STORMWATER REGULATIONS BOARD

MEETING

JANUARY 10, 2005

MINUTES

Attendees:

                Steve McKinley, FMSM

                   Clyde Sawyer

                   Milton Jackson

                   Mary (Cissy) May

                   Jim Hoff

                   Jim Moegling

                   Mike McMahan, City Attorney

                   Ray Adkins

                   F. Douglass Stein

                   Kim McClurkin, Education and Public Relations

                   Naveed Minhas, City Engineer

                   Bill McDonald, Administrator of Public Works

                   Mounir Minkara, Water Quality Manager

                   Bill Payne, Stormwater Manager

                   Carolyn Fisher, Secretary

(The following Board Members were absent)

                   Harry Tate

                   Ken DeFoor

I.      Call to Order.

                Jim Moegling

Jim Moegling:     We will start the meeting.  First of all I thank Doug for all the good work.  You guys did all the hard work while I was gone.  Got the enforcement procedure in place.  I think that is a big step forward.  So, I’m sure the City appreciates that.  Good to start it off with something as a baseline.  Maybe we won’t ever have to use it.  We hope.  But, don’t believe that.  Carolyn said she still trying to get the minutes from the December13^th meeting.  A lot of it was in the back and so we’re not going to worry about that. 

Bill Payne:           We’ve had some difficulty in being able to hear off the tape and being able to get it to play back.  So, we will have that corrected and should have the December minutes and these minutes at the next meeting. 

Jim Moegling:      Okay.  And we can approve them at that time if that’s not a problem with anyone.  We’ll just bring those up at the next meeting and make sure that they’re okay.  Is there anything from that meeting that we need to bring up right now?

Ray Adkins:       It was pretty well resolved by the end of the meeting. 

Jim Moegling:      Very good.  Again, that’s good work.  Bill, of course, I’m just back new and so if you’ve got an agenda.

Bill Payne:           Mounir is gone up to get that off.  We had not gotten it printed off.  We’ve got two topics that are on the agenda.  At last month’s agenda, handed out a long term agenda for the next several months of the topics that we’re going to be covering.  And I’ll apologize now.  I’ve been fighting off a little bit of a cold.  Lost my voice yesterday, but it has mostly come back today.  So, hopefully, I’ll be okay today throughout the meeting today. 

II.     Roles and Responsibilities.

        a.      Board

Bill Payne:         There are two topics we want to talk about. The enforcement protocol was all finally resolved at the November meeting.  In December, we wanted to be able to bring the focus back to the overall view of the NPDES Permit and the program.  In doing so, we briefly went over all the different requirements in the Permit itself at the December meeting.  This month we want to take time for a couple of things.  One is to review the roles and responsibilities of the Board, because that will help relate to the long-term six or eight month topic outline that we presented in December.   Today we will talk about not only what the Board does, but also the things that the staff is doing.  And then, if we have time at the end, we will talk about drainage and floodplain-issues.  We have a presentation that we gave to the Forest Plaza Community back in, I guess it was October.   We wanted to present that to the Board as a case study of the types of issues that have to be dealt with on the drainage side.  Because, those may be some things that come up as well to this Board from time to time if people want to come and talk about policies that the City has in terms of drainage. 

So, we’ll start off with the roles and responsibilities – a section of that.  In this segment, we’re going to talk about two different pieces.  One is an overall history of the Board an their role.  Then, what are the roles and responsibilities of the departmental staff that are here to administer the program.  One of the questions that may come up is “Well, why is there a Stormwater Board?”  The Stormwater Board is established under City Code.  It is set up specifically for Chattanooga with that Ordinance.  It is also required by the Tennessee State Code annotated that any program witha utility fee as Chattanooga has. A stormwater utility fee is required to have a board to oversee that, to serve as an appeals board for the users and rate payers of the utility fee as well as to oversee the way that the fee is administered.  A little bit of background on the Board; prior to 2002-2003, 2003, the Board really was not very active.  It was a different configuration.  The Board had seven members.  They only met a couple of times a year and that was only if something came up.  They were primarily an appeals board.  So, if there were no appeals or no actions to be heard by the Board, they didn’t meet.  So, that was much different than what we are going through right now.  As you know, we have been meeting monthly since June.  And, as we are going to discuss today, a lot more things that are under the Board’s review besides just hearing appeals.  In 2002 and 2003, there was a review, an audit of Chattanooga’s Stormwater program.  It was done by the firms of FMSM and ERC.  That’s Fuller, Mossbarger, Scott and May as the engineering firm.  ERC was the financial firm. Environmental Rate Consultants that looked at the financial pieces of it.  And one of their recommendations was to a nine-member Board to help guide the program to provide more than just an appeals process, but also to provide some direction as well.  In terms of the composition of the board, one is an environmental engineer, environmental scientist or educator, one is a representative of an industry or a commercial establishment that is regulated by the article.  We have two representatives of neighborhood groups.  We have a representative of the development community, one for an environmental interest or environmental organization that is active in Chattanooga, one representing the contractor community and then we have two at-large members as well to fill out the Board.  Because one of the functions of the Board is to hear the appeals, we did require that all the members either themselves or through their place of employment, pay a Stormwater fee.  Because, obviously, it does not make any sense to have a board that is trying to hear people’s appeals about fees and then that business or that individual is not paying the fee.  So, that is also one of the qualifications to be able to serve.  There are nine members.  We have them set up for staggered terms.  The term length is for three years.   Right now everybody is still in that staggered stage.  So we have some of you are on one-year terms for this first one.  Some are on two-year terms.  Eventually, as those are re-appointed, then those will become three-year terms.  All of the members are appointed by the Mayor and approved by the Council.  And the Board is required to meet at least quarterly or at any other frequency that is necessary in order to be able to fulfill all the duties.  We have had a lot of meetings recently with some of the issues, the enforcement protocol, to get this information and get you as a Board up to speed and educated about the issues that we have to deal with in this program.  So, what are the roles and responsibilities?  One is to prepare a program mission, goal and objectives for a five-year time frame, plan for current NPDES Permit and one year subsequent, based on anticipation of renewal of that permit.  These are things to be reviewed on an annual basis.  And also for the Board to prepare an annual report to review any capital budget submissions that the staff makes.  These are all things that the staff has to assist with in terms of preparing budget items and things that are being suggested as well as making sure that you are aware of these.  So, we’ve spent the last few months getting up to speed on these issues and we recognize that those are going to be some things that will come up are going to come up again.  We wanted to bring these back to the forefront so everybody is aware of them.  All of these are listed in the Ordinance that was passed by City Council when we revised it from seven to nine members; these new responsibilities were also added in there.  The proposed capital budget submissions, as well as any comments or suggestions that the Board may make to those, based on what you see in our program.  There is also a requirement to review, at least every two years, the rates of the Stormwater fee and make any recommendations that you see are appropriate to both the Mayor and City Council for ways that you may see to make those more fair to the rate payers and to make sure that the program is adequately funded.  Also, providing any comments back to the staff on ways that we can develop and implement a fair and equitable program that is acceptable to all of the rate payers within the community.  As I mentioned earlier, occasionally, people may complain about the implementation or the enactment of the City’s policies and procedures in these areas.  Not just on enforcement, but also with drainage, implementation of drainage policies, interpretation of these policies.  From time to time, there may be things that come to the Board whenever people are not satisfied with the response they received from staff.  Finally to provide an annual report to the Mayor and to the City Council that provides the Mayor and the Council with your views, any recommendations, any suggestions that you have as a Board on where the program is, where it is headed, what changes in direction may be necessary in order to keep the program on target.  So, with those things in mind, over the next few months we’re going to cover a lot of information, a lot of material, some of it related to budget, some of it related to capital planning as well as other various parts of the program having to do with the level of service that the City provides, the cost to provide that service to the citizens of the community.  As we go through those, we will present this information to you so that in another six or eight months you have enough information, background and education on these issues to be able to make some of these recommendations and reports that are required. 

b.  Staff

In conjunction with that, I know we have talked a lot about some of the things that the staff does and we’re going to detail those again briefly, very similar to what we went through back in December.  We have two components to the program.  One is Water Quantity which addresses flooding and drainage.  The other is a Water Quality program which is our NPDES Permit.  The Water Quantity piece concerns flooding For things like the FEMA program where we work in conjunction with Building Inspections Department Floodplain Management and major streams and areas that run through town as well as the individual storm drainage system, any complaints that come in on that and maintenance of that system.  On the Water Quality side, the areas addressed in the permit include the local streams that run through town, whether or not they are meeting their designated uses, as well as any sources that there may be for any potential types of pollution which could come from many different sources.

Douglass Stein:   Bill, let me interrupt you for a minute. 

Bill Payne:         Yes.

Douglass Stein:   Who designates the use of a stream?

Bill Payne:         That is something that is done by the State.  The Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation has a list of streams that meet the designated uses, whether that is for recreation, navigation, drinking water, etc.

Mounir Minkara: Approved by the EPA.

Bill Payne:           Also approved by the EPA as well and then basically, they have three different lists.  Ones that meet that designated use.  Also a list that does not as well as any that are impaired or on the bubble.

Douglass Stein:   Can there be multiple uses?

Bill Payne:           Yes. 

Jim Moegling:      How was that list generated?  Was that something that you guys had input to?  Or, was that the EPA or the State did on their own?

Mounir Minkara: Well, the State monitors and samples the streams and then designates them. They do take input from the City and others.

Douglass Stein:   Is there a finite list of designated uses?  Wet weather conveyance?  Is that on the list?

Bill Payne:           No.  Wet weather conveyance would not be on the list because this is designated uses, not of the entire drainage system, but of main water bodies (Waters of the State).  So we’re talking about …

Douglass Stein:   The Tennessee River has got every use, I imagine?

Mounir Minkara: Yes, like drinking, navigation, fishing, recreation…

Douglass Stein:   Okay, those four?  Just those four?  Is that all there is? 

Mounir Minkara: It could be a couple more.

Mike McMahan:   They have like wild and scenic rivers, stuff like that which the Tennessee River would fit into.

Mounir Minkara: Yes, drinking water

Mike McMahan:   There was a process many years ago that all these recommendations in the groups were published and there was public comment and they’ve been adopted by regulation.

Douglass Stein:   So, this is an established list that is a lot older than Stormwater?

Mike McMahan:   Oh, yes. 

Mounir Minkara: And every three or four years, the State evaluates the conditions of the streams.  It is a continuous process.

Douglass Stein:   I hate to interrupt.  I’m just trying to make sure I understand.  So, in regard to Water Quality, and we know what the designated use of a stream is, what would be our role?  Or, what would be our responsibility? 

Bill Payne:           To make sure that we take into account those designated uses as we implement the program.  For example, we’re in the process now of going through a Stormwater Master Planning process on a watershed basis.  We are doing that jointly with the folks in Regional Planning Agency where we’re looking at land uses and by comparing land uses and data that we have on pollution within that watershed, we can then incorporate things into the plans review process specific to that watershed to try to address anything within that stream or within that waterway that may be causing it to not meet its designated use.  So it is a way for us to be able to take that in conjunction with other data that we have to address what the known pollutants are.  South Chickamauga Creek, for example, has a sedimentation issue.  So, any set of plans that comes in to the City in addition to whatever we require for erosion sedimentation controls, the State of Tennessee, because it is in anywhere within the South Chickamauga Creek Watershed, the State will then turn around and say, ‘you need to do additional erosion and sediment controls because we have a sedimentation issue in South Chickamauga Creek’.  That’s just one example and the City can also choose to implement other things for example, whether it is for oils and grease or other types of pollutants that we may find to be common to a particular watershed or something that’s common across the City. 

Jim Moegling:      And the State will tell you then what additional steps you would have to take in that case?  They would come back and give you a criterion? 

Bill Payne:           Not necessarily.  They are providing a list and they are and they are listing the source that they believe it is coming from, whether it is high fecal coliform counts or sediment.  They will also list the sources as due to overdevelopment due to urban runoff due to storm drainage.  Nine Mile Branch which drains into North Chickamauga Creek is actually on the list for agricultural uses because the upper section has cattle and a lot of pasturelands in it and it’s on the list for fecal coliform.  It’s inside the City limits but the source is listed as agricultural based on the designated uses and the fact that the State has data that says that it does not meet those uses and report what they believe the source is, then those things can be addressed by compiling all that data together into a common program or a common way to address that.

Jim Moegling:      And the staff will come up with the criteria and the methodology to achieve that criterion.

Bill Payne:           That is correct.

Mounir Minkara: Another example if you have domestic sewer overflows.  This is going to show downstream and we have the State telling us that this stream is not meeting the criteria.  We have to send our inspectors out to do some tests.

Bill McDonald:    Bill, you might introduce Mo since all of them may not know who he is. Last time there were some not here and have not met him.  Give them a little background.

Bill Payne:           Okay.  This is Mo Minkara.  He is the new Water Quality Manager for the City of Chattanooga and Mo has previously worked for TDEC as a regulator and has done some permit work related to both industrial and municipal stormwater work and came to work for the City back in November right around Thanksgiving.  He is taking over the portion of the program directly related to the NPDES Permit.  I will continue to work on flooding and drainage as well as assisting Mo and the other staff on the Permit as well. 

Jim Hoff:              Bill, just one quick question, please.  When they designate the use of these streams, do they use the TMDL’s on that to do that?  Is that where those come from? 

Bill Payne:           No, they do not.

Jim Hoff:              How does that relate?

Bill Payne:           TMDL is a program that they have not fully implemented from EPA, but the reasoning (TMDL is Total Maximum Daily Load)  and what that refers to is ultimately, they are discussing the possibility of establishing a maximum limit on the amount of a particular pollutant that can be in any particular watershed.  And so they might establish a limit for fecal coliforms and then at that point, they would assign numeric limits to anybody who is a potential discharger of that pollutant and a portion of that would also be assigned back to the municipality as well.   They have not really been using the term TMDL as much.  Steve, you were telling me another term EPA uses.

Steve McKinley:  Watershed Action Plans.

Bill Payne:           They have started recently using watershed action plans as a way to do the same thing.  So we are not sure if TMDL’s are actually going to be implemented they way we have heard about them to this point.  Right now the stormwater system does not have a numeric limit on any pollutant that’s out there except to reduce it to the maximum extent practicable.  Whereas, on the wastewater side, they do have numeric discharge limits that they are required to meet.  Currently, those do not exist on the stormwater side.  TMDL’s are basically numeric limits for the stormwater system. 

Jim Moegling:      Is that Federal EPA, State EPA or a combination?

Bill Payne:           If they are assigned, there have been a couple of watersheds in the state of Tennessee that have had them assigned, they have been assigned at the State level in conjunction with EPA.  You can also see underneath the Water Quality Section there (and we actually listed TMDL’s) some of the monitoring and the modeling that the City is doing, especially as related to any of the water quality data, that we are collecting, because we were concerned about how TMDL’s could be implemented, we wanted to be sure that we had accurate data for the pollutants that are coming from Chattanooga.  So we have tried to implement additional monitoring and sampling within our City limits so that whenever the State, if the State does get around to doing TMDL’s for any of the watersheds in Chattanooga, that we are certain that they have accurate data to base those numbers on.  There has been some concern that there is not enough data out there to be able to make those assessments. 

