Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

We are ready to go.

Well, good morning, everybody. Welcome to the June 23rd Regularly Scheduled Planning Commission Meeting. I'm the Acting Chair, Sean Manley. At this time, I'm going to ask for a roll call vote. Roll call vote.

Oh, good. Okay. Acting Chair Manley.

Here.

Commissioner O'Leary.

Here.

Commissioner Sonsma.

Here.

Commissioner Lewis. Here. Commissioner Starr is absent today. Commissioner Burke?

Here.

And our new commissioners, Anderson and Commissioner Carnes, are both absent today. It was a bit last notice for them, so they weren't able to make it.

All right.

But we have a court, so.

Thank you, Sarah. Before we move to the approval of minutes, just a note about this morning's meeting. So we appreciate Commissioner Jurkovic, who served her two terms, eight years, and she was our chair. And without having a chair, nominated and elected in her place. I am the acting chair today. I have let staff know and the commission knows or some commissioners know I am unable to continue in that role, but I'm happy to chair today's meeting. At the next meeting, in order of sequence, according to our bylaws, the secretary will move into the chair role. And at the next meeting, we'll also have a nomination and election for the secretary to finish the term of this year. So with that, we're going to ask for a motion to approve the minutes from May 26th, 26th.

Jim Burks will move.

And a second. Second. Thank you. Any further discussion? All in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? And abstentions? All right. At this time, we have a division update. So we're going to have a legislative update and a work plan update from Planning and Public Works. And Commissioner Jurkiewicz was so good at this. I'm also going to read the disclaimer that she often will read so that we are all on the same page of what the Planning Commission does. So I know that the Planning Commission is principally an advisory board to the Pierce County Council. Actions taken by the Planning Commission on almost all agenda items will be forwarded to the County Council as recommendation for its consideration of final action. At this time, I'd like to welcome Alonzo. Thank you.

Thank you for the opportunity. I will be brief, just continuing the tradition that you all have asked for. But we follow up on what happens with things once they leave and give you a heads up on what's coming next. So this very afternoon at three o'clock at council today, council will take a final on cottage housing that you looked at a while back. So recall that includes not only cottage housing, but also unit lot subdivision. So the ability to have a smaller piece of land with a smaller house, making it more affordable simply by the virtue of less, not because it's affordable. We have one more tool in the affordable housing arsenal, but we'll be smarter after council's meeting this afternoon on which way that goes. And then on July 14th, council will consider battery energy storage systems that made its way out of council committee. I think a lot to consider there still on the trade-offs between something that I think we generally want to support as a move towards more energy resiliency and something that we are concerned about the environmental harm of. So I think there's more to come on that topic, but that'll be with council on July 14th. And then just a few things that are going to be coming to you. You had, I believe it was at your last meeting, a discussion on detention facilities. In your July meeting, that team will be coming back just to discuss definitions. This is a first step ahead of doing any of the ordinance work, just to move through some of the definitions. So what is a detention facility? We have very little on this in code currently. And in addition to that, Council has been doing some work on the multifamily tax exemption program, and we are likely to bring you a first briefing on that in July as well.

Fantastic. Thank you, Alana. It does mean a lot to me and I know the rest of the Commission to be able to get those updates. I'd like to open up to any Commissioners if you have any comments or questions for Alana.

Yeah, I have one question. I said, where does, uh, HB 1181, the greenhouse gas reduction resilience elements actively sit in the current work plan and how is staff tracking our 2020, 2030 sustainability plan actions across all County plans to ensure they are executed rather than deferred.

Sure. Uh, so a couple of things were actually way ahead of the curve on house bill 1181, the requirements from that, uh, that was a house bill in 2023. That required the addition of climate elements into comprehensive plans, a number of other things. With that, because it passed in 23 and we were a 2024 comprehensive plan county, our requirements are for 2029. We included much of those requirements, including adding a climate element in the 2024 comprehensive plan. So we're ahead of where we should be, where we were expected to be at the moment. There are a number of things that we want to do with the climate element ahead of 2029. So, for example, through the transportation code package that we are just working on, starting to work on, we're going to go beyond what we've already said on multimodal level of service. We're going to take a hard look at place type, the idea of being the right thing in the right place rather than one size fits all across the whole county. So we'll be thinking about different place types from the most rural to the most urban in the county and expectation for transportation there. That's something that nobody has done yet on multimodal level of service. We'll do that ahead of 2029 as well. And then Sustainability 2030 is working on not a separate track, but it is being tracked somewhat separately, but it is entirely, everything that is in our climate element speaks very nicely back and forth with sustainability 2030. They were developed in concert with each other. So there's nothing in one that contradicts the other. So they're definitely in support.

Thank you very much. I appreciate that. Sure.

Any other questions or comments? Seeing none, we thank you, Elan, for your time and we're going to move to agenda item number five. What we have in front of us here is an action item. This is the 2026 amendment to the Pierce County Capital Facilities Plan. We're going to begin with a briefing. We will take public hearing during this conversation. We'll have deliberation and we'll ask for action to be able to approve or decline this action item.

Hi, thank you for having me. My name is Rui Binion. I'm the Assistant Director of Budget and Performance at the county, and I'm here to talk to you about an amendment to the CFP. Okay, so a brief presentation today, but here's the agenda. I'll give you a brief introduction on the CFP, then provide some background on what's happened since the CFP was adopted back in November. Then I'll go over the project that staff are proposing to be added to the CFP. And finally, I'll be asking the Planning Commission to find that the channel replacement preliminary design project isn't aligned with a comprehensive plan.

Apologies, Breed. Sarah, we just think we might have a technical issue with one of my phones. I'm concerned about folks being able to hear him online.

I can switch.

Oh, you can't? I don't know if it's working now. This one's working. I don't think Alana's is working.

Okay. So these microphones are attached to the room speakers. The online speakers would be those little satellites. Okay.

Okay. As long as folks can hear.

Okay. Thank you. So for some background on the CFP, the purpose of the CFP is to provide a financial plan that ensures adequate public facilities on a schedule that allows facilities to be maintained and adopted standards of level of service with projected growth to the community and the impacts of new development. It's really a planning document that helps us plan for the needed capital improvements county needs to accommodate both anticipated growth and current operations. The CFP is a required component of the comprehensive plan. and the growth management, sorry, CFP's required element of planning under the Growth Management Act. It is a six-year plan for financing capital improvements that support the county's current and future population and economy. I was in front of this group back in November of last year to present amendments to the 2026-2027 CFP. At that meeting, the Planning Commission found that amendments were consistent with the Pierce County's comprehensive plan and county planning policies. An ordinance was then forwarded to the county council, who then adopted the CFP through Ordinance O-2025-563. Since that time, the county established the Justice and Unified Safety Tax Fund, which authorized an additional one-tenth of one percent sales tax dedicated specifically for law enforcement and Justice Operations in 2026, 2027, this tax will provide additional funding for a project that is listed in CFP. And that project is the Justice Fund will provide funding for the 2002 Jail Renovation Study schematic design. This project was already in the CFP and it utilized REIT funds in 2026-27. So the allocation from the Justice Fund frees up $1.63 million in REIT, which can now be used for another purpose. Staff recommend adding the jail replacement preliminary design project to the CFP and allocating that $1.63 million to fund the project. We do know that the jail needs to be replaced. In 2022, the jail contracted with K&B Architects to conduct a 20-year master plan for the Pierce County Justice Center. The results of that study were provided in the materials for this meeting. The study recommended replacing the existing jail within the next 20 years. That recommendation is on page 62 of that report. The report reads, and I have a little snippet there on the slide, says it is recommended that the main jail be demolished in the next 20 years. The building structure is not easily adaptable for innovation or reuse. And many of the basic building blocks of the building, cell room sizes, are not configured in a way to increase size to meet best practices or certification standards. Many of the building systems are near or beyond end of life and need of replacement. Furthermore, it states that due to it being a hardened facility, aging infrastructure and non-code compliance and the deterioration of the existing envelope make it difficult and expensive to preserve for repurposing. In addition, attempting to renovate many of the larger infrastructure needs in an occupied secure facility present operational safety challenges. So preliminary design work would mark the first step in such a massive project, which is why it is being recommended that we add the project to the CFP now and fund it with the REIT dollars that were freed up by the establishment of the Justice Fund. The jail replacement project is aligned with comprehensive goal CFU-2, which states, I have a typo out there, it says CPU, but it should be CFU-2. Um, that goal States construction constructs needed capital improvements that repair or replace obsolete or worn out facilities, eliminate existing deficiencies. Staff is asking the planning commission, uh, recommend the capital facilities plan amendment be submitted to county to the county council with a finding that it is consistent with Pierce county comprehensive goals and countywide planning policies. That. All I have. Happy to take any questions. They also have staff from facilities to answer, of course. Facilities, really. All right.

