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HomeMy WebLinkAboutNatural Resources Advisory Board - Minutes - 01/06/1999MINUTES CITY OF FORT COLLINS NATURAL RESOURCES ADVISORY BOARD REGULAR MEETING 281 N. COLLEGE AVENUE January 6,1999 For Reference: Phil Murphy, NRAB Chair - 491-6303 Bill Bertschy, Council Liaison - 484-0181 Susie Gordon, Staff Liaison - 221-6265 Board Members Present Randy Fischer, Kelly Ohlson, Nate Donovan Reagan Waskom, Phil Murphy, Rick Hamess, Bill Miller Board Members Absent Phil Friedman, Don Rodriguez Staff Present Natural Resources Dept Terry Klahn, Susie Gordon, Tom Shoemaker, Brian Woodruff, Aaron Fodge Guests Sally Craig, Planning and Zoning Board Agenda Review No changes Brief Announcements Bill Miller: In 1991 there was a citizens' project to reintroduce osprey, which involved DOW, Poudre School District, Audubon Society, representatives from CSU, and many others. A $1,000 grant was received from City mitigation monies to buy perch poles for osprey, but in the end REA donated the poles. The coalition is being closed out and left- over funds dispersed, including a check for $849.36 which was presented to Tom Shoemaker, to be returned to the Natural Resources Department mitigation fund. Tom Shoemaker: The FIDOS group has invited the Natural Areas rangers to attend a meeting scheduled for January 25. Tom said the department would be happy to attend, but has requested a pre -meeting so that we can understand clearly the goals and format of the meeting. Natural Resources Advisory Board January 6, 1999 Page 2 Committee Reports Growth Manattement Committee: Bill Miller stated members of the committee met with Clark Mapes, Glen Haas, and Joe Maurier (State Parks). Sally Craig and Bill Miller worked with Clark on the proposed rezoning of East Prospect. This resulted in the memo of 12/30/98, included in the packet, regarding the demise of East Prospect Rezonings and a Structure Plan Amendment. Sally Craig commended staff for listening and being so open-minded. Tom Shoemaker added that this issue has gone away for now, but there is still work to be done. Tom Shoemaker reminded the Board that committee meetings are public meetings and require a minimum twenty-four hour public notice. Also, staff liaisons should be notified when meetings are scheduled. Kelly Ohlson asked if there was anything to report on the Flood Plain Task Force. The DDA and DVA have complained that they are not part of the task force. He added that it is necessary to make sure that environmental viewpoints are adequately represented. Randy Fischer stated that he feels most local groups are represented and that it's pretty balanced. He will inquire as to what the policy is and find out if they intend to continue adding people to the task force. Bill Miller requested a meeting of the Natural Areas Committee with Tom Shoemaker in February. Review Minutes December 2: The minutes were unanimously adopted as written. December 16: • Last page, other business, change FIDO to FIDOS (Friends Interested in Dogs in Open Spaces) • Natural Areas Acquisitions: add bullet saying "At least three NRAB members recommend that staff take a second look at the possible acquisition of property at comer of Shields and Trilby (Hazaleus property). The minutes were unanimously approved as amended. Natural Areas Acquisitions Update, Tom Shoemaker Tom Shoemaker stated that he presented an overview of the program at the last meeting He expects Natural Areas Acquisitions to be ongoing item at each meeting. Would like to talk tonight about an area that was originally identified as high priority. Worked for a couple years trying to restructure Huntington Hills in a way that would have allowed a large natural area along Fossil Creek, but the project was unsuccessful due to money issues and unwilling sellers. Now we're trying to do the best we can with what is left. Would like to have feedback on a proposal that would involve the exchange of two acres of Parcel L to Huntington Hills, and two acres belonging to Huntington Hills to Parcel L. Natural Resources Ad .0 Board • January 6, 1999 Page 3 In addition would attempt to acquire remaining area of tract D from Huntington Hills. The total price would be around $95,000. There are a couple of alternatives including not doing anything. We can wait and see what happens, but it's doubtful we would get the same level of setbacks. Some would also recommend buying tract A. Staff can't recommend this because the area has been very broken up, an unwilling seller and a high price (over a million dollars for twelve acres). This proposal is unusual for reasons including a high price for small amount of property, and the development proposal will be controversial. This is a special area with lots of potential. Will still have space for some red tail hawks and maintains a nice corridor. Discussion • Ohlson: Will Parks