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HomeMy WebLinkAbout2024-11-13 City Council Special Meeting Minutes COTTAGE GROVE CITY COUNCIL SPECIAL MEETING November 13, 2024 12800 RAVINE PARKWAY SOUTH COTTAGE GROVE, MN 55016 TRAINING ROOM - 6:00 P.M 1. CALL TO ORDER The City Council of the City of Cottage Grove, Washington County, Minnesota, held a Special Meeting on November 13, 2024, at Cottage Grove City Hall, 12800 Ravine Parkway. Mayor Bailey called the Special Meeting to order at 6:00 p.m.; he mentioned Council Member Olsen is out of town, and Council Member Garza should be here in about five minutes. So, we’re going to flip the canvassing of the votes to the second item on the agenda so we can go ahead and get started on the workshop first. 2. ROLL CALL City Clerk Tammy Anderson called the roll: Mayor Bailey-Here; Council Member Garza-Arrived after Roll Call; Council Member Khambata-Here; Council Member Olsen-Absent; Council Member Thiede-Here. Also present: Jennifer Levitt, City Administrator; Tammy Anderson, City Clerk; Ken Brittain, Planning Commissioner; Ryan Burfeind, Public Works Director; Zac Dockter, Parks and Recreation Director; Pete Koerner, Public Safety Director; Brenda Malinowski, Finance Director; Emily Schmitz, Community Development Director; Samantha Pierret, Senior Planner; Karla Bigham, Washington County Commissioner; 3. ADOPTION OF AGENDA Motion by Council Member Thiede to approve the agenda; second by Council Member Khambata. Motion carried: 3-0. 4. REGULAR AGENDA Canvass the Abstract Votes Cast from the November 5, 2024, Municipal General Election for the City Council Member Race Staff Recommendation: Adopt Resolution 2024-157 declaring Myron Bailey winner of the four-year Term Mayor’s race, declaring Justin Olsen and David Clausen winners of the four-year term City Council race, and declaring Monique Garza winner of the two-year term City Council race (Special Election). Mayor Bailey said he’d look for a motion on this item. Motion by Council Member Garza to Adopt Resolution 2024-157 declaring Myron Bailey winner of the four-year term Mayor’s race, declaring Justin Olsen and David Clausen winners of the four-year term City Council race, and declaring Monique Garza winner of the two-year term City Council race (Special Election); second by Council Member Khambata. Motion carried: 4-0. Workshop - Holcim Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS) Staff Recommendation: Receive an overview of the Draft Environmental Impact Statement for the Nelson Mine Backwaters Project. Emily Schmitz, Community Development Director, stated this is a meeting a long time in the making, we have a lot of specialists in the room, but this is Holcim’s presentation on their draft DEIS where they will disclose more details. I am going to kick it off to Stantec’s Beth Elliott, who is working on this on behalf of the City, to give kind of an overview of how we ended up where we are and our role in regard to their proposal and the details. Beth Elliott stated I’m an Urban Planner, here with my colleague, Courtney Bot, an Environmental Review Specialist. Stantec is working on behalf of you, the City of Cottage Grove, and we’re working with you on process and with some of our specialists. So, what I want to show you a little bit here is this is a story map; we have created a robust web page on the City’s website for this project, it has the chapters of the Draft EIS, it has this story map, which gives a summary of the process and contents. There is also a Fact Sheet that has something similar, and there’s individual handouts on various topics so people can go just look at the topic that they are most interested in. I just wanted to be able to tell you that there are a lot of resources on the website if you have constituents who are asking questions. This story map is one way people can judge the project. We’re just going to talk about the process and then we’re going to hand it off to the proposer to talk more about the contents of the Draft EIS. So, there’s a lot of stuff here, but I’m just going to go through the process. So, there are three phases of an EIS at this stage level. For those of you who were on the Council a couple years ago, you approved something called the Draft and Final Scoping Decision Document; that laid out the priorities that we were going to evaluate in the EIS and laid out process-specific issues. It laid out kind of some basic order of magnitude for what we were going to study. Where we are today is on the Draft EIS; that’s going to go through its own public review process, and then we get comments, we make final changes to the EIS, and then it comes to you as a Final EIS. Courtney’s going to talk through what your role is, but I just wanted to say that this is a State EIS process; its mandated by a couple parts of the Environmental Rules, based on the magnitude of the mining and the specifics of the mining. Beth asked Courtney to speak about the City’s role as the RGU. Courtney said Beth provided the perfect leadin, so by State Rule, the City of Cottage Grove is what’s called the Responsible Governmental Unit (RGU). As the RGU, per the Rules, it means that you need to oversee that this process is carried out, the one that you’ve been involved in through scoping and now the Draft EIS development. It doesn’t mean you have to be responsible for all the technical pieces except for what I will get to down the road; you have both the proposer’s technical team that had helped them put together the documentation, our team at Stantec does review that, and where we have come to today is we have helped govern and guide a complete Draft EIS for the City to consider. So, the scoping, as Beth mentioned, laid out what was needed to be studied in the Draft EIS, the Draft EIS has been completed per I’ll call it like the cookbook of that scoping document, and where we are today is at the point of determining that the Draft EIS is complete. Is it addressing all of those things that were in the scoping document? And then it can go to the public for comment. Now, we also had a public comment period that was at the Scoping EAW stage that led to the Scoping Decision. So, there has been public involvement and that includes agencies and the general public. They have helped the City as a RGU also figure out are all the things in these documents that we want to see and you want to understand. What I think is sometimes confusing is that by reaching these different milestones, so, stating that the Draft EIS is ready for public review is that there’s like a stamp of approval for the project, and that is not what this is. This is an environmental review of a project, it is a dissemination of information for the project, and then the permitting stage that follows, by law has to come after the Draft EIS and the Final EIS is completed. That stage is where the permitting agencies look at things like wetlands; and so, at that point in time, you go kind of from the RGU and taking care of the environmental review stage to that permitting agency, really focusing on the type of environmental subject being permitted. So, let’s just use wetlands again, for instance, and they kind of hone in on what more do they want to know, what are they going to permit, what kind of mitigation is going to be required. So, it’s really that permitting stage where the final stamps come into play. And I know there are elements that the City will have a role in, on permitting and approval, but it is not just the City; so, I think that’s important to always point out is that the Draft EIS and the Final EIS really aren’t a project approval, they’re putting the right information together for those activities to happen after the Environmental Review. So, I hope that helps explain the role a little bit better. Beth said we’d be happy to answer more questions about that. The final point I want to make, before I turn it over to Holcim, is that the City staff ran a Technical Advisory Committee (TAC) process for two years, from February 2022 to February 2024; it was to hash out a lot of issues related to the process, the scope of the project, like the magnitude, the size, where it was, explored the other alternatives. I wanted to put up here a list of the agencies and organizations that were invited into that process. Again, we can answer more questions, but I wanted to identify that this wasn’t just a singular process; a lot of the commenting agencies and others who have a stake in this project were invited to the table as well. Beth stated I will now turn this over to Tom. Tom said thank you everyone for coming, thanks for hosting. I’ll start with introductions here, introduce the team, then we can just get going on the presentation: Patty Bestler, Holcim Regional Land and Environmental Manager. Cheryl and Shanna from Barr Engineering, they’re the experts, they’re the workhouses behind this document, you can see they have lots of years of experience, very qualified specialists that we had working on this. Tom stated my credentials are down here at the bottom of the page, you’ll notice I don’t have any environmental