Thank you so much for this time. We'll open it up to commissioners if you have questions or comments.

So, thank you for the presentation. A couple of questions. The scope of the project, can you tell us roughly what the current occupancy is of the jail? even on a percentage basis?

Oh, of the total of what? I think there's around 800, I think, that people have in the jail at any given time. I don't know what the total occupancy is.

So is the current facility being used to its maximum capacity or in 100% capacity one way or another? At one time, I understood there was a section of it that was basically not being used.

Yeah, I don't believe it is near total capacity right now. I don't know the percentage of that off the top of my head, but I'm happy to follow up with the commission.

Yeah, Debra Anderson. I'm the construction division manager for facilities management. I do think the main jail is more highly used. There are sections in the 2002 jail that are not as fully utilized right now, and We mentioned the 2002 jail project that's already in there. Part of that project would be to upgrade sections of it to be able to have capacity to move people that are of a higher security level from the main jail into that 2002 to help facilitate so that we have room and capacity to move people around when we need to do the construction of the main jail.

And so the scope of this project is projected to accommodate a larger number of detainees? Or is it, I mean, I'm trying to get my bearings as far as where the projections are coming from and how you see capacity and so forth going forward as it relates to the project.

Yeah, part of our pre-design is going to be to revalidate all that information about how big, what is the capacity really needed? What alternative programs are out there? Does that change the numbers? So that will be all part of the study that is done and in consideration about how much space do we need to really build back for capacity.

And this project will be in the same footprint, basically, that we have currently.

It's planned to be in that downtown campus. Yeah. Where it's going to sit and how we need to phase and stage it, it may not be like 100%. We're not buying new property. We're not buying property. Yeah. Okay. Thank you so much.

Thank you. Commissioner Burke.

Yes, I wonder if the pre-design scope could consider two paired defined climate deliverables, a mitigation target for all electric net zero ready facility with heat pumps and solar and an adaptation target specifying advanced air filtration for wildfire smoke, extreme heat shielding and resilient backup powder. Because pre-design is the only window where these specifications are cheap. After that phase, they become costly change orders. These targets aren't an added burden. They represent the lowest cost lifecycle path to comply with the state clean building standard and our own 2030 sustainability plan. And since Tacoma Power offers 97% carbon free, it would really work well. And recently, Pueblo County, Colorado opened a net zero county jail just last month. So I would like, you know, I know I'm going to support this, but would you consider, you know, adding those to the pre-design?

I think that's something that we can look at adding in the pre-design to see how feasible that is.

How tall is the building that you're proposing?

I believe that the study that we previously did, there are zoning Considerations I think it's four stories is the tallest you can build in that area. With the jail is. So, so it wouldn't be any bigger than.

The county city building. Yes, so would it be in the shadow of the county city building. um. You mean. That's no lesson. I was wondering for you know so that Council member address solar I was just wondering if it would be a candidate for solar based on its location.

Yeah, I can't answer that off the top of my head, but we can, like I said, look at it, and that would be part of that determination on whether or not.

How old's the building you want to raise?

A section of it was built in 1984, so that's 41 years, and the other portion is built in 1959, so that's 66 years, I think.

Any other questions or comments from commissioners? Seeing none, at this time, we're going to move to our public hearing. So I'll first ask, is there anybody in the audience today who would like to comment on item number five on our agenda? Seeing none, we will move to online comments. If anybody who's online currently would like to speak on the subject, please make yourself known.

For those online who would like to write a public comment, please press the raise hand icon on Zoom or star nine on your telephone keypad. Doesn't look like we have any public conference online either.

This time I'll ask for any other deliberation. And if somebody would like to make a motion, they've actually already encapsulated the motion down at the bottom of our slides on Section 7, so they're looking for us to be able to amend the CFP to include this new proposal for a jail facility.

I have just one more comment. When you do look at costs and those sort of things, based on the previous comment regarding some of the climate issues and climate resilience, et cetera, and some of these additional items or alternative items, could you make sure to break those additional costs out so it's clearly identified as to what the cost would be and what the return would be if we go that way? Is that possible, please?

Yeah, we can at this level of planning.

You know you're way early, so I can respect that. Just a footnote. Thank you.

Would anybody like to make a motion to recommend this capital facilities plan amendment? All right, seeing no motion.

I so move, I so move, Chamber.

Do I have a second? Seeing no second, we will move to agenda item number six, the current use open space applications. So this is again an action item along with public hearing. So at this time, we're going to ask staff to provide a briefing.

I mean, I'd like to swap out microphone for personal learning.

Yeah, just one moment. We're going to do a little bit of IT work. We've got a technical difficulty with a microphone.

Thank you.

All right, take us away.

Just about there. Well, good morning. Nice to be here. My name is Dean McClary. I work in the Office of Resilience and Climate Action.

Speaking to the mic.