and Rec want to put a trail there? Fossil Creek Trail will go there somehow. • Shoemaker: The development proposal has been submitted Would like to get a read at this meeting or next from the Board, so that can give both owners an indication if we are willing to proceed • Ohlson: Is this really expensive? It's not outrageous, but it's at the upper end of things. It's not expensive for multi family or single-family ground. • Fischer: There are stability problems along the creek. It's a serious problem, some houses are ready to fall in. • Ohlson: If we spend this we don't buy something else. The bigger chunks the better, but if this is a gem I'll go along with what you think. • Miller: Is it conceivable that this area could support prairie dogs? It wouldn't be advisable. • Harness: Is there an advantage in going with just tract D? It was pursued as an option. There's not much that can be developed on tract B. That's why the price difference, $17, 000 instead of $80, 000 per acre. • Ohlson: No strong feelings positive or negative, does anyone else feel strongly one way or the other? • Fischer: I have a strong feeling about preservation because of what it used to be, maybe I'm clutching at the last remaining pieces. I would say go for it. • Miller: Is there connectivity to areas that support raptors? There will be some raptors, we do have Prairie Dog Meadows not far away. • Ohlson: What's out there that we could better spend the money on, most valued habitat under the most immediate threat. Don't believe that doing this would compromise our ability to do any of those things. • Murohv: Would like to go out and take a look. Interested board members will meet Friday, January 8, at 4:00 p.m. where Fossil Creek Parkway dead ends. Natural Resources Advisory Huard January 6, 1999 Page 4 Air Quality Action Plan, Brian Woodruff Going around to various groups looking for input on the Air Quality Action Plan. We're revising the plan in a four-year period, from the year 2000 through the year 2003. In the past we have done it every two years. Previously, we have dealt with the issue of motor vehicles by covering actions that reduce vehicle miles traveled and reducing tail pipe emissions. This time we are excluding the actions affecting vehicle miles traveled. These actions are covered in the Land Use Code and various transportation plans. The formula that we think is working for VMT is that City Plan, in conjunction with the Transportation Plan will reduce the growth rate of VMT. Council has not yet decided to put on the ballot the .36 % sales tax to support transportation operations and maintenance. Financing for these items is crucial to making the shift from automobiles to alternative modes of transportation. If we don't fund it, it's not going to happen. Tail Pipe Emissions: Stricter new car and fuel standards. We don't implement, that's done at the state and federal level, but we do support it. Tier 2 Standards — The US EPA is now proposing standards that will take affect in the year 2004. California has taken the jump to stricter standards already. The question now is, will the manufacturers be required to make cleaner cars for the rest of the country as well. It takes a long time for the effects to be seen. Sport Utility Vehicles and Minivans are allowed three times the carbon monoxide emissions of passenger cars. The state of California is going to hold SUV's to the same standard as passenger cars. Emission Sticker Compliance: Our concern is people coming in from out of the area to work, and also students. We're trying to raise the compliance rate. We're also interested in a better emissions test. Right now, the test is a technological match with 1982 vehicles. Cold Start Driving: The first couple of miles driven is when most of the emissions occur. We currently have a program to encourage people to use engine block heaters, and we're trying to encourage people, through education, to reduce the number of cold starts. Smoking Vehicles: Smoking vehicles are a more important part of the brown cloud than we had previously thought. Want to reduce the fraction of cars on the road that are in cold start mode. To accomplish we will need to change the behavior of drivers. Commerce & Industry: We're focusing on pollution prevention from new industrial sources. Want to encourage new businesses to incorporate pollution prevention at the outset, to avoid pollution before it begins. This has been shown to help the bottom line Natural Resources Advis• Board January 6, 1999 Page 5 and reduce worker exposure. The big companies know about this, but small and medium -size companies don't have access to all of the information. The approach is to leverage services already available in the community. This program is just getting started this year. Fischer: There are several big polluters in the city whose inventory of toxic emissions is probably