Alright, well it is officially one o'clock. Are we good to call the meeting to order?
I want to start off by welcoming everyone and wishing you a happy Earth Day. And just a quick
reminder that we just have one Earth, so that's one reason why we are here. I also do want to let
everyone know that I have to leave by four. I think we should be fine, but if we can just go
through the presentation and then have our questions after to see if that would be okay.
And then if I do have to leave, then Matthew, Matt will take over as chair. Is that correct? Okay.
Alright, so we do have a quorum. It's Friday, April 22nd, and we are in the City Council Work
Session Room, and we do have a quorum. And we will begin with our first item for individual
consideration. Consider approval of the March 25th, 2022 minutes. Did everyone have a chance
to review those? Do you have a motion for approval? I move. Move and second? Second. Alright,
all in favor say aye. Aye. Alright, so we will move right on to item B. Receive a report and hold
a discussion regarding gas well inspections, results, and trends. And we have a special guest
today doing the presentation for us. Do you want to give him an introduction? Michael Gunn, Director
of Environmental Quality Services and Sustainability at the City of Denton. We have Kenneth Tram here
with Modern Geosciences. He's going to be going over a presentation that he gave at a conference
recently that ties into the work he's been doing not only for the City of Denton, but for other
surrounding jurisdictions regarding gas well inspections. So I think seeing that in totality
will really help the new perspective of how Denton's doing as well as how we compare to our
surrounding cities. So I'll turn it over to Kenneth. How are you doing? Let's see, I think you told me
what control B? Shift B. I learned a new trick today. I'm sure I will use that again. It's a pleasure
to be here and I appreciate the opportunity. So as Michael said, this has a lot of elements to it so
I'm going to touch on some of them that are just kind of a highlight level and given that we want
questions kind of at the end of this if we can hold it for that. I can go back to anything you
like. There's some added things that weren't in the general presentation that are Denton specific,
right? Because I know you have specific questions for Denton too so I'd make sure that some of those
slides have those things in here. And it's good to see a few of these spaces again that I've met
before. COVID's taking a lot of things away from people and that's part of it so it's good to see
you guys. All right, that said, what I was covering in this more general presentation
was a little bit of Barnett Shale history. Everyone in here probably has lived it so obviously you
don't need me to rehash several of those pieces so those will be the ones we go through a little
faster. And then municipal inspection program data, right? So we looked at five different cities,
municipalities that were collecting quantifiable data, right? There's a lot of different cities
that have different approaches. There's a lot of qualitative information but qualitative is what
we're looking so for so we can actually judge performance, things like that. And then from that
effort we put together a database with thousands of wells inspected and the end result of those done
in a quantifiable way to say what does benchmarking look like, right? If we talk about baseball
players we say what's the average at bat etc. So we should have an ability to kind of quantify
performance and so it turns out you can. So that said, you know the Barnett Shale area, you're in
the middle of it here and you know the background that gets us to unconventional shale gas happening
here in our backyard which is different than a lot of places before including in Texas history,
right? When you have an urban environment up against this unconventional shale gas activity.
This slide here will play the whole thing from you but for you, hopefully you've seen this before
because it's been a lot of different presentations before but I'll only go until it turns red, right?
So the traditional vertical is what it was in red and this is what it felt like in a very localized
area. As soon as it was known that you could go and be successful with you know a non-vertical base
you know taking it laterally into the shale then you see the red takeover become the larger portion
of this that you've seen the presentation. So you've felt these but this is that upward swing that
happens. All right, you've lived it. Population is the next thing that we're all feeling right now,
right? So our area, the DFW area, is getting roughly 280 people a day move here on average. So
couple that with what we've been feeling for a while and you're going to have people there moving
into right where there's actually gas wells today too. So not new information to this crew here.
So that said, right? So key points as I look through the history and things we were involved
in some of these. Some of these we read about and learned about just like everybody else.
Some of the initial concerns voiced in 2008 and they were very local or municipal in nature and
the collection of data became a piece of the story. Make sure that data meant what you think it had
meant. In 2009 the TCEQ comes in and performs an inspection that verifies yes there are VOCs and
not just methane. Now it's not an always thing. It's very well specific but it meant there are
possible concerns in the gas and controlling leaks is your best way to minimize impact.
In 2011 we have the data itself from the Fort Worth study which is a nice quantifiable element.
Now I have more of a compliance purpose to it, right? Are these wells that are in our backyard
complying with the applicable rules? But there's other data to glean from that.
So in that there's 164 point source canisters meaning there's a leak,
collect in a canister, analyze it. They actually identified more leaks than they had anticipated
so at 164 they just cut it off. But if we looked into that data set we find something
consistent with the TCEQ pound which is there's some elevated benzene and other compounds that
are in that. Not a surprise again to this room here but it's localized. It's not all the time
and it's not from the pieces of equipment that people probably anticipated most specifically the
above-ground storage tanks, right? Is the point at which you actually had more VOCs in the actual
mix of the gas coming out. So that makes before everybody was very focused on wells. This means
really all these components become of interest to us in our inspection program for that reason.
2014, no reminder here, the citizens spoke up so we feel these pressures. We've got some concerns
that actually led to a short-term ban that was here and then more learning to live with it,
control it, work around it. House Bill 40, probably know plenty about that. Luckily by that time many
municipalities had already been doing quantified based approaches. Graham Curry is one of them.
They did a review in 2015, an audit, there's a copy that we did here, looking at the different
operators. I think that of them it's listed on here. I'm trying not to get into every detail
that's in here because I can go down to Rabbit Hall 40, but the specifics of it is two very large
operators indicated they actually never had a leak, which of course is impossible.
You've probably got into a nuance of definition, but by this point in history we have a true
definition for that. So in this case, let's put a leak as right, there's normal emissions that are
expected in operating conditions and pneumatic equipment specifically, but the kind of leaks
we're talking about are the ones that the operators would want to fix because they're losing gas and
equipment's not operating correctly. So the actual definitions and elements that we used
for our review is in 2016. We get something called QUAD-O-A, probably several of you are probably
familiar with some of the elements of that. This introduces a technology that can be used to quantify
and an acceptance by regulatory agencies, which is optical gas imaging, where it allows us to see
at least some minimum threshold, so 10,000 part per million on a typical day, sometimes better,
as a threshold to look for leaks quickly. And that is what's used in Denton's inspection program today.
By 2019, municipalities are starting to feel that pressure of redevelopment and what happens
post-production, right? So think of it as there's a drilling phase, short measured in days, a hydraulic
fracturing and flow back phase measured in weeks, and a production phase where it will make gas,
which if it's a good well, maybe 10, 20 years. A bad well, probably shorter. But after that,
there will be redevelopment that shows up. And so there's a disconnect between the rules
that govern the let's get energy and do it safely and effectively versus the risk of redevelopment.
And it's just, it's not that they're terribly different, it's just that they are different,
right? More TCEQ versus railroad commission in that sense. So I'll leave that said here.
One of those key redevelopment ones that keeps coming up again and again is NORM, so naturally
occurring radioactive material. In this case, it's in the equipment itself. Think of it as
arteriosclerosis for gas wells, right? So it's a scale that builds up and it happens when temperature
differences, right? So a delta in temperature would be a good place for the scale to build up
or pressure changes. Those are going to be your key points. So elbows, those ASTs again. This one
happens to be in flower mound. And this is one where we have such elevated NORM in the tanks.
Again, the equipment, that equipment is taken away, this problem should be taken away to an address.
But sitting there, if we compared it to what we say is the high end of normal background,
you can see it has a radius that's going off the pad side. It's short. It's not affected by wind
direction. So we looked at this enough for flower mound to get comfortable, like okay, what are the
limits of impact so we can communicate it to both the property owner and others? This one was
suggested as probably a leak because we see the trees. We have the ones that are healthy and green,
the ones next to it and black there. So there's probably another problem on the pad side,
has nothing to do with the NORM. But that said, post-production now looked at some of these
problems. So what I mean by that is at the end of the production phase, it's good to know what
pieces of equipment have issues, where they were. So when they're removed, we can document
those issues have been removed. There's now a suggestion of releases or spills or remnant
impact for when redevelopment comes next. Does that make sense? That's not required by the
Railroad Commission who are operating for operating reasons, but it is important for the next
redevelopment folks. So the more municipalities we've worked with, the more they wanted to get
this level of information. So right now in your inspection program, you do this, right? So when
we go to a pad site, we have the equipment to actually change if the well has been plugged,
for example. We know it's about to be plugged. We'll start collecting this data so you'll have
that information going forward. If we're there, we can get it. So one interesting take home,
and this was at that pivotal point when Denton switched from kind of more qualitative information
to quantitative. One of the operators said, "Hey, if we do fine inspection, you're not going to find
anything we don't find." And so under like lessons learned, there's a lot of vibrato that happens
from operators. And it's not to knock them. Some operators are fantastic, and they care as much
about everything we collect, and they get on it quickly. And then some other ones, maybe they
don't have the resources. But in this standoff, if you will, we did meet at high noon. Very Texas.
We showed up with our crew, and I think they had hired a crew because they probably didn't have one,
and they were using optical gas imaging cameras too. And so I think he was unfamiliar with that.
