Planning Board - Planning Board Meeting

Mary, we are all set with the recording and the live stream, so we should be able to open the meeting at 6.30 itself.

Thank you. Good evening. Welcome to the June 10th, 2025 meeting of the Cambridge planning board. My name is Mary Flynn and I am the chair. Pursuant to chapter two of the acts of 2025 adopted by the Massachusetts general court and approved by the governor, the city is authorized to use remote participation at meetings of the Cambridge planning board. while board members, applicants, and members of the public will state their name before speaking, and all votes will be taken by roll call. Members of the public will be kept on mute until it is time for public comment. I will give instructions for public comment at that time, and you can also find instructions on the city's webpage for remote planning board meetings. This meeting is being video and audio recorded and is being streamed live on the City of Cambridge online meeting portal and on cable television channel 22 within Cambridge. There will also be a transcript of the proceedings. I'll start by asking staff to take board member attendance and verify that all members are audible. For that, I'm going to go to Jeff.

Thank you, this is Jeff Roberts at CDD. H. Theodore Cohen, are you present and is the meeting visible and audible to you? Present, visible, and audible. Thank you, Ted. Mary Lydecker, are you present and is the meeting visible and audible to you?

Present, visible, and audible.

Thank you, Mary. Diego Macias, are you present and is the meeting visible and audible to you? Present, visible, and audible. Thank you, Diego. Tom Sieniewicz, are you present and is the meeting visible and audible to you? Present, visible, and audible. Thank you, Tom. Ashley Tan, are you present? Is the meeting visible and audible to you?

Present, visible, and audible.

Thank you, Ashley. Carolyn Zern, are you present? Is the meeting visible and audible to you?

Present, visible, and audible.

Thank you, Carolyn. And now, associate members. Dan Anderson, are you present? And is the meeting visible and audible to you?

Hi, Jeff. Present, visible, and audible.

Thank you, Dan. Joy Jackson, are you present and is the meeting visible and audible to you?

Present, visible, and audible.

Thank you, Joy. So then back to Mary Flynn. Can you confirm that the meeting is visible and audible to you?

It is visible and audible.

Thank you, Mary. That means we have all seven planning board members and two associate members present.

Great. Thank you very much. The first item this evening will be an update from the community development. And for that, we're going to go back to Jeff. And Jeff, if you would introduce any other staff who were present at the meeting.

Thank you. I will do that, Mary. So this is Jeff Roberts. I'm the Director of Zoning and Development in the Community Development Department. With me, Swathi Joseph on the Zoning and Development team. And we have some special guests who will be introducing themselves a little bit later on. Kathy Watkins, who is currently the Commissioner of Public Works. Nikhil Nadkarni, who's in our Office of Sustainability. And unfortunately, I don't have him for this official title. So I'm sure he'll have a chance to introduce himself. But he's been involved in the subject of tonight's meeting. Then we have some other, I believe we have some other city staff, but they can introduce themselves as they come on. I'll just do a quick update because there's actually not a whole lot to update. We don't have any more planning board meetings scheduled for this month. We will likely have some in July, but probably more mid to late July. So for planning board watchers, you'll have to keep an eye on our website to see what items are going to pop up and when. we uh so for the sake of update i'll just go i'll do what i did before and give kind of an update on the zoning petitions that have come through the city council i'm sorry come through the planning board and um and are being considered by the city council uh the aho heights zoning amendment uh passed city council so it's been adopted that was some um clarifications on the height limits on the affordable housing overlay. It was a follow-up from the multifamily zoning amendments. We also had an update to the floodplain zoning that also was adopted by the City Council, so that incorporates new mapping and data that will go into effect on July 8th. And then there was a zoning petition related to cannabis retail stores and packaging that was up for adoption last night. My understanding is that was also adopted. I'm not sure if the website has been fully updated at this point, but that was, I think, clear that that was said to be adopted. So that's three zoning petitions that have made their way through the process. The Biomed Realty Zoning Petition, which relates to 320 Charles Street and proposed development there, that's been passed to a second reading. So that will come up for a potential vote either later in June, I believe June 30th, or at the city council summer meeting, which is typically in early August. I don't know if that's been posted yet. So that's still to be decided. And then there's the petition, the residents petition related to religious uses. We just recently had posted an ordinance committee hearing, a follow-up to the first ordinance committee meeting will take place on June 18th. And we will schedule a continued hearing at the planning board. We expect we'll have a legal opinion from the city's law department. So we'll have a chance to talk about that again. So that's where we are. And as I said, as business items come along and we have to schedule them, For the planning board, we'll make sure all that information is posted on our website. Unless there's any questions, I'll turn it over there.

Thank you. Any questions from board members? Okay, seeing none. The next item this evening is approval of meeting minutes. The board has received certified transcripts for the meetings held on March 18th and March 25th of 2025. If board members have questions, please raise your hand or say your name. All right, then we'll move this to a motion and a vote. This will be for full board members only. Is there a motion to accept the transcript as the meeting minutes?

This is Tom, so moved.

Thank you, Tom, is there a second, please? This is Mary, second. Thank you, Mary. Jeff, may we have a roll call vote, please?

Yes, on that motion, Ted Cohen. Yes. Mary Lydecker.

Yes.

Diego Macias. Yes. Thompson Avich. Yes. Ashley Tan.

Yes.

Carolyn Zern.

Just a point of order, since I wasn't at that meeting, I don't know if I am qualified to say yes if I can.

You can. I think you just need to take a vote.

Okay, yes.

Yes, okay. And Mary Flynn. Yes. That's all members voting in favor.

All right, thank you. Next we'll move on to agenda item number one. And I believe Tom is, yes, Tom, let me acknowledge you.

Yes, thank you, Tom Sieniewicz. I'm... for the record, recusing myself from this matter. Thank you.

Thank you. All right. We'll see you in a bit then. The next item on the agenda is a request for an extension of time for hearing and decision on planning board case PB315, an application for a major amendment to modify the infield development concept plan for the MXD zoning district by Boston Properties Limited Partnership. CDD staff will provide an update for us and Swathi is going to do that this evening.

Thank you, Mary. So the major amendment request for this case was first heard on March 25th, 2025. Staff have been in touch with the applicant and they are continuing to work through some issues that were raised by the board members and staff at that time. THE APPLICANT HAS PROVIDED A WAIVER OF THE STATUTORY TIME FOR HEARING AND DECISION AND REQUESTED AN EXTENSION OF TIME TILL SEPTEMBER 30, 2025.

THANK YOU. ARE THERE ANY QUESTIONS FROM BOARD MEMBERS? No, okay, it seems pretty straightforward. We do need an associate member to vote on this case. I'm going to appoint Dan Anderson to act on this particular motion. Could I have a motion to agree to this extension of time?

This is Ted, so moved.

Thank you, Ted. May I have a second, please?

Ashley, second.

Thank you, Ashley. All right, Jeff, let's have a roll call vote, please.

On that motion, Ted Cohen. Yes. Mary Lightacre.

Yes.

Diego Macias. Yes. Tom Sieniewicz. Oh, I'm sorry. Tom Sieniewicz is recused from this. Ashley Tan.

Yes.

Carolyn Zern.

Yes.

Dan Anderson. Yes. And Mary Flynn.

Yes.

So that is all seven appointed members voting in favor. Great.

Thank you very much. All right. So we're going to move on to our next agenda item, which is the main body of the meeting this evening. And that is a report on utility planning from Eversource Gas and Electric Utility, Vicinity Energy, the Cambridge Department of Public Works, and the Cambridge Water Department. board will hear brief presentations from representatives of each utility followed by public comment. And after that, the board will have an opportunity to discuss the presentations. So city staff are here with us this evening and they're gonna begin with the background and an overview of the process. And we'll give a presentation on the city sewer and water infrastructure. So I believe Kathy Watkins is going to be doing this for us this evening. So Kathy, if you would start off and introduce the other staff who were present.

Sure. Thank you all for having me. And you'll see in the presentation, it was originally going to be Jim Wilcox, and I think he did it last year. And Jim is the city engineer and had a sort of last minute conflict. So I am stepping in for Jim. So I hope I will do my best. So Kathy Watkins, currently the commissioner of the Department of Public Works. And then so I'll be talking about the sewer drainage and some, you know, sidewalk and other utilities issues. And then Rich Holley, the manager of distribution at the Water Department, will be talking about the Water Department. And then we'll turn it over to Eversource and Vicinity. So with that, let me share my screen. And then we did this before. So sorry. Let me just make sure this is open. OK. Window. All right. Is everybody seeing this? Somebody seeing the screen?

What we're seeing is your computer screen, so not just the slide.

OK. Sorry about that. We tested this before. Let me try this one more time. Share window. OK. Does that one work? Is that just the presentation?

Now it's, again, your full screen. Swathi, you may be able to turn.

Just toggle.

Go ahead. So, Kathy, we can see the slides, and you might want to move to the slideshow.

It is. Is it not showing up as slideshow? No. Okay. Hold on. Sorry. We just tried this two minutes ago, Swathi.

Okay.

