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HomeMy WebLinkAboutAir Quality Advisory Board - Minutes - 01/22/2008MINUTES AIR QUALITY ADVISORY BOARD REGULAR MEETING DATE: Tuesday, January 22, 2008 LOCATION: 200 West Mountain — Suite A — Conference room. TIME: 5:30 -8:00 P.M. For Reference: Eric Levine, Chair - 493-6341 David Roy, Council Liaison - 407-7393 Brian Woodruff, Staff Liaison - 221-6604 Board Members Present: Eric Levine, Jeff Engell, Dale Adamy, Dennis Georg, Greg McMaster, Dave Dietrich, Katrina Winbom, Nancy York Board Members Absent: Kip Carrico Staff Present: Brian Woodruff, Lucinda Smith, and Alexis Hmielak Eric Levine called the meeting to order at 5:38 pm Announcements • The Climate Task Force Provisional package is going to the SIP (Strategic Issue Team) team January 23, 2008. The next West Nile Virus group is starting and will have its first meeting January 24. • AQAB member Greg McMaster is a member of this task force. • Unfortunately, they will have a short time frame to get their work done before the season starts this spring. • Greg McMaster voiced his disappointment that the first meeting's agenda is about introductions and ground rules and not jumping right into the work at hand. • Brian Woodruff pointed out that Tess Heffernan will be facilitating the group and he is confident she can move the group forward at whatever pace is required to do the work. Ben Manvel has been in communication with RACQ point person Sarah O'Keefe who has subsequently promised to have a stakeholder meeting in Fort Collins within the next month or so. Opportunity for Public Comment None Approve minutes from December 18, 2007, meeting • Katrina Winborn asked for a clarification on page 5 to read ...the city gives away one compact fluorescent bulb per household... • Nancy York asked for a clarification on page 3 to read... The City Council established a Greenhouse Gas Reduction Goal in 1999 to reduce GHG emissions 30% below projected 2010 levels, by 2010... • Dale Adamy for a rewrite of his suggestion on page 7 to inject smaller vehicles on the bus routes when the routes are underutilized. Added text will be "that a size appropriate vehicle be substituted for the large bus during low ridership periods, in order to reduce emissions." Greg McMaster moved and Nancy York seconded a motion to approve the December 18, 2007, minutes as amended. Approved unanimously. Green Building "Road Map" Dana Leavitt stated that the Green Building Roadmap Project began about 14 months ago comprised of a team of himself, Brian Woodruff, John Phelan and Patty Bigner, with input by the Brendle Group. Dana offered to email a PDF of the plan and the executive summary to any AQAB member who wanted it, but stated it will be posted on the Planning website shortly. He also pointed out that the focus of this plan is external to the City and is designed to work with the citizens in the community. Dana gave a presentation to update the AQAB of the City's new road map for improved and coordinated green building services. Green Building Definition - Green buildings are designed, constructed, and operated to provide maximum benefit to people, prosperity and our planet. Green buildings demonstrate a reduced carbon footprint, energy efficiency, water conservation, waste minimization, resource -efficient materials, pollution prevention, and improved indoor air quality to conserve natural resources and improve environmental quality — both indoors and out. Green building practices extend these concepts to the entire built environment for the life cycle of new and existing buildings, their surrounding sites, and transit interconnections. Dana Leavitt related that the previous state of green building in Fort Collins had been scattered amongst citizens, developers, consultants and existing city services and programs with no main focus. Many outside entities recognized the City as a frontrunner in green building and wanted to know what the city was doing in this arena. As a result, the City recognized the need to go forward with a Green Building Vision. In order to create a roadmap for coordinated and enhanced green building services, the Green Building team conducted: • Interviews of City staff and community stakeholders • Surveys of other key cities/organizations • Surveys of existing City services and programs The result of this research was a Green Building Vision that includes: • Increased community and green building businesses and jobs coming to the City. • Fort Collins to be nationally recognized as a driver of green building • Make green building easier with new building codes that will result in more green building permits within the city. • Create a well established pipeline of services for citizens so they know where to go to get information on current and future green building programs. • Have a coordinated effort among the departments of the City of Fort Collins. Other research done by the team: • Evaluated other cities with LEED certified buildings and city utilities such as Austin, Eugene, Sacramento and Seattle, and determined that Fort Collins falls in the middle of the statistics regarding urban green building. • Surveyed all the existing programs and services in the city relative to the LEED criteria. o Site, energy, water, waste, indoor environmental quality, building materials • Determined sectors the existing programs fell into. o Residential, commercial, industrial, institutional, non-profit, multi -family • Examined existing