Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

Welcome to the Wednesday, July 1st, 2026 Planning Commission. The Thurston County Planning Commission is a resident advisory committee to the Board of County Commissioners on land use planning matters, such as the comprehensive plan and zoning ordinance amendments. Planning Commission actions are in the form of recommendations to the County Commissioners, the final decision makers. All Planning Commission meetings are open to the public. Community members are welcome to observe all Planning Commission briefings and work sessions. My name is Eric Casino. I live in District 2. We're going to do some more introductions down here with Commissioner Bumbarger.

Commissioner Bumbarger, District 1. I live in and reside, although I am the out large member.

I'm Sandy Kaiser. I am in District 3, although it says District 1 on my placard.

Oh, they gave you my title, but it's not Nelson District 4. Hey, Carolina, I'm sure we'd love to have you. Commissioner Pessinger.

Devin Postinger, District 5.

Commissioner Fishburne.

Hi, Bill Fishburne. I live in and serve District 4.

And that's all we have for online, but we do have a quorum. So we're going to move on with our agenda. The person on our agenda, I would entertain a motion on approving our agenda.

So moved.

Second. Is there any discussion on this agenda? All in favor, say aye. Aye.

Aye.

Okay, we have an agenda for this evening. Has everybody had an opportunity to look over the June 17th, 2026 minutes? And if so, I'd entertain a motion on those.

I move to approve the meeting minutes and accept the audio as the official meeting record.

Second. It's been moved and second. Is there any discussion on the meeting minutes?

Yeah.

Go ahead, Commissioner.

No. Not on the body of the minutes. I finally have no comments on those, but in the opening, the attendance, A, Lola Flores, I don't think was in attendance, and B, Lola Flores' name is still spelled F-L-O-R-E-S. All right.

We'll double check those and make corrections as needed. Thank you. Any other discussion? All in favor in accepting the meeting minutes from June 17th, and using the audio as the official meeting record, say aye.

Aye.

All right, our meeting minutes have been approved. We're going to move on on our agenda and accept public communication. If there's anybody in the audience that would like to provide public communication, or if there's anybody online that would like to address the Planning Commission, we'd be happy to hear from you now. You may have a commenter coming in, I don't know. Loretta, you're up.

Okay, Planning Commission, this is Loretta Sepinen. I live in Olympia. Thank you for the opportunity to come tonight. I sent in an email, which I hope you have received, asking you to consider three land uses in the critical aquifer recharge area chapter that I found in the Snohomish County CAO, but I didn't find in the Thurston County draft that we saw. And I'm pretty sure that people do put electronic waste, contaminated soil and reg material in our critical aquifer recharge area without permits. And I'd like it to be in the CAO that you can't do that. I also ask staff to provide, when they have new definitions, instead of just saying, that they're going to be in the definition section, which I know they will be, and that's all just fine. Can't we have it someplace where we see that definition as we're on the topic, rather than have to wait to September when we're going to have so many things we're going to have to review. But my main concern tonight is that I want you to know that staff has told me that nothing I or anyone else shares with you will impact the draft CAO unless you actually discuss it and give it a thumbs up. Otherwise, our comments are dismissed. I want to share how frustrating this is because I think several people have made some very useful comments that you haven't had the chance to talk about. And last meeting in particular and the meeting before, you didn't talk about most of the comments. So please go back to your last meeting and consider the comments. And, you know, if you're going to dismiss them, that's fine because there's multiple ways to look at anything. But note that you have done that. Then we know that we shouldn't keep pushing that noodle or if we need to push it, we can have to push it really hard. So I would appreciate if you recognize the The tough spot this puts us commenters in that we must have your outright consideration of our comments or it will be dismissed. Thank you.

Thank you. Up next, we have Lisa Reiner.

Hello, can you hear me?

I can.

Thank you very much. I wanted to thank everyone in the Thurston Planning Commission for being here. Hours and hours of your time, dedication to public issues, health and safety issues for those of us in Thurston County. It's not a little thing that you're doing. It means a lot for future generations, especially dealing with this critical areas Essentially, when you look at critical areas, what do you see? You're talking about water. And you're talking about water... future water supplies and clean water issues for future generation. Currently, forecasting is talking about state of Washington and our droughts, our ongoing droughts. They're looking at draft forecasts for water here in the state of Washington, how the changing water supply and demand can affect communities, farms, and fish for the next 20 years. So that's why this discussion of water issues is so vital. For those of us who cycle up and down the Chehalis Western Trail, we see less and less water in the in the wetlands. So, many of us are concerned about water quality standards. We hear that certain wells are not meeting criteria as we go forward to have water well supplies here in Thurston County. We hear about high manganese levels and how that is impacting our water quality supplies, potable water. And so, I just want to emphasize that we have many gravel pits coming into play here in Thurston County. I remember when we had the discussion about agricultural lands and gravel pits, and everyone said, oh, the gravel pits won't affect Thurston County. It won't happen. Well, it seems like the gravel pits won't. here in Thurston County are affecting critical areas. They are affecting water quality. And I just hope that the planning commission realizes that we are concerned about this, about a shortage of water and potable water for future generations. Thank you very much.

Thank you very much. Up next we have Christy White.

Good evening, commissioners. Can you hear me all right?

Yeah, thank you.

First of all, my name is Christy White and I live in the Delphi Valley. I'd like to echo what Loretta said earlier about adding an additional category for electronic waste and the other items that she mentioned. I think those are critical to add to the car list. I also would like to echo the frustration that many of us have We're trying to be that extra FTE that the county needs to help with the CARA. And we put a lot of time and effort into making suggestions, and we're hopeful that you will consider them. I also would like to emphasize the need that I believe to extend the critical areas update timeline. This is big. The CAO is big. And to allow enough time for the planning staff to really vet the CAO code, the timeline is just too short. So I'm asking you,

to ask that the timeline be extended.

I'm not sure you can still hear me.

Christy, go ahead.

Okay. I did in my comments that you've received in writing today regarding the CARA, Some of it's already been addressed in the gap analysis. Thank you, staff, for that. But I'd like to also emphasize to, you know, update the CARA with best available science with new data. You know, it's been 2013, 2016 when the mapping was done and there's LIDAR available and a lot of other things that are available to update that mapping. Secondly, a full scrub on Table 24.10. I think all of those items need to be looked at closely and where they fit into being in a CARA, at a wellhead, and their usage. For instance, you have boat refinishing, which uses highly toxic substances, yet it can be included in a CARA with a permit. Also clarify relationship between cars and wellheads. Mostly people don't know what those are. And there's several other things that I listed. And lastly, making sure there's a checklist for people so they know what they're up against when they're looking at a car on their property. There's several other things on my list, but with time short, I hope you'll take a moment to look at the document I sent you and ask the planning staff to incorporate these items into the car review. Thank you.

