Water, Land Use, Energy, and Materials committee reports; new pesticides committee in formation; climate action update; and more
Attending (all via Zoom) Debra Simes, Kim Kastens (taking notes), Sue Jick, Mike Boss, Danny Factor, Chris Edwards, Jim Snyder-Grant, Matt Liebman, Terra Friedrichs, Debby Andell, Karen Herther
• Welcome: re-engaging for the rest of 2021; housekeeping tasks
• Check-in [only non-personal and green-relevant stuff is in the notes]
- Danny and Terra were both victims of flooding in their homes
- Many reactions to the new IPCC report
• Committee report highlights
- Water: see report below
- Energy: Highlight is that ABRHS students have connected with GA/energy and want to push for 100% renewable electricity as the default option in Acton Power Choice. Also, the Sustainability Office and Energy are launching a new round of publicity promoting APC GREEN (banner, yard signs, Aframes, and more).
- Land Use: Rehab trust idea was chosen as a top priority by the Select Board for coming year
- Materials: see report below
• Questions + responses / open mic / comments & queries
- For Water Committee: several questions about treating water for PFAS at home or town-wide. Sue suggested that her husband Dan Groher (a panelist from GA/LWV PFAS event panel) might come to a GA meeting to answer questions about PFAS remediation.
- For Energy Committee: Eversource bills come with insert saying we get our power from non-green sources, even if we are on 100% green. A: This does not apply to APC (Acton Power Choice) GREEN subscribers; it is the source mix for Eversource Basic Service. Q: Can we get a different insert? No. Q: Eversource will not respond to individual town aggregation programs? Nope.
• GA biz:
> GA Pesticides Subcommittee in formation
- Chris Edwards has generously stepped forward to launch this initiative; others interested in working with him please reach out to Chris and/or Admin. This is informal notice; Admin will bring the formal “chartering” document to a GA meeting (probably) in Nov.
> Report on Climate Action Plan Advisory Group meeting
- Debra is the rep for Green Action Plan Advisory Group
- Other people at first meeting (Aug. 26): town staff, community organizations, businesses
- Things stressed: diversity/equity/inclusion. Advocacy for things outside of Acton.
- See Debra’s report at: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Mg0qpgWlz02OEyP70lSRkXMk21ZpaOWQJ4s8PDCfMPU/edit
- Terra response: too much emphasis on by-right multifamily or higher density housing whereas we had worked on rehab as the source of affordable housing.
- Danny response: he would would like to see Land Use Committee come to Directors with a recommendation on what kind of housing we would like to see.
> Climate activity update (IPCC report, Town/ACC: Energize Acton, Blocpower)
- Jim Snyder-Grant reporting
- Acton Climate Coalition is also working on Energize Acton website (can see at EnergizeActon.org )
- Blocpower has a financial and logistical model for massive energy upgrading of a large number of buildings (primarily shifting to heat pump tech), as it has done in Ithaca, NY. Jim and Fran Cummings meeting with them next week to see if their work has potential relevance for Acton.
- Low Income Community Solar project is coming along. It will provide further discounts on electricity supply to folks who qualify for any of the needs-tested programs, such as SNAP or subsidized school lunches. This is a state-authorized program that is, essentially, a financial transaction between WR Grace and the solar installer that causes discounts to flow to every Acton Power Choice customer that is on one of the subsidized electricity rates.
• Announcements (see below, also)
• CAP (Climate Action Plan) workshops #2: 9/13, 9/14, 9/15 at noon
Registration info in flyer below
• Discovery Museum event: Varshini Prakash, “Youth Voices in Climate Change”
Sept 23, 7pm by Zoom
Registration info in flyer below
• Acton Clean Energy Challenge event. Also Sept 23 7pm by Zoom.
Info here: https://www.acton-ma.gov/civicalerts.aspx?AID=1319
• TRANSITION (checkout for those leaving)
ADMIN
• Upcoming October Annual Meeting: 2022 officers, directors; Volunteer Engagement report
- Jim S-G: Approving a budget, electing officers and Directors
- Mike and Jim are talking to each Director and Officer individually. Insights emerging will be summarized.
- Mike will not stand for election to the Board. He’s moving to Littleton to join a senior co-housing group (Hager Homestead), an all-electric compound. 336 King Street next to the library. 12 of its 15 acres will be in a conservation restriction; 8 affordable units.
- We will need another co-treasurer; contact Jim or Mike with interest.
- Also looking for a co-clerk to work with Jim, with goal of (eventually) someone other than Jim moving into the Clerk position.
• checkout
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Green Acton September Committee Reports
Plastics Subcommittee
The drafts of the Polystyrene Ban and the Bag Fee were presented to the Select Board and Board of Health. We are getting back to them with answers to their questions.
We will be visiting restaurants and stores again once we know when the next Town Meeting will be.
We are researching alternatives to polystyrene and plastic utensils and developing educational materials.
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Materials
Extended Producer Responsibility
1. Met with Acton Green Advisory Board in July to introduce draft of Extended Producer Responsibility resolution, which Newton and other municipalities have signed. They will be discussing this at their September meeting.
2. Testified in June at the Massachusetts Legislature’s hearing on sustainable materials management bills hosted by the Joint Committee on Environment, Natural Resources and Agriculture.