science or environmental background in my experience here. The idea here is I’m kind of the jack of all trades, I’ve got the mining piece and the environmental piece, and I think it might be easier when we have questions we’ve got the experts here to get us the answers we need. Tom said I’m excited to present this to you guys, this is years in the making, we’ve done a lot of really cool, really scientific things. At the end of the day, when this presentation is done, I think we’re going to be somewhere between 60 and 90 minutes, probably closer to an hour, I hope, depending on how many questions we have. I want to convey to the Council the amount of effort and time and careful thought we put into this process. We took it very seriously and so hopefully I can convey that through these slides as we go through them today. This is the outline of where we’re going to go; after each section, I’ll stop and I’ll ask for questions if you have any. I know a lot of you are very familiar with the operation, but I know we also have some new faces and people that maybe aren’t; so, we’re going to start with some review to get us all on the same background set of facts and then we’ll move forward into the Draft EIS. Holcim is a multinational building materials supplier, and we employ just over 62,000 people in 60 markets; 40% of our business is here in North America. We’ve got four branches of the business: Solutions and Product (roofing membranes, bituminous, and things like that); Aggregate, which we’re going to talk a lot about today; Cement; Ready-mix Concrete, which we’re also going to talk about today. If you zoom in a little bit tighter here to the United States, our headquarters is in Chicago; you can see the markets we participate in on the left and Aggregate’s on the right. We’ve got 350 sites in 43 states; we’re the largest mass producer in the United States, and we’re a leading supplier of aggregate. I’ll mention we’re a very forward-looking company, looking at green pollution, kind of our tagline here is Decarbonize Without Compromise, so we’re looking at ways to reduce the carbon footprint of building materials for supplies but still providing performance our customers expect with our building materials. So, we’re doing a lot of stuff with carbon and I’ll talk a little bit about that. Zooming down even still further to the Twin Cities Aggregate Division here, it consists of six active plants: We’ve got two distribution yards, we’ve got a towing division with bullets and barges on the Mississippi River, roughly 90 operating engineers, and 25 salaried employees to support the local business here in the Twin Cities. You can see we’re kind of strategically scattered around the Twin Cities metro so we can supply materials to all parts of the cities. Zooming in even farther still, everyone is familiar with Cottage Grove; we’re sitting down there on the Lower Grey Cloud Island, we’re in Pool 2 of the Mississippi River, we’re in the City of Cottage Grove, in Washington County. So, that’s where this operation is located. I’ll mention now that we’ve operated in harmony with Cottage Grove for over 40 years, I think that’s when we mixed into Cottage Grove; the operation has been going since the 1950s, we get along with the neighbors and the neighborhood there. Permitting and things and renewals have gone very well, I think we’ve got a good working relationship with the City, and we’re following the rules and doing what we need to do as a responsible employer. The Nelson Operation, PAS Facilities owns the property, owns the island that Holcim is mining on; we have a longstanding lease with PAS Facilities to mine the property, and this operation of mining and barging is as early as about 1953. This is a picture from our archives from 1957, and you can I’ve got a circle here; you can just see the start of where we started mining back in 1957. You’ll notice the island is primarily farmland, no inland lake because we did that later with a dredge, and I’ll show you a bit about that in a little bit here. I’ve got about a three-minute video, it’ll kind of run you through the operations; the video was played. Tom said all right, so that walked you through the process there. You can see the star of the show is that dredger, and we’ll talk a lot about that. It starts there, material is extracted, by the time it gets to the end, it’s been washed and loaded on barges, and then it goes up the river. These are the materials that we’re mining, and we’re going to talk a bit about what they’re used for shortly. So, Holcim’s river system consists of the Nelson Sand and Gravel operation, which we’re here to talk about tonight, and on Upper Grey Cloud Island, we have the Larson Quarry. Very unique geology here where we’ve got a limestone quarry and adjacent to it is a sand and gravel source. Typically, those things are not positioned that way, so unique geology there. These materials are both loaded on the barges, barged up I think it’s like 18 river miles, up to our St. Paul distribution yard. We used to be able to continue up to our Minneapolis yard, but the upper St. Anthony Lock and Dam was closed in 2015; so, with that closure, we’re no longer able to barge all the way up there, so now we stop at our St. Paul distribution yard. A little bit about the transportation with Nelson Aggregate because it’s an important part of the story. One barge of materials is about 1,250 tons, that’s about 50 trucks worth of materials, and you can see the CO2 savings there for that. If you expand that out, annually it’s about 540 barges, that’s 27,000 roundtrip truck traffic trips, that’s major CO2. If you look at the 25-year lifespan of the project, those are very impressive numbers in terms of CO2 savings and traffic reduction with this river system. No matter how you slice it, these are general numbers available publicly, it’s not so much the values that we have there, but it’s the trend; barging is significantly more efficient, rail’s next, and trucking is last. So, we’re able to do this economically and very environmentally friendly. There’s a bunch of societal things that are involved with CO2 that our barging helps support as well; if you’re not familiar with the buying of these construction materials process, the DOT is running pilot projects right now with the Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs). The State is worried about these body carbons in steel and concrete materials. So, part of their purchasing decisions are going to be based on not only price, but how much of body carbon is in those; so, basically, an EPD is like a nutrition label of your concrete and how much body carbon is in there. They’re obviously trying to get the least amount they can, and they’re going to make purchasing decisions based on that. So, that’s something that’s coming, we’re working on these now. The DOT is trying to reduce vehicle miles traveled, that’s a goal of theirs, and we support that. Just a random headline here, Affordable Housing is definitely something that’s at the forefront, things people are worried about and talking about, as well as just a housing shortage in general. We need to get materials to build housing, and this is a 2022 article on trucking prices; it hasn’t gotten much better since then. We have a shortage of drivers, we have a shortage of trucks, and this is something that we’re going to see continuing as we move forward. So, the river system supports a bunch of other societal goals as well, including reducing the CO2 emissions from trucks. If you look at the end user of what are these materials used for, 80% of these products are used in Ready-mix concrete; this is kind of a volumetric representation of what a yard of concrete looks like. You can see that fine aggregate, or sand, and of course aggregate rock, makes up a pretty significant amount of a big yard of Ready-mix concrete. Concrete is a perishable product because as everybody knows it gets hard; so, hauling concrete much over an hour gets to be kind of tricky. So, these concrete plants are located as close to the end users as they can; so, these three Ready-mix plants are the primary customers of Nelson materials. They’re located in a market that needs Ready-mix concrete surrounding those plants. The demand for concrete is not going to slow; we’re trying to fix infrastructure, trying to get housing shortages fixed so concrete demand is going to increase, as well as the aggregate demands that go into that concrete. Variations of this river system, Nelson, Larson, and these plants have built the Twin Cities since the 1950s; the Nelson facility was a major aggregate supplier earlier on, and it’s still a big player in the market today. Key projects and supplies, probably the highest profile would be the St. Croix Crossing bridge; those supplies by Nelson built very cool projects: Huntington Bank, US Bank stadium, big projects like this use Nelson materials, but as the RGU, these are also going into the things that you are working on here. I think this is a little bit dated list, we’ve done some new stuff as well; probably the most recent one