ORDER-2019-114 : Adoption of the 2019 Natural Hazards Mitigation Plan

Transcript (~32 min @ 12:51)

Speakers identified by voice; unnamed voices are numbered within this recording. Auto-caption text — verify against the video.

▶ 12:45 Jennifer L. Lemmerman: on the table we have a motion made by alderman Tramontozzi and seconded by alderman mortimer to place the balance of this order on the table all in favor aye aye any opposed

▶ 12:59 Speaker 5: the order is laid on the table order 2019-114 adoption of the 2019 natural hazards mitigation

▶ 13:07 John N. Tramontozzi: plan alderman Tramontozzi thank you again madam president i move for immediate consideration of order number 2019-114 um it is um it's necessary uh to adopt this uh so that we can the city engineering and the public department of public works can apply for a one million dollar grant and it has to be done before july 12th and um we will miss that deadline if we don't act on this uh today because our next meeting uh thereafter is july 15th we have a motion from

▶ 13:36 Jennifer L. Lemmerman: alderman Tramontozzi for immediate consideration order 2019-114 to allow for a timely consideration

▶ 13:47 John N. Tramontozzi: is there an objection the order is before you a motion to suspend the rules to hear from the proper administration personnel second the motion a motion to spend the rules made by alderman

▶ 13:52 Jennifer L. Lemmerman: Tramontozzi seconded by alderman mortimer to suspend the rules all in favor aye any opposed you're

▶ 14:00 Jennifer L. Lemmerman: joined by miss elena perregas alex and mr john chena thank you for being here this evening oh

▶ 14:04 Speaker 6: thank you for harris and i appreciate the opportunity to speak tonight um we we received some feedback from female last week that really forced our hand in expediting this and i appreciate the opportunity to come before you in an expedited fashion this evening so the national the natural hazards mitigation plan is a project that public works has been working on for well over a year our engineering office has been the lead on it and what it does is provide documentation of natural hazards and mitigation and planning that into integrate community derived priorities so in other words what happens during national natural emergencies in melrose and how does melrose respond what where are our hazards where are our weak points when we first did this some 12 years ago the majority of the natural hazards were drain focused we were we flooded a lot in various areas of the community fast forward 12 years dependency on electricity is significantly higher than it was we've improved our drainage system because of that study and subsequent funding that we were able to acquire because we had that plan in place and focus changed so what we did was we did a series

▶ 15:35 Speaker 6: of outreach meetings the national the natural hazards mitigation team was led by public works again our city engineer did most of the leading with this we had input from the planning office in the mayor's office and then we had a community team that consisted of public officials and regional organizations i'm going to list a few of the groups involved in our meetings we had representation from the mayor's office fight apartment park and open spaces mel's historic commission our state representative's office was involved national grid the chamber of commerce our health department um the hospital we reached out to conservation hallmark emergency preparedness

▶ 16:23 Speaker 6: group was involved the police department mima friends of the fells mystic valley elder services those were a few of the many that participated in our outreach meetings and obviously we always included this this board and in our in our groups and in our meetings we had four main meetings public meetings the first was a workshop that we held in april of 2018 we followed that up with one in june of 20 june 21st of 2018 we had a regional input meeting at memorial hall in september of 2018 that's when we really reached out more outside of melrose to our neighboring communities to see what they did and what their needs were see if we could create any overlaps and then we had one last meeting at the learning commons at the high school on march 11th once accepted by this board we become eligible to uh be awarded grants we already have two grants pending um they were they were very generous in allowing us to apply for grants and and over the winter with the intent that this would become official by middle of summer before the grants were awarded that's why we're here tonight um did i miss anything in my overview so we're here to answer any questions that you may have technical or regards to the process and you've all been provided a digital copy of the report as soon as one gets as soon as these get copied and bounded we literally just received the okay last thursday from fema we will provide this this group with with their own copy

▶ 18:16 Jennifer L. Lemmerman: thank you there are questions from the board thank you uh thanks for being here tonight i

▶ 18:20 Manisha Bewtra: just wanted to ask what the grant proposals are regarding first and then I just also wanted to ask when I think I had attended the meeting back in September that was the regional regional hazards mitigation team and one of the things that came up was also other types of hazards and emergency management planning and just wanted a status update on on the um crossover between those different so i'll