Jim Moegling:      How does the staff look at that?  Do you see the TMDL’s as a positive step?

Bill Payne:           I think if they are implemented on a watershed basis, there’s some reason that’s placed in there with it; I think it can be an effective tool.  The concern is that ultimately if everybody starts to look at all these point sources, whether they are an industrial plant, a wastewater treatment plant, any other type of place where you can go and point to a single pipe and say this is where it is coming from.  And then if you say this is the number that we think ought to be in the entire watershed and you subtract off all the point sources, then the number you are left with is how much can be allowed from all non-point sources.  And a municipal drainage system is a non-point source system.  We are not considered a point source.  The concern is that if the maximum number that’s allocated for the entire watershed is either unreasonable or unrealistic, then you potentially could either place a large burden either on the point sources or on the non-point sources, or both, and eventually get to the point where you almost have to have treatment plant for your storm water in order for it to meet those TMDL’s.  That is the biggest concern. 

Jim Moegling:      Is that different from now where there is no direction?  Seems like you’re completely wide open for whatever somebody says is reasonable. 

Bill Payne:           Right.  And at this point, everything is aimed at the maximum extent practicable which is a judgment call, At the same time, if TMDL’s are put into place, and there is no logic that is used in establishing those limits, then it is not much better than just using the maximum extent practicable.  And we have seen some things.  California kind of always is on the cutting edge.  But they have gotten to the point now where it’s almost like having little mini-treatment systems.  They are actually having discussions about whether or not they need to try to cool storm water to prevent it from being too warm when it enters receiving waters and other sorts of things.  So it has potential to really have some long-reaching implications.

Jim Moegling:      California has never been reasonable.

Bill Payne:           Good point.  I think we have talked about many of these other things.  There are only a couple of others there on the Permit.  We have talked about that many times in the past.  Just to give you some idea in terms of magnitude of the system, Chattanooga has over five hundred miles of stream channels broken up into eight major watersheds.  About one hundred of those, which is about twenty-five percent, are in WPA channels which are concrete-lined channels which are especially in some of the older sections of town.  So you can see that there are quite a bit of stream sections that have to be looked at in conjunction with the designated uses and with them having ‘Waters of the State’ designations.  Compare that to what we estimate about twenty-two hundred miles of major drainage system that is inside the City.  We clean about ten miles of piping in a year’s time for (that says last year but I think that should be 2003).  Now we have completed about five hundred major repair/replacements projects during the calendar year of 2003.  So, you can see the enormity of the drainage system.  We are doing about one half of a percent per year.  Although our inventory project is going to give us a better handle on those twenty-two hundred miles.  Right now, that is a close estimate.  We will know more when we get to the middle of next year after we have completed all the inventory work.  The estimated number of catch basins, curb inlets, manholes and other types of stormwater structures at one point was estimated around fifty thousand.  That estimate right now is pretty close.  It could be as low as forty-five, could be as high as sixty thousand, depending on which parts of the system and how you do the estimate.  In 2003, we cleaned over one thousand of those structures to remove sediment and other debris from those and that was in excess of seven hundred ninety tons of debris that was removed from those structures and the piping that was cleaned during that year.  Talking about the complaints, the phone calls that we receive from the citizens, from the public at large about the drainage system; in 2003, we had over twenty-five hundred calls that came in to our office.  All of those got a response in some form or fashion.  It might not have been to go out and do work.  We may not have written a work order for that, but we do make contact with everyone that calls in.  You can see on this list that translated to about five hundred work orders to fix problems within the public right-of-way.  That is about 20% of the calls we went out on and over that time, we completed about five hundred work orders as well during that time frame.  There still is a back-log of 800 is the number in here.  Numbers that I got earlier today indicate that based on some completions that we had at the end of last year we probably are down to a little over 700. 

                        So that is the reason for that last bullet which says there is a potential to double, probably to at least double the work orders that we write every year if the policy were changed and there are a lot of people who would like to see those policies changed.  And that ultimately becomes a question we will talk about in the next couple months.  As I talked earlier, we will talk about; what is the level service the City provides and what is the cost of providing that service to the citizens.  How does that compare with the revenue and the rates that are being charged?  So we are going to talk in more detail, especially next month, about those issues.  But, just to give you an idea, these are the numbers that we are dealing with.  Only dealing with public right-of-way issues.  And I will say we will have copies of the slides in with the minutes for everybody to reference back to. 

Talking about flooding and floodplain management; back in May of 2003, we had the 100-year flood event that occurred in Chattanooga.  That, as you can imagine, is one of the big events that occurs from time to time.  We do work closely with the folks in Building Inspections to work with them on the FEMA program for the Flood Insurance program here in Chattanooga.  There are also some programs available through FEMA that the City is considering.  The Cooperating Technical Partner and the Community Rating System.  Those are going to come down to doing modeling on a watershed basis to look at solutions rather than just a piece-meal approach of small sections of the drainage system.  And, ultimately, that is what the City is going to have to do, not just from a water quality standpoint, but also from a drainage and flood management standpoint.  This is just a comparison picture of 1973 to 2003.  We have some similar reference points there for you.  Just to attach some numbers to the flooding in 2003; just from the Tennessee River alone, the estimated property damage was around 17 million dollars due to about 12” of rainfall and that was approximately 300 damaged buildings.  But City-wide, we had two thousand people that were displaced from their homes caused from the flood.  We were talking earlier about the designated uses and the stream sections that are out there.  This is a map.  If you look at the legend here on the left, we have different color codes for fully supporting waterways, partially supporting waterways and non-supporting waterways.  That corresponds to the three lists that I was talking about earlier, whether or not they meet their designated uses.  So it is either fully supporting, partially supporting or non-supporting and you can look at each of these to determine for example, Mountain Creek:  3.2 miles of Mountain Creek are considered partially supporting due in part to habitat alterations caused by land development.  So, they have identified that as being urban development.

Douglass Stein:   What does partially supporting mean?  Does it mean just not as many fish in there?

Bill Payne:           Partially supporting, Mo can jump in and correct me if I go wrong here, but, basically, that means it has more than one designated use and it meets some of those uses, but not all the uses.  And so, if fully supporting water supports all designated uses, and non-supporting waterway meets none of its designated uses, then a partially supporting waterway meets some of the designated uses, but does not meet others.  And so, it has to do with the fact that a waterway can have more than one designated use and it is not meeting at least one of those.

Douglass Stein:   Just take South Chickamauga Creek as an example.  What are its designated uses and what is it not supporting?

Bill Payne:           The South Chickamauga Creek is listed as partially supporting due to pathogens and siltation.  Pathogens are going to impact things like recreational swimming and possibly some fishing.  Siltation is going to have to do with habitat for some of the fish in terms of supporting aquatic life.  The uses that it does meet are for navigation and recreational boating for example.  You can canoe it very well, but some of the other things…

Douglass Stein:   But there are no fish?  And wouldn’t go swimming?

Bill Payne:           It has some fish in it.  It is a question of does it have a diverse makeup, because by doing an assessment of the biological aquatic life that is in the stream channel, you can tell some are more hardy than others.  And, so there are some that whenever there are high levels of pollutants present, you will find them dominated by one or two different species.  And so there may be aquatic life there, but it is only the hardier of the species that are actually surviving.  So you’re not getting the diversity.

Douglass Stein:   My office is on the shores of South Chickamauga Creek is why I asked that. 

Jim Hoff:              Are the pathogens a result of combined sewers. Sanitary and industrial? (Storm, rather).  What type of pathogens is that?

