[0:00] Good morning, everybody. This is a meeting of the Boulder County Commissioners. It is April 6, 2021, all three commissioners are present and we are here for a business meeting starting with the consent calendar items 1 through 8.

[0:26] Second. All in favour? Aye. Aye. Now the item number nine, petition of

[0:34] a payment or refund of taxes recommended for the approval of Cessor's office for the

[0:39] Sunbelt Reynolds Inc.

[0:44] Good morning, commissioners. This is Claudia Hodges Gonzalez,

[0:48] appeals coordinator in the office of the County Administrators Office. I have a petition for

[0:53] statement or refund of taxes submitted by Sunbelt, rentals ink for the 2019 and 2020 tax

[1:01] years for their personal property account, P0401686. The assessor's office recommends this

[1:08] petition for your approval, which would result in a refund in the amount of $54,355.85 for 2019,

[1:17] 15 and 50,500 on dollars in 95 cents for 2020.

[1:23] April Micah was here from the assessor's office to provide more information and answer your questions.

[1:29] So, April wanted to give us a description.

[1:33] Absolutely. Good morning, commissioners.

[1:34] I'm April Micah, supervisor for the business personal property department in the assessor's office.

[1:39] So we have an abatement for two years, Sunbelt rentals, acquired and existing a business back in 2017.

[1:49] And they started filing their declarations with us, and unfortunately, we're listing both asset lines,

[1:57] where they were including equipment that they actually rent out to other local businesses.

[2:03] By state statute, equipment like that that's least out for 30 days or less, and includes sales tax, becomes exempt from business personal property.

[2:11] So they didn't abatement to go back and remove those assets from their list.

[2:17] Since they were already paying sales tax on it, and so we did an itemized list to make it clearer in the future.

[2:24] Thanks April any questions?

[2:28] Your explanation was crystal clear. Thank you, April. I, although I don't understand the policy behind that, but I guess that's not the question for this morning.

[2:38] I don't have any questions. Thanks, Claudia and April for presenting and that was great description. So I'm happy to move for approval of item number nine this morning. Second.

[2:50] All in favor.

[2:52] Hi.

[2:53] Thanks.

[2:53] Thanks, April.

[2:54] Thank you.

[2:58] The next item is item 10.

[3:00] Boulder County Department of Housing and Human Services.

[3:03] There's requesting a waiver of bid requirements for a contract of out-of-home

[3:07] placement of services for RADS house for BDCDHHS family and children services clients.

[3:17] Hi.

[3:17] Yeah, thank you. My name is Dave Bonnet-Youtso, and I am with the Impact Care Management Division

[3:24] of Housing and Human Services, and I manage a team of eight care coordinators who coordinate

[3:32] placements for child welfare youth when they are requiring that level of care. My team

[3:40] helps to assess the needs of kiddos and then find a child placement agency or a residential child care facility that meets the needs of those each unique youth.

[3:55] And we have each year we enter into a contract and out of home placement contract.

[4:03] It's an umbrella contract, we refer to it as an SS23A, and there is no financial liability to that umbrella contract, there's no rate in the contract or requirement to use the facility.

[4:22] Once we place a youth, we then execute a contract for that kiddo, that individual kiddo.

[4:31] and that's when we negotiate rate and and that is the contract that aligns the scope for

[4:41] the mental health treatment and other services that meets the needs of that kiddo.

[4:48] The state provides the list of facilities that are certified that we use and this past year added

[4:57] a residential child care facility named Brad's House and we have done bid waivers in the past

[5:06] for all the other facilities that we have contracts with and we are today requesting that we

[5:12] can do a bid waiver for Brad's House as well. Any questions?

[5:20] I have a question. Thank you for being here this morning.

[5:24] Two questions, I guess, do we, so we maintain the contracts with other residential treatment providers as well, so this Brad's house is not the only place that we would place it on.

[5:40] That's right.

[5:40] And one thing that just caught my eye, not necessarily a problem, but that they're based

[5:47] down in El Paso County.

[5:51] And so when we're placing a child quite far away from their home, do we make some kind

[6:00] of provision or allowances for visitation if that's appropriate under the circumstances?

[6:04] Absolutely.

[6:07] We have about 19 youth in congregate care placements right now and we try to have as wide

[6:17] of net available as possible because oftentimes my team Heather is here, she's the placement

[6:24] coordinator as well. The team is making those placement decisions at 2 o'clock in the morning

[6:32] And particularly Brad's house, which is in, as you said,

[6:35] it's in Monument, and it serves 10 to 14 year olds.

[6:40] And of the 30 or so facilities, we have three that will serve 10

[6:46] and 11 year olds.

[6:48] So it really has become harder and harder each year

[6:51] for us to find placement beds.

[6:54] By design, we like to keep kiddos in their homes

[6:57] as much as possible, but we try to have as wide of availability to meet the kids needs.

[7:06] And yes, we make sure visitation can happen and other therapeutic services and supports as well.

[7:14] Okay, thank you.

[7:16] Thank you, Bals, for being here this morning.

[7:18] I did have a couple of questions.

[7:20] one, you address a little bit about the amount, the financial amount on the contract that there isn't

[7:27] an amount there that is part of this presentation. Can you give us an idea of what that total

[7:35] amount ends, I understand that the contract so then made once like a kiddo is designated to one of

[7:40] those 40 spots locations. Can you give us an idea of what that looks like from an annual spend

[7:46] even if it's, you know, the last three to five years or somewhere in there.

[7:53] Yeah, I mean, I can, I can share with you the cost is a, is a daily cost for a residential child care facility.

[8:00] It's a rate that is set by the state and it's $238 in 11 cents per day.

[8:08] And so, and we might have youth, you know, we try to keep youth placed under 90 days,

[8:16] but we often have kiddos who are placed for a year or more.

[8:22] So, and we place about 138 youth were removed from their homes last year.

[8:31] We try to place as many of those kiddos in Boulder County foster homes.

[8:37] So those are foster homes that are managed by housing and human services.

[8:43] Not part of this contract.

[8:45] We try to default to that as much as possible.

[8:50] But we last year, we placed about between 150 kiddos in a CPA or RCCF.

[9:00] those group care homes.

[9:03] Okay, thank you.

[9:04] I have one other question on the,

[9:06] you mentioned that the state provides the list

[9:09] of facility and our homes, the placement locations.

[9:14] What is the relationship for the county

[9:17] using those services to learn more about those facilities

[9:22] on an ongoing basis to make sure that the need

[9:25] of being met for everybody in our community?

[9:28] Yeah. So sorry. I just looked at the rate and I think I had it wrong. It was 2, 231, 38.

[9:36] For a residential child care facility and 93 dollars and 22 cents a day for child placement agency.

[9:46] And yeah, so the department, the Colorado Department of Human Services, CTHS of the state,

[9:53] has a certification process, a licensing team that licenses each facility and oversees those facilities.

[10:03] And then we have amongst our team of eight folks, one of those folks would be assigned to each placement to ensure the quality of care.

[10:12] And there's also a case worker that from the family and children services that is overseeing the care as well.

[10:20] In general, there is a treatment team of four to eight people involved meeting monthly to

[10:30] ensure that the kiddos both that their knees are getting met, but also that they're moving

[10:34] towards the treatment goals that will step them down from the facility and into a more home-like setting.

[10:44] Okay, thank you. So that the request is not today for an amount of funding. It's simply for the

[10:49] waiver request that you that's what you're looking for. That's right, yes.

[10:58] And the only other thing I

[10:59] just wanted to comment and say thank you to staff there was some old language in this particular

[11:03] contract and so I just want to recognize the staff that went back in and we're going to work with

[11:07] the all to get that contract updated to use more appropriate language for our workers in Colorado.

[11:14] Yes, and thank you to you for pointing that out. I didn't have any other questions.

[11:21] Thank you for approval of item 10.

[11:24] Back in.

[11:26] So it's important work.

[11:27] Thanks for doing it.

[11:29] All of all in favor.

[11:30] Hi.

[11:33] Thanks, David Heather.

[11:34] Thanks Claudia earlier for your work on the

[11:36] pavement.

[11:37] Thank you.

[11:39] Thank you.

[11:40] You guys are doing the work.

[11:42] Thank you.

[11:43] Thank you.

[11:44] Let's see.

[11:45] We are on to item number 11.

[11:48] Acknowledgement and agreement regarding communication sites, agreements between Boulder County

[11:54] and Eldar Enterprise's LLC.

[12:00] Hi.

[12:00] This is Eric Rogers.

[12:01] I'm going to be presenting this item for you today.

[12:05] I can give you a little bit of background about this.

[12:09] So back in 2011, Boulder County entered into agreement with El Doris, ski resort, granting

[12:15] El Dora, a license to use land adjacent to the ski resort, a radio communications tower

[12:21] was being constructed on the landing question, and the purpose of the agreement was to

[12:27] allow El Dora to install radio equipment on the tower. This agreement was the radio communications

[12:33] agreement, and then in 2014, the county entered into another agreement with El Dora related

[12:39] to the same site, this time granting outdoor license to use communications facilities being

[12:45] constructed on the site.

[12:47] And this agreement also discusses an electrical line, which is going from a transformer.

[12:53] And that site is owned by Al Dora.

[12:56] The county will pay rent to use that electrical power source, so it's sort of going two ways

[13:02] in this agreement.

[13:03] There are licenses going both ways.

[13:06] and outdoor grants, the county license to cross Eldora's land to access the site.

[13:12] So that second agreement is called the Communications Site Agreement, and it's a little

[13:17] bit detailed, but for the purposes of today, all we're talking about is these acknowledgments,

[13:24] which are coming before you, because Eldora is entering into a new, they're basically refinancing,

[13:29] and so they have two banks who are asking that these

[13:34] acknowledgeants be signed. Basically they're just asking for the banks to be put in

[13:38] elder issues, if elder or were to default, for the purposes of these two

[13:43] agreements. So they really don't affect the county's interest at all. The county

[13:48] attorney's office is recommending approval in signature and we were hoping to get

[13:54] both of them before you today but one of them has gotten held up in the signature

[13:57] process. So today you're just looking at the one with US bank and then in a few weeks you'll see

[14:03] the same thing coming through with the other bank that's evolved. Let me just check my notes and

[14:10] make sure I got everything that I was going to say. I think that's about it. Do you have any

[14:17] questions about these acknowledgements? Any questions? Thanks, Erica for being here this morning.

[14:24] Yeah, the question I had is the document, it has dates of September 30, 2020, so I was just curious about the time laps and it seemed like this probably was already presented to a previous board maybe and it's just now signed up those dates.

[14:44] That's a good question. I thought that I had updated the dates.

[14:51] Let me see, maybe it somehow came through with the wrong date,

[14:59] I'm wondering how I can pull

[15:00] What's the one that you're looking at?

[15:04] I've gotten to the most recent packet, because there were two links.

[15:12] Let's see.

[15:17] What are you seeing that date, Marita? I'm seeing it's entered into as of like 2021.

[15:25] let me get back to this. Okay, I think I'm looking at it. What you're looking at, let's see.

[15:35] Trying to find the item 11 on my path there.

[15:43] Pack it page one of the three extensions of credit.

[15:50] data as of September 30th, 2020. It's in the second paragraph of the

[15:54] recitals. I see it now, yeah. Oh, I see it too. Okay, let's see.

[16:03] So the

[16:03] collab, I think that that's referencing the date of the collateral agreement,

[16:09] which is not this. That's something that I let's see.

[16:20] It sounds like that's

[16:21] in the Eldora and their borrowers have already entered into.

[16:27] That's the way I was reading it.

[16:29] And so this one, they're calling it the acknowledgement throughout.

[16:38] And so maybe they've already entered into some kind of deal with their lenders, but for our purposes,

[16:45] this is where we're going to say, okay, if you default, if Eldora defaults,

[16:50] we will accept the banks stepping into their shoes.

[16:54] Okay, so the guarantee agreement that's also in the paragraph of the

[16:59] knowledge of an agreement, those are just both of those items are from September

[17:04] 30th, but they're just part of the fuller agreement.

[17:10] That's my understanding that that's part of the financing agreement between

[17:14] outdoor and its blenders. And just so you know powder, the that they've

[17:21] powder is the company that now owns El Doris. So that's where powder is

[17:26] coming up. But powder, outdoor, those are the borrowers, and then the lenders are

[17:34] thanks. Okay, does that help? Yeah, clarify. Okay, thank you. That was

[17:44] the only question that I had. So, thank you, yes, sir. I don't see those

[17:50] agreements that are part of this agreement, that are dated. That's what we're

[17:54] going to look like, yes, sir. Do I have a general question? Sorry,

[17:58] you weren't jumping before you made a motion,

[18:03] but what's this communication

[18:06] terror use for? That's a good question. I don't know. I wasn't here when

[18:14] all this was happening and I don't know. I don't know idea. I could try to find

[18:20] out if you would like me to. Yeah, I'm just curious. I mean, it could be a

[18:30] You know, I did notice that the original agreement was signed by the sheriff's office, so it may be emergency related.

[18:39] But I don't know for sure.

[18:42] That is a critical thing, so that's my question.

[18:47] Do you want to, are you, Commissioner Johnson, you want to pull this until we have the other agreement to look at them together?

[18:54] What would you like to do with that comment?

[18:57] And I could try to reach out and see if I could get an answer here if you wanted to skip this item.

[19:03] If you'd feel like you need that to move on, I could do that real quick.

[19:06] Try to get a little more information.

[19:10] Why don't we do that and just keep moving to the agenda here and then come back to item number 11.

[19:17] Okay, that sounds good.

[19:19] No, thanks, Erica.

[19:21] In now on 12, rightification of chair Jones, 331-21 signature, I did that on my birthday,

[19:29] by the way.

[19:30] On an annual governmental joint cooperative agreement between the County of Boulder, State

[19:35] of Colorado and the State of Colorado, Department of Local Affairs, for a bit of division

[19:41] of housing concerning H.R. or 133 funds for emergency rental assistance.

[19:47] Good morning, commissioners Leslie Irwin commissioners office staff and happy belated birthday commissioner Jones.

[19:54] I'm bringing forward this request to ratify your signature that was executed last week.

[19:59] The State Department of Local Affairs sent this contract directly to commissioner Jones via docu sign and he executed it.

[20:06] This agreement is to use the neighborly portal to process applications for emergency rental assistance

[20:14] is specifically limited to our U.S. Treasury pot of funds for rental assistance, emergency rental

[20:22] assistance. Dola is executing agreements with all 11 communities that receive direct allocations

[20:29] from Treasury for some level of participation in neighborly. Our agreement is just that we use

[20:35] their portal, but we still process the applications and work with the residents to give them

[20:40] the assistance.

[20:41] We'll also use the portal to ensure there's no duplication of benefits if residents had

[20:47] previously received assistance from the state.

[20:49] We'll be able to check duplication of benefits and also access, use the data for reporting

[20:54] requirements to U.S. Treasury.

[20:56] Attorneys did review the contract before it was sent to Commissioner Jones and there will

[21:03] be a separate vendor contract at some point soon with Benavay, who does business as neighborly.

[21:10] So those are two separate agreements.

[21:12] We're awaiting direction from the state on the vendor agreement.

[21:15] But today, it is the agreement with the state to use neighborly that I am here to request

[21:20] ratification of Commissioner Jones signature last week.

[21:25] Any questions?

[21:28] No, Leslie.

[21:28] Thank you very much.

[21:30] Thank you, Leslie. I did just have a question mostly for public too for anybody listening and curious about these funds. Could you just talk about the breakdown. Where that where that money is going my just looking through the agreement here. It looks like there's a 90% use direct and then what's where's the other 10%.

[21:49] Yeah, and that's requirement in the act in the law itself. So 90% has to be direct financial

[21:56] assistance to residents. So that means rental assistance or utility assistance. And then 10%

[22:03] can be for housing stability services and administration. So housing stability could be case management

[22:09] or eviction, advocacy to prevent eviction, and then that administration piece.

[22:16] Okay, thank you and I hope as we can do some outreach and get to some folks who may be

[22:22] weren't helped or weren't supported initially and some as COVID has gone on as we all know

[22:27] for some of the extended amount of time so thank you for all your work to get this where it's

[22:33] that now.

[22:34] And the huge thanks to HHS staff and BCHA staff who are doing Yomans work, we did have a surge

[22:41] application. So where it is getting out some way or another. So that's good to know that we're able to help people who need it.

[22:50] Absolutely.

[22:51] Like to me if approval of item 12.

[22:56] All in favor.

[22:58] Hi.

[22:59] Thank you.

[23:01] Thank you.

[23:01] Good work.

[23:03] Thank you.

[23:04] In Commissioner Jones. This is air courageous. I could answer your question if you want to come back now.

[23:08] I can wait. Let's go to item 11 and you can answer a question, Erica.

[23:12] Okay, so I did confirm that the primary use is emergency communications.

[23:20] That sounds like a good thing.

[23:23] Yeah, it's an important thing. So, where did did you have anything more or should we go ahead and vote on this?

[23:28] I didn't have anything for there. I'd like to move for approval of item 11.

[23:32] Second.

[23:33] Well in favor.

[23:36] Here's let's hear it for emergency communications.

[23:38] Thank you, Rika.

[23:40] When you're up at Eldora.

[23:42] I'm really financing and acknowledging that you just followed that, that, that, that, that, that.

[23:50] All right, we are now on to item 13.

[23:55] 2021 budget supplemental on behalf of Public Works Department in the amount of

[24:00] 1,100, 100,000, 243 dollars to increase the related identified and approval

[24:06] construction projects to the e-spoilter County Hub project in Lafayette.

[24:14] Morning from the shares to Indian district. I'm the Senior Budget Analyst with the Office of

[24:17] Financial Management and as stated, we're looking to increase the general reconstruction

[24:23] appropriation by the $1.1 million. These are all previously approved projects that were

[24:36] guidance, though, that these costs are not eligible to be funded by the costs, proceeds themselves,

[24:44] and so we're just recognizing that this portion of the project costs will not be funded using

[24:49] general use resources. And if you have any specific questions about the projects themselves,

[24:55] I do have David McLeod, the deputy public work director available to address any of those.

[25:01] Any questions?