Of course. We had it moved. We'll try that again. I think you heard it. I work in the Office of Resilience and Climate Action, part of a land stewardship team. And it's my privilege to provide some different agricultural planning services for Pierce County. One of the things I also have the privilege of doing is providing some care for our current use open space application process. The purpose this morning is to give you a quick context for the program and then introduce to you the 15 applications have received in 2025. There we go. Yeah, got it. Very good. I recognize that there were some members on the commission that were new to this process, would like to just thus provide just a short introduction to the program called Current Use. This is actually a state-level program that was established in 1973. We find in our RCWs. We ourselves in Pierce County codified it. We find in Chapter 2 of Section 114. The purpose of the program is to provide a public benefit by conserving open space parcels that have certain bundles of natural resources. The benefit to the constituent with a parcel that has those parcel and natural resource bundles is they get a tax benefit. The program here at Pierce County is administered by two entities I provide. What we'll find is a review and approval process work, and then the assessor treasurer's office I collaborated with in terms of how we work those applications through, they actually do the administration of the tax benefit. so specifically in the context of how we work together what you have here today is actually the middle we call year two of a three-year process so these applications were received during calendar year 2025 this is now year obviously 2026 i'm administering this review and approval process the assessor treasurer's office will then if there is a recommendation from this group to approve these applications these will then receive a tax benefit in the calendar year 2027. And then finally, the program is based up, oh, my apologies, I hit that twice, okay. Back in 1998, the state level statute called Current Use Open Space or Current Use was actually modified a little bit. We now, they provided at that time an opportunity for counties to quantify the natural resources we're looking at. So it's called a public benefit rating system. What you'll hear me say is PBRS. Of course, we need another acronym. The way our system is set up is that in our system, we're one of 13 counties out of 39 that does have a PBRS, is that we have, number one, it's quantifiable. It's based on numbers. It has three categories of natural resources that we got to select as Pierce County back in 1998. We have high, medium, and low natural resources. To qualify, our constituents, when they apply, need to have a minimum of three total public benefit rating system points, and you can earn up to 25. And then finally, the points are used then, they're translated by the Assessor Treasurer's Office into an actual tax break. So that's the context for what in fact is now a summary of what you have in your packet. What we did this year is we bundled the applications this year. I know that the previous years we broke them up over a couple of meetings, but you have 15 applications. And what I will do is I will provide a synopsis in the form of a slide of what are between 10 to 15-page staff reports. So our first application, and what I will do is I will slow down just a little bit in the first one. There's some language here I want to make sure you understand, and then we'll kind of speed it up. So OS is open space. The number is called a case number. I sign those based on location in Pierce County. You also see then the first bullet. There's a reference to what's called a change in designation. So something that I think some of you are aware of is that the current use program at the state level actually has some different programs. So there is a current use we call active farm and egg. There's a current use. We'll have a couple of these this morning called forest land, what we call designated forest land. Those are working land classifications. People with those types of parcels get a tax break. What we have is a third bucket called current use open space. And there's not a requirement that the land is working. There's not a requirement to show levels of income generated in the case of like active farm and egg. Why do I say that? Application number one is a change in designation. They're moving from one designation to another. So this is an historical family farm. They're moving from active farm and egg to current use. Number two. You're going to see that the amount transferred in acreage is less than the total parcel size. So that's called an exclusion. And so that's just recognizing that some of these parcels will have single family dwellings and or accessory units or accessory structures associated with that parcel. And that's the case here. So we have a single family dwelling. And then finally, what you're going to see is just a quick summary of what are called the natural resources categories. found at site so the way this program works is that i do an initial assessment using county gis services different types we call shape files but then i actually go out and i visit the parcel so i actually do a site evaluation and so what you're going to see with this one is that this particular parcel in fact has natural resources that we value called agricultural lands five points is it means it's a high priority resource streams, high priority resource, five points. Wetlands, high priority resource, five points. So we get this number, and that's called the 15 points PBRS. And finally, last comment, and we'll speed it up here, is the tax shift for the county to have this parcel come in for the public benefit of saving those natural resources is about $1,800. So that's shifted to other parcels as a function of this one getting the tax break. All right. Let's do it. So number two, this is a new application. They were not in any other pre-existing tax exemption program. Five adjoining parcels, contiguous parcels of over four acres found on the Key Peninsula. They earned 15 PBRS points for natural resources of value to the public. So fish and wildlife habitat, marine waters, and it's on a beautiful estuary in the Key Penn area. The tax reduction for these to come into our program would be $5,673. Case study number three. Once again, we're still in the key. Did it jump? Let's try that again. Yes. We're still in the Key Peninsula. This is a single parcel, a new application. Actually, it fronts onto the Puget Sound. No development is planned on this site. Total is 6.2 acres. Natural resources of benefit to the public include marine waters, wetlands, a wooded area, a tax deduction for this constituent if they are recommended and approved of about $3,000 per year. Case study number four. We're now around the Gig Harbor area. One application that's new. One parcel, four acres coming in, one acre exclusion for a single family dwelling and a garage. Beautiful site. It has two streams. We call USDA prime soils. wetlands. Finally, last comment. This is new. So one of the things we recognize in our PBRS in Pierce County is called bonus points. So the most common bonus is what we call linkage. Linkage means we're allowing or parcels are beginning to abut each other and be creating contiguous larger footprints of protected open space. So this particular parcel is actually abuts a huge key pin park to the east. And so it adds to that green space. Tax reduction of approximately $890. Number five, this is a historical family farm over 100 years old coming out of Acton Farm and Ag where they want to come into open space. Four parcels qualify, a little over 50 total acres, very, very small exclusion for a very small single family dwelling. And just so you, not all parcels coming in when they're contiguous have the same pbrs point value so that you can see on the slide is it dependent upon the parcel so some one parcel earned 10 points and one got 20 points that was just based on doing the fight the site assessment combinations for the force of contiguous parcels including egg lands wooded areas streams wetlands one of the sites actually has a landslide hazard i actually have to measure that And they get a point for that tax deduction to the county to have these parcels stay in a program of about $8,000. Case study number six, three contiguous parcels. We're now just north or actually, yeah, a little bit north of Gig Harbor. This is called the Crescent Valley area. Three beautiful parcels, contiguous, have a stream running through it. This is Crescent Creek, approximately seven acres coming in. Fish and wildlife habitat, streams, huge wetland system to the west, and they provide linkage. 20 PBRS points, total tax transfer to constituents of about $1,600. Case study number seven is a historical family farm. They want to come out of that designation into open space. Single parcel, again in the Big Harbor area, nine acres coming in. A little bit larger exclusion for a single family dwelling and some accessory structures, agricultural lands, beautiful stream and associated wetlands, 15 PBRS points. Tax reduction for this parcel to stay in some type of program, $2,174. There was a case study number eight. That particular constituent approached me and said they were going to pull their application and they're obviously allowed to do that. What the consequences of that is, however, they have to pay the back taxes on what was a parcel in active farm and egg, which they did. And now that parcel is in the process of being sold on the Fox Island. So we're jumping to case study number nine, single family parcel or a family parcel, one parcel, historical family farm. It's now going to go into open space. They're going to develop about two acres. And the parcel it still has in the Lackamas Creek area, agricultural lands, Lackamas Creek itself, fish and wildlife habitat. And it provides linkage, 20 PBRS points, tax reduction to the county of $800. This is a different one. So we will get these occasionally. So remember, I commented that the state statute came in place in 1973. PBRS came into place and was codified here in Pierce County in 1998. So we have over 20 years where a program was in place that didn't have a numerical system. It was a much simpler system to assess natural resources. When some of these old historical parcels come up for sale or there's a change in ownership, they're flagged. And they are the, if they stay in the program, they are asked to go through a re-rate. This is an historical parcel, been in our program for many, many years. And what I do in a re-rate at no cost to the constituents is that I come in and I do a PBRS assessment. So that's what I did on this parcel located in the Roy area. One parcel, 6.52 acres, no development, fish and wildlife, two streams, an amazing wetland system, 15 PBRS points. Our tax reduction to keep this parcel in is $418. We're almost there. Case study number 11, historical farmland, beautiful parcel that was historically farmed, coming out of active farm and ag into open space. 20 acres will be recommended by this commission will go into open space they're saving two acres for a future development agricultural lands a stream with some with uh with a good wooded area and they have what we call linkage 20 pbrs points our tax deferral to keep them in this the system is 842 dollars It just rolls. My apologies. Let's go back to 12. There we go. Two parcels abutting each other. New application. This, again, is located in the upper reaches of Tennewax Creek. There is agricultural lands presence. There is a very, very nice second growth wooded area. Linkages is found there. However, the two parcels have different, we call PBRS point values between 10 and 20 points. We'd be bringing in approximately 22 acres. This is recommended by the commission. Our tax shift is about $786 on these two parcels. Case study 13, I have actually been at the site, this general area, this is my third year. These are all small designated forest land parcels that are being developed. This is my third one. And it's coming out of designated forest land. They are going to do a single family dwelling that was being constructed when it was on site in March. We're looking at approximately 3.82 acres coming in. Some natural resources that allow them to qualify. They've got agricultural lands. There is what we call linkage. 10 points, our tax shift is less than $200 to keep this parcel in. And we're almost done. Open space case 14 in the Eatonville area, two parcels. I've not had one of these before. The constituents applied for an active farm and egg. They wanted to put it into open space, 6.2 acres, fine. As I engaged with the constituents and I was on site, they said, I found out that their home site also had a good bundle of natural resources. We talked about it. So this is both a new and a change in designation application. So we kind of bundled them, which way we can do. So we're looking at approximately 10 acres coming in, nice combination of agricultural lands, streams. We have a flood hazard area that we acknowledge is a medium resource priority, and we have linkage. To keep the two parcels in some type of open space, our tax shift is less than, or is $111.87. And two more. This is a single parcel in the Graham area. New application, large exclusion, three acres, because the constituent has a single family dwelling. They have an accessory structure. They do horses. So they got a stable and they got a riding arena. But the 9.66 acres coming in is very nice. We've got streams, linkage, agricultural lands, 15 PBRS points. Our tax deferral would be $915. And the last one, In the ordning area, this is a designated forest land parcel coming out of that designation into open space. That's the recommendation. Seven acres basically coming in. They have a very large plan to develop up three acres of set aside for an ADU, a single family dwelling. They want to do horses. A beautiful wooded area, there is a significant landslide area associated with this draining into South prairie creek to keep this in some type of open space our tax shift is a $516 so to go ahead and conclude. here's the summary of 2025 we had seven new applications. We had two parcels that the recommendation is take them out of designated forest land into open space. We had quite a few transfer of active farm and eggs, specifically six. And so once again, those are what we call working land designations into open space. And then as I mentioned, we had one re-rate. The re-rate is based on old historical parcels that came in between 1973 and 1998. And we want to go ahead and make sure that they still have the right bundle of natural resources. we're looking at uh eligibility for 2025 about 192 acres stays in some type of open space destination 56 of that is new and then uh there is uh some some dollars associated with kind of a summary basically one thing to be aware of is that working land designations get the best tax break when actually constituents move them to open space they actually end up paying more taxes However, they still get a tax break. It's just not as good. It's not as sweet. Okay. So just to be aware of the fact that based on this is the thinking about us as a county is taking into account the new applications, the transfer, the re-rates, that our actual tax decrease to keep these together is about $3,876 in 2026. And that's our applications for last year. So I'd be glad to take questions.

