Will County Gazette

Will County Stormwater Management Planning Committee met Nov. 2.

Here are the minutes provided by the committee:

I. CALL TO ORDER / ROLL CALL

Municipal Representative, District 3 Jonathan Dykstra called the meeting to order at 10:06 AM

Attendee Name	Title	Status	Arrived
Robert Howard	County Representative, District 1	Present
DJ Kruzel	Municipal Representative, District 1	Absent
Jim Moustis	County Representative, District 2	Excused
Jonathan Dykstra	Municipal Representative, District 3	Present
Thomas Pawlowicz	Municipal Representative, District 4	Present
Randall Jessen	Municipal Representative, District 5	Present
Paul Buss	County Representative, District 6	Absent
Ed Dolezal	Municipal Representative, District 6	Present
Norm Likar	County Representative, District 9	Absent
Ken Carroll	Municipal Representative, District 9	Late	10:12 AM
Joe Hadamik	County Representative, District 10	Absent
Theresa O'Grady	County Representative, District 11	Excused
Raymund Fano	Municipal Representative, District 11	Absent
Tom Weigel	County Representative, District 12	Present
Will Nash	Municipal Representative, District 12	Absent
Bill Lamb	Municipal Representative, District 13	Present

A quorum was NOT declared since only 8 Members were present.

Land Use Staff present were Kris Mazon, Dawn Tomczak, Marguerite Kenny, Nicole Roedl, and Scott Killinger.

Scott Pyles was present from the Will County State's Attorney's Office.

II. PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE

Jonathan Dykstra led the Pledge of Allegiance.

III. INTRODUCTIONS

Committee Members and Staff went around and introduced themselves.

Ted Gray and Scott Tomkins from Living Waters Consultants introduced themselves to the Committee.

IV. PUBLIC COMMENT

None.

V. APPROVAL OF MINUTES

A quorum was NOT declared so no vote could be taken to approve the Minutes from the October 5, 2021 meeting.

1. Stormwater Management Planning Committee - Regular Meeting - Oct 5, 2021 10:00 AM

VI. NEW BUSINESS CORRESPONDENCE

1. Consent Agenda

Will County Stormwater Management Planning Committee Consent Agenda:

Resolution 21-10: Joint Funding Agreement with Wheatland

Township - Rolling Acres & Sunny Farms Acres Subdivisions Drainage Restoration and Maintenance Project Phase 1

A quorum was NOT declared so no vote could be taken to approve the Consent Agenda, however discussion did occur.

Scott Killinger said there is one more project from Wheatland Township. It’s a drainage maintenance improvement project. They’re basically restoring the drainage in Rolling Acres and Sunny Farms Subdivisions in Wheatland Township.

This information is in your packet. Last month, we didn’t send out anything and that wasn’t good.

So, that would be this project here. We can award that next month and then we’ll need to start paying from it.

There is actually one other project that I heard about this morning.

The City of Joliet had Pilcher Park Farms improvement and it came up too high. He and I talked, and we decided to move that to FY22. He’s going to re-bid it in the Spring and see if we get better prices.

Scott Tomkins is here from Living Waters and he’s going to talk about the Rock Creek Watershed Plan. I had anticipated $25,000 for that, but that will also be FY22.

If you take those 2 out and then add in Wheatland Township, we’re currently at $142,500 of the $150,000 budgeted.

This morning I got a call from Green Garden. That’s one more project that I could put in. I’ll take a look at it and report back in December.

That’s all as far as the Projects Program.

Again, the Consent Agenda is here, but we cannot take action.

Jonathan Dykstra said I’m just going to skip the discussion on this. We can’t vote on this new project today anyway.

Scott Killinger said it’s a project and I can go over it again in December when hopefully we have a quorum.

1. 2021 Project Program Discussion Itemized Budget for Will County Storm Water Management Committee 2021

2. Support of the Rock Creek Watershed Based Plan and partial funding of the local match required for IEPA Section 319(h) Grant

Ted Gray from Living Waters Consultants said we had previously made a presentation back in July that was subject also to some August discussion with the Will County Stormwater Management Board for the Rock Creek Watershed Plan.

This is a project that covers the eastern part of the County in the Peotone, Monee, and University Park area.

At that time, we intended to cover both Will County and Kankakee County in this Watershed Based Plan.