[25:03] Yeah, if you don't mind, Gillian, can you just clarify that? Did you say that this money is allowed?

[25:10] Is eligible to be funded? And I'm reading the line item here, so maybe that's part of my confusion

[25:15] that it talks about receiving guidance on costs that are eligible to be funded. But I thought you just said that

[25:21] this 1.1 million is not. Yeah, so the guidance we received was really just to gain some clarity around

[25:27] which portion of the projects cost were eligible to be funded by the cops,

[25:32] proceeds, and which were not. And so this 1.1 that we're increasing in our general reconstruction

[25:38] appropriation is the portion of costs that we believe are ineligible. And so we're acknowledging

[25:43] that rather than the cops proceeds covering those costs will be using general general use resources

[25:50] to cover those costs instead. Does that help distinguish between the eligible and

[25:57] knowledgeable. Yeah, so the in-house work can't be part of the COP is at the short story.

[26:05] Correct. Okay. Any other questions?

[26:12] No, I don't think I have any other questions. Thanks.

[26:15] Daughter of her for the questions. I can move to prove item 13. Second.

[26:20] All in favour?

[26:22] All right.

[26:24] Thank you, Julie.

[26:27] Item 14, 2021 budget supple mental on behalf of public works department amount of

[26:33] four million dollars to increase related to continued construction improvement projects

[26:38] in the Boulder County jail that we're not completed by the end of fiscal year 2020.

[26:45] Yeah, so this item again is associated with projects that have been previously approved for county staff to pursue.

[26:53] In this case, the full funds were approved and appropriated in FY20, however, those projects were incomplete.

[27:01] So we're asking approval to reappropriate those funds in FY21 so that staff can continue work on the projects out of the channel.

[27:11] Yeah, I had just a quick question, Julie, and thank you very much for bringing this to us.

[27:19] Are these funds coming out of the alternative sentencing tax that was approved?

[27:30] And this is a little bit unrelated to this specific item in front of us, but so as I understand

[27:39] the bulk of that tax is for the alternative sentencing facility and then a portion of it is for

[27:45] certain improvements in the existing jail around the administrative offices and things like that.

[27:51] Have all of the funds or the projected proceeds from that tax been basically spoken for if you will.

[27:59] Do we have we've identified improvements for all of those funds, just I think?

[28:06] Great question.

[28:07] And do you think that those funds are essentially spoken for largely in part for that alternative sentencing?

[28:14] I'll let David McLeod chime in if he has any specifics around.

[28:18] That would be helpful.

[28:21] Good morning everyone.

[28:23] didn't cloud their director of public works.

[28:27] Jill, summed up pretty well, I would say that the bulk of those funds are

[28:30] spoken for, you know, revenues are still a projection at this point,

[28:36] so we're, you know, we are projecting that all that might

[28:40] will be spent between ultimate sentencing and other

[28:44] group of projects on the GLPs.

[28:47] And just to be clear, then the budgets for the existing facility

[28:52] coming out of the tax, those have been identified already. The reason I'm asking is,

[29:02] there's a bill in the legislature that could create some significant new capital expenses for

[29:10] the jail, and I was wondering whether any of these funds would be available. We have no idea what

[29:18] scope of those expenses might be, but I'm just wondering whether this source of funding would be

[29:25] available or whether it's already been programmed. I'm not familiar with legislation that's

[29:33] kind of in motion and how that might impact us, but the fund source for the of intermanagement fund

[29:40] is a tax-based fund. And I believe that all of the projected revenues are already accounted for

[29:48] with capital projects on the channel payments, including lots of things.

[29:52] Thanks, that is the answer I needed. Thanks. I just had one question that sounds similar.

[30:00] That, these particular allocation of the four million dollar request is for, is it for infrastructure versus programs?

[30:09] Sully?

[30:10] Correct.

[30:12] Yes. These are for actual construction, capital construction projects, the funds that we're requesting today.

[30:21] Okay.

[30:24] I don't have any further questions. I'd move to approve item 14.

[30:27] second. All in favour? Aye. Aye. Thank you, commissioners. Thank you, David and Jillian.

[30:38] We're on to item 15, 2020 and budget supplemental amount of 9,816,670 of dollars.

[30:46] This increased request is related to a U.S. Department of Treasury and Merchee Riddle Assistance Award.

[30:54] Yeah, so the final budget supplement on a quest that we're bringing forward today is to appropriate the $9.8 million that would increase the county spending authority and our dedicated resources fund.

[31:07] and allow the funds associated with this U.S. Department of Treasury award to be dispersed

[31:13] on eligible expenses. And I have Chris Krullock here, our special projects coordinator in

[31:18] the Office of Financial Management. Do you have any questions specific to that award?

[31:23] Any questions?

[31:26] I think we've been briefed on this. I believe so. I don't think I have any other questions. Thank you.

[31:32] I don't have a question per se, but it'd be great because if maybe you could just do a two liner, to distinguish this one from the one we just hold a few minutes ago as well.

[31:43] It's kind of related. Thank you. Good morning, everyone. Chris Crowell,

[31:48] Special Project Coordinator, Office of Financial Management. This is revenue that was not anticipated during the 2021 budget process.

[31:57] It's treasury funding, which is specifically

[32:00] airmarked for housing support related to the COVID-19 response and recovery.

[32:06] We've already received the funds at the Treasury's office

[32:10] and we're just seeking approval for the budget amendment

[32:13] so we can move money over to BCHA and HHS

[32:16] to get this money out into the community.

[32:20] Thank you.

[32:22] Thank you.

[32:24] I'd move to provide on 15 seconds.

[32:29] Really important work. Thanks for bringing in the money, Chris and team, jelly, and everybody.

[32:35] All in favor.

[32:38] Thank you.

[32:42] So authorization of this for executive session,

[32:52] I think Susie is on the phone.

[32:56] She might need to be promoted to

[32:58] list. It looks like she unmuted.

[33:15] I wonder if we could, uh, mad if you could just read it and we

[33:20] can vote on it. I actually don't, I don't know. I don't know. That's also possible. Thank you,

[33:24] listeners. This is Brianna Barbara Assistant Clerk to the Board. The authorization for executive

[33:31] session for item number 16, the topics that were proposed to be discussed by the County Attorney's

[33:39] Office are community planning and permanent dock at SE-21-002, the Rutter lot consolidation,

[33:50] litigation updates in Cook versus Boulder County, and Sabar St. Brain versus Board of Adjustment,

[33:57] And this authorization would approve an executive session for 11 a.m. this Wednesday April 7th.

[34:14] Do I have a motion?

[34:16] Before before you do that, it's been proven for so into CRS 24 or 6402.

[34:22] print for print be legal advice. So go ahead for a motion. Thank you.

[34:30] Some moved. Second. All in favor. All right. Thank you commissioners. And moving on to our next

[34:40] item. Just a note for the record. Docket SE-20-0013 ederton building lot recognition has been

[34:52] rescheduled from April 8th to April 27th.

[35:01] And actually this is not, I know for the record, I do need a motion to approve the reschedwing of this stock, please.

[35:09] Okay, question to approve items 17.

[35:14] Oh, wait, I don't see item. Is that on our agenda?

[35:20] Yeah, number 17.

[35:21] Oh, let me see that. Okay. So move a second.

[35:25] All in favour?

[35:27] Hi.

[35:28] Do we have any BCH executive sessions that we need to report?

[35:34] No, Commissioner Jones, we do not.

[35:36] All right. Anything else?

[35:38] Yes.

[35:39] We do need.

[35:40] I do need to confirm the executive session topics for two sessions that were held the first

[35:45] What is March 31st?

[35:48] Just to note for the record,

[35:49] the topics discussed

[35:50] where community planning and permitting

[35:52] docket LEU-21-001, the C-DOT Highway 7 Lower Canyon Project,

[36:00] and also a litigation overview,

[36:04] moving on, confirming the executive session topics,

[36:08] discuss on April 2nd, the executive session schedule

[36:12] at 9 a.m. On Friday, April 2nd with Ben Permanent County Attorney pursuant to CRS24-6-4024F for personal

[36:26] personnel matters for the purpose of interviewing finalists for the Boulder County Public Health

[36:31] Executive Director position was not health. And that is all that I had today.

[36:42] Thank you. Thank you. Thanks, Reynet. Everything on the agenda, though, we're adjourned.

[36:50] Thank you. Thank you. Good afternoon, everybody. This is a meeting of the Boulder County Commissioners.

[36:57] It is April 6, 2021. All three commissioners are present. Today we're here to have a hearing on the inner government

[37:06] a little agreement for funding Iraqi flat screenweight trail crossings through the federal land access program.

[37:13] The request from the parks and open space that the Boulder County Commissioners approved the

[37:17] Intergovernmental Agreement for funding the Rocky Mountain Greenway trail crossing.

[37:23] Whichever is the county in the cities of Boulder, Western Australia about it,

[37:26] and it's substantially in the forefront present by the board.

[37:30] So in other words, what we're talking about is the actual underpass and the road crossing.

[37:34] And that is the subject of this conversation.

[37:39] Also, we're not doing public, or a public comment,

[37:42] but we are doing public comment and we have read the comments,

[37:46] the commissioners have read the comments that came in through today.

[37:51] So with that, Summer, do you want to present?

[38:00] Yes, good afternoon, commissioners.

[38:02] This is Summer Law's policy analyst in the county commission's office.

[38:07] And Jeff Molene is bringing up our presentation now.

[38:12] If Jeff, if you could introduce yourself.

[38:15] Yes, I'm Jeff Molene.

[38:15] I'm the planning manager for Boulder County Parks and Open Space.

[38:20] And so, as you mentioned, Commissioner Jones,

[38:23] we're here today to bring forth the consideration

[38:25] of the Intergovernmental Agreement in support

[38:28] of the Federal Lands Access Program grant.

[38:32] And next slide.

[38:35] So, just a reminder that we'll be focusing on our discussion on these topics, we'll provide

[38:44] an overview and some history, an overview of the actual IGA, and then a presentation on

[38:51] the soil sampling and analysis results from the or kicked off after our folder counties

[38:58] and our partners 2016 resolution and then a review from Boulder County Public Health and so they'll

[39:07] say I'm playing in analysis results and then bring forward this decision point.

[39:13] So next slide, here are the presenters today and we'll each introduce ourselves as we take on

[39:21] different portions of the presentation, but just synodic that staff have spent countless

[39:29] hours reviewing the data and analysis related to this project that we've been involved

[39:37] in a partnership group and the federal land's access program grant process since at least

[39:46] 2016, if not prior, and a voter county has been involved in Rocky Flats issues for many decades, but we're really going to be focused today, specifically on this this IGA and trail crossings. So next slide.

[40:03] So yeah, just emphasizing the consideration point today and then next slide.

[40:11] One thing to note is that we'll really be taking a policy approach and also kind of a science

[40:19] driven approach to our review of the the soil sampling results and our overall involvement

[40:27] in the federal land's access program grant. But we won't be talking about the central

[40:32] operable unit or the Rocky Fletz National Wildlife Refuge per se. But just to note that the central

[40:38] that you can see here in this area is permanently closed, and Boulder County continues to support that permanent closure.

[40:46] And that the trails that we're connecting to are not in the central Oberville unit, but instead in the Rocky Flight Social Wildlife Refuge.

[40:54] And then the next slide please.

[40:59] So here's a timeline of our involvement in the Federal Lands Access Program process with our partners at Jefferson County.

[41:10] City of Boulder, City of Barbada, and City of Westminster. Then 2016, we reviewed an

[41:19] Internet Intergovernmental Agreement to participate in the Federal Lands Access Program

[41:23] grant and at that time, the Board of County Commissioners, conditionally supported,

[41:29] dependent upon additional and independent soil sampling and analysis,

[41:36] that we worked with our partners to contract for and independent agency to conduct EPE EPA

[41:47] compliant soil sampling analysis and we'll talk about that a little bit further that the

[41:52] award went to engineering analytics who is here to present today. Now we've been went through a

[41:58] public engagement process, including town halls and gathering online input regarding that

[42:05] sampling analysis plan before sampling analysis who conducted in 2019.

[42:12] The results became available in 2020 and based upon the results, Jefferson County did

[42:19] move forward and sign a revised intergovernmental agreement in December of last year and

[42:25] in 2021 there's been consideration of that IGA by the other partners just to note last night

[42:33] the city of Arvada also assigned the IGA and the city of Westminster signed in February of

[42:41] this year. So right now it's consideration in front of Boulder County and then also the city of Boulder

[42:46] will consider next week. And I think here is where I pass it over to Jeff.

[42:54] Oh, just a quick review of what is the federal land's access program, and we'll talk a little bit more for the down about the budget for this project and what this project really is in Jeff will go into the details there.

[43:07] But this provides specific funding to connect lands that are adjacent to federal lands, and so I'm going to kick it over to Jeff just to provide more detail.

[43:19] Thanks, Summer again, Jeff Molyne, with Boulder County Parks and Open Space and so yes, we've been so fortunate to have staff who are on the call here this afternoon who were instrumental in allowing and creating this opportunity for Rocky Flats, the Rocky Mountain Arsenal, for the federal lands to partner with these other agencies that summer identified.

[43:49] And locate the ability to access this federal land's access program grant funding opportunities.

[43:58] So if we get a chance to speak with some of our other staff that are on the call,

[44:03] we'll get a chance to talk with the people that really were the ones that made this opportunity

[44:07] of this wonderful opportunity available for us for these cities and counties and available for us at this time.

[44:16] So the way I'm looking at this at this point is this 200 feet is the thing that will get our county's residents safe access to 35 miles of trail.

[44:32] And what I mean by that is what's before you today is this this flat application and the IGA that allows the Boulder County to take part in this flat application.

[44:43] And if we are able to, if we're able to approve that, what it does is it gives our Boulder County residents safe access underneath the state highway 128 to the 35 miles of trail that the green.

[45:00] In way either already exists, 27 miles of it, and then another eight miles that will exist on rocky flats and some of that eight miles is already constructed.

[45:10] The other important parts of the request is that for roughly $90,000 of participation on our county part,

[45:20] And we're going to end up with a project that is in total nearly four million dollars.

[45:26] And so it's an incredible opportunity for us to leverage lots of different funding sources.

[45:32] And again, especially with this federal and access program.

[45:35] The project itself is only for the crossings that get the greenway into the Rocky-Flas National Wildlife Refuge.

[45:44] and in particular for us in Boulder County, it's this one that's the crossing of state highway 128.

[45:51] And we've talked about this other part already about the partnership and the agencies that are part of that.

[45:58] Again, just a little bit of information about the green way as a whole, the effort was kicked off in 2012

[46:05] with the idea of linking the arsenal through the communities in Denver, utilizing existing

[46:13] regional trails and existing community trails when they are present, but creating and building

[46:20] new trails where there's gaps in that, then it connects to the two Ponds National Wildlife

[46:25] Refuge and then with this flat grant would connect to rocky flats.

[46:30] There's ultimately a vision with the greenway that would connect this, excuse me, connect the greenway into Boulder, further north into Boulder County, and then ultimately up to Rocky Mountain National Park. That was the vision at the beginning.

[46:47] So our Boulder County, we've been a part of this partnership group since 2016 as some are mentioned and we've also had a share in the rocky flat stewardship council and the Greenway steering committee and both of those efforts have been important in tracking this project as well.

[47:05] I just wanted to touch based on some past actions,

[47:09] we'll be reiterating these things over time,

[47:12] but I, in 2016, brought this opportunity in front of our Parks

[47:16] and Open Space Advisory Committee, and they supported the participation,

[47:21] a recommended support of the, excuse me, recommended participation,

[47:28] and supported that recommendation to the county commissioners,

[47:32] and then the county commissioners, conditionally supported,

[47:35] the IGA at that point and then requested this additional independent soil sampling that we can talk more about and we'll talk more about this afternoon.

[47:45] And so from a from a from a parks perspective, we feel like we've met those those the requirements of those past actions.

[47:53] And again, we'll hear about the safety and the analysis of the soil sample.

[48:02] So, at the one, another point I wanted to make is that our department finds that this project is supported by county open space, sustainability and transportation policies and plans, and that would include things like the county's comprehensive plan.

[48:18] And it's for these reasons. It provides the safe highway crossing.

[48:22] It provides a safe connection to the wildlife refuge, and that's important in our community and important for the members of our community.

[48:30] It's an important regional trail connection that, again, connects all those wildlife refuges

[48:37] potentially up to Rocky Mountain National Park. But the trail itself also is important in

[48:43] the way that it connects communities. And so the green way, for example, will allow people

[48:48] from Lafayette Lewisville superior to connect Iraqi flats and to the green way and continue, for example,

[48:56] on points to the east and communities to the east,

[49:00] Westminster, Commerce City, Denver.

[49:04] And then another point is that the trail

[49:06] is creating an opportunity

[49:08] to reach recreational sites sustainably.

[49:11] For example, again, myself here in Louisville,

[49:14] I get on the Rocky Mountain Greenway.

[49:16] I'm able to reach Rocky Flat to be a trail

[49:18] and be a safe crossing without having to get into my car.

[49:22] So it meets some of our sustainability goals as well.

[49:27] Here's what this looks like on a shown on a map.

[49:31] This is a depiction much, much larger, not to scale at all.

[49:34] But here's a depiction of where the crossing would be and then you can see to the north

[49:40] that immediately this underpass connects into our regional trail systems.

[49:45] The high planes trail on the left here on the west and our Colton trail here on the east.

[49:51] and then, again, from there, you just radiated into our regional trail system.

[49:58] The greenway itself, if this flap access is approved, we'll then look at identifying

[50:07] and formalizing a greenway alignment using these existing trails that would at least connect us

[50:14] to Boulder. So that would be one of the next steps that we would take. Just wanted to show on the

[50:20] outside what we will be connecting to. So again, this dot here, this A, that's where

[50:28] the access crossing would be on state highway 128. This is the High Plains Trail

[50:33] Colent Trail. And then this would allow us to connect onto the trail system here at Rocky

[50:39] Flats. And you can see the green way outlined here in green, of course. And a number of

[50:45] trail shown and depicted on this map already exists in the course of Rocky Flats National Wildlife

[50:51] Refuge is already open to public recreation.

