[SPEAKER_02]: I hope you're having a fabulous spring. Una primavera muy especial. Since we have a quorum, apparently, I'm going to skip the roll call. And I see Martha is about to join us. Welcome, Martha. So I am bringing the meeting to order. And let's review the minutes from May. I'll entertain a motion to approve the minutes. Lois, do you approve?
[Lois Grossman]: That's a yes. Bob?
[Barry Ingber]: Wait, wait, wait, wait. You have to have a motion. Nobody made the motion. So somebody has to make the motion, and then somebody has to second the motion. Not that it really matters, but for when it matters, you should know how to do it. I'll make the motion. I move that we accept the minutes. And I'll second that.
[SPEAKER_02]: Thank you for teaching me. So Lois approves of the minutes. Bob?
[Robert Paine]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_02]: Barry?
[Barry Ingber]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_02]: Fran?
[Barry Ingber]: It's Benji, yes.
[SPEAKER_02]: Brenda?
[Brenda Pike]: Oh, I'm not a voting member.
[Unidentified]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_02]: Jessica? Yes. Martha? Yes. Matthew.
[Brenda Pike]: Oh, also not a voting member.
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, Matthew is a guest. Right. And who's Medford community? Is that Alicia?
[Brenda Pike]: That is the community TV. So they're here to record the meeting.
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay, then. Looks like that's everyone. And I also approve. All right, minutes are approved. Let's go through the agenda.
[Brenda Pike]: So I think the next thing is the administrative updates. The only real administrative updates are that we have new interns in our office starting this week and next. I'm not exactly sure what work each of them will be taking on, but for future meetings, you should see some new faces coming in to help out.
[Robert Paine]: Brenda, are we having a table at the Circle the Square event?
[Brenda Pike]: We are for Electrify Medford, yes.
[Robert Paine]: Oh, OK. But not for the committee? Not that it really matters.
[Brenda Pike]: No, but I mean, if folks from the committee want to come to Circle the Square and help out there any materials that you want to have there, we can have it for the table that we have reserved for Electrify Medford.
[Robert Paine]: Usually we have a save the date for the Harvest Your Energy Festival, or something of that ilk.
[Lois Grossman]: I'll be there with Trees Medford, Brenda. And I was hoping we'd be side by side, which we often are. And so I can sort of go back and forth as needed.
[Brenda Pike]: That's great. Yeah, I haven't seen the layout for it yet.
[SPEAKER_02]: Do you have any further administrative updates? If not, I'd like to take a moment to welcome our guest. Matthew, would you like to tell us about yourself?
[Matthew Page-Lieberman]: Not, not really. I don't want to get in the way of the meeting, but thank you for being so inviting.
[SPEAKER_02]: No worries. We have plenty of time. Okay. Shall we proceed to the monthly update on initiatives involving climate policy in Medford?
[Robert Paine]: There was one item in the administrative, the planning for the next meeting. which is like a floating meeting. And I think we probably have to send out a doodle poll maybe. I volunteered in the last couple of years to have it in my backyard. You can also see a installation of a heat pump system as a bonus. And my purple air monitor, which is currently saying the air quality is, I think it's okay. So, as a color code, if it's green, that's good. If it's orange, it's not so good. And if it's red, run for the hills. So, that requires some, you know, just to see. It doesn't have to be a Monday. It can be pretty much Monday through, you know, we wouldn't have a Friday, but we could have it any evening from Monday through Thursday night that's We get most of the votes and typically we would have it starting a week of after the 4th of July through maybe mid August or something like that. One week I'm not around is week of July 22nd, but otherwise I'll be around to host the event. So, Ren, are you able to send out some sort of a doodle poll?
[Brenda Pike]: Yes, I can definitely. Yeah. Are folks happy to have it in Bob's backyard again?
[Robert Paine]: Absolutely. And we usually have a potluck. You bring your own food offering and beverage and very informal and another in-person meeting. There's no steps involved. If someone has a wheelchair, they can easily access the backyard. So there's no issue there.
[Brenda Pike]: That's great. I have to say, I can't wait to see your backyard in person after seeing it in the background.
[Robert Paine]: It's going to rain again, because last year it rained. The year before, it was good.
[Lois Grossman]: Then you can walk up the street and see my backyard, because I'm only five houses away. And I have a five-seater canoe. And anybody who's serious about enjoying the day should come dressed for canoeing and take a ride.