Sorry about that. Let me do this one, see if that works. Does that work or no? Yes. All right. All right. See, I'm already like falling behind. Okay. So again, Kathy Watkins and I will go through a number of slides and sort of give some background and again, happy to answer questions. When we think about sort of the city utilities, we very much think about these in terms of having a five-year and 10-year plan. and really trying to have a holistic approach to utilities. So this is an image of our five-year sidewalk and street plan, which really lays out how we approach sidewalk and street reconstruction. There is a significant focus on complete streets and really focusing on our streets being used by people and being safe for all users, so people walking, biking, taking the T and driving and using the street sort of as public space. And there's also a strong commitment to Vision Zero to really focus on the elimination of fatalities and serious injuries. So that is a driver behind all of our projects as well as air prioritization of projects. One of the things that the engineering division has done over the last year that is really new and different is upgraded, updated all of our inventory of sidewalks. And so we did an inventory of every single sidewalk in the city, including sidewalks, pedestrian ramps, and crosswalks, and really assess those for the condition of the sidewalks, as well as accessibility of sidewalks. And so that is giving us extremely good data in terms of understanding what streets and sidewalks we need to be prioritizing for reconstruction. This slide talks a little bit about some of the very specific criteria that we look at to say, you know, is a street accessible? What does that mean? So it's both in terms of, you know, the condition of the street, but also things like the width. Is it wide enough to get if I'm using mobility device, using a wheelchair, using a walker? Is it wide enough to meet those? And, you know, what are the slopes of the sidewalk? And so that was data that was collected and then also looked at the existing conditions. So, and which is typically, you know, like how many cracks are there and how many defects are there and how accessible is it? And so all of that data really came to look at, okay, so when we combine all that data, how much of our sidewalks are in good condition? FAIR CONDITION AND POOR CONDITION. AND SO WHAT YOU SEE IS THAT ABOUT 43% OF OUR SIDEWALKS WERE IN GOOD CONDITION, 49% WERE IN FAIR CONDITION AND 7% WERE IN POOR CONDITION. AND I WOULD SAY THAT THAT WAS ACTUALLY A LITTLE MORE POSITIVE THAN I WOULD HAVE EXPECTED TO BE HONEST. I THINK WE SPEND A LOT OF OUR TIME FOCUSING ON THE SIDEWALKS THAT ARE IN POOR CONDITION AND SO I WAS ACTUALLY QUITE POSITIVE TO SEE THAT AMOUNT OF SIDEWALKING GOOD AND FAIR CONDITION. We also looked at some of the, you know, what are these spot issues that come up that cause issues for sidewalks? So, you know, is there a hydrant or utility pole that really constricts the width of the sidewalk? Are there overhanging trees and shrubs and those kind of point defects that really compromise the sidewalk? So this is all built into that survey data. And then again, similarly with the pedestrian ramps, we looked at very technical, you know, what is the width of the ramp? What are the cross slopes of the ramp? Does it really work for people trying to use it? And again, these are sort of showing some examples of different types of ramps, all of which are compliant and work differently in different locations. That was the kind of data that was collected. And again, I'm going through this very quickly, but people will have the presentation and can really look at it. And what we found is that we have a significant number of ramps that are noncompliant. So if we look over on the right-hand side in this compliant bucket, we have over 1,000 ramps that are fully compliant, but we have over 3,000 ramps that are noncompliant. They're either too steep or they don't have the truncated domes and really problematic in terms of accessibility for people. And so one of the things that we're looking at is doing some contracts, you know, some construction contracts that focus just on those ramps to say, can we make our sidewalks work better for people? Similarly to the sidewalk condition data, we've also recently updated air pavement management system. And so that looks at looking at every single roadway in the city and scoring it on a score between zero and 100. And again, really just trying to figure out how do we prioritize different projects and say, these are the locations that we really need to be focusing on next. And so that's sort of on the street and sidewalk section. On our sewer and drain side, we have called a 10-year plan because these are much larger projects with much larger timeframes. And so we think about these in a 10-year timeframe. And when we think about our sewer and drainage system, one of the things to notice is that the dark blue line on sort of the eastern part of the city is All the area to the left of that drains to the Alewife Brook. So if it rains and you're sort of like, where does that water go to? It goes to the Alewife Brook. All of the water on the right side of that line goes to the Charles River. So different depending on what section of the city you're in, air water goes in different places. The other thing this map shows are areas that are what we call separated sewer systems and not separated sewer systems. And I'll talk a little bit more about those specifics. The blue areas are separated, which we generally think of as the better way to go. And the yellow areas are not separated. So just keep that in mind as we're looking at the next couple of slides. And again, this talks about, you know, we have the number of miles and the number of catch basins that we have. We have a very complex and very old. Some of these systems are over 100 years old in terms of our existing infrastructure. So when we think about what is a combined sewer, what you have on the left is the combined sewer. So that means both rain and sewage when you flush your toilet goes into the same pipe. On a dry day or even on a moderately wet day, all of that flow, both a little bit of rain as well as your sewage, goes to Deer Island and is treated. But when we have a really heavy rainstorm, the pipes would get overwhelmed and could back up into homes. And so in those situations, we have a combined sewer overflow that says, okay, the pipes are too full and can't handle it. And so some of that combined sewage goes into either the Charles or the Alewife Brook. And so the city has spent many decades doing extensive construction projects to really reduce the amount of combined sewer overflows. And we're continuing to work on that. So right now we have a project that we're doing, a long-term control plan that we're doing with Somerville and the MWRA to say, how do we effectively continue to reduce those combined sewer overflows? So if we look back over 30 years, we've reduced the amount of overflows into the Alewife Brook by 85% and into the Charles River by 98%. So we've made significant progress, but we know that that's not sufficient. We have more work to do to, again, continue to reduce those combined sewer overflows and continue to improve the water quality of the Alewife Brook, the Mystic River, and the Charles River. This lays out a timeframe for the CSO control plan. So again, combined sewer overflow control plan. And we have had a number of community meetings and to continue to engage with the public. We're currently looking to have the next community meeting would be in this fall. And then we are working with MWA in Somerville to have a draft plan by the end of this year. So by the end of 2025, we would have a draft CSO control plan in And then by January of 2027, we would have a finalized plan. So that's sort of the focus of the work that we're doing now. And so we say, you know, what does that work involved and why does it take so long? Right. Like we are, this is a big priority. We want to be moving on it and we're continue to do projects. And I'll show a couple examples of those, but again, One of the things we've been doing is really making sure that all of our different hydraulic models talk to each other and are really a combined model. So we spent a substantial amount of time working with, again, MWA and Somerville to make sure we have a combined model and that we all agree on, you know, if we do this project, what are the CSO controls benefits going to be? And so this is one of the things we've also done is we spent a significant amount of time looking at when we think about CSO control, we say, you know, in a typical year, how does the system behave? But what we know is that with climate change, our typical year isn't the same today as it is in 2050. And so we've spent a significant amount of time developing a future-proof typical year that really accounts for climate change. And this is really the first CSO control plan in the country that has effectively incorporated climate change into the plan. And so what that means, though, is that if you look at this graph, if you say like in a typical year from 1992, which was the last long-term control plan, we would have that volume of combined sewer overflows. Now, if we keep the system the exact same, and all we do is say we're increasing the rate of precipitation, because we know that rainstorms are getting more intense and larger, we will have significantly more combined sewer overflows into the Elwhite Brook, into the Charles River. And so as we're looking at projects and as we're looking to implement them, we want to make sure that they address combined sewer overflows today and into the future. The next couple of slides, just really think about, you know, what are the types of tools that we think about? We say we want to reduce CSOs and everyone's like, well, of course we do. It's like, well, how do we do that? And so there's a number of different strategies such as sewer separation, again, sort of separating those pipes. So you have a sewer pipe and a drainage pipe. green stormwater infrastructure. People think about the alewife wetlands, inflow and infiltration. So that can be water that gets into the sewage system that shouldn't be there. We also look at storage and then conveyance. And we'll talk a little bit about a couple of these issues. So again, we talked about sewer separation, So again, instead of having a single pipe that's carrying both sewer and drainage, on the right-hand side, you'll see that you have a system that has two different pipes. So you have a drainage system that only carries clean rainwater that goes out to the rivers, and then you have a pipe that only carries sewage that goes out to Deer Island. And again, so people that are familiar with West Cambridge sewer separation that we did a number of years ago or the Western Avenue project or the River Street project, these are very large, complex projects. And so they have significant benefits, but they take many years and decades to implement. We also look at green stormwater infrastructure. So and this comes up, I know when people are reviewing a number of development projects, how do we maintain and keep some of that stormwater out of the system completely. So we can do small bio basins like this is showing or larger green infrastructure. And again, the goal is to keep some of that rainwater out of the system completely. This is sort of showing infiltration and flow. So again, if you have a leaking pipe, it can let groundwater into the drainage system, which means there's less capacity in that system for when actual rain is getting into it. And so the other strategy that, again, is really being looked at are CSO is storage facilities. So the top photo is really more of a regional kind of facility that the MWA would do that is a large storage tunnel for CSO. So if you have a really big storm, instead of saying that combined sewage needs to go as an overflow into the Charles River, the Alewife Brook, this tunnel can store it until there's capacity in the system to then send it back. And then there's another photo showing a different type of facility. We also think a lot about conveyance. So that is, you know, do we have a large enough pipe to really convey the water and convey the storage? And so we are doing a number of different projects like that. If people have been out to Broadway and Kendall Square, there's a significant project going on there. And that is really driven by additional capacity in the sewer and drainage systems. As part of the CSO control plan, there's going to be a sort of a suite of strategies that's going to really work together to reduce combined sewer overflows. So this plan is showing the sort of the line to the left is really the Alewife Brook. the blue line and this is really indicating that you know one strategy could be in Somerville for them to separate you know over 250 acres of sewer separation and so that they can again reduce that combined sewer overflow. We also are looking at doing a number of storage systems so that we can again reduce those combined sewer overflows. And similarly on the Charles River, looking at similar kinds of suite of strategies, some might involve a larger MWA type tunnel where they can really store significant volumes or again, sort of smaller localized storage facilities. And then here we have just a few different types of examples of projects that we're working on. And again, we're continuing to implement these kinds of improvements. This is an image of the Tobin, and this is on the Vassal Lane side, so the new school of Tobin. And there we're doing both pretty significant 100,000 gallon by a retention area in the front of the school, which will be a nice amenity visually for the school, but also help reduce flooding in the neighborhood as well as improve the water quality of the stormwater. This is a tank that's in the back of the school. So in addition to doing the rain garden, we're also doing 1.25 million gallon stormwater tank that again during those heavy storm events can really hold that stormwater and reduce flooding in the neighborhood. And so that that project is under construction. I think most people know, you know, the Tobin is scheduled to be completed for September school. And so that those pieces are really coming together. So again, a couple different images. And if you sort of look in the picture and see the size of the people in there, you can see this is a quite large tank and is one of the largest ones we've ever constructed. And so we're really excited to have this come online and reduce flooding in the neighborhood. And again, just a couple other construction photos. And then the last thing I sort of want to touch base on, and we've talked about this with the board, is sea level rise, storm surge. So when we are looking at flooding in several different areas of Cambridge, one of the big risks is future flooding from sea level rise and storm surge. So that's water coming back from the Boston Harbor and back over the Amelia Earhart Dam or the Charles River Dam and flooding the city. And so we've been working on a regional project that we've really been leading with other communities to say what can we do to enhance both the Charles River Dam and the Amelia Earhart Dam as well as look at any other pathways that the water has to get around that. And so that we can keep that sea level, sea water out of the city. And so if you look at this image, what you're seeing in those yellow boxes is sort of, as we look at the Amelia Earhart dam and how do we keep water for coming back over the Amelia Earhart dam, up the Mystic River and then back over to Elwhife, we've identified a number of different strategies And again, we're making really good progress in terms of understanding what the design of those needs to be to protect the city. And this is really significant in terms of development projects because the elevation of that flooding from sea level rise is generally can be two to four feet higher than the flooding that you would anticipate in some areas from rainfall and so it can have a significant impact on the development projects so again just a couple examples of looking at those kinds of strategies that we're looking at and again the different types of the different colors show you know the different pathways and how water can get into the city and again really increase the flooding to the neighborhoods I'm going to flip through these sort of quickly. The other sort of last point we just wanted to make is that, you know, a little over a year ago, the electrical division used to be a separate department. And about a year ago, we moved them into the Department of Public Works. They were a pretty small department. And we felt like there was a lot of value in having them part of the broader DPW. And so, yeah. That's been really positive in terms of us being able to help the electrical division with supports and then also, you know, just giving them more funding and more support as they're looking to do their work. And they do really critical work in terms of, you know, all of our street lighting as well as, you know, the fire alarm system and maintaining this electricity and facilities in the city buildings. And one of the major projects we've been working with them on that I think people will probably in the next couple of weeks will start to see is the replacement of the decorative poles at the Lechmere Canal Park. Those were installed when the park was originally constructed and have deteriorated to become structurally unsound over the years. We're doing an active project of replacing those poles. And again, you know, the electrical department is also looking at, you know, let's have a three year and a four year approach to light pole replacement so that we're keeping up with the light pole replacements and not just in a reactive mode. One of the other things the department does is maintain the PV systems at our city buildings, which as we continue to build out PV systems is becoming a bigger piece of work for the department. And again, just to sort of close, you know, we look at all of these infrastructure in terms of, you know, how does it support the work of the community and how does it really benefit the community and really make it work better for folks? So again, we think of it both in terms of our infrastructure and our streets and sidewalks, but then also like as we talked about, you know, the combined sewer overflow is also a significant part of what has really led to the transformation, particularly in the Charles River, where the Charles River is such an amenity to the community. And so that is a lot of what is driving our improvements on our infrastructure. So with that, I will stop sharing. Hopefully that worked. And it didn't.

No, it did. It did. Oh, it did.

Okay.

Awesome. That's all right. I appreciate that. So with that, I'll turn it over to Rich and he can talk about the water department infrastructure. Thank you.

Okay. So we can get this right the first time here.

Oh, look, he's trying to make me look bad. Ah, Rich, you're better than me. Just like that.

Not yet. I can't reach the, hold on.

Okay, can everybody see this?

Yep, looks great.