▶ 18:57 Speaker 6: answer the first part and then i'll let elena handle the second part uh we have two pending grants the first is for a generator for purchase and installation of a generator for backup power to this building the technology for nearly the entire city is housed in this building when we lose power here we lose our ability practically our ability to function when we go back to paper and paper and old style ways of doing things um that's one grant that's pending um it's not a full grant there is a match but um i don't know the breakdown 75 25. okay the second

▶ 19:40 Speaker 6: is a drainage issue that's aimed at improving conditions on lebanon street at sylvan street uh to do that we we're planning the pro the project proposes to do work inside the cemetery along pine banks at the malden line where there's an outfall that backs up the water right now elena spent a lot of time literally going house to house on that neb lebanon sylvan street neighborhood meeting with people getting information on that the type of loss that they've seen in their time in those dwellings and we put a i i believe we put a pretty positive um grant proposal together for that project as well so those are the two that are pending in terms of integration we now have an emergency management director and this has been with him since his first week here and do you want to explain how that got tied into the actual report a little bit sure so um so this report

▶ 20:39 Speaker 7: and some of the meetings that john was mentioning were dovetailed also with the municipal vulnerability preparedness program for which we got a grant from the state for 19 000 last year and that program was mainly focused on climate resiliency for climate change whereas the hazards mitigation plan accounts for all hazards now and in the future so we we combined that all up into the natural hazards mitigation plan and that plan encompasses it really broadened the scope from the plan in 2004 I believe it was to include not just the infrastructure improvements that were needed but also societal and environmental improvements so a lot of that is in the mitigation measures that are recommended in this report there's a lot of outreach to residents there's a lot of planning that hopefully the emergency management director will be able to do and by way of updating our comprehensive emergency management plan and as part of that we're looking at evacuation plans and shelter plans and all those sorts of things and a big piece of that is also educating the public as to what those plans are and you know what to do in the event of an emergency and then hitting the more at at-risk populations, the elderly, people who might be on life support for, you know, who need power for whatever medical devices they have, people who might not be native English speakers. So the report gets really broad in its look at what types of hazards we're looking at and then what types of mitigation measures we're trying to implement.

▶ 22:27 Manisha Bewtra: Great. Thank you. also i appreciate that you mentioned the mvp program because um you know having seen a lot of hazard mitigation plans before there's always been that sort of tension where fema wasn't necessarily focused on climate resiliency and i was really glad to see how we are integrating that into our planning thank you thanks for being here tonight thank you alderman Boisselle

▶ 22:54 Jennifer L. Lemmerman: my questions were answered thank you any other questions uh alderman Letter garabedian sure thank

▶ 22:57 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: Thank you, and this is a very comprehensive document, 300-some pages, including the appendices. And it was good to see the level of community involvement, the cross agency or departments, rather, who were sitting down. I did notice that all of your meetings, the four major ones that you mentioned, were during work hours. So, is the focus for these developments or for the presentation of this document really um it seemed looking for sort of the different departments to be working on it and then obviously our partners for example at the hospital the chamber etc yeah i think the

▶ 23:33 Speaker 7: the report didn't actually list the time so two of the meetings were tonight okay the one at the middle school that was the informational meeting um that was the second one i think that john mentioned and then one at the learning commons when we presented the final plan those were both

▶ 23:50 Speaker 6: evening meetings that's great and we did get we did get residents to come to both of those meetings and it was good because some residents had the background they were here when we did our first one and they were able to communicate the differences this time around as well right

▶ 24:03 Speaker 7: and the plans were always also posted online in advance of those public meetings and we had comment forms as well that if someone either couldn't attend or just didn't want to raise their hand in the meeting and wanted to provide feedback we gave them forms where they could jot down some ideas and people did submit those not not a ton of people but the most interested

▶ 24:24 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: folks right and i think the mayor also blogged about it to let people know that this was being developed you mentioned that it had been that some people were who who worked on the most recent plan were able to weigh in this time around and i noticed that fema in its comments you know strongly encouraged us not to wait 15 years to develop our to revise this plan any sense of why it took so long for us to update our plan well i think it was just a matter of

▶ 24:49 Speaker 6: finding finding funding we went through a period where we didn't have an emergency management director and we went through a change in fire chief so once we were able to secure the funding we realized it was time to upgrade and we were still working on our original plan we still had projects and it was it was a couple of years back we were really start okay it's time to focus on

