Council - Special Meeting

Okay, it's 3 o'clock. I'm gonna call this meeting to order. Can everybody hear me?

Okay. Uh, please make sure your phones are on vibrate. And before we get do the pledge, could I ask for all veterans to stand, please we appreciate you and we thank your families for sharing you with our country. Now, will you stand for the pledge? I pledge algiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all.

Thank you all. And for those veterans that did stand, we do have a breakfast here for veterans tomorrow morning at 8:30 that from the chamber. All right. First of all, let me say thank you for being here today. And I thank Chuck Boss, mayor of Belleville, for being here. You know, we all know that what affect what each town does, it affects each other. And we asked him if he'd be here. And we were hoping someone from the county and Nevada was coming um and they still may show up. But this is special meeting of the town council and is particularly set up in a workshop setting to facilitate discussion among council staff and agency representatives. This is not like a typical meeting of council. We will only speak about the items already listed and published on the agenda. The freedom to add items to the agenda is restricted to special circumstances. We do not intend to add anything here today. The meeting will follow the agenda as approved by council. We will first have a presentation from staff and agency representatives. We will also have some items presented from the town attorney. Council will discuss the information presented and ask questions of the presenters and each other. After that discussion has concluded, the public will be allowed to speak. They can state their opinions, concerns, and ask questions. However, the public comment period will be not be a dialogue with the presenters or with council. We will listen and note what is said and the questions that are asked. The public speakers will be given three minutes each. After the public comment period has concluded, the council will discuss what additional matters they determine

or important to address from the public comments of their or their own thoughts. The council will then discuss next steps and any directions for staff or the town attorney. The the meeting will then be adjourned. So I appreciate all of you being here once again. Uh next thing on the agenda is approval of the agenda. I make a motion to approve the agenda as presented. Second. Richard. All in favor of the motion. Any oppos? Motion carries. Open burning workshop.

We're going to start tonight with blue and fire chief Ronnie Hayes. Good afternoon, Mayor Council. Um before I get started, just like to introduce the folks that are here with us on I thought we put one presentation together for all three agencies for air quality and for forestry. So we've worked on that and put it all together. So I'd like to introduce them. We have Mr. Alan Matthews. He's the Brunswick County Ranger. He represents all of Brunswick County. Sean Taylor, who's the public information officer for North Carolina Air Quality. Scott Sanders, who's the regional air air quality guy for our area. he handles that. And then also with forestry, we have Mike Malcolm who's the district law enforcement. Um Michael Rhodess who is the district ranger that handles Brunswick County as well as six other seven other counties. And then Mr. Glenn Kohley who's the state law enforcement officer for for North Carolina forestry. So uh we'll go ahead and get started. Um what you have here is I put these at out at your desk before we started. have the entire open burning um rule as it is in in state policy. Uh I put this first slide up here just to just just to show you that what I've underlined gives you the authority to change anything as far as open burning within the town limits if you so choose to do so. So that's just showing that you have the authority to do that as a town. Um Turn around. I'm sorry.

All right.

So, the other one that I have here is that under the current policy on they have a website, the air quality website, there you see the link that you can go to. If it's a green day, uh you can burn. If it's a orange day or any of the ones you see above orange, which is red and purple, you cannot burn. So, if it's green or yellow, you can. And if it's any of the other ones, you cannot burn. Um, I know a lot of questions are asked, well, how do they determine that? They have this set up. They have a monitor set up throughout the state and it's a forecast. It's not a moment, it's a forecast. So, they do a forecast for each day coming and then that way it says if you can do open burning. Uh, as a uh forestry service has to do that. If they're doing control burns, they cannot burn on a day like those other days. It only has to be a green or yellow day. Uh, and that would be for anybody. Land clearing. I just put this definition in here so you would know exactly what the definition of land clearing is as it states in the rule. Um, as you can see, it's property and cleanup. So, anything that's taken off the property just to clean up the property, if they're not going to development, that's not considered land clearing. So if they wanted to clean up a lot and cut the tree limbs to six to eight feet in the lot and just clean it up, that's not considered land clearing. It would be for the development purposes. So just so everybody understands the difference in how that works with the law. The other one to put up here is the state policy and the different types of burning land. So this is straight out the rule book as for it deals with land clearing. So in land clearing it has to

be 250 ft away from a public rideway uh before the person can burn it and it also has to be 500 ft away from a dwelling not on that property. So if the dwelling is on the property that they're doing the clearing, it can be closer. Uh there is a limitation in here and we'll talk about they can get a waiver and burn closer to a residence if the person gives them the authority to do that or they're using the air air curtain incinerator and we'll talk more about those in just a minute. Um next thing is the initial burning. So, uh, the person doing the land clearing, they can start the fire between the times of 8 and 6:00 p. p.m. That is the only time in which they can add combustion materials to the pile. So, after 6:00 p.m., they don't cannot add any more combustion material to the pile, but the pile can continue to burn. And then at 8:00 the next morning, they can start piling stuff back on. That's currently the way the rules are written. um no fires. They have to burn uh debris from that site. So they cannot bring in anything from another site or they cannot burn anything that's not natural vegetation. So root matter, trees, so on and so forth, but they can't bring in any outside um products. It has to be on that piece of property. So, the procedure for obtaining a land clearing burn permit currently. So, land clearing burn permits have to be for five acres or less. So, if they're going to burn less than five acres, they can get a more than I'm sorry, if they're going to burn less than five acres, they can just get a regular permit uh online just like any citizen can. uh if they're going to burn more than five acres, they have to contact the forestry service. At

that time, the person would come out to the site, ensured they're meeting the setback rules, and issue that burning permit. Okay? So, if it's less than five acres, they don't have to have a land clearing permit or a burning permit like that. They can use just a normal permit. In the policy also, it states that these these products on this site cannot be picked up and moved unless it's taken to a permitted facility. So, the contractor could not um clear clear the site, load it up on a trailer or truck and take it to somewhere unless it was a permitted facility. Uh by by law, they cannot do that. Again, these facilities have to meet the same setback. They can do their own personal facility, but as you can see in the next slide, they can only burn four times a year and that they can only do two piles that are 20 ft in diameter. Okay, so that's all they can do. So for land clearing, this would not be um something they could do if they had a a large lot or a lot of acreage. They have to take it to a permitted facility. So facilities in this area, we have three in New Hover, three in Brunswick County, three in col in Columbus County. Um the one one of the ones in Brunswick and also one of the ones in Columbus are the landfields. They actually have tough grinders where it can be taken there and they can grind it and get rid of it. the other facilities. The problem if you have a lot of land clearing going on is these facilities only have a certain capacity. So once they reach their capacity, they're not able to take anymore till they get rid of it. So it may stall some of the developers if a lot of let's say there's a lot going on at one time. Uh so these are the only

areas that we know of in this area. Um I talked to several different vendors um that do land clearing now currently for developers. They stated by hauling would add anywhere from additional five to $20,000 per acre for hauling. That's if they could go to one of the facilities at least three counties. If they had to go further off, it would increase it would cost more. Uh and that's just the estimate that they gave me. So let's talk about state policy with air curtain incinerator. So this is current policy on air curtains. They must be approved by North Carolina Air Quality and a trench. If they're using a trench incinerator, it's got to be compatible with the soil. I'll show you a picture of both of them. Uh, also right right now, we were made aware where we're putting this together that there's some rule making changing process going on with this current rule. So, um, it we don't know exactly what's going to happen yet. So that's why we put the part in here that if we're looking at this, we need to contact air quality for the most current information that's happening with this rule. So these are the two types of primarily permitted air curtain incinerators. The one on the left is the trench. So you can see why I said it has to be compatible with the soil. In our area, we have low areas. So if they hit water when they're digging, they cannot use that area. Also, it can't be sandy. So, it has to be clay, primarily clay type soil to use a trench burner. The other burner that you see here is one that just sits on top the ground. Um, it you have you can actually drag it. It's open on the bottom. So, you would pile the stuff in there and light it normally. Once it gets to a certain temperature, then they would turn on fans and all it does is push air in and make makes it clean faster. It burns faster and

cleaner. You still have smoke. We still have that, but it does burn faster and cleaner. Um, so as of today, uh, y'all change on October the 10th, you passed an ordinance not not allowing open burning for land clearing and all other types of but all other types of open burning is allowed. Uh, so to give you some ideas of what happened right after you did that on that date on Tuesday, we got several calls and it was people burning legally. They just saw smoke and they called. So again, it's only for land clearing. It's not for any other type. So citizens can burn, no problem. Any other type of burning can be done. It's only for land clearing as the ordinance was written. So some of the other issues that we're going to have uh with this is we're going to have you see the map of how Leland is. All the blue is Leland. So anything that we do within our town limits is our responsibility. But then anybody else could go and burn somewhere else and we're still going to see the smoke's going to affect us. That's not going to change. Uh this slide I put in strictly to show a reference is as you can see you can see Savannah Branch Road the first two lots past Landville. Uh they are currently in a TRC review at the county level for a 20 home development to go in there. So, if the county approves it and they approve that going in there, then that person, if they could meet the setbacks, I don't know if they could, but if they could meet the setbacks, then that developer could go in there, push that, and enlight it. Be perfectly legal. Uh, if they can meet the rules. So, if they did, then we would have that smoke coming in, and that would be regulated by us as the town. Um, and the very last slide I have for

you is next steps. As far as from me, uh, for for the fire department, I would recommend that whatever we decide to do, it's put in our fire prevention and protection ordinance. Uh, currently that ordinance has open burning in it and it states that we follow the North Carolina policy. So, wherever uh we do this, however you decide to do it, it needs to be housed in my opinion in that ordinance and or else we need to delete that section out of the ordinance. And I'll go sit down. If y'all have questions for myself or any of the gentlemen here, we'll take them afterwards after y'all finish.