The goal of the plan is to improve water quality in the Rock Creek Watershed which, spanning both counties, has 120 square miles. The Will County portion is 62 square miles.

At that time, Will County had approved a local funding share match of $25,000, which was half of the local match that we needed to pursue the grant.

We had subsequently talked with Kankakee County officials, and it turns out that there is not the same level or ability of financial support there. So, after talking briefly with Scott Killinger, we thought we can either not pursue the project or we could pursue the project and focus in on the Will County portion of the watershed. This again equates to 62 square miles.

That's the purpose of today's follow-up discussion with you all.

The slide that you're currently looking at talks about four different subwatersheds.

Scott Tomkins of Living Water Consultants said these are four separate watersheds under 12-digit codes of the USGS. These four make up the 10-digit HUC of Rock Creek.

You can see that we have the Black Walnut Creek, which makes up 92.7% in Will County. So, that is the one that has the most acreage in Will County.

Also, you have the South Branch Rock Creek, which also includes Marshall Slough.

Then you have the North Branch Rock Creek, which the headwaters are in Will County.

Then, the Main Stem of Rock Creek is confluence of both Black Walnut and South Branch.

Looking at these, like I said the majority of the tributary is Black Walnut Creek. There also lies in your County the Rock Creek North Branch and the Rock Creek South Branch.

Ted Gray said the next slide is the Will County Stakeholders that we have identified. We have spent a lot of background time talking and working with the Stakeholders. This has been coordinating, holding some online meetings and also some phone discussions.

We have Aqua Illinois, Illinois Native Plant Society, and our organization, Living Waters Consultants. We are the consultants to complete the plan that’s being proposed. Olivet Nazarene University would provide a significant educational or outreach component, which is an important part of the project. We also have the Will County Stormwater Management Board, Will County Forest Preserve District, and the Will South-Cook Soil and Water Conservation District.

We have other partners in Kankakee County as well, but we’re again focusing on the Will County portion of the watershed at this point in time.

To just briefly remind you, the focus of this project would be to identify projects to protect and improve water quality in the Rock Creek Watershed. It does not mean that those projects cannot provide other benefits like flood control. Often, they do provide multiple benefits, but for the purposes of the grant, the primary benefit would be for water quality improvement.

A critical part of the plan is that it would identify projects throughout Will County whether it be in Peotone, Monee, University Park, or in other rural parts of the watershed that are recommended to enhance water quality.

There’s no limit to the number of projects that can be listed in the plan, nor to their cost.

The major benefit for Will County would be that in the future, should Will County decide to pursue a particular project, those projects identified in this particular plan would be potentially subject to a 60% Grant that would cover 60% of the construction costs.

So, that’s kind of a brief reminder of where we were at this past July.

The next slide is the proposed budget. In reaching out to Kankakee, we had some limited participation from Kankakee River Basin Committee, but we’re going to exclude that from this endeavor at this point since we’re focusing on the Will County portion of the watershed. We’re planning to stop at the county line for planning purposes.

We’re anticipating that the total project cost would be $100,000 to complete the plan. Our grant would be 60%, or $60,000. The local match that we would be requesting from Will County Stormwater Management would be $40,000, or 40% of the project cost. So, that’s the proposal.

The next slide talks about administrative assistance. There’s a little bit to digest here, but essentially between Scott and I and Living Waters Consultants, we would be providing Will County with all of the draft completion of all of the forms required that need to be submitted to Illinois EPA to pursue the grant and complete the Watershed Plan. That’s the first several bullet points there. We would be completing the PFR, PPR, BMP forms, the quarterly reports, the final report and basically all of the reporting that would be needed. We will also host the stakeholder meetings, coordinating and managing those. We would lead those meetings and of course welcome any Will County participation that may be available. The Soil and Water Conservation District has indicated that they are very enthusiastic about helping as a partner. So, we would be providing completion of the forms, including invoice reimbursement forms. We would submit them to Will County for review, answer any questions you have or consult with Illinois EPA.

The second half of this slide is the Will County administrative responsibility would be signatures for forms as appropriate. For instance, an invoice reimbursement document would require a signature from Will County to submit to Illinois EPA. There may be some draft forms of the grant application that require a signature from Will County. The Financial Assistance Agreement with Illinois EPA would obviously be through Will County Stormwater Management Board, if you chose to approve this proposal.