Betsy Norton.

Hi. Can you hear me? Okay. Hi, you guys. My name is Betsy Norton. I live in Olympia. To the planning commissioners, thank you for allowing me to make some comments here. I am punting a little bit tonight, so apologies for that. I would like you to increase the focus on biological wastes when you're talking about the aquifer recharge areas and particularly think about things like slaughterhouses and fertilizer and fertilizer plants and fertilizing waste and to prohibit those things or limit them so that they don't enter the water stream. The other thing is I think that the CARs give you a good opportunity to implement some sort of innovative incentive and disincentive plan for increasing the recharge or like Concentrating development in a smaller square foot area. This may be a way that you can, you know, if somebody can, instead of building a thousand square foot house on a thousand square feet, build it on 500 and make it two stories. And that way preserve some amount of the recharge function. Also limit the herbicide and fertilizer use that can be applied to things, especially on Kara 1 and 2. And also, I would ask you to include in here a regular review of CARA mapping based on industries that are doing some sort of significant terraforming or changing to the topography. Things like mining, even clear cutting, you know, with the erosion that occurs with that. If you can... revise you know with particularly with surface mines you know they're cutting away a significant portion of the cara and so all the infiltration and the groundwater directions change with all that change so please um so please update the maps when you do that because i think the cumulative impacts on groundwater flow and groundwater saturation change so thank you very much

Thank you. I'm going to come back to the boardroom if anybody has anything, please.

Hello, I'm Bonnie. Where I live, we have a well down in Akara, but it is fed by an aquifer that is like a big chunk of basalt that is kind of enriched in iron and manganese. And there's also a lot of septic tanks. So I kind of don't really drink that water. I go to the well in downtown. But the well is like, it's blue listed. That means it's not the artesian well. This is like a cultural icon for Olympia. It's the water. It's the water. This is important stuff. A lot of people drink from it. It's got a blue list. That means that people shouldn't drink from it. It may be a natural source of manganese. It may be a not so natural source. And I've noticed like there's other wells that are already somewhat impaired. by fecal coliform, by manganese, by other things that are listed in a certain WAC, 246, 290. And I hope that as you go forward, you can kind of consider those. And as an aquifer that might already be somewhat impaired, either by natural or by existing human stuff that's going on by looking at the well records, just as you move forward from here and consider how the use is Like in our watershed, in the McLean watershed, the Streamflow Restoration Act allows 165 more houses. It'll take 27 acre feet, you know, sucked out of the groundwater to feed those houses. And that's like allowed under the Byron 13 thing for that McLean Creek watershed. Okay, so my question is, if they can pump that much more water, 27 acre feet out of the ground, what will that, and rainfall may change, what does that use do for housing due to the water quality that existing wells will have? Will it change the type of pH in the water? Will it change the type of dissolved oxygen in the water and change the water quality when it comes out to the purveyor who has to send it to my house? So please think about the existing conditions and how uses are going to affect the water quality in those conditions, whether it's going to be potable or not. And that could depend on natural geology or like the chemistry in the geology. And it could depend on existing contamination that's already like in there and part of it. And again, my concern is how the groundwater pumping of so many projects going forward could affect the potability of water in the future. And I think that could guide CARA things, like the type of uses that are appropriate in the different CARA types. I hope you understood that.

Thank you. Those are... Speaking of public testimony, but we will do a public testimony, public communication debrief now if staff would like to address any of those points.

Most of what we talked about tonight I think will be covered either probably in the discussion later on. A lot of it will probably be picked up in, excuse me, In Claire's presentation, I do think it might make sense to spend a minute and talk about one of Ms. Sepinen's comments about kind of how staff are taking public comment versus, or basically how we're understanding that public comment and where we're looking for direction from the planning commission. So on the kind of the real extremes of a process like this, could have something that's really heavily staff driven and we're writing all the code and making a bunch of choices and bringing it to you and saying here's what we think the code should look like we've taken and then on the other end would be basically we start with nothing and we're like hey tell us what you where where you want us to take this and you know you could be involved in subcommittees writing code if you really really want to get into it thank you and um what what we're What we're trying to do in the relationship we're trying to set up is that this really should be a community-driven effort. And the way I understand that is that the feedback should be coming through the planning commission. That's why the public comment is important. That helps shape the direction. And I don't think it's entirely true that we, and apologies if I misspoke earlier, Loretta, or didn't clarify enough, that we wouldn't take any feedback that we heard in public testimony. So for example, we wouldn't make a policy choice, um, based on public testimony, we would want to get some direction from you. We wouldn't take high level direction and like swing the project in a different, uh, in a wildly different direction based on public testimony without what we, without some direction from the planning commission. That said, if we did get direction or there was a policy choice from the Planning Commission and that was pretty well in line, fits really well with something we'd heard from the public, we might just pull it right in if it's in line. But our goal is to be able to take that kind of high-level policy direction forward. some of those kind of critical policy choices and then write that into code we may hear really good ideas from the public and just bring them in but the that that direction and those kind of critical policy choices we really want direction from the planning commission so I hope that clarifies a little bit about our intention in the process and I hope that that's something that that's amenable to folks if we want a different kind of relationship between ourselves, the public, and the planning commission, we could talk about that. Trying to balance it and have it be deeply community driven.

I know you said that a lot of this other stuff will probably get touched on during the presentation, but one of the things that has come up a couple of times in today's public testimony and elsewhere is the timeline for this project and how quickly it's going to get done. It seems like the greatest emphasis, which makes a lot of sense, is on how long are we going to be able to digest the code before decisions are being made? What can we do with that timeline to make sure that everybody feels like they've been heard?

Our current timeline, we're estimating at this point, what is it, October, public hearing. We understand that as the place where people really start to pay attention. So we get a lot more people kind of coming out of the woodwork and like, oh, here we go. It's time to make comment on the on the critical areas ordinances. So I think we'd like to use that as the place where we have an opportunity to kind of settle and digest after that public hearing, get feedback. And then what we've talked about is, so after that public hearing, then the planning commission needs to make a bunch of decisions about a final draft and what from the public hearing we've heard that we want to incorporate and make a final recommendation to the board on a planning commission draft. That's our goal is to get to a draft that the planning commission can endorse up to the board of county commissioners.

And that's happening somewhere November-ish, maybe?

And we think that that could take a significant amount of time. Okay. The Planning Commission has some prerogative to take the time it needs. I don't think we're trying to push something before folks are ready. One of the things that we've thought about after that public hearing would be a series of workshops that we could do to actually... sit, digest, discuss that code. But we anticipate that I wouldn't imagine that it would be any faster than something like two months would be pretty quick for that public hearing to a planning commission draft. So I anticipate, again, that timeline being pretty substantial between that, that public hearing draft, and the planning commission recommendation draft.

