We've got two colors on this map. The orange ones, the orange pins represent the feedback during the, in person community meeting, and the blue dots reflect the responses in the survey. And you can see some of the charging preferences trends, that that came out as a result of those. So that's a a bit of background on what we heard from the community, and I wanna talk about our actual suitability analysis and how we went about modeling that.

And at its core, this analysis is trying to answer questions like you see on the screen here. It's the union of the answers to all of these questions that are going to tell us where chargers go. So where do people park their EVs? Where are people driving their EVs? Where do residents want their chargers? What areas make sense? What areas don't make sense? And blending all of these is is really what this analysis is getting at. And so if we take those questions one by one, this is the first question you saw there that where do people park their EVs? People park their EVs at home generally.

And so by looking at population density, we can see where that home charging is going to be happening. So in this stage, we took zoning codes. We took personal ownership. We took parcel size to make a very informed estimate as to where people are living, and therefore, as EVs are adopted, where those EVs will be parked. The next question, where do people drive their EVs?

We have this data source called replica, and we use that to understand where electric vehicles are traveling on county roads. So you can see where people are traveling more, there will be an increased need for for charge. And then where do people want chargers? This is a callback to what we saw in the in the public comment, as well as the public survey. And then finally, what areas are less preferable for public chargers? Right? I mentioned rivers and lakes. Right? We're gonna steer clear of those, but not just the the persistent rivers, but places that flood maybe once every twenty years. We need to know that as well and make sure that charges aren't going in those spots.

Federal exempt land is another example. Private residences, someone's single family home is not a very good place for a public charger. And so, noting and defining where those places are so that our technical analysis can can keep those in mind and, steer clear of those areas. And so to answer what areas make sense for chargers, we are merging all of this data that we now have access to by going out and getting that data. And this image is sort of abstract, but hopefully painting a clear picture of how we can prioritize the different parts of each data layer and then merge that to actually drive the optimal locations and find where these charges should go.

So, importantly, we are investigating a few different charging scenarios as part of this project. So we have home charging. We also have county owned public charging. And then we have privately owned shared level two charging, and then fast charging, which could be on county owned and privately owned land. So across these four scenarios, all those data layers that we talked about are weighted differently.

For example, if you're looking at county owned charging, you know, like we said, we're not gonna use someone's single family home as an option there. And so these different data layers get weighted differently, and we might crank up the knob on some of these layers in the county owned charging and adjust those for the shared level two charging. So now we're into the actual scenarios themselves. Scenario one, the at home charging, this is a way that we can forecast the adoption rate of electric vehicles, high, moderate, and low adoption rates. And the the beauty of this that it allows us to see in 2025, 2030, 2055 where electric vehicles, are going to be because as we talked about, we we understand where people are charging at home, and then we can start to see what is the impact on the grid, for the that at home charging.

This is where scenario two, we get into the the real meat of it. What you're seeing here on the left is two maps, one from kinda downtown Los Alamos and the other from Downtown White Rock. And the gradient of orange here is showing us what areas are more or less suitable. So the darker the orange, the more suitable the area. So in this scenario, as we're talking about turning those knobs, county uncharging, right, is is the only land that's considered here.

Places that are in downtown cores end up being prioritized more highly. You can see that in these really dark orange specs that are down in the middle here. Then we've got on the screen in orange these proposed locations, that are aligned both with public comment and with the site optimization tool, the output of this map. I'll jump to scenario three here. This is the shared level two charging. This is a little different. Right? If I just toggle back and forth between these, you can see how that those orange areas differ. We're looking at the same places. And the reason they're differing is because in this case, we're looking at, excuse me, we're looking at, privately owned land and multifamily housing and commercial areas are prioritized.

So you see a lot more of those coming to the foreground in the dark orange, across both Los Alamos and White Rock. And then finally, fast charging. So multifamily housing in commercial areas, again, are prioritized in this. You're also seeing some real big activity along the highway because the EV travel behavior is more highly weighted in this scenario. The feeder capacities are also very highly weighted here because of the increased drop on those feeders.

And so the point of all of this, again, I'm just really quickly flashing these four examples up there, is to show how each of these different scenarios relate to each other. And these maps are going to have informed the specific locations where the chargers will actually be installed. And so the plan that, is going into a lot more detail than we have time for today detailed all of those locations out as well as the methodology for how we got there and what the impacts are going to be on the future energy needs, out the next thirty years as well as the electrical capacity today. And so all of this is coming in. We've got a few, public presentations coming up.

We'll be gathering feedback on the draft plan and be submitting that shortly, and then all of the feedback from that will go into the final plan, in the final submission. And, hopefully, saved enough time to make sure we get a chance to discuss this and answer any questions all of you have.

Awesome. Thanks, Josh and everyone else. I have a couple questions, but I'm sure we've got other questions. Does anyone wanna start? Okay. Okay. You can go, Joe.

Do you have pricing worked in on this?

Yes. We do have specifically, the county fleet will have a financial model considered for both capital and operational of the fleet, And we also have a financial model that will be included, for the charging for the public charging that will help the county assess different ways to, operate and sustain the model.

And for context, when we look at the map and we're looking at these different dots, are these like a two charging station, four charge like, what what's the relative sizing? Right? Or or how are we supposed to look at that on a on a map or a figure like this?

Josh, if you wanna go, Yeah. I can

Right now in in these maps that's a great question. These maps don't reflect the quantities there. They're all in the order of two to eight chargers, and that is something that's included in the, the draft report is the quantities at each of those. I think that's a big thing that, we'll be looking for feedback on between the draft and the final is the, the quantities at these locations. The locations are are, I think, very well informed by the public comment and by the suitability analysis. And and so the quantities are something that we'll definitely be providing and soliciting feedback on.

And then, I guess, kinda last question, kinda wrap this up right now for me is at the start, you started off with kinda what's the motivating factor for this. Right? Like, more EVs and the adoption, and you put out some general numbers. Like, is there an I don't know. From the spots that we saw, is that enough charging stations to actually meet the feasibility of what the requirement is with just those dots shown, or is there a a gap?

Yeah. Thank you for that question. So the way that we drive the estimated quantity of chargers is based on the, NREL's has a a formula essentially that says based on a given number of vehicles, how many chargers you need to support that. And so the EV adoption rates at a that graph of those three lines, right, low, medium, and high, those scenarios match the, the the standards set out by the state. And so in each of those scenarios, we can understand from NREL's formula how many chargers we need.

And so that's what's actually driving those, the total quantity. The distribution of where that quantity goes is based on the suitability and the the feedback. But the answer is yes. That this this number of charges will be sufficient to account for that demand.

So sorry. One last clarification on that. When you talked about the low, medium, high, so your low case scenario is actually calibrated to meet what's required for plan. And then anything else is just gravy on top to make sure that if there's a higher adoption rate, you have that covered.

That's right. Okay. Thanks,

Joe. Who is next? Okay. I'll go. I'm just curious when you all for the community plan, when you took the data of how many EV drivers we had, I just know a lot of people who have purchased new vehicles with because the federal tax credit expired, like, two weeks ago. So I wonder if there's been more I I think there would be an increase in cars, I guess, is what I'm trying to say.

Yeah. That's a great point. The data that we got is updated on, kind of six monthly schedule. So it's not captured, anything that was, you know, vehicles purchased right up to the wire there. But I think those numbers aren't driving too much of the analysis. That's a a snapshot for us to kinda get a sense of what's going on, but the the analysis and the forecasted values are based on, a bit more than that one data source that we got.

Yeah. That makes sense. I'm more just, like, selfishly curious.

Yeah. Sure. I I'm with you. I'm also curious.

Cool. Okay. Thanks. Sue, do you wanna go next? Yeah. You don't have any questions? Okay.

I've been working on this.

No one else? No? Okay. Alright. Well, I think that answers all of our questions. Is the oh, Rin has a question.

Is that alright?

Of course. Yes.

On page 27, there is no. Okay.

I don't know if you you all can hear, but on slide 27 on which I don't know what slide that is. There is no North Mesa Elementary. It's probably Barranca Mesa Elementary. Yeah.

Yep. I think you're right. I think that's Veronica, I'll get that updated.

Thank you.

Hold

on. Thank you. Yeah. Go ahead, Eric.

Hey. Thanks, everybody. Real quick question for you. I know there was an issue with getting charging equipment. There was a backlog just because of demand. Can you speak to that about, especially with the quick charging, fast charging stations, has that been alleviated and that's not an issue anymore? Are tariffs playing an issue at all? I know I'm looking further down the line in my questioning, but it's also I just know there there was a significant lead time in getting the equipment for charging. That was maybe a year ago that that I knew of.

I can I can speak to that or and and, Greg, go ahead if it's well? But I mostly work with, like, fleet owners and managers that will have more of, like, the higher bulk number, and I do believe the backlog is still there. We have seen a reduced, like, probably from, like, eighteen months lead to at least just twelve months lead. So what we are doing in order to mitigate some of the risk is that when we're doing the planning for when the vehicle has to be in the fleet, we're including some of that lead time for procurement fulfillment for both the vehicles and the charging equipment.

Oh, perfect.

Thank you.

So that the yeah. Greg, I don't know if you had anything else to add.

None none that you didn't already answer, Annaly. We're looking for some larger electrical distribution equipment lead times in the three year plus category and seeing no relief on that because of manufacturing and supply chain issues. But I I support everything Annalise said on the other side. Yep.

That's good. Thank you.

I guess I got one more question. Kind of off of your Rubik's cube that you put together with all the different weightings. And then on the next slide, you talk about each data set is weighted differently depending on the scenario being evaluated. Like, what was the high value that was assigned to an area and what did that correspond to? And then conversely, what was the low area for waiting and what did that correspond to? Just so we can get a relative sizing of what was kind of given priority and highest confidence.

Yeah. That's a great question. And we have again, this this is all documented in, in great detail in the draft report. Essentially, you can you can think of this as everything is mapped on a scale of zero to 100. And so, in a scenario like, shared level two charging, residential, zoned properties might be weighted, higher than county owned.

Right? So in the shared level two, they might be 60. And in the county owned charging, they might be, well, zero in that case because we're not considering private property in the county owned charging scenario. But everything is on that scale of zero to 100, and, the exact values are provided in the report. But, is is that kinda answering your question of of how the reading system works?

It helps. I mean, I'm just trying to understand, like, the quantitative nature versus the qualitative nature. Right? Like, in football, they talk about you miss by two inches, but it's based off of somebody's random spot from the sideline of where they think that went with the ball. Right? So I'm just trying to get a relative feel for how that goes and then just the magnitude difference between. Right? Like, it sounds like maybe something 60 in some areas, and in other areas, some things are weighted zero.

Yeah. And the zero areas are really we call that an exclusion zone. Right? So that would be like the, oh, let's see. Like, a a floodplain, is that's completely excluded. It's actually not zero. It's it's, it's not considered whatsoever. There are other things, other assets that are negatively weighted. So we didn't do this in this project, but, in some projects that have a lot of existing chargers already, you might not wanna put as a a new charger right next to an existing charger. So you might actually negatively weight that and say negative 20.

Right? And so then on on this map, that's where you start to get these kinda, like, bubbles, like circles that are pushing, suitability away from them. And I say this as an example because this is a tool that's been run-in a lot of different scenarios in different areas and on different projects. And so the methodology for how those weights are applied and missing by inches has been refined over those projects. And so I guess that's what I would say is that it's, it's a science that's been fine tuned, and it's a process also that was contoured and specifically discussed with Anne Helica and and her team to make sure that it's applied to Los Alamos' contacts.

That's super helpful. Thank you. Appreciate the clarity.

Alright. I don't think we have any more questions, but thank you all so much for presenting to us. And, Helc, I did have a question for you. We're still having the community engagement event on Thursday. Right? Next Thursday?

So we are moving that date just due to we need a little bit more time for advertising and Okay. Letting the public know we're planning to have that. So we're going to reschedule, and I will let you know once I know once we select a date. Okay. That just changed today. So Sounds good. But we but they are presenting the Stantec team is presenting to counsel on Tuesday and then BPU on Wednesday.

Of this coming week. Yes. Next week. Okay. Sounds good. Well, thank you all, and good luck with the rest of your presentations.

Thank you

so much.

For the time.

Have a great evening.

Alright. So the next thing on the agenda is the review of plastic bag research and a possible hopefully, a recommendation to or, I guess, we need to make a recommendation to counsel regarding the research. So I am gonna be presenting at the same time as we present our, like, yearly update to counsel. So I'm gonna stand up because I would like to practice. But, Rebecca, please don't feel like you need to stand up.

Yeah. Okay. Yeah. And I'm gonna go over there. Alright. Okay. So like I mentioned, we are gonna be presenting to council, I believe, next Tuesday. Right? Okay. When do we can we make any updates if people have suggestions, or are we past that point?

I think we're past actually, probably tonight, I can make the last changes, like, just today, though, and tomorrow.

Okay. Sounds good. So if you see anything or you desperately want me to add something, please let us know. I will say that I really struggled with how much information to include in this. So a lot of, like, additional information.

Like, Sue, you sent some really fantastic information, and I just I struggled if I should include some of that or not include it. So if you guys feel like something is missing from here, please let me know. And, unfortunately, this is probably gonna be somewhat of a repeat for Rebecca, Joe, obviously, Rebecca and Sue, and then Eric. This is brand new for you. But we did kind of revamp things and then included some of the additional information that we have found out since we last presented, which was in July July. Yeah. Okay. Alright. Next slide, please. Okay.

So we're gonna go through the environmental impacts of plastic bags as well as, like, other alternatives, and then take a more in-depth look at plastic bag fees and ordinances in New Mexico and kind of what that landscape currently looks like in Los Alamos and then jump into a conclusion and next steps. But first, I wanna review the county council motion. So this was from January 16. The motion stated or the request, I guess, stated to evaluate single use plastic bags to include factors such as ability to recycle and other alternatives and cost to county to recycle and engagement to local businesses and other interested parties. So for our purposes, that's really three factors.

Environmental factors, so the ability to recycle and the alternatives, the cost, so the cost of the county. And we kinda added the cost to the consumer there as well, and then engagement with local businesses and other interested parties. Next slide. Okay. So background.

And I'm going fast, and some of this is a repeat. But if I need to slow down or if you have questions, just feel free to interrupt me. So back in 2015, there was a citizen position to ban single use plastic bags and impose a $0.10 fee on paper bags. In surveys that were conducted, there was an 80% were opposed to the ban and 72% opposed to reducing distribution. So rather than ESB recommending a ban or an ordinance or anything, they just recommended that we continue to educate the public.

And then in 2019, there was another petition. It was a little broader, so it was to ban plastic bags, straws, and Styrofoam. As a result of that, council formed a subcommittee, and essentially, the subcommittee decided to focus on education campaigns and then funding washable utensils for schools, a feasibility to study food composting. As we know, that's what's led to the eventual food composting program that we're still working on. But there was no plastic bag ban implemented. And then leads us to the present. ESB is directed directed again to evaluate the aspects of a bay a ban NFE. Alright. Next slide. Okay.

So we'll jump into environmental impacts. So I've just got a couple fast facts. I didn't know this, and I thought it was interesting. So what type of plastic is normally in a plastic bag? It's it's HDPE or high density polyethylene. And what's the lasting impact of plastic bags? So they do take about a thousand years to decompose in the landfill. And as we know, they don't necessarily break down. They photo degrade, and then they become microplastics, which is obviously a big concern, especially presently. So do plastic bag policies work?

They can lead to a 25 to 40 up to a 2547% decrease in plastic bags as a share of title items collected by litter cleanups relative to areas without policies. So this was just on coastal communities that we found this figure. I I have it a little bit later, but something else to consider is that there can be unintended consequences with plastic bag policies. So for instance, like, trash bag sales can go up because people use them to line their trash cans. So just something to consider.

Are they recyclable? Yes. But not in curbside recycling, so you have to go to a location that accepts them. And the research that I found about anywhere from 80 to 87% of bags produced are not recycled, and they are used for about fourteen minutes. They are the majority of marine litter found. And in New Mexico, we use about 33,000,000 single use plastic bags every year. So we are a relatively small and unpopulated state. So multiply that, and that's a lot of bags. Alright. Next slide.