And on the first one, we found eight leaks. On the second one, they chose the pad site. They
had it all ready. We found 11. So this operator was hearing the same information from his own people,
and we didn't hear from them again about inspecting pad sites. So one was an above-ground
storage tank that actually had a failure in the well that was pushing the gas out. So it made like
a 20-foot area that was above the low explosive limit. So if you're going to pick one to have
us visit, this would have been the last one. So that at least tells you, if you don't inspect with
the right equipment, the operators, not because they're bad people, but if you don't have the
right equipment, how are you going to find the right answers? All right. Subgrade leaks is another
problem we've seen. So this is away from equipment, not the well, not the separator,
not the above-ground storage tank. The more pad sites you have that are separated,
you'll have connecting equipment with them. So some of them in Flower Mound have been found by
joggers. Hey, there's a whistling in that field. So this is one that was on a pad site. So you can
see with optical gas imaging cameras what we would say, "Hey, don't park there. You'll have
a problem." So it can have unsafe conditions on a pad site. So again, the benefit, using old
direct reading equipment, just think of how much you would have to walk around to find these things.
So again, a benefit. What's that in DIN? That one is in Flower Mound. Okay. The top one was in DIN?
Top one was in DIN. Okay. All right. So I've kind of run through a lot of what is now US history.
But from that and looking at the data sets we have and the things we have learned,
and I'll mention a little bit more about what we call a leak rate. So in the most simplistic form
there is, the number of leaks you have found, meeting the definitions that were set forth here
in and on your inspection reports, divided by the number of wells. So the Fort Worth one, which just
had 164, or they recorded more, 164 is what they took samples of. So the number of leaks by the
number of wells, there were 1.17 at the time that work was done. So keep that in mind. So 1.17. So
that means for every one well there's a little more than one leak on the pad side. That's all that
means. The bottom part of this is I think operators and the community started to learn more about what
this was and there are actually ways to be doing this more correctly. From the citizen point of
view and the stakeholders, hey, less leaks means there's less things in the air. I didn't want to
even know what was in your stuff. That'd be great if it stayed in and that you sold it and I cooked
a hamburger on it. That's great. On the operator side it meant high enough up when they learned of
the leaks that means their crews were probably not doing everything they were supposed to be doing
and so that created an incentive at the lower levels of the operators themselves to perform
better. So don't take my word for it. I'll show you data of how that worked. Or as Yogi Bear said,
you can observe a lot just by watching. It's probably sad that my three children can quote
like probably 15 or 20 Yogi Bear quotes. It's funny to me, but you know, I think only me.
All right, so the program data. I know I haven't gotten to Denton specific. Am I still okay?
Context is helpful and some of this work you guys did. This is the data from doing it in a
quantifiable way that we have together now. So we looked at if it was above 50 micro Rankins per hour.
That's the point at which you need to label equipment and then manage it appropriately. So
it's norm containing past that. So that's a threshold. That is not really based on a health
and safety number. It's really almost like a mythical number here in Texas and other people
sighted in other states. It's said that number comes from the gamma concentration if you're
walking around the state house. I don't know if it's true. I've never gotten in there with my gamma
scintillometer, but someday. If somebody knows somebody, let me know. We'll verify that. The second part is near equipment inspection,
which means when we're looking at individual pieces of equipment with optical gas imaging cameras to
actually identify leaks like I just showed you. So we were able to get multiple cities. You see them
listed here, including Denton. Number of wells inspected over that time period. So each time
it's inspected, it's a singular. I may go to that well each year, but each one is just one event.
That's 2,659 individual wells. On those pad sites that would include 8,063 pieces of equipment,
such as separators above ground storage tanks, compressors. And then we have a group of other,
because there's ancillary equipment that supports this and comes and goes. But that just gives us a
category we needed to compartmentalize these. And then five cities, as I mentioned, and there were 20
unique operators, right? Some would change over time, sell equipment, but they would operate
differently. So we felt this is a good grouping to look, because we have small cities and we have
large cities. The criteria, this gives you the formal definition of a leak. I won't read it to
you because we'd all be asleep, but this way you have it. But by numbers, using an optical gas imaging
camera, even on a bad day, we have limits to what a good and bad day is. We can see a 10,000 ppm
leak of methane by the methods that we use. That's very much specific to QUAD OA, which is an EPA
process. And then on NORM, we're using equipment, the same equipment, same tools the Railroad
Commission would use to evaluate NORM. And we're able to see down and we use 50 again as our threshold.
All right. That said, this is the Denton program. You have a high, moderate, and a low
priority in your pad sites based on its proximity to a sensitive receptor. And at the end of all of
our inspections, the ones that have changed, some have gone back out because buildings have been
removed, some have come closer. So we put those together and then we communicate with staff on,
here's what we're seeing, and then make some decisions on how to move them up and down so
now they have a frequency that's consistent with your program. Beyond that, there's different things
we do based on the sensitivity. The further away ones, we're very interested in the function of
the equipment. It always includes the well, the separator, the AST, any other equipment on the site.
That's what we refer to as near equipment, right? So we're answering the question of how are these
performing? As we get closer to sensitive receptors, we also collect data on the fence line because if
we found a leak, we know the next question that Michael's going to have for me is, okay, well,
what does it look like over here, right? So we get that kind of data as we get closer to receptors,
but that's what this says here. So this is what your most basic near equipment, right? So everybody
has this, right? So I won't wait for all these to play, but we can see leaks readily with the
equipment. And quickly, another thing that Dent has done is you've actually taken all the infrastructure
and it's all been put together in a GIS database. So it's all tracked and understood. So if there's a
particularly problematic piece of equipment, right, we know exactly where it is within a sub-meter
accuracy. And so that's just the way we collect the data. In addition to the near equipment,
right, the fence line may have any number of things, again, based on that program that we put
forward. So everything from noise, total VOCs, and all of the decisions on what to include
is based on, you know, ever-changing research at the time and information from multiple states. So
you have probably the most comprehensive set now. So if there is something really interesting
happening, this would be the way to understand it early. And then if needed, and we've only done
this I think once or twice, I think when Dr. Banks was here, if they have fence line exceedances,
so we have contingencies for what happens next. If there's a VOC, we'll actually take an air sample.
We have a GCMS back at the office and we can actually look at the chromatogram and tell you
exactly what's in there and give you estimates of concentrations. If it's H2S, we'll take a sample
and get lab analysis. If it's even more significant than that, we can deploy real-time monitors that
are connected to a cellular link and then we can know real-time. Right, so these are things that
are just, if needed, you can use them. So let's talk Denton for a moment. These are the pad sites
that are within the city of Denton, right, so inside, not the ETJ. And then from '21, right,
so since we've wrapped up '21, we have all those data sets here. We have 80 leaks. These are action
items from the first part of the year, 11 norm exceedances, 54 of the action items were corrosion
on equipment, and then one had a produced water leak, right. So all these things are identified,
communicated to the operators, and in this case, followed up by city staff, right, for the
verification that these things have been addressed. And in this case, all the action items identified
in 2021 have been addressed and right now the ones for 2022 are on their way to being addressed.
So let me get back to the data sets, the thing quantifiable, right, so the leak number versus
the number of wells, the number of norm exceedances of 50 divided by the number of wells just gives us
a tool, probably more cartoony than you need for this crowd. My purpose here is to say a leak could
come from more than just the well, right, so we're going to itemize it by the number of wells, but
wherever it is on the pad site, because they're actually supporting equipment. Those pieces of
equipment would not be there if there was no well, right, so it made it easy way to look through the
data set. So for example, if I have five leaks, as I do here, and three wells, we would have 1.6,
right, so if you remember we were a little over one for Fort Worth, we're carrying that data forward
with me. So here's what Denton looks like when we switch to a quantified approach. So we were at 0.8
at the start. It's the red line that you see there. We saw it come down in 2019, we saw it come down
in 2020, and even in 2021 the data's not on your chart just because our nine-year data set didn't
include it at the time. You're at 0.406. So that's pretty good. I'd say that's probably the best
across the city's inspection wise that are happening now. So you have operators that have
learned to work with the program. They actually follow us out now and bring equipment and start
fixing things as we go. So there's a plus to this when they kind of learn the program. Operators like
XTO actually use the reports we generate for the city internally as their quality control requirements,
right, because I think their parent company, I'm not sure if they're still part of ExxonMove or not,
I don't know where to follow that, but required it of them to be quad away consistent. Now your norm,
in this case, you had 113 exceedances of that 50, 286 individual wells were inspected over 2021.
So that gives you a 0.395. And I'll show you that's still in the good category when I look at all the
data sets, but you'll see an increase with time. That makes sense, right? We're going to collect
scale over time. Now some operators get in early and start to remove scale and they drop their
norm back down, but some wait for the end of the life of the equipment to do it then. So it's just
knowledge of where are those issues so you know when that life of the pad side is over and the
next one begins. Flower mounds trends, so they started closer to two, right, when they, so that
means for every well there was two leaks on those pad sites. And they're now down closer to I think
just under 0.5. And that's held true for their 2021 data set as well. And they saw their norm rate
kind of move up a little bit again. They actually have some of the highest norm probably in the
Metroplex. Something really good about that water there, I don't know. Grand Prairie. So in 2015,
if you remember, when we did that audit, one of the operators that had no leaks, the city said we'd
like you to go out and just inspect. We're going to give them notice similar to what happened in Dent.