Okay. Next, we have Alan Matthews and No, he he was cover. And so you get Mr. Sanders, too. Yes, sir. Yes, ma'am. Okay. All done. All right. Well, now we're on ordinance review, but I did see Mayor Sheila Grady from Northwest come in. Miss Grady, we're glad you're here with us. Mayor. So, mayor has some more presentations. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Coggin. Thank you, Madam Mayor.

So, very dangerous to give a liberal arts major no coaching before you get up. Thank you very much folks. Welcome here this afternoon. I'm Steve Coggins. I am the town attorney for Leland. I practice law in Wilmington. I was asked to examine uh state statutes and regulations dealing with open burning and town ordinances dealing with it because the question had been raised to what extent does the town of Leland have to regulate the activities of which your council have received so much comment about. It's always a good question to ask. What authority does a town have? If you remember nothing else that comes out of my mouth this evening, I want you to remember this. No town in North Carolina has any inherent authority to do anything. Towns exist for one reason and one reason alone. because the legislature says they exist and the legislature says what they can and cannot do. If there is no statute that authorizes a town to take a certain action, you probably should assume the town cannot do so. I have found that for most folks that's a very difficult idea to understand.

Most folks think that towns just kind of organically grow up out of the ground like a plant and that they can do anything they want to. That is not so. They are instead creatures of statute and can only do what the legislature in Raleigh says that they can do. And I spend a great deal of time reminding your elected officials of that. This is basically a summary that provides that fortunately there's a provision in our state laws that provide that the environmental management commission believe it or not North Carolina the legislature has passed there is a clean air act in North Carolina and they have delegated responsibility for dealing with clean air issues and after all smoke is is defined in their statutes as a kind of a pollutant. And there are statutes that deal with smoke regulation and they delegate that primary function to the environmental management commission, the EMC. And it is interesting that in those same statutes, they give authority for the commission to adopt a partial air pollution control program that allows local governments to do not everything that can has to be done about air pollution but perhaps a certain narrow defined species of that they can grant therefore authority to towns this is the key here this is the permission that comes from the legislature I'm talking about that is so critical okay to regulate contaminants like smoke more effectively than state rules

What that's telling me is that the legislature says, "Yes, it's possible for a town to do it, but you but towns, you've got to show us that you can do it better than we can. To get this permission, what you've got to do is you've got to submit an application documents to the director of DEEQ, the environment department of environmental quality that demonstrates all the compliance with the our the North Carolina Clean Air Act and the BEQ director reviews or makes a recommendation to the uh the county about that within 90 days. And then the Environmental Management Commission then they approve it a certified program. But again, only if the requirements are met. And I bet you guys dealt enough with government in your life to know that anytime anything that says you got to submit documentation, you're talking about a real project. So the question is why limit local regulation then to open burning for land clearing purposes? And I'm asking the question that is is that there's a lot to be said for applying to the environmental management commission. So here okay that's fine. Actually it works out better.

Okay. Thank you.

Uh that when you're applying the Environmental Management Commission, your chances are likely that you're going to get approval more so the more narrow and easily defined the purpose is show and that you show that basically you have the ability to do what it says you want to do. I don't think anybody wants Leland to be in the total air uh control uh total air pollution control business. We all know Teran Le could do a lot of things, but it's not an expert in every form of air pollution that's possible. But you know what? It knows a little something about smoke and knows a little bit of something about development activities and how it can generate smoke. So that's a pretty narrowly defined stoke that I think that perhaps the town might be interested in doing. Okay. It would address the concerns that citizens have expressed. Not every concern, but the ones they have expressed here. And it's something that the MC would take a hard look at. Now, the act has language say saying that the town can establish a program. And somebody may say, "Well, Steve, there are some statutes out there that says that um nothing limits the authority, so to speak, of the town to regulate this area, or if they get a state permit, they still got to uh comply with town local laws about that." Okay. Well, here it is. Why then do we even have to ask for the permission in the first place? All right. Because we've also got these laws. Knowing this about establish an air pollution control program and a ban on open burning is

such a program unless that program meets the requirements of the North Carolina Air Pollution Control and the governing body of any municipality subject to the approval of the Environmental Management Commission can establish that program. So if you go and you get the environmental management commission's approval, you therefore remove a big risk sort of damocles hanging over the town's head if you will that is embarked on a program that costs taxpayer money and time. You remove the risk that you lose that investment because the state says you don't have authority to do it. This is one time I can tell you for sure it is much better to get permission first than to shoot first and ask for uh forgiveness later. So can the town impose stricter rules? That's basically the side B of what I was talking about first is that can we demonstrate to the state that we can do something better and the question can we do something that is stricter for instance a complete ban under all circumstances for instance on open burning for land clearing purposes and keep in mind chief did a good point in raising you and I'm glad he out to you what the definition of land clearing is and what open burning is. It's not every conceivable kind of burning for any kind of purpose. Open burning is a defined term and it's in a defined context for land clearing purposes for for development. Okay. Can we do a complete ban in that

instance? Well, if it's more effective and is it compatible with state rules? Now, what is compatible? I don't know. That's what judges are for. All we can do in the meantime is the best we can do to try to predict what a judge would do. The second thing I hope that you'll remember is this. what the definition of law is. Law is not something that's written down in rules. Law as a body of rules which a court will recognize and enforce. And if a court won't recognize and enforce it, it's not law. What would a judge do? I don't know. But if you're smart and you do this right, if you do it thoroughly and professionally and conscientiously, there's a really good chance there won't be a legal challenge and you won't have to ask yourself that very hard question. Chief did a great job outlining this and I'm glad he also talked about the curtains because that is the only place that exists where it very clearly without any ambiguity at all says Leland you can't do this and what it very clearly says that Leland cannot do is it cannot regulate these incinerators that is something solely the job of the state. So if you said uh we're banning open

burning even if you use one of those incentars I think that's probably not going to hold up because that's one place where I do believe that the law is pretty clear on there have been a lot of questions I've understood been asked where I think there have been some misconceptions where people said that u you've got to have a you can't have open burning unless you have a vegetative refuge pickup program in the town. Not so not not in this particular context of open burning for land clearing purposes were developed. Uh burning logs is not exempt from regulations. Again, not so if it's within the definition of open burning and in the context of land clearing for development purposes. Yep. Logs be logs could be burned. Okay. And then nuisance immunity logs again. only applies to residential burns, limited residential burns. Okay, so there would be limited immunity in that context. Okay, so programs must be more effective. We must be able to demonstrate adequate enforcement and a comprehensive program for administering the program and enforcing it and clear rules and laws about what you do when violations take place and how you react to that. What and what are the guidelines so that the chief for instance is not put into an impossible position of trying to guess what it is that people through their ive representatives want to do. They have to have some pretty clear standards to go by and if you come up with that kind of a program perhaps there's a chance that you can get uh environmental management commission approval for that kind of a program. So

my conclusion is that can and pursue an environmental management commission certified authority to regulate open bird the land clearing purposes which would be a limited sensible and community responsive approach. I'm happy to take any questions.

Um I've got Thank you, Mr. Coggins, for that explanation. And I've got some questions because as you say, there's been a lot of information going on on social media with people um asking questions uh assuming things and this may also apply to our guests here. Thank you all for coming today. Um first of all, we had At least I believe and I'm looking at our forest rangers and stuff. We had a legal permit for October 17th burn. Is that correct? I'm seeing yes, no, maybe correct.

Okay. So that at that time met all of the state requirements. Um, so there was no need for additional monitoring or um, do we know if any logs, extra logs were put on there after the times? You know, chief, you mentioned that you can't put logs on after a certain amount of time. Was there anybody monitoring to make sure that they were keeping within their permit? Every time staff went by those times was noted but nobody was out for 247 type things. Okay.