was the roundabout by the gas stations there, we were hauling sand to that project and very reasonably so. It’s not just big stuff, but curbs and gutters, sidewalks, driveways use the pouring concrete, too, and use these materials. One last kind of comment on the importance of aggregate, probably not known by the average person would be the importance these materials play, and how much of them we intake: So, 400 tons of sand and gravel in a house; 15,000 tons in a school; 85,000 tons in a length of mile pavement. The one I like to show down here is these are all from the National Stone, Sand, & Gravel Association: 10 tons of aggregate per person per year to maintain our standard of living. So, that’s 5-1/2 pounds, basically the weight of these materials, for every person in the State to maintain our standard of living. So, these are important materials, and this is an important project. Proposed Project Purpose Statement: Exercise Holcim’s lease to continue mechanical dredging operations in an adjacent backwaters area of the Mississippi River to supply to the Twin Cities and other local markets high grade, construction quality natural aggregate for an additional 20-to-25 years. The proposed project will extend the functionality of the existing Nelson Sand & Gravel Processing Facilities and ship the items to the market using the existing Holcim barge system. Tom stated now we’re going to dive into the project, and we’ll start with the backwaters area, which we’re going to talk a lot about. You can see the picture is aerial imagery from 1927 and then the same shape is down here in 2021, the same overlay. What you’ll notice in 2027 is the dry land; so, that 395 acres was used primarily as agricultural pasture land before 1930. Everything changed in 1930 when Lock & Dam #2 went into place; they put the dam in, they flooded that land, and its now currently under water and it looks how it does here today. The area is bounded on the north by Lower Grey Cloud Island and on the south by these barrier islands built by the Army Corps. So, we’ve done extensive legal work to prove that PAS Associates maintains their rights to their property in this backwater area, it’s a very niche legal area to do riparian water rights and things; so, we’ve got some experts there that have done a lot of work, and that’s been provided to the DNR to show that just because that property was flooded does not mean that PAS Associates has lost their legal rights to that property, and that could be important. Another important detail is that this is an expansion of the existing mine: We’re not changing processing techniques or equipment, we’re not changing run rates, hours of operation, staffing, barge capacity, the annual trips; all of that stuff is being maintained, it’ll be similar to what it is now, but we’re expanding an existing operation. If we get into land use a little bit and why that’s important, there are rules for mining in the Mississippi River Critical Corridor Areas: New mining is not allowed, expansion or moving of an existing mine is, and so this expansion is compatible with these guidelines, so that’s an important point I wanted to cover. Kind of the star of our show here is the floating dredge; it was commissioned in 1997, and it was the largest piece of equipment of its kind at the time. It’s got two 13 cubic yard plant shell buckets that can mine up to 200 feet in the water. It’s electrically powered and it’s got environmentally-friendly hydraulic oil systems on it, so it’s similar to a vegetable oil; so, in the event that we would have something rupture, it’s environmentally friendly that way. It floats on pontoons and uses a series of floating conveyors to get the material back to land, and it moves with winches on the corner of each ear that are anchored back on the shore. So, the point I want to make here is this is not self-powered; there are not big tanks of diesel fuel on here or lots of petroleum products. It is a very cool piece of equipment and runs on electricity with environmentally-friendly hydraulic fluid in it. This is the backwaters area, and so our project is to just take this floating dredge here, put it out in the backwaters, and proceed to mine this material out here for the next 20-to-25 years. There was some concern from the TAC when we proposed the project about blending the inland lake water with the river water; basically, what I’m trying to show here is these black lines would be piles. So, there’s a way we can draft pile, we can mine in with the dredge to a point, move the pile, fill in behind it, and then walk the dredge out, so we’re not blending two waters. Again, I confirmed with the TAC that we have a solution here to avoid doing that. So, that’s how we would get the dredge out there. We’re going to talk about these particular features of the backwaters throughout this presentation, so I want to make sure we understand what they are. We’ve got barrier berms, so we’re putting berms in place to close off the backwaters area from current; so, we’re going to fill in where the Army Corps islands are not there, so we’re going to fill those in so there are barrier berms there. We’ve got a conveyor corridor, which runs down here, and then you can see these shoot into the different phases; so as the dredge moves to progress through these phases, there’s nothing magical about this line or that line, but it’s just generally phases. We will continue to make a land-to-water connection in these conveyor corridors as we move out the progress with the project. We’re going to move the dredge through this area that I showed you, but then this is going to be a winter slip area; so, when we’re done mining at the end of the fall, we’re going to put that dredge back in that slip and then do maintenance on it in the winter to get it ready to go, and then we bring it out in the spring. So, those are features of the project area. Washington County Commissioner Karla Bigham said so, maybe I’m just confused; you’re going to dredge from where to fill that in, originally? Maybe I just spaced that out or you didn’t say; Tom replied I think I’m going to answer your question here shortly. If I don’t, I’ll come back to it. Tom said so, we’re going to move the dredge out here, and we’re going to start mining for sand and gravel for construction materials. If any of you are fortunate enough to come out and take a look at that thing while its running, you understand we have a lot of excess sand in the mining process. So, that excess sand in Phase 1 is proposed to be put back in the lake, and we do this for reclamation and mitigation in the inland lake there. We have to establish a hole to get started, and then as we progress through the project, we will put that excess sand behind it and continue to move through the phases of the mining. When we end at the end, as I said before, excess sand is put behind us for filling in shoreland areas for mitigation and reclamation, to utilize boats and things. When we end, we’re going to have on average 100-foot water body there, and I’m trying to work with the Army Corps here that are in great need of places to put dredge spoils; this would be a very beneficial use and a good synergy there. So, we’ll have to get there when we get there, but that’s something we’re looking at, so. Does that answer your question? Commissioner Bigham replied yeah, is the Army Corps going to cooperate with you doing that, do you think? Or is that what you’re waiting on? Tom replied right, so there’s a State process and there’s a Federal process; we’re in the State process. Right now, we’re trying to just identify what’s out there, identify what we’re impacting, then we’re going to go to permitting, and we’re going to have to see how we can work that out. We’re outside the navigational channel, so the navigational channel, I maybe should have mentioned that, is out here. This is the Army Corps’ jurisdiction, you need this opening to keep commerce going, right? And we’re in this backwaters area, which has legal ownership by PAS Associates. Commissioner Bigham asked do you have a Plan B if they say no, or not really? Tom replied this is Plan A, B, and C. Council Member Garza said thank you, the presentation’s been great. I have a question, and I’m just piggybacking off of Commissioner Bigham; when you do take the excess sand that you’ll be filling in that barrier, once you make it to the end, that’s going to go away so that the flow will continue again, or is that going to create a new? Mayor Bailey said they’re not interrupting the flow; Council Member Garza said well, the barriers would, to keep it from going through. Tom said the barrier berms will be there when we finish the project; I suspect that’s something we’ll have to talk about as we get further down the road, whether we want to leave those or whether we want to take them back out. And there may be some mitigation reasons or different reasons why we wanted to or not, but that’s something we have to figure out down the road. Council Member Garza said and that was my question because of the Army Corps already putting those islands