There has been some discussions among the CAC recently about the topics for the upcoming CAC meetings in February, March and April to focus on alternatives earlier. There is also an investigation being planned to follow-up on the survey results. We believe that these items warrant a reconsideration of the topics for the upcoming CAC meetings.

For reference, the current meeting topics are as follows:

We are recommending a few changes to these topics as outlined below.

First, in response to the issues identified on the FDD survey, the City is currently planning a follow-up investigation of several of the respondents that expressed issues with the FDD.  We are meeting with the City today to discuss the investigation, and it will likely include looking at several homes, calling several survey respondents to collect additional information, and recommending improvements to correct issues identified. We expect to have the results ready by April 1. We believe that having this information in hand is necessary to conduct the meeting "If FDD goes forward, what needs to change?", and therefore, we are proposing to move this meeting topic to the April meeting. 

Secondly, we are sensing a strong desire by members of the CAC and public to begin focusing on alternatives sooner rather than later.  Therefore, we are proposing to focus on this in the next meeting in February. The "storage" topic for the March meeting will be combined and moved up into the February meeting. We are proposing a topic for February of "Initiation of alternative evaluation".  We expect that this meeting will be an expansion and continuation of the "Best Practices" sub-group that I lead this fall, and in the February meeting. We will focus on the broad options that are available to address wet weather issues is sanitary sewer systems and discuss several specific alternatives, and examples of communities that have implemented them. This will be an informational and brainstorming session - all options are on the table.  We will not be evaluating or eliminating options yet - that will come later.  We will also ask the CAC what additional information or research they would like to perform or would like to perform on alternatives to help support the CACs evaluation and recommendation.  The February meeting is an "initiation" of the alternatives process, because this will be an on-going topic that will be a large focus for the remainder of the CAC work. Of course, we need the results of the risk assessment and hydraulic capacity assessment to fully evaluate the alternatives, but the topic is so important that it makes sense to begin discussing the options now.

Finally, we are proposing to move up the findings on the risk assessment and hydraulic capacity evaluation to the March meeting. We have been saying that these results will be ready in April.  However, I checked with our hydraulic modeling team, and they feel that they will have the flow risk assessment complete, and a first draft of the results of the hydraulic capacity assessment ready by the March 20 meeting.  So we are proposing to move this milestone up to meet the needs of the CAC meetings.

With those proposed changes, the revised upcoming CAC meeting topics are as follows:

We think these topics will work very well with the desires to focus on alternatives and the timing of available information from our modeling and the survey follow-up investigation.  We would like to hear from the CAC members on these proposed changes to the meeting topics. Does this change sound ok?

Take care,

Robert