When you so How much before the public hearing do you expect, how much time before the public hearing do you expect that the draft code will be released?

Thoughts on that?

Do you have? Currently it is, I mean, we function on putting things out a week in advance. I know for an entire chapter of code, that's not very much. So we could try and plan to have that sooner. We don't have like, we haven't set like which meeting in October. It's more general for the public hearing. So far, so we could look and see kind of how much of a lift needs to be done to kind of finalize all the code at the end and then kind of planner on that. But we could if if folks are interested in having more than that kind of typical one week advance.

I guess my concern is the planning commission. Once we see the draft and have a public hearing, we still have a lot of deliberations that we could do before then. But the public's ability to have a lot of input is best at the public hearing. So if the public has more time before the public hearing to see the draft so that way they can communicate effectively at the public hearing, that would be a good thing I could do. I could only give them a week. I don't think it's enough.

No, I think we'd probably all agree that's just the short timeline. My suggestion would be probably in the two to three week range. I think once you get beyond that, yeah, it starts to lose some of its... And most of this will have been surfaced.

in other ways.

Yeah, the public hearing draft should be the third time each chapter comes before the Planning Commission. So it'll be a final fourth time that's the recommendation draft, and that'll be post-digesting from the public hearing and everything.

Yeah, it will be the first time it's all together, and it'll take some work for folks, I think, to really understand how all the pieces work together. so um and figuring out where different different things live and how they'll interact so my watch yeah my my suggestion is something in the in the two to three week range um for a draft before out before the hearing i would yeah i would like to see at least

to have it before. So if we have the public hearing, the meeting before that public hearing, I would like to draft out before even that meeting.

So that would be the two to three week range.

Well, yeah. And if we had two meetings in between, that wouldn't even hurt my feelings. I understand that we don't want to stretch that out too far because you get a lot of convolution going on if you have too many meetings in between, but at least one regular meeting before the public hearing meeting of the draft and as many as two would be fine with me. So.

Yeah, I could see us utilizing a meeting to go over the public hearing draft without it being the public hearing. And that could be helpful for the public as well. Just to make sure everyone feels prepared for the meeting.

That would be good. Please. I was just going to say, we did give direction that as sections are available online, Draft sections are available. They should be being released. And we saw some draft in the attachments for today's meeting. So again, that is also helping build in plenty of comment time for folks. We saw commenters citing specific tables that need additions and stuff. That's what we want. So if we're... It really should be, hopefully, just some of the last content we discussed that folks will not have seen drafts of by the time we're having that meeting before the meeting. I did also want to ask, I know you said we'd cover most things before we got there, but multiple people did bring up the electronic waste thing, too. I don't know if it's worth bringing that up now.

I took a couple of the things that are more related to the content here and I've actually noted them in the discussion slide. Just so that we can revisit them in the context of the presentation and everything. Yeah, so I have the e-waste and other uses. A quick thing that I can address right now is the concern about definitions. The one we've been referencing a lot that is new is the definition for qualified professional. And that was actually already adopted. I think the concern and confusion is it takes some time for us to change the code that's available online. So the new definition for qualified professional does exist. It's not in the current version of our online code right now. But we are relying a lot on that definition just in general and an approach to this update because it's one of the big sticking points is that kind of issue of accepting reports and who can do them and who do we accept them from. And that being a known issue was part of why the definition was developed as part of the last batch of like minor code updates. So we're just leaning on that, knowing that we already have it in our toolbox.

Okay, great. Anything else on public comment debrief? All right. Well, then I guess we're going to move on with our agenda to CAO work session number 18, CARA gap analysis and feedback incorporation.

All right.

Yeah, so this week we'll be going through a fairly similar format of presentation as you all got last time. So we're going to be reviewing for this chapter, it's mostly changes that already you have seen once in the first draft that came to Planning Commission as part of both the last gap analysis and this one. We did also review the Planning Commission meeting and discussions and the public comments we received to make sure we could incorporate feedback in these drafts as we Also did the gap analysis and you'll see in the slides that some of the gap analysis actual like identified recommended changes come from feedback and conversation as well. So we'll revisit a couple of the key best available science points that are influencing the changes. Go over the gap analysis itself and then we'll have room for discussion and that discussion side will include a few points that came up during the public comment as well. So there's a major points from best available science that we'll see influencing this chapter. One was input from a staff expert, actually, that injection wells, underground deep injection wells that pierce a confining layer to access, but as in like sort of a slab of rock that's above an aquifer to access an aquifer kind of the area around that inherently becomes more sensitive because that combining layer has been pierced. So we've added that as part of designation criteria. That'll create, it essentially creates an artificial CARA3 by piercing through a geological formation. We know that CARAs support drinking water and healthy in-stream habitat temperature and flow. And this is kind of our a big basis for the intent of the regulations, understanding CARA is not only as a function of safe potable water for human development, but also as an important piece of our ecosystem, especially in reflects to climate change. with CARAs being a source of cold water when stream temperatures are a big concern for fish habitat as climate changes. We also have new soil data and are working alongside our GIS team along with this update to create new maps and also ensure that maps can stay up to date. So eliminating conflicts within the code and being able to bring in new data. The main new data source for CARAs, obviously geological formations don't change too often, but NRCS soils data, which comes from the Department of Agriculture has been updated and they have some new classifications and some new maps. And so we're trying to make sure we can incorporate those as part of how we identify CARAs on the landscape. Other things we're looking at that don't necessarily come directly from the science, transparency and screening tools and report requirements. That's a huge theme across all the critical areas, helping people understand for sure or as close to for sure whether or not they're going to be in a critical area, what their reporting is going to need and creating a flexibility where it's appropriate and it doesn't sacrifice environmental standards or protection and just making sure the coding language is navigable, clear, accessible as much as it can be. So the actual gap analysis portion, we have updated similar to other chapters how critical aquifer recharge areas are designated. Some of that is actually just bringing the designation criteria into the chapter itself rather than having it live over in the definitions chapter. One of the main goals in this update is just to reduce the amount that people have to jump through chapter by chapter. Someone can just open up one chapter because they saw one thing on their map and they know that's where they're going to get their information. That's a lot more helpful for them. We've removed some outdated references to maps and data. As I said, there are new maps that come in or new data sources that come in. And sometimes the code can hold us back a little bit from staying up to date with the science if we are too rigid in how we define that. And so we're trying to work with our GIS team to make it easy to still have clearly designated critical areas, but not in ways that can kind of force us to lag behind on available maps and science. And then as I mentioned earlier in the presentation, I'm talking about designating areas near deep underground injection control wells as CAR 1, because that increases the sensitivity of an aquifer. We've made changes to Table 2410-1. So part of this is to allow for the infiltration of reclaimed water, manual aquifer recharge and aquifer storage and recovery. The federal government, Department of Ecology and LOT have all spent a lot of time since the last update, doing research, developing standards to address this. And so we feel it's a little more appropriate now than at the previous update to begin allowing for this, especially with the consideration for aquifers as a water source for both streams and people in Thurston County. And then just to ensure consistency with state law for the most part, there's some updated language around underground injection control wells, just making it clear that essentially if you can't do the ones that the state doesn't allow anyone to do anywhere. Yeah. Oh, and then, um, back to the, uh, reclaimed water and aquifer storage management recovery, um, 24, 10, one 90 is the actual code section that just discusses the use of that. So the tables have the little like table, and then you scroll down to the actual code section with additional information. So that's just reflecting that same change. Um, And then we've removed some tables to keep in line with that effort to support the geo data work and make our maps easy to update without conflicting with code. And that's it. So from the public comments, we heard a couple folks mentioned e-waste and then also things like contaminated soil and dredge material. I definitely see the value for considering these uses. Same with biological waste fertilizer and slaughterhouses. We'll look to the planning commission for any guidance or insight on exactly how you want to approach these in the code. But I just noted those down while listening to the public comments and surface mines and other uses that might disturb or disrupt underground or surface soil and geological features and change the susceptibility of a CARA possibly. So, yeah.