So the environmental impacts of plastic bags. So for greenhouse gas emissions, plastics as a whole contribute to about 3.4% of global greenhouse gas emissions. Most of the greenhouse gas emissions that are from plastic bags are sorry. No. Yeah.

Hold on. I don't know what I wrote there. Novel plastics, 90% of the total emissions from plastic. Oh, 90% of the total emissions from plastics are from new plastics that are made, and most of those are in the production of plastics. So if we can reuse plastics and we're, like, eliminating a lot of the the new greenhouse gas emissions, The specific type of plastic bags, the HDPE, I found a wide range of numbers, but probably about 2.6 kilograms of CO two e per kilogram of plastic bag, and that varies pretty greatly depending on the source.

And then as I said, about 90% of the emissions come from the production stage. So if we can reduce and reuse, that would eliminate a lot of emissions. I mentioned this previously, but plastic bags take about a thousand years to decompose. A paper bag can take several months, and then organic cotton also takes several months. And then oh, go back, please. So pollution, again, what are the most common items of waste found in rivers and oceans? Bags is the majority there. And we do have rivers in our state even though we're landlocked. So that is something to consider. All right.

Next slide. So this was the slide that Sue sent in, and I think it's it's helpful. So this compares a lot of different materials across the board of kind of environmental impacts compared to a c one single use plastic bag. So I don't know if we have time really to dive into this, but I figured we could just come back to it if people have questions. I only have, like, fifteen minutes. So alright. So I'll look at New Mexico and Los Alamos. Next slide. So we're let's start with New Mexico. Okay.

So New Mexico as a state has a couple plastic bag ordinances. So we've got Las Cruces, Santa Fe City. The next slide should be Bernalillo County, Taos, and then I believe Silver City is on the last slide and Carlsbad. So I guess I have a question for the board. Do you all think that we should spend time on these or just have counsel kind of review them on their own time? Eric says yes. Okay.

I think setting some context is gonna be helpful. Okay. I certainly wouldn't read off the slide, but I would pick just a couple.

So I was thinking we could do Santa Fe City since that's closest to us. Does that make the most sense?

I think you could just give an overview of, like, what the general exemptions are or Okay. I think a lot of this merges in with what you talk about later with, like, our actual conversations Yeah. With them. And I think that that kind of those conversations are almost more

More important.

Important or impactful. And I wonder, maybe you can almost, like, switch the ordering maybe because this is almost like a follow on from that of, like, the actual

Okay.

I don't know. Let's I mean, we can roll through it, but let's Okay. Okay. So these charts just basically have the jurisdiction, the date that the ordinance or fee or whatever was implemented, and then the type of of fee and then any exemptions. So can we jump back one slide? One more. Okay. So we'll look at Santa Fe City. So Santa Fe has a 10¢ environmental service fee, and then 10% of that is retained by the retail establishment to buy, you know, paper bags or whatever. And then we and then Santa Fe City gets the remaining percentage.

It doesn't apply to paper bags smaller than the manufacturer stated capacity of one eight inch barrel, and then there are other common exemptions. So that would include probably I think restaurants are included in that. And then

If you're gonna just say common exemptions, what I would do because I defined common exemptions, like, if you go up to Las Cruces.

Oh, right there.

So that's the definition. Because I was just, like, so wordy to try to pack it all

by a nonprofit.

So when Okay. When it says common exemptions, it means that's it followed that exact language.

Okay.

So it might be worth, like, maybe swapping them.

Yeah. We could put the

Put the common exemptions there, define it. And then in, like, Las Cruces, put common exemptions.

Okay.

I I think this is a good chart, but I think, ultimately, what they're gonna wanna know is, like, what's the size of the city that's doing it? Like, Santa Fe is good because it's proximal, but then they're gonna wanna know, like, okay. For a small area, what is it that they're doing? And then they're gonna wanna know, like, what's the what's the quantitative impact.

Yeah. So we have that in the next couple slides Okay. Of, like, what that would look like in Los Alamos. So okay. So let's just skip this for now, and then we can go to the next slide after the charts. Maybe we just stick that at the end as, like, an appendix, and I can pull out some of the, like, main information from it real quick.

I think it's okay to say, you know, these are the different cities across our state that have enacted them. And Okay. You know, just I don't think you need to dive too deep, but just that they're there. There has been support across the state. And

Okay. Okay.

Why don't you just instead of having the the big box, just, yeah, have literally have a list of

this Yeah. We could do that.

And just do that. And you can even put population like Joe was talking about.

I would I would just put I would cut a map of the state and just highlight dots for where they are and put the population and then put, like, what the thing is because people always understand pictures.

So I'm gonna have about an hour probably to fix

this. You cut

I don't think

you need to change it. Just

Don't mind me.

Say it. Okay. I'll why don't I look up the population beforehand, and then I can just verbally say that? Does that work? Okay. Like, in your speaker notes? Yeah. In my speaker notes. Yeah. Okay.

Do you have any results or outcomes that were shared with you from these communities from their experiences that you could include?

We do. Yeah. And I I believe I have that later on. Okay. If not, we can add a little bit more details.

But If

you have that, then I wouldn't worry about it. I would just appendix this stuff. Yeah. I would mention it briefly and, like, save yourself the trouble.

Especially since counsel didn't even ask for

this. Okay.

Sorry. I'm trying

to make

my life easier now.

So what I'll do is add a slide, and I can just say these are the cities that have bans. There's information in the appendix if you wanna refer to that.

I think they did ask for it in a way because they asked for what are the alternatives to recycling, and here they are. And they like to see that we looked at our neighboring communities. So I think it's okay that they're there. We don't you don't need to go through every single one of them.

Okay. I'll just pick some highlights then and include the populations. Okay. Okay. So there has been some movement towards a statewide ban.

The so house bill three ninety two proposed a statewide ban of plastic bags and then a 10¢ fee on paper bags with three purse 3¢ going to the store and then the remainder going to whatever municipality the store is in. They this the report estimated a statewide plastic bag could save $3,800,000 per year for recycling processors because plastic bags are heavily contaminated in recycling, and they can cause a lot of damage. When we were speaking to some of the communities, they did suggest that if more counties adopted their own bans, a statewide ban is is potentially more likely the next time that this gets brought to our state representatives. So something to consider. Next slide.

Okay. So let's look at Los Alamos. Next slide, please. Okay. So we focused a lot of our research on Smith's because that is basically our only big box store in town besides, like, maybe O'Reilly's. And the other grocery stores in town already don't use plastic bags. So at the Los Alamos Smiths, we use about 3.2 one two million bags per year. And they do have a bag collection there. It's sent to warehouses in either Phoenix, Las Vegas, or Seattle. The individuals that we talked to weren't sure what happened after that. So is it recycled? Who knows? Is it thrown out? Who knows? I'm not sure.

Hopefully, it's recycled. In White Rock and I will preface this with I do not think this number is correct, but I could not get an updated number. So we use at least a 130,000 bags per year based off of the Los Alamos number. I think that's wrong, but that's the number we're working with right now. And as we all know, White Rock did have a previous plastic bag fee.

So it's 10¢, and it wasn't a paper bag. It was one of the thicker plastics. And the intention of that was that you would reuse it a couple times because it was that thicker plastic. But a lot of customers complained that the White Rock location had a fee and the Los Alamos location did not have a fee, and then the back fee was pretty much dropped without any follow on. There's also a back collection at the White Rock Smiths. Again, the assumption is it's sent to Phoenix, Las Vegas, or Seattle. And then from there, who knows?

It might might be also worth mentioning that the fee just went to, like, the private company. As, like, a reminder.

Yeah. Yeah. I'll add that. Cool. Okay.

So other things that kind of came up when we were talking to Smiths was that they some people use reusable bags that are, like, dirty and gross, And so that's another area that, you know, potentially we could help encouraging people to make sure their bags are clean. I think the example was given was that this person brought in bags that were covered in cat hair, which in a public space is not great, or in a grocery store. They also have problems with getting trash in the recycle drops off drop off, so people use them as a trash bag and or trash can. And then, you know, I I don't know if that makes that stuff unrecyclable, but it could potentially, like, impact that. And then, obviously, there's there's opportunities to encourage reusing bags.

So, you know, not purchasing a bunch of canvas bags every time you go to the store because you don't have your plastic bags or remembering to bring in your canvas bags. So lots of opportunities there. And then when we talked to the Los Alamos location, they said about half of the customers use reusable bags and about half used plastic bags. So it's about a $50.50 split. Alright.

