Community Q&A on xAi

e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e good morning Richard just going to let a few more people trickle in before we start give people an opportunity to get settled so [Music] oh there's Sean anywhere anywhere oops I think no I'm on the mic I can't even whisper I think he used to tast sheer really back in the day yeah cuz when we that when she came for the protest for the PIP someone that was good morning everyone W morning oh I know you guys are more awake than that good morning good morning and Welcome to our community conversation on xai I'm Ursa Madden the vice president of corporate Communications for Memphis Light Gas and Water today's Community Q&A was requested by our Memphis city council many members are here today and at special request of Memphis city council woman Pearl Eva Walker to give the broader Community an opportunity ask questions about xai and to provide answers within our area of scope here at Memphis Lake gas and water and any other questions that were're able to answer a big thank you to Southwest Tennessee Community College and Chuck Thomas for allowing us to host this community Q&A today they're such good partners for us we really appreciate them providing the space for us today a few housekeeping notes before we get started I'd like to remind everyone that this event is being streamed live on the MLGW YouTube channel and and will be posted on the MLGW website and potentially other social media platforms once this meeting concludes uh please silence your phones at this time uh try not to interrupt the speakers from the panel or from the audience we all want to be able to hear the presentation the questions that are being asked and the responses that are being given we understand some of you may be quite passionate in your opinions about xai which is perfectly fine just please keep it respectful and please keep your language PG uh also if you have questions or concerns about your MLGW Bill we have customer service Representatives who are out in the hallway um you can uh who can help you uh we need to keep the questions in this room today um specifically targeted on the xai issues by the way if you do need to use the restroom it's out these back doors here to my left and uh to the left again down the hallway for today's run of show we'll start by well we hoped to have our mayor here uh to uh make a few remarks before he gets started if he does happen to come in today we'll give him an opportunity to um address the audience as well uh we'll have uh Pearl Eva walker uh give some brief remarks followed by our MLGW CEO and president Doug McGowan who will give a brief presentation and then we will begin the Q&A uh questions there councilwoman Walker will lead us through those questions that were submitted through the registration portal or question cards that you may have um give been given before you walked in here the cards will be collected if you still have your uh question card please hold it up somebody from MLGW will come by and get it from you and uh make sure it gets up here on the stage after we've answered the questions then we're going to have um a little bit of a comment period each person who wishes to speak can come up to the microphone um for 3 minutes just like we do at our MLGW board of directors meetings you'll be given 3 minut minutes to um say what you what's on your mind U there is a timer so please keep it within that time frame because we want to give as many people who would like to speak in Opportunity before we get to the 11:00 hour um we will not be answering the questions during the commentary period to give as many people as a chance as possible to say what's on their minds however if a question does come up during the commentary that has not been asked we will write it down and post that question and answer on our website at MLGW backx a and we'll do that um next week make sure those uh q&as get posted as well again we appreciate you being here today and with that I see that Mayor Young has walked into the room mayor would you mind please stepping up to the microphone oh well you can just stay right there and like say hello to everybody thank you so much uh honored to be here with all of you to talk about this important project I know there has been a lot of discussion in the media so I want to applaud MLGW for pulling that together this dialogue uh councilwoman Pearl walker uh and it's going to be an important conversation uh I have U been looking at this project for a little while now and I will tell you that one of the first conversations uh that I had and president MCG was there as well uh with the company was around how we ensure that we preserve our water resources and power um something that we are thinking about city government and it's something that MLGW is thinking about and I will say this just my personal opinion on the project I do think that this is a good thing for our community um I think that it is something that we have the ability to control the narrative we have billions of dollars that are being invested into our community so those are tax dollars and we have the world's largest super computer that's going to be located in Memphis Tennessee nothing to say about the jobs located inside the facility but the question for me is how do we turn that narrative into something powerful around innovation in Memphis Tennesse and I believe that as the nation's largest majority africanamerican community in this country that we take that statement of inov and we apply it to the people of our community we apply it to uh the jobs that we're looking to create we have this facility that's going to be located here and 50 Mi away we have more electric vehicles that are going to be produced in this region than anywhere else in the country and you start to begin to create a narrative around jobs that are located in the tech in the smart infrastructure Arena and I think that's something that we as a community can and should capitalize on because at the end of the day what I want to see for our city is wealth I want to see wealth grow in Memphis and I believe that we can take this narrative and apply it to the future of our city for the most important asset that we have which are our young people and so I'll leave it there I know there'll be a lot of questions comments and dialogue and um I look forward to hearing from everyone thank you thank you mayor we appreciate you it's okay to applaud the mayor y'all and now councilwoman Walker please your remarks thank you good morning everyone morning and if this is your first time