All right. U Mr. Coggins, you mentioned going to the EMC. I've in my other lives and hats, I've gone before the EMC and gotten a rule change and it took two years. How long do you I know you said that the um secretary of DEQ has 90 days to react to this after it comes from the EMC. Is that correct? No. 90 days from the date the town or whoever is doing the application. When that completed application is submitted, that director has to act within 90 days. How long will then the EMC take after that? Yeah. So, he has to act on it to get it to the EMC. Correct. in effect is the clerical body to act,

right? That makes sure that we've we've dotted all our eyes, crossed all our tees. Correct. And have have all of the things that we need to submit to the state to say, "Mother, may I have this permission to do this?" That's right. Okay. But after that, it goes to the EMC process. Correct. And they meet how often? I think no more than quarterly.

Okay. So, hoping that we get happen to get it in time to make let's just And I know this won't happen from my personal experience, but let's just suppose we get it in to make the next quarterly meeting. Um, how long has it been your experience that it may take before they actually act upon it? No one has that experience in this context.

Okay. This is a very limited, rarely exercised program. I only know of one for sure that belongs to one discrete local government and that's for site county. I'm not familiar with one well with perhaps with the exception of Asheville in which a municipality is the authorized local government body. So there really is no real experience you can point to. We are in many ways paving new ground here. Which is another reason perhaps to consider in addition to the factor that smoke does not respect municipal boundaries, right?

Or of any government is that uh there would be something to be said if it was a regional authority that was composed of say Northwest, Nevada, Leland, the county of Brunswick and whatnot who are acting coordination with each other and and to be able to react and a powerful uh statement I think could be drafted that we are dealing with a very unique situation depending on who you talk to large uh arguably the largest county in the state you're not county water bodies that are within it with an extraordinary forest resource tree resource with extraordinary growth that a a combination of those two factors that arguably has not existed in the recent history of our state. And so that you're dealing with a a new rather unique problem and perhaps with a coordinated response would increase the chances or likelihood of state permission to do something that's mean.

Thank you for that answer. And is Ivonne here today? Young lady that spoke about almost a year ago at council. Is she is she here?

Yeah, she's not here. She one one woman um initially really got this off the ground probably earlier this year around January, February time frame, I think it was and brought to the fact that she has some health issues and ask us to look at it. And I remember um after taking a recess and going to find her and saying to her that whatever we did needed to be a regional approach and y'all saw the map up there, right? If somebody starts burning right now in Nevada, no offense to our friends in Nevada. And by the way, mayor elect Rose Terry is here from Nevada along with telling me that. Yeah. Mayor um Sheila Grady from Northwest and Mayor Chuck, mayor, acting mayor, soon to be mayor. Um, Chuck Bose. Chuck,

he's here. He's somewhere. He's over this way.

Okay, he's in here somewhere. There he is in the back. Hey, Chuck. Thank y'all for coming because this needs to be a if we're going to make this truly effective so that it really doesn't hurt health and we're not just checking off a block. It's got to be all of us, okay? It can't just be us. I mean, if you just want to do something political and have me go, "Okay, we did it. Look, we did it months ago and that's it." Yeah, we could have done that. But hopefully you've seen, you know, someone put out today, yeah, I read them. I don't necessarily comment on all of them, but someone put out a long list of folks. Well, half the folks names that they put out that you needed to contact. They're in this room right now. We've talked to them, obviously. Okay. It's not that we've been sitting on this at all. This is something that's not been done in North Carolina. For those of us who come from the northeast, that's unheard of because frankly before the town of Leland existed, there were, you know, there were no open burning bands in the Northeast. But that's not the case here. So this is uncharted territory for a municipality that doesn't have a lot of home rule kind of strength in in action. So we're trying our best to not just check a block here, but actually protect you and make this something that won't get thrown out later. Now, my friends over here from DAQ, who's their boss, Brat Nuland, couldn't be here. But let me ask you guys, someone posted a few weeks ago, um, well, I was actually in my hospital bed about the $25,000 fine that is written in state law that the DAQ can impose for violations of um, certain rules and particulate matter and all that good stuff. Um, has that ever been has anybody been fined ever? Find any amount.

Fine. Yeah. Yes. Okay. Has anybody ever been fined 25,000?

Not for a 25,000 environment. and and I know from talking to Mr. Nulan that he got his phone was beaming off the hook too that Friday, October 17th. Do you guys have the tools available to actually go out and measure? How does measuring of air quality work? How do we know if you've met that that threshold where um they violated state rules and can actually we can turn it over to you because you can impose a higher fine than we are and I'll get to you on that Mr. I know you sat how do we know if they've actually violated it to a point where we can say hey state come over here and measure this stuff and and find them.

Yeah thank you for the question. Um the open burning rules that uh are on the books do not consider the level of emissions anymore. It's whether um the type of burning including the way it was burned, what was burned, the setbacks uh from roads and wind direction um were done correctly. So our authority is limited to determining whether or not they found did the correct setbacks whether or not you know, only vegetative matter was burned.

So, so basically if it doesn't matter what the the particulate matter is or how thick the smoke is, so to speak. It's only did they meet basically their permit. Did they burn it with so many feet from a structure? Um, are they not throwing in household garbage or something that shouldn't be thrown in? There's no actual like rules on the in the air under unless not not under open burning unless it's something like methyl bromide or or some known hazard where there's an actual limit.

So to be clear on that what matters from your authority is the process leading up to the fire being set, not the consequences that come after. Is that is that a fair assessment? Right.

Is the fire in compliance? In other words, as I said again, I if if they've met if they checked off all the blocks on their permit, they've met the setbacks, they haven't thrown household goods in there, they haven't added anything onto the pile past whatever time it was in the evening, they weren't supposed to do that. As long as they've done all those things, the thing could be a smoky, you know, you know, smoke on the water to go back date myself for songs and it it would just be like, okay, basically it would be nothing you guys could do. I shouldn't say it should be okay, but your hands would be tied as well. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Coggins. Um, why did we stop at $500? There is no clear statutory authorization to impose a penalty in excess of that amount. That is one of the recommendations that if you seek greater authority to impose something more is to pursue the process of obtaining approval for that kind of a program that would allow the assessment of a penalty. uh in the context of very clear rules that prevent an abuse of discretion. In other words, it would only be in the you come up with a certain amount based on examining very particular defined factors about what is involved. For instance, is it the first offense or is it 12 dag on time uh that they responded and the the consequences from it? The factors are all laid out so that you know uh what it is that you're supposed to do.

So, as of right now under state law, the maximum we can do is $500 per incident. If I remember correctly, I don't recall that amount. It's certainly not a high amount. Right. Follow up on that. Um what is it in our authority that allows us to determine what is an incident? For example, um you know, is it by day? Is it by fire? Is it by pile? Right? you know, if there was 12 fires late.

That's a great question. In fact, there was litigation over a particular uh burn somewhere else in the state. This was not a local program. This was a violation of the of the state rules and there was a dispute over the per day separate violation wording and it went all the way up to the North Carolina Court of Appeals on that. and in consequence they uh redid the rules to make it even clearer in what context. So obviously I would read that case and I would follow it right to the letter to uphold it.

But to follow up to that what you're saying is it's it's there's not a lot of flexibility there to use that as a method to enhance the penalty. Correct. A lot of flexibility. I would say there's a lot there is some. It just has to be again very carefully defined guided discretion but as of right now there's none um because we have not applied to the to ask for that extra flexibility. That's correct. What we did a couple of weeks ago is that okay is something that's going to get us in trouble. What

I think that what you did a couple of weeks ago was better than nothing. I think you could take steps to improve its let's just call it more bulletproof. How about that? More what? Bulletproof. Okay. From legal challenge.

And again, you also got to think in terms of anybody who anybody wants to know if they're violating the law or not. When you're out in your car, you want to know if you're speeding or not. And the rules need to be need to be very clear. If you're someone who who really does need to do open burning for land clearing purposes. You need to know what is the rule. What are you supposed to comply with? And if you don't comply with it, what are the consequences? This is America. That's called due process. We don't believe in giving unbridled undefined discretion to appointed appointed officials who ultimately are not really accountable quickly to local government. I mean to the voters. That's the whole idea is fairness is to be as specific as possible.

So in your um guidance to us as council, would you say that the first step is and and I know we have some your recommendations to bulletproof our ordinance that we passed last week to kind of cross our tees and dot our eyes a little bit better. Um to adopt that um share it hopefully with our neighbors and hope that they will look at it and potenti adopted as well so that at least we'll have a more regional coverage from that and then perhaps move forward to go and petition the DEQ secretary for this extra flexibility. I think that's a reasonable

Thank you, Mr. Cogn. If if the state issues burn permit, does what we do then override that permit which takes precedent? If you are a locally authorized program by the EMC, that's a good

you would take precedence clearly. In absence of that, who knows what the answer is? I just have another practical question. There's a a lot of conversation about um the movement of debris. Uh two slides before your presentation began. There was a a zoomed in cutout of a map that chief showed and I recognized the property. Right. That was the uh the Goodman track across our Brunswick forest. And what you see there Yes. Right there you see there's that big white patch and then the two blue patches next to it. Those two blue patches are the area where the burning was occurring in front of Brunswick Forest. That white patch is the second portion of that same property. So that's not currently in the town. That's the unincorporated county. It's not under our jurisdiction. Would that from a legal standpoint be considered um part of the same property? meaning that the the debris from those two blue squares could just be shifted over there and they would no longer be subject to our rules or is there anything that's blocking that short distance especially if it's owned by the same people I want to make sure I understand the question we're assuming are you assuming the context where the town has an ordinance where is outright b correct

and they are burning within the town's jurisdiction But in the midst of that process, they move the burning source to outside of the town's jurisdiction. Is that the question?