there, there was a purpose that they didn’t connect them all, so I just wondered how that. Tom said yes, and I’m going to get into it a little bit. We did some very cool models to show the effect of what we’re doing out there, so in a little bit I’ll share that with you, and then there might be a few questions on that as well. Council Member Khambata asked what happens with the dredge when you get to the other end? Tom replied operationally, every winter we’re going to walk it back to the slip here and do maintenance on it, so we walk it back to the slip there and we decommission it there and we take it apart. Council Member Khambata asked will this be the final phase of mining in this region for you, for sand and gravel? Tom replied yes. Mayor Bailey said quick question for you, and maybe you’re going to answer it, but I’ve heard different stories; what you’re basically saying is when you do the back channel mining, you’re going to create this 100-foot hole, if you will, on the back channel. The Army Corps of Engineers wants to dredge the main channel again, so at this point, they are trying to say that they want to put that material into the interior lake, is that correct? Tom replied correct. Mayor Bailey said and what you’re proposing is, instead of putting it in the interior lake, they could dump it in where you guys are going to be taking a lot of this product out. Tom replied yes, it’s a great place to do that work. Council Member Thiede asked so is it really just 20-25 years? I mean, I’ve been on the Council for 13 and Planning Commission for another 5, and all the times I’ve listened to it, it’s been 20-to-25-years; and it feels like it’s just a continuation in terms of looking for other ways to use those connections to the water and the river and so forth. Tom replied so, my next slide is partial turnback of the island is possible, so I don’t know if this exactly answers the question, but this is our projected best guess on drilling more record of what’s out there and our annual sales. You know, the economy can go great here, the economy can crash, but this is a legitimate best guess as to what’s out there. Holcim’s aware, for PAS Associates or the City or the County, it’s important that parts of this island start to be developed and start to be utilized. Holcim does not own the property, so it’s not up to us, it’s not our plans, but we will support this however we can to facilitate partial turnback of things. Our intent is to not hold this entire area in control for the backwaters process. So, again, we don’t have a say in that, but we’re more than willing to work with all the parties involved to try and facilitate that. Council Member Garza asked what does the topography, so to turn it back to an island to be usable; how does that, what does that look like? Is it going to be all sand flatland, are you going to make it green again, are you putting trees back? Like, what does that do? Tom replied reclamation obligations are going to be to basically smooth out the elevation so we have stable slopes, and we’re going to have to topsoil, seed things so those plants take root so we don’t have erosion problems. So, it’s going to be a flat, seeded area, and then whatever development plans come, they’re going to end up carving it up and shaping it how it needs to be for that development. Council Member Garza asked, realistically, what does that look like as far as timeline? So, if you have this land that is ready to be reclaimed, what do we envision, 2 years, 5 years? How long will it take to reclaim that land? Tom replied well, we’ve probably got 5 years of mining still to go before we’re out of reserve on the inland area. So, for that foreseeable future, I think we’re going to have our operations pretty much running as they are now, but as we wind down on the inland lake, there’s no plan, it obviously will be ready to go so there’s no disruption out in the backwaters. So, it’s something we can be working ahead of ourselves here and getting this reclamation done so that when we’re done mining, reclamation is ready and things can proceed. Ken Brittain said I’m curious, you mentioned with getting a barge out into the backwaters and protecting that and not mixing the river water with the lake water; what is the water quality difference between the river and the lake? Tom replied it’s not a concern of mine, but it was a concern of the TAC members. We’re going to go through and explain very vivid details of a lot of the ecological enzymes that are out in the backwaters area there. I’m not entirely sure where that or what that concern found, but it was expressed, and so we have a solution there to deal with that. Tom said the Proposed Project has been described, we got the Background in, so now we’re going to dive into the Draft EIS. Stantec did a good job describing why we need to do this, but I will tell you just a brief history: We started this process in the mid-2000s, we were up to the point of having a Draft EIS, but then we had TAC mention all these things that we’re going to talk about here. We did not release it for public review, as the economy went down, and we decided not to continue forward with it. So, now we’ve restarted this process again; you’re going to see some references to studies that were done in 2008, 2010, and that’s the reason why, because we started those studies back then. We’ve updated them to the present conditions, but that’s the history and why you’ll see some of that as we move forward. Also, I won’t spend any time here because Stantec did a pretty good job of explaining where we’re at in the process of the Draft EIS. Our TAC here, as Holcim staff, is to investigate potential alternatives for the Proposed Project; we need to identify and provide detailed information on the extent of all potentially significant environmental impacts for a project, and we need to identify methods to reduce or mitigate any adverse environmental impacts to the project. So, that’s what our job is and that’s what I’m going to walk you through, on how we’ve done that. The backwaters project is a complex project, and you will see that shortly on why that is; there are multiple stakeholders involved, and we’ve decided to go the route of get the EIS done, identify all the important environmental things that are out there, and then move to the permitting phase and get serious about how we’re doing the mitigation and things like that. Stantec kind of touched on it here, this is not meant to approve or deny a project, but it’s information to guide permitting. So, we’re nowhere near going out there and mining the backwaters yet, but this is a big step to take in the process. Again, I’ll mention the project life is 20-to-25 years. When we walk the dredge out here on day one, we don’t impact this entire area; so, it’s by phase and by as we go, and we can mitigate behind us as we’re proceeding. So, when you’re looking at these impacts, it’s not all at once; just remember that as we go through. This is kind of a by the numbers of Holcim’s efforts on this EIS to date; the small numbers are on the lefthand side and you go to the big numbers on the right. We’ve been working on this for almost four years, it officially started in March 2021. We’ve had 10 meetings with Holcim, the DNR, and the Army Corps; we’ve had 62 biweekly meetings between Holcim and Cottage Grove staff. We’ve had 18 staff meetings, Stantec talked about these; there’s a laundry list of interested parties and agencies and associations that were involved in these. These were meetings where we threw out all these ideas, and they provided feedback, concerns, questions, and comments. We took that information and worked it back into our document. We’ve had 76 large subject matter experts working on this in 33 disciplines. I don’t have the number for Stantec, but you guys have kind of peer reviewed all of this stuff, so a lot of experts at Stantec check our work and make sure everything makes sense there. We’re at a document that’s over 500 pages at this point, so that’s kind of the high level where we’re at. We’re going to dive into alternatives analysis for the project in question. Potential mining locations need to meet a lot of criteria: Quality is number one, there’s a great loss to the State where the quality of the aggregate there will not meet the construction investigation for concrete. Quantity has to be there, you have to have enough to be economically viable to mine it. It has to be undeveloped land, you can’t mine for sand and gravel near a shopping center or housing developments. We want to be away from dense populations. We want to be close to the end-user market. We need properties that’s not tied up in AG Preserve or other agricultural programs. Back in 2000, the Minnesota Geological Survey in conjunction with the University of Minnesota and the Metropolitan Council did a study on the inventory of the seven-county metro aggregate; the prediction in 2000 was that we would be running out in 2028. We’re not going to run out in 2028, but these materials are getting more scarce in the marketplace; so, even back in 