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HomeMy WebLinkAboutNatural Resources Advisory Board - Minutes - 08/16/2023 Page 1 08/16/2023 – MINUTES Natural Resources Advisory Board REGULAR MEETING Wednesday, August 16, 2023 – 6:00 PM 222 Laporte Avenue, Colorado River Room 1. CALL TO ORDER: 6:05 PM 2. ROLL CALL a. Board Members Present – • Barry Noon • Danielle Buttke • Drew Derderian • Kelly Stewart (Vice Chair) • Kevin Krause • Lisa Andrews b. Board Members Absent – • Dawson Metcalf (Chair) • Matt Zoccali c. Staff Members Present – • Honoré Depew, Staff Liaison • Kendra Boot, City Forester • Katie Colins, Water Conservation Specialist • Mariel Miller, Water Conservation Manager • Kathryne Marko, Environmental Regulatory Affairs Manager d. Guest(s) – • None 3. AGENDA REVIEW 4. CITIZEN PARTICIPATION 5. APPROVAL OF MINUTES a. No minutes to approve this month. 6. UNFINISHED BUSINESS 7. NEW BUSINESS Page 2 08/16/2023 – MINUTES a. Landscape Standards Code Revisions – Kendra Boot (City Forester) and Katie Colins (Water Conservation Specialist) will share proposed updates to landscape standards for xeriscape, soil amendment, irrigation, and trees. Staff is seeking feedback and formal support from the board to move forward these updates as part of City Council’s priorities. (Action) • Discussion | Q + A • Lisa – Q – I have a question about the funding with at least 3 ½ FTEs; do people make payments for permission to do this kind of thing or where does this money come from? Does it come from the City, the applicant, or both? Kendra – A – We are not quite sure about that yet. We are analyzing what sort of funding sources, and it may be a combination. So, we are not quite sure about that yet, but it is a great question. • Barry – Comment – At our home we are in the process of doing xeriscaping between Mountain Ave and the sidewalk. We had to submit a plan to the City. The review process has taken a very long time. Maybe in the process of doing it, we didn’t do it ourselves; we contracted with someone to do it. We may have inadvertently violated some of the requirements for the financial incentives to do the xeriscaping. So, our experiences so far, have been a bit challenging but obviously we are very supportive of the program. In our case, it’s been a little bit difficult to know what we can and cannot do and the delay has been pretty pronounced. • Barry – Q – I have a number of questions and it may be in that longer document with all the yellow highlighting. I apologize I have not studied that exhaustively. Are there pesticide restrictions for concerns about pollinators and not adding onto the demise of pollinators, which has been quite well documented scientifically. Is that anything that is in the code? Kendra – A – Not that I am aware of as far as turf or xeriscaping goes. As far as trees, the forestry division maintains all the public trees, at least from what we know, and people do take things into their own hands and treat trees adjacent to their own homes. Property owners are supposed to get permits if they are doing any work to street trees. Not everyone may know that. We don’t allow neonicotinoid for treating public trees but that does not mean that they may be utilized on the grass in xeriscape. Barry – Comment – I am also on the County Environmental Advisory Board and that’s been an issue that we’ve dealt with in the last few months about developing a policy to not add further to the demise of pollinators. I am not sure how much communication occurs between City and County, even though we are embedded in the County. Kendra – Comment – I like that point and maybe that is something we can add to our education plans for these policy roll outs because it’s part of the landscape and toolbox of how you manage landscapes. Thank you for bringing that up. • Barry – Q – So another question is whether there’s any restriction on Page 3 08/16/2023 – MINUTES soil amendments and different fertilizers. Because, again, another thing that’s well documented across the country is the adverse effects of nitrogen and phosphorous loading on water supplies and then stream out. I wonder if that is part what you are proposing. Any restrictions there? Kathryn – A - So this isn’t so much of a restriction of not this, but you have to meet certain physical and organic components. So, it’s not straight fertilizer but the basic standard is its compost tilled into the soil. We also work with storm water, MS4, storm water runoff, and the quality impacting the waterways. By tilling it into the soil and working on the soil quality, you reduce how much you’re putting on top, how much can then run off, and reducing the overall application of people who don’t know. It’s hard to estimate when you are not an expert and just a homeowner. When your grass is dying, you want to fix it. It’s often unintended over application which is a big concern. Barry – Comment – At the scale of an individual household isn’t saying much but it’s the cumulative affect of hundreds if not thousands of households with too much fertilizer. Kathryn – Comment – by adding it into the actual soil, it is reducing the amount that needs to be put on top of that. • Barry – Q – Are there any recommended tree species for planting? Are they native? Is there a tradeoff or an argument both for deciduous and conifer trees. Kendra – A – We do have a couple of different recommendations list. I would say many of the trees are not native because I think there are 28 native trees in Colorado and probably five of those are deciduous. The rest are conifers. Many of those don’t live well down at this elevation. A lot of the trees that are on our recommended list is a