There was a public comment specifically calling out the boat refinishing being acceptable with permits and that that was dangerous. I'm assuming the permits would take into consideration exposure and wouldn't approve it if it was high risk.

Yeah, so there are a number of uses. There's essentially outright allowed uses that you wouldn't need a carp to do. Uses that would require a carp, which would then require review are like we're looking from like hydrogeologic staff. And that's where that would come in for that being allowed. And then there's uses that are just like, no, you can't have this at all here. And so that's one of those ones that falls under that with staff review and approval. And if the staff review finds that that is causing no net loss of ecological function, the risks are addressed and taken care of. That would be allowed under that current table. And we can take direction on that if it's concerning.

So really quickly, we did, We got an email that was what our injection wells, and maybe we could talk a little bit about that just so we're all clear. So the state has a definition for injection wells. It's essentially any, any essentially depression that is deeper than it is wide intended for receiving water. But what we're usually talking about here are where we like, that's the state's definition. A lot of times they're used to manage stormwater, for example. If you can't infiltrate really easily, it's legal to use an injection well to manage your stormwater. So those are... They can take multiple forms, but generally what we're talking about here in reference to ACARA are some of the deeper injection wells that Claire mentioned could pierce one of those confining layers for an aquifer.

Yeah, and we're fairly specific about that as a designation criteria. It is specifically like confining layer piercing deep underground injection control wells. So yeah, not every... infiltrating stormwater feature.

Yeah, not every injection will pierce the confining layer.

How do we know how thick these confining layers are?

Ground penetrating radar, maybe? Usually, I mean, the way you'd assess that is you'd take a core

Yeah, but there's other places in our code where we talk about a 20-foot piling. That assumes that a 20-foot piling is going to go all the way through a confining layer, right? Otherwise, we wouldn't care if it was a 20-foot or 30-foot or 10-foot.

Or it's bedrock of some sort or some sort of substrate.

I am not an engineer. Are we looking at, like when we're talking about pylings, what if a pylings is it, is that because it could be a injection well? For pylings? Yeah, or digging the hole for a pylene is all of a sudden an injection well?

Highlands didn't come up specifically in my conversation with Kevin about the injection wells.

No, this was essentially the county hydrogeologist wanted to make sure that we were considering the impacts to CARAs and that if you do have an injection well, you've essentially created a CARA 3 if you pierce the confining.

So we're talking about sites where we know already for sure because the well is existing and installed that a confining layer has been pierced essentially. Yeah.

Well, I think that makes perfect sense that if we've already pierced the confining layer, then it'd be in a care of one makes it's a pretty sensible thing.

Commissioner bombard. Oh, I was noting Kevin has his hand up. Oh, I'm sorry. Yes. Sure. Passing her.

Thank you, chair. Uh, several questions and comments. Number one, I vote, uh, as Claire requested, uh, I vote yes for consideration and inclusion of those topics mentioned by the public. If you want more than that, that's my starting point. I vote yes for that. Number two, Blair, looking at the document that is about CARA itself, the actual Chapter 24.10 that you shared with us, Um, and looking at the opening segment called purposes and it has ABCDE five, five purposes listed. Um, do you know, is that written recently? Is that really old? Is that old, but it's been updated a few times. What do you know about that section?

I know that I did not make any changes to that section, I believe unless there is a I don't have an open in front of me. So if there's no red line there, it is just what's from the last critical areas ordinance update.

And that was about 15 years ago or 25 years ago. 2012. Okay, so 14 years ago. So I'm a little curious because we've got gap analysis on kind of like what should be there and what's not there in terms of language. But just in terms of this opening section, which I always think is the most important section to any chapter when they talk about objectives or purposes, if you look at these five items of purposes, they're pretty detailed and pretty clear, protect the public health, you know, and welfare and Michael Leclerc- safeguarding critical aquifer recharge areas and stuff and I think we ought to at least have a slight amount of information analysis, if you will, on how are we doing. Michael Leclerc- Since this was written, have we gotten better at this are we bad at this we've you know we have an A grade or a B grade or an F grade on this particular purpose. Because I think that would help guide us quite a bit in things we need to make sure are properly addressed. I think these purposes are quite thoughtful and protective and they had a good forethought in coming up with them. I'd be very curious how we are doing on a number of these. I have a feeling it's not great. I know we mean well, but I have a feeling From the stories I've been hearing, including from the hydrologist, uh, who has a lot of concerns about water issues in our County. And I share many of those. Um, I think the public is telling us pretty clearly, and I agree that water really matters to us. It's probably our single biggest environmental climate factor. If you will, we can't change global climate issues very much here in Thurston County alone. but we sure as heck have to deal with, and we have some ability to affect water issues here locally. And I think it's going to affect every one of our lives and futures and everyone we're related to and family here. And we care very much about doing the best we can to protect potable water and water recharge and safety of water and all of that. And, um, I don't know where the question is in this, but I we've heard a lot of different things over the years. I personally live in Lacey. And so I've heard a lot of things from Lacey city council about issues with, um, the difference between, uh, septic tanks and. sewer connections and we have Cynthia Pratt got in trouble one time for saying we got a big ticking time bomb which is all the volume of septic tanks now they may be most numerous in Lacey but I know we have a lot in the county as well maybe more in the county I'm not sure the exact numbers everyone remembers the political fiasco that was called the poo tax I thought that was pretty crazy in how it was sort of represented. Maybe I've had bad experiences going camping or something, but I can't think of anything I would rather have my tax dollars used for than to keep poo out of my drinking water. The safety of our drinking water is paramount, I think, to almost everyone. And so my question in this, I think, is things like that, like I don't see any form of a summary of like, Hey, here's where we stand with septic tanks and how many are failing and what issue that represents to us or concern related to these purposes and objectives. I really would like us to get some information on how we're doing in regard to these purposes.

