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HomeMy WebLinkAbout01/14/2014 RegularMINUTES OF THE JOINT ELECTED OFFICIALS MEETING OF THE SPRINGFIELD CITY COUNCIL, AND LANE COUNTY BOARD OF COMMISSIONERS TUESDAY, JANUARY 14, 2014 A joint elected officials meeting with the City of Springfield and Lane County was held in Harris Hall, Lane County Public Service Building, 125 East 8 'b Avenue, Eugene, Oregon, on Tuesday, January 14, 2014 at 5:30pm with Board Chair Pat Farr presiding. ATTENDANCE Vice -Chair Farr reconvened the meeting of the Lane County Board of Commissioners. Mayor Lundberg opened the meeting of the Springfield City Council. Present from Lane County were Board Chair Farr and Commissioners Leiken, Stewart, Bozievich and Sorenson. Lane County Planning Manager Matt Laird and other Lane County staff were also present. Present from Springfield were Mayor Christine Lundberg and Councilors VanGordon, Wylie, Moore, Ralston, Woodrow and Brew. Springfield City Manager Gino Grimaldi and other Springfield staff were also present. PUBLIC HEARING 1. Springfield Utility Board Drinking Water Amendments to the Lane County Rural Comprehensive Plan (RCP). [Mark Metzger] (60 Minutes) LANE COUNTY ORDINANCE NO. PA -1307 — IN THE MATTER OF AMENDING THE LANE COUNTY RURAL COMPREHENSIVE PLAN (RCP) TO REVISE THE GOAL 5 GROUNDWATER RESOURCES POLICIES AND ADD THE SPRINGFIELD WELLHEAD PROTECTOIN AREA TO THE GOAL 5 INVENTORY OF SIGNIFICANT GROUNDWATER RESOURCES AND ADOPITNG A SAVINGS AND SEVERABILITY CLAUSE (Dept. File No. PA 13 -05273 ). SPRINGFIELD RESOLUTION NO. I — A RESOLUTION APPROVING THE AMENDMENT OF THE LANE COUNTY RURAL COMPREHENSIVE PLAN (RCP) TO REVISE THE GOAL 5 GROUNDWATER RESOURCES POLICIES AND ADD THE SPRINGFIELD WELLHEAD PROTECTION AREA TO THE GOAL 5 INVENTORY OF SIGNIFICANT GROUNDWATER RESOURCES MOTION: ADOPT/NOT ADOPT RESOLUTION NO. 1. Board Chair Fan said this was a second reading and public hearing of ORDINANCE PA 1307/ In the Matter Amending the Lane County Rural Comprehensive Plan (RCP) to Revise the Goal 5 Groundwater Resources Policies and Add the Springfield Wellhead Protection Area to the Goal 5 Inventory of Significant Groundwater Resources and adopting a Savings and Severability Cause (Dept. File No.: PA 13-05273). January 14, 2014 Joint Elected Officials Meeting Public Hearing City of Springfield Lane County Page 2 of 7 Springfield Planner Mark Metzger said Springfield was considering a resolution amending the Rural Comprehensive Plan to Revise Goal 5 Groundwater Resources Policies, and add the Springfield Wellhead Protection Area to the Goals 5 Inventory of Significant Groundwater Resources. Commissioner Farr noted that the public hearing for Lane County was already open from earlier today Mayor Lundberg opened the public hearing for Springfield. Lane County Senior Planner Keir Miller reviewed the topics to be covered this evening: Background; Process — IGA; Amendment Request (applicant); Criteria; Public Comments; and Planning Commission Recommendations. Prior to the County's enactment of Ordinance PA -1281, the Metro Plan encompassed a larger area than it currently covered. The area east of Interstate 5 used to be part of the Metro Plan, but through the County's enactment of that ordinance, which was co- adopted by the City of Springfield, that boundary shrunk. He referred to maps showing the Metro Plan boundary before and after the change. It had been a County initiated request to remove that area from the Metro Plan. During the proceedings to move that boundary, the Springfield Utility Board (SUB) expressed concern about that area being removed from the Metro Plan Boundary. If it were removed, the City of Springfield would no longer be a decision maker on plan amendments in that area and would lose some level of control for their sensitive groundwater time of travel zones. A significant portion (about 40 %) of the SUB time of travel zones lay within the area outside of the city limits but within the old Metro Plan boundary. The solution to this issue was an IGA the City and County entered into which would allow the City of Springfield to be at the table with the Board of Commissioners, reviewing an application. The IGA stated that whenever a plan amendment came in for that area, the city would be a decision maker. Tonight, SUB was requesting two policy amendments to the Rural Comprehensive Plan. The first was that those areas would be adopted by Lane County into the Rural Comprehensive Plan as significant Goal 5 groundwater resources. He referred to a map identifying those sites. That afforded SUB recognition under the Plan and set the stage for future protection of those resources. Statewide Planning Goal 5 was a two -part goal that pertained to groundwater, riparian resources, mining resources, etc. The two goals were to identify the significant resources and adopt a'protection measure to protect those resources. Tonight they were addressing the first phase of recognizing and adopting those time of travel zones. SUB had a hydro - geologist on staff who would define that terminology and walk through how the areas were established and certified by the State. The second component of the proposal was more of a housekeeping item. It memorialized the IGA between the City and the County and put the language into the Rural Comprehensive Plan. Mr. Miller noted the policy language that would be added: Goal 5 — Water Resources, Policy 6: The significant groundwater resource inventory for Lane County shall consist of those wellhead protection areas meeting the requirements of OAR 660 - 023- 01400(5)(a) that have been delineated and certified by the Oregon Public Health Division. The certified wellhead protection areas shall be adopted into the Goal 5 Inventory by Board Ordinance. The adopted January 14, 2014 Joint Elected Officials Meeting Public Hearing City of Springfield Lane County Page 3 of 7 areas boundaries shall form the basis for development of wellhead protection plans in accordance with OAR 340 - 040 -0180. Mr. Miller referred to the applicable criteria and noted that staff was recommending approval of this application request. Notice was sent to all affected land owners within those time of travel zones as well as properties abutting those time of travel zones. Over 850 notices were mailed out, a legal ad was put in the paper, a website was developed that received over 173 hits up through December 31. 