mixture of trees that are xeric and can live in low water situations. I would say most of them are in that group. Then, we have some trees that require a little bit more water, like some of our maples for example. Many of the trees that are on our recommendation list are trees that are adequate for our planet, are fairly adequate for changing climate, and can live in many different situations, irrigated or non-irrigated. Barry – Comment – The most common forest type in the continental US are juniper forests. They are about 26% of forest cover. I think junipers probably do well here and in the future they will probably do even better, though they are not necessarily the most desirable trees in terms of casting share and ameliorating the temperature extremes like today. Kendra – Comment – I do agree. We don’t plant any evergreens or conifers in the public right of way for a number of reasons. Some of it is the shading in the winter and creating ice on sidewalks, roads, and parking areas. The other reason is we have clearance standards. Many of the conifers that grow well here its not great to raise their canopies up, spruce particularly. So, if we are planting them in the public right of way, these very narrow right of way strips, we can’t clear the sidewalks for people to walk down and park on the street. That is the biggest factor of planting conifers. The one thing that we have been trying the last four to five years is the deciduous conifers Page 4 08/16/2023 – MINUTES such as larch or glyptostrobus. So, they still get those feathery needles in that summertime, during the growing season and lose them for the winter so you can raise them up. They have a canopy and form instructor that is more similar to a deciduous tree. • Barry – Q – My final question has to do with the three City golf courses. What is being done there? There’s a lot that could be done to have them use less water and to make the fairways start further from the tee box. Just no water education there. Narrowing the fairways and requirement for what they plant. There is a program, it’s probably multiple ones, but there is an Audubon Society Program for golf courses. I lived in a little town and my son and oldest daughter played golf in college. I belonged to a country club and one of the things I did was push them to get Audubon Society Certified and to put up nesting structures for birds all around. It seems to me that there is quite a bit that could be done to better xeriscape the golf courses. Kendra – A – I am going to veer a little bit out of my normal lane and try to answer as much as I can about the golf courses. We don’t have our golf manager here with us, but I will say that the three of our golf courses are Audubon dedicated sanctuaries. We are part of that. Part of what goes into that is best management practices. You are taking into consideration water use and doing your best maintenance practices to make sure you are creating a conducive habitat for birds, species and other wildlife. We do meet those minimum standards if not I would say we probably go above and beyond. Our cemeteries are also dedicated, and I believe City Park is also dedicated. I wanted to touch on the water piece a little. I have heard my peers say that we are very efficient in the way we utilize water as a city organization. We also use a combination of well water and city water, but mostly well water. Last time I checked it was 90% ET. Last time when we were in a water shortage, we got down to 80% ET. We are very efficient at watering our golf courses and parks based on best practices. • Kelly – Q – What does “ET” stand for? Katie – A – Evapotranspiration. So essentially the amount of water a plant loses is measured in evapotranspiration and the idea of irrigation is to replace the water that is lost from the plant. So, when we talk about 90% of ET that means we are not replacing 100% of what’s lost we are replacing less than that. Kendra – Comment – I have one more thing to add about the golf courses. A big part of water loss comes from old infrastructure. For instance, Southridge just went through an entire update, brand new state-of-the-art infrastructure. That is going to save us, I can’t remember the numbers, but it’s astounding how much water that is going to save that golf course. City Park 9, that infrastructure replacement for that irrigation system is also coming soon. If we could have these nice infrastructure replacements every 30 or so years, its huge replacement and saving water. Katie – Comment – I will add to Southridge, they are converting more areas of the golf type nature to native or rough species. Barry – Comment Page 5 08/16/2023 – MINUTES – The Southridge course is in bad shape, and I think it’s because of the hard freezes we had in the winter, but it needs work. Katie – Comment – They have been putting a ton of work into it, especially in the last year. So exciting things over there. • Kevin – Q – As far as soil amendments or really all three parts, what has engagement been with installers and otherwise those who maintain infrastructure? Katie – A – We started public engagement on this project back in 2021. We had surveys with focus groups with the landscape industry. We reached out to developers and builders but didn’t get a great response there as well as property managers. We did have conversations back and forth and we’ll continue to go back to these folks to learn more about what the impact would be there. We have been engaging those groups through this process but also through our certified landscape professionals’ program. That is a list of landscape professionals in Fort Collins that have a water sense certification. We