So, we are looking for the local match portion to complete the Watershed Plan, as well as Will County to assist as being the administrative agent for the grant application.

Again, our roll, having done this before with other municipalities and organizations, is to make that administrative aspect as easy as possible for Staff.

Scott Tomkins said I was going to inject what the important part of Will County being the administrator is. The Section 319 Grants require pre-qualification of the government office and management through the Grant Accountability and Transparency Act requirements. So, any applicant that is applying has to be pre

qualified. I looked and I saw on the website that Will County has pre-qualification requirements. If the applicant is not pre-qualified, the grant won’t even be considered for funding.

Ted Gray said I want to be sensitive to your time, but I think that concludes the overview of what we wanted to present here today.

Scott Tomkins said backing up to the aspect of water quality impairments. When I looked using the Illinois Integrated Water Quality Report and Section 303(d) list, the one segment that was impaired as of the 2018 listing, is Walnut Creek itself. I previously mentioned the majority lies in Will County. Some of the causes of that impairment identified in this document is alteration in stream size, vegetation covered, flooring, flow, alteration changes in depth and velocity, and total phosphorus. Some of the sources that were identified contributing to those impairments are agricultural, habitat modifications or other hydro modifications and municipal point source discharge. There is one NPDES Permit, which is the Peotone Water Treatment Plant. So, a little bit of background with the aspect of the current water quality impairments identified using the Illinois Integrated Water Quality Report and 303(d) listing.

Thomas Pawlowicz said maybe someone can fill me in because I don’t understand. There’s usually a town that spearheads the project and they come to the County for assistance to supplement them. In this case, there’s nobody spearheading this and by default, Will County is becoming the lead. How did this all get started and what happened to that leader?

Scott Tomkins said this originally began back in 2016, when I was employed with the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency with the Watershed Management Plan Nonpoint Source Management Program. There were some concerns about Camp Shaw, which is a camp down at the headwaters of Rock Creek. Their concern was the aspect of water quality and the full recreational contact. They approached me when I was with the Illinois EPA and asked about potential 319 funding and assistance with protecting that water quality so their campers or people using Camp Shaw and the water could be protected from impairments that could make the swimmers in the stream sick. Back in 2018 when I was still with the EPA, I talked to the Kankakee River Basin Commission about it. There was a lot of interest, but nothing really moved forward at that point. I started here at Living Waters in January. When I was looking through what they were considering priority watersheds within the State, I realized that one of the priority watersheds for planning was Kankakee River. With that, I reconnected with people that I was originally working with. We started building consensus to see maybe what interest is back. Ted and I have approached other entities such as Kankakee County Soil and Water Conservation District, Kankakee County Board, and other entities to see if they would spearhead it or take the lead, but there was nobody stepping to the plate at this point. As Ted said, we talked to your Board back in July hoping it would be a full watershed approach being that there would be partners both in Kankakee and Will County to provide either administrative or financial support. Our endeavors up to this point have not been successful in getting somebody on the Kankakee side to step up to the plate. Is there anything else that you want to add Ted?

Ted Gray said no, I think that covers the history, if that’s what you wanted to know.

Thomas Pawlowicz said it disturbs me that the people in the watershed that we’re talking about, there’s not one single person that put down one single dollar for this. It tells me that maybe they don’t care and why should us outsiders go in and force something upon someone when they don’t care about it?

Ted Gray said one thing that I would add is that this proposed plan would only cover Will County. So, there would be no effort or endeavor on Kankakee County at all. So, our identifying of projects would stop at the county line. Part of the purpose of the plan is to hold watershed meetings to try to discover what those project areas are throughout the watershed area. We’ve had limited time to be able to explore that with all the stakeholders. Our understand was that there was an interest in covering this part of Will County with watershed planning on the part of Stormwater Management Board. So, that’s why we’re here today to see if there’s an interest or not.

Scott Killinger said County Board Member Judy Ogalla is in the room here, she is not on camera, but she has a microphone. She is the County Board Member whose District this is in, one of the two. She actually has a couple of questions and a comment.

County Board Member Judy Ogalla introduced herself. My husband actually sits on the Will-South Cook Soil and Water Conservation District. He is also on Black Walnut Creek Drainage District and then there are others in the area. I don’t know how much they know about this because I have not heard about it. I just happen to be walking past and I saw it out in the hall. I was at a Committee Meeting today so I popped in. I know that there would be interest and there’s definite need for help out there due to various different situations. Some areas don’t have Drainage Districts and they definitely have problems with water. Part of Black Walnut Creek, some of that land is in the airport footprint. They don’t mind us doing any work on it, but they don’t contribute any money to that, so it impedes their ability to upgrade that creek. Have you guys spoken with Will-South Cook?