They're like, oh come on, we've already looked at everything. We know we're great. And we found
multiple leaks obviously on that pad side. And then the operator, in almost every case, right,
the rare case is that one of a standoff, right. In almost every other case, I think they're a little
bit, I'm, this is me speaking out of turn, but maybe a little embarrassed, right, that these leaks
are so easy to find. And they start to repair things and behave differently. Maybe it should be
no surprise if there were police cars on the side of the road, people drive different. It just kind
of happens. I'm not saying I'm like a police officer. All right, so Grand Prairie's trends,
Cop Pal's all the same. Haslett's an interesting one because I think they have a lot of shut-in
wells. So in their most recent trend, even they've come back down closer to 0.5 and realize the scale,
right, on the y-axis is updated to, so they're not all the same. Doesn't mean this one's much higher.
It's just, I've got, this one goes to 0.7, the other ones went higher. So let's take that data
together from all those, that time period of looking at it. Look at where they started each
city the first year that they did inspection versus where they ended. And so you have that there in
the second box and you can see roughly because of inspection programs, there are more than 50% less
leaks today in those cities. So that's a huge improvement. My, some of the engineer modelers
down the hall have threatened to take all our data and say how much gas is that and you know some
average emission factors related to that. So if you want to know your greenhouse gas improvements,
right, it's quantifiable as well. So that said, the norm rate of course went up about 50%. Again,
that makes sense operationally. It doesn't mean there's elevated risk, but it means it's data you
want to be knowledgeable of when that transition period comes. So put that together and say, okay,
what does it look like when we have an operational program and we're seeing the kind of in decreases
in the leak rates. We can come up with, you know, if I'm less than 0.5, every one well I find takes
two wells to have one leak, right? That ratio is pretty good operationally. So obviously the no
leaks ever over five years is unbelievable. But something closer to one leak for every two wells
is when there's an inspection program, people are watching and people are trying to fix things.
So that 0.5. So we had a little over one, if you remember the Fort Worth one, right? So we're double
that, but it's the probably first time a municipality showed up as a third party to the operations and
said we want to have a look, right? So we always see improvement when people start looking. Moderate,
probably up to 1.5. When we found pad sites that were decently run, but having leaks, probably
closer to that. More than that, there's probably operational issues and so we would say that's
performing poorly. And then on the flip side of that, the norm rate, I've given you some thresholds
based on that data as well. So if you remember for Denton, right? We are currently 0.4 and 0.3
something. So you're in the green of this right now as I compared you to your peers.
Sometimes we get asked where are the leaks? And again, temperature deltas, pressure deltas, right?
Those are your key points where you'll find the collection of norm and you'll find more emissions
that are happening. So obviously the separator itself is the most common point. It's the dump
valve. It's just the way it's designed. Functionally, there's probably room for improvement on it.
And then norm, obviously the above ground storage tanks, right? So from what I've just presented,
it's probably not a surprise, but it's good to know. So if we went to benchmark wise, right? So
I've got that 1.6, that example I gave you of a fictitious site, right? So that would score as it
being poor performance if I went out to a pad site with three wells and I found five leaks. So city
wise, right? This is what we have. If I just look at Flower Mound data, when they began their program
in 2014 versus what Flower Mound looks like today, right? So 0.47 today meaning 2020 data, the last
it was in this data set. They're about the same or a little bit better right now. So I mean that
improvement was very significant and their norm rate went from being kind of in that moderate level
to now they're pushing the limit and getting a little bit over into that high level of norm.
And that's consistent with anecdotally what we see in that data. They just have more equipment
with norm. Now is that operator specific? We'd have to tear it into the data a little more
to answer that. I have thoughts, but I'll hold those. That 2015 audit done for Grand Prairie,
right? So that was the pad site. It was a 1.45. Remember my 0.5 is that threshold for where we go
from good to poor or good to moderate. So today that very same pad site. So this is not data wise
for the city. This is looking at a pad site saying how is that pad site doing, right? So that one's
come down to 0.5 today. That one happens to be surrounded across the street in all four directions
with houses, right? So that one is a high priority for the city and it's important that they keep
an eye on it there in Grand Prairie. So they like seeing these numbers and being quantifiable
on performance. Now the norm rate on that one, so now we're down in Grand Prairie,
but they had none above 50 has remained that way, right? So that's probably formation specific or
this operator runs a program of de-scaling their equipment. I don't know the answer to that question.
All right, so I've given you your rates and you kind of have them on the bottom here. These are
the individual operators and so every year we do a summary report and I know I'm a little bit wonky
and into the data, but data helps you make good decisions. So this gives you your individual
operators. I did put a pie chart off to the right. That's important because what if the operator has
one pad site, right? Versus who are most of these pad sites? So performance should be judged in that
context. So it's just helpful, but if I looked at that point five as my guide of good performance,
I mean most of these are falling right there and XTO, which had just a one because if it has one
on this one pad site, well that's where they're at and that's the case. They don't have a lot of
sites for you over here. I think you only have two pad sites. As far as norm,
your largest operator actually doesn't have most of the norm.
One of your smaller ones has more norm in their equipment and again maybe that means that their
operational process is to address at the end of the life of the piece of equipment,
but now their equipment is properly labeled. Many of these things were not labeled, not evaluated.
There's not a requirement for them to go out and look at norm, right? So it doesn't happen unless
someone goes up and has a look. So that said, in my presentation it was more general. I was asked to
put together what do you think the future holds in this area now that we know okay we can quantify it,
the tools are out there, the process to collect the data and to present it so it's helpful to
the operator, helpful to the stakeholders. I think there's going to be more scrutiny on the pad site
redevelopment end such as you know building over wells or not. Rail commission has no rules on
building over wells. In fact, there's several things that have already been built over wells.
Municipalities have started to look at maybe we need some limitations. Fort Worth has the requirement
of a monument, so there's Flower Mound, so there's Grand Prairie, and a five-foot setback on those
form of wells. That's a hard conversation to have because there's a limiting of what can be reused
there. That wasn't when the operation began, right? But nonetheless, any of those redevelopment
options, cities are looking at what's important to us. And then surface inspections, when the
equipment's gone and transitions to its next use, that's part of that post-production inspection.
And so if it happens to be at the interim or at the final, so interim is we're ready to remove
everything but pieces are still here. Final, everything's gone so we can actually have access
to the surface. That post-production inspection is part of your program because if you're paying
us to show up and that well happens to be gone for this last year that they've paid into it for the
inspection, we're going to get you that kind of data so it's helpful to you guys. And I think
pad site inspections, I think more municipalities will probably, and even operators will go to,
okay now we can know what a benchmark is, we know what the tools are to inspect properly. I think
you'll see them start to be better at, at least I'm the last half full, but that's my hope. I think
that's it, you have survived it. Any health questions? Awesome, thank you very much. Yes.
That went rather smooth and quickly. You want to start down here and just work our way around?
I don't have any specific questions, that was great. Thank you, sir. Adam, do you have anything?
Um, thank you. This is really educational. This may not be for you, but maybe then. How is, yeah,
how is this being funded? I'm interested in who's paying to have the inspections done and going
forward, redevelopment, I think that's what our city council would be most interested in.
Who's on the hook for what costs to make sure that it's safe to redevelop? Sure, well since you have
your director here, you want to say? I believe it's all paid for by the operator and it's built into
the program. There's a cost for any operator to come into the city and do things, but I'm on the
outside of that, so. Right, so to directly answer your question again, Michael got into environmental.
We have a fee structure that operators pay to operate within the city of Denton, so there's a
certain fee structure that's charged for that. So those fees offset a lot of this. Now we go above
and beyond, so a portion of that inspection is offset through Denton dollars as well. It's not
100% necessarily captured by the fee charged to the operator, because we're wanting to make sure
we're being a good steward for the residents of Denton to get that data. So we're looking at that.
The fee structure will be revised or re-looked at in the coming year, and that may actually come back
to 100% cost recovery, depending on how that comes out. Currently it's not quite there. Okay, and to
the secondary part of the cleanup or the aspect, there's actually funds at the state level to do
that if we need to fall back on that. There's bonds in place to operate within Denton that can
go back against on if we need to do some extras there with those operators. So there's various
mechanisms in place to protect our interests as far as how that pad site operates. Does that answer
the question? Yeah, thank you. I did have one, I know I was thinking more specifically for you.
In your expert opinion, what needs to be done at a site for it to then, for you to say this is a safe
place for people to reside, say, you know, once it's... So like when we transition, so post-production,
I'll use that, PPIs, we've called it, we were answering those questions more and more now.
You know, I was asked that exact question by the City of Arlington, right? They had come to Council,
we want to rezone and have the pad sites now turn into neighborhoods, homes on things.