programs and services o Voluntary — education/awareness and technical/financial assistance o Regulatory — Policies, ordinances, codes and standards. • Charted the above data in a matrix to evaluate them according to the green building elements as defined in LEEDS. Dana Leavitt pointed out some existing programs that encourage green building and conservation. • Section 12-222 of the Fort Collins municipal code prohibits any restrictive covenants by homeowners associations of conservation devices such as solar panels, compost bins or clothes lines. • The Land Use Code has solar orientation standards for single-family developers to dedicate 60% of the lots to be orientated so homeowners can take advantage of solar gain. • Regarding the Mason Street Corridor, there is a Transit Oriented Development Overlay Zone that encourages redevelopment along the corridor as far south as the southern terminus. This would reduce the parking footprint because of its close proximity to the bus and trail system. • Fort Collins Utilities has an Integrated Design Assistance Program that provides financial incentives to help commercial developers and property owners in early stages of design so they can integrate green building standards early on. • Natural Resources provides technical assistance for construction site management and recycling of building materials • We can learn from various countries such as France, Germany, Japan, India, Australia, New Zealand and Sweden currently have green building programs Green Building Roadmap Recommendations • Address the various categories of people in the communities. o Clueless — but are open to learning. o Knowledgeable — who need more information. o Singing to the choir group - who already understand and are doing. • Determine plans for the short term (less than 1 year), mid-term (within 3 years) and ongoing to address: o Minimum performance/remove barriers • Update the commercial energy code. Mike Gebo already working on updating the IBC and IECC. • Research city codes and standards and identify existing barriers to green building. • Identify opportunities to move forward. • Create green building code compliance application tools. • Require green building as prerequisite for public financing. • Regularly review/update residential/commercial energy codes. Encourage innovation • Create web -based access to city green building resources with a link from city's website to green building website. • Promote an integrated design assistance program, to ultimately include single- and multi- family sectors. CSU is already working on this, but they still have a problem getting green building integrated in their projects. • Research potential green building incentives, especially to developers, possibly issuing rebates or reduced cost in development review fees. This will be a challenge to develop. • Provide new building design target tools so that new developers can see where they fit in our plan. • Identify needs and provide external training/education, • On an on -going basis, if we're going to be successful in green building we need to work with partners. • Establish a new project green building track within the Development Review Center. Reward success • Continue existing financial rebate programs such as CFL exchange and Lighten Up program. • Evaluate prescriptive and/or performance building rebates for residential customers. • Develop water efficiency/conservation value structure. • Evaluate/implement technology -specific rebates for energy and water conservation. • The City has applied for a grant from the Governor's Energy Office to get Energy Star rating for new homes. • Provide public recognition for green building leaders/success stories. Right now, we do not have a formal program other than Climate Wise that talks about green building success stories. Build Internal City Capacity • Create a green building team from departments in the City to take us forward. • Build consensus among city leaders and management for a green building vision for Fort Collins. • Raise awareness of LEED requirements for new City buildings. Currently all the new city buildings have to meet basic LEED criteria. • Benchmark city buildings and improve existing building performance. Also inform renovators to know there are energy savings. • Convert this project's matrix of green building programs and services to be a useful tool for green building professionals. • Develop a process for continuous improvement of city green building services by having a knowledgeable staff that can answer or direct questions for answers. • Develop an internal city education program related to green building. • Research and document the local economic benefits of green building and inform owners they can reduce their energy by doing green building. Next steps — 2008 plans rd o As the Green Building Program Manager, Dana Leavitt will be putting together the green building team which will meet once a month for next 6 months. o Create website. Should take about 3-6 months o Need to code all the research and compare them to all the peer cities. o It will probably be 3 years before the Green Building Plan will be fully implemented. The Board discussed Dana Leavitt's presentation. o Nancy York's comment that developers are scraping off old houses in Old Town and enlarging them. In answer to her question if there is there any code to prevent them from increasing the carbon footprint, Dana stated there is not one currently. o He explained