[50:56] I wanted to just mention briefly the environmental review.

[51:00] There had been some questions about concerns about impacts of the greenway on Rocky Flats.

[51:08] There was an environmental assessment done last November.

[51:12] Fancy or finding of no significant impact was issued by the Fish and Wildlife Service for that action for the trail construction and the flat grant in November of 2020.

[51:26] And then we've also one of the things that's a big concern for our department is high or high biodiversity areas.

[51:34] and this map was shared in a 2021 publication that was dealing with invasive plant distributions

[51:43] out at rocky flats. But this map caught my eye in that it reflects the planning that's gone

[51:51] into some of the portions of these crossings illustrate that what we're talking about and here's

[51:57] here's the area that we're talking about for our access flap access grant and the crossing up here

[52:03] state highway 128. The location of the access itself and then the trail that would be necessary

[52:11] to connect it to those existing trails on rocky flats occurs in an area that avoids these really

[52:18] high biodiversity areas of Syrian tall grass prairie that are present and and and very important

[52:24] on the refuge. They predominantly occur to the west of and south of the area where our project

[52:32] would take place. And then I was able to go out this weekend and just take a couple of pictures,

[52:37] so you could see what exactly we're talking about. So this is a view from the north side,

[52:43] looking southeast. So what we've envisioned or I think what's been envisioned is that the

[52:48] underpass would be located approximately here. This is state highway 128. This is a biker on the roadway

[52:55] there. And so this, this would be the north opening of the underpass. You can see actually

[53:02] on this side predominantly smooth-broom is the vegetation type here. Then on the south side,

[53:09] so now we're looking at this bank, this embankment that was filled used to create the highway.

[53:15] So we're talking about the exit here on the south side again. This slope is all smooth-broom,

[53:21] And so then the trail would head off through this fence and then off onto the rocky flats property.

[53:28] So I just wanted to provide some recent pictures of where the project is going to take place.

[53:34] And I think that is all of my slides, and let's see who's up next.

[53:39] Summer, do you want to take an introductory?

[53:45] Yeah.

[53:46] So this, yeah, this is summer laws again, policy analyst in the commissioner's office, and just right now we're going to go through some of the conditions within the 2016 resolution regarding the federal lands access program.

[54:00] So back in 2016, as we mentioned, Boulder County conditionally supported our involvement in the flat grant based upon an independent analysis of soil sampling within the areas where the trail crossings,

[54:16] will be built. So Jason Anders will be presenting this information of results of that soil sampling

[54:22] analysis plan. But this is just a note again of that timeline and process that we talked about

[54:27] earlier that we work together as partners in public health review the soil sampling analysis plan

[54:33] as well as the results we will talk about that here in a minute that we allowed for public input

[54:39] into that plan through an online process and also through an open house held in the city of

[54:45] folder for both Boulder County and City of Boulder residents and others interested in learning

[54:51] more about that sampling analysis. And so we'll kind of dive into that in just a second here.

[54:59] And the next slide. Here's a little bit more about that comment period and input that we've

[55:04] received back in 2018 where we're working on this role in analysis plan. And the next slide.

[55:14] And so now I'm going to pass it over to Jason Andrews and just to note that we worked

[55:22] on contracting with Jason, we worked on hiring an independent contractor and there was a request

[55:28] for proposals that put out that prior to engineering analytics being hired for this process.

[55:37] But in addition and I think Jason will talk about this.

[55:39] The Rocky Flex National Wildlife Refuge agreed to use the same contractor to do some sampling in an analysis on any portions of neutral being built within the refuge.

[55:50] So with that, I'll go ahead and pass it over to Jason.

[55:56] Thank you so much for that information and background.

[55:59] The summer indicated on Jason Andrews with engineering analytics project manager for the soil sampling that occurred for this project.

[56:08] So we're indicated we did develop a sampling in the analysis plan through public comment.

[56:13] Now we'd like to present the results of that work effort.

[56:17] I think at the next slide, please.

[56:19] So this slide provides an overview of the locations with the map.

[56:25] I think we're all pretty familiar with where we're at.

[56:27] Colorado Highway 128 to the north west.

[56:31] kind of the top right of this figure, and the bottom left is the proposed crossing done in the

[56:37] Indiana street. We sampled this with like a 25 samples at two locations within these two sites,

[56:45] looking at the next line.

[56:50] So we have a zoom in on the two slides or two sites. The bottom right is the

[56:55] proposed disturbance area or the potential disturbance area for the crossing at 128. The figure on the

[57:02] top right is the proposed or potential disturbance area for the crossing at Indiana. The little green dots on there I realized that they might be a little hard to see on the screen are our sampling locations.

[57:16] So as indicated in that bolt there's 25 sample locations. The yellow highlights show the areas where we had our high samples are our highest sample readings.

[57:27] And those are important as we go to as we move forward here to kind of keep track of those, as we look at the results.

[57:34] So you can get some visual cues as to where that might fall out.

[57:39] If we can get the next slide, please.

[57:42] So this table here, there's a lot to digest on this table.

[57:47] We have a couple of things going on here.

[57:50] Down the left side on the column, we have the sample area.

[57:53] So we have Colorado 128 crossing,

[57:56] and we have it in the industry crossing.

[57:59] As we go left to right across the table,

[58:02] I'll kind of go through that as we go one column across.

[58:05] So the first one is the Exosciate Exposure Unit.

[58:08] How to Rocky Flats, there's exposure unit

[58:10] as well, it's been sampled in the past.

[58:13] And the data has been collated by that exposure unit.

[58:16] And that's the data we used to compare our samples with.

[58:23] or a Colorado 128, we compared the data

[58:26] to the rock creek drainage.

[58:27] For Indiana, we compared it to the windblown area.

[58:36] So if we go one more column, we have the project samples,

[58:39] less than background.

[58:39] So there's a check mark, it says it's less than background.

[58:42] And then below, that is our high maximum reading.

[58:46] So that's 0.045 p.o. carries per gram.

[58:52] And so, for Colorado 128, our samples were less than background, and we'll just kind of work our way across and we can come back to ADN of Street.

[59:00] And then we go to the next column over to talk about the wildlife refuge worker PRG.

[59:05] We were lower than that value as well.

[59:09] And then as we move across, we're less than the mean RIFS data sets were less than the mean of the data set that was collected during the Kaiser Hill reports.

[59:21] And then we provided the historic maximum results so you can kind of see what was shown out there from past sampling efforts.

[59:30] And then at the very, the very right column is the clean of standard of 50 picotiers per gram.

[59:33] So you can see at car out of 128, we're below the historic maximum results, we're below basically every creature that we looked at.

[59:41] So we'll jump down to Indiana industry.

[59:44] We have, we weren't less than back on.

[59:46] We have a sample of 19.4 picotiers program.

[59:50] We were higher than the Wildlife Refuge Worker PRG,

[59:53] at 19.4 picotiers program.

[59:56] However, we were less than the mean of the RIFS results.

[1:00:00] We're also less than the maximum historic results and we're also less than the clean-up standard, as far as the sampling results go.

[1:00:08] Next slide, please.

[1:00:10] So, as Summer mentioned, we did also do sampling for other jurisdictions and other agencies.

[1:00:18] room field, asked that we completed additional sampling at Indiana Street with death.

[1:00:25] So we completed additional 55 additional samples and we went down to one foot and we also drilled

[1:00:32] two borings, one on the west side of Indiana and one on the east side of Indiana down to 20 feet.

[1:00:42] Those results indicated decreasing concentrations with that.

[1:00:46] Next slide.

[1:00:50] We've also collected samples for the Fish and Wildlife Service. We collected 48 samples and they're across the six exposure units.

[1:00:58] So the exposure units are shown kind of that mustard yellow line type. You can see there. And then the trail systems that we sample are a few kind of magenta, I guess it's a better color for that.

[1:01:14] And the green numbers are the sample IDs for the samples that we collected at those locations.

[1:01:20] The sample results, if we can get the next slide, we'll look at those real quick.

[1:01:26] So, very similar layout to the sample results that I showed for the flat group samples.

[1:01:31] So, I want us to so I walk through the explanation of that again.

[1:01:36] But you can also, you can see the check marks on those.

[1:01:40] The project samples, being less than background, two of those units, we're checked the other

[1:01:47] ones were not.

[1:01:49] As we move to the right, you can see all of our samples were below that while life refuge

[1:01:53] worker PRG value.

[1:01:55] You can also see as we move to the next one, the samples were less than the mean of past sampling

[1:02:01] events.

[1:02:02] And once again, we have the max results shown there below in concentrations of picotiers per gram.

[1:02:12] And then, as we continue to the right, we get to the historic maximum results.

[1:02:18] And those are shown in picotiers per gram.

[1:02:22] Our samples are all less than the historic maximum results.

[1:02:26] We're also less than the cleanup standard as well.

[1:02:30] So, if I can get the next slide, please.

[1:02:34] Our conclusions from the flap sampling results

[1:02:38] that we do not need any results from the soil samples collected and analyzed and indicate a higher risk level

[1:02:45] and presented in the 2006 Kaiser Hill report and the DOE report which allowed public access to the project area.

[1:02:53] Thank you.

[1:02:57] Thank you, Jason.

[1:02:59] And then I'm going to pass it over to Bill Hayes and Dr. Chris Rubina.

[1:03:07] Just as a note to folks online and commissioners and public staff that we asked Boulder County

[1:03:14] Public Health to not only review the soil sampling analysis plan, but the results and they're

[1:03:21] going to provide their conclusions in this next presentation.

[1:03:25] Thank

[1:03:30] you, Summer. This is Bill Hayes. I am the air quality coordinator for Boulder County Public Health. I've been with public health for the past 18 years. And for the past three years, I've overseen our rate on program. Through that program, we're working every day to educate people about the risks of rate on exposure in their own homes and helping them to mitigate those risks for.

[1:03:57] old as closure, prior to joining the county, I did work for a decade on the Rocky Flats cleanup effort.

[1:04:04] Initially, I was inside production buildings, planning waste packaging for a couple of years,

[1:04:11] but during my last eight years at the flats, I worked to ensure that radio nucleides were not

[1:04:16] transported off site via surface waterways, and I spent a great deal of time in the buffer zone,

[1:04:21] what is now the National Wildlife Refuge. And it truly is a beautiful setting and, you know,

[1:04:30] something that I enjoyed spending a great deal of time in while I was at the flats. So next slide,

[1:04:37] please. So I do want to acknowledge that, you know, whenever we talk about radiation,

[1:04:44] people become concerned and rightfully so Boulder County Public Health is very aware of the risks

[1:04:51] posed by radiation from any number of sources that were exposed to daily. We share the

[1:04:57] public's concern for those risks. And as I said with our rate on work, we're actively

[1:05:01] working to address the impacts from radiation. We also recognize that as I said, all of us are exposed

[1:05:09] to radiation from a very high number of sources on a daily basis. Some of those are man-made.

[1:05:15] Some of them is the natural background radiation. And the risks of those radiation

[1:05:20] exposures, pose, can range from relatively low to unacceptably high. And sometimes, as is often

[1:05:29] the case in medical treatments exposure to radiation has benefits that outweigh those risks.

[1:05:37] Next slide, please. So we have at Boulder County Public Health thoroughly reviewed

[1:05:44] both the study findings that Jason just presented as well as the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services

[1:05:52] environmental assessment for visit to access at the Rod Life Refuge.

[1:05:58] And we found that in both cases those studies were conducted appropriately, the correct methodologies

[1:06:04] and analytic techniques were employed, and we agreed with the conclusions and findings

[1:06:10] of those reports. I won't read. Again, what was Jason's last slide, but essentially the testing

[1:06:16] didn't find anything different from what we've seen in the past and Boulder County Public Health

[1:06:21] concur as that the project area is suitably low risk for public access. Next slide.

[1:06:35] So radiation exposure at rocky flats. So during the rocky flats closure, there were over 72

[1:06:41] hundred onsite soil samples taken that gave us over 220,000 results. So very thoroughly

[1:06:51] sampled area, very thoroughly analyzed. The residual plutonium concentrations across the refugia,

[1:06:59] and that's not counting the central operable unit that is summers that is closed to the

[1:07:05] like I'm will remain close to the public, but in the remainder of the area and the refuge,

[1:07:10] the average plutonium concentration is about 1.1 pico-curious program. And that average exposure

[1:07:20] equates to an individual's lifetime excess cancer risk of 1 out of a million. And one out of a

[1:07:30] is the threshold that is typically used in public health to determine whether a significant risk exists or not, and at one out of a million that is not considered to be a significant cancer risk.

[1:07:47] Next slide, please.

[1:07:50] So, a little bit more information about that radiation risk in the fish and wildlife

[1:07:56] environmental assessment, they looked at what would be essentially a projected exposure

[1:08:06] to visitors and workers, and I think, in both cases, the scenarios they considered are

[1:08:11] very conservative for a visitor.

[1:08:12] They looked at someone going to the refuge, spending 2.5 hours a day there, 100 days out of the year.

[1:08:22] A worker, 8 hours a day for 230 days of the year.

[1:08:27] And then based on that 1.1 pico-curry program, average exposure,

[1:08:33] that equates to an annual dose for the refuge worker of 0.3 milligrams per year,

[1:08:40] 0.2 milligrams for a child visitor and 0.07 milligrams for adult visitor and that is a very small fraction of what the annual dose to the US public is of 620 milligrams per year.

[1:08:56] next slide. And so when we talk about the average US citizen getting a annual dose of 620

[1:09:06] milligrams per year, where is that coming from? And so at the top of this graphic, you can

[1:09:14] see that radon exposure is the highest single dose source in the US. So the average home in the

[1:09:25] it states gets 228 milligrams per year, exposure from rate on. And that's across all of the country.

[1:09:34] In Colorado, we have the second highest average rate of rate on gas. Iowa has the highest.

[1:09:41] Our average rate on those in Colorado is 610 milligrams per year. And you just heard me say

[1:09:49] that the average exposure across the US is 620.

[1:09:55] So here in Colorado, we receive just from rate on a loan almost the national average for radiation exposure.

[1:10:06] Additionally, we see cosmic radiation from living in Denver is 80 milligrams.

[1:10:12] And right below that cosmic radiation at sea level is 30 milligrams.

[1:10:17] So just by living in Colorado, we all received an additional 50 milligrams per year exposure.

[1:10:25] And then you can see on the left-hand side, the doses from a number of very common medical procedures.

[1:10:33] And again,

[1:10:36] typical x-ray will give you between 10 and 29 milligrams of exposure.

[1:10:45] So, every time you go to the dentist every time you go to the doctor and get an x-ray, you're going to get a couple orders of magnitude higher dose than you would if you were visiting rocky flats for two and a half hours a day, 100 days a year. Next slide, please.

[1:11:05] So, I do want to talk specifically about plutonium, because when we hear plutonium within the anxiety level tends to go up, but plutonium is just another radioactive element, depending on its isotope, it can be very reactive or it can be a very slow reactor.

[1:11:29] So, plutonium though, there's nothing more dangerous, more serious about the type of radiation

[1:11:37] it emits.

[1:11:38] It is an alpha particle in matter, and it's one that, you know, does occur very rarely in nature

[1:11:48] but the majority of the plutonium is man-made.

[1:11:52] Next slide, please.

[1:11:54] And so I want to get back to talking about Raidon, as I said, that's one of the programs I oversee.

[1:12:01] Raidon is an invisible odorless tasteless gas that enters our homes through holes in the penetrations

[1:12:08] and holes in our foundations.

[1:12:10] In Boulder County, about half of all homes have elevated Raidon levels.

[1:12:17] And Raidon is an alpha-mitter just as plutonium is an alpha-mitter.

[1:12:24] Raidon is the second leading cause of lung cancer among non-smokers in the country.

[1:12:33] And in Colorado, it's estimated that at least 500 people die of Raidon induced lung cancer annually.

[1:12:42] And as I said, the annual average exposure to rate on in Colorado is 610 milligrams per year.

[1:12:52] So next slide please.

[1:12:55] And so to put this all into context,

[1:12:59] no, there is no safe level of exposure to radiation.

[1:13:03] And we are constantly being exposed to radiation.

[1:13:07] And so we've got to put that risk in the context.

[1:13:09] And the increased risk from plutonium exposure to a visitor or a refuge worker at rocky flats is very low.

[1:13:19] And I want to really stress that the primary goal of this project, creating these highway underpasses for pedestrians and cyclists, is to increase their safety, so that they're not having to cross a busy highway.

[1:13:33] And crossing a busy highway would without question be the highest risk to anyone visiting

[1:13:41] rocky flats much higher than the risk from radiation exposure.

[1:13:45] As I said, this central operate, operable unit at the plant is going to remain close to

[1:13:51] the public.

[1:13:52] And if this project does go forward, there will be additional dust monitoring as part of the

[1:14:03] active material is being aerosolized and transported off-site. So that concludes my presentation.

[1:14:13] I thank you all and I do want to give Dr. Bina a chance to add in the additional comments.

[1:14:21] I thank you very much for making that presentation. I'm Christopher Bina,

[1:14:26] I'm the medical officer for Boulder County Public Health. I am also the medical officer for

[1:14:33] field. I was there and testified on that. And when the green way, actually when the

[1:14:38] reputes was first opened up, full disclosure, I was ahead of the Colorado Department of

[1:14:43] Public Health and Environment. So I'm well-versed on the cancer studies and all the historical

[1:14:50] factors associated with the rocket plants, as well as the reputes. So I'm here to just

[1:14:56] answer your questions and I'm going to stop there.

[1:15:00] If there are questions that you have, and just go on with the presentation. Thank you, Bill. Great job.

[1:15:05] Thank you.

[1:15:09] To the summer, are you, or is your presentation concluded? Just a time for questions?

[1:15:13] I'm actually now, we still have a few slides.

[1:15:17] Yeah, I think we've been, I think we have four or five more, and then we could go into questions.

[1:15:20] I think that might work. Okay.

[1:15:23] Thank you, Jeff.

[1:15:26] So, in closing, we have a, yeah, as I mentioned, a couple more slides. We just wanted to note the ways that we,

[1:15:32] That staff feel we have met the requirements in Boulder County's resolution, 2016-59.