Sort of. So the the question is there are rules regarding moving debris to burn it, right? You can't just transport it to another location and set it on fire. It's got to be a permitted and set location. So, would moving the debris from those two properties in town to that adjacent property be a violation of that rule, or would they be able to just bulldoze them right on over that little white borderline and set them on fire and be under a different set of rules? I would want to read very carefully the state permit itself, but in the meantime, the state I'm sorry, the meantime, the town's rule would have been uh violated, but the risk of continuing violation probably was removed. I take literally removed by that action.

And if that had been where the permit was filed, again, completely out of our jurisdiction, completely out of our hands. Chief Hayes, the um like this about where he was talking about just in the county if we went do we have the right then they are in our fire district we don't have the right to tell them they can't do that in our No ma'am even though they're you're protecting them right firewise

it's just like uh I'll give you example we protect the town of Bville however we have no in that's the inspction side of the fire department. So, where we have a fire pro prevention and protection ordinance that states my responsibilities and what I'm responsible for in Belleville, they do that with the county. So, the county would be responsible for that area. So, if we went to the county and asked them could they participate with us on our and that be up to the county.

Well, I'm glad you brought that up because that was sort of what I was getting at here. This is for the the folks here with us today. There's a certain practical risk here, right? So, we've had, you know, the topic of annexation has been a hot button in Leland for a very long time. So, when you annex a property, you bring it under your jurisdiction, right? Now, annexation is generally a bellweather for development, right? You're not going to annex into a town and pay municipal property taxes for nothing, right? You've got a plan. But from a practical sense, when you see these undeveloped areas that sit smack in the middle of our municipal jurisdiction, there's a very good chance that sometime in the future, somebody's going to want to develop them and want to bring them into the town. So, what an ordinance like this does, it simply means that they'll go in and they'll clear the land under the county's rules and then come back and talk to the town of Leland afterwards. And that's why we keep stressing this regional approach because for this to have any real significant long-term teeth. We have to get everybody on board, right? Because I mean that's that's a 30 second, you know, any experienced contractor worth their weight and salt knows that that way around. It's not even a loophole. It's just a difference in rules. So that's why that's been such a focus. That's why our friends from Northwest, Nevada, and Bellefield are here today. That's why we're going to turn you all loose on our friends in Bolivia after this to help lobby them to to work with us on this process because if it's just us, it's going to be better, but it's not going to stop the problem. And that's the ultimate goal is to make this a place where you can go outside every day. You don't have to plan your uh your trips to the grocery store, your golf outings around whether or not somebody building a housing development has decided to burn that day. One of the options that I would recommend that the town consider that in addition to or in lie of an open ban is are greater restrictions about how you would actually go about doing the open

burning in the first place. How big a fire can you have? What uh what really should be the setbacks in a particular situation? uh uh the number of personnel that has to be on hand at any given time to demand something that is under uh out of control or perhaps ex exceeding what the li limits are. So there's somebody always someone there always ready to respond. I think if you the more surgical approach I think the more defensible a program you have.

Well I think at this point I I think the council has is of the same mindset that at least for construction for this purpose that however they get rid of their debris will be the developers concern that we're not going to concern ourselves with that. We're going to concern ourselves with the um health and safety of our residents. So, um I hear you on setbacks and all, but again, um unless we we all of us in this room and our neighbors can convince the county because some of most of those white areas you see there, all of those white areas you see there are county. They're not Belleville. They're not, you know, if you open up the map again, they're not Nevada. They're not um Northwest, but they're the county. And so unless the county does something similar, then we're still going to have a problem. Okay? But one step at a time, one process at a time, and and we'll get there. We'll get there. And I know from talking to our neighbors, they have some of the similar problems. This is something when I say it's a county problem, there are people south of us, you know, that are having this similar problems because of the expansion within the county and they are concerned. So once we lead the way, so to speak, we will probably get phone calls from some of those other folks in the southern part of the county asking, you know, can we have a copy of it? Tell us how you did it. And they may want to join in, which I think could only strengthen both our petition at the EMC, but also hopefully um the the hearts and minds of our county commissioners as well to adopt something countywide. But again, it's one step at a time. So,

well, we're answering questions right now. Mr. Boss, Mayor Boss, do y'all have any you or Miss Grady or Miss Terry have any questions you would like to ask these guys? I know you're all sitting over this one. You want to come up? Do you mind? You can come up to the mic, sir. Yeah, you're fine, honey. Yeah. I might as well get used to it.

Oh, I've been doing it for a while. Um, actually, uh, Miss Carter was very gracious enough to share your draft ordinance and I looked at it. Um, I'm in agreeance with the attorney that it really needs to be bulletproof because if you just throw something out there and it gets challenged in court, it's going to be pointless. Um, I also agree that we need to have a regional process because air doesn't stay in the jurisdiction that it's burned in. So, um, I'm very listening to. I'm just taking this in to try to understand where you're all coming from. I've got it. I understand. Um and I'm willing to move forward with you all and trying to get this policy being more regional.

So, and we have a newer one than which I sent you. We just got I look forward to reading it. The crossing of the tees and dotting of the eyes one. So, we'll share that with you. You can tell you can tell he's former what? Police military. little bit all of it. Well, I'm I'm glad to know you're on board as well because, you know, we know that smoke doesn't respect municipal boundaries, especially municipal boundaries as convoluted as ours. No, I I think this is something that's long overdue to be discussed. So, I appreciate you all taking a lead on this. And um like I said, we're we're going to be taking what you do, giving it to our attorney to look at, talking to our council, and seeing what we can do as long as working with it because I think it

for those folks who don't realize it, there are parts of Leland that are separated by Highway 7476 from northwest. So again, this this has this really is a regional approach to things. There are parts of there's a big subdivision going in that's in the county that they blamed on Leland, but actually physically sits between Nevada and Northwest.

Okay. And so this is a regional problem and concern that we've all got to try to take a hold of and work together as neighbors and fix so that we protect everyone because wind doesn't know. You know, supposedly I talked to the folks that did the um burn on the 17th and they did apologize because they said the wind shifted. Okay. So, we can't we can't wait we can't wait necessarily wait until we get regional. I think we need to get in and get started on this thing.

Absolutely. I think we go we go forward and and you know help our neighbors in any way we can and and take lead the charge. But um I think we've done the hard part of trying to do as much research as we can. I know I shared the the original uh ordinance with um DAQ and um I got you know well I guess that's as good as you guys can do uh was the quote that I got was well you did what you can do um pretty much and so this isn't that much different it's again putting a little bit more teeth and making it a little bit more bulletproof but I say we move forward let's let's go for it you know all right anybody else got any questions

well we got to do public comment Well, I know. I'm getting ready to do that. There there's more of the presentation. Mr. Coggins, if you'll go through the ordinance revisions. If you'll just keep going through.

All right. The Just simply minor clarifications we can get right down to it for the ordinance and that is this definition of land clearing and open burning. I don't use the regulation uh citation uh those citation numbers are subject to change. Uh the definition may be subject to change by the EMC. Uh but nonetheless this is a definition that the town I think can live with now and I provide that it will continue regardless of any changes there. This outlines, I think even more so, what is the town's authority to pass the ordinance again, which in the event of a legal challenge, uh, would show that the town took a careful and hard look at what its authorities are as granted by state statute. This is continuing my theme here, not to rely on as much as possible on the uh, the actual citations to the state code. but rather what we're relying on is what the actual wording is in the ordinance. This also makes it even clearer, chief, that there's note that regardless of what we do, uh there's no intent to limit powers, the broad powers that you otherwise have. Again, that's a grammatical uh change. This clarifies again uh the powers of the chief which are consistent with the powers of the chief has in other context. You'll see this language and fire ordinances really across the state. There's the charge of the $500 a day provides that the town can recover this in a civil action.

It's always a good idea to have a finding as to what there is. Why is the penalty in the amount that it is and here a civil charge or penalty like this is much more defensible if at least there's been some discussion if it's grounded in what the town's actual cost are. I think in truth the town's overhead cost alone is much more than $500. But I think but there's a certain ceiling that's been put uh by the legislature on these kind of things and this provides its own unique internal uh civil uh charge enforcement mechanism. Members of council, this exercise uh led me to examine and to come to understand that the treatment of criminal fines and civil charges in our code is there's a lot of gray and overlap when we live in a legal environment when there needs to be very clear demarcation. And I recommend that the uh there be passed within our code of ordinances a one place where you look at a listing of all of our criminal penalties or what they are. One place you go to look in our in our ordinances where you turn to find out what all are the civil charges are that are out there and that you're consistent with that. Right now it's it's a tedious uh catches catch scan process to make sure that you know what you're applying in that particular instance. And this is something that many of your fellow municipalities and other local governments have done embarked on. What I was going to volunteer is that

when you have here, you're blessed with the presence of uh representatives of the state and I think that it would be well to use this as an opportunity for them to uh express any thoughts they may have about uh what should a local program provide and what if anything are their thoughts about how the environmental management commission may uh respond in these kind of instances where applications like this are made.

