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chairman bryant: good afternoon. let's bring the meeting to order. i think we have is ms. wright here? okay. good afternoon, and welcome to the nationalcapital planning commission's april 5, 2012, meeting. would you all please stand and join me inthe pledge of allegiance. thank you. for all in attendance, please note that today'sproceedings are being live streamed on the

ncpc website. and we do have a quorum, so without objectionwe will proceed along the lines of the agenda that has been publicly advertised. chairman bryant: agenda item number 1 is thereport of the chairman, and you will be happy to know that i don't have a report, otherthan it is that time of the year to where the chair appoints an executive committee,currently constituted as me and rob miller as vice chair, and peter may as the thirdand final member. and with the commission's consent, i wouldlike to keep that same trio in place. so is there a nomination for can we do themthese block in a block commissioner hart:

so moved, yes. chairman bryant: a nomination to keep robmiller as vice chair and peter may as a member of the executive committee. it has been moved, and is there a second? commissioner dixon: second. chairman bryant: it has been moved and seconded. all in favor say aye. (chorus of ayes.) opposed, no.

(no response.) congratulations, peter. (laughter.) chairman bryant: agenda item number 2 is thereport of the executive director. mr. acosta? mr. acosta: thank you, mr. chairman, and goodafternoon. i just have a few items that may be of interestto the general public. ncpc's next speaker series events, shadesof green, will be held on wednesday, april 11th, 6:30 p.m. , in the commission chambers.

representatives from five emerging ecodistrictsin the washington region, including walter reed, arlington, downtown d.c. , the universityof the district of columbia, and also ncpc's own ecodistrict in the southwest side, willpresent innovations and finance governance policy and design that are helping fosterthe sustainability showcases, brought that into the port/wound sustainability initiative,also moderate the discussion. so there is a flyer in front of you, and wehope you are able to attend. on thursday, may 17th, ncpc will also bringtogether a group of leaders and experts to discuss policies and best practices for theplanning of military bases and installations. dr.

dorothy robyn, deputy undersecretary of defense,installations and environment, will deliver a keynote address prior to the discussion. also, we have dr. mark gillem, professor of architecture andurban design, at the university of oregon, who also provided an in-depth look at thecurrently updated unified facilities criteria, which outlined the department of defense'sfacilities planning, design, and standards. we will provide the location and time of theevent shortly. i know the commission has been very interestedand engaged in the planning of military bases in terms of master plan and how we reviewthem and how the standards are set.

so we hope that you will be able to attendthat session, and, again, we will provide that information to you as soon as possible,as soon as we know. on thursday, may 31st, ncpc, the trust forthe national mall, the national building museum, will host a conversation with the nationalmall design competition winners. representatives from the national trust sponsoredcompetition will share their ideas and images for transforming union square, the washingtonmonument grounds at sylvan theater, and constitution gardens. this program will take place at 6:30 p.m.at the national building museum on may 31st. also, the public exhibition of the designconcepts will be displayed on monday, april

9th at the smithsonian castle and the nationalmuseum of american history, for those of you who are interested in seeing the competitionresults. so that concludes my presentation. there is also a written report in your packet. chairman bryant: thank you. one question. the dod meeting regarding facilities masterplanning, is that kind of generally speaking, or is it specific to facilities in the ncr? mr. acosta: these are standard these are masterplan guidelines that apply to all military

bases throughout the country. but we will also look at how they apply tocertain instances here. chairman bryant: great. commissioner may: mr. chairman? chairman bryant: yes. commissioner may: can i just add, i believethat the competition entries will be on display for the full week starting the 9th, the 9ththrough whatever the day is, 13th i think. chairman bryant: okay. questions or comments to mr. acosta?

agenda item number 3 is the legislative update. ms. schuyler? ms. schuyler: thank you, mr. chairman. i have three items to report. the first is on march 29th, a few weeks ago,the senate passed house of representatives bill 2297. and i know you all know that that is a billto promote development of the southwest waterfront district, and that is really a bill that isintended to help clear and clarify the title for the property that is being transferredfrom the district to the developer.

this bill has previously passed the house,but the senate did add an amendment a minor amendment regarding an army corps of engineersnavigation project for the washington channel. so, therefore, this bill has to go to conferencebefore it can go to the president, but i think you can expect it to happen fairly quickly. the second item is the introduction in thehouse of representatives of h. r. 665. and essentially what this is doing is requiringa pilot program, as between gsa and the office of management and budget, to conduct realproperty disposals on an expedited basis,

somewhat related to the civilian brac bill,but this is designed to have 15 currently declared excess properties sold in an expeditedprocess, to see how that might work. and a third item is we have had pass the housea civilian property realignment act, the r&l. and that has been referred to the senate,but there have also been introduced two versions in the senate. they are in committee, but i think you canexpect to see passage of that some version of that bill in the senate as well. questions for ms. schuyler? chairman bryant: agenda item number 4 is theconsent calendar, and we have three items

on the consent calendar. item 4a is the travel camp, phase 1, at fortbelvoir. item 4b is the electric generating equipmentat fort mcnair, and 4c is the electric generating equipment at joint base myer-henderson hall. commissioner dixon: so moved, mr. chair. chairman bryant: it has been moved and secondedthat the three items on the consent calendar be adopted. those are adopted. chairman bryant: agenda item number 5, or5a, is regards the building foundation and

elevator codes for the national museum ofafrican-american history and culture. we have mr. walton. welcome. mr. walton: good afternoon, mr. chairman,and members of the commission. today, the smithsonian has submitted the nationalmuseum of african-american history and culture for final approval of the foundation and buildingcore plans. before i get into the presentation, i wantto quickly go over the commission actions to date. the national museum of african-american historyand culture is a fast-track project, and that

means basically that the construction hasstarted before the design is completed. because of that, the commission is seeingmore submissions for this project than they typically see in order to help the smithsoniankeep their construction schedule. but in order to minimize any confusion, ijust want to quickly go over those actions, starting with the november preliminary designapproval. that approval included the final site utilities,the supportive excavation, which is also called the slurry wall, the excavation and dewatering. in june of 2011, there was approval of a gasline relocation. there was a gas line that was removed fromabout 50 feet into the site closest to the

curb line of constitution avenue in orderto keep that construction schedule moving. in april of 2011, there was approval of therevised concept design. and in september of 2010, there was approvalof the concept design. that brings us to where we are today in thefoundation and building core plan. i want to start with a little background. just as a reminder, the site is located herealong constitution avenue between 14th street and 15 street and madison drive, at the endof a row of existing museums on the national mall. this more detailed version of the site planshows that the building itself is set back

234 feet off constitution avenue, 136 feetoff of 15th street, 85 feet off of 14th street, and 140 to 90 feet off of madison drive. and this is consistent with the preliminarydesign submission from last november. this is also a key point for this submission,because following this the building's position will be fixed. and that will not preclude further developmentof the landscape plan or of the building facades. since that preliminary design submission,the smithsonian has started the site utility work, which is nearing completion. they have also began the construction of theslurry wall last month.

the slurry wall, in the case of the museum,is actually a perimeter wall that wraps the site to keep groundwater out of the site duringthe construction process. seismic monitoring was carried out last septemberand october to study the impacts of pile driving on the surrounding buildings and monuments. these triangular shapes that you see hereonsite represent the location of different seismic monitors, and the circles representthe buildings and monuments that are being studied. the vibration test results have come backlower than the standard that was set and agreed upon by representatives from the agenciesthat are responsible for the buildings and

monuments that surround the site. as i mentioned, slurry wall construction startedlast month. in this diagram, the slurry wall is representedby the blue fill area here. the slurry wall, however, is really just asix-foot wide 100-foot deep trench that wraps around the perimeter of the site. once the trench is completed, it is filledwith concrete. and once the concrete is cured, the earthand water are removed from the site, so that groundwater is kept from entering the siteduring construction of the foundation, which is shown here in yellow.

the yellow area actually fits within the perimeterof the slurry wall. you can see it better here in plan. so this is the foundation in yellow boundaryhere. the blue boundary is the slurry wall. and you can see from the details that aretaken from the four corner points in these intersections that the slurry wall is setback about five to eight feet, depending on where you are around the site from the foundationwall. it can be seen a little bit better i thinkin section. so this is the slurry wall out here.

this is the foundation wall. the slurry wall is keeping water from cominginto the site during the construction. the foundation itself is going to be happeningin phases. the first phase is going to occur here onthe north side of the site. it is going to be a mat slab foundation. the middle third here will be second. it's a little deeper slab with piers belowthe core. the core is here. and on the south side, the third phase wouldbe mat slab and additional piers.

these cores are central to the structure ofthe building in that they carry a large portion of the structure of the building itself. the four core foundations are the footingsthat show shown here in plan, and those four cores also serve as the vertical transportationcores for the building, as they are integrated into the structure of the building. you can see the elevators and the stairs withinthe four cores. so with that, mr. chairman, the executivedirector recommends that the commission approves the final foundation and building core plansfor the national museum of african-american history and culture.

that concludes my presentation. commissioner dixon: so moved. commissioner hart: second. chairman bryant: well, it has been moved andseconded. before we go to a vote, is there any discussionamong commission members immediately for mr. walton before we have public comment? we do have one speaker signed up to speakto the building foundation and elevator codes. feldman, please. judy scott feldman is here representing thenational coalition to save our mall, and,

as such, will have five minutes to speak onthis item. ms. feldman: good morning. i have a powerpoint that the revised powerpointyou received. thank you very much. good morning, chairman bryant, and commissioners. the national coalition to save our mall hasparticipated regularly in the historic preservation section 106 public consultation process forthis museum since it began in january 2007. the coalition supports approval of the finalfoundation plans and agrees with the ncpc staff recommendation that the location ofthe building onsite will be fixed with approval

of the foundation plans. we also agree with the staff's determinationthat the work will not preclude further design of the building exterior or landscape. my testimony today focuses on that futurelandscape, in particular an alternative approach to what has come out of the section 106 publicconsultation meetings. i have given each of you a full transcriptof the powerpoint presentation that is posted on the coalition website at savethemall. org entitled improving the mall setting forthe smithsonian's national museum of african-american also, some illustrations.

my comments today are a distillation of that. next slide. when i get tours on the mall from the smithsonianmetro to the washington monument, i lose people at this stretch of mall between 14th and 15th,the museum location. people see a great void, a great dangerousexpanse filled with roads and trees and traffic, sorry. in fact, the park service's 1966 skidmoreowings and merrill master plan devoted a good deal of attention to this problematic area. that plan proposed to correct abrupt changesin grade between independence to constitution,

bury the roads, and continue the rows of treesfrom the eastern mall all the way towards 15th street. but that plan was never implemented. now we have a major construction project withthis museum and a wonderful, rare opportunity to make improvements. but instead of looking holistically at thissection of the mall, the focus during the section 106 process has been on maintainingthe status quo. what is the alternative? existing conditions at the museum site showthe isolated, irregular-shaped parcel bounded

by the dangerous curb of 15th street and thediagonal alignment of madison drive. the museum landscape is being forced to conformto this awkward setting. but these road alignments are not historic. they were made only in 1997 to support 1993plans for a tourmobile stop and retail gift shop on madison and jefferson drive next slideand an underground visitor's center at the stone structure on 15th street. the 2003 olin security plan intended the lodgeto be the entrance to an underground security screening area and tunnel entrance to themonument, but these plans all have been abandoned, and, with them, the rationale for currentawkward conditions.

the solution is to straighten 15th streetand realign madison and jefferson drive to be continuous with the roadways of the museum-linedeastern mall. the stone lodge could be relocated near thesylvan theater. continue the tree-lined landscape and gravelpathways of the eastern mall in this area, and then do crosswalks to create a more pedestrian-friendlyconnection to the washington monument. these improvements will create a larger sitefor the museum and its landscape, and make this a safer, more pedestrian safety friendlyenvironment for visitors. in the process, we will gain a new smallerbuilding site on the parcel along independence avenue.

importantly, making these improvements willnot impact the time schedule for the museum building and can be implemented as the ongoingsite and landscape plan review continues. an equally significant reason to seriouslyand equally consider this alternative is to protect the legacy of the plan of the cityof washington, d.c. , at this long-neglected portion of the mall. these improvements would restore the geometryand design of the historic l'enfant and mcmillan plan and next slide the concept of the mallcross-axis for this crucial connection between the museum-lined eastern mall and the washingtonmonument. in fact, the 2003 site selection study preparedby the presidential commission for the african-american

museum chose this site precisely because itwas consistent with the l'enfant and mcmillan plans. this approach conforms with the commemorativeworks act, whose purpose i provided the text in your handout is to protect the legacy ofthe l'enfant and mcmillan plans, and it follows the comprehensive plan for the national capital,whose policies include to "protect and enhance the elements, views, and principles of thel'enfant plan, and to restore historic streets and reservations that are not consistent withit." next slide. the section 106 process did not allow consultingparties to consider this alternative. based on national register studies and nationalpark service maps that identify this site

as part of the washington monument, governmentpreservationists say that the landscape must follow the olin plan. citing the secretary of interior standardsfor preservation, they say that since 14th and 15th streets, this section of the mall,was never completed as intended in historic plans, it cannot be completed now. i'm almost done. but this current interpretation contradictsthe comprehensive plan, and it ignores the fact that the l'enfant/mcmillan plans haveonly slowly been realized over more than a century.

as former commission of fine arts chair j. carter brown used to say, and his successordavid childs also said, "the mall is still a work in progress." final slide. i have spoken with traffic engineers and otherswho say that the alternative the coalition proposes is both feasible and desirable. i believe it is time to revisit now how weplan the mall with respect to the historic plans and urban design legacy that presidentgeorge washington created at the founding of the capitol. as i wrote in my letter about the eisenhowermemorial published in the new york times last

friday, the plan of the city of washingtonis a work of art in its own right, and we ask planners, historians, and designers havean important role to protect it. given a choice of the current conditions thatare a reflection of obsolete projects, and the vision of l'enfant that is the basis forwashington's unique power, the historic plan should be given precedence. the coalition asks ncpc to help lead the muchneeded discussion about the value of the l'enfant plan and comprehensive plan today and in thisproject in particular. the agenda item before us today is on thebuilding foundation and elevator codes. your remarks were largely on a different matter.

did you have remarks specific to the buildingfoundation and elevator codes? ms. feldman: well, i believe these were specific,because it was actually in the staff report about this not affecting the future. as for the actual foundation, we are happyto see that studies have been done about potential impact on the washington monument, and wehope that the smithsonian also is talking with the national geodetic survey, which isin the process of evaluating tilt and the height of the monument to make sure that nothinguntoward has happened since the earthquake. ms. feldman: and i hope you believe that thiswas relevant, because as the ongoing discussion happens, it is important these things be saidearlier rather than later when it's too late.