I want to thank you, Dean. I've gone through this presentation several times in the past, and I think you did an excellent job being able to make definitions, even the acronyms.

Yeah, sorry. We live in that world, right?

This is going to make it easy to be able to take a look at these as an amalgamation of all the projects to be able to adopt. I just have one quick question, and we'll get other commissioners' input, but what is the total program reduction in tax basis? So as you've done this over the decades. Right. Yeah, what is our total number of dollars?

Oh, the total number of dollars for all current use of open space Great question. If you want that, I can get that for you. That's an assessor treasurer question, because once again, what I do is I do year two only. So I actually provide the administration of the review, recommendation, approval process, moving it through our system. The actual bean counting is done by the assessor treasurer. I'd be glad to get that for the commissioner, but I don't have it standing for you this morning.

All right.

Yeah, sorry.

Other questions or comments from commissioners? Commissioner Burt? Yeah, we have Commissioner Burt.

Yes, for the two forest land transfers, case number 16 and 13, does this reclassification guarantee the standing forest remains permanently protected?

Great question. The way that the current use open space program works is that all of our constituents, regardless if it's designated forest land, but all of them have a agreement that they signed, Commissioner Burke, that basically says that they will maintain, based upon the completion of the process, the open spaces and the natural resources in the same, if not in improved condition, or enhanced condition from the time they signed the contract. So that's obviously from the perspective of forestry, leaves the idea that you really are, in a sense, leaving the wooded areas intact. You're not managing it any longer as a working land. However, if you are in a situation where you have a designated forest land that's moved into open space and you have identified some hazard trees, we want the hazard trees removed. uh you are uh allowed to do certain types of uh very simple uh you can remove invasive so the idea is you're not just preserving like in a box it doesn't change but you no longer have the working land requirement that is actively used for timber so it's actually the the focus now commissioner burke is more on the benefit of the wooded areas for for uh uh Wildlife habitat, protection of the soil, providing aquifer recharge, that's the focus with the system.

Thank you.

You're welcome. Thanks, Dean. Great presentation. Dean does a great job for us also on the Ag Commission, so I want to just tell you that I really appreciate all your work there. And I do have two questions. One of them is related to that, and they're just general questions. Oh, absolutely. But could you summarize why people are taking their lands out of ag classification and going into open space? Are we seeing further depletion of active farms? Yeah. Or is there some other reason that you're aware of?

That's a great question. What I can speak to is the seven applications. What I can tell you, Commissioner O'Leary, is what you would not be surprised by. We talk about this at the commission, right, is we have an aging out of farms. And that's very true for this set of applications this year. I would say this carefully, and you would know them by name. You know, probably the average age of these constituents I'm working with in these active farm and ag moving to open spaces 65 years or 70 years of age. And these were, and these really were truly active farms. And so, for example, one was actually maintaining a nursery. They raised nursery plants in the land and they actually had their greenhouses. One was a regionally used horse stable facility. You actually use some of the racehorse venues here in the South Puget Sound. So all that to say that that's the main issue they're dealing with. And I'd like to just say in kind of closing, I don't even know the question is, to their credit, they want to keep the land in some type of form where it could go back in. So the hope is that at some point, whether through a natural sale or there's a member of the family at some point through a generational change, they will go back into the act of farming. That would be the desire, right? But what I'm trying to say is when they go into open space, they actually end up taking a tax hit. They actually pay more to keep it in that program because it no longer requires an income and a working lag destination.

Great. And that was the second part of the question was, How difficult is it for them to transfer out of open space into back into or into some other classification?

Right. Our hope is that they would go back into active farm and egg. Now, what the active farm and egg classification does require is that you have to generate and show proof of income. So if these parcels have been out of active farm and egg, they've been in open space for a certain amount of time. They need to generate data, three years of income. The bar's not very high, so schedule left for the IRS is just $1,000. But they need to show that they're actually moving back into Active Farm and Ag. Once they've got that documentation, they can move in at really low cost. The actual application to do so is quite cheap. Yeah.

Last comment that I'd like to make just for the commissioners is that working with the Assessor Treasurer's Office on ag classification for land has been an exceptional experience. They work very well with these kind of offsets to try to help promoting ag open space and lessen the impact to the landowner. So there's a lot of good things going on here. So thank you, Dean.

You're most welcome.

And I just had a question. Yes, please. Size. I thought that there was a restriction in size to five acres or more.

That's that's not the case. That's a great question. So Commissioner says five acres is a minimum to stay in designated forest lands. And this is open space. So we've actually had some very small open space entrance or additions to our pool of open space parcels. However, there is a five acre minimum for wooded areas when I do my public benefit rating system check. So maybe that's where the five came up.

Right, right, right. And then when you convert your property, what's the tax hit for that?

I'm sorry, when you come out of it?

Yeah, when you convert your property back. Let's say you're in forest land.

And you say, I want to sell it.

Yeah, you're going to sell it off.

Right, it's going to be based upon the tax area that you're in and your levy rate. But the bottom line is the way the state program is set up is you have to pay the back taxes on seven years. Which depends upon who you are, right? So for some people, that's enough of a soft... I think I'm not going to, but for some people, based on what they anticipate the land use is, they feel like they can recapture that by paying the back taxes and then doing a land use change. That does happen quite often.

I was just curious. I heard a group that there was a recent change in that.

There was at the state level, and that was specifically from seven to four years, and that was specifically for active farm and ag. And that was all based upon, actually, we watched this in the Agricultural Advisory Commission. It was related to a change based on trying to allow for more agritourism use of active farm and egg parcels. So that state level statute did in fact change the back taxes. There is some concern about that, to be quite honest. I've been involved in some different forums involving our agricultural communities in the region. They would actually like to, that's a relatively low bar to cover for some, is that there's some discussion I'm aware of trying to get the seven back on active farm and egg.

Any other comments or questions from Commissioners? Seeing none, we will now move to public hearing on this agenda item. If anybody in the audience would like to speak, please come to the podium. Seeing none, we will move online.

If anyone online would like to provide public comment, please press the raise hand icon on Zoom or star nine on your cell phone's new pad. Okay, it doesn't look like we have any public comment online either.

All right, this time if there's any other deliberation comments or questions or if we can entertain a motion.