2013, and work sessions and public hearings were held with the Planning Commissions. Very little public comment was received. The majority of the questions and comments were related to what would happen on the ground with the protection measures and if future regulations might regulate septic systems. SUB addressed this by explaining that their main concerns were in hazardous materials, large industrial sites and mining operations. Other questions included whether or not adoption of these protection areas would influence the City's decision making when expanding the urban growth boundary (UGB), and how measures would affect farm and forest practices. It was explained that this was not part of the criteria the city used during the UGB expansion process. One person expressed concern over equity of landowners within the county being subjected to a plan or different measures to protect a resource that benefitted resident within the city. Staff explained that if protection plans were put into place, it would not only protect the city's wellhead area, but also private well owners. Both the city and county Planning Commissions unanimously recommended that the elected officials adopt the proposal. Tom Lamphere spoke on behalf of the City of Springfield and SUB. He noted that Phil Brown from GI Water Resources, Amy Chinitz, Drinking Water Source Protection Coordinator from SUB, and Greg Miller, Water Superintendent from SUB were in attendance and available to answer questions. Statewide Planning Goal 5 required jurisdictions to inventory and protect natural resources, including groundwater resources. This was the inventory step. No measures were being presented at this time. The Administrative Rules establish criteria for determining a significant groundwater resource. There were basically two criteria that applied: 1) the wellhead protection area is deemed significant if it was delineated and certified by the Oregon Public Health Division; and 2) it is a primary source of drinking water serving over 10,000 persons as their primary source of water. In this case, SUB and the Rainbow Water District were serving 64,000 people. The area shown on the map had been certified by the State as recently as July 2008. It met the two criteria for designation as a significant groundwater resource. The maps being presented were in County Ordinance PA1290 and PA1206 which were used in the adoption of Springfield Drinking Water Protection Plan which was currently applicable within city limits and the Springfield UGB. Tonight's proposal was only addressing the wellhead protection area east of Interstate 5. The portion on the west side needed to be reviewed with the City of Eugene. The second part of this was adoption of the two new policies to be added to the Rural Comprehensive Plan. These policies were designed to identify the existence of the inventory, identify how groundwater resources were adopted into the inventory, and their relationship to future plans for groundwater protection. The second policy identified the process for review of post - acknowledgement plan amendments for the areas that were formerly in the Metro Plan that required the joint process with the city and county. With the addition of those policies into the plan, people looking to address groundwater resources in Lane County would be directed to the correct processes and jurisdictional January 14, 2014 Joint Elected Officials Meeting Public Hearing City of Springfield Lane County Page 4 of 7 governance. The review of this application went beyond the normal notice for a legislative action and was treated as a quasi-judicial notice. Every land owner in the affected area was notified, and notice also went 750 feet around the boundaries of the delineated area. They had contact with representatives of the gravel industry, 1000 Friends of Oregon, Land Watch Lane County, the Nature Conservatory, and several farmers in the area. Additional information was provided to the farmers to address their concerns. The farmers' main concerns were how future protection measures would affect their property. At this time there were no protections proposed. They were assured their concerns would be addressed when protection measures were developed. There was a limitation on what could be done to protect the water in terns of farming practices. The Department of Agriculture had jurisdiction over those regulations; therefore, any development of a future protection plan would need to be coordinated with the Department of Agriculture. Phil Brown, professional hydro geologist, spoke on behalf of SUB. It was a requirement of any drinking water protection plan to develop a wellhead protection area. A wellhead protection area was an area where groundwater flowed through an aquifer and was captured by the well. There was a formal process to develop these areas that was described in State regulations including being prepared by a licensed hydro geologist, then reviewed and certified by the State. The size of a well head protection area depended on the pumping rate of the wells or wellfield and the aquifer characteristics. Most of the areas were elongated because