▶ 25:14 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: this again and start a new agenda i think it's really nice that um our emergency management director came on board in the middle of this because of his background and his extensive professional career i'm sure it was helpful to have his perspective as you were drafting well

▶ 25:28 Speaker 6: it's um it's a very comprehensive plan like you may notice of so it's good for someone it's a good tool for someone from the outside to come in and quickly learn about the communities and its strengths and its weaknesses and who its community representatives are i mean it's a great go-to guide for anyone that's involved in emergency response in melrose that doesn't have the 20 plus year history of being here to watch it all i appreciated some of the different tables

▶ 26:01 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: that you have um sort of that identify hazards of concern and the nature of them and the likelihood that they would occur and then you've also done a nice job in a one of the tables identifying all of the high-priority hazards and the steps that you're hoping to take or that we are continuing to take from 15 years ago and on that I noticed that flooding still remains one of our primary concerns because just about the more like it's more likely we would face flooding as opposed to an earthquake for example and there's a mention of two dams and stone them that if they actually flood if they failed some millions of gallons of water would come down toward Melrose but we consider that risk to be low is that right yeah those

▶ 26:49 Speaker 7: are the MWRA dams at their reservoirs up in the fells okay and they do a good job maintaining their infrastructure so it's probably a low likelihood but it is something that warrants a little bit more of a look a lot of the things in plan you know unfortunately you touch on all these things in this plan but you don't have the chance to really delve into any of them in developing the plan you're just identifying them listing them you know kind of prioritizing them but that's certainly one right well that's why i thought

▶ 27:21 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: the chart on i guess it's page three four was really helpful because it identifies issues like that as you know what's the probability and then if it happened how big of a deal would it be so you kind of can do that intersection what about for invasive species so there are a lot of current plants that may be in in melrose that are considered invasive and how do

▶ 27:48 Speaker 7: we address those i think to date that's been more of a concom issue um can you can you explain what

▶ 27:56 Speaker 7: that conservation commission sorry that's okay um yeah the the conservation commission when they review plans and when they um you know if you're doing work near wetlands and you have to do some restoration they require native species when you're replanting and everything and native seed mixes for grasses and so they're really the ones who have gotten more involved with that in terms of residential properties if you have invasive species on your property there's really nobody right now telling you to do anything about it but you know maybe there's some education that can be done so that people understand which species those are and try to replace them with something native

▶ 28:35 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: i think i read that there's a potential for an arborist position at some point that that's something we could maybe envision happening yeah we always love to add staff if we get the

▶ 28:43 Speaker 6: opportunity right now we have a few members of our staff that have experience and entries and identifying the health of it when we get tricky situations we'll bring an arborist from an outside company whether it's a tree removal company or a nursery to supplement but and that is one of

▶ 29:08 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: the things that they do mention and to your point it could also just be a certification for an existing employee okay um i'm just looking over my notes another thing that i saw that we would consider doing is adding sprinklers to this building that we're in and it said consider that when building upgrades occur are there building upgrades on the in the horizon for this building

▶ 29:31 Speaker 6: well nothing no not for this building but i know that building upgrades in general have a thorough review by the building by inspectional services they bring in fire prevention as well and that is one of the items that fire prevention looks at during their review and that is an item that

▶ 29:49 Speaker 7: when we reviewed it with the consultant from cdm smith that that was their recommendation that it was you know it would be too all-encompassing of a project to try to sprinkle this new building when you're not doing anything else and you know measuring the risk versus the

▶ 30:11 Speaker 7: the cost-benefit right that it probably wouldn't come out too high to just do it on its own but it would certainly be beneficial if you're doing another large

▶ 30:20 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: project okay one of the only I think action items that was identified in 2004 where there was no work done as opposed I think every other action item either is completed or in process was this community rating system where if we applied to participate in it citizens would qualify for flood insurance rate premium discounts be familiar why did we not end up doing that well all right we

▶ 30:43 Speaker 6: never really we never really got to it but we did get to it without in that area in and around our pond okay that because of the drainage improvements we were able to petition FEMA and we got a change in floodplain elevation which helped the policies we did it in that aspect and in the other aspects own people just i think people just did it on their own the city never came forward to do it in an

▶ 31:14 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: organized fashion okay and um and is that sort of an archived issue at this point or is it something