I move that the 2025 current use open space application be approved. Second. Any further discussion?

With none, I'll turn to vote. All in favor, say aye. Aye. Opposed? And abstentions? All right. And just to verify, we are at risk of quorum, so I just want to make sure Champagne Lewis, Commissioner Lewis, are you still with us? I saw your mic go off.

I am, and I said aye. We're moving pretty, when we ask for all in favor, we move pretty quickly. So when I turn my mic on, I would appreciate it. Thank you so much.

Got it. Thanks for checking in. All right. Our last agenda item, number seven. This is the Pierce County Unified Sewer Plan, the USB update. Begin with a briefing. This is not an action item.

Close enough. Good morning, Commissioners. I'm Steve Hartwig, the Utilities Manager in Planning and Public Works, responsible for the Sewer Division. I'm going to go ahead and give you a briefing on the Unified Sewer Plan, and we're going to bring the agenda up. There we go. kind of give an overview. So for some of you, it might be a review. For some, it might be new information on the sewer utility itself, the system, what makes up the sewer utility, kind of what area we cover, and then kind of how it's organized and structured. And then I'm going to talk specifically about the Unified Sewer Plan, which in essence, think of it as the comprehensive plan for the sewer utility. And it has to companion the comprehensive plan, which is why it follows the comp plan. So we've been working on it and sort of tailing the comp plan to make sure that we are in compliance with that. And again, that's part of the Planning Commission's review is to make sure that we did that and accomplish it. And then kind of a little bit about the development of the plan itself, the process we used, and then ultimately the alternatives that we kind of have in there that are included that give us some off ramps depending on what happens in the future. So we wanted to make the plan flexible enough that with some of the things that we know are kind of There, but completely unknown as to as to what we'll have to do. We wanted to have a couple of options so that we didn't have to keep just constantly revising the plan because then it's not very usable if we're constantly going through these processes to make that work. So the sewer system itself, our area that we cover is approximately 117 square miles. And then in the color coding up there that you can see the sort of salmon pink is the flow area that goes to the Chambers Creek Regional Wastewater Treatment Plant located in University Place. And then the kind of yellow-orange is the Tahalee plant community, and that goes to the Cascadia treatment plant. And then the green area, and there's not a lot of it, but it's kind of on the upper part of the map mostly, is our service area, but we have a contract with Tacoma, and that wastewater is treated at Tacoma's central plant. The kind of hatched area on the north end of the salmon color that is on the Tacoma Western slopes, that is area that comes to us for treatment that is Tacoma service area. So we kind of have, there's areas where it makes more sense for us to send to them and them to send to us. And so we work on those agreements and make sure that we operate that way. We currently serve completely the cities of DuPont, Lakewood, University Place, and Milton, and then portions of Edgewood, Fife, Fircrest. So there's a pretty significant area that we cover. And the unified sewer plan not only has to make sure it's in compliance with the county's comprehensive plan, but we have all of those cities that have their own comprehensive plans, their growth strategies, their plans for land use. And we have to be in touch with all of those and make sure that this plan kind of meets all of those requirements. We currently have a little over, actually, a little over 750 miles of pipeline that would be from here to like Carmel. the Carmel Monterey Bay area, if you were to put an end to end, just to give you an idea of how much pipe that that makes up. And we serve a little over 300,000 people in 73, over 73,000 connections to the system. So a little bit about the history of the Chambers Creek plant. Back in the late 70s and early 80s, it was initially constructed at about 12 million gallons a day capacity. In 2010, the county began the expansion of the plant. And we're now at a size of 45.3 million gallons a day capacity. That's how much flow we can take. We're currently operating a little under half of that, right around 20 million gallons a day is what's coming in right now. But there's still a significant amount of the service area that is not built out and not connected to sewer. So we have to plan accordingly to make sure we're staying ahead of that curve from the growth. And then the this much smaller cascadia wastewater treatment plant the plan community was in the late 90s right around 2000 in 2018 2019 the county took ownership of the cascadia treatment plant its current capacities about 1 million gallons a day. The interesting thing about Cascadia is it's totally different treatment process than what's used at Chambers. Chambers is more of a traditional sewer treatment process. The Cascadia plant is a membrane bioreactor, so it's using newer technology with different pluses and minuses, but mostly beneficial. It can be done in a much smaller footprint to treat the same amount of waste. And then we're currently working on the expansion of the design or the design of the expansion of that plant. And it's going to be up to nearly 3 million gallons a day in, in its, in its build out. Now there may be what we're planning also is a little bit of expansion area because there are some fringe areas just outside of the Tahali plan community, but that are within the urban growth for the area for the County and the, the, Potential is that that may come to the Cascadia plant at some point as well. So we wanted to have some room to expand a little bit more if we needed to. So as you can imagine, we have a number of things that regulate what we can do with wastewater treatment and what we do with the with the byproducts when we're done. Currently, the Chambers plant has two different National Pollution Discharge Elimination System, or NPDES, permits. One is for the general municipal stormwater, the rainwater that hits the plant, which is an industrial site and how we deal with that. The other permit is specifically how it's regulated for the discharge, the liquid effluent that is at the end of the treatment process as that's discharged into the sound. So that permit is actually being adjusted right now by Ecology with the invalidation of the nutrient general permit that we were under at one point and that became invalidated for some technical reasons. The state has decided to put individual nutrient requirements in every individual NPDES permit for each wastewater facility that discharges to the Sound. So we're right now in discussions with the state trying to determine what that is going to look like for us. And again, that's why the plans need to be a little bit flexible because we just don't know how the regulatory changes might affect us and what we would need to do. Then for Cascadia, it's a separate discharge. It's a state waste discharge permit. So it's a different, slightly different permit that deals with that. And we discharge to ground through right now, which is basically a big drain field. But the expansion plan is to do infiltration basins or spreading basins. So that's a little bit different way of dealing with the liquid effluent. Then we have biosolids permits on what we do with the solids when we're done. And I'll cover that a little bit more as we get into the presentation. But that is also one of the byproducts that we're trying to make beneficial use of. And then the third is reclaimed water, and although both plants are capable of meeting the reclaimed water requirements, neither one currently is permitted to do reclaimed water. The majority of the equipment is in the Chambers Creek plant. to be able to produce reclaimed water and use it for watering of the golf course in the park. We have a couple of capital projects that you probably saw in the SIP when we presented that, that will complete that system so that we can start using the reclaimed water. And that will likely be when our permit is next up for renewal, which is approximately 2028, 2029. So that's the plan. Similar timeframe is Cascadia and reclaimed water. The membrane bioreactors produce very good reclaimed water. And that system, the planned community has been designed to have those open spaces and right away landscape all irrigated with reclaimed water. So that's what's called the purple pipe system. They actually use a pipe that's sort of a pinkish purple color. And at the point in time where We do the next permit upgrade for Cascadia, and when there's enough summertime flow to be able to provide the irrigation for the full season, we'll be cutting that over and taking it off of potable water for irrigation. So that's the plan for reclaimed water in the two plant locations. We have local permits. There's a conditional use permit from the City of University Place for the Chambers plant. It is within the city limits of UP. We have a land use plan for Cascadia that is in unincorporated Pierce County. We have stormwater permits and various others. We have some other things related to shellfish and other permits that we have to have and continue to operate under. And then in the comprehensive plans, as I mentioned, we not only do have to meet and comply with the county's comprehensive plan, but we have the various cities that we serve that we need to make sure we're in compliance and able to keep up with their growth areas, their zoning plans, any of their changes that they hope to do with the community that relate to providing sewer service. And then again, because of that, we have our requirements for sewer, but the development requirements are a little bit different in each of the jurisdictions. So we kind of have to cover a lot of different bases. So about the plan itself, it includes two main components. This is the general sewer or general sewerage plan, and then the recovered resource plan. The general sewerage plan is one that is required by statute and the Department of Ecology has to review that and approve it. So they actually had simultaneously with your review, they will be reviewing that component of the unified sewer plan. You will be looking at the whole thing, make sure it's in compliance with the comp plan and with the goals of the county. And the history of the USP, the original one was done in the late 90s, and then the last update was done in 2010. And I'll show you in just another couple of slides the timing. This was started back in as soon as COVID hit. And so it got delayed a bit. And so that's why the plan is running a little bit behind. But we also needed to stay just behind the comprehensive plan. So that's the reason why we're coming forward with this now is to make sure we're in compliance with that plan and also deal with a lot of regulatory changes, planning changes, the community goals and needs. And so the time is right to update this plan. And like I said, we, we wanted to build in as opposed to being a normal rigid plan, which the 2010 plan was kind of, we're going to do just this. We wanted to make it a little more flexible, but we're planning on doing this, but we have some pilot projects and some other feasibility analysis that we're going to do in case we need to off ramp. And I can, Talk a little bit more about that in another minute or two. So the goals that we have for this is to continue to provide the ratepayers with high-quality sewer service and at the most reasonable rate that we can. Still, everything has costs and everything seems to be going up, but we are trying to keep our rates as low as possible while still staying on the leading edge, keeping up with our preservation and rehab and replacement, and still also meeting growth. But we definitely prioritize public health and environmental health. Those are our big goals. The reason you do wastewater treatment is to protect that health of both the environment and