Thank you.

Anybody have any other what maybe you can maybe you can talk a little bit about the e-waste contaminated soils and dredge materials exactly what the concern is with e-waste or its operation and how it would affect caros.

Yeah I think the to kind of try and

briefly address Commissioner Pessinger too. I think there are things that we can, I think I'm kind of trying to piece that together with the public comments and with what we've heard already so far and kind of see how we can focus a little on what can actually go in the code and influence the code. Because some of the CARAs are really deeply kind of intertwined with a lot of issues that are also managed outside of the CAO, environmental health, our more programmatic water quality approaches, some of the work we do under grants. So there's kind of a breadth of programs that come together to influence water quality. And really all we can do from the CAO standpoint is address impacts that have a nexus through permitting. And so I think, For this chapter, one of the big focuses and it seems like maybe a revisit at least to the current draft we have now is warranted is the allowed uses table in general and kind of coming to a consensus on whether that needs to skew more protective or not or if there are specific uses to hone in on. I think that's where this particular piece of regulation as part of a tool set that includes a lot of programmatic approaches as well can work the strongest on some of those like countywide water quality issues, which are really systemic. To come back a little to some of these specific uses, I think My understanding of the main concerns about most of these uses is essentially the leaching of contaminants into soil and then therefore into aquifers in particularly in highly sensitive areas where that soil is much less likely to or the geological features are much less likely to prevent contaminants from infiltrating. And so the concern here to me seems to be related to the minerals and chemicals associated with things like e-waste. fertilizer slaughterhouses and the capacity for those things either in day-to-day operation or in a more unplanned event, whether it's like a natural disaster, a fire, something else, a leak, a spill, posing a risk of contamination. Yeah.

So I want to go back to the injection. Um, is that going to include things like reclaimed water? That's how it's currently said. So my concern then would be that say, obviously it would be a lot or whatever city set put so well in and is injecting water. And I'm in a care two or three. Now I'm automatically in a care of one that changes everything I can do on my property. Right. because now I've got a more susceptible, supposedly you're saying I have a more susceptible aquifer.

I think the way I would think about it is, let's imagine that it's not a lot, and let's imagine your neighbor puts in a stormwater pond, or an injection well for stormwater. The If your property isn't contributing area to that, I wouldn't think that it would be, I would think that the, we'd want to set the boundaries at the like contributing area for the injection well.

It's for a specific time of travel area. So similar to if your neighbor puts in a wellhead and that wellhead has a time of travel area that is protected from contamination, it's essentially the same idea.

So it doesn't make the whole Kara.

Yeah. It's not like, cause you see like a whole polygon of one Kara designation. It might cover a bunch of different properties. One injection while going into that doesn't like change every property around it. That whole property is now a Kara three. It would just be the immediate surrounding area. Um, and that is reflective of essentially what has changed in the landscape because that was installed. Uh, There's now a physical difference in how that aquifer accepts water from the surface and how clean that water is going to be when it gets to that aquifer.

To Commissioner Nelson's point, though, if there would be an impact on the neighbors, would the neighbors be notified of that potential impact during the permitting processing or anything?

I think I'm not entirely sure. But one thing I would want to, I think we should probably dig into is the requirements for those injection wells, because I'm thinking that the place where it could be a problem is, let's imagine the injection well, it's not confined, and you've got like transmissive soils coming from your property over to that well, and all of a sudden things that wouldn't have gotten into that aquifer from your property can now move through the gravel and enter that well. I'm not sure how frequently that happens or if they're like, it's a, you know, if those are traditionally like sleeved, sleeved pipes, or if they're, you know, unlined holes like that, I think we could dig into that a little bit.

Literally.

Yeah. We could drill down and figure out how frequent of a concern it is and maybe if it's something that would affect neighboring properties, instead of even necessarily worrying about the noticing, it'd be like, let's make sure that the design standards would prevent the problem to begin with.

Well, and I'd be more concerned about being downstream from it. but my other concern would be if you put an injection well here and the water's traveling this way. Yeah. And you say, okay, now at this point, you're a Carol one, but really you haven't changed the properties of any place, but exactly where that goes. So it wouldn't be like all of a sudden my property is more susceptible to putting something into the groundwater because it's my property has stayed the same.

And I think that would be the, the intention of like the, your upstream neighbor is all of a sudden they've created like essentially transmissive soils. Let's imagine like that injection well. essentially allows things to get through that confining layer and that ability for the water to move through that soil is what gives you that higher grade cara. So it makes it more susceptible. It's where we have to protect things because if you spill on the surface here, it's going to hit the groundwater. That would only happen there. So your confining layer would still be there. The question really is what, what does that injection well allow to get into the water that now affects your water down here? It wouldn't change your designation because your designation is based on the fact that you've still got that confining layer and what happens on your property is likely to stay above the aquifer. So the risk level is lower.

I don't know if I'm opening a can of worms by asking this question, but... thinking of things that use a bunch of water or might discharge a bunch of water, is it worth putting any consideration towards the use of data centers in KARAs? Because I know there's a lot of considerations on using ocean water or process water or river water for cooling since there's a really heavy demand on it. And I'm unsure whether we should, could make any sort of consideration in the way our Chapter 24.10 is structured to call that out as either an explicitly prohibited use or something that would like maybe prohibit things that have high volume continuous use of water. I don't know. It was just a thought. I don't know if it's anything that we have considered.

I think it's, as far as could, yes. And then as far as should, we'll ask the planning commission.

I don't particularly want, like the purpose of this is to protect our water. And that's generally seen as a source of draining critical aquifers and a source of contaminants for aquifers. I know we don't define a data center in our code.

We can add definitions as part of the code.

And I'm wondering if calling out a data center is complicated because, you know, you can have a server room in a building and that can be a data center. I think it might make more sense to define high volume continuous use. High volume discharge. Well, yeah, discharge particularly because some of these factories are literally just dumping the process water untreated into rivers or the ground or... I mean, it hasn't impacted us, but there's areas in Georgia that are largely well-fed or have these huge aquifers in there. They have no water pressure. There's weird contaminants showing up. And if we have the opportunity to try and define it now and say, hey, no, I think it might be worth at least putting some barriers up there. Because right now, the only considerations we have in that chart are just generic industrial uses. And it has to do with, like, It process water is not highly contaminated waste, which is what that that focuses on, but the sheer volume of what they would be discharging could be concerning.