Bill Payne:         Pathogens is any type coliform like that.  It is not necessarily due to combined sewers, because in this area, it is not due to combined sewers, but it could be due to a failed septic tank lines, leaking sanitary service lines, leaking main sewer lines as well.  But you also have this whole non-point source component of it, because you’ve got pets and animals.  You also have got birds and wild animals as well.  And whenever it rains, it washes any fecal matter from all those sources in as well.  And so you then have to try to differentiate between what is the human source that we can control versus the animal source that we cannot control that well. 

Jim Hoff:              This doesn’t necessarily mean there are older sanitary sewers in that area that when you have any type of flood, it is going to combine those too.  When you see an area flooded and see people walking in it, you know they are walking in both types. 

Bill Payne:           Right.  And that does happen whenever the sewers surcharge whenever there is a flood situation.  But a lot of times basically what this does is allows us to work closely with the wastewater department to look at and establish what things can be done to check and establish if there is something the City can do to its lines to correct the situation.  And once we know that we have done everything that we can do, then at that point, it is not anything that is coming from our source.  And so we start to look at are there any illicit discharges that are in the system coming from people’s private service lines and failed septic tanks.  Once you rule those out, then it is either coming from somewhere out of the City or it is coming from a non-human source. 

Douglass Stein:   I’m going to ask one more question; I don’t want to keep us here all night.  What is hydro-modification to Citico Creek?  What is going on there? 

Bill Payne:           Hydro-modification of Citico Creek is WPA channels.  It is straightening, realignment, alilning of the channel with concrete in order to make it flow better.  That is what hydro-modification is.  It is basically taking it from a natural channel into a man-made system. 

Good questions.  We have talked about the permit.  We have also mentioned several times about nonpoint source pollution.  And that can come from other areas besides the ones that we’ve talked about.  It is also identified as coming from construction sites, illegal dumping, chemicals and fertilizers that may be improperly disposed of – either in a yard or parking lot indirectly into the storm drain system in some cases. 

Funding of the program is a Federal Mandate that came with no funds from the EPA and so that is the reason why we have the utility fee and ultimately have this Board to oversee the program as well as the rates that are established to fund it.  Most communities, both large and small must comply with that as we have discussed at many of the meetings in the past that there are some strong penalties for non-compliance from both the State and the EPA. 

This is just a slide to give you an idea of the other communities in this area, both in East Tennessee and North Georgia that are part of the Phase II, the small MS4 communities, so it is something that is having to be dealt with in those areas as well as inside Chattanooga. 

We have talked many times about the fact that there are penalties for non-compliance, both from the State and from Federal.  This is a summary slide that goes over that information.  I mentioned the Phase II communities back on the previous slide; Chattanooga is a Phase I community.  Any community larger than 100,000 people in the early 1990’s had to apply for the Permit.  They were individualized and customized based on the applications that were submitted by the municipalities themselves.  And there was emphasis placed on doing mapping, stream sampling, biological monitoring as well as doing inspections and screening on those streams and the drainage system itself.  The Phase II communities which includes unincorporated Hamilton County and the others that were on that list were for folks;  This slide says less than 100,000, but it is less than 100,000 and more than 10,000, although there are some isolated pockets in unincorporated Hamilton where the density is high enough that it qualifies as well.  They all submitted applications for their programs in March of 2003.  Some of them have general permits.  Hamilton County and the other municipalities inside of Hamilton County are working together and they have individual permit.  Their emphasis is placed more on public involvement aspects of it.  The education, Best Management Practices and things that are more closely related to the development, but not as much on the monitoring. 

This just puts some numbers to the things we talked about back in the December meeting.  There are 151 permit activities, 55 spill responses during 2003.  Also in 2003 we studied 66 miles of stream using infrared photography.  That again goes back to the question on the pathogens and where those discharges come from.  We used the infrared photography as the way to be able to address those.

We send out the newsletters, we do construction site visits, we reach students in classrooms by doing presentations, we have storm drain stenciling programs and litter pick-up programs that the community can participate in as well.  These are some photographs and examples as you can see, the spill responses, the citations being issued, an example of the newsletter here as well. 

This is an actual photograph from the infrared photography project that we had.  The red arrows indicate areas that the photo analyst looked at to identify these white, brightly lit areas on the ground or on the stream bank.  This light area that you see represents the stream itself.  And so, by flying over this, we are able to save untold numbers of staff hours spent trying to walk these streams to look for potential problems.  And by utilizing the infrared, we were able to utilize the latitude and longitude from the aircraft and be able to send our staff directly to the points where there was a known problem as opposed to having to send them out to look at areas where, if there wasn’t a problem, then why did we need to spend those resources on that.  In addition to doing illicit discharges, there are also 219 major outfalls where the City of Chattanooga has a storm drain system that empties into “Waters of the State”.  We have to go out and do field screening at each of those places at least once every two years in an effort to look for potential pollutants that are there when it is not raining to try to determine if someone is dumping something illegally into the storm drain system that may be entering into the “Waters of the State”.  Again, we talked about the monitoring and the sampling that we do to collect data and information on the quality and the assessment of the streams in the drainage system in Chattanooga and here are some numbers to go with that and some examples of things that we do to assess what condition everything is in.  And we do all this over 8 major watersheds.  We have North Chickamauga Creek, South Chickamauga Creek, Citico Creek, Lookout Creek, Mountain Creek.  We also have a small portion of Wolftever Creek as well, plus the Tennessee River that flows through town.  So we do have quiet a diverse area.  None of them have the same issues and so we have to manage things in response to the conditions that are present in each one of those.  At this point, I mentioned earlier in the presentation about the review and audit that was done and Steve McKinley is going to go through a few slides:

Steve McKinley:  I am Steve McKinley.  I am with FMSM Engineers and the folks at ERC Environmental Rate Consultants helped us with this audit.  I’m not going to go into great detail because, in the future meetings, we are going to go into details of the various elements of the audit and the program from a financial standpoint.  First of all, the purpose of the audit was to understand the program, review policies and procedures, determine deficiencies, make recommendations in determining kind of the next steps.  How we did that – the process was to do a number of interviews.  We not only interviewed Stormwater staff, but we interviewed outside of the Stormwater department and other program areas that are affected by it.  Stormwater has a way of its tentacles moving into other areas.  It is not just a Stormwater department issue.  There is road department issues, there are sanitary sewers, CSO’s, and on and on.  So, we tried to get a whole wide variety of folks throughout the City that were involved in this.  We then looked at the existing Ordinance and guidelines.  We looked at standards and other programs and how folks are doing things.  In some cases, there are standards out there for stormwater.  FEMA for example has very strict standards with regards to how to do floodplain management.  But, in other things, there may not be strict standards.  So we looked at some other communities and how they operate.  We developed a series of policy papers.  I believe you all received that at one point or another.  It is a pretty thick document and we tried to detail out various areas.  I think there were some ten or twelve areas that we detailed out various things that were happening and various things that we thought ought to be happening.  And then we prepared an action plan and actually a schedule.  The schedule, I think, was very important and very helpful with regard to the EPA and what they are requesting.  And so as a part of their NPDES permit and also their NOV.  Some of the program issues we came up with were a Stormwater Board on coming in and seeing that it was a requirement by law and at that time the existing Stormwater Board was inactive.  We felt like it was really a priority to bring together a new Board.  We looked at, with the staff, what kinds of things should that Board being doing and, of course, earlier in the presentation, you saw the essentially the Ordinance that was passed that formed what we have today.  This is so important to a stormwater program for a couple of reasons.  Not only just because it is a requirement of law, but you all represent the citizenry, the commercial and other interests within the community.  And because of the way stormwater is, it is so important to get that kind of input.  Even if it was not a requirement of law, it would still be a strong recommendation to have a group that would help provide the Stormwater department.  The other thing that happened in the course of us doing our audit was the NPDES Stormwater Permit violation.  And, of course, with that happening that became a prime area issue and recommendation that we needed to look at that.  Flooding and floodplain management – I think it goes without saying also in that timeframe was the 2003 flood.  So, we got both the big 100-year events.  We got the NOV event and the flooding event.  So, those things had to come to the forefront as areas where the program needed to be looked at intently.  Financial incentives and because it is a stormwater utility and financial program, one of the things we looked at was what kind of financial incentives or credits are out there.  And we made some recommendations.  We usually refer to these as credit programs to where if an industry or commercial entity or something is doing something that actually helps the community’s stormwater program, then they can get an incentive for a reduced rate.  Revise permitting and procedures and guidelines and we made recommendations in terms of when you would get, and again, the fruit of this was a little bit of what you guys did early on as part of the Board in looking at the enforcement actions.  Increase in system planning, operation and maintenance – I don’t know of a stormwater program in the country that does not need more of this.  And one of the really big problems that we are going to be talking about that we have already mentioned (Bill already mentioned) was this whole idea of level of service.  How far do you go with this?  You literally can spend millions and millions of dollars on going further and further up in the streams and further and further into individual’s properties.  And you have to be real careful at balancing level of service with the cost of service.  And lastly, and again, this is one that I think is just so important.  And I think it is one that really Chattanooga is doing a great job in – and that is public involvement and education.  And, because of the nature of stormwater again, it is so important to get the involvement of citizens and to educate the folks on just what stormwater management is.  It is a pretty complicated, pretty involved process, I think as you are beginning to see.  Financial issues specifically look at this and I am not a financial expert.  My partner in this is.  And he is going to be here in the future meetings to look at this, but we looked at things such as debt service and how the billing system mechanism – how the bills are sent out.  It goes out through the auditors system right now, the billing system database, how collections are done, or do you have areas where collections are an issue – and you do -, rate structure, the way in which you charge the bills.  A lot of programs do it on an impervious area method.  That is a little different from the way you all do it.  And then management structure in general how everything is managed.  The key recommendations that came out of our work – these were not all the recommendations – they are really detailed in those issue papers in the schedule, but these are some key things here:  re-establish an effective Stormwater Board and we are there today.  Meet the requirements of the NPDES Stormwater Permit.  Last time we met, Bill went through all the details of what they are doing.  You saw the big program with the As-Found for getting the infrastructure piece put into GIS and that is a major consideration that EPA is looking for.  Increasing drainage maintenance – this is something that the public is going to see on a daily basis of actually getting out and cleaning drains.  And you saw some of the things that Bill put up earlier on the board of what that the community is doing.  And then increase and education involvement of the public and there has been great strides made since our evaluation of that.  And then evaluate the utility rate structure and rate and those are things we are going to be talking about in the near future. 

Bill Payne:           And I guess just to add to that, we have taken a lot of action on those items that obviously the Stormwater Board is here now with the revised ordinance with the roles and responsibilities that we talked about.  We have also implemented better plans review guidelines, we have hired additional staff for plans review as well as field inspection, we have an education coordinator that is now part of the staff that works full time.  We now have a new Water Quality Manager.  So, we have made a lot of strides since the Notice of Violation was issued.  Any questions or comments on that?  Like I was saying in the beginning, this is to kind of help lay the framework so that you all can keep all these issues in perspective as we go into these future meetings as well. 

Jim Moegling:      Along that line, Bill, if you have a schedule of what is going to be presented when, so we know what we could be working on.  And the same things of actions that you would expect of the Board, for instance.  I know there is an annual report – when is that?  Can you give us a kind of a timeline what is going to be presented and what you expect from us.

Bill Payne:           I will make sure that you have – I distributed the December meeting and it was going to be part of the minutes.  But I will make sure you have a copy.  As well, but we did – the staff with Steve McKinley and John Damico ‘s assistance helped put together an overall strategy paper for if these are all the things that we have to do, what do we need to start with in order to be able to work our way to those goals and to those areas that I have gone over today.

Jim Moegling:      Okay. Good.

Bill Payne:           I think next month – just to help put these things in perspective – we are going to talk in February about the level of service and the cost of service and that’s all going to be the result of the review and audit that was done by the consulting team in order to establish what services Chattanooga provides where those are funded from, because it turns out that there is funding from multiple sources within City government, not just from the utility fee, establishing some numbers in terms of how those costs are arrived at where that revenue is coming from.  And that is what we are going to be spending February and part of March reviewing that information so that you can be able to put it all together in terms of levels of service.  Once we are able to finish that, we will be able to also talk about what recommendations the Board may have in terms of how to follow through with some of the information that they have collected as part of that first review and audit.  If time allows, and I don’t know what everybody’s thoughts are from this, it is what? About 30 minutes give or take?  We talked earlier through this presentation about drainage policies, floodplain issues.  This is a presentation that we gave to a community in Forest Plaza area as well as some upstream and downstream areas with that.  We listed it on the agenda as if time permitted, so I do not know, Mr. Chairman, if you have a preference.

Jim Moegling:      I would just as soon go ahead – unless, what does the rest of the Board think? 

Douglass Stein:   I’ve set aside the time if it doesn’t take more than fifty-two minutes. 

Bill Payne:           It won’t take that long.

Jim Moegling:      I’d like to see what you have got.

III.    Forest Plaza presentation.

Bill Payne:           Okay.  This was done in response to a lot of calls and concerns we had had in the Forest Plaza area which is just upstream of the K-Mart – the old K-Mart on Hixson Pike at Access Road.  We had calls and complaints both upstream as well as downstream.  Some of them were related.  Some of them weren’t.  Because it was such a large issue, the City looked into doing an overall assessment of the watershed.  This presentation goes through a little bit of the background on the study.   A few brief bullets and slides on the National Flood Insurance Program.  The approach that we took for the study and the results of that study along with the concepts that were analyzed to determine whether or not they posed any possibility of being useful or being able to be implemented as well as final recommendation.  As I mentioned before, there were lots of calls and complaints in from the citizens in that area.  There is an unnamed tributary, “Waters of the State”, section that does run through this particular area.  The City has gone in over the past ever since the area was annexed back in the early seventies.  We provided a lot of fixes during and after flood events.  That has not resolved some of those overall flooding issues.  So, we developed a scope of work for an overall watershed approach.  We contracted with the firm of FMSM to do a complete analysis of the drainage basin.  This is a section that had not been modeled in the City previously so there were no established floodways or floodplains.  The work by the City consisted of doing sediment removal out of the bottom of the channel, doing retaining wall repairs both of which, because they were in a stream channel and because it is “Waters of the State” even though much of the work to channelize it was done in the sixties when the sub-divisions were built, it now requires ARAP permitting from the State of Tennessee.  So those were additional hurdles that we ran into.  We have also done some culvert replacing and upsizing.  Just since 1996 alone, the City’s expenses just in this area are excess of $650,000 and we still continue to have problems out there.  A little bit of information on the flood insurance program – it is a voluntary program that is based on an agreement between both Federal Government and the local community.  The City agrees to adopt and enforce an ordinance about floodplains and how to manage floodplains.  And, in response, the Federal government will provide federally backed flood insurance to property owners within the community.  So, essentially, if the City did not participate in the program, no one inside the City limits would have the option to be able to purchase flood insurance.  That is how the system works.  You actually purchase the insurance through your individual insurance agent, but that is all sold through the National Flood Insurance Program.  There is not any privately-backed flood insurance in the US.  The goals of the flood insurance program are to reduce loss of life and loss of property that is caused by flooding.  They want to reduce the cost of disaster relief due to floods.  Those numbers are escalating as property values go up and as development continues to occur, these damages are getting higher and higher.  And they also want to reduce the reliance on flood disaster relief money by providing homeowners another way to protect themselves.  That can be through any number of ways to try to protect the property.  The benefits of the City participating includes cost effective flood insurance opportunities as well as other possible funding for mitigation of identified problems.  The City’s responsibilities include developing the ordinances, which has been done.  It’s part of the zoning ordinance here in Chattanooga it is administered by the Building Inspections Department.  Enforcement for those regulations for floodplains and floodways regulating the development inside the floodplain.  We also assist FEMA in developing the floodplain mapping and informing the residents of what they may face because of those flood hazards.  The National Flood Insurance Program was started back in the sixties.  It fell underneath the umbrella of an organization that was created in 1979, the Federal Emergency Management Agency.  Chattanooga joined the flood insurance program in 1980 and so the first maps that were developed in Chattanooga were published in 1980.  A lot of folks, especially at these community meetings, ask the question: “If everybody knew it was flooding, why did you allow us to build?  Why didn’t somebody stop it? Or why did you let these developers build there?” And the real answer to that in a lot of cases especially in these older parts of town is – people were aware that areas flooded from time to time, but they had never been identified, they had never been mapped.  There were no models in Chattanooga until 1980.  In the ‘60’s and ‘70’s a lot of these places were developed right along these creeks and these streams were developed when nobody had calculated how high and how wide the water would spread during a flood event.  And so there was a lot of development that occurred.  Everybody was using the best information that was available, but in some cases, it did allow a lot of that development to occur.  There have been some updates to those maps.  The first ones were in 1985.  The most recent ones were done in 2002.  And this particular tributary that runs through the center of this section has never been studied.  FMSM had worked on actually developing the models and the analysis and I’m going to turn it over to Steve again to let him go through the process that they followed.