[Robert Paine]: Yeah, I have two kayaks, a canoe, and a, well, anyway, we have flotilla, if you will.
[Lois Grossman]: Yeah, we could have the meeting on the water.
[Robert Paine]: Well, let's not go too far.
[Martha Ondras]: I like that idea. That's what you call a floating meeting, Bob.
[Robert Paine]: Yeah, right. We have docks anyway, yeah. But we want to stay away from the insects, so we'll stay away from the water. That sounds great. We'll look for the doodle poll and we'll even send an update as to when that meeting will be.
[Brenda Pike]: Okay, sounds good. And this takes the place of both the July and August meetings.
[Robert Paine]: Right, right. Yeah.
[Brenda Pike]: Okay. Okay. And is there anything else that folks should bring it you mentioned that it's going to be a potluck ship to people bring I don't know, folding chairs or anything like that.
[Robert Paine]: I have plenty of chairs, so don't need to bring anything but yourself and your favorite food or beverage that you would like to share.
[Lois Grossman]: And I have extra chairs if you need them, Bob.
[Robert Paine]: All right, great. Sometimes we often begin that meeting at 6 to avoid darkness, so that might be another consideration, but it's really It's a fairly informal meeting and it's more like a summer break, but we talk about a few things in business and then we enjoy the event.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I remember last time there was some real yummy food and a lot of desserts. Seems like everyone brought a dessert.
[Robert Paine]: Right. But it's better if it's outside so that you can see. Yeah, more things.
[Lois Grossman]: We'll have to consult the local meteorologist to choose a good date.
[Robert Paine]: I'm afraid we can't predict that far in advance.
[Brenda Pike]: Well, we can. When I send out the doodle, the top two ones, I'll choose for the date and the rain date for it.
[Robert Paine]: All right, great. Yeah, plan that ahead, I guess.
[Brenda Pike]: Yep.
[Robert Paine]: If that makes sense for a public meeting, I don't know. OK.
[Brenda Pike]: Sounds good. Yep. I'll send that out. So, I think the next thing on the agenda is the updates on the city initiatives. Top of that, I would, I would say electrify Medford. We have 1 more training and a Q and a session left for the coaches and we have 7 paid coaches and 11 volunteer coaches who are who are going through the trainings. And some have been joining our Zoom meetings to sort of do it all together. Some have been doing it on their own. There's an online dashboard and some of the paid coaches especially have been coming in to do the training in person because they don't have as much access to technology at home. I think the lesson I learned from this is the need to be flexible to make it as easy as possible on the coaches who are spending so much time on this. And some of the coaches have already been helping out at events. We had a Haitian Flag Day event that I brought a little dollhouse to, to sort of point out all of the the areas where the building could be improved. That was a big hit with the kids and the parents who gave me an opportunity to talk to their parents as they were sort of hovering there with their kids. We had an asthma education event that I brought a portable induction cooktop to do. And as we're talking about the fact that natural gas is the number one trigger for asthma inside the home, you could then say, OK, here's one thing that you can do about it and be really hands-on with that. So that was a great event. Yes, we were talking about this a little bit earlier, but we'll have a table at Circle the Square on the 15th. And I'll have some climate themed games that people can play. And these are games that I don't know if folks have heard about Mass Energize. But they're a nonprofit organization that's been working with lots of municipalities and community groups. And they have created these pretty large form wooden games with climate change themes to them that organizations can rent for the day. So that's what we're going to be doing for Circle the Square and Harvest Your Energy Festival. So is anyone interested in helping to man our table for Circle the Square?
[Robert Paine]: Brenda, this is Bob, I can do at least for part of the, what is it, 3 to 7 p.m.?
[Brenda Pike]: Yes, it is.
[Robert Paine]: Yeah, okay. Yeah, I'll let you know what, maybe a couple hours of that period, whatever.
[Brenda Pike]: Okay, sounds good. It's the 15th, right? Yes, it is.
[Lois Grossman]: I can help set up. Brenda, I'll be there early to help set up.
[Brenda Pike]: That's really helpful because we'll have to build up the games sort of get flat packed and then we have to set them all up. So there's going to be more set up for this than there normally would be for a table.
[Lois Grossman]: Why don't you email me when you need help and where and I'll do it. Perfect.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'd love to join, but I do have a surgery, a minor surgery the day before, so I cannot join this one, but probably the Harvest Your Energy Festival. When does that take place again?