And I think the Council kicked it back, again I wasn't part of that discussion, and they said we
need somebody that can speak to what comes next. I happen to be active in not just the air quality
and inspection portion of this, but in the due diligence world. If you get really bored,
I wrote a textbook on environmental due diligence. It's like, how do we answer those questions both,
you know, legally, liability-wise, all those other elements. And so we actually came up with a program
called post-production inspection. So now Graham Ferry and Arlington have actual guidance of what
does that look like? What should I look for now that you're gone? So a 10 by 10 grid has a certain
amount of information collected, right? So a high resolution understanding of an iterative set of
data, right? So if I don't find this, this, this, or this, then I know these other things can't be
there. But if I do find one of these, then I do all the things that follows afterwards, whether it was
my gamma centillometer said there's a high point twice background. Now I'm interested in any number
of radionuclides that are related to the norm weights if that happened. And so that's all knowable
real time. We certainly speak towards methane and any other possible leaks because there have been
ancillary lines that have been left behind, and so you want to make sure those are not problematic,
but there is a specific list of things to do that we've put together. And so that's now been used
because on the due diligence side, many people in my office are very busy with all that.
We have residential developers that are calling and saying, can you tell us how to do this or
can you go do this? So that, that set of what to do has started to show up in due diligence world,
right? The people that are coming on want to know before I build, what can I know? So it exists,
it's happening, that conversation is ongoing. So I'm going to just jump in because I have a question.
So does that mean, so then the developer would hire you and pay for you to come in and then get
that report ready. So like if you were doing a presentation of development, then that would...
I may have swerved off the road in my scope here. I'm just going to say we're not posting
issue because we're posting disgusting inspections, not the post closure care of the sites. So it's
not going to be careful where we go too far on that. I'll speak to the post production inspection,
which we do as part of inspections. Right. So that's what I'm questioning. I'm trying to be
mindful of all, but to that point, a set of what to look at exists and somebody coming to the site
could be educated enough to look. What happens in Denton is we are actually collecting some of that
because if we step foot on the site, we have the equipment, the well's gone. I can't inspect the
well, but what I can do is immediately turn it into a post production. So the inspection report
that you get during the process of inspection, provided everything happened where we show up
and it's there and we can get access to everything, that kind of data would then reside at the city.
And then normal due diligence process would be, I'm doing a phase one. Phase one, I need to ask for
records and the city can respond with, well, here's our inspection report. And so that type
of data could exist in that scenario. Okay. Did I stay close enough? All right, good deal.
Pad side inspection. Well, I mean pad side inspection. Correct. As well as that are plugged.
I mean, correct. There are some we are not expecting because they are plugged,
right? We would not go to them because they're not active or in the inspection programs.
To that point, yes.
Go ahead, Brian. Kind of got to where I was coming. But back to your comparative tables
where you showed Denton related to other municipalities on the Barnett region. Could
you point to specific programs to why you would be performing better relative to our neighbors?
Or is it just simply chalked up to our inspection program? What would you have to say?
Well, I'll say, right. So I mean, all I can look is at the data, kind of a 10,000 foot level.
I would say, yes, you're performing better in general because your program is comprehensive
and your staff follows up on stuff. Right. So I'll say, yes, it's good for us to find,
communicate. We obviously communicate with the city whenever we're communicating with
an operator on our pad side inspection findings. But it takes the voice of the city to still be
there. I'm like, hey, how are we coming on repairing those items? Right. So I don't know.
There's probably one or two cities that are still about that active, but many of them don't have
that level of voice. Take Haslett. They're probably a smaller city. They have less staff to do the
follow up. So their numbers, when you come back out again, it's not everything that's been fixed.
Even if they say to us over the phone, it's fixed. There's not a person who's back there to verify.
So maybe I circle back with a trust but verify approach that Denton uses is effective.
Is that your question? Okay. Ed, I see you have a list over there.
You want to go ahead and get started on that? Okay. Thanks. How are you Ed? It's good to see you,
sir. Good to see you. Thanks for the presentation very much. Yes, sir.
Did you see any increase in leakage after the winter storm?
You know, I have to look at that. So our inspections in Denton are kind of two waves,
right? So there's a low priority pad site listing and we hit those every other year.
So there's some that we may not have seen, right? So I'll take those off the table data wise because
I wouldn't have data. But the low ones that are on the year that we would, we would have seen those,
the moderates and the highs. I don't, I'm going to say I don't think so. If you want me to look at
some data related to the pad site inspections specifically, but I'd say the 10,000 foot level,
no, because we, I mean, I have the, the current data and the data for 2021 and they appear consistent.
They appear to be things are being addressed. And so I'll say no based on a 10,000 foot level,
but not having gone through the data to answer that question and also knowing our inspections
are limited, right? Some of them I'll touch that one time and only the highs will we come back
another time, but those are going to be in the summertime. So it's only that first time that
would have probably been near the winter storm. Okay. I'm just curious, in terms of weatherization
and that sort of thing is obviously out of your hands. Is there a differentiation made between
low production and high production wells? I would believe so, right? Pressure is volume moving
through. In our data set, I don't have the operational information of individual wells,
right? I even don't know. Is this one shut in? Not shut in. Was it shut in for a long period of time
before? We visited with operators and trying to get some of that information. Some of them are
very protective, you know, Homeland security element. There's, there's a lot of question about
how much data people want to share. And I understand that. And so what we can do is we can show up and
inspect. And so we've, you know, we've gotten that data, but I do not have enough to say,
I do think you would find a correlation if you had enough information about how many metric cubic
feet of this was right over this period of time, only because operationally that makes sense to me.
Yeah. And there's a paper that was recently released that they discovered that low production
wells are frequently the greatest leakers. And I would say they get visited the least. Yeah. That's
probably why. And I thought maybe in the future, if there's a way that. So that speaks to maintenance
rather than volume. Yeah. That there could be a designation as to whether a well was low producing
or high producing. Now this is, this is wish me luck on this. The 2021 leak rate for Denton was 0.406.
That's right. How does this translate into actual estimates of the amount of methane release?
So these are the engineers that are down the hall for me, right? So, you know, they do things like
greenhouse gas inventories and such. And we, she's not had the spare time because, you know, we,
we get asked to do a lot of things. And so mainly we're responding to the contracts and things that
we have to get out the door, but you could look at expected emission rates related to specific pieces
of equipment. Some of those are known, right? So you could take the data we have, you could break
it apart by is that an above ground storage tank? And then we have some average as expected fugitive
emissions, for example, and you can do it by separator and then you can do it by well. And
you can have this number and then you can make an estimated period of time in which that leak occurred.
Right. So obviously we, we moved slightly away from totally quantifiable to at least semi meets
qualitatively. But some of that is, you could calculate away. I let my engineers get into the
specifics on the rates and the elements and the assumptions that, you know, match both the API side
and the EPA reference side. So, you know, it's a good question. And, but it's not at least in the
past that inspection component. Well, I'd like to, to just put up and further that any, anything that
can be done in your relationship with the city and with the gas well people here, anything that can
be done to actually quantify the amount of leakage would, would I think be something very valuable to
have seeing as how we are going to be working on greenhouse gas inventory and what we can do to
reduce it. So I would like to make that as a point to see if at some point we can actually get that.
Before you move off that, Mr. Schultz, I'll ask that one thing. Oh, sure. Just to make sure what he's
capturing again is the leaks. So if there's permitted emissions, we're not actually gathering
the data on that either. So if we did this, we would be able to possibly quantify the methane
coming out of the leaks, not necessarily the pad size at all. Okay, well that's a start. Does that make sense?
Yeah, that's a start. Okay, just want to make sure it's clear. Yeah, thank you. Just to, I think,
yeah. So there's 293 wells within the city limits and 203 wells in the ETJ.
My question is simply, and this might be for Michael, is how many of those wells
are inactive, plugged, or orphaned, or whatever? I'll say it's always going to be a changing number.
The number of plugged is at least as of when we finish our next summary report,
you'll have that number because it's on our figures. Okay. Right, so you have that number.
The ETJ will not have data in that one. Okay. Michael. No, we're working on a memo to come out
in the packet for your next month meeting on that. We didn't have all the final data just to make
sure it was accurate. We were checking all the sources because we do get notified and there may
be times we're not notified. So we want to make sure we were all inclusive in our spot. All right.
And may I ask one more? Just, I've not been able to find a really precise definition of rework
activities. Can you tell me what's involved and if any, if rework activities in any way
exacerbate leakage rates? I think that term is a kind of a general colloquialism for operators,
right? So it's a, we need to do something to make this system operate more efficiently, right? So
now it depends on what is operating less efficiently, right? So much of it is down all,
it could be things are affecting the open portion of the gas well to minimize what's coming through,
it could be propaganda issues. So there's so much variety to that question. I will say we certainly
are asked. So there's some cities that use us actively for any new work done on that site.
We go out and inspect afterwards. And, you know, so that in that case, right, if there were issues
related to leaks specifically, then those are found and addressed. And, you know, if I again had to
go from memory on that, just kind of anecdotally, I'd say probably 75% of them do not have new issues.
Maybe 25% do, but were they things that were happening between the last inspection and now
I wouldn't know that answer either. So I don't suggest that there's probably a higher number.