Okay, so thank you, Kathy, and good evening, everybody. My name is Rich Hawley. I am the Director of Engineering and Distribution here at the Water Department. I was asked to give a brief overview of current projects that are water main projects that are going on in the city, completed projects that were done in the city, and also some future stuff going on. With that being said, why do we replace water mains? Well, Cambridge has water mains that date all the way back to 1864. And we all know as we get older, we get a little bit more frail, so things happen. You know, sometimes we get some really bad leaks and that's stuff that we want to eliminate and for water conservation and you know the basic overview of the overview of the water system to be structurally sound leakage history, we do a lot of work here and in compiling data on. How many leaks are in the streets and the areas and we compare age and you know why you know road construction stuff like that that's another big part of why we do replace water mains another part is we like to keep up on our fire flows so. We in Cambridge have one of the highest rated percentages of active fire hydrants in the country. We kind of thrive on that and we like to continue to keep it that way. So changing water mains, you're also increasing your water flows and water quality is also a big part of that as well. With fire hydrants, we are able to keep the water moving that is actually stagnant in some areas, typically in dead ends. And with stagnant water, you can get that yucky brown color that people see once in a while when there is some flushing going on. So that's why we like to keep the fire flows going and fire flow capacity, and that also improves the water quality. And one last other thing we look at is we want to support both current and future developments within the city. Cambridge is getting bigger by the day. There's more buildings. There's more universities. There's more labs going in. And we need to support that growth as it continues. Okay. So another thing we take into play here with our water mains is we like to support the DPW with all of their street and sidewalk reconstruction projects. That is a big part of why we do replace water mains because nobody wants to see a water main break when there's a brand new street and sidewalk that was just put in. So the current project right now being worked on is the Chapter 90 Contract 25. So we here at the water department, we like to be proactive and we do handle some work in house here with our own crews. So back in 2018 on Maple Ave, we, the water department actually installed 1500 feet of new eight inch ductile ion pipe. To date, that is one of the longest water main projects we have done here in house and it went very well. and it helped the community greatly by doing that. As you can see on the slide, there was three new fire hydrants that were installed, and the current, well, and the older, hydrants were only giving the residents 900 gallons per minute coming out of those fire hydrants which typically means that there wasn't that much water to fight fires so with that new water main installation those flows actually raised up to 1900 gallons per minute which is more than enough water to do everything they need to do there to keep everybody safe currently newport construction went in there and they had to relocate two of those hydrants to help with the raising of the crosswalks because we don't want to have those in the middle of the crosswalks. And they've also replaced 10 lead services. And as most of you know, we are concentrating on replacing all the lead services within the city. So we tried to piggyback all of this water main work with replacing those lead services at the same time. Another project that we did here in-house was in 2017, which was Montgomery Street. Montgomery Street was one of the streets in Cambridge that actually has two water mains in it. One was an old six-inch cast iron line that was installed in 1870. And then there was also a 12-inch cast iron line that was installed in 1933. But that water main was what we call cleaned and lined, where they go in and they clean it and they reline it for water quality purposes. And what we did there was we took all the water services off of that water main and transferred them from the old six-inch main to the 12-inch main. This helped the residents with more volume at their houses. It helped with the hydrants and it helps. Like I said, the community. Greatly or in that area also, Newport construction also went in after us and relocated to fire hydrants to accommodate for the crosswalks and they replaced 7 lead services. Switching over to that 12-inch main with the fire hydrants, you can see there was a big difference there. It went from 965 gallons per minute to 1,600 gallons per minute. Also, and currently today, and right now, Newport Construction's working on Dana Street. So Dana Street, there is a 10-inch cast iron main that was installed in 1896. That picture you see there is actually a six inch water main, but that's basically what that 10 inch water main looked like. You can see how much tuberculation was in that main. So we here at the water department, 10 inch is not commonly used anymore. So what we did is we ran some hydraulic modeling here and figured that if we installed an eight inch ductile iron pipe to replace the 10 inch cast iron pipe, the fire flows and the overall flows for that road would actually increase. So when I, you know, the hydraulic modeling shows what they call as a C value, which basically is the smoothest of the pipe. You know, the smoother the pipe, the better the water quality and the better the water volume going to those residents. And by us replacing that with an eight inch main instead of the 10, which is uncommon these days, we save the city and overall cost on installation as well. Another part of Chapter 90, Contract 25 is Sharapa Street. So this is a pretty long stretch of water main that's going to be replaced. Fire flows down there are very low to the point where the fire department probably wouldn't even connect to a fire hydrant on Sharapa Street because they're so bad. This project is scheduled to begin in the fall. and there'll be 2 000 feet of pipe that will be eight inch pipe that will be replacing one of the older six inch cast iron mains in the city that dates back to 1896. um also within that project there will be 22 lead services that will be removed from the system which is another good part of why we're trying to do everything concurrently with each with with each other um as you can see the fire flows here will almost tripled And that's great for those residents, as we all know, East Cambridge, the houses are a little bit close together. So we got to make sure that we have plenty of water there in case something happens. Another project that is also scheduled to begin other than the, the chapter 90 projects is the massive partial construction project for the bike lanes on mass. So. the the extent of this job was is pretty expensive so we here we had to figure out what can we replace how can we replace it and how can we make it better down there for everybody so we basically took the intersections where they're going to be putting in the floating bus stops and we're going to replace all of those old cast iron mains with new ductile iron mains ranging from 8 inches to 20 inches um All total, there will be about 1,900 feet of pipe that will be replaced, which will greatly help. And also, there's more valving that is going on there. So if there ever is an issue, we can isolate those water mains without affecting a big amount of customers. This is also going to help the future of Mass Ave with current and future retail stores and homes that will be going in there and upgrading of the Harvard University buildings and all the other restaurants and everything that will be going in there. The six inch water main that was put in there dates all the way back to the late 1800s. And we've actually done some work down there prior and you can probably, within that six inch water main, it's probably closed down to about an inch and a half hole in that water main. So this is something that greatly needs to be done. And the 12 inch, which is on the other side of Mass Ave, that's pretty old too, but again, that water main was cleaned and lined in the early 70s. So the fire flows off of that water main are fairly good. So what are some future projects that are gonna be going out and possibly starting this year? Um, contract that chapter 90 contract 26, another project. There's a number of streets on that that. Will that are set to be done? Um. Avon hill street was 1 of those and again, this is 1 of the streets that we. Went in and we, we did in house here on our own. Avon hill is. at the top of Avon Hill, that's typically, it is the highest point in the city. So with us being a gravity system, the people at the top of Avon Hill kind of had some low pressure in there and it dated back on that old six inch cast iron water main that was in there. Once we replaced that water main, the water flows in that area greatly increased and the residents actually appreciated it real good. Hillside Ave, another area that comes off of Avon Hill Street, that'll be 400 feet of 6-inch pipe that was put in in 1871. So we'll be replacing that with 8-inch ductile iron pipe, and that will help the flows in that area as well. Chetwin Road, a smaller little dead end, but it has a very, very old six-inch cast iron line. And that street is scheduled to be a shared street. So we figured we're going in there. We're going to get that replaced and help those residents down in that area as well. Gray Street, 200 feet of six-inch, same thing. Old Water Main replaced with eight-inch. Kirkland Road, another dead end. Norfolk Street is another big street that's going to happen within this project. It's actually a little piece mailed, as in there's a piece that goes through the DPW yard that was actually done in 1992 that doesn't need to be replaced, but the so-called bookends on Norfolk Street will be replaced. And that's a pretty big project at 1,500 feet. Again... replacing an old six inch line with eight inch ductile iron pipe and haskell street haskell street is currently being done right now by our in-house contractor jnj sacca um the piece from mass ave to rinjav is what's being done and there were some very poor fire flows down there as well so we wanted to get that done and get that quick as that is a is a busy intersection down there So putting everything into perspective here with proposed water main replacements for this year, it's about 1.28 miles of new water main going in. So if you took a walk over the weak bridge, the week's bridge in Harvard outside of Harvard University, if you walked that three and a half times back and forth, that's how much pipe we're planning on getting in this year, which will help everybody in the whole community. And that's all I have.

Great. Well, thank you very much. Both presentations have been very informative. Do any of the board members have clarifying questions that they'd like to ask at this point of either Kathy or Rich? yeah okay we'll have an opportunity for questions later on i guess i do have one question which is about funding for some of these projects um how much of it how much of the funding is is city versus either state or federal and i'm curious given the state and federal situations um if you're I'm assuming there could potentially be reductions in what might come to the city. And so, you know, how is that affecting the planning for all of these different projects?

Sure. I can start on the DPW side. So I would say almost all of our funding is city funding, and that's either, you know, sort of general tax revenue or city bonds that we sell that support our infrastructure. infrastructure. So I would say that is the bulk of it. So, and then we also get money through the state. So Rich talked a little bit about chapter 90. And so we talk about chapter 90 contracts, and that's a source of funding that comes through the state. So that is the bulk of it. We do, we'll go after federal funds for specific projects. And so we do know that's at risk. And so one example of that, that we're struggling with right now is that we've got you know, a $2.4 million grant to fund the design of a bike and pedestrian bridge over the Fitchburg Rail Line, sort of from Wrench Towers area over to Danahy. And so that was money that we were really excited about in terms of getting federal funds. And so we're struggling through what does that mean and what it looks like. So I would say that it's more sort of individual projects, but the bulk of our sort of typical funding is through city funds.

just to piggyback on kathy we're kind of in the same boat here you know the the the city funds and you know your the water meter bills and money for your water usage is where we where our funds mainly come from and also if there is a you know a federal job we also get some help with that as well

Great. Okay. Any other questions from anybody? No. All right. Well, thank you both. Stick around. There may be more later. So let's move on then to our next presenter. And that will be Jason Wright from Eversource. And Mr. Wright, if you would please start by introducing yourself and any other members of your team who might be speaking this evening.

Yes, absolutely. Can you hear me?

Yes.

Great. Okay. Sorry, just bear with me two seconds while I pull up the presentation here. Great. Can we see that?

Yeah, we can see your full computer screen as opposed to just the slides. Oh, there we go. You've got it now.

Thanks. Great. ALL RIGHTY. SO MADAM CHAIR, MEMBERS OF THE BOARD, I CERTAINLY APPRECIATE THE OPPORTUNITY TO BE HERE THIS EVENING. MY NAME IS JASON WRIGHT. I'M THE COMMUNITY RELATIONS SPECIALIST FOR THE CITY OF CAMBRIDGE. WITH ME THIS EVENING I HAVE A FEW OF MY COLLEAGUES, MARK RUNY FROM ENERGY EFFICIENCY, SOPHIA ZANG FROM ADVANCED FORECASTING AND JUAN MARTINEZ FROM SYSTEM PLANNING. Our objective today is to provide the board with an overview of our efforts to help the city and Commonwealth achieve clean energy decarbonization goals, as well as understand what's driving the electrical demand growth and write an update on our capital projects that are planned or currently under construction. We're also excited to introduce our smart meter. or what we refer to as advanced meter infrastructure AMI project. I know we have a lot to cover. I apologize. Just bear with me. I'm just trying to turn my camera on as well. There we go. So, like I said, a lot to cover. We'll jump right in. I'm going to start off with sustainability. Our sustainability report highlights 2024 initiatives and it illustrates how we're executing on our sustainability commitments. Additionally, it outlines some specific performance updates and information on how we manage our sustainability areas. Our climate adaptation and mitigation plan, CAMP for short, highlights how we manage climate matters, including our efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, resiliency, and reliability. WE'VE ALSO RECENTLY REFRESHED OUR SUSTAINABILITY COMMITMENT AND PUBLISHED A NEW BIODIVERSITY COMMITMENT. CERTAINLY INVITE YOU TO VISIT OUR SUSTAINABILITY PAGE FOR REGULAR UPDATES, BUT SIMILAR TO LAST YEAR, BOTH OF OUR REPORTS WILL BE FORMALLY PUBLISHED IN THE COMING DAYS, AND I WILL ONCE AGAIN, ONCE THEY'RE PUBLISHED, BE SURE TO PROVIDE COPIES TO THE BOARD THAT THEY CAN READ AT YOUR LEISURE. So that being said, I'm going to pass it off to Mark Rooney from Energy Efficiency. He's going to run through a couple of slides and then we'll go from there. Mark, are you with us?

I am. Thank you, Jason. Good evening. As Jason mentioned, my name is Mark Rooney. I'm with our energy efficiency team, and I work with our municipal, state, federal customers in our Eastern Mass Service Territory to help them achieve their energy efficiency as well as decarbonization goals. As Jason mentioned, I'm just going to go through a couple of quick slides this evening, sort of on where we've been in the last... We run in three-year plans, for those of you who don't know. So the last... three-year plan ran or ended at the end of 2024. And we're currently five to six months into the new three-year plan. So forgive me for the tiny numbers here on the screen, but these are some historic numbers. Are you able to scroll up a little bit there? There we go. So we have a third party who sort of compiles the numbers for the program administrators, DNV. And they're basically, just because of so much, the amount of data and then doing the numbers for all of the PAs, they sort of run a year behind in terms of publishing the public data. So we've got numbers. for 2022 and 2023. And they're basically categorized into three main areas that we focus on, residential and low income, large commercial industrial, and then small business. So as you can see, in 2022, for instance, in the residential and low income, the annual electric usage, this is across Cambridge, is 241 thousand megawatts and we were able to achieve 1519 in annual megawatt kilowatt hour savings and distribute close to a million dollars in electric utility you know electric incentives to support those projects and then below that you'll see the commercial and industrial category Again, 1.3 million in annual electric, usage megawatt hours and a 245, excuse me, that's 24,519 in annual megawatt hour savings with over 6 million in electric incentives for those projects. I won't read all the numbers for these years, but that's basically the portfolio across Again, residential, large commercial, industrial. I think if I scroll up a little bit, Jason, there are some small business. No, not the next slide, but on the same slide, maybe... Losing the numbers. Oh, there we go. So the Small Business Main Streets Program, the number of projects we've done each year in the city of Cambridge there, you can see 64 in 2022, 26 in 2023, and then it ramped up again to 59 in 2024. And in fact, we've got a Main Street. And that really what happens is we go out there with vendors, we set up in a certain part of the city, invite small businesses as well as residents to this Main Streets program. And it results in projects both in the small business and retail sector, as well as residents participating in our residential programs. In fact, there's one coming up this Monday, June 16th in the city of Cambridge. And I think they're kicking it off at City Hall at 10 a.m. on Monday. And then on the right there, just some numbers for heat pump installations. Forgive sort of a cut and paste issue with Burlington being shown there, but In terms of Cambridge in 2022, we have got 163 heat pumps installed in 151 locations. And then in 2023, 291 heat pumps installed in 266 locations. You can move to the next slide, Jason. So moving on to this current three-year plan, there are really four main pillars of the current new three-year plan. Reduced greenhouse gas emissions, enhanced program access, deliver and improve customer experience and strengthen and diversify workforce. And this, as some of you may know, this is a sort of a development of these three year plans are at least a year long process working with the EAC and and other stakeholders to focus on certain areas.