▶ 31:18 Speaker 7: that's still open for review our consultant looked into it and frankly their consultant works for fema all the time too and is intimately involved with this and they had to actually go and look up what that was okay they weren't really familiar with it so i don't think it's something sort of a promise thing me I think it's yeah I think it's something that was put into the old report because it is a program that you can't apply for but I think it's very uncommon and when they looked into it they found this program does still exist so they carried it forward as a recommendation and so we

▶ 31:53 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: know we can take a look at this down the road so it's just two more questions one of the other I now one of the identified action steps moving forward is around in in the short term which is set to be within the next five years would be around ordinances

▶ 32:06 Speaker 7: reviewing some of our ordinances can you speak a little bit about that sure i think the the biggest ones are looking for opportunities when anyone is building whether it's the city or private developers to implement green infrastructure there's a big push especially with our new stormwater permit where you know we have opportunities to look not just at stormwater quantity not just how much runoff is leaving a site when you're developing a site but also the quality of that runoff especially where so much of our runoff eventually goes to l pond and the vast majority the rest of it goes down to spot pond brook so um the the push would be to take every opportunity we can to look at stormwater quality improvements and stormwater keeping stormwater treated on-site as much as possible our current ordinances do require a good amount of capturing and infiltrating stormwater on-site when it's feasible so this would just expand that and I think there are opportunities in zoning regulations planning subdivision regulations and then also DPW as part of the NPDES program is going to have to have some sort of a stormwater ordinance of our own so looking at it there as well that's what

▶ 33:25 Speaker 6: I had made reference to a few weeks back there I know Public Works presentation will be will be soliciting and entering into a contract with a consultant to really pull that program together and this won't be the last time you hear us coming up here to talk about stormwater quality it's the new direction and it's not just about stormwater management but now it's about the quality of what you discharge out of developments and out of new construction okay that's helpful my

▶ 33:53 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: last question is when I was looking at all the different maps which are really impressive and I you can I mean maybe I'm reading them wrong but it does seem like the vulnerability is particularly high on Main Street and down toward Oak Grove in terms of any number of things like flooding and it reminded me that there is a big undertaking that's happening with National Grid where they're also looking at I think downtown and the power situation and I'm wondering if there's some overlap there and it's really helpful for everyone to know the National Grid was involved in this but if you could just speak to that intersection of the work that National Grid may be doing over the course of the next few years and then also our efforts to address hazardous hazard conditions

▶ 34:39 Speaker 7: yeah so we've had one meeting with National Grid on this on this downtown study since uh there was a condition that was included in one of the board's orders that required that and then they've come in since then with a couple of their engineers and um john mentioned earlier that you know as flooding is becoming not less of a problem but a little bit less than it was certainly or maybe a lot less than it was when the whole pond area used to flood power issues are becoming possibly the higher concern where we don't have generators in a lot of places and then tied into that is the the fact that older downtowns they just weren't built for the type of development that they're seeing now and now that our zoning ordinances allow three and four story structures downtown and the downtown areas in these old communities also tend to be where all the infrastructure is underground so there's no it's not as easy as we'll just throw another transformer on that pole and run another wire to this new building so national grid is actually their approach to this study is there they're looking at it as if it's one big project coming in we gave them planning department gave them a build-out analysis of all of Main Street from Emerson down to I believe it was Wyoming and what the development potential was of every one of those Lots and then in down Essex Street too and then they said we're gonna design this as if there was a project coming in to do this entire development at once and we're gonna put forth what we would do if that were the case and then that will advise as each developer comes in like the MTV building and the building across the way here on Essex Street where there's some discussion when those come forward with these projects they can look to that plan and see well what would we be doing if we were building out the whole thing and then try to build out those components of it piecemeal with these different projects they're not allowed to build for the future they're not allowed to put in more power and more transformers than they are currently using i don't know if it's a safety issue or just a cost issue i think it's a little bit of both so so this is a good way for them to um you know look at the big picture and then account for it as these projects come in right

▶ 37:09 Michael P. Zwirko: okay thank you thank you alderman's worker thank you madam president um most of my questions have already been asked to just uh when this is finalized uh pending you know favorable approval this evening will this be posted somewhere the public can access absolutely

▶ 37:20 Speaker 6: yeah we i think we have a section right in our dpw engineering for this website um yeah for this

▶ 37:31 Speaker 2: okay thank you very much it's all questions i had okay thank you alderman medeiros thank you