I like when there's more maintenance and activity on a site to look at things. I think you'll find
there'll be less leaks if I just look to the general data. Okay, I do have one more. And you
may have already answered this if you have, excuse me. But the leak rate and the wonderful reduction
that is shown on this. Yes, sir. What is it most attributable to? Is it inspections,
low production, capping? What is, why has it come down? You know, so I will call upon the law of
large numbers to help me with some of that, right, because we see it holistically across the board.
So I can't believe everybody just decided to get together and shut down their well. So I think
probably overall, when there's a scrutiny and you identify leaks, again, I'll call it an embarrassment
factor, right, and somebody can find a problem that's obvious to find on your pad site and
you're embarrassed to do it. Is that the person that's out in the field that now his boss knows,
oh man, I'm not fixing the snap valve fast enough, or I should bring a crescent wrench with me maybe.
You know, so I mean, several of these fixes are easy, right? So I mean, it's just minor maintenance,
but you can't see it if you don't look with the right equipment. So I'll say the additional
scrutiny on them in an inspection program is probably the number one reason. It has to be the
case, but look across all the different cities. Okay. Thank you very much. You bet. Mr. Stevens?
Yes. Thank you. Again, great presentation. Quick question. Is there a compliance component
specific to the quantity of gases that you may find during inspection?
And I imagine that's not your department, but is there a reporting process?
Sure. It has a responsibility to make sure, just to hear, thank you for the example of a jogger
running fast in the air, and there's gas hissing out of the ground. Is there a prioritization
system in place to where something needs to happen there as soon as and later?
So let me speak to the ask of regulatory compliance first, right? So it's not that there's no rules,
on a pad site operations. If it was drilled, I'm going to say, now I'm reaching to my memory bank,
I'm going to say September 15th, 2015, right? Post that date. And we certainly have had some
changes in administration since then where things have kind of gone all over. But if you are a post
that date, it is still my understanding that the quota, the process that I described, like going
out with the camera and looking for things and having a specific definition, those apply
to those. And if those leaks are found, they have to be reported, and there's a federal system to
track those, fix those, document along the way. So there's an obligation for compliance for those
things that we're talking about to be fixed. But unfortunately, very few wells in our DFW area are
post 2015. So we have to fall where you made these rule sets, which would be great, and would have
people doing the things we're talking about, but they're not retroactive. But there are some that
are post, so they have to do that. Now there's other larger pieces of equipment as you move off
to a compressor station, etc., right, some larger sources. They have other requirements and
communication and inspection elements. And that sets aside other things. There's other operational
things, right, the Railroad Commission looks at, that are not part of our inspection because we're
really very focused on the air quality piece. You can go back to House Bill 40 as to why that has to
be a focus of what you're looking at. But so there is compliance. So to that one, it exists. It's just
so thin, it's likely not going to answer the concerns that most municipalities have about
can this be done better, or can we limit the potential impact to off-site parties?
All right, so am I hearing that correctly, that it sounds like the federal government is the one
that would force repairs/compliance post-2015 waves? They have a, so there's a relationship.
Obviously, TCEQ has primacy for most air quality items, right, meaning they've been given authority
to enact and perform on air quality issues. Where that sits today, because I think our state is one
of those that likes to sue the government for things, I don't know who's taking what and some
of that. It's not to knock anything, it's just that's where we're at. Right now I'd say it's more of a
reporting element. I think you're going to have very few boots on the ground to verify, right.
There's just, the staff available at a federal level is even thinner than the staff available at
the state level. Thank you. Yes sir. I have just a couple. One, you made a comment at the beginning
of the presentation, and it just caught my ear. You said something like, well that's a leak that
they would want to fix, and I wonder if you have an example of a leak an operator wouldn't want to
fix. So we would not call something a leak. In fact, so our current approach, I don't have a
single operator that says that's not a leak, right. So I'm using terms. There are low bleed pieces of
equipment that we have very limited, right. I can still see those. So for example, on any pad side,
if we don't have the background on a piece of equipment that's leaking, we'll communicate,
can you give us a spec sheet so I make sure it's less than six standard cubic feet per hour, right.
That's a threshold of which there's a minimal amount, the volume is low enough, and it's just
by definition, again in quota A, those rules. So that's one that we make fine, but because it
is de minimis according to federal rules, right. They wouldn't want to fix it. They'd say, great,
it's operating like it's supposed to. Okay. All right. Thank you. Sorry real quick. Is that which,
what you meant by permitted emissions on a side? Right. So most of the pad sides probably have a
permit by rule. That means there's a threshold of emissions that you must stay below. And so even
their choices of equipment will be based on that, right. So that's a known, you know, ceiling for
them to operate. So every time a pneumatic valve opens and closes as it's supposed to, we could see
that and that has a volume, but that's within that permitted volume that is allowed that remains
below that ceiling. Does that make sense? So it's a leak would be when that piece of equipment
jams open and is blown back, that's the dump valve. That's the most common leak is that pneumatic
operating piece of equipment, but that would be permitted. And as long as they stay below a ceiling
and that ceiling is less documented by any sampling, it's based on an average well has what,
an average separator has what, I've chosen this model. And so these pieces all together emit this
much, that's below this much, the permit by rule is given. And so piggybacking off that, so the leaks
included in our data are the ones that were above the permitted. Correct. The things that we find
are not normal operating conditions. So then that would lead me to my next comment, which
Ed suggested, which we are doing the greenhouse gas inventory and those leaks would be pretty
significant information for us to know as this committee, if that would be something possible
that we could incorporate in our inventory. I think, because I mean, that's really why we do
these inspections anyway. I mean, I think so. I mean, similar to what we spoke about. So
yeah, as Michael indicated, there's permitted, abnormal. And so those are quantifiable because
there's assumed numbers that have been communicated to the state. We emit this much or less, so you
could have those numbers. And then you have a certain number of events that have happened that
we've identified. And then you could allocate assumed amount with each of those and that could
be counted. So those two together probably represent most full understanding of greenhouse
gases related to operating gas wells. Well, we might just need to come back to that at some point
in our greenhouse inventory discussion. I could introduce you to the other engineers who would love
to talk all day about that. Okay. And so I know we've been stopped on our discussion because of
the posting, which I'm a little disappointed in because we can't talk about plugged wells or
abandoned wells because it's not an active gas well. Is that what you're saying? No, I would just
say if we're going to get into the actual cleanup of impaction, that's beyond the inspection protocol.
So the inspections, if they contact an operator and the operator notifies that that well has been
plugged or abandoned, which we're aware of too possibly, that one would not then be inspected.
So if you have a question about plugging and abandoning, we can see if that's, if we can answer
that, we're going to be coming back with a memo next meeting to clarify how many, I'm trying to
give kind of a little bit of history of where it stands because some wells get added or turned off
for a while, brought back online. Others actually get plugged and abandoned. We want to make sure
we have that accurate number for you. Yeah, that's, I have questions about those too, but I think that
kind of speaks to that little no man's land that you were talking about before, right? Yeah. Okay,
so it's just important because one of the first, I guess, slides you had was the population and
didn't, right, and at this point land is becoming pretty valuable for the population. So at some
point we need to be able to discuss, discuss that in a different posting. Other than that,
I want to thank you for your time and all your information. This is really, really great. So
thank you. It's a pleasure to be a partner with you guys. Do you want to do it? Thank you. Thank you.
Shift B, here we go. All right, so we will move to item D, Receive a Report,
Hold a Discussion Regarding the Recycling Cart Tagging Program. I didn't see our solid waste.
Brandy Neilsen on the Cart Tagging Program, which are the interns who are out with the wagon
and tagging carts work with Brandy and with our group for education. We just want to give you a
little bit of background about that program and then also just the input. We still get a lot of
questions from people who don't understand what the recycling program is and any input you'll
give us about ways you might be able to reach people that we're missing. Hi Brandy, welcome.
Thank you. I didn't mean to overlook you, I just used to see a brine. I know, it's okay.
Are we ready? Yes. Awesome. Well, I'm super excited to be here today. I was going to talk
to you about contamination reduction efforts, like Kat said, specifically the Cart Tagging Program.
So you may see this in your neighborhood, but you may have not, but we'll talk a little bit
more about it. So real quickly, our agenda is to identify our issue, is to find the strategy and
then execute our plan. So high contamination, that is our issue. So 68% is where we used to be. So
I'm proud to say that is not where we are today, but this is where we were. So I wanted you guys
to see that high number. So when I talk about contamination, there are a few things that we're
talking about other than just trash that's going into the blue recycling bin. So there's a couple
pictures here as examples. So you can see yard waste. So yard waste should be diverted at your
curb, but we don't want to put that in the blue recycling bin. That wants to go in your brown
waste bin. Also, we have styrofoam here. So styrofoam is a recyclable material, but it's
a non-programmed material for the city of Den. So yes, it has a recycling symbol on it, but it
doesn't go in our blue bin. Same goes with plastic film. So we see that very often. So plastic film
can go back to a grocery store. It just doesn't go into our blue bin. So non-programmed material.
Also, you can see our peanut butter jar here. So it's a little bit dirty, so dirty recyclables.