Yeah, we could I'm trying to think about definitions and uses and what's, because I know what I mean when I say data center, but these are the types of things you need. When it comes down to implementing a permit, you do need a solid, you do or don't meet this definitional criteria. And it might even be kind of proactively protective to focus on something like the discharge of processed water as a contaminant, and that might encapsulate uses we haven't even dreamed up yet.

It's also a potential thermal concern, right? We were talking about how this is important as a source of cool water. Of course, that's extremely hot water, and putting it down into a highly insulated liquid mess biomes up down there and her life. And I just feel like there, there should be, I don't know. It would definitely complicate things. It would, but I feel like this is a good opportunity to stick it in there.

I feel like the language was similar to industrial uses that discharge a certain amount of waste, like what we currently have in there, but it was industrial uses that discharge a certain amount of heated or processed or contaminated water.

so there's two two in here right now one is industrial uses other including but not limited to battery processing reprocessing storage food processing facilities tanning textile dyeing wood pulp paper processing and metal finishing which generates less than 220 pounds of hazardous waste per month um and another one was uh ones that do more than that but process water. So you'd essentially say industrial uses that produce over, and we just choose a number that makes sense for, I think I'm just saying untreated process water. Like they build it and they're going to treat it and then put it back down in there, then I think that's less of a big deal, but... That's all I'm doing.

I mean, couldn't we just add data center to that list?

It's just not defined. How would you define what a data center is? That's the whole thing. That's what she was getting at. Like we can say it, but what does that mean? You know, it does this building with a, with a server data center.

rooms or offices or buildings or warehouses that have large server rooms that even do have cooling requirements. And sometimes that's just air conditioning. Sometimes it's water use. There's kind of a spectrum of things. Data center is essentially a colloquial version to refer to the really big version of that that we have started seeing. And so I think focusing on the impact rather than the trying to come up with a definition for that.

I think the impact is more important than the use.

Yeah, yeah. It's really about, well, so I know you were talking about high water discharge, but what other facilities are high water usage? Golf courses. Do we want a golf course on a, well, I guess that wouldn't hurt too much because you're just using. Parks.

Football fields and schools. Everything that's green in the summer is getting a lot of water on it. We could say commercial facilities.

And I also think the critical areas ordinance from a legal scaffolding and state code standpoint is much better oriented to control discharge and pollutants rather than something like water use, which is getting into a lot of other water law stuff.

I want to bring Commissioner Pessinger back in on the conversation.

Thank you, Chair. First off, I vote yes for what Commissioner Bombarder is recommending. Second off, it feels like we've had several topics come up, and we've just been told that the planning staff needs direction from the planning commission. We've talked about at least four different things here, and I haven't heard anybody else say I vote yay or nay against that. Does the planning commission staff feel like they have direction from us on that? Or do we need to one by one go around and say what we vote on each of these requests?

I would say that I've heard a discussion that seemed like it moved in the same direction. Something that would be useful would be, I think, short of like a roll call vote on all the items would be if somebody wanted to summarize the general direction that we've heard tonight and then maybe use the show of thumbs protocol. Yeah, we can do that, Commissioner. Sure.

Yeah, I want to get to something before we move to that, which is we're looking at impacts, but I'm interested also in risk. And I was thinking about battery storage in particular. You know, if it's operating efficiently and correctly, it will be absolutely no problem. But if there is a problem, it's a catastrophe. So how do we look at risk? in the document. I need to go in and read it the way Daniel is right now. But I'm curious about, you know, the probability is probably low, but the actual impact would be devastating.

I think part of how we can consider RIT, and it's outlined this way in some of the state guidance as well, is there's kind of two sources of contamination risk, and it's the susceptibility of the aquifer and the potential of the use to contaminate. So to use your best example, where if it's functioning correctly, everything is okay, but in the event of a disaster, it's a real disaster, that risk might add out. And this is one of those things where we're like, we can't actually do the math on it. But in terms of this is a policy, that type of risk is a policy decision. This is what we're looking to you all for. So it might be where some of these more intensive uses are allowed in CARA 1, and then we consider CARA 2, and then we think about what that means for CARA 3. And I think it's the other way around. I always forget which way the numbers go. But anyway, low risk CARA to high risk CARA, like... if even if it is unlikely to happen, you might really not want it to happen in the highest sensitivity of CARA. And that alone might be enough to say, okay, even though this is a fringe case, we don't want this here. Or you might say, no, that the risk isn't probable enough that we need to worry about it. And that's, I think a lot of, with things like BESS, e-waste, anything that is really like spill or accident is the consideration are the tricky ones. There are some things that we just know are going to like, have contaminant, like a lot of things on the screen right now, fertilizer, contaminated soil, dredge material. Those are things that just have a contaminant in them that are being applied to the ground. That's less of a risk thing and more of an understanding of susceptibility of the aquifer itself. But yeah, I think there is a policy consideration for some of the uses that fall more in that like,

disaster avoidance category isn't the county taking on a best policy as a docket item this next year yes and i think that would this all be addressed in that policy generation uh the critical areas portion would still need to be in the critical areas ordinance yeah so the this is one of those things where there are a ton of different uh different

regulations and laws that are at play in a lot of these discussions there are I think that would focus mostly you'd get most out of that and like aside from what happens if you want to try and do it in a critical area which is a lot because cars are all over the place in the county, it would really be about the requirements that you'd put on it. So if we're thinking about the susceptibility and the risk, what are the mitigation strategies that you put on? Right.

And a lot of those just because even outside of critical areas, it's concerning for a best facility to catch on fire would be in that just like this applies to everything. It doesn't matter if you're in a critical area. This is how you correctly permit and run a best facility in Thurston County per our code. And so. This is a thing where we, with this use in particular, we could wait until that code comes out and see what mitigation actually gets adopted or what standards actually get adopted in that code and then assess the risk from there. Yeah, this is something that I think would probably be likely to get addressed in a future critical areas ordinance update after the adoption of that code. And I don't know what the specific timeline for that code is right now, adoption-wise, so. We might beat it with the CAO, in which case we might want to reflect on it after it's adopted.

So I did some research. A good number is 300,000 gallons a day.

Okay. That sounds like a lot of gallons.

It is a lot. It's more than golf courses, but even enterprise, like smaller data centers, start around there. Do you have a number for golf courses? Well, if they're in the desert, they can use up to a million gallons a day, but in our area, it's not that high.

Is this use or discharge?

They're based on use, but the way a data center uses its cooling, it discharges it once it absorbs too much heat. So it's essentially the same thing.

And if we say discharge, then we'll know what we're referring to.

Yeah, and you could even say process waters to find, right?

I think so.