Ted Gray said we have. We met with them, and I will say there’s a strong interest. They see this as part of their mission for information and education outreach. They were very interested in hosting meetings and participating as partners.

County Board Member Judy Ogalla said perfect, that’s great to hear. Ted Gray said I can give you our points of contact if you want.

County Board Member Judy Ogalla said if you can get that to Scott that would be great. I know the Village of Monee has a new mayor. I don’t know who the lead on it would be, but they might be interested too. They received Amazon money so they have some money coming in that may be available for this too.

Scott Killinger said Ted or Scott, if you send the points of contact to me, I will get them to Judy.

Ted Gray said sure.

Scott Tomkins said as Ted said, we’ve been going and trying to get support. We have about six letters of support from the partnership both in Will and Cook County. There is interest, but unfortunately, we couldn’t get anybody at this point to really step up and be the lead entity and to put, as you would say, skin in the game in Kankakee at this point. They are definitely potential partners that would be interested in this project and would be involved in getting this planning process going.

Jonathan Dykstra asked, any other questions?

No response.

Jonathan Dykstra said I have a question. Much of Rock Creek is unstudied and unmapped. Will there be an effort to create BFE’s and profile modeling for this as well that could be added to the FEMA Mapping?

Ted Gray said with this particular endeavor with the Section 319 Grant Application, there would not be a floodplain mapping or floodplain modeling emphasis. The focus of this Grant Application and Watershed Plan would be for water quality improvement. With that having been said, there are opportunities for addressing flood concerns with projects that would benefit both the water quality and flood reduction. That might be in the form of wetland storage area, infiltration area, bioswales, or impermeable pavers. As long as there is some demonstrated water quality benefit from the flood control endeavor, then it could be eligible to be included in this plan, but there needs to be some water quality component to also address the benefit of flood reduction.

Jonathan Dykstra said I kind of knew that answer. I wanted the Committee to hear that so they’re aware of what this is and what limitations there are.

Scott Tomkins said a Watershed Based Plan needs to be created and needs to be developed and approved before grant funding resources can be pursued. That is one of the elements of Section 319 of the Clean Water Act with the aspect of implementation and you need a developed, created, and approved Watershed Plan.

Scott Killinger said Ted or Scott, you have a couple more slides, did you want to go ahead and finish those?

Ted Gray said Scott, thank you. I don’t know that we could, but I didn’t know that we needed to. You can go ahead and scroll through; they cover more of what the Watershed Plan includes. I didn’t know that we needed to re-cover that since we hit that in July. It’s more of the planning process for completion of the Watershed Plan. From the planning perspective, if there is any future consideration for an airport in the Peotone area or what have you, this also would be a good planning tool to address water quality protection improvement measures that could be helpful long term if there is consideration for a third airport. I just wanted to mention that as well. It could be a component of the planning process.

Jonathan Dykstra asked, does anybody else have any questions? No response.

Jonathan Dykstra said Ted and Scott, thank you for the clear presentation and answering questions. There may be some follow-up questions that will come out. We appreciate your time here today.

Ted Gray said you’re quite welcome. I have just one follow up comment. We started this process a few months ago. The Grant Application is due November 16th. We do not need a Board Resolution by that time, and I doubt that it would even be possible. If there’s an indication at the Board level that there’s support for the project, we would consider that support and likely submit the Grant Application with your approval, but we’ll let that up to you to discuss.

Scott Tomkins said usually the Section 319 Application deadline falls at the end of July. This year due to the aspect of Staff at the Illinois EPA, they did extend it or change the deadline to November 16th. So, we were all geared up looking at a July 30th deadline, which their notice of funding opportunity wasn’t posted until the end of September. That gave us a month to get application, paperwork, and packages together to be submitted on or before November 16th. Thank you for the opportunity.