I think that's a great question. Um, as you said, I'm not aware of any other municipality that has, you know, taken this approach. Um, certainly I do not know what uh the members of the environmental management commission um might do as they review this. Will not speculate. Just in case the folks in back didn't hear, you said you don't know of any other municipality that has taken this approach. I do not. I'm not aware. Thank you.

Excuse me. Um the other local programs mentioned which were Foresight, um Bunkham County, and also Meckllinmberg County. Those are three local air quality programs um that exist in North Carolina and they really prevent um most of the environmental regulations that that's a very interesting observation. Mr. Coggins, you probably said this already, but who everybody has a boss, so who does the EMC report to?

The EMC is appointed I think it's it's a divided appointment authority I think similar to the coastal resources commission uh some are appointed by the governor some are appointed by the state house some are appointed by the state senate and who oversees that group then I beg you pardon who oversees that group then who oversees the environmental management commission correct well once they're appointed they're usually the ultimate authority and uh if you disagree with something they have decided that's subject into a court challenge

if it's like if it's like the CRC which I served on the Coastal Resources Commission and I'll let DAQ jump in there with Mr. Coggins. It is a um quasi trait. It's it's actually in state law what their authority is and what isn't. And so they basically I guess you could say answer to the the general assembly in a sense. Yeah. In the end in the end um but the process of this what I'm discussing is not quasi judicial it would be legislative yeah this would be legislative you would be free for like for lack of a better word you'd be free to lobby them yes absolutely but they they um when we were on the CRC we usually had a representative from the state DOJ

with us to make sure that we didn't violate state law um and to answer any questions we might have about rule making and ordinances rules, excuse me, rulem primarily. You don't have ordinances, but rulemaking that we would pass. And so they are appointed officials by the governor after recommendations from and I don't even know if he makes any more recommendations. It might be totally I'm looking at you, Mr. Taylor. Is it totally the legislature now or is it for the environmental management commission? Um the governor does have a number of appointments. Okay. Um the majority come from the house and senate along with the commissioner of agriculture. Okay. Thank you. Along with who?

The commissioner of agriculture. Uh but fortunately we're not talking about the time frame that does to adopt a rule. They've been given the authority to approve a program, right? That doesn't uh it doesn't go through that formal u uh state rule adoption process. for it wouldn't have to go through the rules commission. Thank God. That's a two-year deal.

Mr. Coggin, question about the u the statute. When it comes to the issuance of the fine, how is that determined? Is it issued to the commercial entity? Is it issued to the person who lights the match? Do we do we have an understanding of how that the criminal penalty and the civil penalty are cited specifically? Generally speaking, it would be issued to whoever had the permit in the first place, but it could also be issued to the person responsible, even if it wasn't somebody who had to permit. So, in the just as a for example, hypothetical hypothetically speaking in the case of the fire on the 17th, theoretically, it could have been issued to publics ultimately. I know that would be a stretch because, you know,

well, just because you own the land doesn't mean you're a person responsible. Gotcha. I I said it would be a stretch. That's why I said hypothetically and all that good lawyer stuff. Okay. But if we had a burn ban, there wouldn't be a permit for burning. If you have a burn ban, uh it's strictly the person responsible. There is no permit. Right. Right. Anyone else? We t we didn't talk about the class three misdemeanor part of it.

Say that again. We didn't really talk speak about the class three misdemeanor part of it. Um, can you talk about that a little bit? How does that work? Who would who would actually be I mean do we show up with does does Chief Humphrey show up and with a a citation or how does that work? You arrest somebody, put them in cuffs, is it on YouTube? I mean red.

You might want to come up, chief.

Everybody hear me? Yes. So fire fire initially would respond to any any call that would have a have to do with an open burning and at which point if it met if it met the the ordinance uh that you approve um then we would respond upon their request in order to do any enforcement as to the class three misdemeanor. So there's no per walk or anything.

Anybody else? All right, we're going to start now with the public comments. Sabrina, have you got the list? You or Adam? Just a reminder when you come up to the microphone, each person is given three minutes to speak. The clock is in the front of the room by the podium. And when you come up, also state your name and address. The first person is Kim O'Henan.

Hi. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Um, I my name is Kim O'Han. and I live at 4034 Staffdale Drive in Brunswick Forest. Um, I moved here exactly four years ago today to this wonderful town in this wonderful county. And while I love living here, I am very, very concerned for our environment and for people's health about the burning that's been going on. And I applaud you for taking some steps to try and mitigate this problem. And I think it's great that you're trying to involve the people around us and the the c the towns around us because you're right, we can't do this alone. You have at your disposal a lot of people in this town that would be willing to back you up and stand next to you and go to the county and go to the state and say, "Hey, this is not going to happen anymore. This is not good for us. This is dangerous." As we found out last year when Boiling Springs had a controlled burn, look what happened. How out of control it got and how it affected us all the way here. And that can't happen. We already have enough natural issues to deal with. We have flooding problems. We have hurricane issues. We don't need to create more problems by allowing open burning. And I want to point out you mentioned some somebody mentioned earlier that you can't do that within 500 feet of a structure. Well, it was not 500 ft from the public site to the buildings in the front of Brunswick Forest. That's less than 500 ft. I mean, it's two lanes of a highway and just that's it. So, I was very upset about that. It got a lot of people very concerned. it affected a lot of people's health and it it's just not a good thing to allow happen. I also would like to

suggest going further if it's possible to um I guess further keep people from doing these bad things is instead of being a misdemeanor, if you are purposely setting a fire, isn't that considered arson? Just a thought. Um $500 a day is definitely not enough to a big corporation or a big developer. That's not going to have any effect on them. What whatever. Um this is the 21st century. Environmental issues are very important. Health issues are very important. We need to keep that in our minds at every turn. And again, you've got a lot of people standing behind you. Use us. Let us help you. We'll be happy to do that. At least I know I would. Um, my mother always said, "Shoot for the moon. Aim for the stars. Let's do it."

Thank you. Thank you, Kim.

Larry Bogaz.

Good afternoon, everybody. I'm Larry Bogus. I live at 6413 Saxon Meadow Drive here in Leland. And a couple questions that came up. Um uh Mr. Hayes, uh in your slides, you said that the piles of uh debris could not be greater than 20 feet uh in width or something like that. I believe that's what was on the screen. That would be about the width of two of these tables. I think if anyone takes a look at the size of the piles that they're actually setting fire to, they're significantly greater than 20 feet. Also, are they using any accelerants? I thought another one of your slides said that they're not supposed to use accelerants. And uh there's no way that those fires start and burn the way that they do without an accelerant. Um, another thing to the people here from the forestry service, uh, there's been a lot of public publicity, not publicity, but facts about all the fires out west and the coster, the cancer-causing elements that are actually put into the smoke. Is a state looking at doing anything about that here? Because those are going to be environmental factors that are going to affect us also. There's a lot of things that are out of our control, but these are in our control. And right now, if the state is not going to do something, I wonder who is going to be responsible for it when people get sick.

That's all I have to say. Thank you. Thank you so much.

Chuck Bins. My name is Chuck Bins. I live at 3006 Pine Bloom Way. That's in Brunswick Forest. And I'm director of the uh Brunswick Forest Resident Civic Association. Since retiring here five years ago, we've been regularly exposed to smoke from large open burns. While I respect developers rights to build, they need to be good neighbors. They need to respect the people already here. Yes, even those in the neighborhoods they created. The need to respect the environment and related laws written and unwritten. They may own land, but the water and air moving across it belong to all of us. When we inquired about the piles burning of burning debris that would smolder for days, the dark plumes rising above the trees, we were told that's the way land gets cleared around here. We have been told that the state law doesn't allow it to be banned. I believed it. It's not just visible smoke that harms us, but the stuff we can't see. The relationship between particulate matter and smoke and human health is well established. And it's that hazard which brought us to that point to this point. Of course, we wish the mayor and council had the wisdom to pass a ban before the 830 foot mounds on the public site were lit, but we applaud your effort. I credit Dave Frankle, an attorney who recently moved here for initiating the change. He discovered the same statute that grants the state authority to issue burn permits for land clearing also gives you guys the right to ban it based on health and public nuisance. Would have been nice to have

that emphasized earlier. I hope this is a turning point for Leland and that the memory of that black weekend serves as a reminder to our mayor and council of who they're sworn to serve. They must respect citizens and they must also respect the authority that we vest in them. To move forward, I urge all parties to focus on three areas. cooperation that is with others in authority for land clearing burns across the county and state. Secondly, enforcement of monitoring requirements. Many permitted burns in and out of Leland have been unattended and pose hazards to nearby residences and businesses. Prevailing wind when a mound is lit is not necessarily the same even hours later. And then enforcement of the Leland ban. A ban without strong enforcement is no ban at all. We shared an extensive list of provisions for the mayor and council to consider to give the band teeth. I'm not sure any of them are included in the new thing. So I do want to share

already shared with everyone but Steve Coggins. This is your copy if you haven't already seen it. It's an ordinance prepared draft ordinance with a number of provisions prepared by us. Thank you.

