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HomeMy WebLinkAbout06/22/2010 Special Council Meeting Minutes~~~ - ~~ ~A~ ASIA ~ ~~ SPECIAL COUNCIL MEETING MINUTES 11555 W. Civic Center Drive, Marana, Arizona 85653 Council Chambers, June 22, 2010, at or after 6:00 PM Ed Honea, Mayor Herb Kai, Vice Mayor Russell Clanagan, Council Member Patti Comerford, Council Member Carol McGorray, Council Member Jon Post, Council Member Roxanne Ziegler, Council Member SPECIAL COUNCIL MEETING CALL TO ORDER AND ROLL CALL Mayor Honea called the meeting to order at 6:01 p.m. Upon roll call, all Council were present except Vice Mayor Herb Kai, who was excused, and Council Member Clanagan who arrived on the dais at 6:03 p.m. PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE/INVOCATION/MOMENT OF SILENCE Led by Mayor Honea. APPROVAL OF AGENDA Motion to approve moved by Council Member Post, second by Council Member Comerford. Motion carried unanimously 6-0. CALL TO THE PUBLIC Larry Lopez, president of AZCOPS, addressed Council regarding the MOU passed by Council at the June 15, 2010 meeting. PROCLAMATIONS MAYOR AND COUNCIL REPORTS: SUMMARY OF CURRENT EVENTS Dispensed. MANAGER'S REPORT: SUMMARY OF CURRENT EVENTS Dispensed. Mayor Honea addressed the audience and stated that the public would be able to address the speakers after the presentations were made and Council had had an opportunity to ask questions. 1 June 22, 2010 Special Council Meeting Minutes PRESENTATIONS P 1: Relating to Development; presentation and discussion on the proposed landfill rezoning application Introduced by Kevin Kish, who gave an overview of the landfills within the region from Phoenix to Sahuarita, showing the distribution within the southern Arizona region. He noted that consultants would be presenting on four items of concern and then reporting their findings and recommendations. He made special mention of the Butterfield station which is where Waste Management takes their municipal waste from the Ina Road station. He noted that Tangerine is basically closed to commercial business. Eventually staff will present a request to Council for approval for a rezoning, based on the annexation that Council passed in May. The facility will be run and regulated by the Municipal Solid Waste Landfill, Arizona Department of Environmental Quality under federal and state and local laws. It will be restricted with many conditions to solid municipal waste. Perimeter buffer yards are proposed of 200 feet along the north and west property lines and up to 470 feet in the upper corner. Council Member Clanagan asked the closest home as you look around the buffer. Mr. Kish responded that upon build out, Silverbell West would be approximately one-half mile. The disposal area consists of approximately 430 acres with the buffer area being 103 acres. He then noted the proposed pattern of the phasing of the landfill. After the off-site infrastructure is completed including road improvements, the waste station and offices and the first cell would be in the lower southwest corner of the site. Cell areas get constructed under their proposal under approximately three phases. The first phase of eight to ten acres is for the first cell. The ultimate height under the current proposed specific plan is 195 feet above surface level at the highest area. The height would increase to that point at the completion of the cells. If the project continues to move forward and approval for the rezoning is successful, there are still a lot of steps. Just for the town of Marana, there would be development plans, landscape plans, native plant permits, the associated improvement plans - off or on-site infrastructure. There are also many state and federal permitting processes. The town has four specific permits - floodplain use, grading, building for the on-site structures, and right of way permits for any work within the public right of way. ADEQ is the federal authorizing environmental protection agency. Their permitting requirements range from endangered species status, archaeology, wetlands, floodplains, airport notification and storm water to name a few. In addition to the state ADEQ, Pima County has environmental requirements, Title 5 air permits, aquifer protection permits for the proposed septic systems, Department of Transportation, Arizona Department of Water Resources permits for general industrial use in conjunction with AMA, US Army Corps of Engineers for 404 permitting in conjunction with ADEQ. There are some unique things associated with a private landfill such as the financial assurance mechanism, which under state statutes and federal laws of ADEQ, provides for the facility closure, post closure care and corrective action. So prior to them opening up a landfill, ADEQ receives the financial guarantees for these issues. It requires an annual review. The cost is determined by a report provided to ADEQ on what the costs associated with the service areas activities taking place. As the cells grow, it gets adjusted every year. The estimated size of cell one is approximately 30 acres. The first 2 June 22, 2010 Special Council Meeting Minutes phase is eight to twelve acres. The ultimate height of this portion of Cell One would be less than 195, but he didn't know exactly what that would be. One hundred ninety-five is the maximum height under the proposal. As the progress continues on sloping, that gets landscaped and irrigated to start the growth of vegetation so you won't get the tailings look like you see at mines. This is done sub-cell by sub-cell. Once you get to a bench area, that will get landscaped, and then the next level and so on. Mr. Kish concluded the overview and introduced Clint Glass, from