it depends on how you look at performance of existing buildings regarding the land use code and building code and determine the benefit without restricting owners from developing their property. It's a matter of property rights vs. sustainability o There are some remodelers that are demolishing houses and are recycling the old building materials. o The city is investigating having a code similar to what Austin, Texas, has that requires when a home sells, it has to meet a certain standard of green building like the radon venting system. o Dale Adamy wondered how to measure the success of a green building program and what would be the increase in building costs. o Dana Leavitt explained there may be a 3-5% increase in construction costs, but they would be quickly offset in energy savings. o Katrina Winborn commented she read office buildings in major cities in the US contribute such a large amount to greenhouse gas emissions that if they became more energy efficient, it might be possible to shut down some coal-fired power plants. o Dennis Georg suggested the team determine the metrics that would measure the ends in order to quantify the success of the goals. Dana explained the infrastructure of the green building plan needs to be in place before they can quantify success, but they will be doing that. o Eric Levine asked if the Green Building Team had involved any environmental groups in any stakeholder meetings, and if not, they should be. o Dana did not know if any environmental groups were invited but attendance at outreach meetings was not as well attended as he would have liked. o Eric would also like to see a list of the groups that were represented and comments the public made at the stakeholder meetings. o Eric asked if Dana had any numbers regarding CO2 saved per year because of green building. o Dana explained that the EAP looks at over all energy consumption and does not break it down to different types of energy. o Lucinda explained that, as part of the Climate Task Force work, the Brendle group was asked to quantify the benefit of changing from the existing Commercial Energy code to the new code under consideration, to put in a greenhouse gas factor so they could update the effectiveness data, but she has not heard back yet. o Dennis Georg quoted some data from the LEED website regarding the energy consumption from all buildings in the US: o 65% energy consumption, 30% greenhouse gas emissions, 30% raw material use, 30% waste output, 12% total water consumption. o Dana Leavitt pointed out 90% of buildings in Fort Collins have already been built so redevelopment is where it's going. o Dave Dietrich asked what the process to get the building codes revised is and where Ft. Collins ranks nationally in building codes. Dana explained that twice a year the Land Use Code is sent to City Council to propose amendments and changes and that, no, he did not have those figures, but the Governor's Energy Office might. o In response to a question from Katrina Winbom whether the team had contacts in other Colorado cities, Dana Leavitt explained no, that is why they had to go outside Colorado to find peer cities that also have city utilities, but the team is looking into it. They are also investigating plans outside the US. o Eric Levine voiced his interest in seeing the various components of the program and how many kilowatt-hours of energy they save. He also asked if there were any metric goals for the program. o Dana suggested Eric contact John Phelan who has information on that. o Also, the team is interested in taking the concept of Energy Star ratings and rating it in whole homes. The Governor's Energy Office is looking into this. The challenge is to remove the ambiguity and differences and have one common program. o Currently, the team has not set parameters for metric goals, but will be working on it. o Eric Levine asked Dana Leavitt to clarify the payback for 3-5% increase in building costs. Dana related the payback would be recouped within 4-5 years in the energy cost savings. o Eric acknowledged Europe is ahead of the US in green building and wondered if we had Europe's building codes in places, what would be the savings. Again, Dana referred him to John Phelan for answers. Ozone — opportunities for Board Input Lucinda Smith announced several upcoming meetings the AQAB would be interested in: o The next public outreach stakeholder meeting will be February 11, at the main Fort Collins Library at 6:30 p.m. She will work with others in the city to be sure this is advertised to the public. She pointed out the draft SIP is due in September and then goes to the Air Quality Control Commission in the fall and then to the state legislature in the winter of 2008. o The RAQC and the Fort Collins MPO are having a joint council meeting March 6, to discuss proposed control strategies. The meeting will be in Frederick, Colorado at D'Augustino's restaurant, 4-6 pm. o In preparation for the March 6 meeting the next MPO meeting will be Feb 7 to discuss what to discuss. This is another opportunity to go as citizens or recommendations. The group discussed the upcoming stakeholder meeting in Fort Collins. o Eric Levine wondered if the meeting would have any focus on ozone. o Lucinda related the Regional Air Quality Council (RAQC) board has endorsed some short term strategies and those could be one focus of the meeting. She felt there was still time to put focus on some others and ozone could be one of them. She will check to