2000, we recognized that this is going to be an issue for the cities so we’re looking for sources all the time. Another kind of interesting tidbit about the backwaters is the unique shape of the reserve. When we’re mining aggregate, we’re looking for quality. So, just very basic math on this, if you’ve got a 200-foot deep amount of deposits in the backwaters, that’s 200 acres; in order to get that similar reserve in the public sites, Dakota County, for example, the mining space is around 40 feet, you’d need 1,000 acres to make up for that 200 acres in the backwaters. So, that’s something we have to consider as we’re searching for alternates. If we’re going to do an alternate in the backwaters, we need a lot of property. As we’re looking at alternatives, we’ve already talked about the trucking if we don’t go to barges, so that’s something else we considered. So, we have a long list of alternatives on the left side. These alternatives came from TAC meetings and suggestions from members, why don’t you do this or what about that or could you do this? So, we put them down, and we have a very robust screening process, which is a 75-page appendix to the EIS that runs through and filters all of these things down to basically four alternatives and our full project over here. We’ve got the rationale in there for why we liked one more and one we didn’t. We’ll cover what those alternatives are now: A) No Action Alternative: That would be to not do anything and mine for the next five years until the Nelson Mine would run out, and we’d rely on the market to fill the gap. This does not meet the purposeful needs of the project. Backwaters Project: The proposed action. Baldwin Lake: Alternative Mississippi River site, it’s 1-1/4 miles up the river, to drill that area as there’s a mineable aggregate reserve there. We believe there would be similar legal ownership and use similar mining methods and would use similar reclamation there; so, it’s very similar to the proposed Backwaters Project. The disturbance acreage there is about 232 acres, so that’s one alternative we carried forward. Reduced Footprint: A modified version of Alternative B, the full Backwaters Project, a reduced scale. We’re trying to find areas that we get the best bang for our buck, in terms of eliminating environmental impacts without eliminating or losing a lot of aggregate reserves. It will reduce the mining area by 30 acres; the other scale we’re balancing here is you can hack this project back as far as you want, but at some point there’s not enough aggregate there to be economically viable. Upland Alternative-Coats Sites: This is a site away from the river, and this is a pretty cool deal with the rate of approach to find what we could potentially mine. It’s a GIS exercise and we started with the ten-county metro, and we overlaid the DNR’s Aggregate Potential Map. Then we removes urban areas and public lands, then we removes sites under 120 acres, which would be the bare minimum. Then we limited distances at 20 miles as we supply the three remnant plants that use these materials; they’re the customers for these projects, so we need to get that material out there. Then we removed the areas by residential housing, golf courses, wetlands, etc. As we tightened the net on what’s available, we ended up with shapes that we call Coats Sites, there’s a Coats polygon in Dakota County; this purple outline is basically a site, it’s 949 acres, so it’s a big piece of land. Some information about that: DNR areas of aggregate potential are not guaranteed; they’re based on well logs, there may or may not be aggregate there, you don’t know until you drill it. That area is encumbered by intermittent streams, and this is a spiderweb down here of hazardous liquid pipeline, that’s a killer for an aggregate project because you can’t mine that area. It’s in three jurisdictions, the City of Rosemount, the Town of Hope, and Vermillion Township, which currently has a mining moratorium in place; 12 residents, 29 structures, 2 commercial buildings, 27 parcels, 18 landowners. It doesn’t meet purpose and need for the projects; we’re not using the barge system like the existing mine uses to do this. The other thing about this upland site is it’s not presently owned by Holcim and it’s not reasonably available to these changes. There are EQB rules and guidelines on this that suggest we didn’t have to check it, but it was important for us to put this in here and we took a look at it. Council Member Garza asked with that Reduced Footprint option, I see that you’re still needing to bring the dredge through, so is that still going to be a pretty good impact there? Tom replied this is a caveat of the reduced scope; thank you, I was going to talk about that. So, we still have to take the dredge out through here, we’re not going to try to mine in this area, but we are going to have to make a temporary transfer channel. The dredge draft is 10-to-12 feet, and we’ve got to dig this out so we can safely pull it through here because this is very shallow water. Again, we’re going to start mining, and then that would get filled back in, and we believe we can do that in a very short period of time, so it’s a temporary impact. Then, rather than continuing to use that and slipping here, we move our slip area to the other side here, and this is where we’d park the dredge in the winter to do maintenance. So, in the EIS we go into very great detail, the impacts of what we’re not doing here, what we’re doing here, and how that all shakes out. There were no other questions, so Tom stated we’ll dive into the EIS. Chapter 4 is your meat and potatoes of our EIS; we have 202 pages of information in there, and it is very technical, very detailed, but it is needed. Chapter 5 is your Cliff notes, so there’s a big table in here that lists out all the alternatives and compares each impact category across the alternatives; he went on to explain in detail how the Chapter 5 table works. If you look at what we’ve covered so far, we’ve briefly touched on land coverage and land use with the MRCCA, we just hit groundwater and air quality, transportation and traffic I think we’ve covered pretty well. So, the big-ticket items I think are the ones in yellow here, these are the ones that people are going to pick up the phone and call or ask questions about or be concerned about. These are also the areas that we’ve had this long list of very qualified people with lots of experience work very hard to get to those details on what the effects would be; so, we’re going to focus on these, and we’re going to walk through each one: Surface Water: We’re proposing to build a berm in the backwaters area, and we’re going to dig a 200-foot deep hole; so, we need to worry about flood elevations and impacts, sediment transport was brought up in TAC meetings, head-cutting potential was a big one in TAC meetings, and underground float stability is another thing we had to worry about. So, how we did this: It’s called a Headrest 2E Hydraulic Model, that’s all I know about it, it’s very data driven. We did it originally in 2010, we updated it in 2023; it’s massive data sets with cloud computing, and I’ve been told these simulations take several weeks to jump through because there’s so much data in there. So, we took data from the United States Geological Service, we took input from TAC members, we took input from Stantec and their professionals, and all the concerns that were had we put this in the Sediment Transport Model, we simulate flood events, and what comes out of this elaborate model is it shows what our effects of the project are on the river. So, we’ll start here, this is actually the river, your island is here, this is what the simulation outputs look like. The DNR has a no-rise tolerance in the river, 0 feet; our model indicates a maximum of .02 feet, which is a quarter-inch increase in the 100-year flood level. We believe no structures would be impacted by this, but nonetheless, we could mitigate this probably by widening the main channel or doing some other things with the vicinity. We need to work that out with the Army Corps and the DNR during permitting. Alternately, I’m told we could do a letter of mass change, and that would be another way to go about it. So, that was the first thing that the model told us. Again, there was concern about how building these barrier berms was going to affect flow of the river. The modeling determined that there would be 4-1/2 feet of erosion depth in the main channel, kind of up here, at the start of the project area. When flood events happened, obviously, finer sediment was deposited in our backwaters area, and we would mine through that and it shouldn’t be an issue. The modeling predicted no risk of head cutting; head cutting is like very aggressive scouring of the channel, that was a concern, but multiple iterations of the model showed that that wasn’t a big concern. Float Stability: If you look at this graphic here, your sand and gravel are the yellow, you’ve got these clay layers. When we mine, we want stable bank floats 3:1, 4:1 underwater, and there’s a concern that maybe