the people. We want to support growing communities and economic development. So we have a number of things that we have to do in order to make sure that the sewer is available in areas that are growing or that are sort of redeveloping and kind of establishing higher demand levels in certain areas. And then we want to make sure that we're continuing to plan for the rehab and replacement. That's one of the things that 10, 15 years ago when they did the last plan, the system was all pretty new, still relatively new. Well, now we've got some of the system that's in the 30, 35, 40 year range of age. And it's getting to the point where it's aging out. So some of the things that we're finding is that the system, some of the system has deteriorated a little faster than we had planned. The Bridgeport emergency sewer project that we were doing is an example of that. We were able to do, get equipment in there and evaluate the pipe. And it was in very degraded condition to the point where we needed to do an emergency project to get a pvc liner put in that so that we didn't have a failure of the pipeline that area is is where it's coming and getting close to chambers is where the pipe gets very large and that area was a 72 inch or a six foot diameter interior diameter pipe that we had to put lining in and then some smaller pipes that come into it but those are the kinds of things that we're finding as we're able to get better and better equipment to be able to evaluate the condition of the system is that we're finding some areas that are needing to be reconditioned or replaced much sooner than we had planned. So we're shifting some things around in the capital program to try and make sure we don't have any significant failures. The Steilacoom Boulevard, those of you that were familiar with it, the Steilacoom Boulevard pipe collapse near Mattress Ranch was a big eye-opener for the utility and Thinking that that pipe still had quite a bit of life left, it made us get out there and start doing better asset condition assessment. We're still working on getting the resources, the people resources to be able to do a much better job of that and stay ahead of the rehab and replacement needs we have. And then we also want to make sure that we're planning for those regulatory changes. Some of the things that we don't have regulated right now, but we're anticipating that in the very near future we will, are things like PFAS or per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, the forever chemicals. The recent legislation is now requiring that we test for that, test it in both the liquid stream and the solid stream, and see how much PFAS we actually have coming through the system. And that's usually a precursor for them setting regulatory limits and levels. While we do a number of things right now with both the liquid and the solid, the regulatory requirements could change that and we put in a couple of pilot efforts that we want to try out and see how that works in case we have to pivot and go to a different process for handling those two main components. So what's in the plan itself, again I mentioned the general sewerage plan, which is really the the meat and potatoes of what we do with the sewer. It's how we are going to continue to provide the sewer service, what infrastructure we're going to need, and how we're going to take care of the existing infrastructure. We do model runs to determine what we're going to need as far as collection and conveyance system capacity as well as plant capacity. And again, it describes the investments that we're going to make in the aging infrastructure. The state wants to know that we're properly managing and providing good stewardship of doing wastewater treatment. And so we have to make sure we have treatment adequacy. There are triggers that when we reach a certain flow level or certain loading level, we have to start planning the next expansion of the facilities. So we have to keep all of that in mind within this plan as well. And then, like I said, it's really a lot of it is responding to either new regulations that have occurred since 2010 when the previous plan was done or things that we know are coming in the very near future. We have things like plasticizers, 6PPDQ, microplastics. So there's these things that are all they're starting to test for those now in the waste streams. And we're likely going to have to do certain things to treat for those in the future. We just don't know what that might be. And then the recovered resource plan is really the three byproducts, the solids, the gas, and the liquid. So that recovered resource plan talks about our strategies for the future use, beneficial use as much as possible of those byproducts. So again, I mentioned reclaimed water. That's what we really hope to do with the liquid stream is use as much of that as possible to offset potable water. Because quite frankly, there's concerns, I think, by a lot of folks that our potable water availability is dwindling and the impact to the aquifers has been fairly significant. So uses that we can supplant with reclaimed water only benefit the ability to deliver potable water to the areas where you need it for consumption. The solid side, right now we have two different components that come out of the solids. During the season, we provide what's called Class A biosolids, which is our SoundGrow fertilizer. It can be utilized by individuals, but we also have several large fertilizer manufacturers that use our product to blend with theirs to give them the numbers that they need for their fertilizers. So we have those two different processes. And like I mentioned, depending on what might happen with PFAS, we may need to do something completely different with that. But we have some pilot projects in the USP that we're going to do to see what the feasibility and what the value of that is. And then on the gas, biogas side, Right now, our biogas is pretty high in hydrogen sulfide, which is very corrosive, which is why we're seeing more rapid deterioration in some of the system. So we have a kind of a two-phased plan to work on the biogas and make it more beneficial, try and take full beneficial use of all of the biogas. The first stage would be to scrub it or clean it to a point where we can use it in our boilers within the plant itself. Those are the ones that provide heat for the digesters that are part of the treatment process, but also heat for the facility itself. We had been using biogas for those boilers and the hydrogen sulfide had actually eaten away the boilers and we had to get new boilers. So we quit using biogas in those, but the goal would be to use it initially in that. And then a second gas cleaning process that would be worked on with some outside consultants that do these energy conversions and help us hopefully get to renewable natural gas. So we'd be able to, at some point in the future, be able to put that into Puget Sound Energy's gas pipeline and it becomes part of the natural gas supply. The goal would be to have that be used as a vehicle fuel for vehicles that can use natural gas. Then there's also some other, they're called RINS credits and other things that are of value to provide that extra gas. My understanding is Puget Sound Energy has some mandates or guidance that they need to use more renewable natural gas. And so we're trying to be one of those providers of that that would go into their system. So that's what the Recovered Resource Plan talks about is those aspects of the byproducts that come out. So the General Sewerage Plan, in essence, is dealing with the upgraded growth projections, capital improvements needed to take care of the existing system and also expand and deal with capacity and expansion. And then again, as I said, a lot of it is dealing with anticipated future regulations. So we have, again, a lot of unknowns, but we're trying to be proactive and be as prepared for those as we can. And then, like I said, recovered resource plan, kind of talked about that, the biosolids. We have some alternative treatments and even the alternative for biosolids, for example, if we needed to do what's called pyrolysis or incineration of that to break the carbon and fluorine atoms bond, which is very strong, it doesn't break down naturally in the environment very well. The end product of that is a biochar. And that's a very good filtration media. And in fact, King County is using it in some of their stormwater basins as filtration to filter out 6BPDQ. So there's, again, we're trying to keep abreast of all of the different options that we have. And if the regulations change, we want to be prepared as much as possible to deal with those. And then, like I mentioned, the two stages of the biogas process so cleaning it first to we can think we can do fairly rapidly to where we can use most of it on site and then the future planning to be able to put it into the natural gas system. And then reclaim water both at both locations. So the three alternatives, you always have to do a no action that would be continuing to do with the 2010 USP says, and it doesn't deal with a lot of the regulatory changes we've had. It doesn't deal with a lot of the land use changes that have happened and the densification in some areas, but we had to include that as an option. The second alternative is basically continue with the two treatment plants that we have and regional treatment that is trying to get everything to go to those two plants. And then the third alternative where we've looked at a couple of strategic areas within the service area that would maybe make sense to have sort of like another small Cascadia plant. The membrane bioreactors, like I said, are a very small footprint for the amount of wastewater they can treat. They're very compact and you're very much able to keep them sort of enclosed and minimize the impact to the community. But that would help us in a couple of different areas within the service area that we want to at least look at those and do some feasibility work. So we included that as the third alternative in the plan, which is all of the things in alternative two, but then a couple of potentially strategically located membrane bioreactor plants that could do service to a couple of sub-regional areas. So the development of the plan went through a lot of process. There was a lot of stakeholder involvement. Two times we went out to stakeholders and gotten feedback and input. We conducted technical planning. We had a community survey for all of the people within the service area, not just those currently served by sewer, but everybody that was in the service area boundary. Got a lot of good feedback from that. Did our SEPA process. Did we did a jurisdictional meetings with all of the cities that we serve plus a number of the other adjacent cities that we that we touch our service areas just to make sure that they all knew what we were doing and we wanted to make sure we understood where they were going with with sewer. We've issued the draft and had the public meeting. We definitely keep updating the website to keep people informed about where we're at with this process. And then now we're in the 2026 timeframe. And I think I have a little bit more detailed slide where we're going with that. Yeah. So right now we are in the early summer of 2026. There's a, by statute, there's a general review committee that has to review sewer plans. And we have a meeting with them this afternoon. We're still trying to get enough together to get a quorum, but it's made up, it's specifically specified as to who has a seat at that committee. But then it's also needs to be reviewed by you, the planning commission, to make sure we're consistent with county goals and with the comprehensive plan. And then, as I mentioned, the Department of Ecology has to review and approve the general sewerage portion of the plan. So they are currently reviewing that as well. Then we would plan to address comments through the summer and then late summer, early fall, come back to the EIDC with a review and recommendation from the various reviewing bodies, and then hopefully final council approval toward the very end of this year. So I think... But that can hopefully answer any questions you might have.