If you think about it, sometimes there's things that are a lot worse than this. So food, there's
cat food, dog food, ranch, ketchup, whatever it is. And so it's kind of shaped or the market has
shifted over the past few years. So when this used to be maybe a little bit more acceptable and it
could slide by, it's not anymore. So now our MRF says no longer everything has to be super clean.
And so that's the message. We've always sent it. You know, empty, clean, loose, and dry has always
been our message. You also need to think about when it gets in the truck and it starts to compact,
that stuff will fall out and then it contaminates everything surrounding it as well. We see a lot
of clothing items. So people have great intentions. They may be done with this piece of clothing, but
they, you know, it's not done with its life and they want it to go somewhere else. But again,
the blue bin is not the place for it. So those things can go through a donation store. They can
go to any of the bins that you see around town, but we need to keep them out of that blue recycling
bin. So this is just a quick graph. So this information comes from our contracted recycling
partner, Pratt. So they provide us data every month. You can see here, we started in October,
so this is October 2020. So this was last fiscal year. At our highest point, we're at about 68%,
which we talked about earlier, which is fairly high. So around February, we said we need to restart.
We've got to do something about it. Our contamination is way too high. We had a lot of new staff
starting at this time. You can see where our interns began in July and you can see we had
already made progress down to 54%. And we keep moving down. Spoiler alert. So this is a great
graphic to kind of visually show you where is the contamination. So again, this was back in January,
February, when our contamination rates were fairly high. So these are the routes, residential routes
here in the city of Denton. You can see they're clustered by color. So that is an actual route.
Some are deeper, darker red. Those are 80 to 90% contaminated routes. Overall, we can say all of
the city of Denton is contaminated. We can't really pinpoint. There's a certain area. We can see that
some is a little higher than others, but we knew we had a big problem and it was all over the town.
So we can do this for both residential and commercial. The commercial map looks a little
different. Commercial is an open market here in the city of Denton, so they don't have to use the
city of Denton. So the spots, you know, it's not a cluster. They're just all over the map. So it's
harder to tell. So residential, what we were already doing, we already had an education and
outreach plan. So we use social media. We use Nextdoor, Facebook. We're always putting the
message out, always telling them, you know, empty, clean, loose and dry. Keep your recycles out of a
bag. Do not put plastic film. And then we always end a monthly newsletter as well. So we would send
out the Citizen Connect. It goes in utility bill. There's always a message in it, whether it's a
seasonal message about your Christmas tree, your wrapping tree, or wrapping paper, pumpkins,
whatever it is, there's always a message in there as well. We had the Forged Lisa. We had someone
else, but they were working with the HOAs trying to get in. When Lisa came in, that's one of her
major projects that she's taken on. And then at the curb, our drivers have actually been tagging
since 2019. So with the drivers, they have this little yellow tag. We leave it behind. We let the
resident know your cart has been contaminated. We're not going to pick it up until next week.
We ask them to clean it out. And then you can notice here that we do tell them what belongs in
the bin, but not necessarily what they've done wrong. So we'll talk about that here in a little
bit. Our drivers do have a little bit of a challenge. So, you know, they're automated.
They're driving down the street. They're grabbing the containers and they're tossing them in. They
can't necessarily see what's underneath the lid. So we can see contamination that's overflowing,
but we can't see what's hidden underneath that lid. So that got us thinking, you know, we need
something else. We need to do something else. So the cart tagging. So we're going to pilot it first
because we didn't know how it was going to go. We know there's some other cities surrounding
us that do something very similar. So we wanted to be a part of that. So we wanted to hire some
interns. So we have some paid interns that weren't easy to find, but we did find some interns widely.
And we were going to focus on those top contaminated routes. So we knew we had a problem.
We knew which ones were higher than the others. And then we needed to start there. So we're going
to use the existing equipment that we already had, which is that yellow recycling tags. We would take
that out. If you guys are not familiar, we just implemented a smart routing system, which is Rubicon.
That's what these two tablet views are here. So you can see there's a little small one that
says contaminated. So our drivers are actually able to mark that in their truck, take a picture,
and then it pops their houses yellow. So you can see as they're approaching the home, well,
the driver can do it and our car tigers can do it as well. And so the car tigers are in front of the
truck, flagging those containers, but we're on foot. So we can't do as much as the truck can do.
We needed to tell the community about it, let them know who we are, what we were doing, and why we
were doing it. So we went to a couple different areas. As Kat was saying, we put some Friday
reports out so that all the council members were aware. We knew that they'd be getting phone calls
and the Citizen Connect. We wanted to make sure we told them there. The City of Dent shared it on their
social media. We shared it on our social media. And then we wanted to start lifting lids. So
we went out. We started lifting lids and we quickly realized that we were not able to communicate our
message as clear as we wanted to. So if you guys are familiar with the cog, they have a whole
campaign of recycle right, know what to throw. They already have these. They're pre-made. You can go
and then kind of dress them up however you want to make them for your city, put pictures. So we
implemented a three-tag system. So we have a lot of residents who are doing a great job. Their peanut
butter jars are super clean, probably been through the dishwasher. And so we want to highlight them
and let them know, thank you for being a recycling star. And then we also have a couple of residents
who just need a little bit of work. So it's not terrible. It's not highly contaminated,
but they do have some items in there that do need to come out most frequently. It's styrofoam,
plastic film, super easy. We have a really quick rule that says if we can clean the cart out within
30 seconds, then we'll pull those items out for them. And we want to leave them a tag so that they
know we were there. Because if we clean it out, they have no idea that we were there. They have
no idea that they're maybe doing something wrong. So we just leave them a super friendly notice that
says, hey, we removed these items. You still are collected. But make sure as a reminder, these items
do not belong in the blue bin. And then the oops tag goes with that yellow recycling. So now this
gives us opportunity to tell them exactly what's in their cart that needs to be removed. So instead
of just telling them what goes in it, we're able to now tell them what doesn't go in there.
So even though we tried to tell the community as much as we could, there's still lots of questions.
The police were calling us on multiple times. Why are these people out here digging in my trash? And
so we have high visibility vest on. And so one of the things that we did, we just put a big city
of Dent logo on there. A lot of times people see us from our back as we're looking in a cart. They
don't know who we are. You know, we're driving a vehicle, but we park our vehicle into the block
and we walk. And so that was something that we needed to do. One of the other things that we
realized while we were out, some of our carts have been in the field for a long time and they're in
rough shape. And so the educational stickers needed to be updated. Some were cracked. A lot of people
aren't aware that we'll replace that cart at no charge. So no big deal. If your lid is missing,
if the body's cracked, the wheels are broken. Just give us a call. We'll come out and do that.
So that's a part of this program as well. So if we see something like that, then we'll flag it for
the customer and then get it taken care of for the next week. So real quickly, we already talked a
little bit about the program details, but we are going to target those highest contaminated routes.
First, we are going to jump on the route with the driver. So like I was talking about earlier,
we're going to be ahead of the driver right on there. So he knows exactly what we're doing. He
can see us. He can see our little dots and we know where he's at as well. Because we are on foot,
we only are able to touch about a hundred homes a day per route where the driver's touching 1300
in a day. So just a little bit of that route is getting touched. So we're going to examine that
cart on the outside for damage. We're going to replace that educational sticker if it needs to
be replaced. Then we're going to inspect the contents. We're going to remove the contaminants
if we can. So we have that 30 second rule. We've had a couple of interns, you know, first intern
necessarily didn't want to clean it out. My second one wanted to drop it on the ground and
clean everything out. And so we had to kind of make a rule and say, we want to help, but we can't
spend all our time on one car. And so 30 seconds, we were moving. If it's 15% or greater, then we
will flag them. We will not go back and collect it. So we do leave them lots of tags that tell
them exactly what needs to come out. And then, you know, we'll go back and we actually go back
on a second audit. So the next week we'll go back to the same homes that we previously tagged.
And we will check and see if they have cleaned up their act or not.
So what does that tell us? So that gives us all of our outreach information. So while we're out
looking in carts, we're able to see, you know, what do we need to tell the residents? And so we
can target that message on next door, straight to one route, we're seeing something. And then we can
target, you know, to that area, tell them. So diapers, a lot of cities have diapers issue. I
don't really think we had a diaper issue, but apparently we do have a diaper issue. So we see
quite a bit of diapers. Flies are a telltale sign. If you open the lid and you see flies, you know,
that cart is contaminated. So bags, number one problem for us is in bag recyclables
and also plastic film. So the most common thing that I hear when someone calls in and they're
upset about us flagging us, you know, I've been doing this for 10 years and, you know, I have to
tell them, we understand that, you know, but now our numbers are high and we're really, you know,
just paying a little bit closer attention than we always have. So you can bag your recyclables.
It's not the best practice. We ask you not to. If they have to, there has to be a clear bag. So we
see a bag recyclable and it is clear. We can see it's clean recyclables in there. We will leave it,
but the request is no bags. Also the donation items that you see in there as well. And then also it
just brings visibility to the program. Once again, let them know who we are. We get to talk to people.