this clay could make things unstable. So, there’s been recommendations that if we are going to proceed with this, we need to do some more testing to determine the engineering properties of that clay. Realistically, I think this is pretty much business as usual for us, we’re mining similar topography now and we haven’t had to deal with that, but that was another outcome of that. Wetlands: We’re worried about wetland resources, assessing what’s there, and mitigation as far as wetlands go. Our approach here is that Barb did a desktop review of agency data, then they went out to the field and used that data to form their data in the field; so, we’ve got a very-detailed report that’s been submitted. In fact, an evaluation panel walked the area and had boats on the river, and there were a few agencies involved with that experience. The result of this work was presented at TAC, to all these agencies here. We’ve also had several meetings with the DNR and Army Corps to discuss potential mitigation strategies on this. The wetland delineation is a 67-page report; we had two ecologists spend three days in August, 2021 to walk the area. This work was using means and methods approved by the Army Corps and the Washington Conservation District and the DNR, so we made sure we had them in the loop when we went out there. We did some of this on foot and some of this in kayaks, and all the areas were GPS of the exact location, pictures taken, soil tested, and basically the wetlands classified. I did not know this before I started this project, there is more than one kind of wetland: We have fresh wet metal, a very small percentage out there; shallow, open water is a large portion of it; something called bluff-line forest; shallow marshes; and deep marshes. So, all of that information got put into very detailed GIS maps to know exactly what is out there, and we’ve got a total of 296 acres of wetlands; we’re not planning on impacting all of it, but we’ve done the legwork there to know what we have out there. One acre of wetland requires a 2:1 ratio of mitigation, so we’re looking at 179 acres of potential impact for the project, so we would need 360 to get credit. Any mitigation we propose and want to do is going to have to be approved by the Army Corps and the DNR and the Washington Conservation District. We’re proposing doing some mitigation on the lower island, in the inland lake; we’ve got some concepts there that can mitigate a lot of that area we’re going to impact. We could do other projects, too. I’m curious if there is some opportunity for habitat movement at the Cottage Grove park. So, there are some creative solutions there if we need it, and we’ve got the opportunity to do a lot of good things and hope to counteract the impacts we have in the backwaters. Examination of Hazardous Materials and Wastes: So, if we’re going to go mine the backwaters, we need to worry about sediment sampling, sediment movement, and PFAS. I want to do an important clarification before we get into this: The proposed project, mining sand and gravel with a clamshell dredge, does not create PFAS, PCPs, PAHs, and we’ll talk about those in a minute for metal. These materials are already existing, either naturally or have been deposited there, we’re not producing them as we mine. Also, I want to clarify the proposed project is not anticipated to impact groundwater quality. Water’s flowing towards the river, not from the river towards groundwater, so there shouldn’t be any impact to groundwater quality. The proposed project wants to reuse materials dredged from the river; this is nothing new, the Army Corps exports a million plus cubic yards of dredged material out of Pool 2 annually to put that material on land. Regulations for dredged materials are based on a concentration of pollutants, not just the mere presence of them; so, we rely on Soil Reference Values (SRV) and there’s a residential limit and there’s a commercial limit, and that’s what we use to gauge what the beneficial use of the dredged material can be. So, if we look at what we’ve done, we sampled in 1998, we sampled in 2009, and then we sampled again in 2021. I’m going to focus on the 2021 sampling because that gives the latest and greatest list of tasks that the MPCA recommends. We were analyzing drain sizes, metals, you can see they’re listed, polychlorinated biphenyls, those are found in electrical transformers and fluorescent lights and things, phosphorus, nitrates, organic carbons, and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons from runoff from asphalt pavement sealants. This is what a sample looks like, as it’s pulled out. The range size distribution was very positive, and you’ll see sandy, sandy silt, silty sand, and sand with silts, and we want sand; sand is bigger particles, the finer clays and silts are what hold onto those contaminants. So, we’re happy with the particle size there. Of the 16 results, we had 2 samples for cadmium and chromium exceeding the residential SRV, and we had two samples for PAH exceeding the residential SRV. No samples exceeded the industrial commercial SRV out there. So, we’ve got a very good idea of what we’ve got in that way. The MPCA has sampled in the river, and we reviewed all the 12 samples within 1 mile of the proposed project: 2 PFAS were identified, they also had PFCA, both were below the residential and recreational SRVs. So, we’ve done our homework out there to figure out what we have and what the levels are. Again, back to our important clarification: The mining process is not producing these materials, they’re already there. We rely on SRVs, we had a few samples over residential, we had no samples over commercial values. Planning Commissioner Ken Brittain said so, you mentioned you did have samples that had some of these values in it, and then you’re talking about industrial vs. residential. Are you talking about the sand and gravel, what you’re going to do with that, or are you talking about sediment that you’re moving out of the way? Tom replied we’re talking about dredge materials we’re moving out of the way. Once we get into the sand and gravel, those materials don’t harbor those contaminants; they’re below the value and the drain size is large enough where they’re not there. Commissioner Brittain said so these sediments that you move out of the way, is that something that’s going to be generated through the entire 25 years or just at the beginning? Tom replied it’s only the surface of the deposit, the very top, basically its the bottom, but riverbed, basically; so, we’ll have to see. You know, we’re going to do this in phases, and there’s no way we would strip the entire area at one time. So, each year, we would go ahead and do that in stepwise processes, test it, figure out what we have, and then figure out what we can do to manage this. Commissioner Brittain said so, you end up with this sediment, and then you do periodic testing, and testing based on some schedule to determine oh, this stuff can go here, this stuff can go there, so that you can appropriately dispose of it or use it. Tom replied use it, yes. Commissioner Brittain said okay. Council Member Khambata said so you’re basically mimicking the dredging process that the Army Corps already does. Tom replied yes, to some degree. Council Member Khambata said so, I think maybe on a larger scale than their like annual output; like they’re disturbing the riverbed when they’re moving material. What guidelines or mitigation techniques are required? Because that riverbed is, you know that stuff has accumulated over a matter of decades, and when you’re stirring it up, you know, like it’s either going to go downriver, or how do you contain that sediment and keep it from causing more contamination? Because now you’ve got all this concentrated sediment over a matter of decades, and now you’re kind of like stirring it back up in the water; how do you mitigate that or how does the Army Corps mitigate that? Because obviously they are running a similar type of operation, and that seems to be allowable, so I guess I’m just curious what the protocol is. Tom replied I’m not familiar with what the Army Corps, what their means and methods are, but I know it’s been something we’ve talked about. We’ve got barrier berms up to limit flow from currents in the area, and we’ve talked about silt curtains and other things even while we’re operating, to make sure that we’re keeping this sediment contained in the area that we’re operating in. So, we’re going to have to use that practice in that way to contain that. Council Member Khambata said okay, thank you, that was my only question. Wildlife: Tom said all right, so we’ll switch gears to wildlife. So, specifically here we’re talking about birds, butterflies, and bats, and then we’ll go into the aquatic wildlife in a second. This process starts with a database query to the State, they’ve got a tool and a database query. For the Federal, they’ve got an NHIS database. If we query these things, they will tell you what species of concern or species, threatened and endangered, are coming within 1 mile of the proposed