Yeah. If you specifically call out process water, that exempts your golf courses because you're not processing it. They're just spraying it. You know what I mean? Your parks aren't doing anything with it. But process water for Dana Center, those often contain small amounts of biocides to stop the growth of things in it. They contain corrosion inhibitors, and they can also pick up small amounts of heavy metals when they're in contact with electronic components like zinc, copper, and lead. So I think we have a good viable reason. And if we stick that in, any really super intensive water use that's going to be dumping a lot of unprocessed water would be excluded.

Right. And I think that's the benefit of using the process water definition rather than focusing on a specific use too. It focuses on the outcomes environmentally.

If we put out that number and people don't agree with it or someone has better information, they can put it out. But I think that's a good starting point. It's a good starting point. And then, yeah, I think it's worth putting it out there. It seems like a low barrier way to put a restriction on a thing that a lot of people want in their neighborhood anyway. For being honest, it's not good for your water.

Can you guys work on that one then? You got enough thumbs up on that? I feel thumbs up on that. Can you tell us a little bit about the concern over dredge materials? I guess I don't have a very good imagination because when I think about dredge materials, I think that somebody's scooping something out of a river lake and dumping it next to the river lake. I don't see how that really changes anything really.

Yeah. That one in particular, actually, this is, this is my first time encountering it in this context is in response to public comment, but I'm happy to take the direction to at least like go back and tell us what the real concern is risk and like understand the concern. That'd be great. Yeah.

I think their metals can get to the bottom that aren't found in the rest of the river. And you get down there and you start disturbing them and you bring them up, you bring in some nasty stuff.

maybe some gold. I guess what I'm saying is they're at the bottom of a lake and they haven't moved from the bottom of the lake and you dig them and you put them on the field next to the lake, they're probably going to sit there. They're not all of a sudden sprouting legs and moving off.

They might seep into that top layer of soil whereas before they were at the bottom of the lake.

Yeah, I think that would be based on what I do know, my understanding of the concern. I think you apply the lens of dredged material on a particularly sensitive area. Whereas the bottom of the lake, if it's just been sitting there, then it's just tons of water. That's an okay place for it to be. You take it and move it onto an area with high susceptibility.

I don't think that we do a lot of dredging in Thurston County anyways. What are you going to do?

We're going to take out the Capitol Lake.

There's a lot of nasty stuff down there.

I think the primary consideration is with contaminated dredge spoils. Like I do know of places where they're working to use them for beneficial use. Like you have areas where you have sediment starved beaches and the Army Corps is dredging over here. Can we just put that, those dredge spoils over here on these sediment starved beaches? So there are places where they are beneficial. I think it's really the, are they contaminated? And is that an opportunity to take them from someplace where they were you know, they weren't moving and all of a sudden moving them into...

So we could probably use just the contaminated soil portion of the concerns here and not the dredged materials concern.

I think dredged materials, from what I understand, are a problem when they're contaminated.

It's part of, it's a smaller part of that subset. I would say yes. Okay.

And this is also like to... kind of maybe hone in on this direction a little bit um one of those things where depending on the level of concern maybe this is something that is restricted in some but not all critical aquifer recharge areas um maybe we're looking at two and three maybe we're looking at three maybe we're looking at wellhead protection like these are all different levels of sensitivity i think that table has like six bars across it columns across it um and so um we could take direction on what especially if we come back with some more information, which I think the next time that this chapter comes back, it will be part of that hearing draft discussion.

I wish commissioner Halverson was here. Cause I want to think that at one point, either when we were doing SMP discussions or LMD discussions, there was something in there that if you do dredging, you're supposed to leave the spoils next to where you took it.

Hmm.

And I can't remember exactly where that came up, and I'm sure that he would have it at the top of his head, but it's something at least to consider and look into.

Okay, yeah. Yeah, and I think what we'd not want is to be putting contaminated. If it's contaminated, we shouldn't put, yeah.

Yeah, and so I see that solution with slotting the dredged material kind of into that contaminated soil. category. Like if you know that you're, you've dug up something out of the ground or out of the river that has some nasty in it, don't go put it on a sensitive critical recharge area. Yeah, so we can kind of look into that and come back with a proposal for how those are managed. I'll take that direction, I think. Unless anyone says no.

No, that's good. We were all pretty much on the same page with biological waste.

I guess I don't understand the risk enough, the use that would produce a risk. So I would love to know more about it. How would it infiltrate? Same with slaughterhouses. I'm not sure what the risk of it, because you're the farmer. I can't think of any.

I mean, I haven't worked on a slaughterhouse for a long time, but I can't think of any chemicals other than maybe some cleaning stuff. But I also can't imagine... somebody building a solar house in Thurston County at this point in time. I mean, that's the same thing with the fertilizer. I don't even know if you wanted to, if you had a place where you could, if you'd be able to build a fertilizer plant.

I mean, because that's going to run up against ecology. I don't know this, but I want to think that the concern on fertilizer is for things like turf farms and the fertilizers that's used on turf farms, because we've heard that discussion often about fertilizers, turf farms, and caras. So like a runoff from the farm, essentially.

So that's probably where that concern comes from, but I don't know for sure. I always feel like that would be under somewhere else in code though, wouldn't it?

Yeah, we do have, there is a separate chapter that deals with critical areas and agriculture uses specifically. So yeah, some of the things on the second bullet point probably actually wouldn't be in the scope of this update. We're not touching it as part of our project. We're not touching agriculture this time, no.

Or surface mines, does anybody? Do we have a surface mine? Well, gravel pits. Gravel, yeah. I don't think we're permitting any new ones anytime soon.

Yeah, I think we are. There are? Yeah, by Miller, Sylvania, now that Miles just bought the 748, 745 acres from Port of Tacoma.

It's pretty common. We have a whole like mining overlay, like district overlay that allows for mining. Mineral resource overlay. Yeah. So is mining permitted in critical areas? It can be permitted.

It depends on the critical area. I'm sure there are many mines in at least Karawans. I don't know. off the top of my head, but like, I know we have existing mines that are in critical areas. I think the concern here was more so about whether or not the existence of a surface mine or of other similarly intensive kind of ground disturbing activity has the potential to increase or decrease the susceptibility of ACARA and whether we should like update our maps or designations to reflect that. And I feel like that's something I would want to have

more research and sources to back up but that we can also research as we dive into more specific research on a couple of these things i mean i feel like we'd all be in agreement for yes for more research on that and then report back type thing yeah we we don't we're not experts on this like and the specific question how do we frame that um what's our research assignment

Consider, just do it like she's written it there. Just consider it and then report back to us about this is not a problem or this could be a problem in this context.