CMG Drainage Engineering in Tucson, who provided information on the surface hydrology and floodplain issues of the project. He started by showing a FEMA flood hazard map which extends one mile beyond the boundaries of the property. The discharge values for Brawley Wash at 35,000 cfs at the confluence of the east and west branches of Brawley Wash. The east branch is largely a sheet flow area over farm canals and diversion structures that flows up to the north of the property. The numbers are very consistent with other water courses in the region and maybe just a little conservative. He conducted a floodplain study similar in detail to what was done in the Tortolita study a year or so ago. That study determined that for discharge rates between the different branches there is a distribution of flow of 21,000 cfs to the west branch and 14,000 cfs to the east branch. These results almost exactly mirror the results of a study conducted by the Pima County Flood Control District in 1996. The final step in our analysis has been to take the floodplain information that we developed for the existing conditions and encroach into that floodplain with the landfill structure -just block off where the landfill goes to make a determination of what the changes and the flood boundaries and elevations are on the perimeters of the property and the adjoining property. Our model determines the amount of water coming into the project site on the west half of the property at about 900 cu feet per second that would need to be accommodated by the project. On the east half, a total of 1850 cu ft per second. We're showing 200 foot setbacks on the west and the south property boundaries combined with an excavation at 200 foot at least two foot deep channel to accept that water and convey it to the east side of the property or to the west side and onto the north and tie back into the existing flood boundaries. On the east side of the property a greater setback of 300-500 feet is needed to accept that 1850 cu ft per second, and that would also require a grading of a two foot channel across that whole width in order to comply with the floodplain ordinance requirements. In summary, with the construction of drainage improvements around the perimeters of the property, we believe that the facility could comply with the town of Marana floodplain ordinance. This is based on a 100-year flood plain. No other assessment has been made. Guesstimating fora 500-year floodplain, they probably will not expand too much on the far east or the far west because the land is topographically rising, so even if the flow depths get another foot or two deep it's not likely the flood boundary would move very far. Mr. Kish introduced Mark Cross from Montgomery & Associates to talk about the aquifer. Mr. Cross discussed a groundwater assessment for the landfill beginning with some background information to establish context. And then he reviewed past, future and current groundwater conditions and the controlling factors that control groundwater level in the aquifer and recharge. He then gave background on the regional aquifer and what 3 June 22, 2010 Special Council Meeting Minutes groundwater levels are influenced by. Mayor Honea asked what he estimated the static water level would be at its maximum with the recharge - is there aceiling -could water level come up to ground level with pumping and recharge increases or stays the same? Mr. Cross replied yes, but there are scenarios where it could rise or decline many decades into the future. The depth to water decreases as you move away from the water recharge source. Rates of movement are about 100 feet per year. There are two municipal supply wells of interest, one owned by the City of Tucson. Travel time for groundwater to move from the landfill would be about 50 years. He then showed a series of slides about the effects of recharge. The regulatory process will monitor any necessary corrective actions. You can't guarantee there would never be a leak, but monitor wells will be able to determine that groundwater has been affected and corrective actions can be implemented. He noted that monitor wells do not sample a large area but there would be more than one well and located upgradient and downgradient wells. There would not be a monitor well for each well. The monitoring plan has not been prepared. The owner or operator typically monitors the wells and then submits reports to the regulatory agency and then water samples are submitted to an agency that's approved by the ADEQ. The monitoring plans and sampling procedures and details of what's proposed all need to be submitted and approved before the first monitor well is drilled. Sometimes a third party is selected. If a leak gets into the aquifer, a pump and treat corrective action would occur. If it was a soil issue, it would be treated with soil vapor action or in situ treatment where materials are injected into the groundwater to assist in biodegradation if they are contaminants that can be biodegraded. Council Member Ziegler asked if there had ever been an incident in Pima County where extraction was necessary within the. last 25 years. Mr. Cross responded that some of the older landfills had problems because they were not lined when waste other than municipal waste was disposed, such as solvents or refrigerants. According to information from Pima County, Tangerine Landfill is lined and there has been no evidence of any defect on groundwater. Council Member Ziegler asked about the depth of the landfill. Mr. Cross reported that it's deepest along the perimeter at this stage and then rises up toward the center. The groundwater would be about 100 feet today from the bottom of the