3. Submitted MassRecycle survey with information gathered from Acton Highway Department regarding tonnages and costs of recyclables, electronics and mattresses. I still need to get paint information but have not been able to reach Acton Board of Health.
4. Corey York and Andrea Becerra met with City of Newton officials in July to discuss how Newton’s resolution came about.
Energy Committee
Song Leav, Jim Snyder-Grant, Debra Simes, Mike Boss, Shirley Jin, Kerry Huang
Students joined the meeting; there were introductions. Song, Shirley, and Kerry, AB students, are interested in energy and the Acton Power Choice program; all are members of the ABRHS student climate task force.
Song reports their interest in the idea of the APC GREEN option being the default, and those who wanted to could downgrade to other options. Shirley – did not know about APC until joined the task force.
Discussed APC program, including ways to encourage people to move up to APC GREEN.
Kerry summarized the idea for the student task force to consider an activity to encourage the school community to opt up.
Song and Shirley expressed interest and thought they might be able to get the whole task force involved. They are willing to work on developing some kind of program to promote APC GREEN at the high school.
Most Community Choice Aggregation towns/cities do not have 100% renewable as the default, but some have gone there. Jim will investigate who was involved in getting the Newton program to happen. (Also, yay! Boston has approved its aggregation program.)
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A new round of promotion of APC GREEN is beginning, a collaboration between the Energy Committee and the Sustainability Office. Look for the overstreet banner again in October, yard signs sited all over town, A-frames at the Acton Memorial Library and Town Hall, and other initiatives and materials to come. Mike B. and Debra S. tabled for APC GREEN at the Aug. 29 Acton-Boxborough Farmers Market.
If you would like to host a yard sign and haven’t yet responded to outreach about it, please contact Debra at debra.simes@gmail.com. If you would like to promote APC GREEN with neighbors or friends, she can also provide you with paper or digital copies of materials that explain the program; just email her.
Water Committee
Meeting: The Water Committee met by Zoom on Sunday September 12, with six people in attendance, including one new person. We had a long list of updates.
Acton Climate Action Plan:
- Norm Strahle is representing the Water Committee in Green Acton’s planning for input into the town Climate Action Plan.
- Water-related concerns that GA/Water wants to see included in the CAP are: preparing for droughts and floods, higher temperatures affecting surface waters and their associated ecosystems, and the need to avoid development patterns that would require substantially increased total water usage.
River Street Dam Removal:
- Acton has received a grant for $75,000 towards engineering costs of removing the River Street Dam and creating a small historical park. This grant, along with others from the same MassDEP program, was featured in the Boston Globe on Sept 12, p. B7, under headline “Bracing for Climate Change,” with Acton’s dam as the poster child for dam removal as a climate adaption measure as precipitation becomes more volatile. During recent high rainfall and high streamflow events, town staff were checking the status of this dam hourly, around the clock.
WRAC and Town Water Study:
- After a pandemic hiatus, the town Water Resources Advisory Committee has resumed its work, with two potential new members and a firm resolve to press onward with the Town Water Study. The scope is still in flux, but it looks likely to include demand for water under various growth scenarios, groundwater protection, septic failures, and water quality monitoring. Plan is expected to be presented to the SelectBoard in October.
PFAS:
- Chris Smith of the EPA forwarded a new set of PFAS data, from groundwater wells in and around the WR Grace Superfund site. These were sampled in June 2021, and include 4 new sites recommended by AWD which had not been sampled in the 2019 and 2020 sampling round. All the sites had PFAS values below the Massachusetts limit of 20 ng/L (parts per trillion) for six PFAS compounds. Contractor Tetra Tech recommends no more PFAS sampling in light of these low values. GA Water Core and WRG working group are in discussion about whether to push back against this recommendation.
- AWD is now offering rebates or checks to water-taking households that have individuals in PFAS sensitive groups (infants, pregnant people, nursing mothers, immuno-compromised people) to reimburse for purchase of bottled water. 17 applications for rebates have been received so far.
- MassDEP and UMass have a new research program to test the PFAS-removal effectiveness of an array of point of use filtration systems (systems suitable for homes or small businesses) in cooperation with public water suppliers whose water has >20ppt PFAS. The expectation is that different filters will work differently in water with different chemistry. GA/ Water encouraged AWD to join this program because of the queries we have gotten from residents about what filter system to buy. AWD elected not to because they didn’t want to have to accommodate requests to pump specific wells at specific times.
Nagog:
- Over the summer, Concord completed the installation of the deep water section of their new intake pipe in Nagog Pond. Their online status reports say that the old intake and the new intake were both surveyed by a professional land surveyor. One of the requirements that MassDEP placed on Concord in follow up to the MassDEP hearing held in Acton at the request of Acton citizens was that the new intake is not allowed to be at a lower elevation (deeper in the water) than the old intake. Green Acton has requested and been promised copies of both surveyor’s reports, but they have not been received. Selby had been the contact person for inquiries to Concord Water and his departure may be delaying things.
- For the first summer since Green Acton began monitoring Nagog Brook in 2017, the Brook level did not drop town to its typical summer depth of 1–2 inches, staying instead at levels more typical of what we had seen in winter and spring. The wet summer is surely the main reason for this, but Concord’s not drawing of water from Nagog Pond during the intake pipe replacement work may also have been a factor. Kim Kastens and ABRHS volunteer Song Leav are preparing a post for the GA website about this data.
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ANNOUNCEMENT VISUALS:
