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MINUTES OF COMMITTEE OF THE WHOLE September 26, 2022 AUDITORIUM Present: Councilmembers Litten, Kepple, Baker, Marx, Bullock & Shachner Also Present: Assistant Law Director Swallow, Chief Storey, Mayor George, Lou McMahon of McMahon Degulis, Clerk Bach, and Deputy Clerk Lascu taking minutes Call to Order: 6:05 p.m. RESOLUTION 2022-38 -A RESOLUTION to take effect immediately provided it receives the affirmative vote of at least two thirds of the members of Council, or otherwise to take effect and be in force after the earliest period allowed by law, authorizing the Mayor to enter into a consent decree with the US Department of Justice. (Referred to PWS 09/19/22) Lou McMahon of McMahon DeGulis gave a presentation on the consent decree that the city is looking to enter into with the Department of Justice (DOJ) and United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and the multi-year process leading up to the decision. The end goal of the consent decree is to renew infrastructure and improve water quality at a pace that is affordable for the city. He briefly recapped the process leading up to the consent decree, that first started with the EPA coming to town 14 years ago. Mr. McMahon spoke about the high-quality team that Lakewood formed and has been working together since 2017 when it developed the Integrated Wet Weather Improvement Plan (IWWIP). He added that the excellent city staff in Engineering and Planning Departments have demonstrated to the EPA that Lakewood knows what it is doing. The EPA has allowed Lakewood to follow the same schedule the city set for itself when it adopted the IWWIP in 2019. The consent decree schedule builds in a pause of work in 2031 that the city did not allot for itself. The pause allows the city to evaluate its economic situation after it's completed all EPA required work. Mr. McMahon went on to explain the technical, legal aspects of the consent decree, noting that it can protect the city from onerous lawsuits or citizen suits. A consent decree is a judicially enforced contract that is designed to bring an entity further into compliance. The civil penalty that was issued to Lakewood under the consent decree was the smallest that the agency can mandate. With the consent decree and civil penalty in place, the city can reap the benefit of the Clean Water Act(CWA), which minimizes the possibility of citizen suit and allows for integrated planning with the CWA. Mr. McMahon described the city's sewer system. It was never built as one cohesive system, with each individual developer of each individual street responsible for building their own waste disposal methods, ultimately dumping sewage directly into the lake instead of going into a treatment plant. As Lakewood developed swiftly in the 1920s & 1930s, the prevailing thought in public health at that time was to remove waste as quickly as possible and avoid odors, which 1