[Brenda Pike]: This year, it's October 19th. I hope the recovery is smooth for the surgery. Thank you. We're also going to have some of the Electrify Medford coaches there helping out too. So I think it'll be a really fun day. And we're also going to be at the Multicultural Day at the Andrews School on the 22nd and at the Farmers Market on the 27th. And just dropping into the chat, there's a link to some of the, a spreadsheet with the outreach events that we're looking at for Electrify Medford with the people who have signed up to help out there. sorry I see Jessica's asking when when circle the square is happening so that is June 15th it's from 3 to 7 unfortunately last year was there was a rain date and it was pushed to Father's Day which would happen the same thing this year if it rained so that's a fingers crossed And for Electrify Medford, we've had three people sign up so far. And Bob was good enough to speak with one of them who was specifically looking for help in assessing some proposals for solar on her home. So thank you, Bob, for doing that before we finished preparing all the materials and going through the training and everything. Switching gears a little bit, the curbside compost program, the bulk compost and bin distribution event at City Hall was very successful. Thank you for the suggestion. I think that came up in this April meeting for this group. So, thank you for pushing us to do that. We have currently... Put it in my closet. A little over 3,000 people signed up for the program, a little over 1,000 who are currently enrolled, and a little over 2,000 who are on the wait list to start on July 1st. And Garbage to Garden is interviewing people now for a paid street team, in addition to some of the volunteers who have been helping out from Mothers Out Front. But they're still looking for volunteers. So if anybody's interested in helping out sort of getting the word out on your street, you can sign up with Garbage to Garden to do that. And I'll drop that link in the group chat as well. But you can also just go on Garbage to Garden's website and sign up. It's medfordcompost.com. A couple of updates from some of the things that we discussed last time, the congressionally directed spending request, another word for earmarks, that we submitted. We're not going to find out about that until the Appropriations Committee makes decisions on the budget, hopefully July 31st. And then the timeline for that after that fact point is Congress will approve the final funding bill sometime between December and March. And then the agency that would be administering the funding would contact us in April or May to start getting the contract process going. And then the funding would actually officially be awarded in spring or summer of next year. So it's a long process, but we should know this summer if we are actually going to be receiving the funding eventually, because really it's that Appropriations Committee Decision that's that's the important 1. And that was for the community center, replacing the building that's there right now with a larger building. Has upgraded heating systems and solar panels and things like that. I see a question. Oh, yeah, yeah, it's not just for heat pumps, but that's definitely part of it. Really, the idea is to give them a larger location so that they can host more programs at the community center. The school HVAC project, we are close to signing contracts for the project manager. and the designer for the project. We really need to start this as soon as possible. So hopefully those contracts are finalized this week. And you can really feel the urgency now because just since we've been working on those contracts, the water heater at the Brooks School died, and one of the chillers at the Roberts School died. So it's really just highlighting the state of the equipment at these schools that we really need to be moving quickly on them. One new thing, I'm not sure if Alicia had mentioned this to you in the past, Previous earmark that was applied for we finally we got the word that we were approved for that And this is to You know renovate the Hegner Center That's a building near near Fellsway and Fulton intersection And the the earmark is basically to make the building habitable again so it can be used for offices for, you know, Board of Health and Office of Outreach and Prevention, and then also as a resilience hub. So, in the case of some emergency, whether it's a power outage or flooding or something like that, It would be a location that people could go to and they, you know, we could have cots there and things like that. So, we're looking, we're trying to get multiple resilience hubs like that set up around the city. So, this isn't another one that we'll be working on. And my office isn't heading this up. The facilities director will be heading this up, but we'll definitely be involved just to make sure that as the building is renovated, you know, that we're putting in efficient electric heating systems and things like that.
[Lois Grossman]: Brenda, can I ask you a left-field question? Sure. That's an emergency shelter. I have a blow-up bed, a queen-size, double-high blow-up bed that developed a bubble in the middle. It's now useless to me for couples to sleep on unless they wanna sleep on either side of the bed, but it's not totally unusable. It's an inflatable and it deflates. Can you use that for something like that? I am trying very hard to find somebody who can make use of it. I hate to just throw it away.