Next slide. Okay. So what do plastic bags cost the county? We had attempted to use Los Alamos cleanup Los Alamos Day as kind of like a a test to see how many bags were littered across the county, and no one provided any data except for me. So that was kind of a bust, unfortunately.

So we that's something to revisit. But in terms of contamination in our recycling, last year or I guess this year, we're expecting about 1,500 tons of mixed recycling. Our contamination rate is pretty steadily about 17%, so that would be a contamination rate of 266 tons. We get charged $46 of per ton of contamination, so that's about $12,000. Recycling contamination is not just plastic bags.

It is everything, so trash, anything that is not meant to be recycled. However, nationally, bags are the largest source of contamination. So there is a waste audit being conducted tomorrow at 5AM, I believe, through our bark Barco bar so, hopefully, after that, we'll have a little bit more information of what our specific contamination looks like, but we don't have that at the moment. So I have no idea if we'll get that by the county council meeting either. But if we get it, we can add it in, I suppose. So alright. So, yeah, contamination cost us about $12,000.

Are they gonna be looking for plastic bags in the audit?

I I think they will not. It's a they're it's just the general weight for contamination.

Okay. So you won't really get that information?

No. But it might it might give us maybe our contamination rate has gone up. I don't know when the 17% is from.

Yeah. I think they're mostly I mean, the purpose they're doing it for is to say what amount is cardboard because they make more money from cardboard, what amount is aluminum cans. They're gonna make a general

Yeah.

Observation to see what's in the contamination, but not sort that any further than just a general heap of trash.

I think in one of your previous slides though you had a breakdown of the different types of contamination. There was a bar graph that showed bags as the highest level. Can you use that number to, guesstimate what our cost is? What percentage of our contamination is plastic bags and therefore what the cost might be?

So that was referring to the amount of contamination in rivers and oceans. Oh. Yeah. Okay. But I a lot of places that I read said that about 25% of recycled contamination is plastic bags, but I could not find any data to back that up. Oh. So I can say that, but I don't feel comfortable, like, sending actually find it. Yeah. That's too bad. I can say that. That was on, like, different recycling websites. But, again, I'm like, did someone just publish this randomly and everyone picked it up? Like, I couldn't find anything. So but we I can say that if you want.

Yeah. If that's the best data you have, but sorry there isn't something better.

I think it just speaks to, like, how difficult it is to collect information on this. Right. So okay. Well, I'll say that, and then I can I'll just say the the numbers, I guess. Cool. Okay. Next slide. Okay. So conclusion and next steps. Alright.

So what would a bag fee or a ban look like in Los Alamos? So a ban would obviously just eliminate plastic bags in the county. I I do think it's worth pointing out that a lot of other municipalities have exemptions for, like, medical use. You know? Like, you get a little bag when you go to the dentist or maybe if you go to the doctor or something like that at the pharmacy.

If there was a fee, consumers would pay for a bag at the store. So there's different ways to structure this, but if we were to do a 10¢ fee with 1¢ going to the business and 9¢ going to the county, that would be at least, $325,000 for a year with just over 292,000 of that going to Los Alamos County. The you know, we would obviously want to specify where that money was gonna be used, probably, like, environmental services or sustainability purposes. Again, there should be considerations for medical use, you know, SNAP, EBT, that kind of stuff. And then also potentially excluding small businesses, restaurants, thrift stops, and then, of course, primarily focusing on our large grocery stores, which would be Smith's, and then gas stations.

For both of or I guess for all options, there's gonna be administrative costs. And because businesses are required, at least in the, the way that other municipalities set up stuff, businesses were required to self report annually. And then somebody on the county side would have to go through that data, follow-up with people if they didn't report, etcetera. Yes, Joe.

I mean, I I think we make a good point of why the bags are not good, but then we put in exclusions that cover like, the only thing that's gonna get hit by this is Smiths.

So it it

feels weird from that standpoint because it I mean, it's also really it's a lot easier for smaller guys to change stuff than it is to get corporate policy and then blend all I mean, it's like

Yeah. So these this was modeled after what, like, other municipalities have done. I maybe that doesn't work for Los Alamos. You're right. And I don't know. Like, I've never gone to Boomerang, so I don't know if they give you plastic bags anyways. But

City of Las Cruces chose not to apply this to any small businesses or restaurants, and they've had success with their corporations complying. It's voluntarily. So

I understand what you're saying, though. Yeah. Go ahead, Eric.

I mean, Smith's did like, this is years ago. They did say they were gonna phase out the use of plastic bags, and they never got around to it. So it's just like

I guess they're the ones that can

afford it. Yeah. Yeah. What themselves organic, like

Organically phase it out. They were gonna do it without us pressuring them. Right. They said they were gonna do it. Then And then

Well, like, things on the national landscape have changed.

A 100%.

That's Yeah.

You know? Yeah. Hey. This makes sense. Everybody wants it. And then all of sudden,

like Right.

The federal pressure comes off and it's like, oh.

Yeah. Kroger as an entity is like, yep. We don't need to do it. So yeah.

One small thing I would just change would be considerations should be considered. Sorry. We should cut that for maybe exemptions should be considered for medical use.

Oh, you're right. Considerations for what?

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Okay.

Are there any other alternative uses for the fee that is just looking at this, it looks like we're just trying to make money for the county. We're implementing a new tax. Yeah. Something along those lines. So are there other things we might consider for the use of the you know, where the money would go?

I mean, I feel like one thing to consider would be to pay for the recycled contamination. That's obviously a very minimal impact to this. But, like, most of the municipalities we talked to, they use it for, like, education for sustainability purposes. So, you know, maybe combining it with some of the stuff that is doing and, like, the the ECO station, some of their efforts. I mean, I think we have the opportunity to write it.

And I say we. I mean, it's not us, but, you know, counsel has opportunity to write it how they see most effective and in a way that's actually enforceable as well too. So do you have any other suggestions for what we could use it for?

No. I was I haven't given it any thought. I just thought in your research, perhaps you had come across other other communities doing different things

Yeah. That

that wouldn't be so alarming to some.

I mean, waste services, like you already alluded to, is actually a really good one just because they can't go in the negative or

Right.

The business structure for waste services within this county, it's like it's designed so it has to be, like, an an enterprise essentially. Right? So you can't run the negative. So being able to offset some of that

Yeah. That would be great. Like, a waste diversion program and education.

Yeah. Yeah. I think, like, I I feel like if a fee or whatever would be implemented, it should be used for sustainability waste purposes.

So Maybe we can put that in there for Los Alamos County, possibly for sustainability programs or some environmental sustainability initiatives. Okay. Okay.

Okay. Next slide. Okay. So we did talk to Santa Fe City and County and then Las Cruces, and they gave us some feedback on what they've learned. So one of the things I mentioned was to ensure the fee or ordinance is legally enforceable, and then they recommended recommended considering enforcing fine for businesses.

They also mentioned, and this kind of goes off of what you said, Sue, but to ensure that revenue from the fee can be used effectively. So recommending having a clear but broadly defined use for the revenue. So some of their uses were a little bit too narrow, and so they had, you know, other stuff going on that perhaps would have benefited from from that money. The initial start up of the collection, that should be has, not as the potential. Has the potential to be a lot of work.

In particular, they noted that it was difficult to get ahold of managers at big box stores. And then they pointed out that continued education is important because, you know, maybe five years from now, people kind of forget, and then they see dips. So just keeping that education of of what the fee or ordinance looks like is important. All right. Next slide.

I have a question.

Oh, yeah. Go ahead.

Would the county take on Smiths and enforce this if they didn't comply? Is that a realistic expectation of this county?

I think that is a great question and something that maybe kind of gets into the next slide a little bit. K. Go for it. So as a working group, we did not do a lot of engagement with the community and really only spoke to Smiths and did not present it as we we kinda just asked them questions, I guess, is what I would say. And that was just due to the history regarding the lack of community support and, again, the sensitive nature of the topic.

So we would request more more guidance from council about how to pursue this. So how how does council expect us to engage with the community? What questions to ask? What's the format? And then, Sue, I think that's a good question from you. Do are we expected to contact Smiths and bring bring this up, I guess? Do you wanna add anything, Angelica?