greater than the whole city combined. Do you ever approach those guys? No, my information is that companies like HP are doing a very good job controlling emissions. The ones I worry about are the small to mid -size companies. They devote less attention to reducing emissions and taking care of the good housekeeping that is necessary with industrial solvents to keep them from becoming pollutants. I wouldn't look to the biggest companies to be the biggest polluters. Ohlson: How do we know the big companies are controlling the "bad stuff'? The information comes from the state regulatory system. If you pollute over a certain amount you have to have a permit from the State Health Dept. When looking at the top emitters, HP is not there. Is it self -reporting? Yes, but there's an inspection component as well, it's not just self -reporting. Larimer County and the State are not known for being aggressive in the area of environmental inspection. I haven't heard that. Donovan: How many stationary sources are big enough to pay clean air act fees? I don't have that information with me. I can get that to you for your next meeting. Wood Smoke: Encourage people not to bum if they don't have to. Use zero interest loans to encourage people to upgrade wood stoves. Indoor Air Pollution: Will revisit the smoking ordinance. Citizen group proposed the City amend the ordinance to make it more strict. Radon: Have spent a lot of effort in last 2 or 3 years and we believe it is working. Over 10,000 houses have been tested (about'/4 of the houses) for radon. Some of those did mitigation. Plan to continue, and considered whether should require mitigation in new homes. The voluntary programs were working so we backed away from that. • Ohlson: Same report says 3 out of 4 homes in Fort Collins exceed the recommended EPA standards. This is too weak, 3 out 4 homes violate the standards, and yet, mitigation won't be required in new construction. Global Warming: The City participates in a joint activity with 180 other cities around the world to reduce green house gas emissions from the burning of fossil fuels and also methane. In the process of preparing a local action plan to reduce green house emissions. Will go to City Council in March for approval. • Donovan: What are the biggest sources of methane in town? The landfill is the major one. They're talking about installing a porous piping system throughout the landfill to collect the methane. Natural Resources Advisory 6Lard January 6, 1999 Page 6 Visibility Research: We have quite a bit of information about the brown cloud, but we don't have an answer to what else the City should be doing to protect visibility. We want to pull all information together and design new actions that help. It's very technical. • Donovan: Please explain what the issues are in getting CSU to require the emissions testing prior to issuance of a parking permit. It would be part of the parking management program. They have angry customers already, and they don It want angry customers because of emissions stickers. • Murphy: Don't you have to obtain an emissions sticker for your car? Yes, if you are a resident student, commuter or are temporarily assigned here for three months or more, you are required to get a sticker and carry the paperwork with you. The problem is, there is no one who checks, except for residents.. • Donovan: Currently compliance is about 87%? That means they survey the CSU parking lots at the beginning of the year and count up number of violators, which is usually about 25%. Then they issue tickets and provide education and over a couple of months compliance goes up to 87%. Each year you are educating anew group of people. • Harness: A small concentrated study shows no significant problem with idling diesel vehicles, yet it also says that diesels cause 11% of the problem. The small study concentrated on idling vehicles, the 11 % is from all the diesel vehicles on the road. • Donovan: Are there any hot spots, major intersections, that violate standards on pollution? We don't think there are hot spots of carbon monoxide. There is one monitor that runs continuously, at the corner of Mason and Laurel on the CSU campus. If we're not getting any violations there we're probably not getting any in Fort Collins. We maybe adding another site based on a survey. There will be pockets where pollution may be getting worse, even as overall emissions are coming down. About eight years ago we did a study at the corner of College and Drake for three months and it turned out that the two monitors tracked pretty well. On the worst days the permanent monitor was the higher of the two. • Ohlson: The air quality programs of the City are not sufficient. The same questions are asked every 2,4,6,8 years. The City organization acts like a think tank, they study this, and study that. Talk about air quality, but don't have adequate