So

Historically, these have been energy efficiency programs, and they still are. But as you know, there's more and more of a focus on decarbonization and electrification. So just briefly on each of those categories, you know, reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The PAs intend to do that by driving electrification of new and existing buildings, including supporting installation of heat pumps. And the target across the state is installing heat pumps in 87,000 homes in this three-year plan. weatherizing over 164,000 homes and small businesses, including significant enhancements to help small businesses access and benefit from available programs, and support greenhouse gas reductions for commercial and industrial customers by way of decarbonization planning and existing building commissioning. Under the accelerated program access area, we're looking to increase electrification and continue to expand access to weatherization for low-income customers, increase moderate-income customer participation by reducing barriers to qualification, and increasing participation for residential renters and rental properties with particular focus on designated equity communities. These are just some of the highlights of these four pillars. Moving on to delivering an improved customer experience. We're looking to do this by providing holistic multilingual support for all customers via creation of a statewide contact center. Ensure timely rebate processing and continuous improvement in the rebate processing experience and improve the customer experience for electrification, starting with low and moderate income customers and renters in designated equity communities. And then the last pillar, strengthening and expanding the workforce. We're looking to collaborate with Massachusetts Clean Energy Center to expand the workforce, doubling the annual funding to $24 million per year under this three-year plan, broaden our pool of qualified suppliers, including through adoption of aspirational benchmark to spend 15% of dollar volume of direct MassSave contracts with diverse suppliers. and then expand and strengthen a robust heat pump installation workforce via the heat pump installer network, which we've developed over time. So those are some of the highlights of the four pillars of the new three-year plan. And like I said, I don't work in all of these areas, but I do work closely with the city, with folks like Ellen Katz and Irina Sidorenko and Aoife Viglianti on the development Again, energy efficiency in municipal school buildings. We've worked on streetlights over the years, and now the focus will be on helping the city with its decarbonization efforts through studies and developing electrification roadmaps. And I'll turn it back to Jason.

Great. Thank you, Mark. Appreciate that. So moving along here, the Massachusetts climate law requires that each electric distribution company develops what's known as an electric sector modernization plan. We'll refer to it as ESMP going forward, because it's a little bit of a mouthful. The ESMP is to proactively, goal is to proactively upgrade distribution transmission systems to meet the Commonwealth's climate goals and several additional objectives, including improving grid reliability, accommodating transportation, as well as BUILDING ELECTRIFICATION. THE PLAN ITSELF IS ABOUT 700 PAGES. FOR THE BOARD'S BENEFIT, I WOULD ENCOURAGE YOU TO PAY SPECIFIC ATTENTION TO CHAPTER 5. CHAPTER 5 COVERS THE ELECTRIC DEMAND FORECASTING WHICH SOPHIA IS GOING TO BE TALKING ABOUT SHORTLY AS WELL AS CHAPTER 6. CHAPTER 6 COVERS THE PLANNING SOLUTIONS WHICH ARE DRIVEN DIRECTLY BY OUR FORECAST. specific drivers. Key drivers of the ESMP investments in the 10-year period are step loads. Simply put, step loads are load changes that happen all at once. Currently, we are a summer peaking season. Probably comes as a surprise to nobody that people typically start turning their air conditioners on around that first heat wave or that first 90-degree day. However, Winter load is also growing with the adoption of EV as well as heat pumps. By 2035, we expect to see a winter peaking and not a summer peaking system. So going back to the ESMP, the ESMP in essence is really, it's our manual or to do if you will, to addressing the infrastructure build out required to accommodate this growth. So that being said, I believe I'm going to turn it over to Sophia, who's going to run us through advanced forecasting and modeling.

Thanks, Jason. So at Eversource, we have a near-term horizon, which is 10 years. And then beyond that, so from now until 2050, we have a what we call a long range demand assessment. So those include policy objectives at the state and federal level in order to meet clean energy goals. So the short term or near term forecast that you see on the left hand side here, that's really driven by our new business and adoption of electric vehicles, solar panels, and what Mark was talking about, our energy efficiency programs. And then beyond that, we have certain assumptions and economic trends that we use to forecast what the growth in those sectors are. while aligning with objectives in state policy. So the 10-year forecast is really where capital projects are triggered and we look to do construction or new design. And then we set that design to be able to enable all of the electric load in 2050. Next slide, please. Yeah, so what's really driving demand in Cambridge? We track all of our large customer loads in Massachusetts, and we work very closely through our customer team with individual developers for buildings and real estate organizations and large businesses to really get ahead of their need and make sure that we're fully capable of supporting their need. So as of right now, based on our assessment, new commercial building development is really the key driver in in cambridge and especially the biotech sector we have some ev charging but in this year we've seen a slowdown somewhat of Evie adoption so primarily, as you can see on the map to the left here. Where all of you who live in the area i'm sure I don't have to tell you where where the construction is happening, you can see it all around you, but there's a lot of concentration. near the Fresh Pond area, Alewife, and then, of course, by Cambridge, by Boylton Yards, and closer to Somerville, you'll see Union Square. There's a lot of development there. So for the next 10 years, we're looking at a 1.9 year on year growth to our peak loads. Next slide, please. So I do want to mention the previous slide that forecast was produced in November of 2024. And of course, there's a lot of developments in the last half year or so, and we are very closely monitoring economic development. You know, there's definitely some shifts in global and national economic trends and changes to policy on how clean energy and of course the different sectors that are driving commercial demand right now. So we're making sure that any delay or rescoping or cancellation of the project, we're keeping an eye on. As of March, we've seen some total load projects have shown a decrease of about 6% in the last two years from when the customers first proposed their projects. In 2023, when we formed our ESMP, the Electric Sector Modernization Plan. But overall, you can see the five-year growth rate, which is the very near term for our step loads, have decreased only about 2%, from 34% per year growth to 32%. And the chart on the right shows that progression over the years. So there's a bit of a dip, and we're keeping an eye on it. But some of the projects may be delayed or canceled altogether. Next slide, please. Yeah, so I'll actually pass this over to my colleague, Juan, who will talk about some of the major projects in the 10-year plan in the neighborhood. Juan?

Thank you, Sophia. Again, Juan Martinez. I'll be covering that planning part that Jason mentioned as part of the Electricity and Modernization Plan. We have Chapter 6, which highlights the projects that we have planned in the next 10 years. There's a lot of projects in the plan, and what we wanted to do with this slide is to show you how does the 10-year plan look like around Cambridge, right? So what are those projects that are also affecting the overall city that you're going to see around the city of Cambridge. And just to give you an idea, most of the areas around the city have planned projects. In the north, in Somerville and Charleston, we're proposing a new substation there to address growth load basically in that area. And similar in the city of Boston, There's a lot of projects, basically three substations, one in the Austin Fenway Brookline, one in the downtown, in the Metro, downtown Boston area, and one in South End. So this is the overall view, basically taking a higher level view and later on we'll shift into Cambridge, but this is a higher level view of what you're going to see around you because the electric system at the end is all connected, right? So this is what you're going to see around you in terms of projects. I think I'll pass it down to Jason now.

Yep. Thank you, Juan. Appreciate that. So as far as projects that are specific to the city of Cambridge, these are the projects that we wanted to highlight. The Greater Cambridge Energy Program, which we'll talk about a little more on the next slides. as well as what's known as the Underground Cable Modernization Program or UCMP for short. So this is just a preview of what we're gonna move into right now. I believe most people on the call may or maybe not might be familiar with the Greater Cambridge Energy Program. Quick recap, it's a first of its kind initiative designed to place a significant amount of electrical infrastructure underground. I believe it's about 105 feet underground. It is the largest underground substation in the country at approximately 35,000 square feet. It is located in Kendall Square and it's integrated into the Boston property site plan. And it interconnects with substations located in Somerville, specifically Union Square, station 402. East Cambridge as well as Alston Brighton. The project itself addresses the increased electrical demand in the region and it will enhance the resiliency of the transmission system and ensure a flexible grid to reliably serve our customers. I am excited to announce that work officially began this year. The Greater Cambridge Energy Program is tracking with the air and construction goals that will help to support the initial energization of the new station in 2029. Our focus this year or year to date has been on coordinating with other area projects or enabling work in the installation of vaults. By definition or in the simplest of terms, we can define a vault as really it's an underground room used to house and protect electrical equipment. Equipment could be on private property, could also be on the public right-of-way. To date, we've installed six vaults along Galileo, Linsky, as well as the Volpe parcel. I believe there are two additional vaults that are on track to be installed the next couple weeks along Ames. And again, these are just this quick picture of a vault being placed, typical traffic configuration dewatering unit. Something else that I will add is we're in constant communication with city officials. We report out on our activities every Monday morning at the construction meetings. All of our traffic management plans are also reviewed and consulted with city officials. Really, our goal here is to make sure everyone knows the who, what, the where, and the when, as well as to minimize or mitigate any potential impacts from traffic detours and construction-related activities. Moving on now, again, going back to UCMP, the underground cable modernization program. This is really our phasing out an older technology that's known as HPFF, and that stands for high-pressure fluid-filled cables. And we're really modernizing those cables to a newer technology called Bear with me here. It's cross-linked polyethylene, or for short, XLPE. These newer lines, XLPE, they can carry higher loads, so it helps to support our electrification goals. They're also more environmentally friendly because they're solid. And the HPFF lines, older as they are, in some cases over 40, 50 years, they're more filled with fluids to help cool the lines themselves. And over time, they can leak, which is obviously not good for the environment. So there's also an environmental benefit to upgrading these lines. For context, and I have a couple of maps we'll show, these lines, in essence, they're transmission lines. So they connect stations, our station, Mystic Station in Everett, to North Cambridge, ALWIFE, as well as Alewife to our other station in actually Woburn. And we'll review the maps, but I just wanted to kind of give a big picture as to what these lines entail, the need for, and where they're located. So the line routing process itself, Essentially, we define our study area. Here again, it's an acid condition. It's an existing line in the ground, so we know where our starting point is. Again, Mystic to North Cambridge, North Cambridge to Woburn. So we work through what we call our universe of routes, or what I like to call it, it's a spaghetti map. So if you picture... you know, throwing some spaghetti against the wall. Our job is really to filter out those routes and deviations based off fatal flaws that we know about, any constraints or any conflicting project work. Our goal is to get what's known as a candidate route or candidate routes where we can really compare and contrast as well as score. And we'll talk about the scoring on the next slide. These routes against one another with the goal of narrowing down to top two. There's a preferred and then there's a, I believe it's called preferred or noticed alternative route. In addition to that, it's really a quantitative, qualitative analysis where we assign numerical values, but we also take into consideration reliability, environmental concerns, cost considerations is always a consideration as well with the goal of really ultimately and engineering both lines and then having one, taking one or carrying one into construction itself. And again, you know, during this entire process, this computer does continued outreach with our stakeholders, as well as city officials, because, you know, The engineers in city of Cambridge know their streets better than anyone. So we certainly take their input and feedback into consideration as we're engineering these routes. Again, I won't go into too much detail on this slide, but again, essentially this is our line. This is the criteria that we use to evaluate and rank these routes. We do have categories that you can, different categories that you can see. There's the natural environment, technical constructability, built environment, and we assign a weight or a criteria to these various criterias. Public shade trees are up there, protected open space. five the other bookmark or the other and if you will historical archaeological archaeological resources those are one because again these lines are in the middle of the street so we typically don't anticipate or expect to come into contact with anything that's historical in nature and again these criteria they can they they can vary slightly from project to project. But again, in addition to that, the qualitative component of it is the reliability, the feasibility, environmental impacts, community impacts, the stakeholder feedback we get, as well as the cost impact to ratepayers. That being said, moving along here, I'm going to focus on the top two because the Belmont to Brighton is fresh, or I want to say a couple months at this point. The projects that are more further along, again, North Cambridge to Woburn, it's a line that was constructed in 1976. It's about 40 years old itself. And again, looking at the map, you can see that this line currently comes out of North Cambridge and goes into Woburn. We currently have, we're further, this one's further along than the prior two. We have our candidate routes and alternative routes. They both overlap in Cambridge. And again, the ALY at the Steele Place or Steele Street, I apologize, I forget the name of it, but it goes up ALY Brook Parkway, heading into Arlington, Winchester, and then station 211 in Woburn. The other project, the other line is the Mystic to Cambridge line. This line totals about five miles and it traverses Everett, Charlestown, Boston, Somerville, and Cambridge. Of the five miles, approximately one mile of that is located in North Cambridge. I believe the existing route includes Meacham Road, Mass Ave, as well as Wrench. As far as contacts or timeline goes, they're not completely parallel, but I would say that our goal to begin construction on these lines is 2028. So again, we're in that initial scoring phase, soliciting feedback. We've started community outreach, or we've met with, I believe it's just a start. We have some meetings set with... some other community groups in that area, inclusive of Fresh Pond Alliance, Aloha Park, excuse me, Aloha Study Group, and the North Cambridge Stabilization Committee, I believe we're reaching out to as well. So all that being said, I want to turn it over to Juan, and he's going to talk through system planning, and then we'll round out with a discussion on distribution, AMI, and an update on gas. So Juan, I'll turn it back to you.