Do surface mining activities increase the susceptibility for recharge areas, I think. And I think the question there too would be like mines are used to have a long life and sometimes get other uses permitted on them, but usually have to also go through reclamation process. And I think at the end of that reclamation process, the intent would be that susceptibility hasn't increased, but should anything be done about the possible increase during the life of that mine? That was brilliant. I'm just thinking of some recent projects.

If it's already addressed somewhere else in code too, I think that's worth looking at. If there's somewhere else that basically mitigates the thing, I don't necessarily think it has to be in the car section if we're already sufficiently preventing it somewhere else in code.

And I would say, I think some might disagree with this characterization, but it is a pretty rigorous permitting process to get a mine approved.

And it's not a given. Yeah, like if you report back and you're like, hey, like this is the theoretical risk, but these are all things that are considered during the permit process. And then we can make an informed decision on whether it should be.

That's the same for a couple of the uses we've talked about so far. Like what would be considering in the permit process? How does that impact the risk? Yeah.

So I think we've covered the public. comments? Well, this was not just the public comments, but any other discussion? Yeah, I added my little book.

Yeah.

Well, I guess that's all we have on that. So thank you very much, Claire.

Thank you all. That was a really helpful discussion. So I'm looking forward to Getting back into that, I'm kind of coming back with a draft that addresses some of those concerns. I feel like we got really constructive on these. Yeah.

Yeah. All right. Well, let's move on to our next agenda item, which is a staff update.

I don't have any updates. I was planning to talk about some of the the CAO timeline and process. I think the one thing we might want to just as a snap update, I guess it's kind of CAO also, but thinking about how we want to set up some of those, like if we're thinking about workshops after that public hearing, what those could look like. And also like, is that even advisable as something that you all think is a good route to take? You didn't do any open houses, public open houses? We have a couple of like events that we're going to be hitting, but we also think that something like workshops would provide some of that opportunity. It's not necessarily a like.

So workshop going to be just for the planning commission or for the community in general?

My thought was that it could be, my initial thinking was that it could be like an open discussion. Maybe we even split you all up and we would notice it because we'd be talking about it. business. But I thought it would be a good opportunity to just have a dialogue.

Yeah, it would be really helpful because in some ways when we have public comment, there's a megaphone and it's coming to us, but there's not enough of it in exchange for good reasons, but that would give us that opportunity.

Yeah, I think more of a kind of like planning commission is here, the public is here, staff is here, but it's not the

standard agenda like meeting concept is is that kind of if you're still sort of time limit comment you could gate our discussion after each comment so that we can i would actually i i would see it as a little bit more freeform in that like we might break out into tables and have discussions and ideas and report outs kind of a like

Yeah, like a true engagement workshop type format. I know we were also talking about in earlier engagement planning, doing, I think we did a lot of these for the comp plan, if I remember right. I wasn't here for all of it, but like pre-hearing open house, just like giving people time to come in and like discuss. Yes. and engage prior to the public hearing itself. And that was our main plan up until the plan to then start working on these workshop concept. So we could still do that and then follow all of that up with the workshops.

If you're going to do more than one, I think having one before the public hearing and one after the public hearing is the way to do it. Because the one before the public hearing, there's probably people that would change exactly what they want to say at the public hearing by having a workshop beforehand.

I think that could be a really good strategy. Yeah. I think it might even make sense to have more than one workshop on the back end. Yeah.

If you want to do one public hearing and two, and then hopefully recommendations after that, I would be all on board for that. I was starting to acclimate to as many as like four.

I feel like we could do one after and based on interest and engagement, go from there. You know, if we do one after and we're not getting a whole lot or the people feel like, no, you addressed what I needed to in the first one, don't put a ton on the calendar just to say we didn't.

What are the noticing requirements for a special meeting? Would that count as a special meeting? Are they, but they're not 15 day or anything crazy like that, are they?

I think we'd want robust noticing out there, but I think would it just follow the rules of noticing that you use if there's going to be a quorum gathered outside of regular meeting time?

I think that's the way we would treat it. I don't remember off the top of my head what those are. Okay. I would personally suggest that you schedule two just from an availability standpoint. Yes.

Yeah.

And you could cancel it if you feel like you needed it.

Or schedule another one if you felt like it's going to be... We don't even have a public hearing scheduled yet. Yeah. But if... you know, if we're all in agreement that we're going to have one before and at least two after, I think that's a good way to start our thoughts.

And one of the other things we had thought about is also maybe looping all the way back to the, the, welcome to the permit counter exercise. That might be a good kind of compare and contrast, like bookend for us too, maybe even in that pre-hearing.

Yeah, the pre-public hearing planning commission meeting, that's kind of the like, here's the final draft review. I think it'd be great to come back and look at the exercise we did. Are we talking permit counter post changes yeah to basically compare and contrast like we did the permit counter exercise way at the beginning of this process um see how new and improved we are yes and then see wow i see you have this slope well i know exactly what kind of report you're gonna need like which isn't what we said in the last demonstration i don't know maybe we know we need a rock all right well

Do you have any other updates? I do. Okay. I guess we'll look at our calendars then. And I think that our calendars, I don't have the dates for our next meeting. It would be July 15th, wouldn't it? Does anybody expect that they won't be able to make our July 15th meeting? Should have a full house for that. And then the next meeting after that would be August 5th. Anybody expecting that they won't be able to make August 5th. All right. Is there anything for the good of the order?

Yeah. I want to mention that commissioner Flores has been trying to connect. Oh no. Yeah. And has just not been able to, she's having trouble with her wifi.

Okay. Well, Hopefully she's been able to at least listen to what we've discussed. And if she has anything in any input, she can mail it on in. Anybody else have anything else for the good of the order? All right. Well, having no more is having no further business. This meeting is adjourned.

We're technically five minutes early. I feel like we should celebrate the five minutes. Given our track record. One minute early is still celebration worthy. That was fast and productive.

Yeah.

Which is the sweet spot.

Yes.

All of these for not being more knowledgeable about the water usage on that. I don't know if we could even ask on that. But here's the thing. I don't think the 300 gallons is perfect because the way those work, a good bit of the water is lost through evaporation. But I'm also picking like the smallest data centers are at that thing. The megawatt facilities, the big ones they're building, they're using well over a million gallons of processed water a day, which that's what I'm really concerned about. Not, you know, And again, Google has some weird micro data center thing where they want to try and get people to build- You're a data center. You're a data center.

Exactly.

They're literally talking about paying people in municipalities with cheap water and power to build like mini data centers attached to their homes and they'll pay their power bill for it. I hate that.

Yeah.

They're just- Sorry. We're going to- I don't know anyone who's like, yeah, data center. Because they eat all your resources. They create almost no jobs. They eat all your power and make it expensive.

Yeah. We're dependent on a lot of this stuff. Like battery storage. How do we have green energy without batteries?

Well, you can do energy storage that doesn't necessarily require batteries. Actually, you can.