project. We also did field habitat surveys for bumblebees and migratory waterbirds, and I’ll talk about those in a second. These are the listed animals in the area: The Northern Long-eared Bat has got a Federal status, the Rusty Patched Bumblebee has got a Federal status. The Bald Eagle is protected under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act. We’ve got a Loggerhead Shrike and a Henslow Sparrow; those are birds that have a State status. So, these are the things that we queried to within 1 mile of the Project Area. As far as our surveys go, we did a survey in 2021, no Rusty Patched Bumblebees were found. There was suitable habitat for bees and that was identified. We did bird surveys in 1997 and 2009 in the backwaters area, and the purpose was to document what migratory birds were using the area. We identified 40 species using the area, and it’s primarily a stopover site, they’re not nesting there, and you can see the list of those down there; so, we have a very good, thorough understanding of what birds are using that area. Habitat Avoidance is a big deal with these species here; this is nothing new, we’re mining in other areas around the State and we’re currently using these practices. Long-eared Bats: You want to avoid impacting trees and removing trees in a certain period of time, when they’re doing their upbringing, that’s a practice we’re doing now. Rusty Patched Bumblebees: You want to avoid construction disturbances during certain times and we can do that to avoid impacting the bees, and replacing disturbed areas with flowering species is another habitat benefit. Bald Eagles: We’ll be conducting surveys for nests prior to disturbing new areas. Henslow Sparrow and the Loggerhead Shrike: We want to avoid disturbances during the breeding and nesting seasons, and we want to do some surveys and make sure there’s nothing there before we start. Again, these are things we’re doing now in other areas, so nothing new for us as miners. Aquatic Biota: This is my favorite section, we did some really cool stuff here, and it’s important to share with you. Mussels is one that we did a lot of work on, so we did a Level 1 Mussel Survey, generating an 81-page report. We had 11 divers spend 10 days in the backwaters area in the fall of 2021. This survey was carefully coordinated with the DNR and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service; they had their input on how this should be done. They divided the backwaters area into half-acre cells, and they searched each one for 20 minutes. They observed mussels and tried to feel for them and see what was there. Whenever they found something, they’d take it out and catalog it and put it back; they can keep it out of the water for five minutes or less to do that. This is what the survey area divers did in the backwaters area, I can’t imagine diving in that area. From their findings from this grid, then they came back and made this map; this shows the frequency that mussels were found and it’s got a key on here for which mussel species they found. The important point is that they used this map, then, to inform themselves for the Level 2 Mussel Survey, which also generates a large report, again coordinated with the agencies. We had six divers out there for 13 days in September and October. This is kind of a fine-toothed comb approach; rather than going over the whole area, they focused on specific special areas and some randomly-chosen areas and really in great detail fine-tooth combed the area, looking for mussel species. This is what that grid looked like there. Here’s what they found: You can see the Level 1 Survey found roughly 5,900 live mussels with 22 species. The Level 2 found 489 live mussels with 14 species. They found a single State-endangered Higgins Eye, they found a State-endangered Rock Pocketbook, they found State-endangered Pistolgrip, and there’s a Fawnsfoot. So, these are species of interest that they were finding out there. Permitting is going to require taking permits for relocation; we definitely know where to find the experts to relocate these things, we’ve had them out there searching for these things for quite some time, they’re very proficient. Again, we would move these things in small batches as we went, we won’t do the entire area until they could repopulate; so, every spring we would move whatever needs to move for our needs for that mining season, and these could go in mitigation areas or other areas as would pertain to the area. Fish: In 2023, we had three staff members spend four days in May sampling the backwaters for fish. Careful coordination with the DNR on how we did these surveys. Live Nets and Gill Nets were used, as well as electrofishing. We were trying to do these samples in a very narrow window of I think it was 10 degrees Celsius, we wanted to be like between 5 and 15 degrees Celsius water temperature as that’s when they feel the spawning happens with the fish. So, we’ve got a lot of balls in the air to hit that window of temperature; coincidentally, that window of temperature happens a lot of times when flooding happens. So, in 2023, we had less than productive sampling, we only got one done and then the river was flooding and it was unsafe to be out there, it was too fast a current, so we threw in the towel in 2023. We came back in 2024, three staff spent 18 days out there, coordinated again with the DNR, used the same techniques, and we got very good results there; flood waters and currents all behaved for us. This is a graph of what we did: The blue areas are electrofishing, and then we’ve got Gill Nets and Live Nets were out here. I’m sure the DNR had a say in where we put those, strategically, to sample what we sampled. In 2023, we had 580 fish with 31 species; in 2024, we had 3,600 some individual fish with 44 species. No Federal or State-endangered fish species were found in the backwaters. We will need to mitigate for lost habitat. These guys here are electrofishing, so that’s how that operation works, and they did that in the backwaters as well, cataloged and photographed everything to get it back in the water. Aquatic Plants: In 2021, we had two staff spend eight days in August and September sampling the area. The survey was coordinated with the DNR again. Staff: We used experts with DNR approval to go out there and do this. They do meandering surveys back there and they did some stuff on the water and on the land. No Federally-endangered species were found, but two State-endangered species were found out there, the waterhissop and the Hooded Arrowhead were found out in the backwaters area. Per law, you can’t take or import or transport or sell these things; permitting is going to require taking permits from the DNR and hopefully during mitigation we can be populating species with these plants as we go. Cultural Resources: We worry about three types: Archaeological, Historical Architectural, and Traditional Cultural properties. The work that we did again was a very in-depth literature and records search at the State Historic Preservation Office, Office of the State Archaeologist, and we had done some earlier surveys out there so they reviewed that data in a very detailed light. I won’t go through each of these meetings, but the point of this slide is to show that when we started the project in 2008, since 2010 we had a lot of coordination meetings to try to keep people in the loop on what we’re doing and keep the agencies and the tribes in the loop. When we fired the project back up in 2022, we had a lot of meetings again, to make sure we’re coordinating and communicating. Our Archaeological work looks like this: In 2008, we did two studies in the upland areas; these are walking surveys, and we did numerous shovel tests. In 2010, we went back out in a big study area, and this is where we tested the backwaters corner water area; we did 43 sediment samples there, 48 shovel tests in the upland areas, and no historic artifacts were recovered from the backwaters area. So, this is what a shovel test looks like; you dig a hole, prescribed depth and diameter over where its in, and you look for artifacts. They did 75 of these in one test and 55 in another, they phased them out. Archaeological studies are where you find material remaining from past human life. There are 11 archaeological sites within one mile of the project area, and 2 of the 11 sites are in the project area, within an area called the Schilling Archaeological District. All resources can and will be avoided for the project. If you look here, this is what’s been usual for us as well, we’re mining the inland lake here and we’re avoiding these cultural resources and making sure we’re respecting them and not disturbing them. As far as architectural resources go, there are 17 within one mile of the project area; he showed a picture of one of them close to the project area. We can avoid these as well, so it shouldn’t be an issue. Traditional cultural properties are locations with significance to a community. We are going to continue, as we will through permitting here, with constant communication, making sure we’re out