Steve McKinley:  Thanks.  A few definitions may be important here.  We talk about these 25-year, 100-year floods, fifty year floods and what we really mean there are terms that refer to the probability of a given storm that will occur in any one year for example a 1-year, or an annual storm you would expect a 100% chance of that in any one year.  On the other hand, a 100-year flood, you have a 1% annual chance for that to occur.  And I don’t know how many people have told me, “Well, we have had four 100-year floods this year.”  And, certainly, that can be possible and you wouldn’t get any for another four hundred years.  But there are some other things that play here in that weather patterns do change, but more importantly, development patterns change.  Sometimes, as more impervious area comes to a particular area, that frequency seems like it is increasing.  It is just that you are getting more run-off from the impervious areas.  The FEMA flood hazard area that they talk about is the 100-year flood that is their designation.  Just another example:  Over a fifty year period, there is a 40% chance of having a 100-year event.  So, just some statistics and understanding on the front end there.  A second part of the definition is this graphic which really shows three things here.  The stream channel which you would normally see.  You can usually tell the banks of a stream and the fact that the stream is down inside those banks.  Obviously, once it starts to flood, it comes out of that.  And FEMA has two important areas; obviously the 100-year Floodplain that you see there and something they call floodway.  The Floodway is actually a calculated item.  And let me step back and just say all of the calculations we did here were with the computer models, the methods, everything that FEMA uses.  And, in fact, at the end of this study, we have a product that City is now taking to FEMA and can get an official floodplain map if it goes through their reviews.  So we have done everything exactly the way FEMA would do it or wants it done.  And we are a FEMA contractor in a number of areas.  This floodway is a very important concept because it is an area in which no development is allowed by ordinance, by your ordinance, no development would be allowed within this zone.  It is actually an idea of taking the 100-year floodplain, if you can imagine having walls and pushing on them until it rises one foot.  And, basically, what they are saying is we are going to let you develop out here.  You can fill this.  You can build a home.  You can build a business in there as long as you don’t encroach beyond that one-foot rise, because we’re going to make everybody get their first floors up above that one foot.  So this floodway is an area of very high velocity and it is an area that you can’t build in.  And it is a very important concept in the whole FEMA scheme of things.  Well, here is the area that was the subject of the study and I’m even going to ask Bill to help me with some of the items.  And you all are more familiar with them than me, but we see the Tennessee River if you want to think about it as the downstream starting point for the study and actually our models run in that way.  We do both a hydrological and hydraulic model.  Hydrologic is just the rainfall, the rainfall pattern is the amount of run-off and the hydraulic model basically tells us how big the floodplains are and how deep the floodwaters are.  But starting down the Tennessee River, it comes up almost paralleling Dupont Parkway there, crosses the railroad into the Birmingham, Atlanta and Memphis Drive areas.  There’s an access road and you see the star and, actually, that’s the grade school, isn’t it?  Dupont Elementary Grade School – that’s where we had the meeting with the folks from the neighborhood and we actually showed this presentation and gave this information to them so they understood what their issues were.  Then you see the Forest Plaza area kind of in the middle there which is where the majority of the flooding occurs and the majority of the residents that were at the area.  We went up to about Ely Road.  It gets pretty steep and pretty high up into the watershed at that point.  Ely Road is also the location of a potential fix for this which was a detention facility site.  And you can see in the upper part of the watershed, there is the City of Red Bank.  So this gives you a perspective of the area we are talking about.  The red line that goes out there, we’ve talked about all these watershed issues along.  That’s the watershed boundary.  So everything inside of there drains towards this unnamed tributary stream that we studied. 

Bill Payne:           About 1900 acres.

Steve McKinley:  Yes, about 1900 acres of drainage area.  What you are looking at – here is the actual FEMA map of what we have.  Tennessee River was studied and some of these areas that you can see going, for example, as we look at again parallel to Dupont Parkway there you are seeing this unnamed tributary, the dark blue line, that’s in the (I’ll try to point out here with the pointer.  I think you can see that on your screens).  That’s that unnamed tributary.  And, although this looks like an area that was really studied, you’re really looking at the backwater of the Tennessee River which was studied in detail by FEMA.  So, this is what we had to start with, but as you move on out of the backwater area of the Tennessee River, you see this upper area there that there is no study at all.  From a standpoint of study approach, data collection, obviously there was survey data that was collected.  We went out and got channel elevations, detail on the culverts and bridges and structures that are along the stream, elevations of the adjacent structures as much as we possibly could and included in this area was Ely/Delashmitt Road to the Tennessee River which I showed in the previous graphic there.  We utilized the City’s and Hamilton County’s GIS data that was invaluable to us to get the elevations and to get the information that we needed to build the model.  A lot of the graphics that you see here was all of that.  And then something that we did that we like to do with a lot of these:  Again, I emphasized in the earlier presentation about public information.  We tried to live it here a little bit.  We went out and we gave questionnaires to residents who looked like they were potentially in that floodplain area.  We did not do the entire watershed, but those who would be affected by a flood.  And we actually got back from them information on historical flooding and how high flooding might have been.  We used that data to help us calibrate our model or make sure that our model is working in a proper way that it would meet an historical flood.  Of course, we could get rainfall records and run-off record from USGS and Corps of Engineers and Tennessee Valley Authority and all that data was gathered as well.  But these resident questionnaires were extremely important to us because they were folks – some of them had lived there for 20 and 30 years and experienced several floods and so we had some pretty accurate data.  I mean, sometimes it’s just discoloration along the side of a wall or garage or something like that.  And that is pretty helpful data to us as we try to build these models and build them as accurately as possible.  Again, the computer modeling and mapping was done using the GIS topographic data and calculating run-off from the watershed was all done with the methods that FEMA recommends their contractors use.  The models predict the flood elevations and we map both floodplain and floodway and we format it as a submittal for these folks to be able to turn in to FEMA as an official mapping product.  And they are in the process of doing that and when that is done, there will be an official map.  Let me take you on again just a little tour of some of the results.  One of the ways of looking at results is a bird’s eye view that we have right here.  And what you are seeing here, the blue area is the 100-year flood and we started again down here at the Tennessee River.  The red area that you see there is that floodway or where we had pushed the limits of that until we got our one-foot rise.  And so that is the area of high velocity.  That is the area where no building could occur in at all.  And, while we would want to discourage, obviously, building in the 100-year floodplain, according to FEMA rules in the Ordinance, it is possible to do that, but you must meet the requirements of raising the building or structure at least above the 100 –year level.  The various lines that you see there are lines of elevation of the actual flood.  Some of the numbers represent, like the twelve eighty-two the actual cross-sections that were taken in the field or that we got off of the GIS system.  So, if we move on up from the Tennessee River area there, the next area is where we parallel Dupont Parkway and where the school is.  And then going on to Access Road

and if you will look at that area where it says Hixson Pike right there and then 676, this is a storage warehouse area right now, I believe some of you may know it as an old K-Mart shopping area in there.  And, really the area that we are going to go to next above there is of critical concern because many of those structures are actually in the 100-year floodplain.  There are a number of homes here that are actually in the floodplain itself. 