landfill. Alejandro Angel from PSOMAS was the next speaker and addressed the traffic issue. He noted that his firm did not prepare the study for the landfill, but reviewed the traffic study to evaluate its findings and whether they concurred with the findings. He first presented the traffic study methodology which gives a picture of existing conditions and then what traffic would be generated by the landfill for 2013 and 2030. Traffic counts were conducted at several locations between Trico and I-10 for existing conditions. Then landfill traffic was counted. The scenario for 2030 assumes that Avra Valley Road will be widened to four lanes per the RTA/PAG plan. Based on those findings, improvements were identified to serve the landfill. One of the key things in this study was the traffic generated by the landfill. Typically, trip studies use the ITE Trip Generation Manual is used to estimate trip volumes, but does not include landfill data. In this case, they assumed the private traffic that use the landfill -that traffic would be comparable as to what Tangerine generates today -about 200 vehicles inbound and outbound every day for a total of about 420 a day. For comparison, Avra Valley Road carries about 4,000 or 5,000 cars a day. This represents a 15% increase on Avra Valley Road which is significant but the capacity of a road like AV Road today is about 15,000. The current traffic is about 4,000 and 8,000, with the highest at the I-10 interchange. 4 June 22, 2010 Special Council Meeting Minutes The private traffic was based on the Tangerine landfill, and the commercial traffic was estimated by the owner using some data from Los Reales, and what they estimated is 60 garbage collection trucks and approximately 40 transfer trucks per day. The transfer trucks carry seven or eight tons of trash and get loaded into larger trucks that carry about 25 tons. The trip generation of the landfill can change a lot depending on who is being served. Most traffic comes from transfer trucks; even though they are fewer, they are heavier. Most of the traffic is assumed to be coming from the. east from I-10 to get to Avra Valley Road, and the traffic on his slide of 300 IB and 300 OB is expected to grow about 25% or about 800 vehicles over the next 20 years based on the increased use of the landfill. The study finds there is sufficient capacity on Avra Valley Road and at the interchange. The new traffic signals are warranted at the Sandario intersection. The one thing that's obvious is that the pavement condition is poor and a landfill will have an impact on that pavement. The more transfer trucks you have, the more the impact. It's not a big impact on operations, so it's a tradeoff. The study recommends a full geotechnical report to evaluate the impact of those trucks on the pavement. The other thing that is recommended is to do a structural evaluation of the bridge over the Brawley Wash. Now that bridge is rated for 80K pounds which is sufficient, but Pima County has been considering reducing that weight allowance and putting a restriction on the bridge because of structural concerns. The study did find that there's a need to construction turn lanes at a few locations - at the landfill entrance in both directions - as well as two turn lanes at Sandario. Up to this point, this is what the traffic study performed by the property owners found. In my opinion, most of the findings of the study are reasonable. Trip generation is still unknown, and that's a key ingredient because we don't know whether the traffic will be coming from transfer trucks or from regular trash collection trucks. We need more information on the service area of the landfill, what population it will serve and how fast it will grow and where the trash will be coming from and how the transfer stations will be used. We believe the study needs to be revised for those items as those changes could affect the improvements required. But it's not a problem of roadway capacity. Those changes would primarily affect how much impact this would have on the pavement and the impact on the bridges on the Brawley Wash and another bridge on Trico Road that has a weight limit as well. Some of their evaluations were done by tonnage. That's the other factor that needs to be evaluated. More information is needed for that analysis. There are no restrictions on the Brawley Wash bridge today, but it would be the east branch of the Brawley Wash and east of the landfill. On Trico Road over the Santa Cruz River there is a 30,000 pound weight restriction in place. Trico Road would serve a minimal amount of landfill traffic and could serve the regular trash collection trucks but could not serve the transfer trucks. The determination is part of the requirements for the project owner, and the analysis is being done by Pima County today. Mr. Angel responded to a question from Mayor Honea about ingress and egress. The only access is Avra Valley Road; there would be no access from Silverbell Road. He also clarified that the heaviest traffic on Avra Valley Road is at I-10 -about 8,000 vehicles a day. As you go west, it goes down to about 4,000 vehicles a day. As you get near the landfill, the intersection with the highest turning vehicle traffic is at Sandario and Avra Valley. That intersection was evaluated to seeing if a turning signal was needed, but it doesn't generate enough traffic to warrant the signal according to the current trip generation figures. It would be more necessary to have a signal at that location than at I-10 and Avra Valley if the traffic figures were revised. 