chairman bryant: thank you very much. we will now return the matter to the commission. additional discussion on the building foundationand building and elevator codes and the edr that is before us? mr. provancha. commissioner provancha: just some positivecomments. i think it is important to commend the designersfor a variety of things. it is important i think a distinction to makesure that the approval of the motion before us actually has two parts the concrete foundationas well as the bearing vertical core of the

building that is going to be made of reinforcedconcrete. i think the designers could be commended forthe concept of putting these piles all the way down to bedrock to give a more solid andstable foundation that is resistant to almost everything except for earthquakes. this seems to be also very respectful, attentiveto the concerns of the neighboring properties and memorials, meeting the standards thatthey have set, particularly on the vibration and the noise, the frequency, the duration,the extent, and so forth. so i think there is a lot of very commendableand collaborative activities that the designers have succeeded in accomplishing and shouldbe commended and applauded for that.

chairman bryant: other discussion? mr. walton, the construction schedule is largelywhere it should be at this time? mr. walton: yes, it is. it is moving along pretty well. charlie, the construction schedule is on point? yes. chairman bryant: any additional comments orquestions? hearing none, the edr is before you. all in favor of the edr as presented say aye.

it is approved. mr. walton: thank you. chairman bryant: thank you, mr. walton. chairman bryant: agenda item 5b is the siteimprovement and perimeter security at the department of commerce headquarters, the hooverbuilding. we have mr. hart. mr. hart: good afternoon, mr. chairman, andmembers of the commission. the project that is before you today is thesite improvement and perimeter security for the herbert c.

hoover building, which is the headquartersof the department of commerce. this project was submitted by the generalservices administration for concept site development review. a little background. the building opened in 1932, and at that timeit was considered the largest office building in the world. it is 1. 2 million gross square feet, and it housesthe department of commerce, the white house visitor's center, as well as the nationalaquarium.

for recent commission actions in 2006, gsasubmitted concept building modernization plans, and these included perimeter security. the commission approved the concept buildingmodernization plans, but at the time did not take an action on the perimeter security,noting that the security needed to be reevaluated as it was actually at the curb, and i willdescribe that in a few minutes. in 2007, the general services administrationsubmitted preliminary and final building modernization plans that did not include the perimeter security,and the commission approved that those building modernization plans. and finally, in 2010, gsa submitted conceptfor a design for the national aquarium entrance

pavilion, and the commission noted that gsathe design for the national aquarium entrance pavilion did include the potential for futureperimeter security in one of the the south wall. and i will share that in a few minutes. this is the project location. the site is located in the federal triangle,and it is bound by pennsylvania avenue to the north, constitution avenue to the south,15th street is on the west side, and 14th street is on the east side. it is just north of the national museum ofthe african-american history and culture,

which you just heard a few minutes ago. also included in this, wanted to show wherethe white house visitor's center is, which is to the northern on the northern portionof the site. and then, the national aquarium, the futurehome of the national aquarium, is on the southern entrance southern side of the site near constitutionavenue. the images on the right of this slide areshowing the main pedestrian entrance to the commerce building, and also the perimetersecurity, which is a row of, actually, planters. and also, we have the vehicular entrance. there are active vehicular barriers.

we also usually call them delta barriers,as well as a guard house and some other elements. so perimeter security planning the nationalcapital urban design and security plan it is a guiding document for perimeter securityprojects in the district. the relevant objectives are summarized here. they are to protect the design principlesof the historic plan of the district, to balance physical perimeter security with the vitalityof the public realm, and, finally, to also understanding that there is an acceptablereasonable risk for buildings that are located in an urban environment. an important policy for the project is listedhere about impacting public space, and it

is for existing buildings in urban areas,perimeter security barriers should be located within the building yard when the size ofthe yard is greater than or equal to 20 feet. and if less than 20 feet, the barriers maybe located in public space the proposal that is before you today is important because itis a good example of how the plan can be utilized to create a perimeter security solution thatrespectfully balances the need for providing an appropriate level of security while minimizingimpacts on public space and pedestrian flow. so looking at a comparison of what was submittedin 2006, this again was the concept from 2006 showing the perimeter security itself. that is the darker line here.

and since this was proposed in 2006, gsa hasworked hard with commerce security officials, as well as nps, ddot, and ncpc staff on developingsecurity measures that balance the security needs with the public access to and aroundthe building. and i would also like to point out that theproperty line is shown in here as well. so the security perimeter was well outsideof the property line in the 2006 case. this is the sorry. chairman bryant: wasn't there a proposal atone time or am i confused that actually even extended perhaps into the roadway? mr. hart: the only thing that has been submittedto us has been the 2006 perimeter security

mr. hart: but chairman bryant: that is theonly thing that has come before us officially. mr. hart: that's correct, yes. mr. hart: here is the security perimeter itselfthat is being proposed now. this perimeter is a little hard to see, butit wraps around the building. it is generally on the property line, whichis here. i have also shown the 2006 security perimeterin the very thin line that is out here. so this has changed since the 2006 securityperimeter was submitted. the plan now, as i said, reduces the impactedarea while maintaining the necessary level of protection for the commerce building.

gsa has worked with nps on the northern thisis the northern or pennsylvania ave side of the building. this is the constitution ave side of the building. gsa has worked with nps, because nps has jurisdictionon pennsylvania avenue, and is managing the white house visitor's center, which is themain entrance is on this side. both agencies are supportive of this new proposedalignment. and this is to give you a little clearer viewof what is being proposed here. and i will talk about what these little indentationsare. they are little niches in the design.

so the perimeter security elements gsa isproposing a cable rail system, and this consists of piers. they are terminal end and interim piers. they are all clad in stone. these piers actually encase bollards, anda cable will connect each of the bollards together. you see the horizontal elements here. the vertical elements are the piers, and thehorizontal ones are the railing or the cable. all of these sit on a stone curb that connectsall of the elements.

there are also walls. this is a curved wall at the at each of thefour corners there are curved walls. and there are niches as well incorporatedinto the design. independent of the cable rail system are bollards,which you see down in the bottom left. and these will currently they are lookingat a steel sleeve to go over top of them. also, active vehicle barriers and reinforcedelements, such as flagpoles and pedestrian lights. so we have talked about the national urbandesign and security plan a little. the staff is supportive of the alignment thatgsa is proposing, and we are suggesting some

minor design modifications for gsa to exploreas the design progresses. they are broken down into kind of overallsuggestions as well as some specific suggestions. the overall suggestions are then also dividedinto some the number of elements that are being proposed. currently, gsa is looking at 13 elements,different types of elements. it seems as though this is somewhat cluttered,and it may be helpful to reduce the number of elements that are being proposed. the rhythm or the proportions of the elementsis also a piece, as well as the materials being suggested currently.

specific comments are around pennsylvaniaavenue and 14th street entrances, the national aquarium entrance, and entrance pavilion wall,vehicle barriers, and seating at the curved walls at the corners. for the national environmental policy act,or nepa, and the national historic preservation act compliance, gsa is going to amend the2006 environmental assessment for the modernization project and include the perimeter securityin that, and then for section 106, the gsa will initiate consultation with the d.c. statehistoric preservation office, as well as ncpc staff in the near future. what i would like to do is to kind of walkaround some key points in the design and walk

around the building and talk about a few ofthe areas of in detail. this is the white house visitor's center entrance. it is the entrance itself is here. these are pedestrian entrances into the building. gsa has worked with nps and consulted withnps about the location of the perimeter security. and gsa is looking to install the perimetersecurity and, in doing so, they need to remove four trees. and these are trees that they are removing. and the proposal is to have the curved wallstransitioning to the cable rail system, bollards

at pedestrian entrances, and the areas thatare on either side of the white house visitor's center entrance actually create raised bedsat those locations. so this would be a low wall, and it wouldbe one point that people could actually sit on fairly about a 36 30-inch wall that wouldbe there. in the detailed look, this is the this entrancein a little more detail. staff is we would like to suggest that gsalook at the spacing of some of the elements. these are bollards, as well as pedestrianlighting, and look at the spacing to make sure that there is adequate space for pedestriansto move through easily without being too pinched. this is a view looking at the entrance itselfwith the bollards and then the pedestrian

lights, and the low wall. for the main pedestrian entrance into thecommerce building, this is along 14th street and towards the middle of the street. gsa is proposing the cable rail system withthe niche walls, and that transitioning to bollards as well as reinforced flagpoles. you see the flagpoles and bollards here withthe a little portion of the cable rail system wall here. this will be 44 feet from the face of thebuilding and a 20-foot sidewalk. and this is actually the existing condition.

this is the same line that is being carriedtoday. as with the pennsylvania avenue side of theproposal, staff is looking at is requesting that gsa explore the position of these bollardsand reinforced elements to make sure that there is adequate space for people pedestriansto move through. and this is the constitution ave side of thebuilding. again, the perimeter security comes down toconstitution avenue from 15th street. this is a wall transitioning into some bollards. bollards are generally the main access orthe main vehicle for people to get through to the pedestrian entrances.

and then, for the entrance of the nationalaquarium, the national aquarium itself is a below-grade facility. the main door is located here. these are stairs going down to it, and a rampgoing down to it. this is a what we call the south wall, andthere are bollards one bollard here and one bollard here that would protect the entranceof the stairs and the ramp. at the june 2010 meeting, the national aquariumentrance pavilion concept was approved by the commission, as i said a little earlier,and at the time the commission noted that gsa was designing this wall to include perimetersecurity.

and staff supported that, and this was primarilybecause at the time the perimeter security was proposal was actually at the curb andnot the current proposal. now, staff is recommending that gsa explorethe potential for actually reinforcing this wall, and the reason for that is that whenperimeter security is in the south wall, that the wall thickness has to get fairly largeit's about a foot and we are looking to see if we can minimize that because it is in publicspace. 15th street again, following the cable railsystem with the niches, this is 27 feet from the building face. and for the proportions of for the elementsor the rhythm of the elements, staff understands

that there are some of the elements actuallyline up with the building facade. but there are some elements that don't seemto line up, and staff would just ask gsa to look at how that rhythm can be maintainedalong the length of the building. and then, for vehicle entrances, staff isthis is what is being proposed now with active vehicle barriers at the entrances. staff is suggesting that gsa make sure thatas the location of these are being determined that there is adequate space for the vehiclesto be kind of stopped and screened, and pedestrians to be able to walk through along the street. there is also a suggestion about when thereare entrances that are not used as frequently,

the possibility of using retractable bollardsor movable bollards instead of the active vehicle barriers. and then, for materials staff is suggestingthat gsa continue working with d.c. state historic preservation office, as well as cfaand ncpc staff, in developing detection materials for the perimeter security. and with that, staff is very supportive ofthe project and recommends that the commission comment favorably on the proposed conceptdesign for the installation and perimeter security elements at the herbert c. hoover building and commends the general servicesadministration for developing a design for

perimeter security of a building that is wellintegrated into the urban fabric of the surrounding streetscape, and also recommends that gsaexplore the following as the overall design of the proposal progresses work to simplifythe overall security design by minimizing the total number of different elements tocreate a regular pattern and style for the security elements, so that they align withcertain architectural features of the building; continue to refine the cable rail detail,ensuring that if a horizontal element is used that it complements the architecture and historicnature of the building and landscape; consult further with ncpc, cfa, and the d.c. statehistoric preservation office on the materials used to ensure that they are compatible withthe historic context of the federal triangle.

and, further, recommend that gsa explore thefollowing use more specific details, use more modern-looking active vehicular barriers atthe vehicular entrances, locate the active barriers such that vehicles waiting to bescreened will not block pedestrian movements, allow for barriers to be only used at themost active vehicle entrances, incorporate perimeter security in the rear wall of thenational aquarium entrance pavilion rather than the front or south wall in order to reducethe width of the south wall and its impact on public space, modify the spacing of thesecurity elements at the pennsylvania ave and 14th street sides of the building in orderto maximize pedestrian clearances and avoid the creation of narrow, unusable spaces, andevaluate the potential for seating along the

walls at the corners of the building. and, finally, notes that gsa will need tocoordinate continue coordinating with the district department of transportation, publicspace committee, and the national park service on the security elements to be located inpublic space. and that concludes my presentation. i would be happy to answer any questions. chairman bryant: thank you, mr. hart. the overall modernization of the departmentof commerce building has been with us for quite a number of years now, and the commerceagency staff and the gsa staff have been very

diligent at working with us and all shouldbe commended for longevity and sticktuitiveness. this phase of the perimeter security has beenan especially important topic of conversation that has been with us for quite some timeas well, and this, to my eye, seems to be a very nice resolution, very nice design. with that, other comments or questions onthis very important and this project is very important in terms of perimeter security,not the least of which is due to its the prominence of the building on constitution and pennsylvaniaand its proximity to the white house grounds. so it has been a very important project, notone to be underestimated at all. again, other questions or comments?

ms. greenwald? commissioner greenwald: can you just describeto me the active vehicle barriers that are currently proposed, and what are sort of themore modern alternatives that are referenced in the recommendation? mr. hart: yeah. they're a little hard to see, i think. but currently most people refer to them asdelta barriers. they are literally a thing that slides up,and then, you know, the vehicles are not able to come in.

and i guess it is looking at what is therenow, it just seems a very utilitarian type of thing, and there may be an alternativeto doing that. and we are just suggesting that gsa look atalternatives for doing that, and there are some that are kind of u-shaped, kind of invertedu-shaped ones that are that have a little bit more aesthetic design to them. commissioner greenwald: that would match thearches nicely. mr. hart: didn't say that. commissioner greenwald: and i guess then theother question is, at the beginning you sort of discussed that there is a certain amountof risk that is taken on when, you know, a

federal building is located within a city. and i understand that, and that is certainlytrue. but it is not clear to me exactly what isthe risk. i mean, it is in a high-risk location, butexactly what is the risk assigned to this building and exactly how much risk they aretaking on through this perimeter design. mr. hart: i think we should have gsa gsa representativesare here. they can answer that for you. commissioner wright: first, it is a level5 because of location. ms. hill: it's level 4.

commissioner wright: oh, it's 4? ms. hill: yes. chairman bryant: yeah. commissioner wright: oh, oh, 5. no, sorry. yes, of course it's 4, because of size andlocation. but before we launch into more of the detail,i did want to take some time to thank the department of commerce, because for thoseof you who have been following this project, it was not their first choice to locate theperimeter security.