Scott Killinger said I’m going to interject something from the Staff standpoint. The Committee passed a Resolution in support of this project, and I believe the amount was $25,000. I guess at this point, that Resolution would need to be re written. So, I would come with another Resolution in support of this project at the December meeting or possibly January. This money would then come out of next fiscal year’s money as I mentioned during the Project Program. Assuming the County Board approves the Stormwater Budget the way I have it written, there is money for a planning project. I believe I requested $162,000. So, there is money that we could use that would not affect the 50/50 Projects that we do with the communities. We’re not going to vote today, but I guess Living Waters can try to reach out to Will-South Cook and see how much money, if any, that they have and possibly the Village of Monee. So, people could do some more work and then we could come up with a Resolution amount.

Scott Tomkins said Scott, a little background with the aspect of the timeline of applications. Like Ted said, the deadline is November 16th. They’ll receive all the applications, do a review, and put together a work plan that will be submitted to the US EPA after they have reviewed and ranked them out. So, we may not hear about an application approval until probably Spring or Summer of next year. This Section 319 Program is highly competitive and there’s many entities that submit. Over the past year there’s been an average of 35 to 40 applicants, so it’s very competitive. Definitely there’s more funds requested that what’s available to fund. This year with their priority for planning at the Kankakee River, we thought it would be a good year to go forward with a potential application package. A lot of the time is downtime and not knowing who will receive any funds, but we can go ahead and continue the work with the partnerships.

Ted Gray said I want to add something as well. We have done a little homework with the Will-South Cook Soil and Water Conservation District and met with them. They had a Board Meeting about this effort as well. They did not have funding in their current budget this year to provide matching funding. I don’t know whether that would change next year or not, but it is something that could be potentially pursued over the course of the next two years. So, we have sat down with them and met with them about this as well.

Thomas Pawlowicz said I’m not against the project. I’m not against Will County pitching in $25,000. I just think that if we do the study and the partners don’t even have the money to chip in $5,000 or $10,000, they’re not going to even have the money to implement any of the projects that you identify. It would become a wasted effort and like you said, there’s no skin in the game. We can’t vote, but I would vote for $25,000. If you want all $40,000 to come from Will County and $0 from Monee, University Park, this Camp that initiated it, and everyone else, it just shows nobody cares and maybe we shouldn’t either. That’s my two cents.

Ted Gray said one thing that we could pursue is that we had $5,000 from a Kankakee County entity, the Kankakee River Basin Commission. We gave a presentation and then they approved $5,000 for this project. We haven’t gone back to them. I guess its kind of a question for Will County Stormwater Management. The plan would obviously be limited to Will County. Would you want us to ask KRBC to see if their $5,000 is still available, or would you rather keep the funding sources to be within Will County?

County Board Member Judy Ogalla said I’m sorry, I’m usually in other meetings at this time so I don’t always pay attention. Like I said, I was walking past. It’s nice to be back in the Board Room, because then you see things like that, and you can pop in. I’m definitely going to look into this. I know that Will-South Cook Soil and Water Conservation District should have some money to put in here. I will contact the mayor of Monee and see what they can do. I’m going to ask Andy Wheeler from Kankakee County. I know they got ARP money like we did, and I’ll see if they can give us some money, I don’t know exactly though. I’ll be talking with Scott after the meeting to get me up on speed on this. Like I said, unfortunately I’m in another meeting during this time. I will be looking into that and will probably be able to have an answer to Scott by Friday at the latest. That would be pretty good if you guys can hang onto that. I live out in this area, and I know there’s a need for this especially with the drainage. The creeks are all cutting into the farmland because there’s no management on a lot of these streams. I know this is a definite issue out there. I unfortunately just became aware of it walking past here today. I don’t know if there’s a member from eastern Will County on this Committee, is there? Is Bob aware of this?

Robert Howard said yes, I am.

County Board Member Judy Ogalla said that would be something to contact a County Board Member if we’re not making a comment and let us know what is going on to try to get support. Anyway, I will look into this and get back to Scott by Friday with some information. Thank you for this. Thanks.

Ted Gray said as we said, you don’t need finalization of funding even before the Grant Application. We just want to know there is some interest and support in the future.

Scott Tomkins said Ted, we do need some signatures on some of the forms that would be submitted by the Board Members, either the Chairman or the Treasurer. So, we would need some sign-off and dating on these forms if we proceed forward with an application package.

Ted Gray said correct. We would need that by the November 16th deadline. In terms of the pledging of funding, we don’t need a finalization of that. That could occur sometime between now and next Spring. The signatures that you need, that could be Jon, the Chairman of Stormwater Committee, I presume?

Scott Tomkins said yes, it could be.

Scott Killinger asked, Jon are you available to sign some forms by the 16th if the consensus of the Committee is to go ahead and pursue at least the application?

Jonathan Dykstra said yeah, if the form page can be emailed, I can print it and sign it, then mail it back or overnight it.

Scott Tomkins said the two signatures that are required on at least one of documents if not both is the Board Chairman and Treasurer of the entity involved.

Jonathan Dykstra said okay. Do they have to be live signatures, or can you use a copy?

Scott Tomkins said I just need signatures, so however that can be done. It’s a PDF form that these documents are on.

Jonathan Dykstra said okay, that would be perfect then. I could sign that and then PDF it back to you. You can get my email from Scott Killinger. We’ll just centralize on him, but he can get that to you.

Scott Tomkins said okay, thank you. I appreciate the time that you’ve given to Ted and I to come and talk to you about this. I just want to assure you that this is nothing that has come up overnight. This has been in the works now for over four years. Like I said, there’s a lot of interest in this and we’re getting letters of support with a lot of people supporting. Hopefully Will County will be the county that will be the applicant and we can move forward with this. There is interest and there is support from Kankakee County. We’re coming to you with the aspect that you have the resources to move forward.

Jonathan Dykstra said I think there’s definitely interest here. Tom is just asking a common question. I think it’s good. Possibly asking that question will stir up more interest and I think that’s what we would all like to see. I’m hearing from other Committee Members that there is interest in seeing this go forward. I think that we found that we are behind it and let’s hope that it gets more attraction after talking to more stakeholders and so forth. I appreciate your time in explaining it and answering our questions. We look forward to more down the road. I think we’ll just move on with our Agenda for today. Thank you, Ted, and Scott, I appreciate it.

Ted Gray said thank you, have a good rest of your meeting.

3. USACE DUPAGE RIVER FLOOD MITIGATION PROJECT

Scott Killinger said the U.S. Army Corps update is really about the same as what I gave you last month. We’re moving into the engineering and implementation phase.

One of the first things that needs to be done with the buy-out phase for the properties is that there needs to be buy-out work done, title work done, and it has to be appraised. There are professional firms that do that.

The scope of work for that work has been placed in the FY 2022 contract with Baxter and Woodman, which is my firm. They can do the surveying work. The County already has a relationship with them, and they will hire the appraisers as a sub-contractor.

So, that contract is going to be considered by the Executive Committee this coming Thursday. Assuming it goes through and is approved, I will continue to be here on this thing because that will mean I’m going to get paid, and that work will be part of that contract.

So, the update really is we’re proceeding with trying to get into the land acquisition and buy-out phase.

Any questions on Army Corps?

No response.

Obviously in December, I’ll have another update for you. By then we will know if the contract is approved, or if it’s not, I may not be here.

Jonathan Dykstra asked, any other questions on that for now?

No response.

4. Stormwater Management for Solar Farm Projects

Scott Killinger said the County has received several requests for Solar Farms.

Basically, there’s questions about whether or not stormwater management should be required in there.

I had actually, a few years ago, put out a couple of Memo’s, which there are marked-up copies here in your packet. Actually, Nicole Roedl who’s on the call from Land Use Staff, marked these up and put some comments on them.

This is not something I’m expecting a decision on today, but I believe there’s a need to change Chapter 55, the Stormwater Ordinance. At a minimum, we need to add a definition for disconnected impervious.

I’m going to probably put that on for December. Again, that requires you all to look at it, then it goes to Land Use Committee. Ultimately to change the Ordinance, it goes to the full Board. If you remember when we adopted Bulletin 70, it takes several months to go through all the wickets.

This isn’t something urgent today, but in your packet, you can see that I put a possible definition of disconnected impervious.

One question I have is, has anybody else out there approved a solar facility and did it include stormwater management or not? Does anybody have any feedback on that?

Thomas Pawlowicz said we had a local school district put up a small array behind one of the middle schools. They didn’t have grass underneath it like the examples that you sent us. They put C7 underneath to help soak up the water. There is a detention pond onsite as well. I don’t recall if we required detention for the solar array or not.