Yeah. I think that's where we're depending on counsel just to say, you know, if you're interested in pursuing any of these, then, you know, it would be the recommendation at minimum to further engage with the businesses and the community. Alright.

Next slide. Okay. So next steps. So if council decides to keep pursuing this research, we request guidance and expectation on engagement with the community. We have a couple possible suggestions, so, like, a survey for residents, a survey for businesses, maybe some outreach events. And then I I would also think we wanna consider the upcoming audit information from tomorrow's audit because that might shed some information on what our current contamination rates are. Alright. And I think that's the last slide. Yeah. So I have a thank you slide.

And then I did put in some additional kind of questions at the end of, like, possible things that people have might ask. So alright. Any comments? An additional comments? Anything glaringly obvious that we miss?

I have a few comments. Okay. There's several mentions in your slides about impacts to marine systems, to rivers and so forth, but our trash, as far as I know, goes to a landfill in the desert. So I might remove that information. You probably don't have a lot of information on how much. Maybe you do. How many plastic bags end up escaping from landlocked landfills? Because the marine data are not relevant. So including irrelevant data, you know, I think it Do

you not think, though, that given that the Rio Grande does reach the ocean? Well, I don't know if it still does.

It's on the cloud and off. But the do the practices of the landfills that we send our trash to allow significant escape of our waste into water systems?

Yeah. That's a great question. And I'm assuming no, but I don't know the answer. So maybe we do just take it out.

I think the I know I think I would caution is that was the most reliable and most prominent, like, study we recently, like, in in recent history that was actually done on

Yeah.

Kind of plastic contamination. It's unfortunate it's just about the marine systems, but it is definitely the most reliable one out there that kind of puts forward the So kind of I don't know if we should remove I it fully or

mean, I don't know, you could And does it apply to US or is that worldwide? That was worldwide.

There's a

very, very different scenario for trash disposal in in other countries.

So maybe we maybe we rephrase it and just say, like, there's not a lot of data on the Southwest, but this is what we know globally.

Sure. If you wanna couch it in those terms, that's fine. You did the research. You can present it that way. But

Okay.

I'm just saying that we should be concerned about this because it ends up in the ocean, I think will raise skepticism.

Yeah. I I understand what you're saying, Sue. Yeah. Right.

Is there So Smiths is I'm pleased to see that 50% of people are bringing their

own bags, and That's very

anecdotal. That's huge. That's awesome. I'm wondering if we could I'd like to see in this, you know, if you ask counsel how they want us to proceed, if they are interested in having us look into what alternatives exist besides bans or fees, that is. Could we do something to increase bag recycling? Could we do something to increase bag reuse? Is there some way that we could approach this that's less problematic than trying to enforce bans and fees?

Yeah. And I think I feel like that is the best option is to do that kind of stuff. Right. Like, offer more. Maybe we just throwing this out there, but maybe we start collecting plastic bags at the eco station. Yeah. We we need to figure out how much that would cost. I don't know. But, yeah, I'm I'm with you. I think there are other options.

Yeah. Because that that's I think that is one of the things that that council asked for. What? The you know, ability to recycle it recycle and other alternatives. Well, a bag and a ban or a fee is one alternative, but there's a bunch of other ones.

So I guess I interpreted that differently. I They they were

specifically requesting information about the fees, and I think it it was stirred up because of a meeting that counselor Reidy had attended where he had heard about the city of Las Cruces and how they were collecting a fee on bags and then using the fee to then pay for sustainability program. So that's that was the intention.

So that you feel that that's the only alternative that they've

asked us

to look into?

Yeah. I do think so, specifically to this information because we've done education in the past about about it. You know? We do it at the booths when people ask, what do I do with bags? Take it to Smith's. They're recycling them. So we do encourage that in some sense. I don't think I mean, it it is an alternative what you're saying to, you know, provide more education.

Or more recycling opportunities, I guess, too. I don't know.

Yeah. I mean, just what what what I guess, your impression is that counsel is only asking us to look at a ban or fee, then as alternatives, then then that's what you've done.

And we we did talk to councilor Reidy too. And that's what he

said Yeah. Was actually intended by this motion.

When I talked to him again, I don't think he he he specifically stated that he wanted to know more about the cost to the county of, like, you know, are we I think he said, are we spending a lot of money cleaning up bags? Like, that kind of stuff, which I I don't think we are. All all we know about is, like, contamination. Right. So

Yeah. And then the other thing is what else did I

have? I

guess that's all I have in terms of questions or suggestions for your, presentation.

Okay. Thanks, Sue. Eric, do you have something?

No? No. I think it's good. Just let them drive the next steps.

Yeah. Joe, anything?

I mean, my thing was really only about the money they collected.

So I I thought we had a slide about that, but I guess maybe we don't. But I'll just say I'll just verbally say, like, when we talked to the city of Las Cruces, they said they collected x amount.

Well, what I was thinking is just like, when I listen to this, the the we don't want bags, but the problem is how you get a bunch of bulky stuff from the store to your car, then from your car to your house, and then you're done.

Yeah.

And it's like, if we're collecting this fee, it seems like and I don't know if it's allowed by ordinance or charter or whatever for for our group, but, like, it would be nice to have that and then allocate that into, like, research or support for projects that could potentially do away with bags or alternatives. It's like, we're right next

to a national lab.

We've got

smart people. They can't figure out something to do with it. Allocate that money there where it's like, hey, We're taking this on and we're gonna put this into some r and d on how we solve this problem. And then who knows? It could cascade everywhere. And so that's your impact of how you change the world off of it.

So you're thinking,

like Again, I don't know if we could. I don't know what our charter is or a designation. I don't think that we're in control of funds

No. For our board. Yeah.

But if it could be allocated somehow into the council where they could direct us then to project manage something or try to do a RFP to the community on somebody willing to go try to tackle this and create a solution.

Yeah.

It would be an interesting use of funds to keep it circulating here in the community where it's not a tax or something, but you're actively trying to seek to solve a problem that hits cities and everything worldwide. So

Okay. Yeah. I think I mean, it sounds like we need to add add a little bullet point there so we can add, like, r and d.

And you can tell me that's crazy.

It's not worth I mean, I don't think that's crazy. I think that's a great idea. I don't know how feasible that is. But, yeah, it's worth, I mean, it's worth putting in there at least, I think.

Oh. Yeah.

I think it's important to note too that just how effective the bans and the fees were. Like, two examples that we had were city of Las Cruces and city of Las Cruces just off the top of my head. So it took a while to start seeing a decline because they put a fee on a plastic on a bag. Right? So I think the plastic bags were they were done away with, but you could buy a bag, which was a paper bag.

Yep. And it kinda just stayed flat. People were buying bags until it took a couple of years to start seeing it, like, take full effect where they were selling less and less and less paper bags. People started getting the hang of it and bringing in their own reusable bag.

I mean, I guess here's a question too. Like, we don't like plastic bags, but, like, how much do we not like paper bags?

Well, that is that slide that Sue presented last time. Like, if you look at it, plastic bags are I'm not gonna say that the best alternative, but, like, in terms of some of the other alternatives, they have a lower environmental impact. Like, you have to reuse your your cotton bag, like, several thousand times.

Well, what about, like so, like, other countries a lot of other countries, they have the cardboard boxes that everything comes in to get shipped there just like Natural Grocer

does. More Costco. Yeah.

Yeah. So, like, what's the impact of actually switching over and using cardboard boxes? I mean, I'm sure Smith's has an insane amount of cardboard that they're having to bail or would do whatever with. I don't know if it comes over to the county or they have their own

They have their own bailer. Uh-huh.

Yeah. So they have their own bailer, but, like, you know, what's the flip side? The alternative is using cardboard boxes. Like, you go to Japan or anywhere else,

it's Yeah.

The backup is you get cardboard boxes to carry your stuff that are again, they're going there. And then recycling a cardboard boxes, I don't think is that great,

is it? I mean, that's the conversation around the alternatives. Right? It's just like, you know, we know we don't like this, but

what's the

best alternative in the box might be, like, the way to go. And I don't Exactly.

That's something you kinda just glazed over. Where is it? It's the

Yeah. The one slot.

That's it.