their first choice was to have it out in thesidewalk, which is not our first choice, and they have very graciously acquiesced to thelocation in the building yard. so that is a big victory for gsa, and "victory"is probably a bad word. that is a huge concession by the departmentof commerce, and we want to make sure that everybody understands that. number one. and, number two, on just a larger kind ofdesign from a larger design perspective, this is an expanse that could lend itself to agreat deal of monotony. so, yeah, we do recognize that there is anabundance of elements that we are experimenting

with. and we do need to we do probably need to simplifya little bit further. but oversimplification could lend itself tojust so many elements marching down the street and become pretty toxic in its own right. so we are very aware of that balance. i just wanted to put in a preemptive defensiveargument for we get that it is a vexing problem, and we are not there yet. suzie, do you want to address more competentlythe ms. hill: the security when we started commissioner wright: suzie hill.

ms. hill: suzie hill, gsa. i'm the nepa specialist and working on thisproject and have been for many years now. when we started to look at moving into thebuilding yard, we really engaged with department of commerce's security staff, and some ofthem are actually here, to look at the risks of moving into the building yard. and this went up really high level withindepartment of commerce, that they were willing to accept the risk of less of a setback onthe compromise that they will be able to get perimeter security. so they recognize that there was a tradeoffthere, that in order to get perimeter security,

which they understand is important for thebuilding, they needed to assume a certain level of risk to moving within the buildingyard. and we did a number of studies looking atapproaches to the building, those kinds of things, to look at where were the most vulnerableparts of the building, and we do actually get where the most vulnerable parts on 14thstreet is where we do get quite a bit within the building yard more the setback that weneed, within the existing conditions. if you want to switch to the 14th street side,if you look where the perimeter security line is there on 14th street at the entrance, wedo get quite a bit of setback there within the existing building yard.

and that is where we have identified as thehigher risk to the building from vehicle. commissioner greenwald: i'm just confused. if that is the higher risk area, shouldn'tthe perimeter be farther out, not closer to this? ms. hill: well, 14th street is actually wherewe get more setback there. if you look at that, it is a wider setback. commissioner wright: okay. ms. hill: sorry, yeah. we do get wider setback on 14th street.

so, yeah commissioner wright: okay. ms. hill: so that's where we you know, that'ssort of what we looked at in terms of where we can locate the perimeter security in thebuilding. commissioner wright: so just to get a littlebit more specifically into the security aspects, if it's a level 4 building, this kind of countermeasureis designed to protect what level building? i mean, are you protecting this as if it werea level 2 building or a level 3 or ms. hill: it is still protected as if it is a level4. so the cable rail system, all of those arebeing designed to protect it as if it is still level 4.

so the rating of the elements that we areusing is still at a level 4. commissioner wright: so the compromise hasbeen at the location ms. hill: yeah. commissioner wright: of those elements. ms. hill: yeah. and the building during the modernizationhas also gotten the blast film on the windows adds further protection to the building andoccupants. that's helpful to understand. and i sort of bring up the question becauseoutside of this we have looked at a lot of perimeter security issues and security issuesbroadly speaking, and it's helpful for you

to go into this level of detail. and i hope all of the other commission memberssort of understand the security risks that these buildings face. chairman bryant: mr. hart? commissioner hart: a question of clarificationon what you are calling niches. what are they all about? mr. hart: they are really i think i have onethat is a little bit more detailed. i think it's farther back. there, there it is.

they are really just areas for kind of ifyou to stop and talk on the phone and you are not in the sidewalk area, if you wantedto look at a map and, you know, there are a lot of tourists that are kind of walkingup and down 14th and 15th streets, so there are places that people can kind of walk offon the side. commissioner hart: so this could be a locationfor pedestrian benches. ms. hill: right. and we are exploring benches in those locationsand working with cfa on a good design for benches in that area. commissioner hart: i mean, this is the publicrealm, and i appreciate the fact that, you

know, part of the solution has to, you know,reach out to the pedestrians and the population in general as well as provide the security. commissioner wright: and this is to to preston'spoint earlier, this is an important project to establish for a vocabulary for the entiretriangle. i am loathe to say a kid of parts, becauseit makes it sound like we just kind of do a true value hardware approach to the restof the triangle, which is not our intent. but we are trying to establish a vocabularywith this building. and because commerce is the biggest one, andbecause it has this long, inexorable march to the mall that the tourists are making,you really have to break it up.

and the niches i think are an attempt to dothat, and also serve a purpose to provide some resting places for people when they arenot, you know, in the melee of pedestrian traffic. so it serves two purposes. but it's still my favorite line, this is designconcept. we are working a lot of things out. chairman bryant: ms. white. commissioner white: i just wanted to complimentthe staff at ncpc, gsa, and commerce for working in this way.

and from the perspective of the at-large member,i mean, you guys are setting a standard here that is going to be copied in other partsof the country. and this is so much further ahead than theinitial sort of hardening elements that have been used around the city. so i was really delighted to see the sensitivityto the public realm, and opportunities for increasing that pedestrian experience andgiving places to sit. also, i really like the way you wrote aboutthese issues without using a lot of jargon and having people understand the appreciationbetween the need for security and balancing the need for the experience of the publicrealm.

so i thank you for that. chairman bryant: mr. provancha. commissioner provancha: i appreciate the commentsof the some fellow commissioners that also had similar questions about this looks likea lot of security, but appreciate the confirmation that this is appropriate security based onthe level assigned to this building, and also the question about the niches. we had some questions also the purpose, thevalue, the cost, the benefit. i think the report talks about seating andwayfinding, so appreciate that. also, again, reminding ourselves that it isthe design concept appears that it is a step

up as opposed to at grade, which is a littlebit of an access barrier, if that is the final design. there was mr. hart: i'm sorry. which part of that? commissioner provancha: it appears that theniches you have to step up to get in niches. mr. hart: no. you're walking into commissionerprovancha: according to mr. hart: it's at grade. commissioner provancha: figure 7 on page 10. mr. hart: they are at grade.

commissioner provancha: okay. mr. hart: yeah, they are at grade. it talks about stone clad, again, acknowledgingthey were at design concept stone clad walls to match pavers to architecturally match theadjacent building to match mr. hart: well, i think currently they are looking at matchingthe building. but i think that that is still being kindof discussed and what that is going to be. commissioner provancha: gotcha. appreciate that niches are they the rightniches in the right places? for example, do folks queue up and/or reston 14th and 15th and not on pennsylvania and

constitution, which are primary entrancesto the building? there is mr. hart: no. they do that. commissioner provancha: it just appears thatthere is more niches on 14 and 15, where the entrances to the visitor's center is on thenorth and the aquarium on the south, and there are no niches on the north and the south,unless you say, "well, the lines are so long, and they queue up around the corners, so thepeople at the end of the line can't sit down, but the people at the front of the line can."ms. hill: there are benches on pennsylvania avenue already. commissioner provancha: there are?

okay, good. ms. hill: and we propose to keep those inplace. looks like on the 14th street side, too, therewas reinforced flagpoles. it looked like there was existing flags hangingoff the building, and we've got redundant flagpoles now, more flags than we need, andwe have ms. hill: we would take them off of the building and replace them. original plans for the building actually hadthem in that location on the street, so and the sidewalk. and the last comment was, from the september'07 meeting, it looked like there was two

areas of concern perimeter security and streetscapeelements. this is submitted as a perimeter securityproposal, but not as a streetscape element proposal. that being said, it appears that all of ifyou would just confirm all of the streetscape developments are included in this proposal,so we are actually approving both, just by being submitted as just perimeter securityonly. mr. hart: well, this is perimeter security. there are some streetscape elements actuallyon the pennsylvania ave side, because of the removal of a couple of trees that are therecommissioner provancha: right, right.

mr. hart: and the grass panels. mr. hart: and the raised bed that is alongpennsylvania avenue as well. commissioner provancha: so this proposal includes,then, just to clarify, all of the streetscape elements. so approval of the perimeter security alsoindicates approval of the streetscape elements. so mr. hart: that they commissioner provancha:checked off both of those mr. hart: that they are looking at commissioner provancha: fromseptember '07. mr. hart: that they are looking at for this,yes. got it.

commissioner tregoning: just a quick question. one of the recommendations was to locate theactive barriers such that vehicles waiting to be screened won't block the pedestrianmovements. can you show me what you mean? mr. hart: give me a second to get there. just along the really along here, becauseof where the pedestrian the sidewalk is, and then the entrances are here and here. and if there is a way to have the vehiclesbe able to fully come into the kind of the property without having that blocking thatpedestrian commissioner tregoning: so who

are what are these vehicles? are they employee parking? what are the vehicles that are being screenedhere? mr. hart: they are there are some employee,but ms. hill: there is parking there are motor courts within the building, so there is employeesthat have parking. so they are being screened, and then and it'sreally just an id check, and then they can move it and park within the courts of thebuilding. commissioner tregoning: and what is you know,what it looks like there is only the depth of maybe one car.

commissioner tregoning: so where would theymove the screening, so that they could the queuing wouldn't block the pedestrian access? mr. hart: well, i think, again, it is lookingat having these move in at least having one car that is able to be in here without, again,blocking the pedestrian realm. it is i don't think it is seen as being anumber of cars queuing up to get in here. it would just be one car stop, id check, andthen move in, is how the operations work. commissioner tregoning: okay. i would just suggest that that might be moreof a there might be more operational design than simply changing the dimension.

anything larger than the dimension of a singlecar would probably, even if it's like one and a half car lengths, would probably encouragea second car to try to pull in. so i think that is something that actuallyhas to be designed. especially we are entering our peak touristseason now, and, you know, i am sure that you have seen and employees of commerce haveseen the incredible increase in pedestrian traffic, you know, in this area. and i find our tourists are a wonderful boonto the city, but they are often not looking for traffic hazards. they are looking around at other things.

so just a thought there. and not to be churlish i don't say this churlishlyi do appreciate how much an improvement this is over the 2006 security perimeter, but iwould still urge gsa to take all of the security out of the public realm, you know, that canpossibly be taken out. and if there are other ways with these urbanbuildings to harden exterior walls and not affect the public realm, especially for abuilding in this prominent location that is designed to be a destination for visitors,that would be greatly appreciated. but, again, appreciate the progress that isbeing made. i can't wait to see the next iteration.

commissioner wright: you can be as churlishas you want on this subject. chairman bryant: when is the estimate forassuming all approvals, that construction would start on this? any idea? mr. hart: suzie? i think we are looking at within the next,what, six months? ms. hill: spring of '13 to start construction. mr. hart: so yeah. ms. hill: and then, coming back for preliminaryand final june/july, a couple months down

the road. ms. hill: and it is rf funded, so we do havethose sort of schedule limitations and constraints. chairman bryant: additional questions or comments? hearing none, the edr before you is therea motion on the edr before you? commissioner white: i'll move. chairman bryant: it has been moved and secondedthat the edr as presented be approved. chairman bryant: agenda item number 6a isthe district of columbia commission on arts and the humanities 5 x 5 temporary art program. and ms. moulton is here.

ms. moulton: good afternoon, mr. chairman,and members of the commission. in partnership with the national cherry blossomfestival, the district of columbia's commission on arts and humanities has developed 5 x 5,a temporary art program. this spring event is the work of five curators,each tapping five artists to create a total of 25 unique public artworks throughout d.c.and i am pleased to introduce mary beth brown and deirdre mcwilliams from cah who are heretoday to provide an information presentation on the program. 5 x 5 brings temporary art to all eight wardsof the district, which is really an unprecedented achievement that has taken over a year tocoordinate.

after our fall 2011 call for curators, 25works were developed and dispersed throughout the city. and many of them are mobile and will actuallyengage multiple neighborhoods. while the main purpose of the program is toencourage residents of d.c. to get out and experience the artwork, 5 x 5 also providesthe opportunity for visitors to the city to explore areas beyond the national mall, too. temporary art is an increasingly popular wayfor cities to enliven the public realm. whether it's through a surprise performanceof opera at the smithsonian castle or an outdoor art projection on the hirschorn, it reallyprovides a fleeting but significant shift

in the way that we experience life beyondour front door. temporary art is supported by a number ofncpc documents, including the federal elements of the comp plan, the monumental core frameworkplan, and the memorials and museums master plan. and with more federal and local agencies committedto creating a dynamic public realm, staff anticipates an increasing number of temporaryart projects through the ncr. while ncpc doesn't typically review an eventlike this, staff did want to bring this to the attention of the commission, just to highlightthe importance of public art and of the use of temporary art specifically to activatethe public realm.

there are a number of thematic links, too,between an event like this and other programs such as beyond granite, the temporary commemorationproject that is currently underway with ncpc and gsa. at this time, i would like to invite marybeth and deirdre to walk you through some of their 5 x 5 projects. ms. brown: good afternoon. my name is mary beth brown of the d.c. commissionon the arts and humanities. i just wanted to thank you for giving us thisopportunity to present 5 x 5. the d.c. commission on the arts and humanitiesis responsible for providing grants, programs,

and educational activities that encouragediverse artistic expressions and learning opportunities. 5 x 5 was conceived through our public artmaster plan. the commission selected five curators, whoin turn selected five individual artists or artist teams to each create a temporary publicart project, the result being 25 temporary public art installations of various shapes,sizes, and mediums, installed throughout the district. ms. mcwilliams: hi. my name is deirdre ehlen mcwilliams, and iam the managing consultant for the 5 x 5 project.

on the screen is an overview of all five curatorsand each of the 25 artists. each project is a temporary intervention thatactivates space in a new and creative way and encourages residents and visitors to explorewithin and beyond the monumental core. new york curator amy lipton's curatorial focusis on contemporary art and its relationship to the natural world. she has chosen five artists whose work addressesbiodiversity in both scientific and cultural terms. biodiversity is the title of our 5 x 5 curatorialwork and refers to the wide variety of ecosystems and living organisms, including humans, animals,plants, and their habitats.

the project shown is brandon ballengee's outdoorlight installation for the national zoo entitled love motel for insects. ballengee is finishing his ph. d. in biology and has created a similar installationin both asia and europe. at each location, the arthropods leave tracesand create abstract pheromone paintings on the fabric surfaces. these works have become the backdrop of communityevents such as picnics, scientific investigations, and music and dance events.

ms. brown: justine topfer is an australiancurator based out of san francisco. her 5 x 5 projects are designed to breathenew life into the ordinary, reinvigorating the fabric of urban environments under thecuratorial title betwixt and between. the masculine virility and stamina drivingjefferson pinder's performance ben hur draws out the historical, social, and politicalissues tied to race and identity. this endurance performance opens up a broadernarrative to explore our collective experience of human predicament and struggle. ms. mcwilliams: local curator laura rouletis focused on transforming the production and reception of public art.

activate participate is the title of her 5x 5 curatorial work, and each of her five projects creates communal, multi-sensory experiencesfor diverse audiences. the project shown is the floating lab collectivere museum. the floating lab collective has transformeda truck normally used for selling tacos into a roving museum. the truck functions under the premise of accessibility,participation, roaming, and integration of displaced communities. this roving museum meets with residents toexplore ideas of what belongs in a museum, who defines what art is, and how is art valued.