communicate with them on City projects, and they give us feedback. So, we have presented this direction to them as well. • Kevin – Q – What do you expect or anticipate from Council? Do you have any anticipation of what those conversations are or what they will be looking for? And then the budget piece is an add on question of how does it get covered? I know there are several asks for it. Are they more sensitive because of that. Katie – A – We took soil amendment and xeriscape topics to Council work session in January. Kendra, I think came two weeks after us with the tree policy. In those conversations we were really looking for direction and narrowing into specifics on turf maximums and other things so we had discussion around should it be zero percent, should it be 15. We went over that, and they seemed pretty happy with where we landed in the middle. Through public engagement especially, we have heard there is a little bit of heartburn around single family landscape standards among owners, builders, and the general public. Then on the other side people are really supportive of the direction. What we anticipate October 10 is bringing single family back up to get the temperature again from Council. They were supportive of it in January. We’ll continue to share what that engagement has been. When we’re talking about the resources needs and the employees that three and a half full time employee number comes from having to support single family landscape standards because we have the processes and much of the staff in place to support the commercial, non-residential, or multifamily development review. But for single family where you have 400 homes going in, we don’t have a process to look at landscape plans, landscape inspections, irrigation checks and audits. So that is really where that three and a half number is. Kevin – Comment – I think the heartburn we can all relate to that desire to keep what is typical or what we are used to in the standard, so I totally get that. This board expressed last time excitement to be thoughtfully thinking about turf grass, especially with things that tend Page 6 08/16/2023 – MINUTES to be underutilized. I think there is probably a nice tie in with parks as well and developments to make sure that there is not a feeling of loss with respect to potential for activity that people expect. Katie – A – You could go wall to wall if you wanted. We don’t recommend it though. Kevin – Comment – So you could max on that as far as explaining the change. There’s still a lot there centralized. Kendra – Comment – We realized through Covid that parks are such an important, valuable asset. The community could go and hang out and feel safe. So, its good it’s part of the exception. Even when we are planning or developing new parks, we are considering pollinator gardens more natural, xeric landscape on the outskirts. We are looking at ways to bring that back. Katie – Comment – When we evaluated, we were looking at the recent parks that have gone in and looking at how those parks would or wouldn’t fit into this 30% 10,000 square foot thing. The 10,000 square foot cap is really where it gets tricky for soccer fields, football fields, outfields and things like that. More and more, the parks that are being put in, there’s a lot of community input and there’s a lot of excellent examples of best practice in those park designs and management of those parks. We found that they didn’t quite meet that 30%. They often went over but as far as gallon per square foot, much lower on average than only commercial or older parks. • Kelly – Q – So you guys are looking for formal support. I don’t know if the board feels like we are in a place to do that or what our options are to go about that. Honoré shared the different options with the board. • Barry – Comment – So again, and not looking at that full document exhaustively, two points I already raised so I will just touch on them briefly. I think sometimes regulations have an opportunity to gently teach someone. The issue with pollinators is really well documented that pollinators (insects, birds) are in decline. Also here, that is an issue. You could suggest restrictions on the use of pesticides with adverse effects on pollinators and then simply have a sentence or two saying that pollinators are in steep decline, and from pollinators we get totally free environmental services. They are absolutely critical for almost all of our crops and they’re totally free. We don’t have to pay them. Then a similar thing with nitrogen and phosphorus again, extremely well documented, of how t contributes to eutrophication and e coli breakouts in aquatic ecosystems. Just a sentence or two. It’s not like using a hammer. It’s saying we strongly recommend for these reasons. Maybe that sometimes has an effect without being preachy. Kendra – Comment – I like that feedback and I think each section or article starts out with a purpose statement. I think that’s a great spot for educating or bringing it front of mind to whomever is reading the code. It also makes me think that the land use code will be going through phase two update after they push through phase one, which is affordable housing and update of the land use code. I believe phase two will probably be next year and that will likely Page 7 08/16/2023 – MINUTES include nature in the City policies. So, there will be other opportunities as well. We’ll take that back around the pollinators and pass it to Kirk Longstein and make sure we are bringing that in front of him. Barry – Comment – In that regard there is actually a formal pollinator report from the County Environmental Science Advisory Board that has just