Yeah. Yeah. But it's a

I feel like I complicated. I need to I I've spent a lot of time looking at this slide. I don't feel like I can summarize it quickly yet, so I'll spend a little bit of time doing that. But it is it's an important slide. I mean, I don't know. It's I'm assuming cardboard is well, unbleached paper is different than cardboard probably. But

I know Herman had a problem with this study. Did he come up with a a similar life cycle study that you I like didn't

interview this, so Okay. That's his

I just I you know, I just pulled this off the Internet with a pretty quick search, and if and and y'all had you also thought you thought this was too old, a study. And if there's a more

I couldn't find one. I couldn't find one. Update. Okay. Yeah. I mean, I I I did go to our world and data and looked at it, and this is a huge study, I think. So just the magnitude of it

to It was.

I think what it shows is that there's a lot of environmental impacts of any choice. Yeah. And it's difficult, and it's very complicated, and it's difficult to pick a better alternative. You know? And so one of the questions is, given this, is plastic bag or single use plastic bags really something we wanna stop using? Right. Yeah.

And just yeah. The other the fact that it can have unintended consequences of increase in trash bag sales, I think people think, oh, we can bet bet like, we'll do this. And, yeah, maybe you're you're not thinking about other things. So okay. So it sounds like there's a few things that we need to adjust, and I can do that tonight. I'll have time when I get home. Is that enough time?

You could send it, like, first

thing tomorrow. Fine. Yeah. Okay. Alright. So I believe I took well enough notes to

catch And I tried too.

So We can compare. Cool. Alright. Anything else before we close out here?

I think we're looking for a recommendation.

Oh, yes. We do. So there is I'm gonna go sit back down. K.

Good job.

Okay. So we have we did prepare a couple recommendations. We can address them if we need to, but I will read them. So the first one is I move that the Environmental Sustainability Board forward the plastic bag research to counsel for consideration. We might add, like, with discussed changes or something. The next one is I move that the Environmental Sustainability Board recommends council consider all available information and conduct community engagement, including a community wide survey to gauge support for a ban or a fee. And then the last one is I move that the environmental sustainability board recommends taking no further action.

So we left these very broad just so we would have the ability here to wordsmith them and and come up with a recommendation that everyone felt comfortable with. So I do think we should this was a council directed action item. And for the most part, we've done most of the research with the exception of the community engagement like they asked for. I mean, we could add some of the things that you mentioned, Sue, like an alternative to a banner fee That could be a possible alternative as well. But I do think it's important to go present what we found and give some sort of recommendation.

Should we discuss or just start flinging Rin has a question.

Do you mind if

I Of course.

Yeah. Absolutely.

I'm kinda passionate about this one. I I do think you should include in the presentation that the senate bill two forty three that did not pass was in just in 2023.

Okay.

But I think I think this county should be a leader when it comes to sustainability. And plastic bag bans can be powerful symbols of a community's commitment to sustainability and environmental responsibility. When a community implements such bans, it sends a clear message that they value reducing plastic waste, protecting wildlife, and promoting cleaner, healthier environments. Moreover, these bans often inspire further environmental initiatives and foster a culture of sustainability. People become more conscious of their consumption habits and start exploring other ways to reduce their ecological footprint.

Local businesses also play a role by offering eco friendly alternatives and supporting the community's sustainability goals. I'm also very concerned about the small business community, and I'm not sure how to make this whole thing work. Maybe the small businesses could get more than 1¢ of a bag ban, the the money from that. I don't if you've never looked, Breckenridge Colorado has a great program and I'd encourage all of you guys to take a look at it. Angelica and I have looked at it before.

We actually, when I was at the chamber, worked on a possible bag program with a small business community and I just never was able to get that off the ground. But if there's funding for something like that, it might be something that we could do. And it would be almost sort of something for tourists, but something for locals alike. You'd do a art competition to have something on the side of them. You sell the bags to the small businesses and they make a profit on them.

You sell them, I mean, at a loss basically, but the businesses make money using those, selling those. I don't know. It's worth taking a look at. But I do think there are 19 states as of March that ban single use plastics. And, you know, I honestly can't see New Mexico ever being one of them.

But I feel very strongly that Los Alamos should be, you know, ahead of the curve in this state and setting the standard for doing the right thing. So, you know, I agree maybe plastic bags aren't the right thing to ban, but maybe coming up with an alternative like on Helica and I discussed, maybe we could make something like that work. But do take a look at the Breckenridge plan. They it's really great.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I can

do that tonight. Okay. Great. Alright. So what do people think about the motion? And then three options. Do we need to change anything?

I would say check-in and get more clarity.

With counsel. So you're thinking the first one?

Yeah. Like, report in, see what's going on, and then see what they'd like for further steps.

Okay.

Yeah. On the same page.

Okay. So just thinking about, like, if we're asked to do more research, like, Herman is gone from the board. He can still participate, but we might need a couple more members to, like, participate. And and Rebecca's leaving. So it'll just be me. Can help. So Yeah. No.

I can

help too.

I can help you.

Obviously, we can talk about that, but Yeah. Just, you know, keep maybe think think about that in the back side.

Volunteers don't

I mean

say talk about it.

So I am reminded just from what counselor Brynn was talking about was, like, animals eat plastic bags all the time. You hear about that all the time.

Yeah. I It

kill like, it kills them because they can't process it. So We need Like, isn't that something it's not necessarily going to a marine system. It's not necessarily going to a lake, but the we have a lot of deer and other animals that, like, will eat it because they think it's shiny and something food sourced and kills them.

Yeah. I did make a note to include more about pollution. It's really difficult to find information. So I'll I will do my best. But, yeah, I agree with you. If we're gonna take out the marine stuff, we can we can substitute it with something like that. I think that is a great idea.

Mean, the ravens live at Smith's eating

Oh, yeah.

I'm sure they have so much crap. Like, every time you hear about, like, them opening up a raven to look at what they have, it's, all plastic.

So yeah. Okay.

Do you follow h Fist Johnson? He's CEO of SC Johnson, and he started leading a huge initiative against plastics. And so their website where they might be available to give some data across different things for their products, they've

HC Johnson?

H. Fisk Johnson.

K. K. Okay. So

But don't stay all night. So

I mean, that's fine.

Yeah. Don't I mean, again, it's it's pretty much there. Just, like, cancel. Right. Tickets to the

few things.

Tell us what to do. Yeah. Our new scope statement. Yep.

I also I also don't think motion two I guess motion two is more like we're forwarding you the report, and we need guidance. Guidance on or we yeah. Like, if you wanna move forward, we rec highly recommend doing more community engagement. Right? Because that's one component that's missing right now from our research. So maybe we revise one to somehow stay that. I

just wonder if that's premature. I think there's I think that there needs to be just having gone through this a couple times and knowing what the community has brought back to us in terms of feedback and questions and challenges to it, I don't think we have enough answers for us to do this engagement. I mean, could just assume that if we're going to do the engagement, we're also going to do more research so that we can provide that information. But if we don't have it, then it's premature.

I would agree with you. Because, I mean, if you're going to have this discussion and take it to the community, you need to be ready for somebody when they're like, well, how am getting my groceries from the cart here? What are my other alternatives? Like, what am I gonna use as a poopy bag for my dog? Like, have some things where you're like, I can fire back and give you some options. So then you can weigh them.

I think that's included in our next steps question was, like, what questions do we need to be asking? What like, what are the expectations? So maybe that is an expectation. Go go research, whatever. I don't know.

So the slide basically says the motion. Right? The slide's like, if you want us to consider pursuing this, then we recommend community engagement. So that's that's up to them for consideration then. So right? What's these two? Yeah. ESB request guidance.

Based on that, so I I I think I do think the very first one is the is the most appropriate path. Okay. And then let them, again, define the scope. Super excited to go deep dive this one and look at what other places are doing as a parametric and then come back with that information because again, the we're not a leader at all in this one. There's a ton of other communities that are doing this. So we can pick up what's already done. We can figure out what's and we can refine it and come back with something infinitely more refined than the 30,000 foot view that you guys have done a great job on. But, you know, again, let's have council Give us and then we can go and be way more granular in what we're talking about.

Okay. I mean, I'm whatever you whatever the board thinks is best is fine with me. I think either way, we need more guidance from counsel.