Yes, thank you. So in one slide, we're trying to represent what is the overall plan, near-term, mid-term, and long-term in terms of planning for the electric system in the city. And basically in the next 10 years, we have solutions to address the capacity constraints of the substations that include transferring loads within the existing substations. We have an interim solution that will include the Somerville Station 402. That's in the, I'll call it in the near term, midterm. We're looking at alternative solutions, and basically that's to transfer load between the substations, get the most technical capacity out of the system in order to basically get us to the Greater Energy Cambridge program, which is the new substation. So that will be the long-term solution. And in the pictures, you can see both, you know, what we're proposing. So on the right side, you can see what the long-term solution is, which will be the new substation. And that will basically carve out a section of the existing substation, therefore relieving all the substations within the city. So that's the interim, midterm, and long-term solution for the overall city. Jason?

Thank you, Juan. So distribution side of house. We've been speaking almost exclusively about transmission. For context, when you think of transmission, it's really kind of the superhighway, if you will, of the electrical system. When you're driving on the highway and you look up and you see those large steel structures, the very thick lines, those are... uh transmission lines uh when you look out your window and you see a utility pole those are um distribution lines on those utility poles in essence it's the voltage gets lower from the transmission substation and it gets lower down to um the distribution lines where it goes into into your house we have three buckets if you will of of work kind of the more of the day-to-day these buckets encompass capital work customer work as well as system maintenance So capital work we can look at as replacing aging equipment. Customer work is work where there's new service or new upgrades. It's that work order that we get where someone may take down a one or a two family and they want to build three, four, or five family. So that work itself filters through our engineers based on the load. In addition to that, there's also general system maintenance. The maintenance system maintenance work is divided into two buckets. There's emergent maintenance, which is trouble work or work that needs to be addressed literally to keep the lights on. That could be something like a car hitting a utility pole and the utility pole coming down or a transformer coming down as well. The corrective maintenance is more. work that needs to be repaired but it's not urgent so that may be you know utility pole that's damaged or if you look up and there's a cross arm that looks like it's rotted or it should be addressed sooner rather than later or if you're driving your car and you go over a manhole and you have the dump that's will come out and we'll do what's called a re-roof we'll reset the manhole so again i just wanted to i don't want to focus strictly on the the transmission side of the house i want to people to have a general understanding of the distribution work that occurs daily in Cambridge. Alrighty, I will move on. AMI or Advanced Metering Infrastructure is our smart meter project. In January of 2025, we began implementation of our AMI project in the western part of the state. It's a three-year plan to upgrade every existing electrical customer meter in the state to a new AMI smart meter. Smart meters open the door for a number of useful account features. Some of them, or you'll see them listed below. It allows for near real-time access to usage data, reports on energy use, alerts for high energy usage, automatic power outage reporting. Believe it or not, now we get alerted to power outages by our customers calling us, and they'll no longer have to call. We'll be able to see the system itself in real time. It'll also allow for remote move-in and move-out. As many people probably know, when you move, you have to have a technician come out and turn power on. This will allow that all to be done remotely. So what does this mean for Cambridge? So we expect to begin installing smart meters in Cambridge in mid-2027. Before we install new smart meters at customers' homes, businesses, we will be building out our network throughout the state. This will involve installing network devices that read this information remotely. They'll be installed on utility poles, so that work in the Cambridge area is expected probably Q4 2025, maybe Q1 of 2026. So in preparation of that, We've started a broad customer education campaign to promote the benefits of the smart meters and make customers aware of the work that will be happening. Our customers will also receive direct notifications in the mail at the 30, 60, as well as 90-day mark. And lastly, gas, our gas system enhancement program to safely and reliably deliver natural gas to our customers. Vintage pipe materials that are such as cast iron and steel are being or continue to be replaced with state-of-the-art materials throughout the system to reduce leaks as well as improve capacity. what's known again as the gas system enhancement plan. These graphs on the left kind of show the progress to date in 2025, but also 2023 and 2024, just kind of to benchmark where we're at. In addition to that, you will see that the natural gas pipeline replacement projects that have been completed in Cambridge that are currently in progress and that are planned before the end of the calendar year. And that is it.

Thank you. Thank you for that very comprehensive overview. I appreciate it. Are there any clarifying questions that the board would like to ask at this point? Ashley.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I had a quick question. I was wondering if we would be able to go back to, I think it was slide 18. And if one of you guys would talk quickly about the Alewife substation. I was just curious about that since I know there's a lot happening or planned to happen in Alewife. Thank you.

I can cover that, Jason. Yeah. Yeah, so we do, based on our recent forecast, we do expect the LYF substation to be at capacity in the 10-year planning horizon. So we are working on a near-term solution, let's call it, to address that capacity need onto a long-term solution is developed. So that's the work we have going on right now. So we expect the substation to be at capacity, let's say by 2027. So now we have to develop plans from 2027 until the long-term solution can be established. Long-term solution could be something like, you know, adding additional transformer capacity at the substation. That could be a long-term solution from the distribution point of view. But that's, you know, that's the work that's going on on the LY substation.

Thank you. Any other board questions? Just staying on this slide for a moment. When you get to the long-term solution, are any of these other substations actually eliminated from the grid or the system, or do they continue to operate as part of the overall network?

Yeah, they continue to operate as part of the network. So what happened is with the new substation, we'll be able to deload those existing substations that are nearby. So now those substations can now address more load growth within that boundary, right? So it's a cascading effect in that the new substation deloads the other one. So between the new ones, the new one deloading the nearby substation, those will be able to pick up that growth that they're seeing in that area. So they all stay.

Okay, got it. Thank you so much. That's very helpful.

No problem.

Okay, so as we go along, we will probably come back to you with more questions or comments. But for now, let's move on to our next presentation, which will be done this evening by Matt O'Malley from Vicinity Energy. Mr. O'Malley, if you would please introduce yourself and anybody else on your team will be speaking. Please proceed with your presentation.