[Brenda Pike]: I don't know about that. I can ask the folks at the Board of Health because they're the ones who arrange for things like cots for locations like this. I think they have specific cots that they use because they can be easily collapsed and stored. But I can talk to them and see if donations like that would be helpful.
[Lois Grossman]: Yeah, I would love to see it find a use in an emergency. It would be far better than nothing. So.
[Brenda Pike]: And then the only other thing I wanted to mention was that We were awarded technical assistance from the Massachusetts Department of Energy Resources to make a decarbonization roadmap for city-owned buildings. And so the idea of that is we set out exactly when all of the different systems in the buildings are likely to reach end of life so that we plan ahead to to replace them. And that way, you know, we'll have time to apply for grants to get funding and we're not going we wouldn't be in emergency situations where we might be tempted to just replace them with in kind systems just because it would be quicker. So Kathleen's actually helping us to collect information about city owned buildings to give to the to the consultant that would be giving us this technical assistance. So that will be a huge project, but I think the roadmap at the end will be really interesting for this group to see as we are looking at the different city buildings and what we can do to improve them. So those are all the updates that I had. Any other questions about any of that?
[Martha Ondras]: Brenda, did I hear that Medford's program with the Resilience Hubs slash emergency centers is being used as a model in other communities?
[Brenda Pike]: Yes. And actually, the city of Cambridge has a community center that they are doing essentially the same thing as what we were looking to do with one of their community centers. And they're moving faster than us on it. I think they have more funding to be able to do it. So it's good to see. And MVP, the Municipal Vulnerability Preparedness Grant, they have been using the model that we have set up with the Medford Connectors, the folks who speak the major languages in the city and are helping to do outreach to different groups. They're using the model that we started with our connectors as sort of a way for people to think about this for their own community center. So start with the outreach and the social services, then create the physical location. for people to actually be able to go to in the event of an emergency. But because you've been doing all of the social services work beforehand, you have that trust and you are the people that they're looking to for help in cases like that.
[SPEAKER_02]: Any more questions for Brenda?
[Robert Paine]: Brenda, this is Bob. You mentioned something about an event of emergency. Do we have a municipal plan in case there's gonna be like a major flooding event? I don't know, it's hard to predict those sometimes. Sometimes they're thunderstorms that are just like this pop up and they can create a lot of local street flooding. But I don't know if there's any organized approach for reacting to that.
[Brenda Pike]: The city has been going through a planning process with all the different departments coming together to discuss different types of emergencies and what would be the response to each of them. I'm not sure if there is a public-facing document for that that's prepared yet, but the city has been going through that process.
[Robert Paine]: Okay, is there a, do we have like a, when do you think there'll be more progress on that? Maybe it's hard to say. Has any other community done this already? Like Cambridge, Boston, they have all this money.
[Brenda Pike]: That's a really good question. I haven't been directly involved in Medford's responses. It's been mostly department heads who have been coming together to have these discussions. But I can follow up with Alicia to find out more about it and sort of what the timeline is and all of that.
[Robert Paine]: I don't think there's really a, you know, I've been living on the river for, Mystic River for decades. The worst that's happened is that the water got over my dock, but it didn't get over the bank. So that was a pretty bad event. It was like eight inches of rain or something like that in a June event. So far, we've avoided at least the river flooding areas near it. But I think there have been sometimes there are, if there's a lot of street flooding, you can have pockets where there's poor drainage. And I don't know if there's any approach for improving the drainage in areas that we know are problems.
[Brenda Pike]: Yeah. So, yeah, in Medford, because of the Amelia Earhart Dam, the river flooding is not necessarily as much of an issue. Um, but, uh, it's it's really that that street level flooding that that we've the city's been focusing on. I mean, the, the dam will need to be raised because of sea level rise in the, in the future. And that's something that the cities and cities around the dam have been. working with the state to try to make sure that the state allocates funding to do that. But as long as they do, then the river flooding is not going to be as much of an issue. The city has done a climate vulnerability assessment and some follow-up studies focusing on the stormwater flooding. in different parts of the city and has really highlighted some areas to focus on. And so one of the first ones that the city is focusing on is in South Medford. The streets are Bowen and Golden Ave. And there is an area around Tufts Park. that also has some flooding. And so the studies that we've done have identified those areas as a particular priority, not just because of the flooding that's happening, but because of the sort of the demographics of, you know, the number of people who are living there and their social vulnerability. And so we have gotten funding, grant funding to do the design work for the The upgrades to the drainage system for Boeing golden abs and have have done that design work and are now moving forward with with looking for grant funding for the actual construction of the, the actual improvements to that drainage system. So, it's a slow process, but it's moving along.