in this area welcome to the beautiful Hamlet of White Haven I am Pearl Eva Walker Memphis city councilwoman for District 3 and where is District 3 it is this side of the world famous Elvis Presley Boulevard going in that direction taking in Oak Haven most of Hickory Hill a portion of Parkway Village and Fox Meadows so how did we get here today Dennis would you stand up that's Dennis Lynch and he is with the Memphis branch of the Sierra Club Sierra Club Chickasaw group and about six weeks ago president mcgaan came to us in committee to do his usual um update presentation and he was sharing with us about the xai project and Dennis text me about a public session and so I asked president Macwan could we do this and he agreed and it's been an amazing effort in these past six weeks it's a lot of people here seen and unseen helped to put this together and so before we forget at the end let's give all of them president Macwan Miss Madden and everyone on the team who put this together a round of [Applause] applause at this time I would like to recognize my colleagues and thank you mayor for coming thank you for your comments so starting from my right your left we have councilman Phillip sposa District 5 and we all serve on committees he is the chair of the MLGW committee I am the co-chair of the MLGW committee and next to him we have councilwoman Jerry green District Two she's the liaison to the MLGW next we have no stranger No Stranger we have the councilman from District three which is that side of White Haven Edmond Ford senior and it goes all the way over to the river and flanking that flanking that roow we have councilman Jeff Warren super District nine position three and we used to have a Parks and Recreation committee it is now parks and environment just in case you didn't know and Jeff is the chair of that committee going to the next row we have with planning and Zoning director John zena thank you for joining us [Applause] today and on the far end of the rad we have MLGW board member Cheryl pesy so thank you all for coming out today so my personal position on this is that we've had some great things to happen in this city and we're looking forward to more unfortunately we've had a few bad deals and I want this to be a good deal for Memphis in one sentence I want this to be a good deal for Memphis and to expand on that a little bit I would like for them to help us build out our sustainability goals and objectives and they are in a position to do that and that is something that I'm looking forward to happening as we are in the midst of climate change and things related to that we need to have a really good sustainability plan moving forward and I know that they can help us with that Council women can you all come down to the front please thank you so much to to your left and in conclusion I just want to say once again welcome and happy Elvis week thank you great [Applause] good morning everybody I'm Doug Gas and Water I'm not stand up towering over font but thank you coun former councilwoman Johnson also who arrived today um I want to thank everybody for taking time on Saturday morning to come out and be with us today um I think what we'd like to do is share as much information as we possibly can with you so we can have a really good dialogue and answer questions you may have I will say up front that I may not have the answers to every question because just up front I can't speak for the company um and I can't speak for other agencies who may or may not be represented here but I'll do my level best to share information that I do know um I really appreciate what the mayor said uh when this project was brought to us the very first question the mayor said is how will we protect power for our existing customers and how will we protect availability of water our existing customers and that became our marching orders and the very first conversation we had with the company was about those two things saying how will we be able they ask for utilities and we said very good how are we going to protect existing customers and quite frankly I will tell you my charge is the president of MLGW um the city council's charge and the charge of uh commissioner pesy is the end of the day before any new customers can come on I have to ensure that I preserve existing customers access and reliability that is my chartered responsibility is to ensure um that we protect existing customers and I will tell you just up front as a level set here I am very proud of the work that we have done over the last year to improve electric reliability for all of you as you know we have suffered some from some reliability issues from Decades of underinvestment in our electric grid um it sounds pretty good but last year our electric Rel liability was 99.91% in other words 99.91% of the time everybody had electric power now that's much higher than the grades I ever earned in college but or in high school for that matter but and it's a pretty high bar but it's not good enough the standard is 99.95% that's the industry standard that we should be meeting for electric reliability so I know people are frustrated when the power goes out but last year was our worst year ever 99 9.91% of the time this year just because of the work that we've done last year we invested the most money we have ever invested in Electric Capital in our system this year we have cut more trees and if you've listened to me the key to Electric reliability is trimming trees investing in new infrastructure and modernizing our grid this year we have trimmed more trees than we have ever trimmed in our history uh we have actually achieved our goal in 11 months what we're supposed to achieve in 12 months and we have never achieved our goal throughout our history what you're seeing is as a result of that is this year electric reliability is 99.94% we're not quite where we're supposed to be and we're not going to quit until we get above the standard that we all expect and you all deserve so I want to be clear that anytime we talk about a new project or anytime we talk about something that could impact our system it is in all of our best interest and quite frankly I can't do anything that would send me backwards I want us to move forward and be more reliable not less and so that guides the decisions that we make each and every day I just want to say that up front before we get into the project so and I will also say on the water side I have been involved in this when I was the city and now our whole team at MLGW has been focused on making sure that we preserve the water beneath us as an opening statement