Thank you, Madam Chair, and good evening, everybody. It's great to be with you virtually, thanks to our friends over at Eversource, including Jay Wright, whom I worked with for many years in our previous roles in the Boston City Council. Great overview. My name's Matt O'Malley. I'm the Chief Sustainability Officer for Vicinity. I oversee our decarbonization process as well as Gov Affairs, and I'm joined by several colleagues, including Dawn Sylvia, who's our Vice President for Regional Operations, who will be performing as well. Rick Smith, who is our Regional Vice President for Development, Patrick Haswell, our Director of Business Development and Public Affairs, and Jessica Rodriguez, who is our Senior Policy and Gov Affairs Specialist. I'll be giving the first half of the presentation, Don will follow up, and Rick, Patrick, and Jessica will support us and help answer any questions that you all may have. So I want to begin by thanking the planning board for again this opportunity. I look forward to this every year. What's particularly gratifying to be able to announce tonight is that for the last several years we've talked about our electrification plan and you can see in real time and you'll soon see in fact if you please advance to the next slide you'll see a wonderful ribbon cutting at our Kendall plant with Mayor Simmons and many great colleagues and friends from the city of Cambridge just last November, where the largest electric boiler in North America is currently up and operational and sitting right in the heart of Kendall Square in Cambridge. so a quick overview i'm gonna uh allow for an update on our transition don will then get some more site specifics uh and again we uh welcome uh any and all questions anything that we cannot answer we will make sure that we uh are able to get uh back to the board uh in very short order advance the slide thank you so i think some of you have seen this slide before i apologize if it's uh repetitious but i think it's important to note district energy is something that has been around for a very very long time um and the one constant is that it is constantly evolving it's constantly changing District Energy really could trace its origins to the Roman era with aqueducts. In the more modern sense, it was Birdsall Hawley, who was a contemporary of Thomas Edison, who built a coal-fired boiler in his backyard. He ran a wooden pipe to his house, saw there was very little line loss, knocked on his neighbor's door and said, would you like free heat? The neighbor said, it's 1870. Of course, I'd like free heat. Built another wooden pipe to his neighbor's house, and the first district energy system was born. You've seen the constant evolution of the source. It is fuel agnostic, we like to say, or we used to say. Now I think we're not agnostic about it. We're being very deliberate in how we decarbonize. But it's a very simple concept of a centralized location that creates thermal energy or heat, then through a series of underground pipes helps heat and cool many, many large buildings, particularly in city centers and in downtown cores. It was originally coal that then transitioned to oil. After that, it was natural gas in the 1990s and 1980s. In the early and mid, early aughts, the early 2010s, you saw a process known as CHP or cogeneration, combined heat and power. It's the most efficient way to burn a fossil fuel, but it is still burning a fossil fuel. And that's partly what my colleagues and I are talking to you tonight, how we are moving off from fossil fuels by electrifying our process. And we've got a very ambitious and aggressive 10-year plan that is well underway. And then as we look to the future, we talk about hydrogen, RNG, other technologies as they become available. Our decarbonization plan is not focused on those future technologies, but rather what we're doing now and what we've been able to have some great success with. Next slide, please. So just a refresher, vicinity is in 12 US cities. Our big three are Philadelphia, then Boston slash Cambridge, then Baltimore. Philly is slightly larger than Boston slash Cambridge, although it is becoming quite a competitive race to see who will be on top. In Boston and Cambridge, it's a series of 26 miles of underground pipe. Again, about 4.1 miles of that are in Cambridge proper, with the remainder in the city of Boston. Our largest energy producing facility is, of course, Kendall Square. We also have Neyland Street in Chinatown in Boston, as well as Scotia Street in the back bay of Boston as well. But Kendall is really the heart and soul of our operation locally. There is the largest CHP baseload that's, again, seated in Kendall. And it's been a great neighbor. I'd like to think so, but always looking to be even better. And we've worked incredibly well with many of our neighbors and some of the business and some of the local civic associations, elected officials, and NGOs as well. Next slide, please. So how do we decarbonize? It's a three-pronged approach, and we're going to focus on the big three that will get us there. It's the electric boilers, swapping out old gas-fired boilers to make sure that we can have electric boilers. That's step one. Step two will be our heat pumps, which are really, really exciting. I'll get into a little bit, and then Don's going to sort of talk a little bit more about that. And then the third aspect is thermal storage. So with the electric boilers, we were able to install and operate a 42 megawatt electric boiler. We have a direct connection to the grid, which allows us to procure energy at a wholesale rate. which then allows us to be able to tap into some great renewables and be able to offer a product, a decarbonized product, at a very cost-competitive price to our customers. This is something that is in compliance with Birdo in Boston. This is something that is in compliance with Butoh in Boston. I want to give a special shout-out to Chief Wormser and her team. I know Nikhil's on this as well. He has been... tremendous to work with and to guide us and to push us and to shape us. And we're going to continue to work together because the success of Butoh is something that we see as a success of our business as well, particularly given the challenging national climate that we are dealing with. It really is up to cities and towns to lead on climate action. That's what we're so proud to work with. many of you and your colleagues in government to make sure that Cambridge will continue to lead nationally and if not internationally on being one of the most sustainably driven and leading cities in the world. Electric boilers, as I said, this is a technology that's been around for a long, long time. But by pairing the electricity purchases either with direct rec purchases or with power purchase agreements, we're able to create and foster more renewables, particularly in New England ISO region as well in terms of development. One thing that's been interesting, the e-boiler has been operational since end of November of last year, of 2024. We've seen a number of surplus solar events. What that means is ISO has been a little undercounting the amount of capacity for new solar technology that's come online, and that's allowed us to run it even more than we had anticipated. That's obviously good for us. That's good for our customers. That lowers our emissions. That grows the number of e-steam or electrified steam that we sell, but also is going to breed additionality for more renewable projects to come online. So that's been something that we didn't quite anticipate, but we've been very gratified to have observed over the last seven months. So that's the heat pump. It is up and operational. It was commissioned in November of this past year after about a two-year process of build-out. The next is our heat pump. And this is really what has been giving... is one of the reasons why I feel enormously lucky to work for a company like Facinity. We are leading... We are leading in this country in terms of how district energy companies specifically can meet this moment. When you think about the climate crisis, when you think about just the incredible negative impacts that we're already seeing, that we're already living with, district energy systems can be an enormous tool in the toolbox to fight this existential threat that is climate change. We are not patent number one when we think about the electric boiler or the heat pumps or even the thermal storage, which I'll get to in a second. Leading sustainability cities around the world are implementing these types of technologies. You look at Copenhagen, you look at Glasgow, you look at Brom in Norway or Malmo, Sweden. leading sustainability cities, many of which are, most of which are older cities that have district energy systems in place, are decarbonizing those systems and the impact is going to be a dramatic reduction in emissions of the buildings that we serve. By using a heat pump, and this is a water-based heat pump, this will be leveraging energy from the Charles River. We're able to offer a decarbonized product, spurn new green tech technology right in the heart of Cambridge, and have an efficiency that is two and a half plus. And what that means is that heat pumps are measured through a process known as COP or coefficient of performance. On your home heat pump, you might have a three or a four, which is much smaller, which is terrific. That means for every unit of energy that you're using to run that, you're able to extract three or four units back. We'll be looking at a 2.5 north, 2 to 2.5 north with these early heat pumps that we're putting in, which is going to be remarkable when you think about the efficiency and how we'll be able to deliver such a great product to our customers. The way we do this is we run water from the Charles. We currently have water intake permits, which will allow us to lift energy. Essentially, it flows it over coils. It's going to lift some energy from that. It's going to return the water at a cooler temperature, 4 to 7 degrees. cooler depending on the time of year. The reason why this is important is that oftentimes these power plants and utilities will heat up the water. This does quite the opposite. It's one of the reasons why we've had such enormous support for this project through great organizations like HEAT. We've worked hand in hand with the Charles River Watershed Association, with the Charles River Conservancy, with the Conservation Law Foundation to make sure that we're doing everything right by this. And it really is going to be an absolutely innovative project that is going to Be right in Cambridge, which is something I know you all are incredibly excited about, as am I. As a quick aside, last week was the IDEA, which is the International District Energy Association annual meeting. It's a great acronym for a trade group. And we at vicinity really are leading nationally, and it's been very gratifying to see other district energy systems following this lead in terms of the electrification, in terms of looking at these water source heat pumps as well. So we will not be the first. This is technology that already exists in Europe, but we will be the Cambridge will be the first American city to have a heat pump of this size, of this magnitude that's going to be such the heart and soul of our district energy system, which is something I know I take enormous pride in and I hope you do too. And then the third aspect of our electrification plan is thermal storage. This is very interesting technology. This is probably the farthest out. We would hope to get everything buttoned up by the end of this decade. To be completely candid with you folks, given some of the challenges at the federal level, particularly as it relates to offshore wind, that may be 29 30 as opposed to 28 29 when we hope to get it uh uh really uh well established but what this will do is this will it's essentially think of a large thermos that's able to keep heat and when wind comes online in great capacity which is starting to now in new england iso but obviously there have been some delays uh given the administration's stance on offshore wind uh When wind comes online, New England really will be the Saudi Arabia for wind. The conditions of where we are, of how we're located, offer enormous opportunity. Now, wind blows the heaviest late at night. probably from 10 p.m. to around 2 a.m., which actually is the least amount of grid demand at that time. So by capturing those electrons during that time, by heating up a process of either hot rocks or hot substrate, we'll be able to shift the peak. We'll be able to shift the peak by a couple hours and then use that energy that we've been able to get at the most advantageous time to then use it at our most needed time, which is typically around 6 to 7, 6 to 8 a.m. That's when we really need to heat the buildings before the humans arrive. So that's something that can help us offer a decarbonized product at a very cost-competitive rate and, again, will spurn more development of renewable sources. So it's a win-win all around. Next slide, please. So I mentioned this earlier, just stage one complete. Again, some of you have heard this presentation before. What I find most gratifying, and I worked in government for many, many years before coming over to Vicinity, it's been really inspiring. And I work with an incredibly talented group of colleagues, many of whom you will hear from tonight. But just to see how we've been talking about this for a while, we've actually done it. In November of 2022, we see Boston Mayor Michelle Wu, in addition to being a great mayor, is very good at taking down large old World War II era fossil fuel infrastructure. She helped us with that sledgehammer there. then you can see the work that was done. And then in the fourth picture, you see the upright operational e-boiler. And then of course, Mayor Simmons is in the final pick where she was kind enough to come by and help us turn it on that November date last year. It took just about two years from start to finish for us to build something that will have an enormous impact and allow us right away to help our customers and to really meet this moment in terms of what a good corporate citizen needs to do to decarbonize. The heat pump's going to be slightly longer, but again, we don't think it will be a three-year timeframe. We're in works now, in design works with the company, and it's going to be 2028 when that is fully up and operational, and that's going to be really how we deal with the base load for our entire system in terms of how we're able to create that. where this reason I wanted to include this slide which obviously you haven't seen in prior iterations of is because we're walking the walk and we're talking the talk rather but we're also walking the walk and that's really important And again, a large reason why we're doing this is because of great partnerships with our two cities, and particularly the city of Cambridge, as you and your team continues to work with utilities and make sure that we all have a seat at the table. We are enormously grateful for this continued conversation and hope that we can continue to be a resource and a great neighbor to each and every one of you. So, I think the next slide that we advance to, I'm going to turn the baton over to Don Silvia, who can get into a little bit more of the technical specifics that we have, and then we're happy to take any questions, thoughts, or concerns you may have. Thank you.

Thanks, Matt. So first off, I think we've got to get your honorary engineering degree because you covered a lot of the technical. I don't think you left me much on the plate. But one of the things that Matt talked about was operation of the e-boiler. So since the last time we met last year, as he said, the e-boiler is active. I think last year we're talking a lot about we're building it. It's coming. It's coming. It's coming. It's now active. And it has been active since last November. And we've seen quite a bit of operating hours on the e-boiler. I'm happy to report that it's operating as planned. And in fact, we've been able to overachieve. And one of the things we wanted to point out, I think Matt, touched on it was the ability to react quickly to changes in the grid and in pricing structure. So as we've seen power prices drop in certain times during the day when maybe there's too much power on the grid, we're able to take advantage of that in what we call valley surfing. and bring the boiler on. It'll come on fairly quickly. It can go from zero load to 100% load within 10 minutes, and then we can bring it back off. So we're able to take advantage of those windows in time to do that. We're also been able to take advantage of power pricing during shoulder season. So, you know, those mild seasons of the year, whether it be April, May, again, we're gonna see it, I think, towards the end of the summer in September and October, where we can operate Almost 24-7. Typically we're operating, you know, 18 or 16 to 18 hours a day with the boiler. So very happy with this operation, very happy with how it's reacted. And, you know, it's an exciting time. So as Matt had mentioned, to us, this is just another fuel shift. The buildings aren't changing at all. They're agnostic to what we're doing, but we're bringing them opportunity. Go to the next slide. the next thing uh that we wanted to talk on is the heat pump so as we said the e-boiler is actually in place and and operational and and the next thing we're working on is heat pump um the heat pump is coming very soon again what a heat pump is is just an energy transfer device it's taking uh energy that we're going to actually use to charge river energy and we're going to trans uh transmit that into heat energy and send it out in the form of steam into the city of Cambridge and the city of Boston. If you think about this technology in simple terms, if you're standing outside of your window and you have a window air conditioning and you feel that hot air coming out, that's a heat pump. It's cool on the inside, hot on the outside. Behind your refrigerator would be the same type of a thing. So it's just an energy transfer device. The interesting thing I find with this technology that I learned as we went through this process is the very same compressor technology that we're using with a partnership with MAN Energy Is used for fracking right, so you take this very dark thing that's that's you know in the fossil fuel industry and we flip it on its year and we're using it for good to to compress steam and send it out into the system. The is going to take the place inside of our Kendall station of a fossil fuel boiler that will be coming out of service within the next six to eight months. and in its place will rise this heat pump. And it's, as Matt said, it's a city-scale heat pump, right? So you think of heat pumps outside of people's homes. This heat pump is gargantuan, right? It's 25,000 square feet of heat pump, right, that can supply a city. So that's what the technology is. And over time, so this one will be done by 2028, but if you were to come back, you know, And 15 years from now, we'd like to think that at least another, if not two more fossil fuel boilers will be displaced and this system will continue to grow as we go into the future. We'd also, I think I would want to call out that, you know, I listened very intently to whatever source had to say about their upgrades to the electrical system. That's very helpful for us, right? It's key. We are in that, you know, they mentioned the Kendall property. We're there. We're excited about upgrades to the transmission system. We do have an existing interconnection for up to 300 megawatts. So, you know, I think this is a great opportunity for both companies to share. and help move the city forward. Go to the next slide.

Just one point on that. Actually, two points. Sorry to interrupt, Don. But if you look at the photo on the left of many of us, it's tough to see, but in Orange Vest, that's in Esberg, Denmark, the western coast of Denmark. That's the heat pump that we're putting in a Kendall. So it's up and operational there. We went over and we toured with some local folks to see it. And it really was breathtaking. And I wanted to follow up because I wrote a note to myself and I forgot, but Don mentioned it. I don't know if it was Jason or Mark who mentioned the ESMP that Eversource did, the Electric Sector Modernization Plan. It specifically calls out District Energy as a partner in this, just given the fact that we're going to be able to help each other. And 10 years ago, you would think that Eversource and Vicinity would be I wouldn't say rivals, that's too strong of a word, but certainly have competing business interests. This is one we're working together. We can support both goals, which is more electrification and decarbonization of city buildings.

Okay, we wanted to bring you a couple of examples of modernization that you're seeing in and around the system. One of them, again, close tie to Eversource and what's happening at the MXD site. where they're building the substation. And we actually did an upgrade and relocation of part of our distribution system to help allow and enable that construction to take place. While doing that, we also took advantage of the opportunity to modernize and upsize some of our facilities. So pretty exciting for us. I know it just looks as if maybe it's a pipe in the ground, but that was a major upgrade to our transmission system. So we're also upgrading our transmission as we move forward. Go ahead and go to the next slide, Pat. The last thing we wanted to talk about, I think last year we were questioned about where is the system going, expansion? And this is a very interesting time for us, right? We are beginning to see a lot of growth over the last few years, let's say over the last four or five years. And as construction happens on and near our system, we're able to work closely with customers and bring them on. One example of that is 585 Kendall. This was a long time coming. A few things that happened around that site was, prior to this, we actually worked with Eversource and the developers to move the gas transfer station that was sitting on Third Street, modernize that, bring that inside of our facility to open up a parcel. Over the last two years, we've worked to upgrade our system in that area. We've also worked to upgrade the system with inside the plant proper to be able to supply this incremental load and happy to report there that, you know, we within the last month or so, I've actually completed the interconnection, the intertie to the building. And the building is on time and on schedule to be ready to take energy from us sometime in the spring, if not sooner, of 2026. So this is a success story for us. And it's only one of a few, but we wanted to highlight it. Matt, I'll throw it back to you.

Well, thank you. Here's all of our emails, including our CEO, Kevin Haggerty, who I know has presented here before. feel free to, you know, every planning board member, reach out to us. If you haven't seen the plant and would love a tour, nobody gives a tour like Dawn Sylvia. And as you all know, the Kendall Square is beautiful this time of year. We'd love to host you. We'd love to answer any questions and just continue this communication more than once a year. So with that, happy to answer any questions, Madam Chair, through you and your colleagues.