floating lab collective asks members of thecommunity to bring objects from their home that is meaningful to them. floating lab then casts these objects, likea hair comb from the first african-american beauty salon on capitol hill, or a teen'smicrophone. these objects have been displayed at the corcorangallery of art shown on the screen and at the pepco edison gallery. this coming weekend the works will be on displayat the deanwood recreation center, and on april 14th in anacostia. ms. brown: richard hollinshead is our onlyinternational curator participating in the

inaugural 5 x 5. he is from northeast england, and he decidedto work solely with artists from that region of the u.k. cath campbell, one of the five artists inrichard's curatorial work entitled magnificent distances, which brings an outsider's viewof d.c. to 5 x 5, his projects explore the iconic d.c. but also the domestic human d.c., with its complex histories and communities. marathon, by cath campbell, as you see onthe screen, is a working scale model of the original cable car from mt. hiei, japan, where the gift of 3,000 cherrytrees came from a hundred years ago.

threading through the concrete pillars ofthe yard park lumber shed, marathan draws attention to the scale and empty volume ofa building that is emblematic of wider social shifts away from manufacturing towards a leisureand recreation-led regeneration. ms. mcwilliams: steve rowell is a bi-coastalcurator whose 5 x 5 body of work, suspension of disbelief, investigates the fringes ofthe monumental core. air spaces, zones of exclusion, perimeters,liminal landscapes, waterways, shorelines, perceived non-places in lesser known or overlookedmemorials. the project shown, temperance fountain bykoonstra public, a berlin-based artist-run collective, revolves around the layered historiesin d.c. of the temperance movement of the

late 19th and early 20th centuries, in thehighly influential straight-edged punk rock music scene of the late 1970s and early '80s. both of these movements in very differentways highlight the values of social reform, activism, and counter culture. the research from this project has been realizedas a replica of the temperance fountain found just around the corner at 7th and indiana. our fountain roams throughout the city andis used as a focal point for public gatherings, musical events, and talks. ms. brown: so we just want to thank you againfor taking time to review our projects.

as you can see on the timeline, we began unveilingprojects on march 20th. programming will continue to take place throughjuly, with the last work deinstalled july 20th. chairman bryant: thank you very much for acity that so highly values public art. this is quite a nice exhibit and undertaking. ms. tregoning. commissioner tregoning: i just wanted to saybravo to our commission on arts and humanities for this really wonderful event. they have been you know, they have clearlydone a wonderful job selecting curators and

artists, and all around the city i think theyhave really succeeded in creating these focal points of commentary and interaction thathave been great. they have a particular collaboration withour office of planning as part of a grant that we received, a national grant, calledfrom a new foundation called art place to specifically over time activate with arts-basedinstallation and activities of four different neighborhoods in the city. and they already mentioned how one on april14th with illuminate anacostia, one of those four projects, how some of the mobile artworksare going to congregate in anacostia. but we are doing them also in deanwood andbrookland and central 14th street.

so i think so many of these things are a commentaryon the nature of the federal city versus, you know, the other city. and i think a lot of these things really capturethat unique dynamic in washington, d.c. , and i just wanted to commend you. thank you for coming and telling us aboutthis great program. chairman bryant: ms. greenwald. commissioner greenwald: i just wanted to alsosay thanks. appreciate the installations, and there isone near my apartment and i have been enjoying it for the last week or so.

so thank you for the work, and i look forwardto visiting other installations. commissioner provancha: compliments on theprogram. could you share with us the size of the grant,so we can get a concept of the scope of the project? ms. brown: yes. each of the five curators was allotted upto $100,000. all right. impressive. in some previous presentations, for i thinkas i recall september of '09, we had a capital

space plan presentation in february 2010,activating federal places, and we saw a variety of concepts shown such as plants, like theyhave in london. is there any plan to put permanent displaysfor the temporary art exhibits, or is that part of the concept? ms. brown: i can say that the d.c. commissionon the arts is very intrigued and very excited with this first dive into temporary publicart, and london's fourth plants project is a wonderful example. and i can't make any promises, but it is somethingthat we are interested in exploring further. commissioner provancha: excellent.

ms. mcwilliams: and i do want to add thatit is laid out in our master plan, our public art five-year master plan. and that particular project is highlightedto think about a permanent place for rotating public art. commissioner provancha: great. you cited the memorials and museum masterplan, the comprehensive plan, the core framework, and added beyond granite. it is also consistent with and formed by underthe auspices of the capital space plan and the activating federal places initiatives.

are all of these is there some synergy andlinkage between these initiatives? ms. moulton: i would certainly say that thereis synergy. i think overarching the overarching principlereally is to activate a space, whether it's through local government, nonprofits, allof those plans certainly advocate for an activated public realm. commissioner provancha: do you have an outreachprogram? for example, if federal agencies were to inviteyou, if we wanted to launch similar programs on a smaller scale for our facilities andcampus, do you have that type of a service available?

it would just more generally be connectingwith our office commissioner provancha: okay. ms. brown: through me, for example commissionerprovancha: all right. ms. brown: in setting that up. commissioner provancha: very good. commissioner white: i was noticing in yourbrochure that you invited people to reach out to you if they had an idea for an eventor a program, which i think is a really clever way to do outreach. i'm curious, what kind of response did youget that came from the community or another organization?

ms. brown: that was actually dierdre's idea,so i'm glad you appreciate it. we have i think we have a lot of interestin tours. we haven't seen a lot of them happen yet,but a lot of people reach out to us and want to do a bike tour or a bus tour. and so we are actually working on doing tourson the 14th and the 21st to coincide with those events happening in anacostia. as harriet said, illuminate, which is happeningfrom the d.c. office of planning's art place grant. so hopefully we could do a tour to some ofthe sites, and then end up at the illuminate

festival in anacostia. ms. mcwilliams: and, in addition, the reasonwhy we are sort of doing this crowd sourcing idea for events is because the project isinstalled through july, and we are just two people, and so we want to think about reallyways to get the community involved in 5 x 5 and feel excited. so if anyone is interested in hosting a picnicor a barbecue near one of the sites, it really draws people out into the district neighborhoods,and kind of takes the burden off of us as well. commissioner white: sounds very clever.

i wish you a lot of luck with it. ms. mcwilliams: thank you. very exciting. chairman bryant: agenda item number 6b isthe dc clean rivers and green infrastructure projects, and we have ms. koster. ms. koster: thank you, chairman bryant, andmembers of the commission. i am pleased today to be introducing georgehawkins, the general manager of d.c. water. mr. hawkins will be updating the commissionon the clean rivers project. d.c. water is under a 2005 court-ordered consentdecree to build a massive tunnel to control

combined sewer overflows to the anacostiaand potomac rivers. this work is already underway with the constructionof the first tunnel. in addition, mr. hawkins will be talking toyou about the proposed green infrastructure pilot project. this is a fast-track proposal to see if agreen, low impact development approach could reduce or eliminate the need for the additionaltunnels that are not yet under construction. it will the pilot project will affect 50 acresin the western side of d.c. and could cost from $10- to $30 million. while this approach could be almost as effectiveas traditional infrastructure, it could also

provide green jobs, an enhanced environment,and greener neighborhoods. we wanted the commission to hear about theseprojects, because they do touch on federal and district interest issues. first of all, ncpc has already reviewed threeof the clean rivers projects, and we would anticipate that you would see this work continuingto come before you. in addition, the kind of green infrastructureapproaches that are being proposed here are very consistent, both with administrationobjectives on sustainability as well as ncpc's own policies and our work such as the thingswe are proposing in the southwest ecodistrict. so there is a natural synergy there.

i think we have long supported the idea aswell of clean rivers and a clean chesapeake bay, which is the ultimate goal of all ofthese projects. i would note d.c. water has been activelyseeking support for the pilot project proposal, which requires epa approval. the commission typically does not take actionon information proposals. however, if after the presentation you wouldlike to direct staff to do any further followup, we would be happy to do that. so with very little further ado, i will introducemr. hawkins. chairman bryant: mr. hawkins, welcome back.

mr. hawkins: thank you. chairman bryant: thank you for dressing upfor us. otherwise, we would mistake you for a harvardlawyer or something. mr. hawkins: i came in downstairs and theydirected me to the back where i apparently was (laughter.) it is very funny. i go to the wilson building and they wantto let me through, just want to know where i'm working. so maybe those movies where someone dressesup and gets in works, but chairman bryant:

it does have its advantages. mr. hawkins: my name is george hawkins. i have the pleasure and honor to be the generalmanager of d.c. water, which is your water utility for the region. i'm delighted to be here to tell you aboutan exciting prospect that is before us, and perhaps you will decide it is certainly goodfor you to know about it no matter what you decide to do, but perhaps you will considersupporting it. we are seeking support from a variety of audiencesfor this approach. before i start, the reality of what we aredoing at blue plains this is a picture when

we did the kickoff ceremony for this project. that is blue plains, and obviously you seethe mayor and the congresswoman and a number of folks in the project. yet last night we had a board meeting ford.c. water this morning, so i actually wore this to the board meeting. i wear this every day, actually, whereveri go. but i was leaving late, preparing for theboard meeting, and i was stuck between two cement trucks that were leaving our plant. just to give you a sense of the scale of workwe are undertaking at the site, three nights

a week we are pouring 1,200 cubic yards ofconcrete. if you have ever seen the giant trucks withthe circular back, that holds about nine cubic yards of concrete. so last night we had 137 full concrete truckscome on our site and pour concrete. we do that three nights a week. and currently we have about 600 trucks a dayleaving and entering our site, given the scale of the construction the largest project ofwhich is this one, but there are three major projects. i am going to just summarize all three ofthem, and then go right to the presentation.

one is a project called enhanced nitrogenremoval. it is governed by a permit issued by the u.s.epa. that is a billion dollar project. we will be done by 2015. it will allow us to be one of the most stringentplants meeting nutrient removal requirements for the chesapeake bay. that is actually happening now. if you drive by on 295, you will see about10 big cranes closest to the road. that is the nutrient removal project for thechesapeake.

the second is one of the most interestingprojects. we are building the first in north americaand the largest in the world a digester project to turn the solids at our facility into energy. it will be the largest source of clean renewableenergy in the region 13 megawatts of power. that is a $470 million discretionary projectby the board. it is cashflow positive from the day we turnon the system, and we can demonstrate that it works. there is facilities all over the country watchingthe project, because the technology hasn't been used in north america.

but we will likely turn every water everywaste water authority into a powerplant, which they should be. just to give you a sense of scale, 60 full-sizedtanker trucks, not quite the size of this room, leave our plant every single day withsolid material we are removing from the waste water. half of that will be used in this powerplantto produce clean energy. and then, the third is this project, whichis clean rivers. this is a consent decree mandated project. signing on to the consent decree in 2005 wasthe mayor of the district of columbia, the

chair of the board of d.c. water, the u.s.epa, environmental protection agency, and the u.s. department of justice. so we are mandated to do this project. there is a very specific requirement for theproject, its timeline, and its timeframe, which is what we are implementing today. and what we are proposing is an alternativepilot that might change the direction of the project that we think is exciting, and thatis what i want to describe to you now. so first just to give you a sense of the projectand its scale, the problem, as you know, is from combined sewers.

you probably know this as well as anybody. by the way, it is great to see so many ofmy friends. i know many of the people on this board, althoughnot all, but marcel and harriet. council member wells and i will be at a publicmeeting tonight where this will be one of our issues. we are going around the city and doing publicmeetings in every ward and with every organization. ward 6 is tonight, so i will be seeing himshortly. but it is great to see you all. as we know, in the older part of the city,which is this purplish section, the pipes

that were designed to carry wastewater arethe same pipes that are designed to carry stormwater running off the street. that's why they're called combined sewers. it was much better than the alternative atthe time. the challenge is that no matter how big thatpipe is, in a big storm it will fill up. and when they fill, the question is, whatdoes the new flow coming into the pipe, where does it go? and there are sort of two choices. it could either go back where it came from,because there is no more capacity in that

pipe, which would mean sewage going back tobuildings, stormwater runoff from streets standing in the streets, which would meanall of the underpasses would fill up. i mean, the city would literally stop functioningon a public health and a transportation basis. or you allowed an overflow, so essentiallyyou allow a relief valve that allows flow to go out of the pipe to allow new flow tocome in. that is called a combined sewer overflow,or a cso. it is how it was designed. this was not by accident. but the problem with that solution, obviously,is while it is better than having sewer backups

in the homes and businesses and having thecity stop functioning, that means a combination of sewage and rainwater is going directlyto the river without any treatment. and in an average hydrologic year, about threebillion gallons of overflow go some to each of the three rivers of the city the potomac,the rock creek, and the anacostia. the consent decree designed to resolve thisproblem is the largest piece of this is a 13-mile tunnel which will proceed up the potomac,the anacostia. that is the nationals ball park. we have the main and well, you of course knowthis map very well. but we have our main and o pump stations there.

so there is a big shaft where we are goingto be putting this is poplar point. the second phase is we will go up to rfk. a third phase, we will actually go into northeastd.c. these shafts actually are not for combined sewer. many of you know there is historic floodingin northeast d.c. since we had a tunnel so close to historic flooding, we agreed in theremedy to add additional tunnels to solve that flooding problem. although it is not a cso problem per se, itis just taking the benefit of the tunnel, since we are so close, to solve the historicproblem.

currently, we are building the first phaseof this tunnel, which is here. that is the largest contract d.c. water hasever entered design-build for $330 million. that is a current project undergoing, andwe will continue we are just now in the process for awarding this contract, which will alsobe design-build, and then we will move to the next phase. this part is not part of our proposal to doa pilot. one of the messages that you need to understandsome of you have heard this before we are what we have proposed to epa would not changethe building of the anacostia side of the remedy.

we are planning to build it. and, in fact, of the three billion gallonsof overflow in the average hydrologic year, it is a long way of saying we had to pickan average year to estimate how much rainfall and what our remedy would be, and actuallyuse three years you take a worst case scenario, in essence, and that becomes your averagehydrologic year. preston will remember all of this from hispast days, but two-thirds of the overflow in the entire system in the average hydrologicyear occur on this side of the city. so since there is such a large two billionof the three billion are on this side of the city, we are going to build these tunnels,because anacostia is also a much slower moving

river, so any contaminants going into theriver have more ecological consequence, because they sit there for longer. so we are building this, and we have not proposedto modify any aspect of the anacostia side of the project. what we are considering or have proposed toepa is whether or not a low impact development, green development, green roofs, porous pavement,redesigning streets, all of the elements that you have heard, that harriet has talked aboutand is designing into the city, whether we did it at enough scale, could we capture enoughstormwater, so that instead of building an underground tunnel, which you don't see, hasa great consequence, but you don't see it.