of the direction the water was flowing and where it would be collected. The delineations could run hundreds or thousands of feet or miles from a well. Springfield's wellhead protection areas were typically defined by a 99 year time of travel. That referred to the amount of time it would take for a molecule of water to travel from the most distant upgradiant to where it was captured by the well. It was common to delineate other time of travel areas within the wellfield areas ranging from six months, one year, five years, etc. The purpose was to identify zones of differing risk in the event of a groundwater contamination event. The shorter the time frame, the higher the risk. Mr. Brown said the Oregon requirements for this delineation work were variable depending on the size of the population served by the water utility. For systems serving more than 50,000 people, it was necessary to use a numerical model so the aquifer could be represented realistically enough so the wellhead protection areas were meaningful and realistic. Springfield used a three - dimensional numerical groundwater flow model. These models were chosen and specified because they were able to simulate much more complex aquifer characteristics and situations. He described some of those situations that could be simulated. Those situations, as well as characteristics could be built and calibrated into this model. The tool SUB used was Mod -flow and its associated software which was developed by United State Geological Survey (USGS) and has been used for decades. It was one of the most widely used and defensible tools for this kind of work. SUB simulated the wellfields pumping at about 125% of the average daily demand to make them viable into the future. Councilor Moore asked if the depth of the well had any influence on the time of travel. She asked what the average depth of a well was. Mr. Brown said in this area they tended to be fairly shallow and about 100 -200 feet in range. Deeper wells tended to have a higher degree of containment, didn't interact as much with surface water, had lower permeability of layers, and their wellhead protection areas tended to be larger and more extensive. January 14, 2014 Joint Elected Officials Meeting Public Hearing City of Springfield Lane County Page 5 of 7 Amy Chinitz, Drinking Water Source Protection Coordinator, spoke on behalf of SUB. The proposed amendment was the first in a two -step process: The first step was the inventory and the second was to adopt protection provisions. They anticipated the second step would involve a process of technical analysis and review, and public involvement had yet to begin. It was premature to speculate what those future provisions would be. She provided an example of when Springfield went through this in the late 1990's when Springfield began developing its Drinking Water Protection Plan. Delineating the wellhead protection area and obtaining certification from the State was the first step in that process. The delineation identified the land area that directly lay over the part of the aquifer that supplied groundwater to the wells. These areas were identified as sensitive areas because the consequences of a chemical spill or other such event were great. The next step after the delineation was to identify an inventory of potential sources of groundwater contaminants. This analysis included identifying all activities, facilities or land uses whether current or historic, that had the potential to be a source of groundwater contamination. Springfield made use of guidance provided by the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) on potential sources of groundwater contamination. She explained some of the possible sources of contamination. Springfield's analysis based on information gathered by using public databases and on the ground surveys, resulted in a map of potential contaminant sources shown and their respective time of travel zones. Together the delineation of the wellhead protection area and the identification of potential contaminant sources formed the basis for developing risk reduction strategies, A citizen task force made up of community members and representatives from agriculture, industry and commercial worked together over a four month period with assistance from a technical advisory group to develop ten strategies for managing potential sources of contamination. These strategies, which directly addressed risks identified in the potential contaminant risk inventory, were the cornerstone of Springfield's Drinking Water Protection (DWP) Plan. Springfield adopted the DWP Plan in May of 1999, and one year later adopted the implementing ordinance which was the Drinking Water Protection Plan Overlay setting standards for the management of hazardous materials within the 20 year time of travel zone. In addition to the Overlay, the DWP Plan also includes a variety of voluntary and education based projects designed to reduce the risk of contamination. She provided some examples of those programs. Board Chair Farr asked if livestock was included in potential contamination sources. Ms. Chinitz said something on the list could include a confined feeding operation where there is high density of livestock in an area Commissioner Leiken said when Springfield's Drinking Water Protection Plan was adopted, he and Mayor Lundberg were both city councilors. He spoke regarding the citizen outreach and that he and late councilor Hatfield, along with John Tamulonis (Community Development Manager of Springfield), went out to speak to businesses who were originally fearful of the plan because they thought it would be detrimental to the business community. The number of permits issued in Springfield over the last decade would indicate that fear was unfounded. When this