Thank you. I appreciate it. Thank you for the invitation, too. It really does look like quite a facility. Let's see. I see that Dan has a question.

So let's thank you madam chair. Thank you very much for the the presentation. So I'm an architect and and familiar with ground source heat pumps and other Technologies just not at this scale, but just a some ignorance at this scale would be delivering steam. You're providing heat only solutions. Is that accurate?

I'm sorry.

You're generating steam. You're using the heat pump technology and driving cold water. You've pulled the heat out of it. You're compressing it and you're delivering high temperature steam. So we have major buildings that have heat demand loads, but they also have cooling loads. So what I run into at the small scale is an evaluation between strict air to air heat pumps, electrically generated, and ground source pumps. And so the question I'm having is, where's your efficiency rating? it requires an enormous amount of electrical power to run a heat pump at this scale. And so you're transferring that. So I'm just kind of curious at an urban level, we've got certainly a help for decarbonization at one level, but it's where you're putting your source energy, right? So I guess I'm looking at this just questioning and trying to understand where that efficiency transfer happens. What I'm getting at the small scale is that the systems to run a ground source heat pump outstrip the efficiencies or are counterbalanced by air-to-air efficiencies direct off the grid. So maybe a little bit of technical question or a little bit of a question of scale that I'm not familiar with, but I'm really curious as to where the highest level of energy efficiency happens.

Do you want me to take that, Matt? Yeah, yeah, you can start. So I think what Matt told you, so in the process that we're using right now, We expect to achieve COP in excess of two, as much as 2.5, right? So that means for every unit of energy we put into it, we're going to extract two and a half units of energy out. The other thing, we talked about scale, right? The system itself, again, is an existing system. And so there's two things there, right? One is you've already got buildings on the system that are taking energy. If you were going to electrify those buildings, as you said, right, they're going to... they're going to overburden the current distribution system for sure and require massive upgrades. So what our solution is, is to electrify in one location, centralized, right, on a utility scale, and then dispatch that into the system and distribute that energy. So if you think about the steam lines as just an energy distribution system, medium that's what we're doing as far as cooling goes you know you bring up a valid point so there are technologies that are on the system now and there's the ability to use those um to take the heat energy and use that in either absorption cooling right or some sort of a a turbine drive be it um but other, and we do have those already on our system and we see, you know, a kind of a rebirth there, right? Just like you saw with people, right? Um, So the other thing that we talked a little bit about was our interconnection to the grid, right? So we can take in power at transmission level, right? We're not taking it in at distribution level, right? So we're not burdening the distribution system. So that's another advantage. So I think we find that there's multiple advantages to this. And again, it's just another energy shift. If you look at Kendall Station, well before you or I were here, but it burned coal. Right. And then it went to synthetic gas and then it went to oil and then it went to natural gas. Right. And then and now here we are at the precipice of another fuel change. But my CEO would like to say it's just another Monday. I don't like Mondays, but it's another Monday and we're going to transition to electrical input. Right. What comes next? Who knows? Could it be fusion? What's going to drive that electricity? I think we're fairly agnostic to that as well, right? So as the grid becomes greener and greener, I think the solution becomes better and better. Does that answer your question?

Yeah, no, it does. And I appreciate knowing that there's some turbine and other conversion technologies for cooling. I would guess that, I mean, taking the advantage of the existing distribution system, you've got a much lower loss factor as well with steam than transmission lines.

Yes, we do. I currently and again, as we said, you know, we see technology changes as well. Right. And so there are upgrades to installation. There are upgrades to, you know, things we do within the distribution system, the distribution system that you saw in the 1970s.

uh you know 60 70s right has seen upgrades and we expect it will continue to see upgrades thank you fantastic work well said and i just add a quick ps you know the cop has even gotten better since 2022 when we first started to do this so we think this gen one heat is going to be about between a two and a two five Gen two, which is as turbo compressors and some things I can't even think of, you know, can't even pronounce, it would be north of three. So there is an opportunity to even see how the COP will grow within the next 10 years. And then lastly, the temperature deviation of, you know, ground source is the best because it's pretty stacked. It's one of the reasons why people still use caves in France. The air can vary. Obviously, it can be 10 degrees on a very, very cold day. It can be 95 degrees. water particularly the charles river um it's kind of in between i think the coldest it gets is 36 37 degrees on an absolutely chilly day you know free frigid day on you know the hottest august day it'll probably be 72 73 degrees so it's a much narrower stratosphere that we need to sort of navigating that that allows us to um uh be able to maintain a higher uh cop it's not going to be the same cop as the air source heat pumps i have on my house but we're talking about a 1200 square foot house as opposed to you know a 35 megawatt machine that's going to hopefully get into you know tens of millions of square feet throughout boston cambridge

Thank you. Um, I'm sure there'll be more questions and comments coming up, but for now, um, let's just move on to public comment. Uh, there are a few people, um, uh, watching online. So this is not a public hearing, but we will take public comment this evening. Any members of the public who wish to speak should now click the button that says raise hand. If you're calling in by phone, you can raise your hand by pressing star nine. As of 5 p.m. yesterday, the board had received no written communications. Written communications received since that time will be entered into the record. So let me just see here. There are any hands. Yeah, we do have one attendee who has their hand up. I'm going to turn it over to Jeff to manage the public comment. Speakers, please start by saying your name and address and staff will confirm that we can hear you. And after that, you'll have up to three minutes to speak before you'll need to wrap up. So Jeff.

This is Jeff Roberts. I will call. There's one hand raised, so we'll just go to that speaker. But if your hand is not raised and I don't call your name and you want to speak, now's a good time to push the raise hand button or star nine if you're on phone. So the speaker is Heather Hoffman. I'll allow you to speak. You can begin with your name and address.

Hello, Heather Hoffman, 213 Hurley Street. So I am close to a few things that were discussed because of Kendall Square. And I, but I wanna start with the Alewife CSO. There was a whole lot of discussion at last night's city council meeting that I don't need to rehash, but I hope that people were listening and that we are not going to be having raw sewage, not just in Alewife Brook, but in people's basements, on the paths that people are traversing. We need to not be proud and not be stupid. Take advantage of the opportunities that are being presented. I do want to confirm that the Lechmere Canal Park lights are still the replacements by the original style, which folks in East Cambridge, with the tremendous assistance of the landscape architects who originally worked on the parks, cracked down for the city. So I do hope But that's what we're getting. With respect to fire hydrants, I am glad to hear that water will be flowing freely. And I don't know who is in charge of putting the pennants on the fire hydrants so that when there's snow, you can find them so that you can shovel them out. That's a really nice thing. And it also encourages plow drivers not to run into them because damage never makes your day better. With respect to electrical stuff, I am really hopeful that every last double pole in this city will disappear by the end of the year. They're unsightly. They're an insult to the people who have to look at them every day. And I know that they have been disappearing at least in my neighborhood, but I want to make sure that every single utility that uses them understands that they need to work together and make them disappear. And then finally on substations and transformers, one thing I didn't hear, in the discussion of the future is whether what we were originally told was that there was a need for a few more substations and transformers in neighborhoods other than mine, thank God. But I didn't hear whether the story was changed. Where's the story now? Thank you.

Thank you. So that still appears to be the only speaker. So I'll turn it back over to the chair.

Great. Thank you. All right. So now it's time for the board for discussion questions. So if you have any questions for either the staff, city staff, or for any of the utility representatives, please feel free. Or if you just have general comments on the presentations, we'd like to hear those too. So who would like to begin?

Carolyn.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Going back to Kathy's and the DPW presentation, I have a question, well, I have two questions, one of which may be for DPW, may be for planning, but we had talked about green infrastructure being a countermeasure to the combined sewer overflow. And I'm curious if the city is measuring or tracking at all the green infrastructure that we know of, the green roofs, the permeable pavers, if there's any sort of managing of that or measuring of that.

So, yeah, we talked about the green infrastructure. Green infrastructure plays two different roles. I talked about in the context of CSO control, you know, so green infrastructure can manage stormwater. The other thing it does, it can be, you know, in many ways, much more effective is also the water quality. So we think about, you know, rainwater is being cleaned, but when it's coming off of the streets, it's taking pollutants with it. And so it's, green infrastructure can be really effective at providing cleaner water before it goes to the outfall. So, you know, we do, you know, green infrastructure in terms of biobasins and that kind of thing. We also do infiltrating catch basins, which sort of do the same thing, but it's underground, but it gets the water into, you know, into back to groundwater or filter before it goes out as an overflow. In terms of measurement, we do, we have O and M plans for all the, like if a private development does green infrastructure, and then we also do regular inspections. And so those can vary on the timelines and sort of saying like, are they maintaining them? Are they doing the proper procedures? to make sure that that green infrastructure and any other stormwater infrastructure that they do is actually being maintained. That's part of the permits that we have with DEP when we're sort of saying like, here's how we're managing our stormwater and making sure it's meeting all of our requirements. So that is part of that process. Great, thank you.

And then the other part of my question was, I'm curious about how you think about the balance as you talk about adding in, you know, replacing ramps, replacing sidewalk. Is there any room for balance with permeability as you look at that? I know that there's kind of a tension between the two, right? You need ADA, you need it to be wide enough and stable.

How do you think about that? So I'd say there's a couple ways we think about it. So one is, can it be completely open soil? So we do, and in particular, if you look at some of our newer tree plantings, we're doing larger tree pits. And so that is one about increasing the health of the tree. It also gives more space for stormwater to get back into the groundwater. So we're doing that. You will also see if you take a look around town, we're doing... you know, a number of deep paving projects where we're saying like, you know, if we don't need this area for sidewalk, can we do, you know, a hundred foot of connected tree walls? So it's very site specific, but that is one thing that we're doing in terms of thinking about that. The other thing we've done and, you know, we're sort of continuing to play this one out is that we have some sidewalks where we've done, you know, like a five foot concrete sidewalk and then say a two or three foot brick edging. So right in front of where Jeff and these guys work at 344 Broadway is a good example of that. And we actually did that brick edging with pervious brick pavers. And so it's sort of gappy bricks, you know, is a very technical term. But, you know, and those are technically accessible. I would say they do not make a great walking surface because it's just much bumpier and less desirable. But when it's in that kind of brick edging and not in the primary walking surface, it's we think that is a good model. So, you know, we're always sort of looking to adjust how we're thinking about these things. But I would say those are a couple examples of the way we're approaching it. That's great.

Thank you so much.

Kathy, while we have you, can you just respond to the question about the Lechmere Canal, the decorative lights? Because my understanding is that they are similar, if not exact replicas of what has been there all along.

Yeah. So they're the Shepherd's Crook or Shepherd's Hook Crook. Yeah. So those have been ordered. And again, it's taken us a long time because they're a long lead time, but they are being replaced. Yeah. Yep.

Yeah, yeah. I know that was a really important shoot for the neighborhood, which is why I'm sure Heather raised it. That's great to hear. Thank you. Dan, I'm going to skip over you for a minute just because you've already asked one question, and let me go to Tom, but I'll come back to you after that. Okay. Tom, what are your thoughts?

Great, thank you. Listening carefully tonight, you know, I'm in preparing for this meeting, I was wondering, well, what do I need to check? And it's certainly resiliency and the pride that we take in being a progressive city around planning for a future. It's measuring the adequate capacity and service and the utilities, which would foster not only reliability for existing customers, but potentially to deal with an increased electrification of our energy systems. And then, importantly, sustainability, which is different from resiliency to a large degree. So I heard really good things tonight. I don't have so many questions as comments and compliments. I would say around, and Kathy's touched on it already, I think she gets it in terms of the way a river system works, which is we often think, oh, it rains and that makes the flow in the river, but of course a great deal of the flow in the Charles River and out Nail Wife comes from groundwater. And that's water that's treated naturally. And the photographs of the pipe, which was showing infiltration, for instance, there was concern in the presentation that that was going to increase flow and capacity for the treatment or overtake capacity in the pipe. It's actually doing something else. It's dewatering the water table, right? So that infiltration, thinking about it relative to the ecosystems could be, and it is damaging. So keeping those pipes tight does two things. It helps with those treatment volumes, but it also will make our rivers much more sustainable. I think she gets it. It just was a point that was lost in the lengthy presentation tonight. So I hope those giant stormwater tanks that we saw also facilitate infiltration. I suspect they do, rather than just timing of the outflow of those waters. And that's a question, I guess, in a second if you could address that to see whether we can do that. Relative to adequate capacity and service, the ESMP in Chapter 5 and Chapter 6, both in the modernization of that grid for reliability and the forecasting, I appreciate the dynamic situation that the utility is in to try to read the tea leaves for the future for what they're going to be dealing with. But it was reassuring to this planning board member that that's very carefully considered and up to date in terms of the current economy and forces working on the economy. So lastly, slightly disorganized thoughts this evening after the lengthy presentations, but really one question and I'm always also interested in permeable paving, which I'm told is a technology with issues, but something that I'd love to get to at some point the natural systems are working in our watershed to make a healthy environment and a more resilient city. Thank you.