instead, you change the landscape of the cityon a broad scale. if you could capture enough stormwater, youmight pick that as an alternative. that is not in our consent decree. we can't do it unless there is an alternativepilot allowed, and it would be at least what we have proposed is potentially for the potomactunnel and the rock creek tunnel. so the two that we are the proposal is for,this is the current georgetown in georgetown for the potomac, overflow to the potomac. the other reason why, by the way, we haveselected these two aspects is, as a practical matter in the timeline of the consent decree,georgetown is phase 2 and the rock creek piney

branch tunnel is phase 3. so they actually happen in phase later inthe consent decree. the anacostia tunnel we are building rightnow, so we would have to actually stop construction, stop work of what has already been done. in this case, we have not started designingthese projects. so if we push them back in time to see ifa pilot would work, we haven't lost the work we have done because we haven't done it yet. so this is the tunnel. one of the interesting aspects of the georgetowntunnel, there is no question it will be harder

to capture enough stormwater at the surfacein georgetown than it might be otherwise because of the level and scale of existing development. there is just not as much open spaces to dothe green work we want to do. on the other hand, that is also an opportunity,figuring out how to do green development at this scale in a more classic urban contextis one of the issues that we hope that the pilot could resolve, because we would putpretty significant money into this project. the plan was for us to start facility planningby 2015. we think we are going to have to move thatforward. because of the consequence and scale of thistunnel, there is an issue of whether an eis

or that an eis needs to be done. if we weren't originally contemplating that,if an eis is done, we have to move our schedule forward to accommodate the timing of an eisprocess. so 9,500 feet long, 34 feet in diameter, thatis a huge tunnel. thirty-four feet is much bigger than a metrotunnel. if you can imagine it's maybe eight feet andjust 34 feet in diameter. the tunnel boring machines that build thesetunnels are awe-striking when you see how big they are. and if you'd like to come back and get a tourwhen we are actually building the one under

the anacostia, i am going to be going downthere and looking at it, because i can't wait to see it. but we would be glad to take you all down,too. so the question is, could we do enough? we have green development in the areas thatdrain. otherwise, we'd go down into this tunnel andcapture it by green development on the surface. now, there are strengths and weaknesses toboth sides, which i can come back to. that is what the pilot is hopeful to answer. at the moment, we couldn't do that.

the consent decree does not enable it, theconsent decree does not allow it, so unless there is a change to the consent decree itis not even something that is possible. we have to build the tunnel under the currentconsent decree. the other tunnel is up in the rock creek. it is probably the one where just off thebat there is most likely chance, because there is the landscape development around here,it's much larger lots, much more green space, many more opportunities perhaps to be doinggreen development, and there is less to capture. so there is less quantity to capture, andthere is arguably more places to do the green development if you wanted to.

but it is not as classic urban landscape designup there. this is more like a suburban landscape. so we have two different kinds of landscapesthat would allow us to really sample at a scale two different approaches. and this a year later, so this is a year backeven from 2015 where, absent anything else, we would be starting on the facility planningto get this project done. so here is the notion of what we are doing. this is the impressive performance natureof the existing project. you have what we call the clean rivers project.

the long-term control plan didn't resonatewith anybody with what on earth we were doing. so clean rivers is really why we are doingthe projects. we wanted to name the project for the purposeof the effort, so people would understand the cost. if i didn't mention the cost, it is $2.6 billion. part of the hearing tonight with council memberwill be presenting our budget. it is the fastest rising part of our budgetis the capital costs associated with this project, and it's projected to rise everyyear for the next 15 years every year, year after year after year.

we've got to raise $2.6 billion to pay forthis, and d.c. water doesn't we raise it, but it has to be paid for by our ratepayers. so here is the level of overflow, so you cansee there is three billion more than three billion in the average hydrologic year, andyou can see that it is about two-thirds of that is in the anacostia. that is one of the reasons why we are goingto build the tunnels in the anacostia. and also, the level of performance. in the average hydrologic year, when we wereformed, there was 82 overflows. and by the time we finished with this gigantictunnel system underneath the river, it will

be two. it is not 100 percent. no matter how big of a tunnel you design,there still could be a bigger storm that even will fill up the huge tunnel, and then youare still going to have to have an overflow system, because rainwater is coming into asewage system. but you can see from 82, 74, and 30, we aredown to a handful of these overflows. and it is going to be the very largest ofmonster storms that are going to cause overflows in any year. this points to the advantage of the gray solution,which is in our consent decree.

you can design it, you know exactly how muchit captures, you know who is going to maintain it, which is us, you know where to monitorit and measure it. all sort of the very practical operationalaspects of making a decision on performance are highlighted in the gray infrastructuresolution. so we can pretty guarantee is overstated,because this is an average hydrologic year. in a year of rainfall like we have had thisone, where so far we have had very little snow or rainfall, you might have zero overflowsin a year. if rainfall gets much heavier, we would havemore. but we certainly can calculate that and knowit almost to the square inch of what the performance

is likely to be. that is a strength of the project. just so you know, of the work we are doing,we wanted to emphasize there are some who, for whatever reasons of concern, are worriedthat we are trying to propose something to duck our obligations, and we want everybodyto know we are ducking nothing. currently, we are fully engaged, and we willdeliver on the consent decree, as it is required of us, that we will meet our deadlines. and that is the project we were on, and wewill meet it. and to give you a sense of it, this is blueplains.

this is the tunnel that is coming in 100 feetbelow grade. so this is below a metro tunnel. this is 23 feet in interior diameter. again, think of that relative to this ceiling. it is a huge interior diameter tunnel. in a storm, the volume and velocity of theflow that is going to be coming down here is pretty impressive, so you've got to havea huge concrete retaining system, so it doesn't hit and completely blow out the bottom likeit would a stream itself, and then shoot straight up.

this system is a 16-story building we arebuilding straight down at blue plains. and at the bottom there has to be a screeningsystem to take out all of the crud before it is then pumped up, and on top of this therewill be a treatment plan built that will provide additional treatment at blue plains. it is just a massive engineering project,and we are currently building this, which is why we are pouring so one of the reasonswe are pouring so much concrete onsite. so we are doing this. we are not trying to shirk anything. and if for whatever reason public policy suggestswe don't open the consent decree, we will

build this. we will satisfy and meet the obligations ofthat consent decree. for the consent decree itself, i won't gointo great detail on this. but it is a consent decree entered with thefederal court. the parties d.c. water, district government,u.s. epa, department of justice of course negotiates for epa, is epa's lawyer, it hasa very detailed schedule for when work has to be done, concluding in 2025. that is a very significant element for ourproject, as i will come back to. and it has a very specific set of remediesthat outline what we have to do and in what

order. so that is what we are currently doing, and,as i said, we will do. the question of what is in there currently,there is a little bit about green infrastructure. there is a $3 million pilot for us to do greeninfrastructure at our facilities. we are doing that. we have actually done most of it already. we will vastly but that is not designed togive us enough knowledge of green infrastructure to change the consent decree. it was just added into the consent decreeas an element mostly of a demonstration, but

we are doing it on our site. so what it is teaching us about what it wouldtake if it's in public space, or if it's a private property, no "we," it is on our facility,so we are designing and building it and putting it in place ourselves, which is a whole differentballgame. as everybody knows, if we are going to engageprivate landowners, or we are going to be in the public space with ddot and the federalgovernment, that would be a question that would have to be addressed if we are goingto do low impact development at a scale to change the big tunnel remedy. so we are it says that on the basis of this$3 million pilot on our own facilities we

conceivably could downsize the potomac androck creek tunnels. our engineering folks don't see that thereis any possible way that that little project on our own facility would tell us enough aboutanything to propose downsizing a tunnel, given the scale of what needs to be done. so it is in there this i want to be very straightabout it but to us this is not going to get us to a potential different alternative. so what we are suggesting is an adaptive managementapproach, and what i want everyone in the room to understand is that this is not breakingnew ground. d.c. water we like to think we are in theforefront of many things, and this one we

are looking to many of our compatriots andtrying to catch up, arguably. and what i have listed here are cities. we have huge notebooks back at the officewhere we have gone through the consent decrees of cities facing exactly the same issue, whohave built into their consent decrees systems to allow adaptive management on the basisof much larger pilots to enable a low impact development remedy. and the cities are listed down the side here. and one of the most dramatic elements is thepercentage reduction of stormwater. you can see we have relative to our we havea 96 percent average percentage, where other

cities have lower percentages. it almost that is the biggest single challengeis that concrete, gray infrastructure. we know how it works; we know what it capturessome of these others don't. the cost of ours is this is the green investmentof what is being put in. philadelphia's and new york's are actuallyon a different scale. they have been approved by the state agencies. in those states, the state has authority overthe clean water act decisions. in the district, we negotiate directly withepa. so you may have seen some of the articles.

new york just was approved by new york state. philadelphia has been approved by pennsylvaniastate environmental agencies. but epa has not signed off on these consentdecrees, on either one, because you can see the percentage reduction. the are essentially relying on green developmentto a much greater scale in those cities, and both cities are promoting it. i am impressed. on the other hand, the percentage captureis much less than what we are getting with the gray project here.

and the question to us is: what is the proposalthat we would put in place for a green investment? what would the percentage be? what would the reductions be? and could we move forward? and to us, actually, before we would makethis proposal, we want to have far better information about how we would do it, in whatmanner we would do it, all the practical details that we would have to answer to have anywherenear the certainty of performance with a green development landscape-level remedy as we dowith a gray development, physical plant-level so our proposed approach is a demonstrationproject.

this would mean postponing, but not cancelling,the tunnels on rock creek and the potomac. it is a very significant difference from philadelphia,for example. the philadelphia project, which is groundbreakingand breathtaking, was essentially to do a meanly green development remedy, wait untilthe end of it, and then determine if something else is necessary and a whole other negotiationcomes in place. and pretty much everyone is certain that itis going to do very well, but not capture as much stormwater. and the question is: what do you do when youcome to that reckoning point when you still have water quality and overflows that youwant to stop?

and that has been delayed in the philadelphiaexperiment until back end. in our case, what we have asked for is anextra series of years to do a full-scale pilot to see if the lid works. and we are going to call an advisory boardtogether to review every bit of information, put it out on the web. none of this will be hidden. we want to be transparent about what we find. and if at the end of that pilot we i mean,"we" in the broad sense decide we would rather have gray because we liked the performance,then we will build the tunnels.

so our commitment to build the tunnels doesn'tchange. what we have asked for is an extension oftime, push back the tunnel construction, so we can do a full-scale pilot, answer all ofthese questions, and then make a decision whether an alternative should be selectedwhen we have very hard data about how the project would be done. so the demonstration project, we think itis necessary. and without going into the details, yesterdaythe head of ddot, myself, and the head of department of environment met for over anhour. and it was over practical questions that arecoming up as more low impact development is

being designed in the city. we are all in favor of it, but there is allsorts of issues that are coming up about how to maintain it, who is going to look afterit, what if it is put in over a water main when you have trees being planted. we like the trees, but we know from experiencethat if you put a tree over a water main you are going to have a problem, unless you designin one case it was put in low impact development but pushed a little space next to the bollardsthat are put in to stop transport trucks. but that was the only place our truck couldpull in to fix a water main that was right in the same space, and we had to put a halton it.

so you are stopping lid, and our reactionwas, we don't mean to stop anything. we are now having the kinds of discussionson a design basis that we haven't had to have before, because we weren't doing as much lowimpact development, and we've got to get these answers as best we can right. but the kind of questions that i am also askingand this is from the perspective of a very operational agency is after these low impactdevelopment installations are built, who maintains them? where do the trucks come from? where do the trucks get placed?

i mean, one of the big issues we have in ourin the city, we have about 550 vehicles in our fleet, is where to put them, because d.c.would like to move us off where we are now, which is perfectly fine as long as we canfigure out somewhere else to put them. it's practical questions of who drives thetrucks? where do they get paid from? where does the training come from? we would like to have as much knowledge andanswers to those questions not that it has to be perfect as we can before we would agreeto go with the green development alternative, because we are the ones on the hook.

it is our consent decree. we think all of these answers have to be questionshave to be answered to the best of our ability. so these are the two areas that we are lookingat drainage to the georgetown and drainage to the rock creek low density residential. this is historic, which is its own challengein georgetown, as well as heavily developed. and what we have done is actually looked ingreat detail and i'm not patting myself on the back. this is a decision the board has supported. but we just now spent more than $1-1/2 millionin prep work to do the work to produce the

proposal to do this option. so that is on top of it. this is not this is a million and a half weput into it, because we have gone in and looked at parcels throughout these areas, and wehave done a fairly complex matrix of where we would select to do the pilot. we don't want to self-select land that wouldbe easy to do. so what is representative of the actual landcover? we are going to do those places, so we don'tselect something where it is easier for us to make the project work.

but then we don't really learn what we needto learn to make it work. we want different income levels. we want different wars, different politicalsituations, commercial. we had this complex matrix of trying to selectplaces that will truly tell us what we need to do to then model it to scale to see whatwe could ultimately do. so this is the concept plan approach of wherewe have been going down. we have walked these neighborhoods. we are starting to map the neighborhoods. if we invested, what could we do, and at whatscale?

the last time we discussed this with harriet,she had all sorts of ideas about the performance of any one lid is at a certain level, butif you combine them together, it is like the sum is stronger than the pieces, that you'dget better performance doing it as a whole, which i model all of that. but then, actually build it somewhere, monitorit, see what the performance is. so you and this is old hat to you. you know exactly the kinds of things we aretalking about. this organization is very supportive and thelead on these sorts of things. the institutional issues what i asked ourengineers to do is create a gantt chart, just

like they would if this were a hard projectwith everything laid out in time about and there is 10 institutional papers that we thinkneed to be written. and these are not philosophical papers. this is, what are the permits needed, andwho grants them, and in what order? and what are who are the agencies that needto be involved? very practical. each one we have a paper, we have it assignedto a timeframe, when it is going to be answered, and how it is going to be done. so it is not just physically installing agreen roof.

it is all sorts of institutional issues, financialquestions. if it's a private property owner who doesit, what happens if they change over to a new private property owner? and how do we make sure that the new privateproperty owner does what the past one was? if we are counting that performance in ourremedy. a lot of questions to answer. so what we have proposed to epa, we wrotea letter actually to the administrator, lisa jackson, last summer. we followed up with a letter to region 3,which is in philadelphia, which is the region

that has oversight for the district. we have proposed to spend, on top of whatwe have already spent in the planning phase of this, between $10- and $30 million forthe pilot itself. i'd have to guess it is going to end up closerto $30- than $10-, but that is what we have been saying. a large of this is going to take we have actuallyspoken to environmental groups, and actually go into the d.c. environmental network inmay. we are going across the city. we have gotten support from the mayor, fromcongresswoman norton.