see what they are planning. o Eric will survey the AQAB to see what the members would like to see on the agenda. He feels the reason why ozone is a concern and the public health aspects of ozone should be part of the agenda. o Katrina Winborn would like to know where they are now, where they are going, and what opportunities lie ahead. She is also concerned about the high monitors in the Fort Collins area. The group discussed whether or not there should be regular public forums to discuss air quality. o Nancy York stated this type of forum brings recognition to ozone as a problem. o Lucinda Smith pointed out to conduct a public forum costs approximately $8,000, and suggested maybe every other year would be appropriate to hold them. She also stated it was helpful to have the climate change questions added to the previous ones. However, they found the answers keep coming back approximately the same and was not sure what new would be learned. o Dennis Georg suggested the next step could be a sustainability survey that might be more receptive to the public. The group then discussed the merits that the public forum should be about more than air quality and that if the answers are the same, new questions should be asked such as sustainability and green building. Greg McMaster moved and Nancy York seconded a motion to hold a public forum every other year regarding air quality. Motion passed unanimously. Mobility, VMT and MPO estimates Lucinda Smith discussed revised estimates of Vehicle Miles Traveled (VMT) that have come to light that could have a major effect on the upcoming climate plan and its action measures. • The greenhouse gas inventory data in the 1990's was based on the Regional Transportation Plan. From 2001-2005 it used data from the LUTRAQ Team that estimated, based on 1990-1998 data, a 4.9% annul growth rate of VMT until 2005. • Lucinda related that she is wondering how to compile MP data for 2006, as 1990's data is quite dated. She became aware that the MPO, for their 2030 Regional Transportation Plan are using a data set for 2005 (1 billion VMT/yr) which is significantly lower than the LUTRAQ data (1.29 billion VMT/yr), but does not know why it is lower. Using the lower numbers here to estimate 2006 seemed like the logical break between the 1990 numbers. She suggested using them to go forward with the data. • The Group discussed whether they have the right data, the reasons for the revised estimates and whether slowing population growth may be responsible for much of this shift. o Eric Levine recalled a regional 3 year study in 1995-1998 called the Mobility Report Card. Data from the study showed a growth of VMT of 25.6% during the 3 year test = 8% per yr. and also gave figures relative to Fort Collins. Since people logged how many miles they traveled, he felt that study should have accurate data for that time period. o Brian Woodruff pointed out the LUTRAQ team considered fuel use, Federal Highway Administration traffic counts and modeling but chose modeling because, even though models change, calibration to ground count makes it valuable. He also said the apparent discrepancy in data might be real. o Lucinda Smith stated the City's website recently posted revised calculations of Fort Collins population in the Trends Report that may be playing into the model. o Dennis George pointed out many people may work and shop in Ft. Collins, but live elsewhere so they can have more land and less congestion. The group also discussed the necessity of finding a model that is replicable and able to identify change and exchanged ideas how to statistically model this and agreed to email suggestions to each other. Lucinda summarized the group's suggestions: o Report the inventory data in a range, but any other estimates would use the mean. o For the target, the worst case emissions inventory scenario would be used. o The emissions inventory should be based on a set of principles that say the best thing is the current model calibrated traffic ground count. o Try to go back and analyze the data to explain the discrepancy and what caused that, but this may not be doable. o The Task Force needs to discuss how important is it to fill what size gap and how quickly to change the trajectory of the emissions. Special meeting with council members Roy and Manvel Eric Levine reported he spoke with Ben Manvel and invited him to attend the next AQAB meeting to discuss ozone. Eric will work to reschedule the next AQAB meeting for a Monday or a Wednesday in February so that Ben Marvel could attend. He will email the dates to the Board for final consensus and Alexis Hmielak will book a room for the meeting. Eric will continue to find a mutually -agreeable date for David Roy to attend an AQAB meeting. Agenda Planning Items for the February AQAB agenda could include trash hauling, West Nile Virus and items being considered by the MPO that is related to the AQAB. Brief Updates Brian Woodruff reported he had just attended the work session of the Ft. Collins City Council where they were looking at building code amendments, which would include radon mitigation. It was his impression that the Council was favorable to adopting the amendments. However, the Mayor has asked for more data before they can vote on it. Nancy York moved and Dale Adamy seconded a motion to adjourn. Meeting adjourned at 8:31 pm. Submitted by Alexis Hmielak Administrative Secretary I Approved by the Board on �Y , 2008 Signed Date A inistrative Secretary I Extension: 6600