5 June 22, 2010 Special Council Meeting Minutes The last speaker was Jim Harris, president of Coffinan & Associates in Scottsdale, Arizona to talk about airport concerns relative to the landfill. His firm has served as the town's airport planning consultant for a number of years and prepared the airport master plan in 2007. His study evaluated impacts to the airport if a landfill was established. There are several guiding documents which reside with the FAA which has oversight of the airport as part of the federal air transportation system. Two keys advisory circulars relative to a landfill are FAA documents which involve the construction or establishment of landfills near public airports and also hazardous wildlife attraction on or near airports. The first thing you generally look at with regard to the airport would be boundaries around the airport, prescribed in the advisory circulars. The first criteria is if the airport has a general aviation airport, would the airport be served by piston powered aircraft. There's a boundary established for those types of aircraft of a radius of 5,000 feet around the airport. There's a boundary for turbojet aircraft which is the case for Marana, which increases to 10,000 feet from the runway ends. The landfill itself as presented is approximately 15,000 feet from the airport, so it's well outside of the 10,000 foot boundary. There is another boundary that says if the proposed landfill is within five miles of the airport, then some other conditions have to be met. But the intent of the five-mile buffer and the way FAA would look at this would say if a landfill is in that buffer, they want to be assured that the landfill - as an attractant to wildlife -most significantly birds - would not pose a hazardous situation to the airport. Their concerns are birds that may nest or roost along the Santa Cruz River that would transition between that area to the landfill as a food source and cross over the approach ends of the runway or in the vicinity of the airport. And vice versa, if birds were to find the landfill attractive to nest or roost but the food source was in the Santa Cruz, they want some assurance that that situation would not arise. Generally, the way to do that is to have the landfill analyzed by a certified wildlife biologist and the results of that analysis presented to the FAA to assure that that condition would not occur. With that in mind, that is something that as the document was reviewed, that particular analysis by a biologist has not been done but that should be done to determine that that case would not exist. The next thing we looked at and the second most critical to the FAA is the height of structures around airports. There are a number of different surfaces that are established by the FAA. As an example, if you're looking at a football field, everything radiates away from the center of the field, upward and outward, protecting those surfaces out to a point which is the outer edge of the conical surface around the perimeter. There is another surface called the horizontal surface which sits 150 feet above the airport which must be protected as well. The landfill under the current situation impacts the outer edge of the conical surface just on the perimeter of the landfill. The height of that surface would be about 206 feet above the landfill height if the landfill were at the 195 feet fully constructed. So it does sit below that particular surface. The future for the airport -the master plan considered improvements to the runways, to instrument approaches to the airport and as such there are some different surfaces and expansion of surfaces, but in this particular case, the conical surface itself just overlies the eastern one third of the landfill. There's no impact to the surfaces; however, there is a process that is required by the FAA any time there is construction near an airport that that type of construction, the height of the structure must be disclosed to the FAA and then they evaluate it to make sure it doesn't pose a hazard to aircraft operating in and out of the Marana Regional Airport. 6 June 22, 2010 Special Council Meeting Minutes In conclusion, there are really two steps that need to be looked at from the airport's perspective. One is filing federal form 2460-1 to initiate the coordination of the obstruction evaluation -the Notice of Proposed Construction. The FAA provides a finding as to whether there would be an obstruction or a potential hazard. Also, the preparation of either a mitigation plan or a wildlife study to determine that the landfill would not be an attractant, and if it were, what could be done to mitigate that to ensure that it would not occur. Finally, if the second one, if a hazard plan or the wildlife hazard plan were found not to be acceptable to the FAA, then the town has some obligations as the airport sponsor under the grant assurances to then deal with that situation to prevent its establishment. When the airport additional findings and future steps will have to be taken. Deterrents to keep birds away from the airport would be to make sure there aren't food sources available, including landscaping that is not a nesting attractant. Mayor Honea called fora 10-minute break before the wrap-up. The meeting resumed at 8:14 p.m. Mr. Kish noted that there was an additional presenter intended to speak to the public health issue who was unable to be there. The applicant is working to get a public health report done by an expert. Once that's submitted, the town will work with Pima County Health Department to look at providing comments and making sure it's a valid study. Further, he noted that he learned that Tangerine Landfill is not closed to commercial haulers, but commercial haulers are choosing not to use it at this time. The Tangerine Landfill is lined based on information from