Jim Moegling:      Is that blue area above Access Road; is that part of Dupont School?

Steve McKinley:  This right here?

Jim Moegling:      Yes.

Steve McKinley:  No, actually it is across the way.  The school…I stand corrected. The school owns that property.  But it doesn’t appear to affect any structures in there as best we can tell.  And then, this is the key area – the Forest Plaza neighborhood, if you will.  This is the neighborhood key area that we were doing the study for although the benefits obviously were all up and down throughout the watershed.  I guess just a couple things just to point out here is Plaza Drive, the Dana Court in there and then Norcross Road comes along in here.  Again, the red is the floodway.  The blue is the 100-year and you see some green area there.  That’s actually the 500-year.  We ran a number of scenarios.  Once you have set the model up, it is pretty easy to run a number of different scenarios of flooding.  I don’t know how well you can see it on your screens.  I’m pointing to some of the rooftops that are actually in the floodplain.  And there are a number of homes.  And I tell you, this is the problem here.  The homes were built in the floodplain and in the floodway.  And it is very difficult and very expensive as you will see here in a minute to find fixes that will take care of the situation where you have just built right next to the stream.  And then, of course, the watershed develops and more impervious area goes in.  And these things naturally flood anyone.

Clyde Sawyer:     Why the restriction of the floodway right there.

Steve McKinley:  Right here?

Clyde Sawyer:    Yes.

Steve McKinley:  Let me go back.

Douglass Stein:   There are two of them.

Steve McKinley:  This right here is the culvert through the area and what happens here it does not get high enough to overtop that area and go over top of the culvert.  Some of them (I’ll try to show here) like the Norcross Road, the flood, although it narrows in there, it actually, overtops the road.  And that is what that is showing versus here, it is just building up behind it and then going through the structure out letting and then again the same thing happens in here.

Bill Payne:           What we understand from getting resident questions here were extremely helpful here because this area where the K-Mart was originally developed, they placed some piping in that area whenever they first developed that property.  And then they filled over the top of it and raised everything up and in effect, built a small dam.  In response to some floods back in the 70’s, they did go in and add some additional pipes in that area, but even with those additional capacities we still have what we see here that it still acts as a dam. 

Douglass Stein:   But it does reduce the flooding in this area and still to catch the water up higher.

Steve McKinley:  I guess here’s the last part of that is up in Ely Road, Delashmitt Road area and the area that we are going to be talking about here in a minute.  Right in here for a potential detention facility that we looked at.  So that kind of gives you a quick overview we can look at and show some of the results of that.  Another way to look at these results is we actually counted the number of homes at risk, those north and south of Hixson Pike. In the one-year, there were six structures, homes north of Hixson Pike that are in there and that is – an annual flood, you expect that to come all the time and you hope you actually have no buildings, but there are six.  And all way up to 84 in the 100-year flood south of Hixson Pike and north of it 76 structures for a total of 160.  Now we need to submit the result to FEMA to update the flood insurance rate maps.  This is called a LOMR (a letter of map revision) and flood insurance will then come available to these residents and the City’s portion of it is to enforce that the management of that and one of those things would be in any of those areas with available land not to let them build in that floodway zone and really restrict it within the 100-year also.

Milton Jackson:   Well, isn’t that in your area that you do have like up in Hixson, there where the water is shallow, is it possible that it’s going to cost some money to do it, but to go at least fifty feet down from below.  Just dredge all that out and make it deeper and then I noticed down in Florida and Texas various areas have these bayous.  Areas that we can put a bayou there to take some of the run-off water.  Is it possible that we can do that in these floodplain areas?

Steve McKinley:  The problem that you have once you start doing the dredging or deepening the channel is you can’t just do it in one area and stop.  You’ve got to keep going.

Milton Jackson:   You could keep going with it.

Steve McKinley:  That gets expensive.  Probably more money than these folks have.  And the depth that you would have to get to start shrinking these would be pretty significant.  So it is an economic issue.  Plus, there are a lot of problems today with just going in and saying “We’re going to dredge this stream.”  The EPA is now involved in it.  And you’re going to have to really look at that stream.  Up and down this stream there are retaining walls that were built before EPA got involved with a lot of their regulations.  And, at this point, they are going to make you turn that stream back into a natural stream if you’re going to go in there and do anything.  So, when you start doing it with the number of homes that are already in the sides of the bank, you’re going to be buying those anyway which in a few minutes, I’m going to show you – that’s one of the options here is to get some of these houses from a voluntary program standpoint – get as many of them out of the floodplain is probably a more economic solution, a better solution at this point.  Your idea of a bayou – we really do have that as part of our repertoire. We call them detention facilities, but we would have to build a dam in order to hold the water back.  But it is similar to what I believe you are talking about.  It is sort of a storage area or a bayou. 

Jim Moegling:      That is what I was wondering.  How much of this is backed from the river.  And dredging or anything else isn’t going to help that.

Steve McKinley:  That is correct and there as, as you saw in that one photo, there is a great deal of this that is backed up from the Tennessee River that is going to be there no matter what.  But the flooding we are talking about up in this upper area is still headwater flooding and there are some things that we’re going to talk about here that we looked at basically.  There are a lot of things that could be done but from a concept standpoint, you’ve either got the idea of retaining or getting the water out faster, getting the water downstream faster, or as the last one shown here, getting the homes out of the floodplain.  And we looked at that area where the Ely and Delashmitt come together.  We looked at a very large detention basin, what we call a medium size that would take somewhere between the twenty-five and ten-year flood and then a small detention facility that would be between the ten and one-year flood.  And then we also looked at just property purchasing.  You can see where I’m headed with this.  That’s one where we can get some Federal assistance also.  The area right here, Ely Road and Delashmitt Road is the area that we looked at.  There are a couple of reasons for that.  It is somewhere between a third of the way and half way up and it is actually a third of the way from the area that is actually being affected.  There are still  two major tributaries that come down there that we can control.  So, it is a good location for a detention facility.  It appears that there is a little bit of land that is not developed.  We do not know whether it is available or not.  We didn’t go that far, but there were not structures on it.  However, as the analysis went on, what we are going to see is, this actually is a diagram.  The red lines you see there are revised contour lines of what that dam might look like.  And this would be – here is the stream coming up through this area and the break and, Bill, I think this one is Ely Road?

Bill Payne:           That is correct.

Steve McKinley:  Right here and then this is Delashmitt.  And to get the kind of structure in that we needed, they actually would have to buy homes as you can see in here and build a major structure; put an outlet works in here along with an emergency spillway.  All of these structures would probably be large enough structures that they fall under the dam safety guidelines for the State of Tennessee or the United States.  And they are large enough structures that this would have to have first of all an emergency spillway which is very expensive item, but meet all the other guidelines of geotechnical and what-not for them.  So, while it is feasible to do it, there would be an awful lot of homes that would have to be taken out of here and that would still probably mean some homes downstream as you’ll see.  This right here represents a relocation of the road.