been approved and completed. That might be useful to look at. • Kelly – Q – Are we comfortable with a vote or would you prefer a memo? Barry – A – I think maybe as Honoré mention in the minutes and notes here. • Katie – Comment – I also want to say that we think that the general direction of these codes will likely remain as what you see here. We have our Boards and Commissions roadshow. We are collecting some additional feedback and we’ll be revising the code language that you received in your packet. I just want to point out that you’ve seen a proposed draft and some of the language in there might change but we don’t anticipate the direction changing significantly unless we were to pull single family out of there, for example. I just wanted to throw that out there in light of a recommendation. • Lisa – Q – It seems to me that the overall purpose of this is language change, and I did kind of go through it yesterday, is to bring things up to best practices and to consolidate further the goals of an environmentally sound community. That is what I get out of it, and I support that entirely. • Kevin motions and Lisa seconds to express support for the direction of the proposed code changes inclusive of single family remaining in there because it is important and to also highlight the importance of the educational opportunities pointed out with respect to pollinators and soil content additives and try to make that the center point of the public introduction to the code being waterwise. Motion passes unanimously. 5-0 b. NRAB Memo Review: Oil and Gas Reverse Setbacks – Review and finalize draft memo, prepared by NRAB Chair, regarding proposed changes to the City’s policies on oil and natural gas reverse setbacks. Memo is based on NRAB discussion and motion following the July 19 presentation by Kristie Raymond, in advance of a Council Work Session scheduled for September 12. (Action) • Discussion | Q + A • The Board discussed that the wording on number three was confusing regarding soil-gas and ground water monitoring timeline. They discussed the strong desire for ongoing monitoring vs a one- time assessment. They also requested the initial assessment be conducted within a year of it being plugged and abandoned. They also mentioned Danielle’s point from the discussion last meeting that the soil here tends to degrade things quicker. • Honore shared the most updated language of the code. The board still disagreed with an initial assessment and a five-year waiting period as the environment is not static or predictable. It should be a Page 8 08/16/2023 – MINUTES high priority activity because it is documented to have adverse human health impacts. There was a code change added from the original list they were given. • Barry shared that the County Environmental Advisory Board received a presentation on air quality in Larimer County. The air quality is bad in Larimer County and has gotten worse. It will be out of compliance for the next 3-5 years. Wind direction is the number one predictor of air quality in Larimer County and is correlated with the number of wells in Weld County, so he does not want to let up on oil and gas regulations and monitoring. • 8. BOARD MEMBER REPORTS a. Kevin – Council has been thinking about reimaging the Bicycle Advisory Committee (BAC). During their last meeting they were presented with an initial recommendation from a Council Sub Committee. The recommendation included it becoming a true board versus a committee made up by other boards so NRAB would no longer have a liaison. They also mentioned changing it to include all active modes. There are also some non-profits and other community groups that are part of BAC. They want to make those members not as defined of what organizations but have a body that is inclusive of those types of organizations as non-voting members. Kevin mentioned there was a heated discussion, but he supports the changes. It does cause some confusion for the Transportation Board and what they would then cover and what their roles would be. • Barry asked about e-bikes and how some of them you no longer have to pedal so they are more like a motorcycle and where they are allowed. Kevin mentioned that class one and two are allowed on trails but there is a courtesy lower speed limit that should be followed. There were studies done on speed and injuries. b. Kevin – Mentioned an email sent by utilities regarding a change in raw water. There is a proposal to change the way raw water requirements are structured, including the cost. Kevin mentioned it seemed like Council received feedback after the email went out from community members who were alarmed at the cost increase. It seems like there might be a balance or looking out for current costs and future costs. Kevin wonders if Council could use support or guidance from NRAB regarding this. c. Barry – The County and CSU Water Center are sponsoring a water education series. The first talk is on August 21st at 200 Oak St on water supply and Risks. The second talk is Sept 20th on water conservation. The third talk is on October 18th on watershed health and instream flows and the last one is on November 16th on what is next for Larimer County water. Barry stated Glade Reservoir and Northern Water is not on the agenda. It is open to the public and Barry will forward it to the Board. 9. STAFF REPORTS 10. OTHER BUSINESS Page 9 08/16/2023 – MINUTES a. Six Month Calendar Review • September • Water Supply Requirement Fee • Platte River Power Authority • Land Use Code Update • October • Economic Health Strategic Plan • Downtown Parking 11. ADJOURNMENT a. (7:56 pm) Minutes approved by a vote of the Board/Commission on 11/15/23