City Commission - workshop

Formal meeting for city commissions called to order. Clear call the roll.

Mr. Ricketts. Here. Mr. Rigsby. Here. Mrs. Tackett. Here. Mr. Wallace. Here. Mr. Rue.

Here.

City manager.

Good evening. Good evening commissioners. Tonight we have a presentation update on the Tremont Barrel fill from our partners with the EPA.

Good afternoon. I'm Adrian Palmeque. I'm a community global coordinator with the US EPA and also for the site for the Tremont City Barrier Field site. Just look at located at next to the Tremont City Village and we had the opportunity to provide an update last year about this time. Back then we were just briefing up uh the city on uh we had uh reached a 30 percent remedial design report at that point and uh we have moved uh quite a bit since then uh we had a stakeholders meeting this morning we had a lot of uh people from uh from the city of course we had people from the county from uh the township uh all uh interested in the site We were able to provide quite a detailed presentation this morning, but we wanted to provide just a shorter version, just real quick for everybody's awareness. And as I was mentioning a year ago, we're in the 30% remedial design report, and we recently conditionally approved the 95% remedial design report on June 4th. And we received a draft 100% remedial design report on August 3rd from the RESA group, the potential responsible parties for the site. So we're excited that things are moving forward. And we have here with us tonight a representative from the RESA group, Mr. Bob Ruhl. And also we have from GHD, John Priebe, which will provide a little bit of an update regarding the status of the site.

Thank you for your time, everyone. We appreciate that you're willing to let us come in and talk. As Adrian said, the last time we were here was about a year ago. Since then, we've done a lot of work to get the designs completed. As Adrian said, we submitted the 95. It's been approved, moved on. We submitted the 100 last week, the 100%. With the 100% design, we also made a recommendation to US EPA to let us start some of the site prep work sooner than the approval comes in. We received that approval today. So as early as mid-September, we may be moving some equipment in to start some of the site prep activities at the Barrel Fill. Site prep will include what I would call a non-intrusive activities, things like upgrading the roads, putting in fencing so that we have purity out there, putting in some of our staging areas for the barrels, putting in our administrative trailers, things like that in anticipation of perhaps as early as December starting to pull the drums out provided we get approval from US EPA on the design. Also, since we met last, we had agreed to do some baseline sampling at the site. We have completed two rounds of baseline sampling. We've received the results on the first one that we did last December. And no appreciable difference in the contamination. It's not moving, so groundwater is still protected. We just did our second baseline event in July. Data are starting to trickle in and We don't have it all, but it's looking about the same. So no appreciable differences in the last 10 years that we have seen. So we're getting started at a good time on the barrel fill. As I said, we're going to get started as early as mid-September. One of the things that we'll do, we'll start working with the first responders. Part of our submittal with the 100% was an emergency response plan. So we'll start working with our first responders out there to make sure that we do some tabletop exercises, get them out to the site so that they can see where we'll be working, what we'll be doing. In the event that we have to call, they'll know what they're walking into. With that, I will ask, are there any questions?

I do have a question. Are you staying or going to be staying engaged with the neighbors that may be directly impacted by the traffic, just giving them updates?

Yes. Okay. Last night, we met with a village of Tremont City for their meeting as well to let them know timeframes. As soon as we leave here, we're going to German Township, and tomorrow we're meeting with Clark County.

Other than meetings, are you door knocking? Are you...

not doing anything at that point all right thank you as somebody that's been involved in this process for a long life of that group um this is just this is something that's that's been a long time coming i'm very i can't tell you how happy i am that we are at this point and i'm also appreciative of the epa We're having enough faith in DeMaximus to allow them to start the process of actually working at the site before we're at 100%. most of the work that they're going to do, in fact, all the work that they're going to do is not going to be on top of the barrel fill. This is the work of putting up buildings of where the decanting will take place of the barrels. This is improving the road up there. This is getting everything ready so that once that 100% mark is reached, and we hope that that's hopefully sometime in October, November, then they're ready to go. EPA could have said, no, you need to wait until we're 100%. Well, that might have taken us into October, November, December. Winter's here. Then they can't put their buildings up and do everything until next year. We're looking at another six- or eight-month delay. This is really huge, and I'm very appreciative of all the parties involved. Thank you guys very much.

Other comments from commissioners? We appreciate all the hard work you're doing and look forward to getting this going. Thank you so much for being here.

Thank you for allowing us.

Thank you. We have about seven minutes before we'll start public comments. Is there a motion to adjourn the work session?

So moved.

Second. It's been moved and seconded. Clerk, call the roll.

Mr. Ricketts?

Yes.

Mr. Rigsby? Yes. Mrs. Tackett? Yes. Mr. Wallace? Yes. Mr. Rue?

Yes.