So for consideration and further guidance or further

Yeah. For consideration and further guidance. Yeah. Mhmm. I think that's good. Yeah. Mhmm. Yeah. Mhmm.

If that's what they if that's what they think is the way forward. Yeah.

Okay. So awesome. Does anyone or, well, are we comfortable with that motion? Anything else that we need to change? Okay. Does anyone wanna make the motion then?

What did we add to it?

And guidance at that. Further guidance.

Further guidance.

Further guidance. I'll do it. I move that the Environmental Sustainability Board forward the plastic bag research to counsel for consideration and further guidance.

I second.

Alright. All those in favor? Yep. Awesome. Great.

Well, thank you, everybody. So I just have a question because Sue had an idea about it. It's like further guidance, I mean, in the way I interpreted it was the alternatives, we already checked that box. Yeah. But did they want us to look at, you know, these other alternatives of, like, having our own recycle program. Or Do you want me to add

that to the slide then? I don't know. Or I can. We can add it here. I can say oh, what's the next one?

Or just

The next step. Say, like

It's a freeze. Frozen. Yeah.

I can ask the question on this slide. Like, any, any additional alternatives that council requests we look at. Research alternative Yeah.

To reducing single use plastic bags. K. I don't know if any other community has ever done anything other than

I don't think so. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Sounds good. Okey dokey. Alright. Thanks, everyone, for your help, and thank you, especially Rebecca, for your help on this. And if anyone wants to come to the presentation on Tuesday, it is at the White Rock Fire Station. Awesome. Okay. Mhmm. Alright. So we can move on to the next agenda item. I believe we are almost done.

Where did that go? Oh, here we go. Alright. So we'll start with reports, and we can all start. So I just wanted to welcome back Eric, Michelle. So thank you for joining the board again. We're excited to have you. Hopefully, you're excited to be here. Yes. So not to what's the I don't know.

Not to beat the horse. What is the term? Beat the dead horse. So a couple of things did come up when we were talking to Smith's and the EcoStation, which I think maybe we can help with, which was the contamination of the bag bins. And Armando did state that they have a lot of massive cardboard.

I think I mentioned this last time, but people put in a lot of cardboard into curbside recycling and, you know, we have designated cardboard recycle locations. So I think that that is something really easy that we can help with. Maybe we just write a newspaper article, and maybe I said this last time, but I'd like us to maybe consider that. Maybe next meeting, we can talk about, like we could bring Armando in, and he can tell us, like, what he thinks would be helpful. But I know that is that is something that he specifically said was a problem, and I think we can we can help with that. So right before

Christmas. That's the

time to Yes. That's a good idea. Yeah. Yeah.

Okay. All the Amazon remember Joe brought up the issue with all the Amazon Yes. Boxes and packaging? I mean, I don't I mean, it's it's just such a big issue.

Yeah. No. That's a great idea. We can we can phrase it as, like, as you know, the holidays are coming. As you buy more stuff, like, maybe don't buy as much stuff, but also Yeah. Shop local. Yes. Shop local. Yeah. Cool. Okay. Awesome. Yeah. So and, Halka, do you mind reaching out to Armando and seeing if he is willing to come talk to us?

Or About the contamination?

Just, like, what he thinks will help them. Yeah. Sure. Might we might have the audit by then too, which will maybe there's other stuff that will come of it.

Sure.

So, okay. And then the last thing I wanted to say is that we do still currently have an open position. So if you know of anybody, please forward the application to them. It's on the website. And so alright, so we can move on to board of public utilities. Sue, were you able to go to the I think there was

Yeah. No. Those were

Okay. I homework. Yep. So I did not go to the working group meeting or the open meeting. I'm going to next week's meeting, though, on the twenty second, so I will be there for that.

No. It's it's me. Yeah. Alright. So we still Herman was on t board. So if anyone is interested in joining t board, let us know. Okay. Parks and Rec board, I I have not been able to go to those meetings. So if anyone's interested in swapping with me for Parks and Rec as well.

I think there's been movement on the on were our were our comments forwarded to

Yes. They

were. The board for consideration at their next meeting regarding the

first Yes. The I think they are planning to present that back to counsel soon.

Soon. It should be coming up because they met last week. Yeah. Last Wednesday. And our and our comments were forward to forwarded to them and included in the packet. Yeah. So alright. Next is Wren. Do you have any updates for us? I do. Awesome.

Thank you, chair and board. The last meeting we had was October 7. It was last week. There were a couple of really great presentations I just wanted to tell you about. First was the bicycle working group from Parks and Rec board to talk about a bike park that they would like to have. The location that they are sort of focusing on is out on North Mesa. It's meant to be sort of a skills training park for young people to kind of train up. So they did a fabulous presentation. It's going to cost a lot of money. The stable owners came out.

They were in support of it. There were a lot of people, little kids and everything that got up in support of this. And I want to tell you about our taxes. But the whole time they were doing this presentation I just kept thinking, oh my gosh, this is going to cost us so much. But it was a really great presentation.

The second one was this woman that gave a talk about open space and trails, trying to get volunteers to come out and sort of they have a program already, kind of an adopt a trail program, but it hasn't been very successful like the adopt a road has been. And so they're thinking outside of the box a little bit and coming up with an idea where they sort of allow you to adopt a trail in smaller bites like for a day or for an event or that sort of thing. And it really seemed to make a lot of sense. So I think they'll be pursuing that. And then the third one was introduction presentation of the updated trails and open space management plan.

They basically took six plans and are combining them into one. Great thing to do. So for example, 15 strategies were resolved down to four strategies. So it's a really great thing. We kicked off the entire meeting with an announcement that the Corey Styron and the community services team won a really great national award.

And I think we can all see why they do amazing things. And then let's see, the only other really important thing I wanted to share with you was, as I mentioned earlier, taxes. A few years ago the state passed a manufacturing exemption and the lab is now manufacturing pits and is taking advantage of this exemption. And basically, we are not collecting as much GRT as we used to. And so we are looking at raising, taxes, GRT taxes.

And, of course, with everything going on right now with the federal shutdown and the lab and people are concerned, it's not a great time to be floating this. But, you know, I think this county is known for having a lot of really, really great things in it, and and our residents are used to these great services. And we have taken a hard look at the budget and options that are available to us, this is what we are proposing. The increase would be five eighths of a percent. And it basically, if you spent $100 it would increase that bill by 68¢.

So I just wanted to let you guys know this is coming. And I personally think it's the right thing to be doing or for us to do. The amount would take effect next July. So wanted to let you know about that. And I also wanted to just tell you regarding the bag ban.

Counselor Susie Havelman is a huge supporter of this. And I think probably five out of the seven, I think, would be in favor of doing a ban or something. I'm not sure yet what it would be. But I know two would not be in favor of it for sure. I'm unfortunately not going to be at the meeting on Tuesday and Susie will not be there either. So Oh. I know. I know. So I will let the county manager know and I will Susie's in the hospital So and out of I will I've been texting with her. I'm picking up her mail and whatnot.

So I'll let her know this is happening on Tuesday. And I'm going to be on a plane. I can't be even on Zoom. So I'm really sorry. But I will let the county manager know my feelings about this ahead of time. So and I'm sorry I can't be there to support you.

Thank you for letting us know. Given that this is a it's like a working group meeting.

Right? It is.

So do you all still make do you still vote on stuff at those meetings?

It's a presentation.

Right? Yeah. They don't take action at work sessions, but they could give some potential guidance back to the board.

Okay. Sounds good. Okay.

Do you guys have any questions for me?

Well, please let counselor Haberman know that we're thinking of her. I will.

Yeah. Thank you. She's a a huge supporter of this. Yeah.

I have all of her notes. Okay. I'm sure you do. Any question? No? Okay. Thank you.

Thank you. I appreciate what you guys all do.

Alright. I don't think we have anybody from the inclusivity task force on the so I'll skip that. And we don't have anybody from BCity. No.

But they did send a report, so I'll forward that on to you. Sorry about that.

Okay. Thanks, Anhalka. We don't have anybody assigned to education and outreach working group. We just had a presentation about the community wide EV study, so I think we could skip that. We also had a presentation on plastic bags. Sue, do we have any updates from Los Alamos Sustainability Alliance?

No. Our meeting this month was canceled.

Okay. All right.

I do want to make one comment

Oh, yes, please do.