Pima County. Council Member Post asked when Mr. Kish thought he would have the public safety or public health person before Council. Mr. Kish responded that he expected a report in the next couple of weeks and then asking Pima County Health to help them analyze it. Council Member Post asked what the procedures are going forward. There are a couple of options. The next presentation anticipated before the Council would be the public hearing of the rezoning and a decision by Council. He is also looking at doing an open house next week. There is not a specific date scheduled, but the first opportunity would be July 20. The next would be August at the first or second regular meeting. The open house will be July 8 at town hall, and notification will be published in the media as well as to those who have sent a-mails and other forms of communication. Members of the public submitting speaker cards in opposition to the landfill were Melissa Rohlik (spoke), Joan Travis-Triumph (spoke), Robert Ruppelius (spoke), Annie Shellberg (spoke), Pam Ruppelius (spoke) and Steve Storzer (spoke). Frank Triumph, Michelle Otero, Elizabeth Maxam, Linda Storzer, Dolores J. Marro, Pat McElroy, Tanya Anway, David Anway, Jens T. Hill, Betty Turner. Those speaking in support of the landfill were Matthew Vorholzer, Lisa Felix and Tisha Felix. Michael Racy, representing the applicant, introduced Garth Bowers from Cornerstone, an engineer for the project also addressed Council on some of the technical questions that were raised earlier. The firm of Structural Grace is already under contract to do an analysis of the bridge at the east branch of the Brawley Wash and the applicant will be 7 June 22, 2010 Special Council Meeting Minutes responsible for any upgrades that are necessary for that facility as a consequence of any increased truck traffic. Mr. Bowers addressed Council by stating that this is the beginning of a very long process and a lot of the questions that have arisen tonight by the other consultants working for the town are questions that are part of the permitting process that we can't start on until it goes through the zoning process. There's a lengthy permitting process with ADEQ as well as the FAA. He noted that the average depth of the facility is about 40 feet. The deepest parts are areas of the facility where the bottom will be at existing grade in the center of the site. The height of Cell lA in the corner will be about 10 feet above the top of the screening berm which will be vegetated with trees. He noted that there will be a lot of information available at the July 8 open house and will be prepared to answer any questions at that time in more depth. He also noted that the monitoring wells will be part of the hydrological study required by ADEQ. It's likely that they will have a large number of wells along the western or downgradient side. They will be focused around the areas where the liner is the deepest and the least separation from the liner to the groundwater and spaced as required to pick up any possible contamination. Dust control is applied only to the extent that it gets the top surface wet to overcome the evaporation rate. The monitoring of the wells and water samples will be done by a third party per the ADEQ permit, so it's unlikely that the owner would want to be in that position. Council Member Post asked Mr. Racy to address why the landfill has to be so large. It is basically related to cost. The Tangerine Landfill or other gravel pit landfills that were built in the SOs and 60s, the contamination goes back to the kind of facility that was taking liquid waste and which started as small facilities which the regulating agencies say you should not do any longer because of the extensive monitoring and mitigation. This facility will serve all of northern Pima County and all of southern Pinal County as well as incidental hauling from this area. The Cactus Landfill in Pinal County is virtually identical. Mineral Mountain is in the same range. This is the size these modern facilities are designed to. CONSENT AGENDA LIQUOR LICENSES BOARDS, COMMISSIONS AND COMMITTEES COUNCIL ACTION ITEMS FOR DISCUSSION/POSSIBLE ACTION EXECUTIVE SESSIONS E 1: Executive Session pursuant to A.R.S. §38-431.03 (A)(3), Council may ask for discussion or consultation for legal advice with the Town Attorney concerning any matter listed on this agenda. E 2: Executive Session pursuant to A.R.S. § 38-431.03(A)(3),(4) and (7), discussion or consultation for legal advice with the Town's attorneys and discussion and to consider its position and instruct the Town Manager and staff concerning (1) the lawsuit entitled Town of Marana v. Pima County/Pima County v. Marana (consolidated), Maricopa 8 June 22, 2010 Special Council Meeting Minutes County Superior Court No. CV2008-001131, (2) pending legal issues, settlement discussions and contract negotiations relating to the transition of Marana wastewater collection and treatment to the Town of Marana FUTURE AGENDA ITEMS Council Member Clanagan asked if Council. would consider setting aside a day and partnering with Parks & Recreation and other community groups before the Twin Peaks Interchange is opened to vehicular traffic, to turn it over to the community -walkers, runners, joggers and cyclists. ADJOURNMENT Motion to adjourn moved by Council Member Post, second by Council Member McGorray. Motion carried unanimously 6-0. The meeting was adjourned at 8:57 p.m. CERTIFICATION I hereby certify that the foregoing are the true and correct minutes of the Marana Town Council meeting held on June 22, 2010. I further certify th~t~~ggp was present. elyn ronson, Town Clerk ~1~ ~Rao~ sue. 9 June 22, 2010 Special Council Meeting Minutes