in front of this and talking to the right people and the right agencies to make sure that we’re respecting what’s out there and taking care of it. So, that’s going to be a communication issue as we move forward. Conclusion Tom stated we talked about construction aggregate, its critical role in quality of life in Minnesota. The proposed backwater has been operating in harmony with Cottage Grove for 40 years, we’ve been running that place since the 1950s. This facility is unique with its barging capabilities, it’s economically and environmentally friendly using this way to move the materials up to the urban core of the Twin Cities where they’re used. For a variety of reasons we discussed, alternate sites for mining are not reasonably available to be obtained, it’s difficult to find sites for that. I hope it’s been apparent through the presentation that we’ve incorporated a substantial amount of feedback from the TAC agencies into this document, as it is now in its draft form. I hope it was apparent that we’ve assembled a detailed, thorough, thoughtful examination of what’s out there in that project area and what potential impacts are there that we’re bringing back to our project by the numbers. Mayor Bailey asked Council if there were any questions. Council Member Garza thanked Tom, it was really good, a lot of great information, and I learned a lot from this presentation, so thank you. My question is, and maybe I missed it and maybe that’s TAC, but did we talk to the neighbors? Tom replied PAS Associates owns a lot of that property down there. We do have other neighbors, somewhere in here we had a church here, and they were invited to TAC meetings; they’re the closest neighbor that we would have. Council Member Garza asked and so how do the neighbors feel about this? Tom replied I don’t recall having a whole lot of feedback from the neighbors. We’re operating the dredge down there now 24/7, and we don’t get noise complaints. If you were out there and toured the dredge, it would be quiet, its got downcast lighting out there, backwaters would be similar. I don’t anticipate having a lot of complaints with that, just based on how it’s been today. Council Member Thiede said just out of curiosity, obviously you’re trying to get most of that material up to the St. Paul distribution site, which is obviously located right by the cement plant there and by the rail switching and so forth. Some of those inner ponds and so forth there, did anybody check those? Could you have actually dredged any of those spots? Tom asked inland? Council Member Thiede asked do you know where I’m talking about? Mayor Bailey asked are you talking about the true backwaters? Council Member Thiede said, well, I’m talking about, it’s along the river, but even when you’re driving on Highway 61 and 10 and so forth, by the rail switching, there’s a pond, all along that area there’s little inlet type deals that aren’t in the primary flow of the river. Tom replied yes, we did not investigate those. The project needs are what we utilize, we want to use our existing facility, use our existing barges; there would be an impasse up there as well. We don’t have a drilling record for it, we definitely don’t own it, so maybe that’s something that could be investigated, but it wasn’t looked at for this draft EIS. Council Member Thiede said I would think that ultimately something still along the river like that would be more desirable, like Coats, on the inland as an investigation of alternative sites. Council Member Khambata said I touched on it when I went down and toured the facility, but could you just kind of give a broader explanation of the geological activity that caused these deposits to be where they are? Tom replied yeah, I’m not a geologist, but this would be a stretch, but glaciation is the mechanism by which these things are deposited in a space. I think there’s a theory there that the hard rock quarry was kind of the waterfall and all these sand and gravel fields came off that and were deposited down there in the backwaters area and that became the island there. It happened a long time ago, as part of the glaciers. Mayor Bailey said I mean I know what the next step is, but just putting a bow on all of this, what’s the next step? You’re going to request us to release it for public comment, I’m assuming is what the next step is at this point? Tom replied yes, we’ve got a public meeting in December. Mayor Bailey asked the first meeting in December or the second? Director Schmitz replied the public meeting, yes, but the next step is the request will come before the Council to allow us to publish in the EQB. The public will be able to comment on that for 30 days, and so it would come to Council at the second meeting in December. Mayor Bailey said I have a question maybe for our staff, so through all of this, as we all know, we’ve got Holcim that’s trying to do what they’re going to do whether it’s on the island or in the backwaters. Then we’ve got the Army Corps of Engineers, I’m assuming, saying they want to come in and they want to dredge on the channel, and they pose the sentiment that they’re taking off in the channel. What is their timeframe, when are they looking at doing that? Do we know? Administrator Levitt replied at this time, the Corps has not been in contact with us, and obviously engaging with the underlying land pro forma, but I don’t think there’s a desire by the Corps to take those form of deposits onto the inland. I think there’s a good reason, right? Because you saw it in those sediment samples, the different heavy metals and PAHs that you’re seeing, and those are all toxic to bring into that inland lake area that currently probably does not have those. So, and it wouldn’t be desirable for that because if you think about it as a residential use, potentially in the future, you want to be able to meet that residential criteria for the actual quality of the soil. So, my guess is the Army Corps of Engineers is probably not desiring of that. So, that’s why I think, as the Applicant has mentioned, that 100-foot depth of the Pool and keeping it within the Pool to maintain the body of the Mississippi is probably a better use for that vs. potentially contaminating an area that has not had any of those materials deposited. Mayor Bailey said so a quick question, you said that there was and to be clear, I think you said it was through TAC, that in order to get the dredge out from the inner lake out to the channel, that you’d basically, because you didn’t want to mix the water between the inland lake vs. the backwaters, correct? Tom replied that’s what the concern was, yes. Mayor Bailey said the reason I’m asking this, I find this ironic, I’m just going to say it, that the Army Corps of Engineers are saying well, we’d like to take the sediment that’s out in the channel and drop it in a lake, which another group on here is saying well, we don’t want to contaminate the lake. But yet the Army Corps of Engineers is trying to, I’d assume eminent domain if it comes to that, it doesn’t make any sense to me, I guess is what I’m trying to say. If they’re telling you on one hand and I think it’s great to have the lake be separate from the channel and to do the barriers like you’re saying. But I’m just saying I think it’s bizarre that on one hand, there’s an agency saying don’t mix the river with the inner lake, but yet they’re willing to. I don’t know if they have to go through the same process; my assumption is no and I just find that frankly ridiculous. I agree and I know the partners back here that own the property don’t care for it to be in the lake either, and I don’t think we as a City do either. I just find it ironic that they’re saying that they would prefer to do that vs. keeping it within a Pool in the event that this process would move forward. Administrator Levitt said the City brought that concern forward to the Army Corps and the DNR. Obviously, if you’ve been on that inland lake, it’s like a pristine lake, you can almost see to the depth of 50 feet, and it doesn’t have any of the contamination of the actual river. So, our concern is to try to keep any sediment that may be contaminated out of that area, and that’s so we don’t have any restrictions for future use of the area. Mayor Bailey asked Administrator Levitt if we need to receive this report to make it official? Administrator Levitt replied at this point, you would just receive the information, and the actual DEIS will be at your Council table. Mayor Bailey confirmed with Administrator Levitt that there was no motion needed tonight. Mayor Bailey thanked Tom for the presentation; it was very detailed and very impressive, especially to see the early pictures when that all wasn’t underwater at one point, until the dam was built. Council Member Garza said the historical pictures of the Medicine Village, I thought that was really neat. Thank you for your time. 5. ADJOURNMENT Motion by Council Member Thiede, second by Council Member Garza, to adjourn the meeting at 7:31 p.m. Motion carried: 4-0. Minutes prepared by Judy Graf and reviewed by Tamara Anderson, City Clerk.