monitoring. Everything moves at a snail's pace, people think things and study things to death. I don't have a problem with regulation, but we never seem to get there. I support the hierarchy -education and voluntary efforts -but we never quite get to the regulation. Let's get a full time FTE working on pollution prevention. Last time I had 50 specific suggestions, none of which made it into the Action Plan. The only reason air quality is improving is because of the technology in new cars and federal standards for new industry. It's all talk, no walk, no action. Let's hire someone who will go out and talk to business about pollution prevention and do something, let's quit studying. Here are my specifics: 1. Indoor Air Quality - What about the poisonous products that we're allowing into our homes, is that being talked about? No 2. Hope that the City lobbies on Sport Utility Vehicles and federal air standards. Natural Resources Advisory Board • January 6, 1999 Page 7 3. Monitoring site —make sure we have adequate monitoring sites Waskom: How much effort is there in getting data out to people in Fort Collins? The only thing I'm aware of is the daily reading in the Coloradoan. Is there any talk about moving toward high pollution "red days"? We tried that in the past and it didn't work out very well. The red pollution days are based on weather forecasts and we were very bad at forecasting. Thought that rather than pretend we can predict bad days and send out an alert, we would try to encourage good habits every dory. Are you familiar with the remote sensing station at the Speer Street off ramp in Denver that reads emissions? Yes, I'm not sure about using that method, but remote sensing in tracking tail pipe emissions is important. Is there any talk about an ordinance that allows vehicles to be ticketed? There's an effort to review the City's ordinances and enforcement procedures. The police don't concern themselves with smoking vehicles. They're not interested in enforcement unless we provide the resources. Ohlson: They will hire more cops, but they won't do environmental enforcement. There would have to be some sort of environmental code enforcement. Won't come from rank and file officers. Donovan: Could you explain the decision to not apply for attainment status, what are the issues? The main question is are we going to be able to stay in attainment very long given our PMT growth rate? The rules under federal regulations require us to project out in the future for ten years. It would be tight for us to show them we could maintain attainment for 10 years. Ina non -attainment area there must be a plan filed that shows how the standard will be attained The State Health Department has to do an emission inventory every three years. Also have the vehicle inspection maintenance plan at the state level. Ohlson: It's always been my opinion that the department wants to put the most positive spin on things. We need to make sure we don't soft peddle the issues. It's never staffs intention to soft peddle these issues. The Growth Management Committee will meet Wednesday, January 13 to review and make recommendations regarding the Air Quality Action Plan. Review and Comment on Upcoming Council Items Districting: A six page agenda item summary was sent over today (Jan. 6). Districting will be the topic ofFriday's brown bag discussion hosted by Councilman Smith. Staff will provide the summary to anyone who is interested. North East Truck Route: This item is coming up January 26. Phil Murphy stated that Tim Johnson would like to suggest that NRAB go on record as being opposed to the Owl Canyon bypass. Phil Murphy will sit down with Tim and discuss the proposal and prepare a draft memorandum. Other Upcoming Agenda items: Natural Areas Rules and Regulations Search & Rescue Horse issues Natural Resources Advisory Board January 6, 1999 Page 8 Land Use Code changes Review Future Agenda Items: January 20, 1999: Natural Areas Acquisitions Update Natural Areas Philosophies Land Use Code Changes February 3. 1999: Cities for Climate Protection Mountain Vista Subarea Plan Downtown River Corridor Plan February 17, 1999: Community Separator Project: Report & Recommendations City Plan Monitoring Ohlson: Have we hired the new person yet? Tom intends to hire a program manager for the Natural Areas Program. Will do majority of acquisitions. Intend to have job description next week, It will probably be mid -March before will be on the job. Sally Craig: Who replaced Rob (Wilkinson)? Kim Kreimeyer has been hired Most of her job is development review, and design for natural areas. Review Action Log See update in packet. • Ohlson: CDOT and the State have admitted that the stuff they've been using on the roads contain heavy metals and another chemical. Would like the City to follow upon this. Staff will investigate. ADJOURNMENT The meeting adjoumed at 9:35 p.m.