Minutes 11-21-2011 - Laserfiche WebLink

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Tony Whitaker: Regarding food waste, the kids generally bring their lunches. I do suppose that there is some waste from that. The school is very good about segregating all kinds of waste and very receptive to hearing about better ways to separate waste and collect. Composting is an active part of some of the things that go on campus. Those are in the operational protocols of the program already. Commissioner Jacobs: This memorandum that we got that's kind of separate for solid waste disposal and management practices, it may just be picking at words, but some of the requirements where it says, "recycle a scrap as an aggregate producer," sometimes it says, "if practical" and other times it says, "as practical." I would think "as practical" denotes more of a commitment to do it than "if practical." Tony Whitaker: I agree with you. I think the intent is as practical in every case. As the one who wrote those words, I don't believe I made such a fine point of distinction at the time of writing, but I do understand that as you speak of it, and I agree. The point is that certain things are practical and certain things are not. They'li become manifest in the moment or at the time. Sometimes there is a market for some kinds of material and sometimes there's not, depending on economic cycles. Those things can be sorted through with another solid waste management plan at the time of site plan approval for each facet of the work.: Your point is well taken. Commissioner Jacobs: So it will be reflected somewhere in the future. Tony Whitaker: Yes. And to the current standards at that time. Commissioner Jacobs: My last point, it is not really the Friends School's problem, but it is more of the County's problem. It must be already 15 years since Piney Mountain had its system failure. Piney Mountain is a subdivision not far from the Friends School that had a system that was supposed to be cutting edge, and in fact it didn't work. It was governed by the same entity that is now being designated to administer this system. We spent a number of years trying to come up with a mechanism to prevent reliance on DWQ to have the sole authority over regulating these kinds of systems in Orange County because it was such a mess to have to deal with when the Piney Mountain system failed, and Mr. Whitaker is nodding his head, he remembers. We had to come up with a special way to get water and sewer from Durham into the rural buffer. I don't know really that there's anything to say about this project other than I would like at least to put in the record the possibility that Environmental Health staff look at the possibility of adding an inspection per year beyond what the state requires so that there's some local oversight of the system. Because also what happened was the state was not following through on doing the number of inspections of the system, so they didn't even notice very quickly that it had failed. Of course the state has been cutting staff for these kinds of functions. I don't know that it's necessarily a big issue for you because you're already so far into the pipeline and to bring up now that there's a more global issue for the County is not really fair. I do think it's a more global issue for the County, especially if we ever want to do anything more creative in rural areas about having any other kind of system other than a well and septic tank. I would at least like to have Environmental Health look at whether or not there's a way to bolster the state's inspection. I don't know that it would be anything but redundant, but it might prevent something like what we had to go through before. Commissioner McKee: Going back to the issue of the ball field. I heard mention of moving the ball field to the east to take into account the adjacent property owners' concerns. If I might