[Robert Paine]: Yeah, that's good because I think that's just nuts and bolts type of thing. Understanding where the street flooding is known to be a problem and then figuring out how to rectify that. And that's good to know that that's being done.
[Martha Ondras]: Brenda, on that topic, I heard at one of the budget subcommittee meetings that the police got a grant Medford police got a grant to work on resilience and response related. It was a climate related grant and be interesting to know more about that. You get a chance and how the how that works with other departments, particularly planning and. I also just observed that one of the consequences of flooding that maybe people don't see so much is the sewer outfalls, the combined sewer outfalls, and the sanitary sewers that behave properly normally, but in the heavy rain, they dump sewage. Because I live on the lower lake and the river at a point where that happens pretty often, I'm very aware of it. And the Alewife Brook related groups are very aware of it. And it would be interesting to know, as a kind of follow-up question, how our climate plan addresses water quality and the contamination in our surface water.
[Brenda Pike]: The interesting thing is that the The overflows that you probably hear about are from the Somerville and the Cambridge sewers. Medford actually already has a separated system where the drainage and the sewers are actually different systems. So the stormwater doesn't mix with the sewage in Medford. I mean, but if there's, overflow that's happening in Somerville, it's going into the Mystic River. And, you know, same with Cambridge up on there, on the Alewife Brook. Although they've been working, both cities have been working to do sewer separation projects. I was lucky enough to live in both in Cambridge and Somerville on streets when they were doing the sewer separation projects there. It took a long time for them to be doing construction on our streets to be doing that. Luckily, Medford doesn't have to do that because they were constructed properly to begin with.
[Martha Ondras]: I'll just close by saying there are definitely sanitary sewer overflows that aren't related to the separation issue. They're just old sewers that accidentally, if you want to call it accidental, do flood the river, discharge into the river at times when there's heavy rain.
[Brenda Pike]: Interesting. My understanding was that, huh, that that wasn't true, but I can follow up with the city engineer to see more about that.
[Martha Ondras]: Yeah, it's also DCR responsibility. So you see their trucks parked out here monitoring those. You know where those sewers are because they park a truck there during heavy rain. I'll try to find out some more facts and not just feelings about it, OK? Yeah, I'd love to find out more.
[SPEAKER_02]: Does anyone have any more questions for Brenda?
[Martha Ondras]: I have one city related question, and that is, are we continuing to replace gas lines?
[Brenda Pike]: So my understanding is there is nothing preventing National Grid from replacing gas lines at the moment. And I think that's part of what Senator Barrett in the bill that Senator Barrett was talking about, I think that's a first step to getting to the point where they can stop that from happening.
[SPEAKER_02]: Thank you. Yes, I see that Matthew has a question. Go ahead, Matthew.
[Matthew Page-Lieberman]: Yeah, this is OK. It was very nice to meet you recently, Brenda, and to speak again on the telephone today. You know, I live in public housing, and the question I'm always trying to want to know is what the housing authority can do for more, you know, climate resiliency and renewable energy and stuff like that. And I'm never kind of quite like you gave a recommendation today about a question I had about the Salton. It was no walk in court. I want to know about the redevelopment. what was in plan for that as far as renewable energy. And I know that this commission, and I think Barry, you took leadership on this as far as the ordinance for the solar panels. Well, sometimes I have questions that they will not apply to state and federal property and all kinds of stuff, but I don't really know where to start as far as how to move forward with this. I mean, the current board of commissioners isn't really ambitious as far as I think addressing this and I think the executive director has a lot on this plate. So if anybody has any recommendations about how we would go about all these buildings, all the housing buildings here, I would like to know any directions to point me in and any attempts that have been made in the past. Thank you.
[Brenda Pike]: Yeah, I haven't been directly involved in the Walkling Court discussions, but I can follow up with other folks here. Matthew, I think when we talked earlier, we talked about the fact that Danielle has probably been involved with that, so I can follow up with her.
[SPEAKER_02]: Martha, do you have some insights on this? And then Barry.