[1:15:41] One of the requirements was that the soil sampling analysis plan would be developed in conjunction with Boulder County,

[1:15:49] and that we would be satisfied with that plan.

[1:15:53] Again, as Bill mentioned, we partnered with Public Health for a review of that process,

[1:15:58] the methodology, methodology, which you heard from Jason Andrews, and we believe that those

[1:16:04] required that requirement was met. In addition, the soil sampling included the full panel

[1:16:12] testing for radio nucleodes, and as we mentioned, it was compliant with EPA protocols.

[1:16:20] And then the final kind of pledges of support and funding within that resolution was really dependent

[1:16:26] upon the soil sampling results demonstrating that the contamination levels are below the

[1:16:32] apical federal and state human health standards, which you did hear that conclusion from

[1:16:37] both Jason Andrews and Bill Hayes this afternoon. So next slide. And just to note that

[1:16:47] if the federal lands access program IGA is approved by a voter county, that will continue our

[1:16:54] involvement.

[1:16:56] Parks and Open Space will be involved in implementation of this, of the IGA, as well as

[1:17:03] any subsequent documents that we also support the additional dust monitoring that was proposed

[1:17:10] by Jefferson County to take place during the construction of the trail crossings.

[1:17:16] Separately, we will continue to be a member of the Rocky Flat Stewardship Council, which

[1:17:22] It looks at all things rocky flats and also takes public comment input into those issues and that will continue to review the quarterly and annual reports from the

[1:17:33] Georgia Council and the long term maintenance of the cleanup enclosure of the central operating unit and that will continue to partner with

[1:17:42] staff over at public health

[1:17:44] in terms of review of any relevant plans related to the trail crossings or rocky flats issues.

[1:17:51] And then next slide. And then as Commissioner Jones mentioned at the kickoff that we did

[1:17:56] open this process to public comment and we received written comment. As of earlier today,

[1:18:03] we had 100 emails and public comment submitted to the commissioners. There were four emails from

[1:18:10] 47 individuals that were drafted to the City of Boulder, but I think also meant to for Boulder County,

[1:18:16] requesting the opportunity to provide a verbal comment on this process, because of the nature

[1:18:24] of the decision at hand, which was really about the trail crossing in this IDEA, the board and

[1:18:40] that were written in support of the trail crossing, and then 26 individual emails either against

[1:18:46] the trail crossing or trails within the Rocky Blacks National Wildlife Refuge.

[1:18:53] In the next slide, this is just where we are in terms of the process as partners.

[1:18:59] As I mentioned, Jefferson County had approved the IGA back in December, and there was the

[1:19:06] additional dust-marked monitoring provision, the city of Westminster

[1:19:10] approved and February and city of Arvada approved last night.

[1:19:16] The IGA is obviously up for consideration for Boulder County.

[1:19:19] This E-Lean and that the city of Boulder is Council's reviewing a staff report on April 13th.

[1:19:27] So next week.

[1:19:30] And here's the project budget.

[1:19:31] And I, Jeff, I didn't know if you wanted to jump into this.

[1:19:35] I don't think I need to necessarily, but these amounts, I guess I could just mention one thing.

[1:19:42] These amounts that are bolded here represent the match that is going to be required for each of the two crossings.

[1:19:50] And then, as is indicated in the narrative, here, the total project cost is nearly $4 million.

[1:19:58] Thank you.

[1:19:59] Yeah.

[1:20:04] Yeah. So, so both either summer or I could take this, but at least from the parks perspective this leads us to our recommendation, which is for you to approve the IGA, moving forward for all the reasons that we've discussed today, but especially I think this perspective of the trail safety and trying to find ways to keep our recreating public safety.

[1:20:32] and from having to negotiate a highway crossing at grade between our two wonderful existing trail systems.

[1:20:41] The Rocky Mountain Greenway and some of the existing trails at Rocky Flats and what will be a continuation of the Rocky Mountain Greenway down to the south.

[1:20:50] And then our just wonderful regional and local trail systems here to the North and Boulder County.

[1:20:56] And so we're, we're, I'm really asking for your approval of this.

[1:21:02] And I don't know, do you have anything to add, summer?

[1:21:05] I don't want to thank you, Jeff.

[1:21:07] And I think now we can stop our presentation.

[1:21:10] Yeah, and then take questions.

[1:21:12] And we have, you know, for all all staffs, happy to answer any questions.

[1:21:16] Well, thank you for the presentation, which appreciated just let the public know.

[1:21:22] And we take public comments.

[1:21:24] is not about when we present them like their counts like that that implies that what we're looking

[1:21:30] for is what we might change in our proposal from those. But are there any questions for staff?

[1:21:41] Yes, thank you. Thank you everybody for the presentation, the materials, the background.

[1:21:47] There's a lot of history, there's a lot of work that's been done, so just want to acknowledge all that

[1:21:51] and thank you all. I also want to just a couple things that I want to put on the record first.

[1:21:55] one, some of you just went through one of the lists and I missed the title of the slides,

[1:22:00] so we won't go back to it. But on my night, I'm three. I did ask for public comment to be part

[1:22:07] of this particular presentation and public hearing today and our two fifth staff made a decision

[1:22:12] to not do that for this one and we've got written comment and we've got over 100 comments as you

[1:22:18] as you talked about and we have read through all of those. I just want to, which is I have read through

[1:22:22] all of those comments and so I just want to make sure the public is aware that

[1:22:25] we've received it and we have read through it and we'll hear that respond to it.

[1:22:30] So that's one piece and then the other piece I just wanted to check in commissioner Jones

[1:22:35] just from a process standpoint of when our staff would might have an opportunity to respond

[1:22:41] to some of those comments because some of them have come in in the last couple of hours.

[1:22:46] And so I'm sure they weren't part of the presentation because the presentation was then

[1:22:50] prior to that. So just for our clarification on the order of how we're going to address that.

[1:22:55] So this is an opportunity for us to ask questions and we'll deliver it after this.

[1:23:00] And so if you want to say some of the questions or ask, that would be great.

[1:23:06] I don't think the staff has had a chance to read everything up to the end.

[1:23:10] Okay.

[1:23:11] What did you go ahead and ask some of the themes?

[1:23:14] Okay.

[1:23:15] Sure.

[1:23:16] I will.

[1:23:17] And there's a couple and just what timing and some of the folks I know we have are attorneys

[1:23:21] and things like that.

[1:23:22] want to maybe ask some of those questions and then they can ask them like other questions as well.

[1:23:27] One of the pieces was in a public comment from a

[1:23:34] roundel whiner in regards to current litigation and I just wanted to know if we could have

[1:23:40] either staff or our attorney stuff somebody respond to that question and I could find it and read it

[1:23:49] is that what you were asking for Shandong's?

[1:23:52] No, not necessarily.

[1:23:54] I don't know if it the turnies on the line here.

[1:23:58] This is Conrad Lattison.

[1:24:00] I had a model on.

[1:24:03] I can't talk about that.

[1:24:05] That that suit was brought a number of years ago.

[1:24:10] And Mr. Weiner tried to get the federal court to put a stay on.

[1:24:17] Fish and Wildlife's proceedings to open the park to the public, and that request was denied.

[1:24:32] So there is no, at least in the litigation that is ongoing, even that litigation has not halted anything with respect to rocky flats.

[1:24:44] We have not, you know, closely examined this case, but we know that on NEPA issues, there is always a low chance of success, and that even if you get a victory, it is generally procedural and does not stop the project.

[1:25:04] So, we do not see that lawsuit as likely to stop, you know, there'd be in recreation at Rocky Flats.

[1:25:16] And if there's recreation of Rack of Flats and on our side of 128, there are people are going to transfer between the two.

[1:25:26] Thank you. I appreciate that. And then the other piece that the piece I was going to put on the record

[1:25:31] and I missed that. I just want to introduce my question. I got so excited. I did though. I did take an opportunity yesterday actually to go out and run the cultural head just to kind of see what we're talking about.

[1:25:45] And to stop and talk to a couple of people who were out there just to not ask them specifically as much as one of my questions is around the public process.

[1:25:53] I didn't see signers like public hearing signers that we would see another types of hearings and so I was just kind of curious to hear from staff about that process alongside the question that community members have brought up about public input et cetera.

[1:26:09] And, and so just wanted to know, I guess, we could start there from a, that piece of public

[1:26:17] process for this hearing, and I know that there was a change of dates and things like that

[1:26:21] that might have been confusing for folks.

[1:26:27] Yeah, I think, I'll say a couple things, and then I also might ask Andrew Valdez to say

[1:26:31] a couple of things about our public process for the soil sampling and analysis plan just overall

[1:26:36] since 2016.

[1:26:40] So in the sense and meeting Michelle can jump in here too that we're looking at the

[1:26:45] the resolution from 2016 and meeting the conditions of that resolution. We didn't hold

[1:26:51] a large public process for this hearing other than requesting written comment in terms of this hearing

[1:26:59] for the entire school of sampling and analysis plan and kind of the review of the crossings we

[1:27:04] work with our partners, for that kind of broader bigger picture look at the soil

[1:27:10] family and analysis plan of whether or not we should move forward with the crossings.

[1:27:15] And so maybe Andrew, if you want to talk a little bit about that, if you're able to.

[1:27:19] Yeah, sure. So when when we read Andrew, will you stay your name in your position?

[1:27:24] Yes. My apologies. So Andrew, about that, Johnson County Open Space planer.

[1:27:29] And I'm the project manager for the Johnson County Council.

[1:27:36] So yes, when we originally applied for this grant as part of the condition for proceeding was a robust public process.

[1:27:47] And at that time, we had six open space agencies involved in the pursuit.

[1:27:54] And as part of our outreach component, we had each open space agency work with their communications departments individually to get out all the process that we were going to do on the on this on a specific project.

[1:28:10] So we advertise, do you public open house forums that were well-atended, where we talked

[1:28:18] about all the projects, history, where it's going from here, and the soil sampling that

[1:28:23] was done historically, and the soil sampling that we were planning to do at that time.

[1:28:28] We also established on the Jefferson County side, a project website, where people could

[1:28:33] submit comments.

[1:28:34] And we received over 350 individual comments,

[1:28:40] 60% of which were in support or in strong support.

[1:28:44] There was also a number that were neutral pending the results

[1:28:50] of these soil sampling analysis plan.

[1:28:52] We also provided an opportunity for the public and interested parties

[1:28:58] to provide technical comments on the sampling and analysis plan.

[1:29:02] And we received about a hundred of those, and those were actually built into the design of the sampling.

[1:29:11] And the sampling analysis plan was changed somewhat due to public comment.

[1:29:17] We also shared split samples with an interested party and created a fraction that was then picked up by an interested party third party.

[1:29:27] So, you know, we have done our public process and that's why it's been five years to get to this point.

[1:29:38] Okay, thank you.

[1:29:41] And I was curious on the,

[1:29:44] oops.

[1:29:46] The, so a couple of things.

[1:29:48] One of the questions is around the safe highway crossings.

[1:29:52] And I was wondering if you could bring up

[1:29:55] there was one of the slides that showed the... it's a...

[1:30:00] Upgrounds and the Petrails on it. And one of the questions just to clarify, and I think it's helpful for folks who are watching as well to have an indication of which of those trails are completed versus which ones are potential or considered.

[1:30:23] Yeah, let me work on that here for a second.

[1:30:28] Um, you bet. So. And I wonder if anybody knows, you know, when once we get to that map, the, where the actual trail heads are, because I haven't seen them with those overlays yet. And it would be helpful.

[1:30:51] Yeah, I can, I can really help with that. So let's see here. I just got to get my

[1:30:57] to go.

[1:30:57] To Jeff, I do this slide that Commissioner Loachamea is referring to for the, it has the blue and the magenta in engineering analytics shows the way.

[1:31:06] Oh, sure. Okay. That's a good one.

[1:31:08] The new construction, which ones were the existing and where we did that the Fish and Wildlife agreed to use the contractor that we worked with to do the additional sampling.

[1:31:18] on any new construction of trails. So that's in Jason's, please. Yeah. I think that's

[1:31:24] long. And there was got it. 26. Yeah. So now I just got to get to, are you guys aren't seeing

[1:31:34] this, right? Not yet, but we're in and we are understanding. Okay. No pressure. Yeah. Got to share my

[1:31:42] screen first. Here we go.

[1:31:48] Let's see here. So now you, now I'm hoping you're going to be able to

[1:31:52] see my screen. I can see the sample locations. Yeah, so let me, let me orient you Commissioner

[1:31:59] Loachman. So this up here, I hope you can see the cursor. So state, state highway 128 is this,

[1:32:07] this line up here on the northern part of the refuge. This location right here is Indiana,

[1:32:12] the intersection, excuse me, not Indiana,

[1:32:16] McCaslin, and State Highway 128.

[1:32:19] That intersection is located right here.

[1:32:23] So for the Boulder County side of things,

[1:32:28] you can just barely see there's an area

[1:32:31] that people do use as a trailhead located here

[1:32:34] in the right of way of State Highway 128.

[1:32:37] And so you can see that location here with the cursor

[1:32:40] And then the new pieces, so the connection would go from that parking area there in the right of way.

[1:32:52] And then the flat grant would get us across this 200 feet of highway.

[1:32:57] And then attached to this purple section of trail that would need to be constructed as part of the refuge's work.

[1:33:09] um, their trail work project. And so, so that's, that's the north side. Um, these blue trails,

[1:33:18] this, this blue trail outline here that I'm outlining. That's it. That's existing trail.

[1:33:24] This right here is existing trail. I guess, uh, the, um, many of these that are shown on this map,

[1:33:32] the blue ones that are shown as refuge trails are constructed, uh, maybe not quite all of them,

[1:33:38] but most of them are constructed.

[1:33:40] And I know for fact that all of these are already constructed.

[1:33:47] And then this would be the new construction of trail work

[1:33:50] on the east side of the refuge that would then tie into the Indiana crossing.

[1:33:56] That's this eastern boundary of the refuge is Indiana.

[1:34:01] And then this, I don't, I know less about this.

[1:34:03] We'd have to get somebody else if you had questions about this new construction over here.

[1:34:07] Does that help, so there's the trailhead, the one thing I forgot to mention is the formal rocky flats trailhead on the north is located right about there.

[1:34:23] The rocky flats, the existing rocky flats trailhead, off of currently off of state highway 128 that's existing is located right about here where my cursor is.

[1:34:34] that you can see it again up here on the North.

[1:34:38] So that's where that existing trailhead is.

[1:34:40] And then thank you for that Jeff.

[1:34:43] I was just curious, I know Dave Lucas,

[1:34:46] who is a National Wildlife Refuge Manager

[1:34:50] for Rocky Flat National Wildlife Refuge

[1:34:52] and the other two metro wildlife refuges is here on the line.

[1:34:56] So didn't know if you had anything to add to that, Dave.

[1:35:03] Thank you, my formal introduction.

[1:35:04] My name's David Lucas and I work for the US

[1:35:08] especially in wildlife service, thank you, so on.

[1:35:12] Councilwoman, no, I mean, that was a very good description.

[1:35:15] The goal with our refugees is we try to avoid,

[1:35:18] you know, habitat impacts.

[1:35:20] So honestly, the majority of blue lines, but not all.

[1:35:25] It's fine, we're existing roadways that were on in place.

[1:35:30] As a part of us taking over the refugees,

[1:35:32] we were claimed many roads and restored many roads,

[1:35:34] but those roads were chosen to be left behind.

[1:35:36] So that was not what we considered new construction

[1:35:40] that needed to be sampled.

[1:35:42] Those trails were in place prior to this partner arrangement.

[1:35:47] So the purple lines were trails that needed to be construction

[1:35:52] and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service agreed

[1:35:54] to do soil sampling as a part of that program.

[1:35:59] Since that sampling, that purple loop, Jeff,

[1:36:04] towards the top, that has been constructed out to the road, and there's a trail hit kind of right.

[1:36:11] You can see the road going up into the right about there somewhere.

[1:36:14] There's a trail hit and a parking lot in that country.

[1:36:17] So those have been constructed as well.

[1:36:19] So you have to be constructed from the the refuge side,

[1:36:23] not a part of your $3.9 million, but part of our funding will do that

[1:36:28] trail to the connection. It will in the Southwest corner create that through section 16 which is

[1:36:36] this system with grades and to also provide access over that way and then the one in the east

[1:36:44] to head up to Indian history. 52% of those purple lines, I have to have very specific numbers from

[1:36:53] the environmental assessment, 52% of those green lines are still on what we would consider

[1:37:00] past roadways without requiring any impacts to have a death.

[1:37:09] Okay, so just to clarify, and that's what I'm trying to determine, so this is very helpful.

[1:37:12] Thank you.

[1:37:13] Everybody for putting it together here, what is what is actually done, and because I was up

[1:37:19] and I'm planning to map and y'all can't do it.

[1:37:23] where the cursor was, yeah, but in that area, just north of that, I believe is where the

[1:37:28] Colton trailhead is. That's always trying to figure out where the west.

[1:37:32] Okay. That's by that SB 20 Jeff. Well, that our Colton trail is, it's on the gas

[1:37:39] arm as well. Yeah, yeah, it's off the, it's, it is, it is. So, um, Commissioner Loachman. Yeah,

[1:37:45] so our Colton trail, you want the southern southwest end of it is right here at this parking,

[1:37:53] this kind of informal parking area along the state highway 128. And then the formal

[1:37:57] Colton trailhead is located north along McCaslin, probably about a mile or so north

[1:38:07] at the intersection of Colton road in McCaslin in Superior. And so that's that's off the map

[1:38:13] on here to the north. Yeah, that's why I was trying to make sure I was looking at

[1:38:18] And I'm asking that because it looked to me like there were social trails and I saw folks crossing on their bikes on 128, you know, the whole time I was running from the formal trailhead to to that parking lot area.

[1:38:36] Okay. Okay. And so, so I'm looking at it from the standpoint of trail crossing and bike safety and having a really good friend just two weeks ago and build a county and the hitting run bike accident. And so, so I just want to make sure I'm looking at the correct things when we're talking about bicycle.

[1:38:54] Okay.

[1:38:54] Mark, could I pick up on that? Could you put the map up again, please?