Vivian Monty. I live at 1330 Stargrass Way and I believe I saw on the screen there something about no more than piles can be burned per day. I think there's probably a thousand people, a thousand witnesses that saw at least six to eight piles on that public's property on that Saturday. And also, there's something about there's something about uh you can't transport debris from one area to another. So, I think you brought that up. Could that be done? I think I saw on the screen that cannot be done. You can't take a pile of something, move it from here and then move it to there and burn it. So that would be answering your question. And also why do we always have to start from ground zero? Surely there are other towns in this country that have approached their agencies with crossing their tees, dotting their eyes, and having the correct information so that there's no mistake about what we want. We don't have to start from ground zero. And I just think it's just, you know, oh well, it's it's so hard to change. It's so hard to change. We're ready to change. The citizens of Leland are ready for change. That's why we keep coming to these meetings. We're not afraid to approach agencies and say, "This is wrong. We need to change things." So, let's be copycats. Let's find people that have already done the change, who were successful. Let's copy what they did. I'm not proud to do that. Let's do it. Thank you. David Chian.

Hi everyone. My name is David Keanez. I live at 3037 Enol Lane here in Leland. And one of the things I've been listening to here of all of you that have spoke today have focused on the law and the realities of 500 ft, 5 feet, whatever that criteria is. And what we're not focusing in, as far as I can see, is the clean burning. There must be for the Clean Air Act specifications of parts per million. And this is directed at the EAQ. Who enforces these particles? Everything is a carcinogenic that burns. Rosins in wood, natural man-made materials as plastics. Everything that goes into these burning bundles. I called the EAQ and they said, "Well, speak to your legislators." Uh, it's not the legislator problem right now. My problem is being focused on clean air parts per million. What are the rules? What are the statutes? What are the materials? What are the parts per million that can be burned that affect my health and my fellow people in this room? What we need is and who monitors this? Who's champions this? supposed to be the EAQ, I believe, that champions this and you're not doing your job. You're you're pushing it off to the legislators. Just as the attorney here spoke about what the rules are, what the regulations are, we should be focusing in on clean air. It has to be monitored. You can't drive by like the fire chief drove by and

looks at every two hours or whatever to see what is being burnt. You have to be there. You have to put equipment in there to monitor what's being burned and look at the particullet that are coming off of this and the density of the smoke that's coming off. It's equipment that does this job. You place it at a burn site. You review it. It's recorded. And then you prosecute if they violated. Simple. Thank you for your time.

Scott Watson.

Good afternoon. My name is uh Scotty Watson. I live at 7883 Harrier Circle in Brunswick Forest. And uh I'm an asthma sufferer like many of my neighbors and friends in Leland. And um I could say I'm I'm saddened and extremely disappointed that we've I've come to this board. I've watched plenty of people plead with this board over the years to look at the burning and it's been ignored. I'm when the burning occurs, I'm I become a uh a prisoner in my own home. Uh and I call me a cynical old man, but I doubt for a second we'd be standing in front of this board right now had the election, the candidates running for election on this board, campaigning on a platform of working with us to stop these burns, how popular they became. And uh and I think Brunswick Forest is a voting giant, that sleeping giant that was awoken and we're not going to stop voting and we're going to become more and more active in this in this matter. Um and I would uh plead to you that you have an opportunity. You have a a well spoken smarty pants attorney who who's on staff and maybe you could collectively uh come up with some like swing for the fences a little here. like let's not just go low, let's go big. You could put Leland on the map in North Carolina as as a trends setter starter of some great legislation to help protect their their their people. And uh and I think also Thank you. Perhaps there's something could be added to the ordinance. You know, builders are all about money, right? So if obviously they're getting fined $500, maybe that's the amount the max amount you can do. Well, how about a stop work order? Like, how about that gets tied in until their thing is litigated? Then maybe it takes a while, maybe it takes a couple months for that

litigation on the burn to be corrected. Well, that's all the time that they're not building and they're losing money. So, there's another way to add some teeth. Just my two cents. Thank you for your time. Thank you, Scott. Ron Sio Ronella.

Maybe I'll call his name again at the end just in case he stepped out for a moment. Okay. Yeah, he might have just stepped out a minute. Yeah. Daniel Wright.

Thank you. Daniel Wright, 7920 Harrier Circle. I would be remiss if I didn't mention Curic County, which has a burn ban. Uh I passed out this sheet and has three simple points. One, report and publicize violations. So even if it doesn't stop, we can at least shame them. I think one of the reason public stopped was because people called and said stop doing this. It's hurting your reputation and so they stopped before the ban was even in effect. Uh suspend or revoke permits. By the way, this handout has legal basis for every issue. Um so just to echo I guess Scotty just stop prevent them from working until they comply. And then three put them uh ban violators from future permits and contracts. This is allowed under North Carolina law is known as the responsible bidder statute for the legal team there. Meaning if you get caught doing this, if you are fined, you are no longer eligible for contracting in Leland. You cannot bid. You cannot be part of the process. That is the fine. So in conclusion, if we do those three things, that's the leverage I think we have. I agree with a lot of the other issues that were raised, but report and publicize violations. That means a mandatory press release. These people have been fined. It's in the public database. Hurts the reputation. Suspend their permit and then ban violators from future business in Leland. Thank you.

Thank you,

Robert Steven. Hi, my name is Bob Steben. Um, I live at 3037 Lock Green Circle in Brunswick Forest. I've only been here about a year and a half and um I haven't I I want to thank everybody who's really working on this. Um, thank you very much. Uh, just a couple quick things. one when they had that control burn in uh was it Bolivia um or it was uh Boiling Springs or whatever. Um I saw cinders falling from the uh sky. Now it I know that you know that's part of a fire but if cinders can travel that far or carogens can travel that far um it'd be obvious that anything in Leland wouldn't have to travel that far to affect people. So that's one thing I wanted to bring up. who um I go to church on Lanville Street in um in Leland and when I was driving up to there I saw this huge smoke plume. I thought the the church was on fire. It was you know it was so thick it was almost like as if as if it was on fire. Now granted the church is expanding but it was definitely not as a result of the burning there. Um, so by the time we got out of the service, the the smoke was gone. So any fire can have an impact on several different areas because of the wind. It can change. Um, but again, I wanted to thank you for the opportunity to be able to speak and I really hope we get this this taken care of and passed and uh has

some teeth to it. Thank you.

Thank you, Bob. Linda Rizzo. Linda Rizzo. Holly Schwarz. Holly Schwarz. Jack Veli Jack Talotti, excuse me, 11:05 Aldora Court Leland and I'm in Brunswick Forest. First of all, good afternoon. Okay. Uh I have to say uh I'm disappointed to have to be here at all. Uh when we moved here, we were excited to be in what we thought was a great place. Uh we have since realized that there are several things that don't make sense. Not the least is the total clear cutting. Why trees along property borders can't be left to keep the the reason we all moved here, the nature. But now it has become clear that the Brunswick County and Leland follow the will of the developers. I implore you uh board members to start thinking of what is best for the well-being and especially the health of residents. I can't believe open burning is still allowed knowing the effects and consequences to the health of everyone. The new uh clearing of public's property definitely brought home the hazards to all. Heavy, almost blinding smoke covered Ocean Highway and making it

impossible to be outdoors in Brunswick or shop in the commercial areas. Folks like me with asthma can't even breathe in our own homes. So, please use prudence and proper decision so moving forward we can have the town we were all promised. And I do have to say I'm was happy to hear some of what was discussed today and happy to hear we're moving forward at a positive note and hope that keeps going. So, thank you. Thank you, J. Uh that was the last person that had signed up. Okay. Did Ron come back in? Who was the folks that we missed that? There was a couple

Ron Siolla, Linda Rizzo, Holly Schwarz. Is there anyone else that wants to speak that didn't sign up? Do what? What' you say, Veronica? I'm just wondering if there's anyone else who wants to speak that didn't sign up since we're here. Can we let her speak? Am I able to? Okay. Am I able to speak? I didn't sign up, but I have a quick question. I guess so.