was first adopted, it was groundbreaking. The discussion about the Metro Plan boundary started in 2009 and he felt the current discussion about the groundwater was positive because it would protect those citizens who were between Springfield's UGB and the Metro Plan Boundary. This added tremendous value to all of those property owners and was a good step. He thanked the staffs from Lane County, the City of Springfield and the Springfield Utility Board for working together and taking the time needed to do this well. This was good work from all the staff and sent a very good message. January 14, 2014 Joint Elected Officials Meeting Public Hearing City of Springfield Lane County Page 6 of 7 Commissioner Bozievich said when Springfield adopted the DWP Plan, he was working in Springfield at Branch Engineering. He was then employed by Eugene Water and Electric Board (EWEB) in their water division where they were looking at the possibility of developing a confluence wellfield on the other side of 1 -5. During that process, they looked to the Springfield DWP Plan as a model for a wellhead protection plan. From that experience, he had read a finite element model of a groundwater resource and understood the impacts of the aquifer underlaying Eugene and Springfield which was a very open aquifer and open to the ground. That was why it was really important it be protected. What fell on the ground in Eugene and Springfield went into our drinking water. This was an important first step. He had seen the analysis of these areas and felt they were an accurate depiction of the areas that needed protection and deserved Goal 5 designation. This was the second action the Board had taken in the last six months to protect wellheads. On Sept 17, 2013 the Board adopted an ordinance to protect the City of Florence's dunal aquifer and some of their riparian and wetland areas. This Board had been actively working to protect drinking water. Lane County and the city had worked together with SUB to resolve several issues in order to get the protections in place that were important to the City of Springfield through an IGA. This type of cooperation was a great model. He noted other times when this type of cooperation had been used recently in the City of Florence. Commissioner Sorenson said the protection of drinking water was something most people didn't spend a lot of time on so it was nice to see the professionals here talking about this program. He noted that the governor of West Virginia announced that there would be a state of emergency in 9 counties after a chemical spill contaminated the Elk River. That contamination affected and caused a ban on water use for 200,000 customers. A chemical spill could really affect drinking water very quickly in both surface and ground waters. He was glad they were moving forward with this and was trusting they were taking enough action to be pro- active. Board Chair Farr said this did have a direct parallel to what was going on in Virginia so he appreciated Commissioner Sorenson bringing that up. The action being discussed this evening was the type that precluded that type of emergency. It would seem that our aquifer may be more susceptible to contamination than that in the Appalachians. Commissioner Bozievich noted that the incident in Virginia was surface water contamination rather than ground water contamination. When surface water _was involved, intakes could be turned off to keep contaminants from getting through. That was not the case with ground water. It was even more serious in our area to establish these protections. Board Chair Farr referred to the map and noted that several of the wells were on both the Springfield and Eugene side of 1 -5. He asked how that was addressed. Mr. Miller said in those situations, SUB would work directly with the City of Eugene. It would likely be worked into their Envision Eugene process to adopt water protection plans in that process. That would be addressed at that time. Board Chair Farr said this had been a lengthy process on the Springfield side. He asked if it would be an equally long process on the Eugene side. Mr. Miller said it was likely to take a long time in Eugene as well. With the model in place that has been used on the Springfield side, it should be smoother. January 14, 2014 Joint Elected Officials Meeting Public Hearing City of Springfield Lane County Page 7 of 7 Mayor Lundberg said that when they were approached by the county with this idea, there was some disagreement as to why they needed to do this. The city and county were not in agreement about many issues when they first started, but the Drinking Water Protection Plan was essential to the citizens in Springfield. She was very pleased that things had been worked out and SUB was satisfied. They had been able to work out a satisfactory resolution by working together. She thanked staff for their hard work and said she was happy to be at this point. Board Chair Farr asked if there was anyone who would like to speak on this topic. No one appeared to speak. Board Chair Farr closed the public hearing and the record for the Lane County Board of Commissioners. Mayor Lundberg closed the public hearing and the record for the Springfield City Council. IT WAS MOVED BY COMMISSIONER LEIKEN WITH A SECOND BY COMMISSIONER STEWART TO ADOPT ORDINANCE NO. PA -1307. THE MOTION PASSED BY A VOTE OF 5 FOR AND 0 AGAINST. IT WAS MOVED BY COUNCILOR WYLIE WITH A SECOND BY COUNCILOR WOODROW TO ADOPT RESOLUTION NO. 2014-02. THE MOTION PASSED BY A VOTE OF 6 FOR AND 0 AGAINST. ADJOURNMENT Mayor Lundberg adjourned the Springfield City Council at 6:17 p.m. Commissioner Farr adjourned the Lane County Commissioners at 6:17 p.m. Minutes Recorder Amy Sowa City Recorder o-ah ristine L. Lundber Mayor Attest: City Reco ler