Thank you so much. First question, and that was a great presentation. See, there's a lot of detail in there. So we are going to be reviewing this at the next Planning Commission meeting to review and potentially propose to council to adopt.

Okay. I'll check with Alon on that.

I believe it's in August when it will return. Okay.

Great. Give you a little more time to look at it. There's quite a bit of stuff there. All right.

Other comments or questions from commissioners? I've got a couple. Thanks again for the presentation. We are bumping up against prefast. PFS, excuse me, I was having a tough moment in some commercial sites that we work on in my profession, and while it's identified by Department of Ecology, there isn't really an identified way of cleaning it up at this point. And my concern and question is that in the bio soils, if PFAS is found and you can't sell it, dispose of it, if there's no market for it, what is the plan as far as to handling that internally and where would it be stored, encapsulated?

How does that work? Well, that's the bio chart. We have a pilot. And when you look through the plan, you'll see that the proposed pilot of an incineration or pyrolysis process, we would still need to run it through the fertilizer manufacturing facility or the FMF that we call it that now creates the SoundGrow. which isn't 100% dry. It's 80% or 90% dry, but fairly close. That gets it to the point where it's dry enough that then it can go into the pyrolysis process and it would become a biochar. So far, the research has shown that that breaks the bond between the carbon and fluorine atoms and breaks that long chain molecule apart. Then the residual that's left over is a is a char product. And like I said, it works out as a, it's kind of like a carbon filtration system. So the biochar product at the end of that process is actually being used, like I said, by King County in some of their stormwater basins, because as the water filters through, it captures the 6PPDQ. And then every so often they have to remove that layer, dispose of it, and then put new biochar in their stormwater basins. So, that's the plan, at least what we're looking at, because the research so far looks like that's probably the most likely way that we're going to be able to break that bond down from those different chemicals. And there's a whole bunch of them that are known as PFAS. They're all different numbers of carbon and fluorine atoms connected together. And it seems like every time some of them get banned, they come up with new, longer ones that do some of the similar things. But we are aware of that. We know that at some point we may not be able to no longer provide and distribute a sound grow or the class B solids that are usually land spread as a soil augmentation. But that's where we wanted this plan to be flexible to where we are piloting and have an off-ramp to change the process to meet what we think are going to be likely future regulations.

Yeah. I was just, I mean, I'm asking for a variety of reasons, but also for any potential liability, um, as a contaminator, um, if it could be tracked back. Um, and then the last was, it sounds like there's 45.3 million gallons of capacity at the chambers facility. And you're only using about half that we're projecting real high densities in certain areas with the growth management act and the comp plan. And, um, Are you looking favorably on the capacity that exists today, the free capacity? Yeah. Or are we looking at some needs for expansion?

The actual, if at the time it was modeled, the build out of the entire service area would take the Chambers plant at some point in the future to about 100 million gallons a day. And that's why you see a lot of extra land around the plant right now. We have plans for all of it and actually potentially even a little bit more with some of the regulatory things that we might have to do. But the goal is we have to stay ahead of that growth, but you don't want to build it to 100 million gallons right now because it's a lot of invested capital that's going to sit there for a very long time. So we are required at, I believe, 85% of capacity. We have to start the design of the expansion. And then by, I think it's 90 or 95, we have to be in construction to make sure that we stay ahead of the need and the demand. The main thing with the densification that is impacting us now is the collection and conveyance system. Because I think that every city and every jurisdiction thought, well, let's put higher densities in these areas that already have utility service. The problem is that both the water lines and the sewer lines were sized at the previous land use designation. And when you add a whole lot more demand, we either have to upsize pipes that are there or we have to put parallel additional pipes in and potentially pump stations in order to handle that densification. So we're working. That's why we're working very closely with all the jurisdictions to figure to see what their plans are for what their densification plan is where they're planning on doing it. And then what that does to impact the system that gets it to the treatment plants. And so we are definitely tuned into that and are trying to make sure because Lakewood has a different strategy than UP does, for example. And so we have to work with them directly and figure out what the best plan is for each of those jurisdictions. Same with DuPont, same with Milton, and then the components of Fircrest and other areas that we serve. making sure we're in touch with what they're planning on doing and where they're planning on doing it. So that's why this, like I said, the plan, we've got a little flexibility in there because we knew that there were going to be some, at least at this point, unknowns that we know are coming. We just don't know exactly how and where. So we tried to make the plan work to do that.

Well, I really commend you. You know, too many times we see siloed government taking off on their own and not considering the interconnections and interactivity that we have with other branches or other jurisdictions. So, I mean, I think that's the best use and stewardship of taxpayer money. Um, so that's, that's real good to hear. Last question. At any point, would the cascade system be converted to the more current and what I believe to be a vertical system that Tahali has implemented?

Oh, converting the chambers plant to a membrane, um, We'll probably study that to see if it makes sense in the future, because like I said, it is usually it does require a little bit less land. But that's a massive overhaul of the Chambers plant. And the Chambers plant is what's called advanced secondary treatment. We haven't gone quite to tertiary. When we're producing reclaimed water, it goes through another filtration system. And then that achieves a tertiary treatment level, which is about as high as you can get without doing reverse osmosis, which is a whole expensive application. very high-end process to treat water. In fact, the bottled water industry uses reverse osmosis to take virtually everything out of there but the hydrogen and oxygen atoms. So it's so pure water that it's very aggressive. So all of these bottled water companies, they run it through reverse osmosis. It totally takes everything down to just pure water. They have to put minerals back in for anybody to be able to consume it. It's just, they have a recipe of what they put back into it. So we would probably never take wastewater to that level of treatment. It just is too far into the removal process and it's massively costly as far as energy consumption. Thank you.