[1:39:03] Same one. Yes, please.

[1:39:07] So my question is, how far is it from where the trail enters 128 currently?

[1:39:15] To where the underpass would be, a mile?

[1:39:19] So yeah, down here in this corner is the scale, you can see it.

[1:39:24] So yeah, we're looking at, it's going to be something over a little over a mile that we're talking about this spot right here, which is where the so currently as David mentioned that there aren't any trails that

[1:39:40] currently link directly to 128.

[1:39:43] So you, this trailhead has the access

[1:39:46] where it goes to 128 here.

[1:39:47] And so then this distance, yeah,

[1:39:50] going over there, you can look at this,

[1:39:52] there's a mile right there.

[1:39:55] So something over a mile, mile and a half,

[1:39:57] between those.

[1:39:58] Okay.

[1:39:59] So here's, do you said that there's an informal parking area near

[1:40:03] where the underpass would be eight?

[1:40:07] What the underpass is going to be an attraction, but what about the safety of cars parking there to access the site from an informal trailhead right off the highway?

[1:40:18] Yeah, I'll take that.

[1:40:19] I think that's something that will need to be, we'll need to be working with our partners on that.

[1:40:24] that's, this is within the seed out right of way.

[1:40:28] And so we'll need to be working with them

[1:40:31] about how does this interaction, how does this trail

[1:40:35] and this crossing interact with that parking area?

[1:40:39] So that'll be an important,

[1:40:40] important next step of this process.

[1:40:44] Yeah, unfortunately I've planned a number of trailheads

[1:40:49] who have worked on them.

[1:40:53] I would say that area there is a higher safety issue putting in a underpass will be a distraction.

[1:41:02] Every bit as much as somebody traveling a mile, which won't happen very often to get to that area.

[1:41:10] So for me, from a safety standpoint, it's kind of a wash.

[1:41:13] And you can put it no parking size there, but you better be willing to enforce them.

[1:41:16] And people will park on the far side of the no parking sign.

[1:41:19] So, just to make sure Commissioner Jones,

[1:41:22] I don't think we're saying that,

[1:41:24] I mean, the area is already open for parking.

[1:41:25] So we're not suggesting that it would be closed for parking.

[1:41:29] Yeah, I, well, I don't know what the future brings for that,

[1:41:33] but what I'm saying is if you put an underpass in there,

[1:41:36] it will be an attraction for people to go there

[1:41:38] to access both directions.

[1:41:41] More than it is now, at least that's for my experience.

[1:41:46] So, from a safety perspective, it's kind of a wash

[1:41:48] and the scientists, which is more safe going on with it.

[1:41:52] As you know Commissioner Jones, we have a number of new underpasses here in Louisville and some

[1:41:57] of them have parking lots on them and some of them don't have a parking lots associated with them.

[1:42:02] So you can get a variety of post construction activities depending on exactly how you plan that

[1:42:11] parking lot and that parking situation between the trails.

[1:42:15] Yeah. I appreciate that Jeff. This is kind of a destination and it would be a destination

[1:42:22] a little bit different than their best in the most film, which you're in the city fabric.

[1:42:27] But they are a big attract and so to the safety issue, I think you could say it's a wash.

[1:42:33] Marty, do you have other questions?

[1:42:35] Yeah, I had a couple of questions moving to kind of different topics here.

[1:42:40] There was just one note on that last topic. I wondered, Andrew, did you in terms of fish in wildlife or gave

[1:42:51] David Lucas? Do you have any comments in terms of parking as well? I know that that's something that you'll be working on

[1:42:57] with this project,

[1:43:01] just soon. I apologize. I had to jump up on still at the office in the

[1:43:06] and the storm that hits you guys just hit me and started blowing the front door open and everything else.

[1:43:11] So I close that. Sorry.

[1:43:13] But in regards to the parking lots, I heard the conversation.

[1:43:17] Fish and Wildlife is a part of our process.

[1:43:19] Does plan improvements to the parking lot located off of 128,

[1:43:24] assist with that.

[1:43:25] My expectation would be working with federal highways

[1:43:29] that they would put significant thought into the concern

[1:43:33] that Councilman Jones is talking about right now.

[1:43:38] That social parking lot at the moment is not a great, I agree with it.

[1:43:41] It is not a great event, it's a location.

[1:43:44] I know that CDOT is not particularly fond

[1:43:47] of those social parking lots that are up and down highway 128,

[1:43:50] but there are several.

[1:43:52] There's one in the castle and there's one across

[1:43:53] from the refuge entrance, there's another one.

[1:43:56] At this location, there's another one further down by

[1:44:00] in route, the wind towers. So there's definitely some work that needs to be done

[1:44:06] along Highway 208 because, well, I mean, it's packed. It is packed for sunset views.

[1:44:12] It's packed for recreation. It's one of the coolest spots that exist in this area, actually.

[1:44:19] So probably one of the best spots to get a picture in a view of the flat irons. Sorry,

[1:44:23] our folks in Boulder City proper, but it's a beautiful location and people enjoy it.

[1:44:28] So we definitely need to make that a very high priority

[1:44:33] if approved working with federal highways to figure out

[1:44:37] how to best mitigate any safety hazard

[1:44:40] to associated with parking at that location.

[1:44:43] And they have done that very successfully here

[1:44:45] with us on the flat project at the Rocky Mount Arsel.

[1:44:49] We installed two, three new parking lots

[1:44:54] on the perimeter of the Rocky Mount Arsel.

[1:44:58] I'll chew a lot of 56 to have enough.

[1:45:00] Which is a very busy roadway, and one long ninety six to Avenue. And that was a coordination with the city of Denver and the city of Commerce City and all the folks that are traffic engineers necessary to, and they know all that stuff, point one miles from the nearest light and this perimeter, and they created the access to make those locations and those turns very safe. So I'm confident, I guess, that by bringing federal highways into the program, we will get some expertise and probably a lot of it.

[1:45:29] on how to deal with the traffic side of it?

[1:45:37] I think at some point that may be a question of just how would something like that?

[1:45:42] I mean, we're here to the request is to prove an IGA and so I don't know that some of these questions

[1:45:48] around safety, signage, things like where those, how those would fit in and so we'll come back to us.

[1:45:56] I'll connect to staff as some of the specific questions.

[1:45:58] And here later on in the conversation I'm sure I did have a couple other questions I just wanted to bring up in regards to the assessments that were done there was one noted in regards it and I believe it was on this slide that was talking about 2004.

[1:46:12] Or if I've got my notes correct here, as far as levels of the levels of impact studies.

[1:46:23] And there was one noted for November of 2020 that was the fauncy.

[1:46:28] And so it's just curious about how that level of study was chosen versus an environmental assessment or an environmental impact study.

[1:46:42] I wonder if David would be willing to answer that.

[1:46:46] So the, I think the question is,

[1:46:50] so I pulled up, I might have confused things,

[1:46:53] Commissioner Loachman, but I pulled a map from 2021 study

[1:46:58] that was done on invasive species.

[1:47:01] And I pulled them that map out just to illustrate

[1:47:05] the location of the Zurich Tallgrass Prairie Habitat

[1:47:10] that's one that we, in our department,

[1:47:13] recognizes as just having really high biodiversity traits.

[1:47:18] And so I pulled that image, that map,

[1:47:21] that had a 2004 date, just to illustrate the location

[1:47:25] of where the trail would be in relationship

[1:47:27] to this really high biodiversity habitat.

[1:47:31] That again, we all, in our department,

[1:47:34] are very concerned about.

[1:47:35] But then the, if you want a question or if you have a question about the level of environmental review EA versus EIS from the NEPA side for the Trail project and Ms. Flapp Grant that's probably better for David to answer I think.

[1:47:56] Yeah, and I think also Jeff, you did have a slide just noting that if you want to bring that up.

[1:48:01] Yeah, I'll go get that while maybe David can speak about it just for a second here.

[1:48:10] But it's a wonderful question. So basically, when people ask you about

[1:48:16] EA's environmental assessments versus EIS's environmental impact statements, they are ultimately

[1:48:22] referring to the National Environmental Policy Act or Neva. Neva is a requirement on federal actions.

[1:48:30] So this project obviously has that nexus in two ways, one, we are talking about a connection to a federal national wildlife refuge, but also the grant itself is for federal funding so that that creates kind of dual dual federal nexus for this project.

[1:48:52] NEPA is a law that requires us to analyze impacts to the both that human and natural environment.

[1:49:03] So, there are several different processes within NEPA.

[1:49:07] There are categorical exclusions.

[1:49:10] Therefore, it has been determined that no further analysis is required if there is a categorical excuse.

[1:49:16] Then the next step generally, if you're not categorically excluded, is you move to an environmental assessment.

[1:49:24] An environmental assessment is a tool that is used to analyze if there will be significant impacts to the human and natural environment that would warrant development of an environmental impact statement.

[1:49:42] So, it's a somewhat tiered system.

[1:49:45] If a categorical exclusion exists,

[1:49:48] you need to go no further.

[1:49:50] If an environmental assessment says

[1:49:51] that there will be no significant impact,

[1:49:54] you need to go no further.

[1:49:56] The most robust is an environmental impact statement.

[1:50:00] When you believe,

[1:50:01] and you need to analyze what

[1:50:03] significant impact these exist

[1:50:05] and document those.

[1:50:07] NEPA is obviously a very public process

[1:50:09] For environmental assessments, including this one, there was public review and public comment.

[1:50:16] And maybe that's enough, but there's kind of three years to meet them.

[1:50:21] But I guess what I would also include is there is a lot of supporting documentation that goes into your need by analysis.

[1:50:30] There's cultural review, so we did, we had archaeologists walk all these trail proposed trail routes,

[1:50:36] We reviewed previous cultural resource studies under the Endangered Species Act.

[1:50:42] We had to do formal consultation under Section 7 of the Endangered Species Act, which meant

[1:50:48] that our office had to create a biological assessment that was then presented to the Colorado

[1:50:55] Field Office for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and they issued a biological opinion

[1:51:01] determined that we would not have impacts. Once again, significant impacts on threatened and

[1:51:08] endangered species under the federal and endangered species act. There's wetlands, reviews,

[1:51:14] there are air quality reviews, there's lots of supplementary reviews that are kind of feeding

[1:51:19] into the ultimate environmental assessment. And as stated, this document that was signed off in November

[1:51:26] 2020, our original director issued a finding of no significant impact based upon the environmental

[1:51:35] assessment that was completed for this project.

[1:51:39] Okay.

[1:51:39] And that was an awful lot of information that we're trying to summarize, hold me, but.

[1:51:44] Great.

[1:51:45] Yeah.

[1:51:45] And that's what I wanted to just clarify and find out where we were in those different

[1:51:49] levels.

[1:51:49] So thank you.

[1:51:50] I appreciate that.

[1:51:51] And I had one other question.

[1:51:54] And then it might, and I'm kind of think of who was it was still.

[1:51:58] And Dr. Bina and maybe Jason, I can't remember,

[1:52:03] right on expert.

[1:52:05] Can you translate the, there was a few different terms

[1:52:09] that were used in the difference on the slides of Raidon

[1:52:12] and Platonium in regards to Millerrim, her year at a 620

[1:52:18] and now and then the Raidon levels, which I understand

[1:52:21] as like a four pico, what's the translation of that? And if we need to go back to one of the slides,

[1:52:28] so I can get the correct terminology. I'm happy to do that, but y'all might hear a commission.

[1:52:32] So, you know, Bill's the expert in the radiation. I'm certainly happy to talk about

[1:52:37] health risks associated with those levels of radiation. It's good luck. Okay.

[1:52:41] Now, when we talk about pico-curries per gram, that's the concentration of the radioactive

[1:52:51] material.

[1:52:53] So, that tells us, you know, if we pull up a sample of soil out of rocky flats, that in

[1:53:04] one gram of soil, there will be 1.1 pico-curries of radioactive material.

[1:53:11] Now, that doesn't tell us what dose of radiation we're going to get.

[1:53:19] We have to do a conversion and so, depending on which radioactive material and its specific isotope it is,

[1:53:30] that translates to how much exposure our body receives.

[1:53:34] So, fecal curries program is how much of the material you get,

[1:53:42] milligrams is how much of an exposure your body receives.

[1:53:47] And so, you know, it both are important to know,

[1:53:51] but from a public health standpoint from a health impacts,

[1:53:55] we're really concerned about the dose.

[1:53:59] And so, the dose is the milligrams.

[1:54:01] And I know I'm a bit of a broken record on it, but it doesn't matter what radio

[1:54:13] nuclei you get that dose from. There are three types of ionizing radiation. There's

[1:54:20] gamma rays. There's beta particles and there's alpha particles. And plutonium is primarily

[1:54:26] in alpha particle of midterm. It's, um, if I'm remembering my chemistry exactly right, two protons,

[1:54:33] two neutrons and it's a fairly low energy particle, meaning it can't travel very far and it

[1:54:41] doesn't penetrate very well. So alpha emitters, you can shield yourself from them with a sheet of paper.

[1:54:50] So alpha emitters, whether it's plutonium, whether it's the rate on in your home,

[1:54:54] the route of exposure that we're most concerned with is inhalation or ingestion.

[1:55:01] If it's just on your skin, it's not getting through your skin.

[1:55:06] And so what we worry about with plutonium, what we worry about the rate on is breathing it in, that

[1:55:11] particle getting trapped in your lungs and now those alpha particles can damage the cells from inside your body.

[1:55:22] And I before I go further, does that answer your question or do we need to go further on that?

[1:55:31] Yeah, not the end up.

[1:55:32] Thank you.

[1:55:33] And I was just trying to translate into something that I understand, which would be an EPA limit of right on it for 0.1.

[1:55:41] But I don't know how that translates to 620 milligrams per year.

[1:55:48] And so what I hear in your say, there's a level, and then it's the effect to the body.

[1:55:53] Does that even translate?

[1:55:56] Otherwise, I can...

[1:55:57] Yeah, like it's a couple.

[1:55:59] Go ahead, Chris.

[1:56:00] I think the best way to look at a commissioner is when you compare milligrams and that's

[1:56:04] that's the bill is talking about. The dosage, you have to compare it to things that we commonly

[1:56:10] see in our environment like a CT scan or a chest X-ray. Chest X-ray gives you 10 milligrams of exposure.

[1:56:19] So those are chest X-ray is not a benign thing. So that's important to compare us when Bill talked

[1:56:27] about those numbers being extremely low there. They're there. But the exposure in terms of the dosage

[1:56:33] admit, if you inhale or ingest them, comparing that to chest aches, we have 10 milligrams.

[1:56:41] The average boost in Colorado, as you know, is very clearly stated, is significant when we

[1:56:49] live in higher altitude and in a background radiation rate on in Colorado. So. Thank you.

[1:56:56] And I just am thank you fellow commissioners for being so patient. There was one other question I

[1:57:01] I had an in regards to one of the, and I don't know if it was that condition.

[1:57:07] Some are that you shared in your presentation that was talking about death monitoring.

[1:57:13] And I just was curious, there's two, there was like a four point slide.

[1:57:18] One of them was about death monitoring, and I was just curious about what that means.

[1:57:25] And how it's going to be regulated, how are we accountable to it if death monitoring is it.

[1:57:31] why is the level, what does that mean, what can the community expect? And or when will that be

[1:57:37] decided when will we hear about that as not just the board but also the public? And then there

[1:57:43] was another notation in regards to relevant plans and it was kind of the same question about

[1:57:49] when do those pieces get actually detailed and or is that something that we'd be talking about today?

[1:57:55] Yeah, we wouldn't be talking about today, it's, I guess, dependent upon saying a tour of this

[1:58:02] IGA, but I'll have Andrews step in here in just a second to talk about the dust monitoring

[1:58:09] and I can even try to pull up that document, so something that the Jefferson County Commissioners

[1:58:15] included when they discussed this item was this request for additional dust monitoring during

[1:58:24] construction of the trail crossing so if approved that the idea overall we would move forward

[1:58:31] with that particular provision. And there's there's still in discussion as to the I think

[1:58:39] there I'm going to let Andrew speak to this more elegantly than I can. But basically if the

[1:58:44] IGA is approved we would move forward and also wait into some of those other components that

[1:58:49] have to do with implementation and there will be other documents and intergovernmental

[1:58:53] agreements that may come forward and staff would continue to be involved in those discussions and providing updates to the board.

[1:59:02] So, I know you can much more elegantly explain the dust monitoring project.

[1:59:08] Sure, thanks, Summer.

[1:59:10] So, as Summer mentioned, this is a requirement that one of our commissioners requested for.

[1:59:15] And so far at this point, we have a scope of work

[1:59:21] and it's being led by Jason Andrews and engineering analytics.

[1:59:28] And on kind of broad terms, the project is to install

[1:59:33] dust monitors, so real-time particulate matter monitors.

[1:59:40] At the locations where construction is taking place, and then as a function of the residual contamination that we kind of categorize at this point in the soils, we can understand health risk as a function of how much dust is being suspended into the air.

[2:00:00] That is a calculation. And what we will do to sort of validate those assumptions when we see how much PM is in the air, we will actually capture all the PM in the sensors and then take that for laboratory analysis to sort of validate our assumptions.

[2:00:22] We have a two-page scope of work with engineering analytics and an air monitor and specialist.

[2:00:31] Also a local consulting student, Ajax analytics.

[2:00:35] They do a lot of work in Brimfield, OIL and Gas, air monitoring.

[2:00:40] And we've had at this point we've had comments and reviewed by CDPHE and we're also happy to share the scope of work

[2:00:48] with Boulder County Public Health and anybody else that is interesting.

[2:00:54] Again, it's a short scope of work.

[2:00:57] We will have a formal, fully fleshed out work plan,

[2:01:00] assuming the IGA goes forward and we're ready to do an actual project.

[2:01:05] Okay, so that I just want to clarify.

[2:01:07] That was one of the, there was a couple questions from public comment as well

[2:01:10] in regards to that request.

[2:01:12] So to clarify that for folks, I think it's helpful.

[2:01:15] I appreciate that.

[2:01:15] It sounds like then that will be, that's not written in the IGA, but it'll be part of and other.

[2:01:22] Is it, would you say everybody that's working on this in the agreement with addressing that's monitoring some way?