Scott Killinger said okay, thanks Tom. The usual design is to put native plantings and pollinator species underneath the panels. These firms come in and they argue that they should not be required to provide detention. To some extent, I can understand what they’re saying, but because it’s disconnected impervious and the Ordinance doesn’t really recognize disconnected impervious, Nicole and I, as Staff, are kind of stuck. We kind of have to require detention is what we think. At a minimum, I guess we need to talk about this some more in December.

Jonathan said I had a similar case. This was a pretty large solar farm being done for an industrial site. They had the open land to do it, the only thing was that about half of it was floodplain. They did provide a plan where the array was fully separated with a good space in between and it was all grass below it. We did make them go to DNR because there was also some floodway. They did do all of that and we used the guidance that you came up with Scott. From what I heard, we did end up approving this for this town. They seemed to do everything that we asked for and we ended up not requiring detention. They had a roadway, or a driveway, and we told them they had to do some kind of stormwater detention for that. On the Village level, they were more concerned about when this exceeds the lifespan, is it just going to sit there or what? When it reaches the plan of life, what is the plan to restore the area back to its original state? So, we had them submit a plan like that. This seems to work for the site user. I forget the timeline on it, I don’t know if these were 50-year panels or what. Don’t quote me on the years, but it was some amount 50 or 70 years, but we didn’t want to leave that for someone in the future. I would agree that some sort of definition is needed to increase the guidance to make it less fuzzy. We’ll look forward to that process. We know it will take a bit to make any changes.

Scott Killinger said in the packet that you received, I think the last page is a definition of disconnected impervious. We can talk through that and change it any way that we need to.

Jonathan Dykstra said for some reason I was missing that page. I’ll look at that and if everyone else can too we can talk about this next month. If there’s anything else too, even if it’s unrelated and we need to tweak a word or two in the Ordinance, as long as we’re going make some changes maybe we look at that too.

Robert Howard said I’d like to make a comment. With these solar farms, generally they don’t build them on the optimum farm ground. Generally, there’s a little bit of slope to them along that line. There’s been complaints about the weeds underneath them, but anyway that’s not our problem. These are basically where the panels sit up on those racks and the racks are tilted. So, you have a roof without gutters on it so you’re channelizing water in there. If we would continue to have a lot of rain, basically you’re going to start moving the soil underneath these. I’m not a proponent, by any means, of putting down aggregate or anything. They basically put metal poles in the ground and when they pull it out, it can be restored very easily. I just think that’s something that should be looked at. You can’t get a machine in there to grade it, or anything along that line. Actually, the way they place them, it would be impossible to re-contour the ground or something like that while they’re in this form. I would say that they actually do need to look at that and basically set some kind of restrictor on the water. Retention ponds would probably be a good idea on these in the long run. Anyway, that’s my comment on it.

Jonathan Dykstra said ok, thank you Bob. I’m sure we’ll talk more about this, but if anyone else wants to comment now, please do.

No response.

5. 2022 Meeting Schedule

Jonathan Dykstra said we also have our 2022 Meeting Schedule. Of course, we won't be voting on it today, but check the dates. Since it's on Tuesday, it's not going to be on a Monday holiday, but it's after a few Monday holidays, I think September 6th and July 5th. Anyway, we'll vote on that as well when we have a quorum.

Scott Killinger said we'll bring this back in December as well.

VII. REPORT OF OFFICERS, SUBCOMMITTEES, STATE'S ATTORNEY AND/OR STAFF Scott Killinger said I told you at the last meeting that Marilyn Sucoe from IDNR had requested to come and address the Committee. I'm not sure what the topic is, but I have asked her. She was going to come in November, then she told me she would wait until December. So, at some meeting here in the future, we'll have Marilyn from IDNR.

Also, I'm aware there are some vacancies on the Committee. As we've talked about during this meeting regarding the County Board, we will wait until they re-district and we'll sort out who's going to represent what District. Obviously, the one has to come first. That is probably something that we will be doing next year.

Jonathan Dykstra said maybe some of you saw that there's an IDOT Plan for a 6-year I-80 infrastructure improvement plan that's in the works. Year 1 I think is going on right now. So, I-80's going to be under construction for quite awhile.

VIII. ANNOUNCEMENTS/COMMITTEE COMMENTS

None.

IX. ADJOURNMENT

Bill Lamb made a Motion at 11:12 AM to adjourn the meeting. Ken Carroll seconded the Motion. A voice vote was taken. Motion passed unanimously, 8-0.

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