One of the best parts is everyone gets to come out and ask, what are you doing? Most people are
friendly. Some, you know, a little upset when they first start, but we can flip that conversation
because they were transparent with them exactly why we're doing it. And then has it been an issue?
So this is a quick graph to kind of shows you. So the top graph shows you every route that we have.
You can see this is for our entire internship. We still haven't touched 12/31/13/13 or 15/15.
But the blue line represents how many homes we touched per route. And then the orange line
represents how many homes are flagged as contaminated. The bottom graph shows you
by percentage. You can see some of them about 40% contaminated as our highest routes. Again,
we're not able to touch all the homes on the routes. We have revisited the same routes over
and over. They keep coming up in the highest contaminated route. So we can go to different
sections. So we've touched about 15,000 homes and about 4,000 were considered contaminated.
One of the new things that we are tracking is that notice. So we haven't always tracked the notice.
We just left the notice and moved on. But we actually are cleaning it out for the customers.
So we want to consider that as part of our contamination numbers as well. So that number
is down there. So it doesn't reflect in the earlier data that we were compiling. So about 27% of homes
were marked as contaminated. And then our repeat offenders, when we go back, about 40% of them have
not cleaned out their cart. And some don't bring their cart to the curb because they know they're
coming. So this is a wonderful visual. If you remember, our map showed you where we were in
January. This other map on the other side is where we were in December. So we have a recent map.
We're missing some employees who know how to map. But you can see all the yellow dots, which is
awesome, all the green dots. We still have some shaded orange there, which is not red. So we will
take that as a win. But we are moving in the right direction. So this is our overall result. So you
can see that top line where we were last year. You can see where we are today as of March.
The end of this month, we'll get the new numbers. We did actually see a little bit of an increase.
You can see we kind of stalled out from December to February. And then March, we've seen an
increase. And that was in residential. Our commercial is doing great. They're down to 39%.
Same efforts are being done there. I don't know what happened. But it'll be interesting to see
what our April numbers are. So next steps for us. So we've been running the internship program
since about July. So we want to be able to get all this data and figure out what do we do with it.
So how do we enforce it? What do we do with the repeated vendors, who 40% aren't cleaning out
their carts? Some cities do fines. Some cities will remove the container overall. We haven't
figured out what our decision is going to be yet. But that's what's on the horizon for us.
We'll continue to educate, like always. And then postcards, that's something that's coming new. So
go into the highest contaminated routes. We'll be sending out direct mailers to them.
And then just continue to brainstorm. And then like Kat said, we're happy to take your suggestions.
What you think would work best, we are happy to hear it. And that's all I have.
I have some questions and comments, but you want to start? Do you guys have any?
I'd rather someone else start. I've got one for sure. It was on your very first slide. The
definition of contamination, I understand what counts as contamination. But that like, so take
45%. That's where we're at now. Does that mean if you have 100 pounds of any recycling container,
45 pounds is not recyclable in five weeks? Yes. Oh, wow. It's a big deal. It's a big deal. It really
is. Wow. Okay. Thank you. I also want to commend you for what you're doing. This is an interesting
connection with our last presentation. If you go looking, you get improvement. Yeah, absolutely.
Good job. Thank you. I just want to say thank you so much. I love this program. I think it's
really inventive. And you guys are just doing such a fantastic job about the community engagement
element too. It's really, really commendable. So obviously I've lived in a lot of multi-families
around town and I know there's long discussions about the availability of recycling and how the
solid waste in those types of housing units work. But for the housing units that are multi-family
that I have lived in that do offer recycling, obviously that is directed and managed by the
multi-family administration, right? Not necessarily each individual resident having direct control over
where that waste goes, how it's collected, where they get notified even. And so I'm just wondering,
say I move into town because I'm a new resident and I want to attend a college or whatever,
and I move into a multi-family and I don't necessarily receive any materials that tell
me how to engage with our waste system. So I'm just kind of curious where ideas or what programs
might be out there for that kind of resident. And then when you do have a little bit of separate
question, but when you do have multi-family with the availability of recycling, how they can
communicate to their residents about what sort of waste management education needs to go on within
their community. So I can start, Julissa may want to speak a little bit because she is our pro for
that. But one of the things that we've talked about for a long time is like a new resident packet.
So currently this is residential, not necessarily multi-family, but it could be the same.
So residential, when a brand new build comes in and they build the house from ground up,
they get new carts, they do get a welcome packet that tells them a little bit of information.
But if someone's tenant moves in, moves out, they don't get anything. So I mean, our neighbors next
door recycle different than we recycle here in Dent. It is not consistent across the state,
you know, at all. And so we do need some sort of packet. And that is something that we've been
talking about for a while that we need to make happen. Do you want to come talk?
Can you guys see me?
So I do the education for the multi-families. And what I normally do is, so Brandy, when we meet
we have our top contaminated commercial routes. So from there, they'll actually divvy them up into
DISD. So Kim will take care of those. I'll take care of multi-family. And then we also have
Shelby Smith in Solid Waste who will do the other commercial industrial restaurants, etc.
So a majority of the times I'm visiting multi-families that are predominantly on
the highest contaminated routes. So I'll leave them information to have these little move-in
multi-family info cards. So we give them a card to include in their move-in packets for their residents.
We also give them the reusable apartment bags that have a handle on the bottom so they can empty them
directly into the containers that they have on site. And then we also give them an apartment
planner. How do you use your reusable bag? Don't just dump it directly into the container. You
want to reuse it and refill it and repeat. So that's what I do with a lot of the highest
contaminated ones. And then we've also started doing events. So I've been feeding very hungry
college kids with Little Caesar's pizzas and, you know, just being able to try and get back in there,
especially now that we're opening back up. But offering events because there's a lot of
specifically student-run living that they have a lot of different events and they want to engage
a lot of their residents. But I was at Uptown last week, so Uptown Apartments off of 35,
and they did an Instagram Live with me. So I did a recycling presentation for them. They had 32
people on there and then their kiddos came in, got some pizza. So that's how I'm able to do
some education like that. But I'm definitely open to reaching out and any ideas you guys have.
And I want to jump in a little bit on that.
It gets a little bit deeper than that because when Jaleesa's out on site, she sees
they have a four-yard container here that's overflowing. They have an eight-yard container
in the back that has nothing in it. So then we go back and we ask them to make that little
operational change where they switch the carts around so that we can, you know, not have this
overflowing cart that they can't pick up or the trash is overflowing and using the recycling for
trash. So having Jaleesa on site, having Shelby, Kim, everybody on site, we make operational
changes. Also the multifamily with the locking lids, chute lids and locking bars to keep them
from being able to put those large non-recyclable items in their mattresses, giant rubber-made totes
full of cat litter. Yeah, it's amazing what people think might be recyclable.
I just, are the notices, the yellow tags and all, are they bilingual? Yes. Good.
Yes, and I didn't even say that, but they do. When you flip them, they are bilingual on the back side.
Thank you. Are you on that again? No, we're moving right along. Do you have another one in?
Congratulations. Thank you. Go ahead, Mr. Steven.
My personal concern, I believe in the family, we do a good job of clean, recycle, but there's
opportunity for sure. Education will be the headliner. I do get the monthly newsletters and
I do read that on a regular basis. Styrofoam was a question in my house, so thank you for that
clarification today. Opportunity, well, practicality being one and then a suggestion. I've done some
work with the Army Corps of Engineers educating middle schoolers in St. Louis with regards to the
impact of dad changing oil and dumping the oil in the sewer and how it ends up in the water systems
and so forth. Throwing a empty potato chip bag on the street, nine times out of 10, that's going to
end up in the Gulf of Mexico and the 12-mile island thing or something like that. When we begin to
educate the children, it was the children became a tremendous workforce to help us clean up hot
spots, if you would, in the St. Louis, Missouri metro area. My point would be, or suggestion would be,
I did not see it, education is key. And so what about our youth, our older elementary school kids
slash junior high? Is there an opportunity to be able to maybe get to the science teachers to make
a presentation or to do an event, you know, at a school or something. Now, my daughter's a second
grade teacher, she'll be like, "Dad, we don't need anything else on our plate," but this is a very
important item. You know, sustainability is very important and I think that is a demographic that
we really, really want to educate now if we want to make long-term your presented future. So,
and then finally, in my office I do a lot of shredding, a lot of shredding. One of my challenges
is windy days, I'll see this shred all over my yard, you know, or even when the truck dumps it,
that shred is, you know, over the street. So is there a suggestion on how I could better handle,
you know, that aspect of trying to effectively participate in recycling?
Yes, so that is the one exception to bagging recyclables is shred. So you can use a clear bag
and they can see that it is shredded material in there. You can use a paper bag and a lot of people
just write shred on it so that they can see that. And then to the point of the schools, Kim's doing
wonderful things and she probably needs to come to a presentation to share that. So when did you
start? October? October? Yes. Yeah, so she's moved mountains since then and has a great story to tell,
but definitely we're in the schools. And then finally, you know, an incentivization program.