▶ 37:33 Monica C. Medeiros: i definitely found especially the information just there about national grid very helpful i just want to take a moment which is somewhat slightly off topic but on this i as i was looking through the maps and we see just how much damage there had been in the city previously i just want to you know say thank you to the engineering and the public works department in particular for the work that has been done over the years in particular when i came on the board of aldermen as the ward 2 alderman it had been slightly slightly after some of the major flooding that we had for the mother's day storm and some houses had experienced tremendous amounts of damage and you know because of the work and the investment that the city made in in those projects and the work by your departments um and mr beshear who i have to mention as well although he's not here and i know mr shen has been here right along and um it's just it's made a tremendous difference and it's it's nice to see that that's been addressed in this report and you know there are always things and improvements that can be made along the way and because that was addressed we can work on some of the other issues flooding is always going to because of our topography flooding's going to always remain probably a top concern for us but that we're able to then put some of these other issues about these vulnerable populations who may be on oxygen machines or things like that that could really suffer if the electricity went out for any prolonged period of time i'm happy that we're able to to move forward and try to address those problems and that safety

▶ 39:20 Peter D. Mortimer: for our communities thank you thank you thank you very much madam president a great deal of work

▶ 39:27 Peter D. Mortimer: has been done to mitigate flooding already in the city and i'm glad to see that it's going even further because we do have a great deal of flooding melrose was called at one time pond field Rita behind the fire station was a pond called Dick's Pond, D-I-X. And the water's just everywhere. Melrose is all underground streams and ledge. There's one that runs down from the common between Laurel and Grove. They're all over the place. I was on the conservation commission for five years before I became an alderman 19 years ago. And I just learned more about hydrology and topography than I ever had known before. And it's amazing what's happened already. The Haas Road and the Haywood Road area, the flooding has been mitigated there. The entire Lynn Felsway corridor from the Melrose Towers all the way down to the railroad bridge. including the Roosevelt School, the flooding there has been eliminated or nearly eliminated, completely mitigated, it's wonderful. Some of the projects that helped do that was the second outflow project where instead of going behind the Coolidge School and running behind Main Street, the water now also can leave Melrose from the El Pond part anyway, down Myrtle Street, now there's a culvert, a buried conduit that goes under Myrtle Street as well. And then takes it to the big open culvert that runs alongside Oak Grove, which is so big and voluminous that that never floods. That's a great outflow that we have and makes it way down to Wellington Circle, to the Mystic River. We also have outflow to the Saugus River, up around Dead Man's Curve, where Melrose-Upham Street turns into Essex Street and Saugus. And all these outflows, Mount Hood, the golf course used to flood on the first and fourth holes, and now it's dry. They used to be flooding in the Mount Hood neighborhoods, and now that's been addressed by a good plan that make sure that those, that neighborhood and the golf course doesn't flood as much. The middle school was built, it used to flood all the time. When it was the old high school, when I went there and there'd be sewage and the cafeteria would be closed for a week due to raw sewage pouring in. And in 2007, we opened the new middle school, which never floods. Just set it back, put it on a big slab, no more basement. And the projects that have stopped the flooding have been immense along Sylvan and all over Melrose. Because we do have so much water, so much underground water, aquifers and ledge, which blocks the water sometimes and then it accumulates in areas. So I'm really happy with the work that both of you have done and your department has done. heretofore and I'm glad to see that it's being taken even further. Because change is inevitable, the only constant in life is change and Melrose is becoming more dense, not a big fan of it, but it seems like it's something unavoidable, but we have to manage it well. And part of it is having more electricity, as you aptly stated a moment ago. And part of that is to make sure that we don't have the flooding. Some of the areas that people have built probably shouldn't have been built originally. With the original layout and the hydrology of the area, they probably never should have built there, but people just go ahead and build. But now we're finding ways that since buildings are there, can we alter the water flow and the hydrology and engineering that your department and both of you have done is amazing and fantastic. And that you can go ahead and apply for a grant and get someone outside the city to pay for it, to preserve our tax dollars for the many excellent uses that the tax dollars are applied in the city. It's wonderful, and thank you so much for achieving that. That's all I have, Madam President.

▶ 44:14 Speaker 2: Thank you. Any further comments or questions?

▶ 44:18 Speaker 3: We have a motion. Motion for passage.

▶ 44:20 Jennifer L. Lemmerman: We have a motion for passage made by Alderman Tramontozzi. Seconded by Alderman Boisselle. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? The order passes. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much.