Mayor Jill Vargas, if it's just a question that you got, if you'll My name is Jill Jill. It's to the attorney. Okay. Okay. Well, we'll all be here after this is over. It's very quick. It'll take a minute. Madam Madame Mayor, just rules of procedure. If the council wants additional people to speak, I think it would be a motion of the council to allow that. And then you could allow any additional people that you wanted to speak to speak. I'll make a motion. What do y'all think? I'll second your move. All in favor of the motion I

Any opposed? Motion carries. Okay, Jill. I appreciate that. My name is Jill Vargas. I live in Brunswick Forest. Um I wasn't going to speak, but the gentleman who presented these three things, uh the report and publicized violations, suspend and revoke permits, ban violators from future permits and contracts. It seems like there's legal basis to these. If the legal basis are actually accurate, what would it take for the town of Leland to infor put these into the ordinance? I haven't seen the paper, so it's always dangerous to uh remark on that, but generally speaking, that would require a an ordinance amendment.

Okay. And Mr. Coggins, we're we're just going to take the dialogue. We're not going to uh respond at this point. Um so madame mayor if if you want to continue with the meeting like that. Okay. So we can't have the legal opinion if in fact this is I would I would discuss it after the meeting. We should not get on the spot legal opinions. We we can take that question and come back at a later time and and give an answer to it. But it's never advisory. Madame Mayor it was a hypothetical if this was accurate as far as the legal basis. I appreciate putting that on the record. Thank you.

So, Madame Mayor, maybe you want to repeat the what we're doing here with public comment. We're receiving public comment. Yes. And then if anybody has questions, they will be answered after the meeting is over. We'll all be here. Marilyn, my name's Marilyn O'Brien. I live in Brunswick Forest. And this question This question is really directed at the fire chief, but all

2049 Simmerman Way in Brunswick Forest. Uh, this is directed to Ronnie. And it seems to me, because I've been in three fires, I consider myself somewhat of an expert that when your fire uh men go into a fire, you wear respirators to protect your lungs. when we were in that uh subject to that fire on 17, people couldn't even drive safely on on 17. The smoke was so thick. But what's to protect our lungs from that type of particulate matter? And I just want that as a simple comment.

Thank you, Marilyn. Rhonda Florian, 2167 Townage Drive, Leland. There was a lot of discussion about air quality issues and obviously that is a huge concern with all these burnings, but the one um danger, really big danger that wasn't even mentioned is what about our houses catching on fire and burning down? As we saw with that fire that occurred in Boiling Springs, fire is very dangerous. That fire on the public's property was incredibly close to many, many homes. A lot of us were afraid that our houses were going to burn down if that fire had gotten out of control. And according to our observations and the testimony we've heard today, there was nobody watching these fires at night. So, if that fire had sparks had traveled and caught people's houses on fire, oh well, your house burned down and and um nobody's even noticing that that's a serious danger. So, in addition to the air quality issue, there's the danger of our houses burning down. So, we would like to see some attention directed toward that issue.

Thank you, ma'am. Good afternoon. My name is Doug Field. I live at 28282. There I did make my living working with this stuff. Um, I wanted to remind you, uh, when I moved here eight years ago, I spoke to my new physician and I said, "Should I be worried about PFAS and the water?" And she looked at me and she said, "Mr. Field, uh, people have been drinking the water coming out of that river for decades." Well, PFAS became a big issue in a very short period of time. And now we have uh we are dropping wells into the aquifer and we've got an RO plant because we want to keep PFAS out of our bodies. Well, the science on air pollution is changing as well. It was only recently this year that I read that particulate matter is now linked to Alzheimer's disease and dementia. And I think that I'd like to volunteer to work on a citizen committee because North Carolina as a state policy invites older retirees with favorable tax treatment of retirement income. This the state wants us older people here and in the nation 16% of the people are 65 or older. In Leland, it's 27% of the people are 65 or older. And in

Magnolia Greens, Waterford, MA, um, Mallerie Creek, and Brunswick Forest, even by the town of Leland's own mobility documentation, there's an even greater density of people aged 65 and older. And then, if you look at the data, people aed 65 and older, well, it's Veterans Day. We have among us a lot of heroes from Vietnam. Personally, I know a fellow from Brunswick forest who died of age and orange orange poisoning. We have people living among us with serious health problems. 10% of people our age have have severe bronchitis or lung cancer or asthma or some other pulmonary disease. And then you throw in the new information that it is is affecting our brains. Things change and I think that we have an educational opportunity for the EDQ and I applaud the woman who said it's been done elsewhere because other states have got more rigorous control of open burning. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Mr. Fields. My name is Linda Lang and I'm at

Thank you. My name is Linda Lang. I live at 2085 Simmerman Way in Leon, North Carolina. And like the other couple gentlemen that said they have asthma, I have severe asthma. We came here um because we owned a place on Carolina Beach, vacation place for 20 years. When we retired, we wanted to come here and enjoy our retirement. We were having a great time until we got hit with the smoke. The first time we thought, "Oh, this must be a mistake. The smoke gets so bad that if you're out bicycle riding or walking, sometimes I can't get back." My girlfriends used to joke because I had a big backpack with a nebilizer in, EpiPens, um, inhalers because I really couldn't get back. We stopped. I used it. They called my husband. He came and got me. Um, those men said that they were prisoners in their house. I could be a prisoner in my house for 24, 48 hours. And when my oxygen level drops down to 70, the doctor says, "You better get to the hospital because that's unheard of. It's because of the smoke. It doesn't last a day or two. I could be wheezing and struggling to breathe for a month." Um, because of this, I'm asking the town, please consider adopting stricter rules and if possible, can you have like Amber Alert, can you please send some notice to all of the residents that in 48 hours someone is going to burn someplace? Because where my house is,

where my house is, it's two and a quarter miles to the front of Brunswick Forest. The day the Publix was burning, there must have been six or seven piles. The smoke was as dark as can be. And our white seoia was full of black soot and actual ashes. We don't know what they're burning. We don't know whether they're burning things from years ago that has creassol in or not, but something definitely is triggering off the people with asthma. There's quite a few older people in our development. Um, I'm going to say most of the whole Brunswick Forest is 60 and over, but there's a lot of children who their immune system is not developed yet, and they're being affected. They're all getting asthma. I feel by getting a notice 48 hours we'll stay in the house or leave or why can't we just have two times of burning once in the spring because you don't want to have it in the winter when it gets windy once in the spring that week. notify the residents and we'll pack up and go on vacation and then have one in the fall because you don't want to have it in the summer because it's too hot and too dry here. God forbid something catches on fire. Have it in the spring. But I think, you know, this isn't an issue about taking any rights away from the builder. It's protecting our community, our health, and our quality of life. I hope you take some of these um concerns of all of us that came to this room today and um act on them. I think the notice and restricting time of burning should be easy to do not to wait two years for ordinance. Thank you,

ma'am. What was your name? Thank you.

Can you hear me? My name is Jennifer Brightenbach. I live at 11:30 Evangeline Drive, which for many of you, you might know and you might not, but it's the first neighborhood that you come to when you come into Brunswick Forest. Um, I'm really grateful for the opportunity to be able to speak. I mean, that is what being an American is all about. And we're seeing our system at work with people coming up here and expressing their concerns. I thank the council for what they're presenting toward us. I thank the members that are serving our community for the information they're giving us. However, this is a big issue as many people have already explained. It needs to be dealt with. This is not a small thing. Um, so many people had comments about why we're here. That should be taken into consideration. We're one of the fastest growing areas, not just in North Carolina, but I think in the country. Everywhere you go in this county, they're building. The infrastructure has to be in place before the building overcomes it, which is what's happening. And I think that the the property um the developers, they need to have more responsibility in this. they need to take uh responsibility for the building they're doing and making sure that the infrastructure is there as well. And we've had issues with that in Brunswick Forest already. And I don't want to go into all these details and you you should all be aware of it. Uh you're on the council and you represent us. So, um couple things I would say. I'm afraid this is going to come out of here, but couple things I would say about what I heard today. Just some notes um about the burn in particular because that's the hot issue right now. No pun intended there. Um that the open burn should be monitored between 8 to 6. And I think I I heard the um police chief mention that you drove by but fire chief. Okay. That you kind of monitoring it driving it by. I

mean I don't think that's true true monitoring of it. Um and the burning went on past that time. I mean we all witnessed it that lived in Brunswick forest. Okay. And I mean at one point the plumes of fire that were coming up were like purple and yellow. I mean that kind of speaks to me about toxic ingredients in the burn. Now I lived in Montgomery County, Maryland, and I was a teacher and I took my kids on field trips to see how waste was disposed so they could be familiar with what happens when you make all of this trash. Right. Okay. The deal is there. They had a nice system. They sorted everything out, but they had a no burn policy there. So, you know what they did? They went to the next county over and they burned all of our trash in Montgomery County in their incinerator. So, these are very real issues that we need to deal with. I'm glad we're speaking up. Thank you. I hope we can work together. That's what we're supposed to be doing and make this a great place to live.

Thank you, Jennifer. All right. Well, we appreciate each and every one of council. Uh, more discussion here.