so the question is, we think that doing thisat a pilot level will advance the state of the art. it will be a benefit to the city, no matterwhat, even if at the end of it we again, the broad "we" decided it was a great pilot, youreally demonstrated a lot, we learned a lot, but the capture ratios are just not high enough,and we would rather go with the gray infrastructure. we are ready to build it, so we would. i am hopeful that we in fact find a greeninfrastructure, one that works. otherwise, i wouldn't be here. but if not, we will build the gray.

we are not walking away from it. but we certainly will have, if nothing else,put $30 million $10- to $30 million into green infrastructure, which is permanent that doesn'tgo away and we have gotten, we hope, all of this learning about how it would be done atscale if we so chose. this is that gantt chart, a short versionof it. the long version is much bigger, because ithas all of the little pieces built into it. what we have asked for from epa and this mayseem like a long time to you, but i want to come back to that is an eight-year extensionof time in order to do the project, the papers, the evaluation, performance, maintenance,and then a calculation of alternatives for

what it could be that is not green versusgray. it is gray is in there now; it would be somehybrid, perhaps even some gray infrastructure that currently we are not thinking about,but would become relevant if the amount of capture we had to accomplish with gray wasreduced. so we don't have to do a huge tunnel, if wedo other alternative gray solution. and the notion of the eight years, epa, asothers have why eight years? that seems like a lot of years to do a pilot. the consent decrees in other cities that havethis adaptive management technique are all 25 years, because they realize the periodof time to do a pilot that is meaningful and

then the decisionmaking time, even if afterthe pilot is done we then have to produce alternatives, our experience is that it actuallytakes a fairly long time, sometimes a couple of years, just for the various governmentagencies to come to a conclusion about what the right choice is. but there is 25 years to do the adaptive managementtechnique. our consent decree is only a 20-year consentdecree, so we had five years to start with, and we are seven years in. so we actually only have 13, 14 years leftto do the bulk of the work of the consent decree, because the first big chunk was planningand gearing up.

we are now full tilt pretty much from nowuntil the end. so in order for us to be able to hold backon what we need to do to get those two other tunnels built, and have the time to do a sufficient,meaningful pilot, we believe is eight years. that is a negotiable point as far as we areconcerned, but we are we have gone to epa and explained to them exactly where thesedates come from and why we think that is a fair number and very similar to what has beengranted to other cities in similar circumstance. so we know that issues permitting construction,post-construction monitoring, all of that is built into the plan. these are the years that we have asked for.

institutional issues this is actually wherei think perhaps the most work is going to need to be done is how to make all of thesedecisions, and who is going to be on the hook. construction, post-construction monitoring,four full years. it is 11 years, but 2012 we weren't planningto start until for three years back, which is why 11 minus three gets us back to eight. so that's where the eight came from. but we won't wait to start until 2015. we will start immediately well, we alreadyhave. as i said, we've got a million and a halfinto the project so far.

so we think this is absolutely in the publicinterest. there is a lot going on in the city already. we do not mean to suggest there isn't a lotof interest in this including from here. but the kind of firepower that we are goingto deploy i think will add to that. we are going to bring our entire engineeringsquad to the forefront on this, and try to answer it like our engineers answer everythingvery operationally, very systematically, and have a very specific answer to every question,connected with budgets and maintenance. and over time what about 10 years from now,what about 20 years from now? well, the tunnel, we know what we are doing20 years from now.

we need to know or know as best as we canwhat we would do with this remedy 20 years from now. so we think there is tremendous public interest. so our next step we have sought lots of supportfrom a lot of different avenues. we understand that this is not typical foryou to take action on an informational presentation, but we hope that you will at least consider. and we are certainly willing to answer anyquestions, which i can do now. we have epa, we actually got an answer backfrom epa yesterday. i'm afraid to say that it was tepid at best,and so we definitely have some work to do

with epa, our experience. i used to be in epa enforcement lawyer. can't believe some of the decisions i madeback then. but i know what that mind-set is, having beenthere, and they have a deal in place. so why open something? and our reaction is: because there is allsorts of good reasons to open it, and persuading epa to do that is a challenge. but we are on it, and we are working on it. we have as i said, mayor gray has writtena letter of support.

we have gotten a letter from the congresswoman,a variety of organizations, environmental groups, individuals have signed on. and one of the key points i also want to mentionthat has been very significant in some audiences is one of the distinct differences betweengray and green, aside from the green infrastructure and the energy heat island effect, and habitat,all sorts of benefits at the landscape level, is the job difference. a job creation, you know, a deep tunnel projectis significant, but there is very specialized folks who do that work. and most of them come in, they do tunnelingwork all over the world, actually, and they

come in and they run these giant machines. the kind of work that would be associatedwith landscape changes, doing more green alleys, green streets, green roofs, bioswales, isthe kind of work that we think is likely to put a lot of people in the district to work,and which is probably a great public benefit. many of them might be folks who don't havejobs now, and think of the cost difference between supporting someone who is in troubleto someone who has got a good, productive job. over time, it is not a job that comes andgoes; you have to then maintain it. and i personally believe that one of the partsof this is going to have to be a maintenance

trust fund where we would fund and i'm sayingthis as a personal opinion. d.c. water has not agreed to this. we don't i'm just assuming it has to be partof it is that we put aside a sizeable amount of money in a permanent fund that could notbe used for anything other than every year having a certain source of funds to maintainthese low impact development applications, and of course drive the jobs that are associatedwith it. so we think that is a benefit. our direct need is to achieve environmentalresults, because we are on the consent decree, we are the ones who have a set of performancestandards to reach.

but there are all sorts of other benefitsthat come to the city if this other approach turns out to work. so i hope that wasn't too long. i thank you for listening. i know there is great interest by this organizationfor these topics, so i was delighted to have the chance. i'm actually here with alan heymann and willpickering from our staff, some of you may know, so we can jointly follow up today orin the future with any questions you have as we go forward.

chairman bryant: thank you, george. a couple of questions. i mean, you answered many questions i jotteddown. while you can't speak for epa and i know youjust got that tepid response yesterday but i was going to ask you if you could generallycharacterize kind of the nature of the discussions and perhaps i think i know the answer howenthusiastically they have embraced this possibility. and along with that, while doj assists epain the negotiations, is doj a separate signatory to the co as well as epa? mr. hawkins: to start in the second part ofthe question, i believe my memory is that

they did sign the consent decree. mr. hawkins: but i would have to go back andcheck to be sure. they certainly come to all the negotiations. my view is that the department of justiceis the lawyer for the client, and the client should be making the decision on the policy,but department of justice has strong opinions on these things. and they have been very hesitant at the stafflevel in our negotiations. to go to the first part of your question,it is chairman bryant: well, there is clear precedent that they have made these decisionsbefore.

mr. hawkins: yes, absolutely. chairman bryant: what might be mr. hawkins:which we have been highlighting. the challenge from epa of answering the questionof how what is epa's sort of demeanor towards this proposal is it almost entirely dependson who you ask. if you are here in washington, the headquartersoffice is promoting these ideas as the direction of the agency. and so they have new policies that have comeout on green development; they have new policies on integrated permitting. there is all sorts of policy-level work thatare coming out that encourage that's one of

the reasons that we are encouraged to trythis. the regional office and the enforcement staffwho you end up negotiating with on an operational level, they are aware of those policies iguess, but that is not what is before them on a day-to-day basis. and my rather than what you hear from headquarters,which is encouragement, this is where we want the agency to go, this is and i know lisajackson from new jersey personally, and we talked about it, which is this is great, let'snot that we agree with it, but we encourage you, go for it is very different from theresponse from the region which is cautious, to put it mildly.

chairman bryant: mr. garvin been encouragingor cautious? mr. hawkins: i have only gone to him once. we are having been with the agencies before,i know many of us are i am always hesitant to go above the until we have done the formalsteps, and then to elevate, which haven't really done yet other than folks in headquartersdo know that we are doing this project. it is washington, d.c. , or at least proposingthis project. but i think mr. garvin is interested. everyone seems interested, but when you getdown to the nitty-gritty, essentially what epa is telling us is, as long as you agreeto meet exactly the same level of performance

that you would have with the tunnels, whichi am not sure is going to be possible there may have to be a tradeoff we will accept alittle bit less capture. however, we will get all of these other things. and can you sort of evaluate and choose adifferent package of benefits than the capture rate that the tunnel achieves so successfully? i am not pre-judging that decision. i just would like the chance to make the case,and then the decision will go where it goes. epa wants to presuppose that decision whichis we are not even going to negotiate capture rates.

if you can do 95 percent, or 96 percent, wedon't care what remedy you use as long as you reach the number. and then, separate from that, essentiallythey want us to do all of the prep work, all of the analysis work, all of the planningwork, all of this money we are putting into it already, before they agree to give us anyflexibility, which my board is questioning me on." hawkins, why are you asking for anysignificant funds when you haven't gotten anything yet? you are essentially negotiating with yourself."so, but they haven't said no. they had said, yes, let's continue talking,let's continue negotiating.

so the door is open. we have done the steps we need to do at astaff level, which we think is always the right way to start. and i do think this is the reason that i amnot feeling badly about elevating the issue is i do think it is not it is a policy question. does epa, as a policy matter, want to go inthis direction or not? and that is a decision that is made at theupper levels, and then reflected in this kind of action, rather than a person who has negotiatedconsent decrees in region 3 has never agreed to one like this before.

there hasn't been something like this in region3. region 3 has not agreed, for example, andsigned on to the philadelphia consent decree, although ours would be a completely differentballgame. i hope that wasn't too long-winded to yourchairman bryant: no. another question now mr. hawkins: question. chairman bryant: and the last question i think. mr. hawkins: sure. chairman bryant: from a project constructionbudget perspective, if you roll the dice on this and you get a bad roll, and it just doesn'twork, the performance evaluation isn't there,

you have put off the while you are still goingto be continuing with the design of the tunnel, but you ultimately have to build it, pushingit off, any estimate as to what the anticipated construction cost or the rate of increasewould be, and if it will add even more to the 2.6? mr. hawkins: our sense is that it goes bothways. will we defer some costs, which in fact youhave the time value of money, and we add some costs with pushing them back farther in time. and as best we can tell, on an econometricbasis, other than the 1.5 million so far that we have put in, the 30 million, which wouldjust have been spent, that we think it is

about a wash for us, that this is not somethingwe are doing to make money. if we ended up building the tunnels or losemoney, we think we would be about there is some financial benefit to deferring the projectfor these years, and there is some financial detriment to building it. and at least at the moment, we are doing moreeconomic analysis of that now. we have held off on doing thorough analysis,because we really want to have a sense of how many years we are talking about, becausethat is the biggest denominator for changing the calculation of how much time we wouldactually have. chairman bryant: and then one more question.

the 2.6 billion is a hefty figure that ultimatelythe ratepayers pay. the business community is behind this as ayou know, a potential way to keep that number down? and have you specifically talked to the federalcity council? and they take up initiatives like this andget behind them if they mr. hawkins: we have gotten a letter of support just last weekfrom aoba, the apartment and office building association. i am scheduled to go in front of the dcbiato talk about this, although the comments have been very positive.

similar, from the chamber, we haven't actuallygotten letters from them yet, but all of what we're hearing is positive. the universities in the city are very supportiveof the idea. the business community likes it, my impressionis, for several reasons. one is it might reduce the cost. but even if it were the same price, we wouldi think there would have to be some incentive program to encourage low impact developmenton private property, because we are just not going to be able to capture enough unlesswe do it. and a lot of these developers or existinglandowners want an incentive program that

they get access to to get funds to do somethingthat their customers like, and they would like to do anyways. so we think that the development and businesscommunity is very interested in this alternative. other questions for mr. hawkins? commissioner tregoning: it's not really somuch a question as a comment i guess. i mean, i don't know that you know, personally,i feel like we can't be sort of forceful enough in supporting this idea. i mean, there might have been a time in thiscountry when we could spend a dollar and get only a dollar's worth of benefits.

in this case, you know, water quality. but if we are talking about spending a dollar,and not only getting water quality benefits, but getting you know, cooling the city, youknow, by greening it, which is going to literally reduce the temperature, reduce our energyuse, reduce our carbon emissions, reduce the cost to our citizens, you know, beautify thecity, create habitat, employ people, not just to design and install but to maintain, i justthink when you put the numbers together and that is what i am most interested in seeingi just don't see how it wouldn't be a tremendously compelling case. and i am not even sure if the net environmentalbenefit, even at a lower level of certainty,

something in the eighties, like what everyother city in america has negotiated, that you but because of the other environmentalbenefits that you would see that you wouldn't end up having a net case you and i havingboth worked for epa in the past know that the hardest thing is for the environmentalagencies to compare benefits across their own program areas. but i do think, you know, this is so muchmore sensible for the city in every way that i hope our colleagues would be willing tosupport it here. the other thing i would just point out isthat we have nearly 8,000 acres of roads in washington.

and so i don't see how this is going to workunless, you know, roadways are a serious part of the solution. and i know you have been meeting with ddot,but it seems like, you know, one of the research projects we need to do together is reallyput out a call for a road design, for a road construction method that will actually storecollect and store stormwater before infiltrating it into the subsurface, into the ground. i don't see how we can do it without engagingthe roadways. mr. hawkins: thank you for the first comment,which i personally wholeheartedly agree, which is thankfully a position our board has alsotaken to date.

on the second question, i can tell you thatddot is very enthusiastic about this. the irony is is that if we did this i alsoagree we will never capture enough unless we get to roadways. we could end up being one of the largest fundersof ddot projects in the city would be d.c. water, which would allow them to take moneythat they would have spent in the districts where we are funding it for water qualityand spend that transportation money somewhere else. so the whole city's boat would be rising,because they would take their funds, spend it elsewhere, georgetown, and parts of rockcreek.

we would essentially cover every road projectthere is. we'd cover the cost, because we do it to capturerainwater. so, yes, you are right. i think that is, and at least so far the departmentof transportation is very interested in pursuing. we did get a proposal coming to the anacostiawater shed society from clark about specifically roadways and how they could capture water. in their view this was in writing, and thisis what our engineers want to test our engineers are the ultimate show-me folks. and that sounds great on paper, let's go buildit and see if it works.

but their view is you can do a square footper road capture of understory at a quantity that is you have a very specific number, .08gallons per water. and if you multiply it by enough roadways,you can know exactly how much water you will capture. and their view is they could capture morewater than our tunnels, if we were willing to rebuild enough roads, which their viewis it costs less than building a tunnel 100 feet underground with a drill machine thesize of a football field. i am encouraged by that usually, and i wouldlove to test it out, which is why we want to do this pilot.