Jim Moegling:      But, when you did that, would this be a lake?  Or, would it just be full during rain.

Steve McKinley:  It would be dry until a rainfall and then depending on how heavy the rainfall is is how much that would back up in there. 

Jim Moegling:      And it’s a pretty big maintenance item for the City.

Bill Payne:           This one represents the largest one that was looked at, but that would still not result in impounding enough water to relieve all the homes down below from the floodway.

Steve McKinley:  To give you an idea here:  the large basin we talked about, we again looked at a twenty-five storm.  The total cost we came up there with was well over six million dollars.  We looked at the benefits versus the cost – and this is a Corps of Engineers way of doing things – benefit cost ratio 1.14 anything 1 or above is usually okay but the higher you would get it, the better it would be.  The medium basin which was really twenty-five and a little bit smaller was a little more costly because I think we still had some other homes to purchase in there to make that work.  And that became about a .7.  The smaller basin was ten-year, but it was still, you know, there is some economy of scale once you get started building something of this scale, some of those initial costs are going to be expensive and you can go higher for a little bit less.  So that is why you are seeing pretty comparable things in terms of cost.  It as about .84.  The property purchase while it was the largest number – but we’re also looking at purchasing where we did the costing of purchasing all the homes within the 100-year which you may or may not be able to do, because we are really recommending this to be a voluntary program, you just don’t go in and tell people, you probably can’t do that, but you give them the option of doing that and in our meeting, I think there were a number of people that would take that option as we talked about it.  That has a cost benefit ratio of about 1.

Douglass Stein:   Steve?

Steve McKinley:  Yes.

Douglass Stein:   How can the medium basin cost more than the large basin?

Steve McKinley:  I’m sorry. I didn’t hear you.

Douglass Stein:   Why does the medium basin cost more than the large basin?

Steve McKinley:  What are along with these costs are the buying of a certain number of homes along with it.  And with the smaller basin, we didn’t even try to get all the homes.  We tried to stay in the ten-year range.

Douglass Stein:   The medium basin is a million dollars more than the large basin.

Bill Payne:           The reason for that is because the medium basin is a smaller basin so it does not restrict the outflow as much which means there are actually more homes that would have to be purchased downstream of the basin.  If you build the medium basin, it is not large enough.  It is smaller, so you have to buy more houses.

Douglass Stein:   Oh I see.  This is total cost, including buying the homes that are still left.  I got you.

Jim Moegling:      Okay, now explain what your benefits are to come with the 9.4 is.  Is that lack of maintenance?  Why did you count it coming up with a 1…

Steve McKinley:  The 9.4?

Jim Moegling:      Yes.

Steve McKinley:  It is purely the cost of the purchasing all of the properties in the 100-year flood.

Jim Moegling:      But what is the benefit?  How does it end up to be 1?

Steve McKinley:  Well, they’re out of the floodplain.

Douglass Stein:   You’ve saved the value – that’s a dollar for dollar swap-out.

Bill Payne:           Yes, it is basically the cost of purchasing property is the same as the benefit because the benefit from FEMA’s stand point is there is no damage.

Douglass Stein:   You’re gauging the benefit.  How many homes are saved from the flooding?

Bill Payne:           Right.  If they pay out 9.4 million now there are no claims in the future.

Douglass Stein:   So we don’t know what the benefit is on these other items.  It’s not on this chart.

Bill Payne:           We didn’t summarize it here.

Steve McKinley:  Right.  Well, what we tried to do was.

Jim Moegling:      Going back to the benefit equal to the cost on the 9.4.  Are the homes completely damaged or just partly damaged?  I would think FEMA wants to see the level of damage to the homes.  Don t think that is the way we would go at it?

Steve McKinley:  Honestly, you are absolutely correct and what they do in their new program which is called PDM Pre-disaster Mitigation and in that program, they actually look at the difference between the ten-year and the hundred-year and they will get a cost-benefit ratio based on that.

Jim Moegling:      And on a probability.

Steve McKinley:  And get those homes.  And, again, they do not make anybody sell.  They don’t go in and say we are going to buy your home.  They give it as an option as a program option. 

Bill Payne:           This number for the 9.4, because we did not know anything about finished floor? Elevations for the 160 homes in the floodplain, this number could have been five homes for a million dollars or like this number is 160 homes and 9.4.  Either way, the cost benefit ratio works out.  Whichever homes get purchased, benefits are going to equal cost.  And only the ones that qualify will be eligible for the purchase.  So, it was really just the way of being able to point out – it’s an expensive proposition to get the property, but, people that are protected are protected completely because they are not there. 

Jim Moegling:     I understand, but it still costs the City 9.4 million dollars.

Bill Payne:           What’s that?

Jim Moegling:      It costs the City 9.4 million dollars. 

Mike McMahan:   It’s like the 80/20 match.

Bill Payne:           Right.  It is a 75/25 match.

Jim Moegling:      Oh, on mitigation from FEMA? Okay.

Bill Payne:           Now, at the same time, our conversation with the folks at TEMA at the State level, they have told us that you can actually get additional things covered that aren’t ordinarily covered under hazard mitigation grants.  Because if people lost cars or contents or also can be applied towards that which they don’t normally do, I don’t think.

Jim Moegling:      Yes, again, they look at the total loss, not just the house.

Bill Payne:           That’s right.

Steve McKinley:  There were two that look the best from a cost-benefit ratio, the large basin and the property purchase, especially when you look at it from the standpoint of assistance from Federal and State government.  And the recommendation was to go look at Federal assistance to help with the purchase of the properties. But probably is the most effective overall.

Bill Payne:           We already are completing the paperwork for the LOMR (Letter of Map Revision) to get these maps published as the affected maps for this area.  We have also had conversations with the State of Tennessee about how this area fits into the pre-disaster mitigation grant framework.  There is a cap on the amount that they will grant for any particular one, so, even if you only looked at the homes in the floodway (there are 60 homes inside the floodway) they represent about 5.4 million dollars for total cost of property and the largest grant that FEMA is going to give is (their share) is going to be 3 million dollars.  So the most for the City to get in on the 75/25 participation means you could only apply for up to 4 million dollars worth of properties.  There’s still some dynamics that still have to happen.  The deadline for that is February 28^th, too short of a deadline for us to get in on that this year.  We are proceeding with making some contact with the residents in the area to see if they are interested in participating or not so that we know before next year’s deadline.

Jim Moegling:      Then you can apply on a part-time; I mean a partial basis for those that will accept.

Bill Payne:           That’s correct.  This presentation gives you an idea of the types of issues that we deal with on the flooding and the drainage side.  You can imagine what questions and concerns the community has, given the things we have talked about.  And these are issues that we have to deal with on the drainage piece of the program, how to implement this, how the City’s policies impact on these areas.

Jim Moegling:      Going back, I guess my thought, what is the cost-benefit analysis for the City?  You’re going to put out dollars.  What is your benefit?

Mike McMahan:   Service.

Jim Moegling:      No, you’ve got keeping the channel clean.  You got a lot of things that perhaps you won’t have to do.  The City could look at the cost-benefit analysis and see whether it is worthwhile from our point of view.

Bill Payne:           Right.  It’s not anything that we looked at from our perspective.  We participated in hazard mitigation grants and looking at it more from the perspective of these properties qualify, they are eligible, let’s apply and the City is willing to put up that money so that the citizens don’t have to deal with that issue because in this case, yes, there are some benefits to the City in terms of channel maintenance and other things that would not have to be done.   Most of the other mitigation grants the City has participated in the last few years have been isolated areas where maintenance of the channel really doesn’t impact it because they are impacted by backwaters from the Tennessee River or