[2:01:34] I want to go back and look at the languages, but it's in our, I know it's in Jefferson County's resolution, and I'm not sure if we updated the IGA with that same language,

[2:01:44] but we've had a partner group discussion with about this specific issue and you know we

[2:01:50] doesn't kind of understand that this would be another joint effort funded by the funded by the

[2:01:57] partners but we're all sort of on board with the ones that we have. Andrew, I can jump in there.

[2:02:04] I'm Hilary Merritt, the Deputy Director at Jefferson County Open Space. The draft IGA has been updated

[2:02:10] to include the dust monitoring and it is included in the resolution that the Jefferson County

[2:02:17] Commissioner has approved back in December. Okay, thank you. That's all the questions I have

[2:02:23] right now. Thank you. Blair, do you have questions? For you, thank you. And thank you, Marta, for

[2:02:35] exploring a lot of the questions really thoroughly. So I'll be able to condense mine a little bit.

[2:02:42] And unfortunately, though, I am going to have to ask you for some of my questions to go back

[2:02:47] to some of the slides that you were on. I didn't want to interrupt the questioning that was going

[2:02:51] on to ask my questions. But let me start somewhere else, maybe.

[2:02:57] And actually maybe where we just left off on the IGA, I'm looking at staff's memo to us

[2:03:13] for this presentation on page three where it talks about the fiscal impact of the proposed IGA.

[2:03:20] And it's got a for Boulder County share that totals 89,894 dollars, there's a TBD line there for, yeah, is that what you're referring to with the dumpster is that something else?

[2:03:38] No, I think that's it.

[2:03:40] Okay. Okay. So that I guess we don't know the upshot is that right now for our decision on whether to approve this IGA or not.

[2:03:56] We don't actually know the total cost of it.

[2:04:01] It's like Andrew's raised his hand to speak to that.

[2:04:07] Yeah, for the military scoping, it's about a $60,000 effort.

[2:04:11] That wouldn't split.

[2:04:14] Yeah, and how is that proposed to be shared along the parties to the idea?

[2:04:20] I think we would use the same formula that we could use

[2:04:22] to like the matches for the cash fund functions of,

[2:04:31] um, so we haven't been to paper on this,

[2:04:36] but older Jackson County is kind of picking up the tab for both sides. So I think

[2:04:43] folders might be around $10,000, uh, but let me, let me give you some better numbers on that.

[2:04:50] Okay. Um, well, well, Perks could enough. I just didn't know whether we were, when I read this

[2:04:55] about contaminant monitoring. I didn't know if we were talking about a major project or not. But

[2:05:02] that range, okay, that's so that tells me, you know, it's not going to totally blow the budget apart.

[2:05:11] I think there was, there was also some language, and now I actually don't, oh, I think it was

[2:05:17] in the draft IGA that was attached. I don't know if there's an updated version of it that reflects

[2:05:24] this. Let me see if I can find it here it is. It refers, I believe it's the IGA that

[2:05:36] or it might be the memo that refers to the need for a third intervention agreement to cover

[2:05:42] maintenance operation and ownership of the crossing. So, what would be envisioned there? Again,

[2:05:52] And I'm asking just to make sure that I understand the full scope of what it is we're approving right now in what might.

[2:05:58] What the unknown is might be in the future if we go down this path.

[2:06:05] I'm happy to weigh in on that.

[2:06:07] I believe the reason we didn't.

[2:06:09] Hillary, excuse me, you're going to have to identify yourself.

[2:06:11] So then I personally are who's in the course.

[2:06:13] Hillary Merritt, deputy director, Jeff Co. Open space.

[2:06:17] The reason that we did not include the management and maintenance in this IGA is this is a five

[2:06:24] party IGA and we did anticipate that maintenance and management and ownership might be something

[2:06:31] that would be split and perhaps the portion that was in Boulder County and the portion that's

[2:06:37] in Jefferson County might be split apart. So it wouldn't be a single agreement for those.

[2:06:43] But we're still in kind of negotiations about that. The none of that has been decided at this point.

[2:06:49] And what would be included in maintenance and operation here?

[2:06:55] You know, I don't know, maybe repaving if you're looking at an underpass periodic, kind of graffiti removal, that type of thing.

[2:07:06] I don't know that it's going to be a heavy amount of maintenance.

[2:07:10] There's probably different level of maintenance on the bridge portion, which is part of the reason why we're talking about

[2:07:16] be separating those out into two agreements.

[2:07:19] Okay, thank you.

[2:07:21] And while we're on this subject, on this subject,

[2:07:26] then what role does C dot have in approving

[2:07:30] this?

[2:07:30] Because we're going to, if this goes forward, we're going to be tunneling under their road.

[2:07:36] Do they have any additional tests or assessments that need to be done in order to

[2:07:46] to do this action with Highway 128 or I don't know actually

[2:07:51] if Indiana is the state highway, but 128?

[2:07:56] Yeah, I think I could probably speak that.

[2:08:00] So at the point that we're assuming we move forward,

[2:08:04] we have a fully active community idea with all the partners.

[2:08:07] The project actually gets handed over to federal highways

[2:08:10] for the project delivery.

[2:08:12] And C dot would be issuing permits for construction

[2:08:16] and all the rest.

[2:08:19] We've had when we first went after the grant.

[2:08:23] We had discussions with CDOT, so they understand

[2:08:25] that this is a project on their radar.

[2:08:29] And in fact, a member of their executive committee

[2:08:35] was on the board for approval of the flat.

[2:08:38] There was a three-person committee.

[2:08:40] One of them was a representative from CDOT.

[2:08:43] So they're aware of this and like I said, they're a highways, we can project manager and see

[2:08:49] that I would issue any permits that they've even invested in creating and all the rest.

[2:08:54] Okay, so they would accept the sampling and the results of that. That was already done

[2:09:02] pursuant to the commissioners resolution and any other sampling that's been done. Okay,

[2:09:08] You, all the sampling that has been done and they're finding or similar to the VHG that the sites do not require any special things.

[2:09:18] Okay. Now I have some questions that are going to go maybe back over a little bit of ground that the commissioner allowed to mean covered.

[2:09:29] And maybe Jason could come back on with his slides that showed the samples and what

[2:09:38] standards were met along that linear chart that you had Jason if are you able to share your screen and pull that back up.

[2:09:53] I didn't, I just wanted you to just maybe walk through the implication of the fact that

[2:10:00] it looked like the Indiana side didn't, yeah, I think you've got that, that's the one.

[2:10:07] So for

[2:10:16] the Indian industry crossing,

[2:10:21] I guess what you're finding to be significant is the fact that it's below the clean up standard of 50 people carries program, is that what is ultimately important here.

[2:10:40] Yes, this is Jason Andrews engineering analytics.

[2:10:44] That's correct.

[2:10:46] When we look at these numbers here,

[2:10:50] the right column is the one that's really the driver, right?

[2:10:52] The cleanup standard is what was established

[2:10:55] for the current use of this land.

[2:11:00] And so that's the driver.

[2:11:01] The other ones are more informational

[2:11:03] as far as how they relate to past sampling efforts in that regard.

[2:11:10] And so, the project samples for the worker or the middle line where your cursor actually is,

[2:11:19] or maybe that's mine, or that's yours.

[2:11:22] That's wildlife, well, what do you see what that is?

[2:11:26] That's wildlife refuge worker, PRG, preliminary remediation goal.

[2:11:33] Okay, oh, I see it down there at the footnote and so why is that number so much lower than the clean up standard?

[2:11:44] Yeah, that's that's a good good question and just as a point of clarification. I'm not a I'm not a risk assessor, so

[2:11:53] That comes in here.

[2:11:57] The preliminary remediation goal is when you're doing risk assessment work, there's there's different levels of goals and different levels of the risk

[2:12:05] Right, so if we go down to the footnote for the cleanup standard, the risk level that was established here was five times in the minus six risk for a wildlife worker.

[2:12:17] That wildlife refuge worker PRG value of 9.3 was a one times 10 to the minus six risk assessment.

[2:12:26] So you look at a range when you establish a risk assessment, and there's a process that's conducted as part of this, the work, and through a series of different discussions with different risk assessors and different risk scenarios, a number is agreed to as far as a clean up standard at the end of the day, with that associated there.

[2:12:50] So that's the difference there.

[2:12:52] There's also some differences as far as scenarios

[2:12:54] and risk use related to that.

[2:12:57] So like I said, not a risk assessor, I don't know,

[2:12:59] if Dr. Abina or Mr. Hayes has any other input

[2:13:04] as far as risk and how that risk number is calculated there.

[2:13:09] Well, yeah, I might appreciate a little bit more explanation

[2:13:13] on that because so the project sample mean.

[2:13:20] And the historic maximum, I'm not sure, I really care about the historic maximum there.

[2:13:31] But if there's a standard for somebody who, I guess that's, that's if you're going to be on site 230 days per year,

[2:13:42] then the standard would be 9.3 people carries program.

[2:13:50] And unfortunately, it's a little more muddled than that.

[2:13:55] That's standard.

[2:13:56] Really, the main reason we had that 9.3 Pico carriers program was that was when we established

[2:14:02] our sampling in analysis plan, we wanted to make sure that our detection limits were low enough

[2:14:07] to cover the range of risks that were looked at when the risk was done back then.

[2:14:18] back in 2017 or back back back back when it was originally set in the Kaiser Hill Report in the 2006 report in the DOE report.

[2:14:27] So that's, that's where the 9.3 came from. We wanted to throw that we wanted to make sure that was in there in the SAAP.

[2:14:32] We wanted to establish when we did our laboratory controls that we were able to meet that value in there.

[2:14:39] And then from that point forward that value was used in our report when looking at the data.

[2:14:47] But it's not, it was not a clean-up center that was, was ever established or utilized.

[2:14:53] It was part of the risk range when they were looking at risk assessments in that process.

[2:14:58] So was the clean-up state?

[2:15:00] Senator established on the assumption that this would be open to the public and the public would be recreating and recreating in a way when you're writing a bike and you're kicking up a lot of dust in your breathing pretty heavily. Was that clean of standard of 50 peak of curries programs on the assumption of access or was that the, well, we'll clean it up as well as we can, we'll call it good.

[2:15:26] There were, there were a number of inputs that went into that and I don't, I apologize at this point time I had not gone back and reviewed the inputs into that model.

[2:15:38] As far as usage goes for that model,

[2:15:44] every model is running a little differently when you're looking at risk, right?

[2:15:47] and there are certain assumptions as far as dust and elation,

[2:15:50] the size of the individual, the age and demographics of that individual that's using that.

[2:15:56] So I'd have to go back and review that to give you a better answer for that.

[2:16:00] Okay, I, you know, Dr. Vina was part of the TDPHG at the time of this, so you might have some more

[2:16:05] more insights as far as what we were into that risk.

[2:16:07] Okay, yeah, I'm just looking for what level of assurance. You know, I know that we've been,

[2:16:15] really trying to focus just strictly on the underpass. And, you know, and the undoubted safety

[2:16:22] of going under a highway rather than running or, you know, run your bike across it. But, you know,

[2:16:28] we are people are going to be exposed to something and then just trying to understand the safety of it.

[2:16:36] Commissioner, Chris, are being a hair. Yeah, thank you.

[2:16:39] So I'm going to ask Bill to pull up his slide with the risk associated with the worker

[2:16:44] on on site, uh, Bill, you had that slide.

[2:16:48] Well, I'm going to have to ask Jeff to pull up that slide.

[2:16:53] And then while he's doing that, I just thank you, um, Dr.

[2:16:57] Vena and Bill, Mr. Hayes for covering that topic and just to note that Lindsay

[2:17:01] masters with, uh, the call of department of public health environment was on this call.

[2:17:05] To help answer some of those questions, but she had a jump off, um, to, um,

[2:17:11] help take care of some kiddos, but we can also reply back with even further information of

[2:17:18] that's necessary after Bill and Chris's review here. Okay. Yeah, and Jeff, that slide 34,

[2:17:26] I think that's the one we want.

[2:17:31] So Bill, could talk us through this, because I think this is

[2:17:33] important, and I think Commissioner, I think the issue is when at various stages of opening,

[2:17:40] closing the refuge, excuse me, closing rocky flats, and clean up one set of risk assessments.

[2:17:48] Opening up the refuge to people, to access another risk assessment. Currently, the next risk

[2:17:58] assessment is basically, you know, are we in assessing these crossings? And so Bill walk us through

[2:18:06] one and how these calculations were done and based on our current level of pico curies in the soil

[2:18:17] on the refuge not the containment unit. Yeah and I will back up a bit you know that 50 pico curie

[2:18:27] per gram cleanup limit you know I wasn't at all involved in the negotiations that led to that number

[2:18:35] But you know, I was there when they were going on and, you know, certainly it was a negotiation and a debate and, you know, early on the cleanup level was being proposed at much lower than that and then the costs started coming in and the feasibility really started coming in that you could, you know,

[2:19:03] spend hundreds of billions of dollars and it's just still not technically feasible to get,

[2:19:09] you know, every last bit of plutonium off of that site. So when they finally settled on that,

[2:19:17] 50 peak of periods per gram, clean up limit, there was some consideration of what future use

[2:19:25] is might be proposed, but at that time when that limit was set, it was not set with the expectation

[2:19:32] that it would be open as a wildlife refuge for recreation to the public. And so as Jason Andrews was

[2:19:40] saying, then when you started considering these additional uses and alternative uses,

[2:19:50] you have to look at that risk assessment for each different visitor use worker how long they might be

[2:20:00] and we talked about earlier that right now the average concentration of plutonium at rocky flats

[2:20:09] in the soil would be expected to yield one in one million additional cancer cases. I don't

[2:20:18] know I'd have to go back and look to see exactly what levels were considered for these various

[2:20:26] scenarios, you know, sometimes it's one in a million, sometimes it's 10 in a million, sometimes

[2:20:32] it's 100 in a million. And not just for plutonium, but any toxin in the environment that we might

[2:20:38] be exposed to that you start that risk assessment with what is the acceptable level. Often the

[2:20:46] acceptable level for an occupational exposure is higher than for the general public. And a lot of that

[2:20:55] in to choice. And so for an exposure to the public where they don't have a choice, and

[2:21:06] might not be aware and might not have the ability to guard against it, you go with a much

[2:21:13] lower, acceptable risk threshold. So that this certainly plays into, and I don't again

[2:21:21] know exactly what those thresholds were for each of these cases, but the adult refuge worker

[2:21:28] I would expect had a higher acceptable threshold than that for the visitors. And so again,

[2:21:38] when you, but these numbers, these milligrams exposures don't, it doesn't matter what that

[2:21:46] threshold is. These are the doses, the radiation exposures that these individuals would expect

[2:21:57] to receive in a year at Rocky Flats. And again, you know, 0.3 milligrams per year is,

[2:22:15] you know,

[2:22:16] is relative to 620. So I can get that. So these calculations, this is a standard, it's just a math

[2:22:25] problem for translate the pico-curries program into milligrams per year. Is that just simple math,

[2:22:38] and it's consistent, and it's a knowledge formula? Yeah. I wouldn't say it's the most simple

[2:22:46] math, but the modeling. It's essentially, you know, it is a fairly complex model of, you know,

[2:22:54] what you're doing at the site, what that dosage is going to be, but it is a standard protocol

[2:23:02] for how to perform that calculation. Yes. Okay. All right. Thank you. And so these numbers, the point

[2:23:10] three, the point two, the point zero seven, and I guess the child is higher than the adult,

[2:23:16] because the child's closer to the ground, maybe. But those numbers are those based on that

[2:23:24] average across the whole site of all the testing sites of 1.1 peak of curries program.

[2:23:32] Yes, that is based on the average. And Dr. Vena, you might be able to explain that a little bit

[2:23:40] better, but a child receives a larger dose more because of their biology.

[2:23:50] Oh, I see. Okay. And then you can do their size and inhalation and

[2:23:55] oxygen. So that they're inhaling more per square area than an adult would be. So I see

[2:24:04] Yeah, long capacities, so there are areas concentrated.

[2:24:09] So it is a little higher.

[2:24:10] The same thing is true for medications and other things as well.

[2:24:13] So my interest in these numbers was that that's based on this 1.1 peak of periods

[2:24:22] program, which is an average across the whole area not the, you know,

[2:24:28] and there's undoubtedly a lot of variation in the site.

[2:24:33] And yeah, certainly, and that's what engineering analytics sampling shows is that there is a great deal of variability across the site as to what the exposure would be.

[2:24:52] But if you're traveling from, you know, one corner of the site to the other, you are going to

[2:25:00] approach that 1.1 pico-curry program average for, you know, that's safe.

[2:25:07] Okay. I think I have two more questions. Can I jump in on that one? I have a related question,

[2:25:13] do you mind? Yeah, no, go ahead ahead. So there was a sample taken when they were trying to do

[2:25:19] looking at the potential road on the east side. Not far north of this Indiana trail

[2:25:24] ahead of it. 264 pico-grams, the pico-curious program in it. They did follow-up

[2:25:34] sampling sort of several step-out sampling, which means you sample around the area

[2:25:38] and they didn't find anything that high.

[2:25:42] But how do we know there aren't high values like

[2:25:47] But I know the averages far lower than that, but how do we know that those don't exist elsewhere?

[2:25:54] Jason, could you talk about that?

[2:25:56] Because we dress that when we talk about this in Greenfield.

[2:25:59] And that was the purpose of taking multiple samples in addition to the over 7,000 samples that have been in the past.

[2:26:07] Okay.

[2:26:07] I just make one note to on this that CDPHE provided a memo related to that anomalous sample and then a revised memo.

[2:26:15] And unfortunately, Lindsey Masters is not on, Andrew might be able to provide a little bit

[2:26:22] of context and I'll try to pull that memo up, but the long story short is there analysis

[2:26:28] based upon that sample was that even if that sample existed in other parts of the refuge,

[2:26:35] we would still be under CDPGs standard for exposure.