chairman bryant: mr. may. commissioner may: first of all, let me justsay the park service is very supportive of this effort overall for reasons that are obvious,and i don't need to restate. and i think for the benefit of the commissioni think we need to understand a little bit more about the item of the eis that is necessaryfor the georgetown waterfront, and we haven't even started talking about what the potentialimpacts are at the for the rock creek tunnel. but this commission has taken action in thepast to approve what is being done, what is just getting started at cso 19, along theanacostia river in the vicinity of rfk stadium. and for that one, we did an environmentalassessment that addressed all of the permitting

issues having to do with the anacostia tunnel. well, we had the convenience there of dealingwith land that is adjacent to the stadium parking lots, and could be taken up for thisconstruction project for a long period of time without having a significant impact onthe environment. so we were able to sign a finding to thateffect. when we talk about doing something like thatat roughly the same scale on the georgetown waterfront and recall that this commissionapproved the georgetown waterfront park, which was now is a tremendous asset for the cityand was a joint effort of the city and the park service to produce in terms of the landand the funding and everything else.

imagine a portion of that being torn up fora project like this, plus additional areas beyond this, beyond the area of georgetownwaterfront park itself further up river being taken up and consumed for a period of severalyears, while a similar drop shaft is built and connecting tunnels. and we are not just talking about, you know,just beyond georgetown waterfront park. we are talking about impacts that go severalhundred yards, as i recall, up the capital crescent trail. and so that means essentially building a roadwaysufficient to support all of these same trucks going up and down that portion of what isnow a tremendous resource and a bicycle and

hiking trail. so it has got the potential to have huge,huge impacts, which is why we believe at this point an eis is necessary. and when we go into the mode of having todo an eis, we are not just talking about we are talking about additional time, which meansmoving the schedule forward. it also means an uncertainty about the timingoverall. so even if you move it forward a year or two,that may not be enough time to bring it all the way to a conclusion. and then, the last thing is we don't knowexactly what that conclusion will be, and

we may come to the end of that conclusionand determine that, you know, the decision that we can make isn't fully supportive ofwhat d.c. water needs to do to meet their consent decree. so there is i think an absolute necessityfor this project to be undertaken, and i think this commission should support it to the strongestextent possible. mr. hawkins: thank you, peter. the only comment i would make about that iswhat i had not done, which you just did, is not i didn't discuss at all that there areserious impacts from the current remedy and its construction process, which is i lovethe crescent trail and that new park.

i am there a lot. and we are not doing it on purpose. we would rather not have to put huge trucksand everything else, but when you are pouring 1,200 cubic yards of concrete to get one ofthese gigantic shafts down, and on the potomac side it is a deeper i mean, it is a the diameterof the shaft is larger than the one on the anacostia. it is going to be a massive construction project. and there will be a toll, in the short runand the longer term, for the current remedy, let alone what it might be an alternative,which is a reason maybe the eis starts and

we push back the dates to do the pilot, andthe eis comes to some alternatives, and the pilot is showing alternatives that those twowork in parallel and support each other. and if in fact the alternative doesn't work,the eis has come to a conclusion that there is you come to some points at the same time,that makes a lot of sense to me. chairman bryant: additional comments? mr. denis. commissioner denis: is your board united onthis program? mr. hawkins: yes. the board is united in the pilot, yes.

commissioner denis: okay. so that would include not only d.c. , butmontgomery, prince george's, and fairfax as well? mr. hawkins: correct. as a matter of pricing, just so you understand,we have a very complicated through the ima, which some of you may know a whole lot about,which has been approved by almost every jurisdiction. commissioner denis: i have one of the originalcopies. mr. hawkins: you do. well, there is about to be a new 2012 ima.

it is actually waiting for the district councilto review and authorize the mayor to sign. but we allocate costs between the jurisdictions. blue plains is one of the original regionalresources. it is the only wastewater facility that hasan area that covers multiple states. that doesn't happen anywhere else in the country. but we allocate costs very specifically. the cost of the tunnels 92.9 percent of thecost of the tunnels are allocated to the district ratepayers, and 7.1 percent are allocatedto the suburban, which is and that was a calculation actually, dan tangerlini was the one on theboard who was in charge when that allocation

was made, which is now going to be in thenew ima. but that 7.1 percent, 2.6 billion is stillnot a small number. but, yes, every jurisdiction on the boardprince george's we have the ceos of prince george, fairfax, montgomery, loudoun, andarlington, indirectly are all supportive of seeking this approach. commissioner denis: thank you. chairman bryant: others? commissioner provancha: are mr. hopkins' slidesavailable to us? are those close-hold, or are they publiclyavailable, so we can ms. koster: i believe

they are publicly available, and we wouldbe happy to share them with the commission. commissioner provancha: we had a small tunnelingproject at our facility, less than a mile. one of the things that we did was we foundthat we had optimal soil conditions, so that we could use the piping as the drill bit basically. do we know anything about the soil conditionsalong the routes of these proposed tunnels to see if a similar approach is favorable? mr. hawkins: i love this job, and i am a lawyerrunning d.c. water, so i am fascinated by the engineering lessons that i learned, justgoing to the job every day. in order to prepare for the tunnel, the biggestconcern that we have, as far as an unexpected

cost, is underground conditions that we haven'tallocated commissioner provancha: sure. mr. hawkins: planned for, because if we hita subsurface that we haven't planned for, we will have the wrong drill bit. and you can have enormous cost overruns. commissioner provancha: right. mr. hawkins: so we have actually done we spenti can't remember the number, but it is an astronomical amount of money. and many of you who have been driving on 295have been seeing these drill borings going on.

that is us. we have done every 200 feet all the way alongto drill down and figure out exactly what is there. the way this big machine works is that thefront cuts the hole, and it essentially is laying tracks going back commissioner provancha:right. mr. hawkins: so that there is a conveyor systemtaking the rubble back while new pieces of pipe are being brought forward at the sametime in what is a small city. they are laid into the side of this tunnelas the machine is going along, with the hvac, you know, and hydraulics and everything beingput in, so it's this moving construction system,

which i haven't actually seen one. i have only seen the descriptions and theanimation we have. but it sounds breathtaking. short answer is: we have done as much as andactually perhaps even more. we are very nervous about hitting conditionsthat we are not prepared for, because that would be a cost issue. so we have done very, very detailed borings,the entire length. we haven't started over in potomac or rockcreek yet doing borings, but we have done it for the entire length on commissioner provancha:type of piping another lesson learned was

when we went to fiberglass reinforced pipe,it lowered the coefficient of friction, allowed us to shrink the diameter of the piping. is that being considered? mr. hawkins: i don't know the answer to thatquestion. i can find out. i know that we have a lot of engineering firmsthat it is a design-build engineering contract. i do not know the specific answer, but i canfind out. mr. hawkins: we are certainly interested inany of those kinds of solutions that could save money or make the project more efficient.

commissioner provancha: we are very impressedwith the level of analysis that has been done we were surprised just to clarify, were younot able to calculate, for example throw out a number. for every 10 million gallons of overflow thatis captured, it would reduce the diameter of the pipe by a foot. no calculations like that have been done atthis point? mr. hawkins: i'm sure we have done calculationslike that, because actually one of the last times i was here was the calculations we weredoing about using a tunnel underneath the mall to capture where there was very specificcalculations of how much you would have to

do to capture a certain percentage of rainwaterfrom the flood. what was it, 2006? and i just don't remember what the numbersare here. what we are realizing, however, is while weknow that end of sort of a math equation of how much volume versus the size of the pipe,it is the calculation of how much roadway, it is working back upstream as it were, tohow much landscape you have to manage to capture that much, which is what is what we reallywant to get the answer to. last point, perhaps counsel can help us, withthe difficult decision of it it looks like there is strong support.

however, this is an informational presentation. if there is some way that we can endorse,for the record, an informational presentation, that would be welcome guidance. i think this would probably require a motion,generally along the lines of i just jotted something down. we are generally supportive of d.c. water'sgreen infrastructure pilot project initiative to determine whether lid could be a practicalalternative to a more expensive tunnel construction project, or something along those lines. participant: so moved.

chairman bryant: if there would be a motionand a presumed second, what i would ask is that, since the executive committee has bothdistrict representatives and federal representatives on it, we could sort of cover the waterfront,that maybe the executive committee could take a crack at drafting the letter, and then wecould, when it is near full completion, we will share. commissioner tregoning: second. chairman bryant: so it has been moved andseconded. with that understanding, all in favor sayaye. we will be in touch, mr. hawkins.

mr. hawkins: we are most grateful. chairman bryant: thank you for your very comprehensivepresentation. chairman bryant: we have one more item beforeus, and that is agenda item 6c. it's the intelligence community campus-bethesda,phase 1, north campus. we have mr. hinkle. mr. hinkle: yes. thank you, mr. chairman, and the commission. and i think i will continue the discussionon stormwater management with this next presentation. but if you remember, last february the commissionapproved a new master plan for the intelligence

community campus in bethesda, maryland. and within this approval, the commission requestedthat the applicant set targets related to deforestation and stormwater management inits design of phase 1 of the installation. so the army corps of engineers is here todayto discuss with the commission their process towards these goals in advance of actuallycompleting the design of phase 1 and submitting these plans for commission review. so with that, i would like to introduce mr.jared olsen with the corps, and he has a short presentation for the commission to explainthis progress. with that, i will hand it over.

mr. olsen: thank you, jeff. thank you to the commission for the invitationtoday. moving on to what was the outcome from the2 february meeting, we basically had two categories of actions. one was a set of comments that needed to beaddressed relative to the master plan, which we have provided a coordinating draft to thestaff here and are working through that process of finalizing those documents to incorporateall of the comments that were made. and then, we had the discussion with regardto the targets that were provided relative to the deforestation on the site and the stormwatermanagement question.

and what i would like to do is spend mostof my time today discussing those two particular issues, because they are in fact the mostchallenging. and i would like to highlight the progresswe have been making to date. just to reorient everyone to the site, justa quick refresher, this is the former nga campus in bethesda. red line is the property boundary. sangamore road is located here. macarthur boulevard, the wapakoneta, whichis the private road with the residential development here, and then the potomac river to the west.

phase 1 two phases for the redevelopment ofthe site includes this general area. main features are the parking garage, thevehicle control, visitor control, and the access road. phase 2 includes demolition of some selectstructures, new construction of a new connector building, and then renovation of three existingbuildings that will remain, the retention of this historical area here known as theellipse, and then general greening of the site throughout the rest of the site. just to recap on the progress made to date,with respect to the question of deforestation with respect relative to the location of theparking garage, our original design submission

called for three acres of clearing associatedwith the garage. it was generally located or oriented withan axis north-south on the western edge of the site. again, sangamore road being down here. this slide was presented as a part of thestaff briefing on 2 february, and it did indicate the progress that was made to reducing it70 percent to a less than one acre of disturbance. and i am going to zoom in on this slide nextand discuss the specific details. the key improvements that we made going intothe 2 february commission meeting were reducing the size of the garage from 2,240 spaces to1,800 spaces.

this enabled us to retain more of the forestedarea located here, as well as all of the specimen trees that have been identified as a partof our survey. the question with regard to viewshed impactwe are to lower the elevation in the garage on the site, and so as to minimize viewshedimpacts offsite into the potomac river gorge, as well as to the neighborhoods surroundingthe facility. we do have a requirement to maintain an opengarage. in order to do that, we have incorporatedthis feature. it is known as the reverse slope berm, wherebasically we are lowering it down and you come out of the lowest level of the garageup to a ridge, if you will, that surrounds

on the west and the southern edge of the garage. and that provides not only a view block fromthe immediate neighbors here along wapakoneta and from views along macarthur boulevard,but it also allows for some plantings that will be planned for the top of the reverseslope berm that further screens the view of the garage. and in combination with the green screen thatis planned for the top of the garage structure, that will very much mitigate the viewshedimpacts. our progress since 2 february, we have beenable to go from approximately .75 acres of deforestation, potential deforestation, to.45 acres.

and we did that principally by sliding thegarage or translating it along its long axis here, approximately north-northeast. north is generally to the right of the slide. we are able to further, then, develop ourdesign with regard to the reverse slope berm, which previously had only been designed toa level of a rough concept, and have been able to reduce principally three-tenths ofan acre of potential deforestation along here, which is now shown in the screen. the yellow does represent areas of potentialdeforestation that remain as part of the development for the parking garage.

and the feature that is located right here,this jut out is actually a requirement from mde. it is the stormwater outfall, and i will talkmore about stormwater the plan for that, because that is the second topic. but generally speaking, we have sized andlocated the facility such that we have made the best use of the available space on thissite in order to locate the garage, and have pretty much snugged it in as best as we can. still maintaining features of the open garage,the necessity for two lanes in and two lanes out of traffic up on the third level, thetwo lanes and two lanes one lane in, one lane

out on the second level, basically all theparameters we have, as well as the standoffs from the denial barriers, which we had addressedpreviously. along with the planning here that has beendone, we have continued our public engagement, have continued to meet with community leadersas well as other stakeholders from the national park service, montgomery county as well, andcontinued to provide them with the current status of where we are at. later this month we will actually stake outthe limit of disturbance, which is the line that borders the yellow area here, onsiteand invite select members to come in from the community to come in and view what theactual is, because we are really dealing with

kind of a paper representation of what ourplan is here. but it is the state of the design thus far. i am going to transition to the stormwaterand talk a little bit about that. the requirement that we had was to treat andretain 100 percent of a 25-year storm. just to judge the magnitude of that, for thisarea, 5.8 inches of rain over 25 excuse me, a 24-hour period represents a 25-year storm. that volume of water basically, the 4.6 milliongallons across the whole site would fill a football field 11 feet deep. so if you can kind of get a feel for the quantityof water that we are talking about here.

it is significant. and if we were just talking about the impactof the water across the north campus, we would be looking at an area the size of a footballfield approximately four feet deep. a key distinction from an engineering perspectiveon the topics of or the terms "retain" versus "detain." retain, we believe or it means tous basically that you do not release the stormwater for the site. it either infiltrates, evaporates, or is reusedon the site. detention, on the other hand, is collected,and there is a controlled release. and what we are going to show you is how weare basically moving from that point forward

to address and go beyond the minimum requirementsfrom mde with regard to the stormwater management. just to kind of go back to the site designor the site layout again for a moment, the area is pretty congested. to recall that sangamore is actually the highside of the site, the ground slopes generally away toward the potomac river here, from agravity collection perspective for stormwater, we basically have the two areas that we haveidentified and are using for collecting stormwater that are located in these particular areasof the site, again, not wanting to disturb any of the forest that remains in this area. with that, we want to make sure that we locatethose structures such that we make the best

use of the available space. but challenges that we have with locatinga stormwater management structure elsewhere on the site, generally having to avoid theellipse here because of its historical nature, are the issues of utilities, for one, thatare located throughout the site that complicate that effort; and, second, the necessity wewould have of collecting stormwater here and then basically pumping it back up about 20feet in elevation to store it here temporarily. the other factor of fact with regard to thissite is it does not perk very well. in other words, it does not meet the criteriaminimum criteria for water infiltration into the ground.