Yes. People are money motivated. Yes. And if I could, this is, if I could wipe out my
recycle rental fee, you know, because, you know, the, I'm getting the stars, you know, month in and
month out, you know, just something to consider. We might get more participation, you know, when
people said, wait a minute, I can save a few dollars here. We're in a, we're in a season where
you guys, they wanted taxes or just real estate taxes, just out of range. You know, but anyway,
those were the, those were the concerns that I had both personally and suggested that I think
would help us in the short term educate our elementary kids somehow by incorporating them
in a process to where they can almost become inspectors at home, you know. And then finally,
one thing I wondered, are there any small, we've had to make this up in my home where we've got
those plastic tubs and we can sit underneath the cabinet where we can throw those water bottles in
or something. I think we might even get cleaner recycle if, you know, we even have something like
that. Now for me, I'm willing to pay for or something like that. If, if you guys could make
that building nice and green recycle and might even print on that thing, what does not go in here,
so to speak. So anyway, that's what we have a little, but we don't really give them to residents.
But it is something that we can make happen. If someone calls them, we'll say, hey, you know what,
I have something for you. And we will take that. That's a great suggestion. I'm a former McDonald's
franchise. It's convenience, convenience, convenience. And so the more convenient we can make the
programs, the more practical I believe people will participate in. Yes. Thank you. So thank you so
much for this presentation. I have just a few comments and a couple of questions, but this is
fantastic. Great work that you guys are doing. So one, I just want to make sure that this presentation
can be uploaded to the agenda online so that we can see it. Next, I'm waiting for my Recycling Star
tag. So one thing I had, and you mentioned like the live stream, like I think having a live stream
with you guys and maybe as a council person or just random like employees like going through,
because like right now I want to know what about solo cups? Are solo cups recyclable?
Because if they're plastic, you know, especially for college kids, like if they're empty,
like I don't know, it says recycle on the bottom. Like you know, a live stream, like what about this?
What about this? You know, because some of those things like you think, you know, but
you know, it's, you just don't know. That would be kind of helpful. And then on contamination,
one of the presentations we had DISD, and I think there's a presentation on that coming up,
like the contamination DSD was just really high. One of the slides that we saw before.
So if we can have an update on that would be great. The next, I'm curious about municipal
contamination. Is that you do? Yeah. So I'll tell you that we are on it right now. So one of the
things, and we didn't talk too much about commercial, but we've done a ton of pilots. We piloted DISD,
we piloted multifamilies. So we actually take a wheel. I have some cheater slides for you that
I'll share. This actually, I'm presenting it at Texuano next week. So that's why you didn't get
the presentation at this time. Because, okay, so here it is. So this is just like a wheel of the
commercial. So we kind of broke it down route by percentage. You can see one route, what it looks
like. And so this isn't a good example, but you can see the city of Denton is about 5%. Some of
the other routes, that city of Denton piece is a lot larger. And we have seen some high contamination.
So one of the things that my team is doing, and with Julie's and Kim's help as well, they're
getting into the city of Denton buildings and they're inspecting not only what's in the container,
but what is the setup? Because what we have at our solid waste building is not what Catherine has in
sustainability. It's not what's here. I've been working here the past couple of weeks and I haven't
seen a recycling bin in my office. And so we know that it's not consistent. So when we work with
facilities to find out how can we make it consistent, and then when we get it consistent,
then we will do a city of Denton building only route and see what the true contamination is.
And then we know, is it bad? Is it good? And we'll be able to really just identify it.
Because there's a cart back here, but there's a black plastic bag.
Well, and that's another thing is that they're not responsible. They, being janitorial staff,
is not supposed to take the recycling out at any building. But it happens because the mine's empty
all the time and I don't know where it goes. And so the people in the building are responsible for
carrying those recyclables out, but do they know? And so one of the things we've done is we've talked
at our employee forum about recycling and what is and what isn't. And we talked about this,
so everybody knows. And we just got a question yesterday. She was like, "Can you put it somewhere
so I can find it? Because I'm confused." And so we really want to tailor that message to the
city of Denton building specific. So what are you recycling here? Because what you recycle at your
home is not necessarily what you recycle at work. And so Julissa is going to be building us some
posters. She already worked on it, but trying to put a targeted message, you know, binders and
obviously paper and styrofoam and stuff like that, that you would see in the building at work and not
at your home. So that's really great. I'm glad to hear it. And so do you guys also directly
talk with parks about park contamination? I know one of the things that we were able to do at
Avondale was get the tops. And I just look inside and it works so well. You have the top on it
and people are just throwing water bottles and gatorade bottles in this one and then, you know,
dog poop in the other one. So I mean, I know that's just one park that has that. So I mean,
and that's a parks thing and we're not posted for that. But as far as like cross departmental
communication or are y'all doing that? Yes. And so we have been working with them on doing some
audits at a couple of parks as well. And we've done in your ride, I mean, some of them with the
restricted lid, the restricted lid works, whether it's a dumpster or it's a park container, it does
work because it prevents them from putting other things or makes them think twice at least about
what goes in there. So we have, we have had conversation with them and we will continue
cats working with the educational and signage pieces with them as well. That's great. I mean,
we all know that recycling isn't the answer, but it is plays a big role. I mean, it's a part of it.
So thank you so much for all you're doing. Thank you. Appreciate it. Yeah, I have one suggestion.
So with the the recycle star, I know people like stickers and to put stickers on their waste bins.
I think with the star, there was a sticker, people would just stick it right on their waste bin. So
it wouldn't be something I earned, I take in my house, but it's something I show to my neighbors.
I love it. Oh, and you can just keep getting more stickers. Yeah. It's like your flag. Yeah,
you're like a double star, a triple star, right? You get that like neighborhood credit.
Yeah, no, that's a great idea. That's a good idea. I like it. I'd sport it. We could do stickers all
day. All right. Well, thank you very much. Thank you. All right. Well, we will move on to our next
stock report.
Is that you, Catherine? That will be me. I'm trying to change over to that. So we,
the Climate Action Plan, RFP, is live on the street now. We're very excited about that. I
would like to share the calendar with you that procurement shared with us. So you can kind of
see where the next milestones are. We may be able to save a little bit of time, depending on where
we are with receiving proposals, evaluation time, but you know, we're looking at that
July, August time very quickly. Okay, that's good. We will keep you posted as we go through this.
Okay. And then the metrics. All right. Wait, I have a question. Oh, you have a question about
that? Yeah. Oh, okay. Just because I don't know what comes first, is this, this is a process you
go through and you get like a bid and you take it to council and say this is what it would
cost. Is that, or has this been already approved? So it goes through a solicitation process.
It's a request for proposals. So we come in with a price component
and then it'll be evaluated. The proposals will all be evaluated.
And they'll go to council and then it'll go to council for approval. Thanks.
And then on the matrix, did you guys have any questions or comments?
On the current matrix? Nope. Everybody okay with that?
It's a solid waste discussion on there that when Brian was here, we just got to come back
more about the renewable gas plan. It is still on the matrix. Yes, sir. It's still there.
I couldn't remember.
Where is it? Last row. Oh, there's two pages. Okay. That's it. I was like, okay. Yeah.
And then there's some that will go off after today. So all right.
We're ready to move on to concluding items. Anybody have anything you want to add?
Marce? Brian? Given we couldn't fully discuss it at today's presentation over the gas inspection,
I was wondering if we could touch on what our policies and procedures are post-production
for our pad sites and wellheads. So particularly looking at when a pad and adjacent to the paddus
is redeveloping or going into a different type of use, what governance authority we have over it,
what policies we're allowed to enact or oversee for those sites, and maybe just a sample of what
current conditions for examples of what happens today with those sites. Yeah. Did you get that?
Just kind of a continuation of something we couldn't go into today. Is that what's going
to be discussed at the next month's meeting that you all talked about with this post-production?
Well, we also, he also discussed that there's a memo coming on abandoned wells or flood wells.
And so maybe we can just incorporate those two together.
We can incorporate it together in the future. The new part will take longer to pull together
than the plug-in event. So since the plug-in event was a question that came up in the past,
we're trying to get that addressed by today. So it'll come back for us a memo.
So can we receive that in a future agenda, just the memo and then a future presentation
over the post-production phase? We'll do our best for the next meeting.
Timelines, whatever, of course. Correct. Thank you.
Adam? I just, I'm curious. I don't want to make that even more complex than it is.
So I find that that, but because we're under, what are we doing?
Including items, we're just suggesting if you have something specific and concise on a presentation.
Oh, specifically concise. No, I have something vague and wandering.
I'm not going to be at the next meeting. I'm kind of bummed because I wanted to hear about
the abandoned wells because I noted the last meeting I was on a field trip with students
and I noticed that several, well I know one down the road from my house has been capped and the
road now goes over it and the new development that's going in south of UNT over there.
And then the vintage wells are, both of those look like they've been abandoned and one looks like it's
been plugged. Two really controversial wells. So I'm anxious to hear what the update that is,
but I'm not going to be here. Okay, well I think that will be in a staff report and that can come
to us so you'll just be able to read that and then whatever presentation we have, questions you have,
you can ask them in that presentation. Is that good? Yeah. All right, well thank you very much.
I appreciate everybody's time today. Are we good down here? Everybody, okay. All right, thank you.
Recycle ride. We are concluding the meeting. Yes, we are concluding at 2 38.