[2:26:40] So let me pull that up and I didn't know the Andrew PM me comments on that as well, and unfortunately Lindsay's not on here. She like I mentioned she had to step away

[2:26:50] Yeah, I would just add a little clarification on that as Summers said they looked at that

[2:26:59] very high

[2:27:01] single sample

[2:27:02] As if that was the average across the entire site not just that it might exist elsewhere

[2:27:10] But they did an analysis of if that extremely unusually high sample was the average across the entire state.

[2:27:19] A site and still found it to be lower than the state's limit for additional dose beyond background in a year.

[2:27:30] Just to remind her, I know we've been on for almost two hours, but it folks could say their names and where you're out from again. I mean, even I'm having trouble finding out who's talking and somebody's thank you.

[2:27:40] Sorry, that was Bill Hayes with public health.

[2:27:44] Thank you.

[2:27:44] Good. Good reminder.

[2:27:46] Matt, did you have more on that issue? I had to work.

[2:27:49] Question.

[2:27:50] Okay.

[2:27:51] Question.

[2:27:52] Yeah. So just two more.

[2:27:54] And I don't know if you need to pull up the slide again.

[2:27:58] but it might be helpful actually on the the overall layout going back to the discussion about the existing

[2:28:06] parking lot along 128 and where the proposed underpass is.

[2:28:15] I didn't want to pile on because at the time that we were talking about it before because I thought

[2:28:20] Well, I would do as confused things, so the one above that may be,

[2:28:34] yeah, yeah, well,

[2:28:37] I'll ask my question, you can just, which slide is the best slide for it.

[2:28:42] So I guess I thought, so there is, you're saying that there is a trailhead that is not an informal trailhead.

[2:28:54] is a trailhead. There is a trailhead closer to the castland there with some parking access

[2:29:03] and that currently exists. I couldn't tell whether what we're talking about is something

[2:29:08] that's informed or whether there's a formal development trailhead in a parking area there.

[2:29:18] Let me, can you see this map of the regional connection?

[2:29:23] So this might help.

[2:29:25] So if you can see my cursor, so I'll be on the right now I'm on the, you know,

[2:29:33] where the flap underpass would be.

[2:29:37] And now I'm going to follow up Colton Trail existing trail.

[2:29:41] And then this location right here, I'm not totally sure commissioner leaving this book.

[2:29:51] That's not talking about the map of the Wildlife Refuge and the circumference sort of.

[2:30:00] Of trail, we were talking about, no, no, no, I'm not.

[2:30:07] One with a purple, a few such trails.

[2:30:10] Yeah, that one work. Yep. Let me get that one. That's right.

[2:30:16] Here, maybe.

[2:30:17] There you go.

[2:30:19] Yeah, so up along that Fuchsia, follow 128 towards McCaslin.

[2:30:25] And we've been talking about, yeah, right there.

[2:30:28] We've been talking about an access. Is there a parking there?

[2:30:35] Well, there's this, there's the formal trailhead that is on the Rocky

[2:30:40] Flatston National Wildlife Refuge about where I have the cursor right now.

[2:30:45] Yes. That's a formal trailhead, and is that, is there a parking with that trailhead?

[2:30:50] Absolutely. There's parking there. Okay, and that's allowed. It's not just informal

[2:30:55] No, no, no, no, it's got a trailhead, there's signage. I'm speaking for David's

[2:31:01] Facility. By the way, this is Jeff Moline of Mola Park's an open space. But yeah, I'm I'm describing David's facility. I should let him if he'd like that. No, that's okay. Okay. So I'm okay. So that's what I'm so what we're so for people who are going to

[2:31:17] drive to the

[2:31:25] they went out there to do,

[2:31:27] that's a place where they will come to and they will park.

[2:31:32] And so the underpass that we're proposing

[2:31:35] that is proposed under 128 is really just

[2:31:39] for trail connection purposes.

[2:31:41] Is that right to get people from this greenway

[2:31:48] from the wildlife refuge onto the Colton Trail

[2:31:52] hence north. Is that correct? That's a great way of saying it I think yes. Okay and so what

[2:32:01] I what got me confused is Commissioner Jones's questions about you know the distance from that

[2:32:08] parking lot to down the road there to where that underpass is. I guess the point of that is that

[2:32:18] But there isn't currently a trail that goes out to 128 from where the underpass would be.

[2:32:23] And if you rode out to that trailhead, and then you wanted to get on the Colton Trail,

[2:32:29] you'd have to ride on 128.

[2:32:31] Is that what that is about?

[2:32:37] Yeah.

[2:32:38] I mean, so currently, again, and David, please jump in if I'm mistating this.

[2:32:44] but currently the existing trail system ends in here.

[2:32:50] Of course, it proceeds further south,

[2:32:52] but in terms of heading to the northwest,

[2:32:54] it ends in this vicinity here.

[2:32:57] So if somebody wanted, it parked at this northern part

[2:33:01] of Rocky Flats National Wildlife Refuge

[2:33:04] and wanted to get access onto the Colton

[2:33:08] or high plain trails, whether they're located over here.

[2:33:10] Currently, they would need to, you know, they would need to get out on to state highway 128 and write it over to that location. Yeah. Okay. So my last question and thank you for giving me all this time. My last question is traffic counts.

[2:33:32] We don't have any traffic counts on 128, and also do we have any projections of the usage.

[2:33:44] I think we talked about this once, but I don't recall that we had any numbers.

[2:33:49] I think we were talking in very, very sort of qualitative terms of how this will be really attractive.

[2:33:54] and it'll get high use, but I just wonder whether we've done any studies of how many people

[2:34:04] will be probably using this underpass and what the traffic situation is on 128.

[2:34:12] I know I used to, when I lived in Southland where I used to ride the old Morbal Bismarck

[2:34:19] route and one thing I loved about it was 128 didn't have a whole lot of traffic. I didn't

[2:34:28] do it at rush hour or anything, but it didn't have a ton of traffic and it has nice wide

[2:34:34] shoulders. So I was kind of wondering what if we have any traffic numbers? So I'm going to have to

[2:34:42] for on the traffic numbers,

[2:34:46] the auto traffic numbers on state highway 128, I'm not aware

[2:34:52] of those numbers. I'm certain we could get those, but there could be people on the call

[2:34:57] that would be able to answer that. And then we do have numbers about visitation at, for example,

[2:35:07] Rocky flats, you know, the wildlife refuge. So we, we can, we, and again, we would, we'd have people on the call that could answer some of those questions. So maybe I'll stop sharing and we'll see if we can.

[2:35:19] Okay. Yeah, get some of those.

[2:35:21] See through some folks that could answer some of those questions.

[2:35:24] And the reason I'm asking is I feel like the primary rationale for this is that it will just make it safer if we're really going to see this as a through route as a true regional trail.

[2:35:35] That's a through route that the reason to go through all this trouble is to make it safer.

[2:35:42] And so I'm just wondering, how dangerous, how dangerous is it?

[2:35:49] Yeah.

[2:35:49] And I think part of it too, Commissioner Levy is, is the speeds involved too.

[2:35:55] So this, you know, state highway is not, you know, a residential street in one of our towns.

[2:36:01] It's a state highway and so speeds are high.

[2:36:04] So that's one consideration, and I don't know if Andrew or David might have just a little bit of information on traffic count numbers.

[2:36:12] I don't know if they do or not.

[2:36:15] I don't have a specific data. Sorry, so this is Andrew Valdez, Jefferson County open space.

[2:36:21] So we did build the end traffic kind of numbers into the grant proposal, but one of the reasons why this project was selected and competed so well

[2:36:31] because it would augment non-motorized multimodal access to a destination.

[2:36:39] So, you know, I wouldn't presume to say that it would reduce traffic, but it will

[2:36:46] supplement the existing particular access with equitable multimodal non-motorized access.

[2:36:55] And without this project, the design, the destination, which is a, you know, a generator,

[2:37:01] It is a destination. We'll have more than a little office. We'll not have more than a little office.

[2:37:11] I guess I would, this is David Lucas, U.S. Fish and a little. I would chime in just a little.

[2:37:17] As a part of the environmental assessment, we did review some data on visitation, on the adjacent open space plans.

[2:37:24] I cannot cite those numbers for you right now, Commissioner, on exactly what they are.

[2:37:29] But there are visitor surveys that are taking place on the cold trail to the north.

[2:37:34] It's being used pretty vividly.

[2:37:36] There are a pretty detailed assessment completed by Westminster on what they call Westminster Hills open space.

[2:37:45] That's the space over by the Indiana crossing.

[2:37:48] The greenway currently goes through that area.

[2:37:52] And I will say that this is a biased number because there also happens to be a dog park nearby.

[2:37:57] And I think a lot of people utilize the green way to get to said dog park, but they ticked in at 1.1 billion visits last year.

[2:38:06] It was a major increase due to COVID, but also a significant number regardless of any of our open spaces. That's a big number.

[2:38:16] And then the refuge, I believe we are at in the 40s, 40,000 for you right now, so they're being used as recreational locations.

[2:38:26] So I think Andrew's point is very valid.

[2:38:28] We don't want to oversell any trail as fixing traffic problems or become, you know, I don't envision thousands of people

[2:38:36] to work the other green way. It's a long way.

[2:38:41] But they definitely are being used so the traffic

[2:38:47] is there. And the risk is there. The highway 128 corridor is very fast. It's also very

[2:38:54] killy. You're going through a big drainage there. And there are an awful lot of bicyclers utilizing

[2:39:00] it right now to get from source A to source B and we have heard from many many of our visitors that

[2:39:08] those connections are important because one of the goals of the greenway was specifically to

[2:39:15] try to provide off-road trail routes and that was a very big challenge for us as we moved across the

[2:39:22] city and as you can imagine and working our way through two bonds and past the Stanley Lake Library

[2:39:28] and all the way around Stanley Lake, it would have been far easier and there was plenty of recommendations to go ahead and just, you know, put a bike line on the side of the road.

[2:39:38] But one of the goals is to get people that safe off-road experience. Obviously, they still probably have to use a vehicle sometimes to get from point A to point B. They'll have to cross a street here or there.

[2:39:49] But by and large, the trail is getting very much off-road without crossing. So that's, to me, I think that's one of the big goals is to just,

[2:39:57] We know that people are parking there. We know they're across the fences. We know they're taking advantage of the trails.

[2:40:02] We know they're using these areas to make it safe and facilitate that in a property way.

[2:40:12] Commissioners, I can pull up the information on the Colton trailhead.

[2:40:17] If you're interested, we're not, we don't have visitation numbers for the exact segment of the trail.

[2:40:23] But just in terms of visits to the Colton Trailhead, which is that trailhead on McCaslin, if you'd like.

[2:40:32] I can pull that up. It's, we get 37, and in 2019, we got 37,900 visits to that particular trailhead.

[2:40:43] Roughly 4,000, almost 5,000 visits in June, the busiest month for the whole month.

[2:40:50] Okay, yeah, thank you, Jeff, I don't have any more questions.

[2:40:54] Thanks so much.

[2:40:58] Well, thank you for hanging in on this.

[2:41:01] The answer to all these questions.

[2:41:03] I'm glad the Colton trails being used to help make it that right away.

[2:41:06] It's a good thing.

[2:41:10] My point clear on the safety issue on the road is was it was pointed out that some people are going out to the road and

[2:41:20] cutting down the road to make the connection,

[2:41:23] which is unsafe, which it is.

[2:41:26] Although I will say there are a lot of people

[2:41:28] that still write that Marvel Bismarck loop

[2:41:31] with this just by the type of bike they're on.

[2:41:34] It's a fun route.

[2:41:37] And now it's safe to go down 93 and it didn't use to be.

[2:41:41] I'll take your word for it.

[2:41:44] But what struck me is having worked on the daddy draw

[2:41:48] for instance, as parking signs, no parking signs are in there because of work and I and another staff

[2:41:54] member did getting Boulder County to put them in and trying to get the sheriff to enforce it,

[2:41:58] which they had other Ferris Fester Frya, they told us, then trying to get the Rangers to enforce it

[2:42:03] and get them special dispensation to do that. It is a management headache and a danger.

[2:42:11] And by putting this underpass in with this informal access area in the road shoulder,

[2:42:17] you are creating that.

[2:42:20] So yes, it's unsafe for people to make the connection and go on to the road.

[2:42:24] It's also unsafe where they're going to park.

[2:42:27] And it's going to be a management issue forever.

[2:42:32] So I just wanted to balance perspective on road safety with that.

[2:42:36] And that's why I made that point.

[2:42:40] Yeah, so we'll leave that one there and I already asked the one on the 264pc here as per Graham, thanks for letting me jump in.

[2:42:51] Jeff, you talked about this. Can you bring back up that back with the tall grassberry?

[2:42:56] Yeah. You are correct that prairie is very high, why would I have a quild life habitat?

[2:43:03] And I am not surprised at all where the road was built up by sea,

[2:43:07] that there's smooth-broomed anarchist for many years and they tell me it's changed. That is their

[2:43:13] grasp of choice. It's a weedy grasp of monoculture. It is not great wildlife habitat.

[2:43:20] But what my question is between the road right away and where this trail would leave another trail.

[2:43:27] And by the way, we're, yes, we are in a clear, we are proving a flagrant that will lead to an

[2:43:37] But what is the vegetation like in that way, area?

[2:43:41] I assume it's pretty intact,

[2:43:43] data of vegetation, just more repairing and type

[2:43:46] and probably short grass or something like that.

[2:43:50] That is not an assumption I would make.

[2:43:53] So we would need to get David back on the line.

[2:43:56] But if you want to look, so here's the map,

[2:44:00] then let's go quickly back to this image

[2:44:04] that I took just the other day.

[2:44:05] So, of course, all of this embankment is all smooth grown, you can see it extending across.

[2:44:11] And there's plenty of smooth grown across the way where this trail would go.

[2:44:16] So this is all part of Rocky Flats, but I'm going to, I would let David, he'd like to

[2:44:23] comment about where this connecting trail from the underpass that would now be on Rocky

[2:44:29] Flats.

[2:44:29] And of course, it's not subject to this IGA agreement, flat agreement, but would then

[2:44:35] head back up to the hill there. So David, would you want to come in any more on that?

[2:44:41] Well, I appreciate it that you had the map.

[2:44:43] Okay.

[2:44:44] No, don't go to the map. Stay always.

[2:44:46] I appreciate it that you had the map because that was from an invasive species report and survey and monitoring that we just played over the last couple years and issued this year.

[2:44:55] Again, there's two habitat types that we are particularly interested in.

[2:45:00] You're particularly on the shell. So that's that flat line in the horizon for you guys that don't know it well. That's the shelf and that's where most of your there is going to be up on the top.

[2:45:12] And then the rocky flat saluvium, the rock, is what creates those shells and that goes down 40 to 200 to 400 feet down the hill.

[2:45:20] It creates this unique feature where water will seep down from above on that flat land and

[2:45:27] seep out the side and create those little dark spots like the cursors on.

[2:45:31] Those seeps create a really neat habitat type that's important to a lot of species.

[2:45:36] But it also is our second big habitat type, which has been named, and I'm not a botanist.

[2:45:43] It's been named Tall Upline Shrubulent, and there's about 11 acres left on the planet all

[2:45:50] the refuge. So we are avoiding those most certainly. But the habitat, specific in the photo

[2:45:58] where the trail is going, you can almost make our road coming down the hill from up there

[2:46:04] and kind of working its way down. So we would follow the old road, obviously, where it exists

[2:46:12] and it kind of crosses, and then it comes down kind of on my screen where summer faces, but

[2:46:17] everybody's a little different. On the right hand side and there would be a stream crossing

[2:46:22] built in across across and then it would go back up towards where you see the culvert pipe

[2:46:29] Jeff kind of on the left hand side. My understanding is right about there is where said culvert

[2:46:35] would exit and come out. So it kind of follow a natural contour down to the bridge and come across

[2:46:44] and go back up, that old Jeep Trail.

[2:46:47] And these old Jeep trails were kind of created.

[2:46:49] That's what's fascinating.

[2:46:50] I don't want to take time for me, guys.

[2:46:52] But if you think about what these lands looked like 100 years ago,

[2:46:55] this was all cattle.

[2:46:56] This was all crazed down to the note.

[2:46:59] There were roads and fences all across all this stuff.

[2:47:02] And this is all restored over the last 80 years,

[2:47:07] to 100 years, because the Department of Energy

[2:47:10] came in at Boston Land.

[2:47:11] It's kind of a weird by-product, and those intact plants still exist and are managed to regenerate in many, many places.

[2:47:22] Unfortunately, in this valley, the majority remains to be smooth-grown grass.

[2:47:28] And we continue to try to work and figure out ways to deal with smooth-grown collectively across all of our organizations.

[2:47:35] But the vast majority of this valley is still smooth, smooth,

[2:47:39] brown, except for those seeps that are coming out.

[2:47:44] Like I said, that have a whole lot of small shrubs and other species that,

[2:47:51] I mean, there are 630 plant species identified on the rocky flats.

[2:47:56] I believe they said something like 80% of the biodiversity is tied to those shrubland

[2:48:01] complexes that you see there.

[2:48:03] So, those are definitely a high priority.

[2:48:07] We've now categorized those as sensitive wildlife areas in our planet

[2:48:10] documents.

[2:48:10] They're several sensitive wildlife areas.

[2:48:12] But that 11 acres of polyp on shrub is obviously something that's extremely interesting

[2:48:17] for us to protect and we would not put a trail through it.

[2:48:21] So we're basically following a Jeep trail off that pediment and then coming down, following

[2:48:27] that Jeep trail down the valley and crossing the bridge, coming back up on the north

[2:48:33] side and exiting by that culvert pipe.

[2:48:38] Thank you.

[2:48:39] Thank you.

[2:48:40] This is Jeff Mulling.

[2:48:42] David, you've had Dr. Buckner working on some of your vegetation analysis, too, correct?

[2:48:48] Yes.

[2:48:48] He actually participated in this report that you have the map from.

[2:48:53] Okay.

[2:48:54] Yeah.

[2:48:54] And I've talked today a bit.

[2:48:56] Yeah.

[2:48:57] He certainly, the expert and kind of explained to you how, you know, two million years ago,

[2:49:01] something pyroplastic occurred and dumped off his rocky flats aluminum out here and the importance

[2:49:06] of this habitat type and the unfortunate part that this habitat type existed in many, many, many

[2:49:13] more places up and down the front range and I have been destroyed now and that this this last

[2:49:19] about 2,500 air acres of goods there tall grass exist in this location.