so this given those constraints, we are prettylimited in what we think we can do with regard to the stormwater management and retainingit. however, the detention i think is definitelyan achievable objective, and that is the direction which we are heading. and, really, if you go to what the principlesof mde and eisa are requiring, is that we want to return the site to the predevelopmenthydrology to the maximum extent practical. and we recognize that this idea of no adversedownstream effects, particularly in the parkland and the that are immediately the bluffs andthe canal, and then the potomac river, is really what our true objective is.

so we believe that the solution that we willhave going forward from here will achieve that objective. a quick comment on standards with respectto this site. the mde did issue a stormwater and erosioncontrol permit in january 2012. now, that was based on the preliminary designthat was submitted last summer that showed the three acres of clearing and the largergarage. they did issue it with the caveat, after weinformed them that we weren't going to develop the site exactly in that manner, and thatwe were making efforts to reduce the deforestation on the site and shrink the garage.

they did issue the permit, but it was caveatedthat we could not go forward with any ground-disturbing activities until we resolved this issue ofthe garage location and the approval of the master plan, which we were able to do in february. we have since submitted a revised permit application,and that is currently under review with the for redevelopment, mde examines basicallytwo aspects of affecting water quality. one is the amount of impervious surface thatremains on the site, and it is desirable to reduce that to the maximum extent practical. if you can reduce it by at least 50 percent,you really don't have to pursue any water treatment options onsite.

but given that is the other option, what wehave found ourselves in is we are not quite able to get to a 50 percent elimination ofimpervious surface on the site. and so we will combine, use both imperviousarea reduction, as well as the treatment of water prior to discharge. and the last point, just to highlight there,is that the mde looks for us to treat the first flush, if you will the first flush onimpervious surfaces that will pick up those contaminants oil spills from vehicles thatpark in parking areas, anything that might spill off a vehicle on a road surface, andthe key is to treat that, first flush of water in order to meet basic water quality standards.

this chart really focuses in on two thingsthe impervious surface area reduction that we are achieving given compared to the existingconditions that we have, as well as the efforts of going above and beyond with regard to watertreatment for the site that we are able to achieve by the way we size the structuresthat we have. and i am going to talk a little bit aboutboth of those in a little more detail. but real quick, presently we have 8.2 acresof impervious surface on this site. we have an approved permit that was approvedin january, in which we achieved a 35 percent reduction in impervious surface. we have further developed that design so thatwe will achieve an overall 47 percent reduction

of impervious surface on the site from the8.2 acres to the 4.3 acres. with respect to treatment, stormwater treatment,there was treatment for four acres of surface, impervious surface area on the site. and we had received the permit for the treatment,originally collecting just from the parking garage. now, what we have added in the current designhas gone beyond just the parking garage as kind of the minimum standard, but we havealso incorporated all of the roadways, access roads into the site, and we do have the abilityto collect the water from all of the pervious surfaces as well, within the limited disturbancewithin the north campus.

so basically what we are doing is collecting100 percent of the stormwater runoff and treating the first inch of that per the mde standard. conceptually, this shows what the approvedpermit design was for. again, it collected water primarily from theparking garage and went to an oil/grit separator located here off of the northern end of thegarage, and discharged into the stream immediately to the west. the road surface that came down was also arequirement, and that went into a biofilter structure here, which was collected, treated,and discharged to a stream that flows to the west from the mid-site.

in the current design and where we are going,again, is 100 percent treatment from the whole area. so clearly this will exceed the minimum requirementsstipulated or the basic requirements stipulated by mde, and it shows our ability to improvethe water quality discharge off of the site. again, the water draining from the circulationroad, which is shown here, that goes to the back of the campus, as well as from the reverseslope berm, will go to a biofilter structure located here, and then be discharged. the parking garage, the access road, visitorcontrol center, visitor parking, as well as the two large pervious areas located on eitherside of the access will be collected and flow

through this structure here, first treatedand prior to discharge into the stream to the west. so just to summarize, we are in a pretty tightcondition with regard to the available real estate. we have decreased the garage here substantially,have moved it as far north as we can because this underground oil/grit separator that islocated here, which is collecting, again, that stormwater coming off of the bulk ofthe north campus site, needs approximately this amount of real estate here to be constructed,as we have shown on this drawing. this is the fenceline.

what we have just off of just outside thisfenceline is the stream that basically runs between the waldorf school, which is downin this area down here, and the montgomery county park that is located right here. it is basically the drainage that separatesit, and there is a pretty substantial dropoff several feet from the property down to thatstream. so we have this structure that is pretty wellshoehorned in between the edge of the garage and the high ground that separates that streamfrom the site. we have the other stormwater structure locatedhere just off of the southeast corner of the garage, which again collects the water fromthe road surface here as well as the pervious

surface that comprises the berm here, intoa biofilter, and then discharges again to the stream that goes here. we have been able to reduce the deforestationfrom .75 acres to .45 acres in order to preserve the trees that are located, again, in thisgenerally this southern end of the property, or just south of the garage, where the woodsin good condition are located off of the site there. and that concludes my comments, subject toyour questions. chairman bryant: thank you, mr. olsen, verymuch. commissioner wright: you said that you havelowered the elevation, but you didn't give

us a number by the total. what is the number of feet that the elevationhas been lowered? mr. olsen: it hasn't been lowered since 2february. what we showed there was the elevation atthe lowest had already been lowered, and the elevation top of parapet for the garage isapproximately 275 feet above sea level. by comparison, morey hall, which is the adjacentexisting structure, is 297 feet above sea level. and erskine hall, which is the largest, higheststructure existing on the site, is 341 feet above sea level.

commissioner wright: it's groundhog day. you're not answering my question. mr. olsen: okay. commissioner wright: my question is: by howmany feet have you lowered the elevation of the garage from the original design to whereit is now? mr. olsen: i don't have that number with me. i don't know. commissioner wright: that seems a really importantnumber to me. we can provide that.

commissioner wright: i would like to knowthat. and you noted that you have an open garagerequirement. what does that mean? it is required by whom or what regulationor what entity or mr. olsen: it was a design criteria that was established for the garage. and when the job was bid, it was a requirementof the design-build contract that was awarded. and so it was bid and awarded for a dollaramount that would construct a garage not requiring the fire protection and mechanical ventilationsystems for enclosed garage. commissioner wright: right.

so, but the design criteria were set by mr.olsen: our client, the dia. commissioner wright: so, and was there evera serious look at moving the location of the garage? mr. olsen: yes, ma'am. commissioner wright: how serious how wouldyou characterize "serious"? mr. olsen: it was serious. it was looked at very seriously early on lastsummer when we were doing the site development for the project. commissioner wright: that's not what i'm asking.

commissioner wright: since the december meetinghere, was there a serious look at relocating the garage? mr. olsen: yes. i mean, we sat down with the project executive,mr. massman, who spoke to you at the february meeting, and laid out the alternatives, and,again, reviewed the logic and analysis that went into relocating the garage elsewhereon the site, the mid-site option and the northeast corner options. and based on that discussion, basically becauseof viewshed impacts and site circulation concerns, again, where we have it located is the bestlocation.

commissioner wright: and during the courseof this serious revisiting of the location, was the option of locating the garage outsideof the security perimeter ever considered? mr. olsen: it was discussed, yes, ma'am. commissioner wright: was it seriously considered? mr. olsen: it was determined at that timethat the client's requirements are that it needed to be within the security perimeter. commissioner wright: was the client consultedwith the option? commissioner wright: and they rejected theoption. chairman bryant: ms. greenwald?

oh, i'm sorry. mr. denis, did you have commissioner denis:no. chairman bryant: mr. hart? commissioner hart: yes, i have a questionabout compliance with the maryland state forest conservation act. was a forest stand delineation plan preparedand approved? mr. olsen: a forest conservation plan was,yes, sir. commissioner hart: and is a forest conservationplan was prepared and approved by d&r? mr. olsen: yes, sir. commissioner hart: okay.

mr. olsen: now, that was for the originalpermit that was submitted, and it will be, accordingly, revised based on the reducedforest impact. commissioner hart: thank you. chairman bryant: mr. may? mr. provancha? commissioner may: first, i want to say i appreciatethe fact that there has been there continues to be progress on this project and close coordinationwith the park service with the two park jurisdictions that are involved. and i think there has generally been positivefeedback from the neighbors, at least from

the little bit that i have heard. so i am pleased to hear that there is goodconsultation and cooperation going on. i have to say, i am a little bit disappointedthat you haven't gotten all the way to what we were looking for when we approved the masterplan. and the you know, i think the deforestationmaybe there is more that can be done. i am probably more concerned at this momentwith the stormwater runoff situation, because it only takes one really bad storm that youhaven't you know, that your system your new system can't manage, to do the kind of damagethat we have seen already in the park. so i would strongly encourage that the thatyou continue to work on that.

and i frankly, you know, looking at the verysimple diagrams that you showed us, i am not quite sure i understand why you can't do moreto detain water onsite. the treatment structure that you have thatis next to the garage entrance, that is underground there, i don't understand why that couldn'tbe expanded to be able to hold more water. is there a reason why that can't grow anylarger? mr. olsen: and we actually have expanded itby about on the order of about 30,000 gallons. it was originally sized 80,000. now it is 110,000. basically, the issue that we have is the setbackarea, the laydown for installing it.

we are at the limits of fitting it betweenthe garage and the northern crest, if you will, before you fall off into the streamalong the northern boundary. commissioner may: okay. but those are essentially two sides of a triangle,and there is a third side of the triangle which backs it, you know, which would allowyou to expand the hole closer to the road. would it not? i mean, couldn't you expand in that direction? mr. olsen: the issue we have is the denialbarriers require underground structures that require space as well as other utilities thatare in the area with regard to storm sewer

and some other utilities that are locatedin that area that kind of complement the space there at the north end of the garage. it has been evaluated. in fact, we gave the criteria to the designteam following the 2 february meeting to make the structure as large as you possibly can,so we can retain as much water as or detain as much water as possible onsite. commissioner may: i mean, it sounds to methat that is just an engineering challenge. it is not i mean, there is no inherent incompatibilitywith having a structure at the surface of that nature with a subsurface structure.

it just means it would need to be engineereddifferently. i mean, is there a reason why you can't havethat the whatever the retainage structure is below grade. why can't that pass under the barriers ofthe surface? i mean, is there a reason? i mean, it seems to me that it is just itchanges the structure of things. it changes how it is engineered and how muchrebar you have to put in and but it doesn't seem like it is inherently incompatible. mr. olsen: i think the only issue would bethe depth at which you would have to build

that structure, the stormwater detention structure,in order to have it below grade and have it drain via gravity and still reach the outfallthat discharges into the western stream. commissioner may: oh, okay. mr. olsen: so you have an issue of slope andgrade that you have to commissioner may: so it is not a retainage solution, that thereare concrete solutions you need or a rebar solution. what you need is a pump. mr. olsen: and the desire not to have thatoperating complication from a with a stormwater management structure.

commissioner may: well, okay. buy a pump, have significant stormwater damagein the park. it seems to me that you have to balance thatand really justify that, and i'm not persuaded. mr. olsen: right. commissioner may: so, anyway, i would justencourage you to keep working on that mr. olsen: all right. commissioner may: push the limit. thanks. commissioner provancha: appreciate mr. may'scomments about the stormwater management,

as well as the collaboration with the community. the staff report talks about active engagementwith the community since february. however, for the record, the attachment goingback to december talks about extensive collaboration with the community well before the februarycommission meeting. so that has been an ongoing, improving, anda very important i think aspect of this project. on the two specific requirements from ourlast meeting on the deforestation and the stormwater management, i think the corps shouldbe commended for the tremendous progress. i think if we started, for example, on deforestationwith three acres, and we are down to .45, the corps was only asked to set a target of.25 and you're within two-tenths of an acre

of meeting a target that you weren't requiredto meet you were required to set, but not necessarily to meet or achieve, as well asthe established or meeting the mde and eisa 438 standards i think all reflects very, verywell on the corps, as well as all of the other aspects of planning, from the traffic accidents,working with local jurisdictions particularly on traffic accidents and egress along sangamore,balancing security, and so forth. so i continue to be encouraged by what wesee each time we revisit this project. so thank you. mr. olsen: thank you. commissioner tregoning: i'll just the issuei wanted to comment on that commissioner may

raised is also stormwater, that the stormwaterproblem isn't merely about the quality of the stormwater, it is about the quantity. so the scouring that occurs when large volumesof water are released down that slope, you know, into the receiving water is somethingthat could, you know, cause great problems with erosion. so not so designing a system that is essentiallyabout skimming oil from the you know, from the roads and other surface materials doesn'treally do much to reduce that scouring. and i have to say, i would like to be sympathetic,except the district has a federal requirement that applies to virtually the entire cityto permanently retain stormwater from a significant

event, not from as large an event. so we are talking about a 1.6-inch stormwaterevent, but it has to be retained, not detained. and we have a lot less land to deal with formost of our buildings than you have at this site. so i realize that once you have already establishedwhere you are going to put everything, and you design the stormwater system and the forestationsystem after the fact, that you are probably not going to have as much success as if itwas part of the design to begin with. but, you know, i think that commissioner'smay comment about having to pump, well, if you put the garage on the downstream sideof the site, and you don't want to put the

retention facility there, yeah, you are goingto have to pump. i don't see any you know, i don't see anyway around it. you know, i guess that is my main comment. i still don't understand why there is anywhy the the literal edge of the garage, if it has to be in the security barrier at all,why it can't just be the security barrier, why there has to be, you know, one inch ofadditional disturbance, except what you might have to do to actually construct, you know,beyond the wall of that garage, because it is not an occupied structure. you know, it is not an occupied structure.

you have the standoff from the rest of thebuilding. you know, i just don't see why it is necessary. now, maybe it is a stormwater it wasn't clearto me, quite frankly, from the presentation whether that was a security feature or whetherthat is something that you are putting in to you know, more to hide the garage, youknow, not clear. but i just don't get it from a security perspective. mr. olsen, thank you very much. i would agree with mr. provancha that thecorps has made, especially in recent months, tremendous strides in terms of both communityoutreach and in redesign.

mr. olsen: thank you, sir. chairman bryant: thank you for your efforts. without noticing any additional comments,we have had a long meeting. thank you all for your attendance and yourperseverance. and unless there is any further business,this meeting is adjourned.

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