[Martha Ondras]: Yeah, thank you. Yeah, I don't know if it's an insight, but I would think if the city is taking an inventory of, I think it's a terrific idea to do what Brenda described, where you look at the remaining life of the HVAC equipment in municipal buildings, public buildings, so you can plan to intervene, rather than replacing a boiler when it dies on a weekend with a new boiler, you're ready to go in with a heat pump. I was just wondering if that also extends to public housing in the city.
[Brenda Pike]: It doesn't because those are technically not city-owned buildings. The housing authority is a separate entity.
[Martha Ondras]: Then I would suggest that you somehow get them on the same plan of understanding where their opportunities are.
[Brenda Pike]: Yeah. Thank you, Martha. It'll be interesting to follow up with the folks that we've been talking to about the Willis Ave Community Center and just follow up with them about whether they have a similar type of decarbonization roadmap. what their plans are.
[Barry Ingber]: In partial answer to Matt's question, I've asked specifically about the Walkling Court development, whether there would be solar panels on those roofs, and I was told yes.
[Matthew Page-Lieberman]: Very good news. Thank you, Martha and Barry. Thank you. Thank you, Brenda.
[SPEAKER_02]: All right, last call for questions for Brenda. Speak now or forever hold your peace. Is Paul here? I see a number 617-417. Is that you, Paul?
[Matthew Page-Lieberman]: Kathleen.
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, Kathleen. Welcome.
[Matthew Page-Lieberman]: I've been walking to meeting and now I'm in my car.
[Brenda Pike]: Martha, I know that you've been talking with Paul about the pollinator garden work that he's been doing, or the two of you have been doing. Would you be comfortable talking about it a little bit now?
[Martha Ondras]: I can tell you a little bit about it. Paul's been doing the work, really. He has identified, with a group of interested people, he's identified five locations in city, in Medford Public Parks where we could put a pollinator garden, natural meadow, you know, there are different terms for the same idea of using native plants that pollinators have great value to pollinators. And he's identified places that have high visibility, so it could be an educational, tool, but are not competing with youth sports or some other use of the property, and that are ecologically suitable. So he's going to present this to the Parks Commission, or there's a group he's presenting to, I think, on the 18th to get support. And then we have, turns out there's a pollinator group at Tufts. student group, which is going to participate. They like to partner with other groups, so we'll be working with them. And the Mystic River Watershed Association also has someone who has done natural meadows and has expertise in this. And I believe within the group that Paul's pulled together, there are at least one person who has experience. So I think we've, he's got real potential here for getting this done and making a difference. And he's also engaged with the high school science teacher who, you know, we can't do it this summer, but by next summer, we might, it might make sense to have a student project next spring and summer. That's what I know.
[Brenda Pike]: That's a lot from the last time we met. It's great to see some hands-on work happening there.
[SPEAKER_02]: Thank you for the update, Martha. Should we move on to new business? Does anybody have any questions for Martha? All right, let's move on to new business. Who would like to introduce a new topic?
[Brenda Pike]: I have something that I just wanted to mention. I heard that Trees Medford was approved for CPA funds to do a park trees inventory to help sort of complete the city's tree inventory. I know, Lois, you're involved with Trees Medford. Is there any information about that you can share?
[Lois Grossman]: Nothing specific at this point, but yes, we are doing what we can. On Circle the Square, I think Amanda will be there. at the table, and that's a time to get some more updates. But they're very active. They did the giveaway at the library and got a lot more trees started. And we did a tree pickup in April, I guess. We'll be doing it again in the fall like we did last year. We're getting lots of trees out there, I can tell you that.
[Brenda Pike]: I'm sure you're aware there's a public listening session Oh, this was put out through the Go Green Medford Google group, so you're definitely aware. But there's a public listening session tomorrow evening that DCR is holding about a project for McDonald Park where they'll be replacing trees that have, it sounds like they've been victims of the Emerald Ash Borer.
[Robert Paine]: Do you have any updates on the Harvester Energy Festival planning? Do you have an intern? Do we have an intern working on that?
[Brenda Pike]: Not yet. We had one new intern start today, and we'll have a couple more starting over the next week. And then we'll start digging into it then.
[Robert Paine]: We still have plenty of time, so.
[SPEAKER_02]: I have a new topic I'd like to introduce. If you'll indulge me for a couple minutes, I came across some climate maps the climate future of the United States and Massachusetts in particular, there's maps and tables. And the table part is basically a climate risk scorecard for each Massachusetts county for multiple types of climate impacts. Is it okay if I screen share that?