Commissioner Burke. Yes. As you spoke about, the high level of hydrogen sulfide in the biogas forced us to repair our boilers, but it also forced us to flare 60 to 90% of our produced biogas. The hydrogen sulfide removal system that is currently unspecified and unfunded. And I would like us to look for, recommend a sustainable low life cycle impact scrubbing method, something like the biological scrubbing, and avoid any hazardous waste stream from consumable media when we do our scrubbing.

Yeah, that is in the plan. Like I said, I believe we have a placeholder project, if you will, you might not be immediately recognizable in the in the SIPP in the sewer improvement plan. But the stage one or phase one cleaning of the gas to be able to use it with the boilers and with other components within our system is in the in the near term plan, so we are trying to move forward with that first stage of cleaning. And then we're going to need some expertise and some consultant support to figure out the best process for doing that second stage of cleaning to be able to use it. The only way we get to using 100% of it is if we get to the renewable natural gas and are able to put it into the pipeline. Otherwise, there's peaks and valleys of demand within the plant. So we're wanting to move towards the renewable natural gas to where we're capturing all of it. With the exception of some maybe minor downtime for some maintenance, there wouldn't be any flaring once we get to the renewable natural gas stage. So that's the plan.

Thank you.

On the secondary treatment of the water, you create rainwater. Is there a possibility of using that chart that you have in a stormwater management situation where you could do an actual aquifer recharge? Would that be a method that could work?

wouldn't it wouldn't remove certain things that you wouldn't want you wouldn't want going into the aquifer it doesn't take out salts and as you know the human human waste is laden with salt and so that's one of the things that that is a challenge to remove and in fact until you get to reverse osmosis you really can't get the salts out of the liquid stream so discharging it to the sound It doesn't cause too much of a problem because it's a saltwater body. But with reclaimed water, we're trying to make sure we balance the amount of salinity in there because certain plants have certain tolerances. So there is some science and some manipulation of that to blend sometimes to make sure we don't have it too salty. It wouldn't be... it wouldn't be the type of quality you'd want to do any kind of a direct aquifer injection. Um, the, the Cascadia plant with its, um, spread basins will allow it to filter through the ground. And so you'll get some aquifer recharge because of that process, but it, it wouldn't, it wouldn't be something that we'd want to put a bunch of small plants in a bunch of places and try and put it directly into the aquifers. That wouldn't be, we don't want to taint the aquifers.

And that's what it would have. Yeah. Purity was enough to make that work.

The, um, the potential for stormwater to do that and filtering out any P six PPDQ or things like that in stormwater and having the stormwater recharge, the aquifers is kind of your, your preferred method for, for doing that as much as possible.

Right. So we would use that chart that in some of the stormwater management existing stormwater facilities.

Yeah. Yeah. We're doing some, uh, work. We're going to be doing some work with swim, uh, to evaluate that, uh, swim has been charged with, uh, by the executive to work on how to deal with 6PPDQ and try and get rid of that in the system because it's a 99 point something fatal to salmon fry. So, I mean, it's just a real bad toxic substance for salmon.

Is that a tire?

Yeah, it's the residual. As the tires wear, it gets on the roads. And then as stormwater hits, it goes into the catch basins and eventually into the stormwater system. and into the creeks. So that's why I said King County, we're going to try and make contact with King County to see where they've used the biochar in their basins to kind of see what quality of biochar they're using and also then what their performance has been for SWIM's benefit to know what, you know, what that might do to remove 6-PPDQ.

Sure, sure. I was just curious in your recovery resources, you have basically a drop, quite a with wastewater. Is there been any thought of reclaiming the energy from that where the water moves into the plant? You have a lot of large pipes that are going in there if you were able to put something that wouldn't dissolve the impellers.

We did actually look at that. That was in the early technical studies that were done because there is a significant grade difference where the tunnel comes in up on Grandview and then drops down to the plant. The problem is there's so much, you know, in wastewater, there's so much debris, right? All of the things that we have to take out in the very first stages of the treatment process that you would gum up impellers. with water systems where you have significant elevation or head difference and you can use that energy. In water systems, you can put an impeller generator inside the pipe and those work pretty well. In the wastewater stream, I don't know if the commissioners have done the Chambers plant tour, but we could show you that. And you can see all of the stuff, the big stuff that comes out right at the beginning. And it would be impossible to keep it clean and operating. So we did look at it. We looked at the feasibility of it and ruled that out because of that difference between wastewater and potable water.

It's going to take a tremendous amount of energy to push that water back up the hill for the gray water. We're using it in any kind of, once we get the pee test.

I wouldn't call it gray. It's treated effluent. It's not really gray water. Gray water is usually like from RVs. It's the sink and the shower. So it's got soaps and things in it. But this isn't a gray water. When we get to the reclaimed, it's treated and disinfected to a point where it's almost drinking quality. It's just that there are things like salts in it that would make it not... for potable use.

And that's what the osmosis would take out if we had the energy to do it.

Yeah, it's massive energy use.

More than what's being produced now by the natural gas.

Oh yeah, it takes just a whole lot of energy to run a reverse osmosis system, especially for the volumes that we're talking about at the plant.

the other thing is, do you have a really great inventory on, uh, on the main, the mains throughout the County on the 700 miles of Maine? Do you have, uh, an active inventory on that? Do you know what's in the ground?

We have, yeah, we have a very good asset management system. And especially as far as what's out there, what size, when it was put in the part that has been our gap in our asset management that we're, we're, um, In our next budget cycle going to be. requesting some resources is the condition assessment of everything, and then the projection of remaining life that's that's the kind of the key to then. triggering and developing your capital program is what what condition is everything in the different pipes the different pump stations the different equipment that goes along with that and how much longer is it likely to last. And so that's the remaining piece of our asset management system that we're hoping to bolster up so that we can do a better job projecting where we're going to need to spend the dollars first. So yeah, that is, we do have a good inventory of what's out there. The condition and the remaining life is the piece that we're still going to have to work on.

With that, do you also have the same kind of inventory for manholes that are, I know that most of them have geoliners and I don't know what the life of the GU liner is, but I mean the rest of the structure that supports the liner. Is there an ongoing inventory of that?

Like I said, we have a good inventory. We know where everything is. We know how many of all of those have it. It's the condition and how much longer it's going to last. That's the part that we have to work on.

And the pipes, you said you can line them with PVC. Is there anything you can do to bat holes to preserve their life?

There is some technologies that we think could work as long as there's enough structure there to preserve. Otherwise, you have to replace them. Sure. As some of you may be aware, certain areas where we know it's more highly susceptible in the collection conveyance system to the hydrogen sulfide gas, new infrastructure is being built with polymer-modified concrete manholes. And those... We've done some testing of just regular concrete and subjected it to hydrogen sulfide and then the polymer modified. And after a year, the regular concrete's been eaten away and the polymer modified looks like it just went in. So it's definitely working. It's a little more costly because it's more of a specialty. But the lifecycle cost of that is tremendously better in areas where we have that higher corrosivity rate.

I just know you're on the cutting edge technology. So I'm in a couple of committees with you and you always come up with the newest, latest and greatest technology that is helping us prolong the life of our systems, our facilities. So thanks for that.

All right. With no further questions or comments from Commissioner, this concludes our USP presentation. Thank you so much, Steve. Thanks. I'm not aware of any other business. Sarah, do you have any other business for us to consider today?

We do not. So a reminder, the next meeting is going to be on July 28th.

Great. Well, that concludes our meeting, ma'am. Thank you so much for all attending.