I I did just have a couple of points that I wanted to make uh based on the comments. The first is there seems to be a little bit of confusion about moving forward with the EMC and what we have right now. So, we have actively banned all burning in the town for land clearing, right? So, the there's no need for an additional notice and things like that because it has been banned. However, going through the EMC is a way to strengthen that ban and prevent personal, you know, potential challenges, other issues, and allow us to enforce it with more teeth. So, I just wanted to make sure people weren't confused that this was like a temporary measure that had been lifted. Right? This is a permanent ordinance that has been passed and now we're moving forward figuring out how to make it better. Uh, to address a couple of direct questions, um, Mr. bogus. You asked about um accelerants in the statute. The line is only land cleared plant growth is burned. Heavy oils, items containing natural or synthetic rubber, etc., etc., etc., shall not be burned. However, kerosene, distillate oil, or diesel fuel may be used to start the fire. So, I just wanted to to provide that tidbit of information. Yeah, that's it's right in there. I don't know what what made them pick those particular accelerants. I don't know why in a world full of ways to start fire you would choose diesel, but that is one of the options listed out to you. Um, someone else mentioned um, you know, trees in between properties. I just want to establish that the the town did take action on that a few years ago. We have passed a buffer ordinance which does require vegetative buffers left between developments. So, while a lot of that stuff occurred in the past, it won't occur going forward. I feel like I'm on that show, pardon the interruption, when they go down and correct all the the things that they said. Um,

and the same for the the times for burning. Per the statute, it's actually adding to the fire between 8 a.m. and 6 p.m. It doesn't have to be out at 6 p.m. You just can't pile anything more on it after 6 p.m., which explains why you'll see those things going through the night. I guess it's a way to save on their diesel costs.

I swear I had one more. Let me just double check. Oh, and the the offsite question. So, that was materials are not carried offsite or transported over public roads for open burning unless the materials are carried or transported to, etc. That was the crux of what I was getting to, right? Those properties I was talking about, they're not over the road. They're not a facility. They're adjacent properties owned by the same owner. they just happen to sit in two different sets of jurisdictions. And that's why I flagged that because that's a very easy way to get around our jurisdictions rule is by just saving a chunk of your property for burning, which is why it's so important for us to work with the county. And I hope you all take that to heart and help us in that lobbying effort. And that was all for me. Thank you.

Thank you, Bill. Anyone else? Veronica.

Yes. Um I guess um Mr. Mchugh and I think alike as I was making notes um just to try to clear up some misunderstandings amongst folks. So let me start with um when you were talking about particulate matters and enforcing the clean air law realized that the clean air law as with the clean water law has changed greatly in the last few years. You might remember I think a few people complained recently about the fact that when they bought their properties they were told no one would ever build builds behind them because it was a wetland. Well, a few years ago, the uh US Supreme Court decided that what was a wetland is no longer a wetland and people can build on it. Okay, so same thing goes with air quality. Now, in North Carolina, and I I'm going to emphasize that and come back to that in a a moment. In North Carolina, the county has the health department. We don't have at municipality level the health department. That's why we invited, if I'm not mistaken, the county health department to come and join us at this table. I don't know why they're not here. That's a question since they have elected officials, too, for all of you to ask them. Why didn't you participate? Why didn't you come? Don't you care about my my breathing? Because they're the ones that would have to address that. It's not at our level of government. You heard uh Mr. Coggin speak about how we have our hands. He didn't say it in these words. These are my words, not his. But in many ways, we are a creature of the general assembly. We cannot ne Just because they don't tell us we can do it does not say we can do it because we're not under that particular type of state constitution. When the two gentlemen who are still in the room take their oath of office next month, they're going to take an oath to support and defend the North Carolina state constitution and its laws along with the US Constitution. If there is a

state law that says we can't do something, we can't just arbitrarily say, "Well, you know what? When I lived in, and I'm gonna fill in all the blanks of states I've lived in, New York, New Jersey, Maryland, Washington, and California. I'm retired Army." Okay? Just because those states did it differently, we should do it that way, too. It doesn't work that way. Okay? It has to be under the North Carolina law. If it's not, then the answer is to get a new law. But that's not at our level of government. Okay? We don't do that. So that's something that will take some some serious grassroots type power. And if you want to know how to do it, I can probably talk to you offline because I've been involved with that earlier in my activist days. Someone mentioned something about um suspend contracts. They're not contracted to this to the town of Leland. The folks have contracts to do land clearing. They're not. It's not us that they're cont that we are the contract holder. Okay. So, we can't necessarily I'm I'm looking at Mr. Coggins and Mr. Hollis. We can't suspend somebody else's contract. I I'm not an economics person here, but is that generally speaking a true statement? the statutes um ordinances or rather the statutes that were referred to was to barring somebody from entering into a contract with the state that if they have this kind of a background, they can't enter into a contract with with the the state or the local government or whoever it is. Right? So

So it's a nice analogy, but it's not applicable. In other words, they're not making a contract with us. Correct. They have a contract with whoever the developer is or whoever is been charged to clear that property, a private entity. Correct. Okay. So that doesn't work for us, I think. But they were take they were trying to take a concept though and take it further saying that if you have this kind of violation, you can't get a permit. Okay. And that's something that's worth taking a look at. Well, well, we can look at that certainly. Um, let's see. Uh, particulate matter. Again, I turn to my friends at DAQ. Do you guys monitor particulate matter? Absolutely.

Okay. They have a network of sites across the state to monitor, excuse me, particulate matter, uh, both fine and for particulate matter and a number of other pollutants. Um, the nearest monitoring site that we have that measures particulate matter is at our cast site, which is about 14 15 miles as the crow flies from here. Sure. um we are regulated by EPA as to the number of monitors and the types of monitors that are required across the state.

Um and it's often based on population. So area of this size has a certain number of particulate monitors that are required to measure background air quality. Um, we don't use our air quality monitors to really measure sources or to determine whether a particular source such as a burn or a facility. We're measuring background air quality. You're just measuring general air quality. So, if it becomes ozone, if the ozone lover layer is being blown up, we don't care. If it's if it's going to turn orange or yellow or green or red, that's what you're monitoring for, whatever those goals are.

Yes. But more specifically, we're measuring long-term trends. So, federal government through EPA sets air quality standards. So, these are averages over one to three years. Have to demonstrate that our air quality in North Carolina over these a times meets those federal air quality standards. All of North Carolina for more than 10 years now has been meeting every because it's over a long period of time. Those are health based air quality standards based on the latest science that EPA reviews baselines for um the nation.

So there's no actual way to find somebody for exceeding some sort of particulate matter level. That would be very difficult in part because even if we have data that shows there was that data there was an number of contributing you know sources of just concentration burns from out of state there's a lot of prescribed burning particulate matter North Carolina, it's very difficult to say, "Yes, we have a violation on our monitor,

but we can't assign liability." Why even have it then? Say again, man. It's like, why have it if they can't do anything with it? Well, if we're seeing trends on our monitor that we're not in compliance, um, we go and we adopt new regulations. EPA requires us to come up with a state arenas back. But right now, no one has necessarily been fined or found liable for violating that because it's an average. And yeah, our our air quality monitor um shows that we are attaining those.

What would we need to do to get that? I mean, I don't mean any harm to the Castle Hang community, but they're not exactly as populous populated as we are. What would it take to get a um monitor to our area as opposed to their area?

Sure. Um there's a number of sighting requirements for a monitor. Um regards to how many trees it don't purchase land for our monitors. We usually rely on somebody agreeing to let us set up our equipment on their So it be very difficult for us to just have discretionary a lot of discretion as to where those monitors are cited. Um the requirement is that this monitor be stationed within the greater Wilmington um statistical area defined by the census. And so um we do take comments on our monitoring network every year. Um you can usually goes to public comment in the spring and we taken all of the feedback about where cited review those and we make decision.

Will you let me know when that takes place and we'll let the public know? And and to my fellow council members, including the ones who will be serving in the spring, can we consider if necessary even looking at some town land to potentially put one of these monitors up on if I don't know how big it is or how much it entails, but you know, let's see if we can get something in our region, more in our region than two counties away. All right, that's all I got.

I'm good. Any of the guests?

Can we take any action today on this agenda? Yeah. Can we take an action on this um We need to change. We we would intend to have it on the consent agenda for the regular council meeting if that Yeah. next week if that's okay. In the meantime, we we stay with the no burning. We still under our no burn regulation. Correct. Everybody no burn our current no burning open burning ordinance.

Correct. And then these proposed changes, we would have those on the agenda for the the Thursday night meeting um to be approved and unless there's some instruction from council for us to investigate anything else or modify this anymore at this time. Okay. All right. Everybody satisfied? All right. We have nothing else. want to thank everybody. Call for adjournment. I I'll make the motion to adjurnn and thank everyone for coming, especially our neighbors in Belleville, Nevada, and um Northwest. Second.

All in favor of the motion. I oppose. Motion carries. Miss Terry, Miss Brady, can I see y'all a second, please?