[Brenda Pike]: Yeah, absolutely. You should be able to your co host.
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay. All right. So I'll send this link shortly. It's a ProPublica article. I won't take you through the whole thing, but this is our suitable temperate zone right now, or historically. And it's basically, it's moving upwards towards Maine, Vermont, Canada. There's a heat map. It's the south, southeast, midwest, western states affected. Extreme heat and humidity. This central part of the country, this middle belt surprised me. Also southeast coast. Western states, Southwest. Oh, and is that Louisiana? Yeah. Wildfires, Western states, of course. Sea level rises, coastal areas all around the perimeter of the US. This is farm crop yields. So purple is bad. The southeast is going to have lower agricultural yield. Green is good, because that's a negative decline, which is actually an increase. But this isn't a high emissions scenario. Moderate emissions scenario looks a little better. Economic damages.
[Robert Paine]: Oh, go ahead. Some of these maps have nothing in New England. Does that mean there's no data or there's no change?
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, I think that for many of the metrics, we in New England and Massachusetts are pretty well situated. We're very insulated from the worst impacts of climate change compared to the rest of the country. And where you do see, this was very interesting, especially because this green is good. This is actually showing that in Vermont and Maine, they're going to see some economic gains from climate change in the decades 2040 to 2060. Major economic losses in Florida and much of the coastal southeast. Not a good place for real estate in the long term, the Southeast. And here is that very interesting table. It actually goes on and on and on. Every single county in the United States is captured. But because the counties are dispersed, they're actually in order of worst impacts to less serious impacts. What I did was I cut and pasted and stitched together. Here it is. I cut and pasted and stitched together this, these little pieces, Massachusetts. So these are all the MA counties. Suffolk County includes Boston, so that's why you see sea level rise there. Barnstable County also, purple. The darker the shade, the worse the impact. They also scored it with numbers. And in Middlesex County, if you look at this area compared to What we saw in the beginning of this table, we're pretty lucky compared to the rest of the US. And we're also pretty lucky compared to coastal Massachusetts. So I'll stop there. What's your reaction? Did that surprise you or did you learn something new?
[Robert Paine]: This is Bob. We've heard about a lot of rainstorms in the Houston area. And I suspect with the bad hurricane years, you can get a lot of damage in the hurricane-prone states, which is probably part of that issue. And it's hard, you know, it's much more expensive now to even get house insurance in these states. because insurance companies are losing so much money with a big storm. So, that's an economic issue. There's just so much exposure to high temperatures, high sea surface temperatures, which will generate abnormally large rain events. And so I think it's the rain events and the wind events that are driving this, the problems with livability, affordability, that type of thing.
[Brenda Pike]: It was interesting to me to see the green economic impact in northern Maine because I'm originally from Maine and I have a lot of family there still who are seeing economic impacts already for things like they work in the woods industry and they are seeing more weeks of the year where they aren't able to do work because the frost has melted earlier than it did before. So they can't actually go in with their equipment into the woods. It would dig it up too much. And so they're actually out of work for more weeks of the year because of that.
[SPEAKER_02]: I would guess that the projected economic gains in Maine and Vermont have more to do with people wanting to move there, people who are going to flee worse areas, and also the farmers will have greater yield. They'll be able to grow more types of crops.
[Martha Ondras]: I'd like to point something out about the scale of the map. The county scale is a very interesting scale. It's still pretty broad brush. So it may be that there's a benign effect over, say, Middlesex County, but within that county, certain populations or communities are going to be much more vulnerable than others. And I've seen maps that include social vulnerability, and the EPA does that, or attempts to do that, for example. And those maps are quite different. You'll see some pretty severe effects in specific pockets.
[SPEAKER_02]: Are you referring to the EJ populations, environmental justice?
[Martha Ondras]: Yeah, pretty much. For example, there was a study on Chelsea, you know, of the heat effects in Chelsea compared to, say, Medford or, you know, another different community. And they're going to be hit much harder because of the density and the amount of paving, you know, the amount of heat absorbed. And also the fact that people don't have air conditioning. And the housing quality, it is not such that, you know, the housing is not designed to keep heat out. So it's, that's just a small example of, you know, how you have to really look at this at a pretty fine grained level to find out where the impacts are. And that's my opinion anyway.