[2:49:26] There's a little bit on the west side of 93, but the vast majority is on the east side of 93.

[2:49:32] And you guys helped with the protection of that in 2011 and 2012 when we purchased an additional square mile.

[2:49:39] And we purchased all the outstanding mineral rights along that area, under Zaryn Tolgrass.

[2:49:44] Boulder County was a participant, Jefferson County was a participant.

[2:49:47] So that means now we can't get more aggregate minds coming in and chopping up our Zaryn.

[2:49:53] You're right David, that was interesting, and they helped do the sex and sex thing.

[2:49:59] It was quite, I didn't know if it could get done, and everybody had a great job to do that and keep things intact.

[2:50:07] Plus, there are other open space areas that have the Zurich Congress as well.

[2:50:12] But in any case, I'm off the topic at hand, and I don't have any more questions.

[2:50:17] I know that's probably a relief to all of you.

[2:50:21] So, we'll go to deliberation and a vote if somebody wants to make a motion, or if you just want to say what you're thinking, your choice.

[2:50:31] I actually still have a question if that's okay.

[2:50:35] Yep.

[2:50:37] And thank you, everybody, for all of the feedback and the responses and walking through from different angles, some of the similar themes and trying to get some of the public comments as well.

[2:50:50] through those questions, so appreciate all of that information.

[2:50:56] I was glad to hear that there was some conversation and it sounds like kind of go back and forth a little bit in regards to the question on the desk monitoring.

[2:51:08] And so one of the questions I had was around signage.

[2:51:11] And if there is an opportunity to add in any language around signage for

[2:51:17] for in this IGA, the same way that it sounds like there's been an amendment to, I'm not in the

[2:51:23] dust monitoring. And if so, what would that look like? And or is there a commitment that we could get from,

[2:51:30] at least from the Boulder County side, we're on our portion, around the underpasses, etc., to

[2:51:37] one address signage of just bike safety. And then the other one, I think, is just as important.

[2:51:43] and I would love to hear how we might be able to encourage, if we can't mandate, but encourage

[2:51:51] are the partners on this to also include some signage. Meaning, on some of our other open space

[2:51:59] in other areas around Boulder County, when you go on a trail, there's like the Orman Roach, for

[2:52:06] example, when you go walking down there, there's a sign that tells you the story of how you used to be

[2:52:11] able to get down to Union Station from Boulder and from that area, from an educational standpoint

[2:52:19] from a information, yeah, thank you for bringing that up.

[2:52:23] We saw this in one of our pre, I think maybe at an onboarding conversation,

[2:52:30] and in this

[2:52:32] time, broken up into maybe four readable sections along my walk would be with a, with a, with a graphic. There's some really important history and there's also really important education for folks who don't know this area.

[2:52:50] And so I would just love to get a response and find out what kind of conversation around that piece has happened and how that might fit into the ideas and amendment and or what we might be able to talk about from a commitment.

[2:53:02] from Boulder County, but also from partners.

[2:53:08] Yeah, thank you for this question.

[2:53:10] Commissioner Luchamine, this is Summer Law's policy

[2:53:12] and I'll send the Commissioner's office.

[2:53:14] And what I have up here on the screen is the,

[2:53:17] like you mentioned, we showed this with you earlier,

[2:53:19] is the sign that's on the wildlife refuge side

[2:53:24] and is according to the David Lucas,

[2:53:29] he can speak more to this.

[2:53:30] what is going to be at all entrances to the Wildlife Refuge in both English and Spanish,

[2:53:36] but your point staff has discussed whether or not we would want to have more

[2:53:40] interpretive signage on the Boulder County side or either work with our partners to provide

[2:53:47] more information and background as you are entering from the Boulder County side into the

[2:54:01] Dave, would you like to weigh in on the signage on the refeed side a little bit more?

[2:54:06] Yeah, this is a wonderful question.

[2:54:08] I mean, I will be brutally honest with the three commissioners that's this language that is on this time.

[2:54:14] A few years of negotiation with somewhere to what we're dealing with right now.

[2:54:22] So, you know, the probably the only thing that's been updated since those discussions is at the very bottom summer where there's websites.

[2:54:27] links. Now we have websites instead of phone numbers. So, no, two-year point, though. I will

[2:54:34] commit that we will work with Boulder County to do what is necessary and make you comfortable

[2:54:40] with science. That's on the exterior. We're already doing, we are already committed and we are already

[2:54:46] included in our master plan to do science at all conferences. And I believe the last time we discussed

[2:54:53] we talked about the science includes both rules and regulations and includes this.

[2:54:57] historical and required information as well. But we will continue to do more and more at the

[2:55:04] active class. It's only been open for two years. The interpretive side, as we would call it,

[2:55:09] is probably a little less sore than it needs to be. We have visions of more interpretive

[2:55:15] counseling in fact to explain the history of the site and the appropriate locations. Not all

[2:55:20] Cold War history, we are committed to the multiple stories, indigenous all the way to, you know, Cold War to clean up to why it's a wildlife for

[2:55:31] refugees and why that's their tall grass is impressive. So we, that is in our plans.

[2:55:37] But if signage at the entrance gates is important, we will commit and make sure that you are 100% happy with that.

[2:55:44] I am thrilled to say today that we have advertised finally our first interpretive

[2:55:49] ranger that is Spanish-speaking. So that will really bolster my capabilities in terms

[2:55:55] of translation.

[2:55:58] And because currently at the Rocky Flats, the signs are just in English

[2:56:01] and we are working to convert all our signs of deep ponds, the arsenal, and now at the

[2:56:05] flats to be both. And that little regulation sign down there is really challenging to get into

[2:56:11] Spanish and English fit on a non billboard-sized sign.

[2:56:17] But we will commit, I'm going to show you to working with you guys

[2:56:20] on whatever you believe is appropriate.

[2:56:24] I would just say that the actual sign that we have posted came from years

[2:56:29] of development and assigned committee and the stewardship console assisted everything else.

[2:56:36] Thanks for that.

[2:56:37] I can appreciate the, I can imagine and appreciate with prayer government work before this

[2:56:44] rule.

[2:56:45] And, but I think there's a way to look at it from, you know, again, from an educational standpoint

[2:56:52] from a, I mean, this is for all different angles and for folks who were just visiting, who

[2:56:59] will only be on this trail one time to have the opportunity to learn from a distance and,

[2:57:06] And again, I'm thinking about, you know, just being out there yesterday from a distance,

[2:57:09] what am I looking at?

[2:57:10] And we see that in parks and all around the country.

[2:57:14] And so how do we, you know, allow people to use this as, use this a little bit differently,

[2:57:20] than maybe it was originally considered.

[2:57:22] So I appreciate that commitment.

[2:57:26] The other folks had questions.

[2:57:29] I'm question down.

[2:57:30] Yeah, I don't think I have anything else.

[2:57:32] I don't want to struggle or it's nester on the content of that sign it. I did notice that it makes no mention of what immediately preceded the closure in 1989, i.e. an FBI raid, when it was operated by Rockwell International because of illegal dumping, so we don't need to go there.

[2:57:57] So then just to be clear, I mean, do, is that something that, and I'm happy to kind of move forward

[2:58:05] on a motion. Maybe that's what I need to do and just start there. Does that feel appropriate

[2:58:10] or to folks have more deliberation that they wanted to? Sure, and I apologize for my laughing

[2:58:14] when Desoline conversation came up. But I witnessed as an altered on the rocket flash stewardship

[2:58:20] council, every word in that sign being argued over anyway. Oh, that's, I guess, why I'm the

[2:58:31] I think we should go to a motion, Marta, if you'd like to make it, I'm more unhappy to.

[2:58:43] I'm happy to make it a motion and I'm looking at our packet here.

[2:58:50] So emotion for approval, Parks and Open Space Intergovernmental Agreement for funding of

[2:58:58] Rocky Mountain Greenway Trail, crossings through the federal land access program.

[2:59:06] And I will second that. And then I think we need either summer or Jeff to tell us

[2:59:14] whether we need to say as amended, because we know that there's going to be some

[2:59:22] additional cost for the dust monitoring,

[2:59:28] do we, or, the version, I'm, I'm looking at the

[2:59:33] version that was attached to your email somewhere then.

[2:59:39] Yeah. So if, if Michelle is still

[2:59:44] on the line, it might be interesting to hear a little bit from her, just in terms of, would

[2:59:51] We would we want to approve this in kind of form and fashion, and then do a final at a...

[3:00:00] This meeting, I'm not exactly sure how to subject amendments around dust monitoring and signage.

[3:00:07] Yeah, I think we should approve as to form subject to minor adjustments to the

[3:00:15] Boulder County and other entity contributions to the total cost and there is Michelle to tell us what to do.

[3:00:26] That's exactly what I was going to say.

[3:00:29] This is an idea that's being approved by several other local governments.

[3:00:34] So I would be cautious about making a lot of changes to the idea itself because it's

[3:00:40] already been approved by several local governments.

[3:00:42] But I think if you can approve to form, we can bring back the final to you at a business

[3:00:47] meeting.

[3:00:48] Yeah. That sounds fine. So I guess I would second it, you know, based on that conceptual

[3:00:55] language. And probably, you know, because this is just an idea is to

[3:01:00] accepting the flat grant and laying out monetary contributions. I think anything else that

[3:01:07] we're interested in that we've been discussing, I think, would be a side conversation about signage

[3:01:12] or those things.

[3:01:16] So we have motion a second.

[3:01:18] I'm going to talk about how I'm going to vote on this.

[3:01:22] I really appreciate all the work that's

[3:01:25] gone into this, and I know it's a lot, and I

[3:01:27] came unseen when it was well in your way.

[3:01:30] And that's one of the things that gives me

[3:01:32] pause is it's pretty far down the track.

[3:01:37] And that would argue to go ahead.

[3:01:39] But for me, and I appreciate the conversation around the vegetation issues, cleared out of

[3:01:48] it for me.

[3:01:49] It's still fragmenting a habitat.

[3:01:52] But the bigger issue for me and record the recreation, you know, it's a trail connector.

[3:01:57] It's from a recreational point of view.

[3:01:59] That's a good thing.

[3:02:01] Trying to make the most out of what you have.

[3:02:04] But I keep thinking about the health risks.

[3:02:06] And I know we had explanations how low they are in acceptable limits, which always kinds of

[3:02:14] makes me nervous. And I think about, you know, about the site in its history. And I think

[3:02:21] about that 264 people, be curious for Graham finding. And I'm sure there's probably more. And I know

[3:02:28] The health department said that that is acceptable, and but I also remember Dr. Mark Johnson saying he doesn't feel comfortable out there himself or the use promoting news and I know there are a lot of people disagreed with him and I also remember reading the email recently from the downwinders about this site and their concerns about it.

[3:02:59] And I guess my life experience kicks in here and that is I'm a double cancer survivor.

[3:03:08] The first I got a 25 and a styrofoam cancer which is primarily caused by radiation.

[3:03:13] I could not tell you where that radiation came from.

[3:03:16] That exposure, if it was that, you just don't know.

[3:03:20] And then a number of years later, I belated the last of that with my thyroid, so it wouldn't be there by taking, meaning removing it by radioactive iodine.

[3:03:33] And they said, oh, there's a 1% chance you'd be looking at from this.

[3:03:39] And years later, I was diagnosed with leukemia and I had a doctor and a white lab coat

[3:03:49] look at me and said, since we don't have a related bone marrow match, there's a 6% chance

[3:03:55] you know, we didn't two years. And yeah, I know the chance is low, but I wouldn't wish that

[3:04:05] anybody. Nobody.

[3:04:10] Thanks for sharing that.

[3:04:12] But then I'm not cutting you off. I'm saying thank you for sharing.

[3:04:16] Yeah, okay. Thank you.

[3:04:20] So yeah, I know it's low.

[3:04:23] And I appreciate all the work that went into that.

[3:04:28] And long ago, I did risk communication on the outtrap program myself.

[3:04:32] Um, you read email,

[3:04:34] tangling for me to election program and I did it.

[3:04:40] It's it's it's safer.

[3:04:42] I'm not safer.

[3:04:43] It's it's the standards of being that, but those standards are

[3:04:48] hypothetical and what are you willing to risk and all that goes into it.

[3:04:53] The stuff that we'd we heard earlier in this conversation a little

[3:04:57] bill about how you said to Standard.

[3:05:01] And I just don't want to be promoting use out there.

[3:05:04] I mean, in Fishwilters can do what they want to do. I just don't want to be part of promoting it

[3:05:11] on the off-chance that somebody gets dire against her and doesn't know where it comes from.

[3:05:16] They get it figured out that they might have gotten it from there. In this plutonium, this out there,

[3:05:21] being found still. So that's my speech and I'm sorry I made a personal but that's

[3:05:30] it's driving me because I know how I'd effects people.

[3:05:37] So anyway thanks for listening to me.

[3:05:42] So we have that you guys want to say anything we have a motion in a second.

[3:05:45] Yeah I do. I do because I know you know I need time something like you know comes up

[3:05:52] deals with rocky flats. It's a matter of intense interest.

[3:05:58] And, you know, the site has a history,

[3:06:01] and people are concerned about safety, and I understand that. One of the people that spoke this

[3:06:09] evening, you know, talked about how plutonium scares people, right fully saw it makes nuclear weapons

[3:06:17] blow up.

[3:06:21] It leaves a residue. There's residual radioactive elements in the soil. So I understand

[3:06:31] that and I appreciate all the email that we've gotten from people who have an interest in this.

[3:06:37] I really appreciate that people take such an interest in what we do and in public process.

[3:06:45] I think, for me, it's, you know, this is, this is, I guess I look at what we can control and what we can't control, and the wildlife refuge has trails on it, people are on it, and so that's happening, and I maybe I'm just compartmentalizing too much, but for me as a question of, do they get there safely or not?

[3:07:15] It's not a question of whether people are going to be on this site or not.

[3:07:20] And I think we all had a lot of questions about the testing, because I felt like,

[3:07:24] I felt like I did need to make sure that I wasn't ignoring something really important

[3:07:29] and focusing on this narrow thing.

[3:07:34] And I'm not capable of analyzing this independently.

[3:07:40] I have to rely on the people who have come here as experts in their field.

[3:07:44] And I have to take them at their word and assume that they're testifying in good faith.

[3:07:49] And I don't mean to imply math that you're not doing that.

[3:07:52] I understand that you bring a very unique perspective to this.

[3:07:56] And I can only respect that, what you bring and what you've gone through in your life.

[3:08:02] I think that we, you know, I am going to go to a prove that I think that it will make access

[3:08:07] safer.

[3:08:08] And I think a lot of work's gone into it.

[3:08:11] I think it's a great opportunity for people to experience

[3:08:15] a phenomenal sight, that really is special.

[3:08:20] Because of its history of having been

[3:08:23] off limits for so long.

[3:08:26] So that's the reason that I'll be voting in favor.

[3:08:28] And I do appreciate everybody's patience

[3:08:30] with a lot of questions about things that staff may have felt

[3:08:34] was tangential to the issue.

[3:08:36] But I think we all felt like we needed to do our due diligence

[3:08:39] and even just put some answers out there for the public who had some interest in things that

[3:08:45] may not have strictly been relevant, but they deserve to know.

[3:08:51] I'm going to just do a quick statement as well. And one, again, to think staff,

[3:08:58] kind of where we started, because for me, this is a project that's been in the works for

[3:09:03] for a lot longer than I've been in this role. And so I appreciate all the time and the

[3:09:10] diligence and effort, the response, et cetera.

[3:09:13] And I also want to acknowledge the folks who did email in with their questions, with their concerns,

[3:09:19] share their history with rocky flats and with Colorado and their concern around the area.

[3:09:26] And so for me, that's when I saw an article in 2018, I remember distinctly walking by the newspaper

[3:09:33] stand and seen the headline about folks starting to recreate on Rocky Flats. And I remember

[3:09:40] saying, like, who would ever recreate on Rocky Flats? Based on the history that I had heard

[3:09:45] about and not knowing all of the details. And so I also yesterday, when I was out on the trail,

[3:09:52] talked with a gentleman who was writing and just asked, where is it? Where am I? Do you know where I'm

[3:10:03] most people don't go over on that side. And I didn't inquire anymore, but what it did

[3:10:08] what it did state to me was we have a choice. If we, if we don't feel comfortable with that

[3:10:14] section of the trail, and it sounds like that's, you know, people have made that decision. And so

[3:10:19] for me, again, being out there and looking at it and looking at this question of safety and

[3:10:25] and making sure that the one section that we're controlling right now is the end of pass. And I'm

[3:10:31] really happy to hear in this brief conversation the commitment to include some signage to

[3:10:38] include some history around what is on the other side as far as Rocky Flats to give people

[3:10:45] that education, the idea of having a website. I saw on some of the trails out there, the trailheads,

[3:10:50] QR codes that could give perspectives and maybe short videos with some history and things like that.

[3:10:56] I think there's a lot we can do to educate folks to know what else is happening when they do

[3:11:02] if they do choose to connect into, you know, all the way down to the arsenal and at some point

[3:11:08] maybe all the way up to Rocky Mountain National Park. So I just want to again, things to all the

[3:11:13] staff and for public folks who did reach out to share their stories, their opinions, and their

[3:11:18] expertise as well.

[3:11:26] We're missing you Matt with your volume. So what they came out of there for me

[3:11:31] after I survived that cancer, so I got about running for public helps again. So here I am. And here you guys have to put up with me. So anyway, we have a motion. All in favor of favor.

[3:11:45] I suppose no. So two to one vote and nothing more, I don't think so we are adjourned. Thank you for any anybody. Thank you for the great information.

[3:11:58] Yeah, my I just thanks staff for staying late on this and everybody that that hung with us here with through all our questions, we'll thank you.

[3:12:10] Thank you commissioner for your for your very thoughtful engaging discussion on this really appreciate all of you.

[3:12:17] Thank you.

[3:12:18] Okay. Thank you. Good night everybody.

[3:12:21] All right. Good night everybody. Thank you.

Board of County Commissioners Regular Meeting

Transcript