Sure. I can take, you know, so the, when we do like the large stormwater holding tanks, that stormwater is after a significant amount of rain. So when we think about water quality, the sort of the dirtiest water is that first flush of water. And so when you're treating water, rainwater for water quality, you're really treating that first flush. So that is where you get the really the biggest benefit in terms of water quality. So the water that's going into the tanks is substantially after that, right? So in an ideal scenario, you've treated the first flush of water. Those tanks are not sort of, they're not, if you have a small rainstorm event, those tanks aren't getting used. Those tanks are getting used six, seven, eight times a year. it's really for those larger storm events to reduce flooding. And so that is not where you're going to get the benefits in the same way of the water quality. And those tanks are water tight to keep water out. And so they do go from the tank, you know, into the pipe and then out to the river. But again, it is, you know, a cleaner water, not that first flush of water. Permeable paving, we've done a fair amount of it. And we did a substantial amount in West Cambridge as part of the large sewer separation project there. I would say that we've had some significant concerns about the maintenance requirements and how it's held up. And so I reference what we call infiltrating catch basins. And it's basically like, you know, you have the grate of a catch basin and underneath it, there's like a box that holds the water. An infiltrating catch basin has holes in that catch basin that allows water to go out into the roadway. And we've done some that even have a perforated pipe that goes out and then allows, again, that water to infiltrate. And so it's doing the same thing as the porous paving, but in a way that is much more maintainable. So we've had much more success with that. We've done it a lot in the sort of Montgomery grid area. because that is a very sandy area that has been very conducive to that infiltration. And so, you know, the downside of it is that people don't see it and don't recognize it as, you know, infiltrating and green infrastructure, but it is getting that stormwater into the groundwater, but just doing it in a way that is much more, it's much less expensive than the porous paving and much more maintainable and lasts much longer than we've found with the porous asphalt.

Okay.

Thank you. Dan. Thank you, Madam Chair.

So, yeah, I guess I want to ask Kathy a couple of questions, and I think it builds off of Carolyn and Tom's point. But I guess before I go there, they both have to do with kind of long-range planning, right? So if we're looking at significant electrification on the grid, obviously we've got a lot of loss over transmission. I'm curious to hear how... Eversource might be thinking about microgrids or being able to think about, you know, if we're going to full electrification, decarbonization in some foreseeable future, just what kind of planning is going on there. So that's a very broad but hopefully quick question for our utility. For Kathy, I guess the question is, how realistic is it and in what time frame to have full stormwater sewer separation and in particular given 2070 goals so I saw 2050 throat floated out as a kind of year planning looking at the city's stormwater and particularly precipitation flooding 2070 numbers come up pretty pretty significantly and cover a lot of Cambridge. So I guess it goes along with it to say, are there more significant flood events, stormwater systems to be put in place to help ameliorate that? Because it certainly impacts development capacity. So there's my quick questions.

Okay, so let's go to Eversource.

Yeah, and I can probably talk about the transmission question, right, Daniel, that you asked about how are we looking for long-term planning, especially for electrification. I still think that transmission is one of the answers. Yeah, there's losses, but the key with the transmission system is we can always step up the voltage, and that reduces basically the losses. And in order to get all that green energy, all that solar, all that wind energy from other areas to bring it back into the center, to the metro area, all that grid energy to bring it back. The transmission system is the answer. So as we look into the future, that's one of the key answers for us. It's being able to bring that transmission, that clean energy into the city from outside of the city. I hope that answers your question.

Okay. And then Kathy on CSOs.

Sure. And, you know, I want to talk about the flooding and the CSOs because they're all sort of related in terms of how we think about our system. And I would say that when we look at our flooding locations, you know, the location of the city that is most vulnerable to flooding, we talk a lot about Alewife and it's part of the floodplain, but we have areas in the port and a floodplain is, you know, Expected, you know, 1% chance of flooding in a given year, right? A hundred year floodplain we talk about. We have areas on the port that, you know, the system there, you know, they can experience flooding from a five year or 10 year flood event. So I would say the port is by far the most vulnerable neighborhood we have to flooding. And so we have a very significant investment that we're, you know, currently in the middle of in terms of infrastructure to reduce flooding in the port. So that's, We did a large stormwater tank in the parking lot six behind McDonald's in Central Square that is active. It gets activated, I would say, five to eight times a year. And each time that activates, that's flooding that did not happen in that neighborhood. And so I can't say enough how important that investment is. And we are continuing to do additional work in the port neighborhood to continue to reduce flood events there. In terms of sort of full separation, you know, I think we are continuing on, you know, I think the long-term control plan that we're working on now will have a 20 or 30 year plan. I don't think that there's any scenario in that 30 year plan that we're getting full sewer separation. when you look at the map that we showed that shows the areas that are still combined you know the work that we've done to date you always start with the easiest projects that give you the biggest benefit and so each next project is more costly more you know more difficult and probably fewer benefits and so each of those projects gets more and more difficult so again we're continuing to look at that one of the things with the cso plan is to really say what's the project that gives us the biggest benefit is constructible, has other co-benefits. And so we're really evaluating that. So that's part of that process. So we certainly do not have a timeline that says, you know, in 20 years, we're going to spend a billion dollars in complete sewer separation in the city. So, but we are continuing to prioritize and say, how do we get the biggest bang for these projects? So I hope that I know that's not exactly the answer you're looking for, but hopefully that helps.

Yeah, I think that puts it in a very good perspective because, yeah, I mean, obviously difficulty and funding and all of those things, you know, are very important given limited resources on various fronts. So thank you. Mary Lidepper, let's go to you next.

Thank you. And so thank you all for the presentations. Very helpful and informative. And so my question comment I think is going to continue on the CSO conversation a little bit. So I live up in the North Cambridge area. And so a question I get a lot from neighbors is an issue that came up on from the public comment about backflow into buildings from the CSO. And so I think, Kathy, what you described about the timeline of replacement is totally understandable. It's a really hard undertaking to replace all the CSOs. But I was wondering if you could speak to two things. One is, how is it going with the city's communication system? to residents about that timeline, about how say their private property, if they're having a backflow issue relates to that bigger picture. And it sounds like probably, I've seen a lot of the more recent public meetings you guys have been doing, which I think has been really, really helpful. And then a kind of second related question to that is, I was wondering if you could talk to say the past 10 years, have you seen an uprise in that backflow because of the extreme events? And relative to kind of both of those things, wondering if you could talk to what the city does to support that? buildings or condo units, right, that find that they either have to retrofit their building or plan, right, towards preventing that backflow. And for everyone, it's like it's when the CSO, when the water overflows, the sewage, if the building's not properly suited up, it'll just get the sewage coming into like lower levels. So I was wondering if you could kind of talk to that topic.

Sure. And one thing I want to be really crystal clear about is backflow issues are not related to CSOs, right? So backflow issues can happen anytime a sewer system is overwhelmed. And so that is not directly tied to CSOs. If we sort of closed all CSOs and said, we don't want any CSOs, the risk of that is you've reduced the capacity in the system and that you force more water to come up through catch basins and manholes and others. And so you could trade one problem for the other. So one of the things we do when we're looking at CSO control is that we want to reduce CSOs without negatively impacting and causing more flooding in the neighborhood. Because the other thing is that in terms of backflows into buildings, so Like if you have a basement shower or a basement toilet that has a backup, that can happen anytime from a sewer system. And so it is under building code, under the plumbing code, if you have a lower level fixture, it needs to have a backflow device on it. Because you could have a blockage in the sewer system that has nothing to do with any kind of weather event and if the water needs somewhere to go and so it can back up into the properties. And so it is really important that people have backflow devices properly installed on any lower level fixtures, because those are at risk. And it's one of the things when we're going through, particularly when people are going through the building permit process, and adding a new bathroom or new fixtures in the basement, that we work really closely with people to just continue to remind them that in order to protect the property, it is really critical that you have those backload devices installed. And then, go ahead.

I just want to make sure it's clear. So I think what I'm asking about is when a building has a CSO connection and an extreme rain event causes the backup,

So again, it's like in any scenario, a lower level fixture needs to have a backflow device. So I just, you know, just to be like, because you can get a backup because, you know, even if it's a separated system, if people's roof drains are connected into it, you can have increased flow. Or if there's a sewer, if there's a, you know, a backup in the sewer, you can have backups into the properties. And so any lower level fixture, fixture needs to have a backflow device on it. So there are different risks associated with different systems, but even if you're connected into a sewer system and there's a separate drain line, that connection should have a backflow device. or else your property is at risk. And so again, when we're going through the building permit review, that is one of the things that we really try to emphasize to people to make sure that they're getting properly installed. In terms of increase in flooding events, I would say what we actually see is the opposite. So if you go back to 30 years ago, we would have pretty small rain events. And I would say pretty frequently, we would have numerous calls for backups and flooding events because of the condition of our system. So over the last 30 years, we have done extensive work to understand how our system actually works. I mean, again, like Rich was talking about the water system, many of our pipes are over 100 years old. And so we didn't necessarily know where the connections were or how it was functioning. We have. We do significant catch basin cleaning. So we clean each catch basin at least once every three years to make sure that the capacity in the catch basins is remaining. We do TV and cleaning of our sewer and drainage lines to make sure that the capacity in those lines is there. And so we have actually seen significantly reduced capacity flooding events because of the work that we've done. Now, we also know that we're fighting against climate change. And so, you know, we're not sort of saying like, oh, we have less flooding and so we're done. So we're continue to work on it. But we actually have, I would say, significantly less flooding events today than we did 30 years ago.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Other questions, comments from the board? All right, seeing none. Okay, then I just want to thank everybody for the presentations. I mean, it's just amazing to see the kind of work that everybody is doing. It's just so extensive, you know, and it's helping everybody. It's helping the environment. There are problems that, you know, are just hard to solve and are going to take time, but it's so great to know that we have, you know, all of these terrific people resources in Cambridge and people who really care about the environment working on these problems. So thank you for all of that. If there are no questions or comments then from the board, we'll take a motion then to conclude the item. this discussion. Obviously, we'll look forward to seeing you all again next year and some of you sooner. This is an item that the associate members will not be voting on. So could I have a board member make a motion then to conclude the item, this discussion item?

This is Tom. I move that we conclude this discussion item.

Thank you. And could I have a second on that, please?

Is Ted second?

Thank you. Jeff, may we have a roll call?

On that motion, Ted Cohen? Yes. Mary Leydecker?

Yes.

Diego Macias? Yes. Tom Sieniewicz? Yes. Ashley Tan?

Yes.

Carolyn Zern?

Yes.

And Mary Flynn?

Yes.

That's all members voting in favor.

Okay, thank you. Again, my thanks to all of the representatives from the various utilities, both in terms of your presentations this evening, but also for all of the work you put into developing them. And it's really very much appreciated. So thank you. And just as one more aside, Kathy, we're very happy that you're here. We know we probably won't be seeing you again because your new role is going to be so demanding. But our congratulations to you on your new role, this upcoming role as deputy city manager. With that, that concludes the business on our agenda. Are there any additional comments from staff?

Um, there, there are no, uh, no immediate comments. It just occurred to me when you said that, that we, we had not made the announcement and I'm sure everyone has also heard that the, uh, that our, uh, department head, Melissa Peters has been named the permanent assistant city manager for community development. So she's not able to make it tonight's meeting. Hopefully she'll be able to make it to a future meeting. You can all embarrass her then. Um, but I wanted to, to make sure that that was on the record for those who hadn't heard.

terrific yes i just discovered that this morning so i don't know how many people had heard yet so that is great news melissa's been uh a great contributor to the department all along and i think she's going to do a fantastic job in her new role so thank you for mentioning that jeff um any other questions comments from the board are you finished i was just going to say other than that as i said at the beginning

Enjoy the rest of spring. And we'll see the board again in July. Look out for details about July meetings.

Okay. Sounds good. All right. I think then we're wrapped up. So I would say the meeting is adjourned. And we'll see you all soon. Thank you, everybody.

Good night.