[Barry Ingber]: Yeah, I would take that even a step further and say that what Martha's bringing up is absolutely right. And but I think it takes it beyond geography that you can't really necessarily look at it geographically to next door neighbors could experience very different impacts from from climate change.
[SPEAKER_02]: Any more thoughts on this topic or any other topics of new business?
[Martha Ondras]: I would just add, I'd question whether they factored in two things that are, again, people aren't so aware of, but that are important. One is the impact of wildfire smoke. because Canada is basically a big smoking ash can north of us that is sending us huge amounts of air pollution. Air quality has declined in recent years because of the fires. Also, ozone production is increasing with the climate change, and that has a great impact on people's health. I don't know if that particular study factored in. Those are dynamic, and they're hard to characterize. But they're important.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I was in New York City last summer when it was hit by that really bad two days of wildfire smoke. And it was shocking. The sky was red. It was hazy. And most people weren't wearing masks. And just a couple hours of exposure without a mask made me pretty sick. I was sick for the next five days. Okay, any more? thoughts or does anyone have a matter of new business? There was one more thing I wanted to talk to you all about. Do you have any interest in a talk by a soil scientist or soil expert? Because I happen to know three that I've met through my work, and two of them are board members. Our subcontractor recently produced a healthy soils report just two weeks ago, and it's a very comprehensive document. So I'd like to hear from you all just to gauge the interest. If there is some, I'd be happy to invite one of those three people to give a brief talk on soil degradation, regenerative practices, and healthy soils. How do we define that?
[Lois Grossman]: I think that would be very interesting. Will it apply at all to our specific area?
[SPEAKER_02]: Their general knowledge will certainly apply, such as the do's and don'ts, and what traditional or more modern agriculture has been getting wrong. and what regenerative practices we need to move towards and why, and the relationship between soil as a carbon sink and mitigating climate impacts, mitigating climate change. As for the Healthy Soils report, it's more focused on my MVP project in the Nashua River watershed. However, there's certain parts of the report that are definitely applicable to any and all areas.
[Brenda Pike]: That might be an interesting topic for our September meeting.
[SPEAKER_02]: Matthew, go ahead.
[Matthew Page-Lieberman]: Yes, I wanted to have a community garden some years back. And some people were saying that we should not grow any vegetables in this soil around here because it's so polluted. I think, Martha, you and I, we also talked about this. Martha is actually, I guess, was one of the commissioners you were speaking about that knows a lot about soil. But I was just kind of wondering about this report, if it would be somehow, if the idea is to eventually use it to show to policymakers or anything like that, for a failure to address all the pollutants, it's creating situations where people do not have such options in which they can grow food or anything like that, if there's any kind of relation.
[Martha Ondras]: Yeah, I think that that's a really good point. And I would love it if this talk tied into, again, local conditions. We have a lot of brownfield soils When they put in the clipper ship connector, they got delayed, I think, about a year because they had to remove lead, you know, soil that had too much lead in it. And I think twice about planting food because of, you know, so many of the areas are brownfields or just not suitable soils. And I think it's a great topic.
[SPEAKER_02]: And if brownfields and contamination is your particular concern, one of the soil experts I had in mind, it just so happens that he founded a company affirmed that for many years was remediating contaminated soils, including some of the worst brownfield sites in the Merrimack and Nashua watershed area. So yeah, I'd love to invite Dr. Ralph Baker. I'm certain he would agree in September. Oh, and we have a new guest.
[Brenda Pike]: Do we still? Hello? Yes. Are we talking about the puppy?
[SPEAKER_02]: There was an individual named Mark, but he's no longer with us. What's your puppy's name?
[Lois Grossman]: Nim.
[SPEAKER_02]: And how'd you choose that name?
[Lois Grossman]: It's my nephew's dog, so I don't know.
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh.
[Lois Grossman]: But he saw me sitting here and my sister-in-law's in the bathtub, which he couldn't follow her into, so he latched on to me.
[Barry Ingber]: It appears that we've exhausted the agenda, so I'd like to make a motion to adjourn. Second. You don't have to take a roll call on that one, Sarah, you could.
[SPEAKER_02]: So moved.
[Barry Ingber]: You know, you can just ask, does anybody object?
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay. No objections. If anyone objects, say nay. And if you agree, say aye. Okay, I'll take that as a yes. Good night.
[Brenda Pike]: Thanks, everyone.