That I just want everyone to know about that I read this morning that was astonishing to me. New Mexico is currently putting in the largest renewable energy project in the Western Hemisphere down by Corona. It's a million acres Woah. And will generate more power than any other renewable energy project in the Western Hemisphere. And I didn't know this I sort of knew this was happening, but I didn't know the scale of it. And it's astonishing that this can occur here, and I'm very proud of our state.

It PV battery? Like what is it?

It's a wind project. They're going to actually run a direct current line to Phoenix and to Southern California. It will power 60,000,000 homes. Woah. It's privately being privately developed. Yeah.

Do we, as a state, get any I'm assuming we get, like, tax benefits and stuff?

I don't know. A lot of it's being done on private ranch land. Interesting. And so I don't know I think the only way we I don't know what we would get. But, you know, we could be if there are state plots that is part of this, we would get revenue from that. Other than that, I don't know. But apparently, a lot of the components are being built at a plant in Berlin. So there are local many thousands of local jobs being created. And, you know, it doesn't matter that the electricity is going elsewhere. It's all in terms of reducing carbon emissions. It's all one atmosphere.

Yeah. Awesome. Yeah. Cool. Thanks for letting

us know.

That's really exciting.

It was pretty cool. Yeah.

Alright. So we'll move on to item seven, which is staff reports. Okay.

Let's see what I have for you all.

Okay.

So our sustainability newsletter this month, we focused on reducing food waste, and we highlighted the pumpkin dumpster that will be set at Fuller Lodge to collect pumpkins, and our subscribers numbers continue to increase slowly. So we're almost to hit hit the 100 mark. EV charging infrastructure, you've probably seen all of the construction out front. So they have broken ground. They started on Monday, Monday.

And so far, we found an abandoned gas line. Thank goodness it was abandoned. And then it poured. So it filled up all the trenches that were about to be inspected today, and then covered back up. So filled them all up. We couldn't get the inspection and we they removed all the water, so they'll be drying out over the weekend. So very exciting. Things are moving. We got the vaults. Those are the big concrete blocks you see outside that will protect all the electrical components.

Very good work from the from the construction team and our project management team, so things are moving along. And then the DC fast charge fast chargers that we Eric, we got an MDOT grant to install DC fast chargers at Mesa Public Library. So we're working on finding an alternative equipment provider just to try to reduce costs, and it comes from a reliable source. So we're working through those hurdles. We've already done the ADA design, and we're starting to work on the electrical design.

Can I ask you a question? How much are the Tesla, the fast chargers?

Oh, I didn't look we haven't looked at Tesla.

Oh, what'd you look at? ChargePoint.

So the county uses ChargePoint. So we have

we just installed two Tesla fast chargers, but they use ChargePoint as the service. So maybe but they say Tesla on them. Yeah.

So that's a good we haven't looked at Tesla.

Let me know because I that's my group who does those.

Yeah. We I've been in touch with Jesse.

But the

we're a little bit we have our hands tied a little bit because we either have to go out for bid for this equipment, which takes time

Yeah.

Or we have to buy off the state price agreements. K. So they're starting to expand those to other EV, like, manufacturers and things. So that's giving us the ability to kinda look outside of the ChargePoint box.

Okay. Well, let me know if if I can help at all. Sure.

Yeah. So that's moving slowly. Let's see. You heard an update on the fleet conversion plan. So you got to see what we've been working on behind the scenes. I hope you feel a little bit more informed about what they're doing with that study. Let's see. Education and outreach. So remember, we are working on so the climate action plan has a lot because we didn't have any mandates. We have a strong focus on education and outreach and encouraging and, you know, trying to nudge people in that direction.

So we issued an RFP to go out to find a company that could help us with all of this, building, all these different campaigns and initiatives. So we the council approved the agreement on October 7 with Modern Entrepreneur Firebrand Creative. I'm not sure what they wanna be called. That's their official legal name. So we're excited to kick off our meeting with them.

There'll be an opportunity for you all to meet them as a board and give, you know, give comments on what their approach will be and, you know, how we when we start building these. Because the topics will range from waste diversion to, you know, energy efficiency, water conservation, alternative transportation. So it's gonna be the gamut of things, will be really fun and very focused. So we're excited for that. Let's see.

I'm gonna skip energy audits. There's no updates to share that there. The municipal food composting program, I'll just say it's on hold. We're going through our twenty year permit at the Eco Station, and it led the state to question a lot of things including us recycling concrete and also yard trimmings and the settling that's occurred where those operations are taking place. So not only was it our the fact that we have a DOE lease, but it's this other thing as well.

So Josh, meantime, Josh and I are looking at in vessel composting to kinda move away from the whole lease idea. And then we're also just looking at other possible alternatives to still capture that food waste. Volunteers, thank you for everyone who contributed to Cleanup LA Day. We had a nice time cleaning up around the airport, so that was fun. Upcoming opportunities to volunteer.

Sue, do you wanna talk about Sarah Mason? And so the first thing is our county manager wants our holiday tree or Christmas tree this season to be adorned with recycled ornaments. So I have talked, reached out to all the schools. We have commitment from Chamisa Elementary. They're making a 100 beautiful like Zia symbol ornaments from Veranca Mesa and from the Eco Club.

The Eco Club needs a little bit of assistance gathering materials. They'd like two liter bottles if anyone uses two liter bottles, let us know or save them. So we need recycled ornaments. If you'd like to make one yourself, we'd love to have it and put it on our tree. So that'd be that'd be one way for you to contribute.

But also, the eco club is looking for help. October 27 through November 7, they're looking they're dropping you could drop off clothing donations at the front desk of the high school, and they help needed from the ESB. So they'd like our help to advertise to the community to attract donations, and then they're also sorting and then setting up the items for sale. And they'd like ESB members to come help sort and set up. This does require a background check.

So if you're interested in that, we can help coordinate that through Sarah Mason. And then they're doing they're actually, you know, conducting the sale. Staff ESB members could help staff the sale, carry out an activity with the prize. This also requires the background check. And then clean up after the cell, so loading excess donations. So that's if you're interested in helping with the equal club, those are ways to engage there. Anilka, I can help that weekend. You wanna help them?

Yeah. Whatever whatever day they need help would be fine. Okay.

So I will connect you with Sarah Mason. Okay. And she can help.

Is she the new

No. She is the, like, the directors of the citizen climate lobby, which is

Oh, okay. Yeah. Cool. She's a

New Mexico state coordination coordinator. Okay. It's a national organization. Yeah. So she's been doing a lot of work with the eco club Okay. And and supporting she ran helped them run the climate summit that they held last year and again this year. Okay. And one I'll say one of the other things that they're trying to do. So this is a thrift sale to reduce clothing waste, but they're also going to include a component of education about fast passion for the students. And so it would be great to have participation. I will also participate.

Cool. Okay.

Okay. Great.

And then if you don't wanna volunteer, I mean, donate your crap. Donate and Not crap. Donate your clothes. And then also go buy, right, you

know, their stuff.

Okay. So let me just share with you the I thought I had it open for you all. Well, I think you have it in your packet. I will just leave it at that. The residential sustainability report for September was 33% diversion. So if we had food diversion, we could add another 15% to that. So we're gonna keep fingers crossed for eventually getting that program up and running. So I'll leave it at that. I do have quite a bit of upcoming agenda items that I wanted to share. They obviously are not for next month.

They're things for us to consider. So I was able to attend the New Mexico Recycle Coalition conference, their annual conference. So I like to share with you what I learned there ranging from p fos to lithium ion battery fires and all in between. And then so I did talk with Adam who is like the regional manager for waste connections, Barco, and he did say that they would be willing to come and give us a presentation. That'd be cool.

So maybe after the audit, like, tomorrow, I'll reach out and say, hey. You know, you and Armando could come. Yeah. Tell us what's in our contamination so we could focus on getting it out of there. Yeah. And then Armando can share what, like, day to day stuff. Okay. Of course, the draft report from the zero emission vehicle study that we're working on, that'll come out probably in December to the board. And then our kickoff meeting for our climate and and engagement

services. So Awesome. Yeah. Thanks, Anhelka.

You're welcome.

Any questions? No. Okay. Alright. Well, thanks, everybody, for your attention and attending, and we will see you in a month or maybe next

week. Yeah.