4 November 2003
Minutes
The meeting was convened at the Vashon Chamber office. Present were Board President James English, Treasurer Nan Hammett, and Secretary Steven Macdonald. The agenda is attached as the last page of these minutes.
Announcements
Secretary Macdonald received a CD with slides from a presentation by Dr Jim W. White of the Washington State Department of Health, entitled "Environmental Arsenic in Washington: Balancing Public Health and Practicality", given at the annual state health conference in Yakima in October. The CD will be given to VMICC-HMRC at its next meeting.
Review and adoption of minutes from prior meeting (9/9/2003)
The minutes of the September Board meeting were adopted following email consultation of Directors. The Board confirmed this action.
Treasurer's report
The November Treasurer's Report showed the new budget figures for each of the categories, totaling $30,000 for the new biennium 2003-2005. There have been no expenditures to date.
Treasurer Hammett presented a draft of a new report showing IRPPC assets and liabilities. The Board discussed the format. As of 30 September, the IRPPC bank account at Washington Mutual showed a balance of $2,923.84. A total of $821.25 in invoices has been submitted to IRPPC by our contractors, but no payment requests have been forwarded to Ecology, in the absence of a signed agreement for the current biennium (see below).
The Board confirmed its approval of Treasurer Hammett’s practice of deferring payment of her expenses for record-keeping, and retaining these funds in the IRPPC bank account at Washington Mutual.
Technical consulting services
Contractor progress was discussed separately for each consultant.
IERE. Soil vendors (R6) IERE reports that this task has been essentially completed, without success. No vendor was found who would properly test their product and had acceptable results. A conundrum was faced: that of the unwillingness of soil vendors to voluntarily test their soil in the absence of a purchase order for soil, coupled with the inability of Vashon-IRPPC to fund the testing due to restrictions placed on us by Ecology. IERE has concluded that this task could have been successfully conducted, if Ecology had a mechanism to fund the testing.
IERE investigated both the idea of purchasing clean topsoil from off-island and the idea of creating clean topsoil on-island, two ideas which are connected. The most obvious link is the possibility that an on-island commercial operation might be able to produce clean topsoil. Discussions at VMICC-HMRC have shown considerable interest in the latter, and IERE staff and HMRC members have made site visits to various locations in pursuit of this objective. In June 2003, Marian Abbett indicated agency willingness to fund testing of soil product from a pilot test: "Ecology may be able to assist with this pilot study by collecting the samples and running them through a lab for analysis."
Secretary Macdonald will ask IERE to produce a final report on the Soil vendors task, and will also describe the activity in the grant proposal submitted to Ecy for the 2003-2005 IRPPC PPG: "Facility for New Clean Soil on the Island – The RECIPIENT will facilitate the exploration of the potential for creation of new clean soil on Vashon Island, such as an island composting facility. One of the RECIPIENT’s technical consultants will organize active discussions, involving the community (using the forum of VMICC-HMRC), the DEPARTMENT, and island vendors." It is hoped that IERE will be open to amendment of the IRPPC-IERE contract for the 2003-2005 biennium to include language compatible with this, extending the work done on task 6.
Soil Amendments project (R6*) A 10/28 message from IERE (in response to a query from Secretary Macdonald regarding the 8/26 "lost in the cracks in DoE" message reported at the last IRPPC meeting) was discussed, which read:
Marian never responded to this email. I have spent a few hours working with the Garden Club, and I printed several copies of the brochure for them, but until Ecology OK's these documents I am pretty much sitting on my hands.
On the day of the IRPPC Board meeting (11/4 at 5:21pm), Marian Abbett sent a message to Secretary Macdonald stating:
below are the comments that I sent to Kathy [on 7/3/2003] related to the poster and brochure. The comments are related to the double digging option.
I had also questioned whether the figure with dots representing risk was accurate/appropriate. I had wanted one of our risk assessment folks to look at it, but haven't heard and haven't followed up. I will have an answer for the HMRC meeting this Friday.
Secretary Macdonald will express the Board’s frustration, with Ecology’s delay, at the upcoming HMRC meeting.
Earthworks Environmental. Independent review, non-technical summary and critique (R1-4) The Earthworks report "CUA IAL Document review" was discussed and approved. Secretary Macdonald will forward it to VMICC-HMRC.
News articles (D3) The "Amendments Not Additions V3" draft was discussed. The Secretary agreed to send the comments to Earthworks.
VMICC HMRC
The subject of editing of the Holly Taylor video of the April 2003 joint HMRC-IRPPC symposium, based on Ecy review of the transcript, was discussed, as was an email message from Kathy Seel of Ecy dated 10/28 which stated:
Molly and I were just discussing this last week. What we need to do is set a date and go over the script until we are confident of the material that will be presented. I will send out an email requesting a date this week or next. Thanks for the prod.
Secretary Macdonald will express the Board’s frustration, with Ecology’s delay, at the upcoming HMRC meeting.
Ecology PPG 03-05 grant
The Board discussed the status of the 2003-2005 agreement: Kathy Seel sent a message on 10/28 stating:
This is so uncanny, I pulled IRPPC's file yesterday and read through all the new biennium emails to see where we were on the draft. I was going to contact you today. I will take your comments/changes and start incorporating them into the draft document. I don't mind changing the grant to six tasks. The sentence about the project (not the grant) being completed on or before May 31, is there to remind the recipient that they have one month left to wind up the activities, write their last monthly/quarterly report, submit the final voucher and write the final report. Would it help to add "activities" after "The project..."? All the previous mentioned items are due on June 30, 2005. The end of this past biennium was mayhem, it will not happen this biennium. All documents will be required to be in on June 30. Any deviation will have to be requested in writing. Anyway, we have a ways before we have to address the closeout of this grant. I hope to get another draft back to you by next week. Take care and say hello to everyone.
In the absence of a signed agreement, Treasurer Hammett has been unwilling to submit payment requests to Ecy. Secretary Macdonald will express the Board’s frustration, with Ecology’s delay, at the upcoming HMRC meeting.
4 November 2003
Agenda
Related documents
1. Announcements
2. Review of minutes from prior meeting (9/9/2003)
IRPPC Board Mtg 2003-09-09 Minutes.rtf
3. Treasurer's report
Financial report
4. Technical consulting services
IERE
Soil vendors (R6)
Schenck email 2003-10-28
Soil Amendments group (R6*)
Schenck email 2003-10-28
webpage (D1)
Earthworks
summary/critique of Ecy child use areas study (R1-4)
Document review 102003.doc
Abbett email 2003-09-29?
news articles (D3): soil sources; soil amendments; April symposium
Amendments Not Additions V3.rtf
survey framework (D4)
symposium evaluation (D7)
Contracting process for 2003-05
5. VMICC HMRC
November election
Holly Taylor transcript
Seel email 2003-10-28
6. Ecology PPG 2003-05 grant
Draft Agreement
Seel email 2003-10-28
7. Board membership and composition
Next meetings
7:15pm, second Tuesday evening bi-monthly: 13 January, 9 March. Location: Vashon Chamber of Commerce office, 17232 Vashon Highway.