I will tell you and I know we have Ward here and some other representatives from protect our aquafer because of their actions together with mayor Strickland and MLGW we funded a study at the University of Memphis called the aquafer study it started in 2018 and that's so we could understand the Dynamics of the aquafer underneath us and what the risks were to that that work continues and it's funded by MLGW a portion of the money we collect from our water bill is funding that study and it will be we're in the sixth year of the study now we did that because we know how important it is to protect that and when you know better you do better you put your wells in a better location you don't put them in a place of risk so this is something we think about every day at Memphis like gas and water just want to let you know that up front before I talk about the project because that guides what we do every day so I'll start just with a basic description of the project if we go to the next slide so this is a Google map view of where the facility is it's in the far southwest corner of Memphis Tennessee it is in the Frank sea pigeon industrial park and I just wanted to frame essentially what I did is include all of Shelby County in this picture here or most of it and you'll see that it's in the pigeon industrial park if we go to the next slide so this is a closeup view what is currently in the pigeon industrial park and I've highlighted a few things um there are two wastewater treatment facilities in Memphis Tennessee uh one is Maxin and that's what serves the southern half uh if you think about pop Avenue in South everything south of that is served by Maxon and pop Avenue in North everything is served by another wastewater treatment plant called Styles and that's up north of Mud Island so the Maxon wastewater treatment plant is there it treats between 50 and 70 million gallons of Wastewater every day that are produced by all of us um you'll see on the upper left there once that water is treated it is discharged to the Mississippi River and that's where that effluent discharge uh arrow is pointing so the water is treated all of the bad bacteria are removed the water is uh consistent with the permit we have with the state discharged to the Mississippi River um and that is how wastewater treatment works in this country so uh you'll see down and to the right is the TVA combined cycle plant um just east of the Max and wastewater treatment plant which is to your right is the location where the Allen coal plant used to be we used to have a coal plant that produced electricity for us that has been demolished they are cleaning up the ash beds there that used to contain the coal ash and that uh will be cleaned up over the next few years and they're actively doing that if you go down there today you'll see plenty of trucks moving in and out of there removing that coal ash across the street they build a combined cycle plant what is that that's a naturally gas natural gas fired um electric generation plant that produces 12200 megaw of energy it can produce up to 1,500 megawatts that may not mean much to all of you so let me just give you some information in Memphis Tennessee throughout Shelby County in the winter time our Peak demand for MLGW is about 2,00 th000 megawatts in the summertime where we just came through like a hot July or August afternoon our Peak is about 3,000 megaw so I tell you that because our Electric System is very connected the Allen plant does not provide all of the energy for our needs in fact sometimes that Allen plant is not running at all so where does our electricity come from well it comes from other plants across the Tennessee Valley Authority footprint and and that is transmitted to us over high voltage lines and it comes to us at Four Points of delivery across Shelby County this is one piece there is another combined cycle plant in Mississippi and there are dozens and dozens of uh power plants across the Tennessee Valley that provide energy that we all use uh to the south of that is what you'll see is the former Electrolux facility and the Electrolux facility is where the xai project is going to be located now I appreciate what councilman Walker said and I don't typically get into critique but when she said we want a good deal for our community I want you to reflect back on Electrolux that factory was paid for by who all of us $120 million in cash with no clawbacks under the promise that they would have 1,200 to 1500 jobs and that they would stay here and they were given a payment of of taxes so they didn't have to pay all of their property taxes and then uh again they decided made a business decision that they were going to close the facility and move their people and their production somewhere else so that facility has been sitting vacant that we all paid for so that was the prime mover for I believe for xai saying where can we go there's an existing manufacturing plant of about a million square feet and you'll see how many extra chart there is existing and available utilities that we can tap into and so I think it became a relatively easy decision to say I don't have to build a facility because one exists there are already utilities that were serving Electrolux and it's an industrial area that has plenty of utilities so it became a pretty logical choice so that's how we're set up to the east of that pretty far is the um uh is to Fuller State Park okay um this is a closeup uh on the left you'll see is the xai facility now these are not the exact locations but it's a depiction you'll see in red there was an existing 20-in water man in the street okay so 20in in diameter that provides tens of millions of gallons of water it distributes it to other companies and all throughout this area so that was already available to them the facility at xai was already connected to that water pipe so nothing had to be done there in the blue is a Gas Distribution main there's a 16inch main in the street didn't have to add anything they just connected to that main so they could access the gas also in that gas line there's plenty of capacity um and what we're doing is xai will actually buy gas and it'll be transported through that tra through that gas line to them so they are not competing with you for gas they're buying their own and it's just being transported over that gas pipeline immediately to the north you'll see the existing electric substation that substation was there to serve the industrial needs of the pigeon Industrial Park um it had an additional 8 megawatt of capacity available immediately that Electrolux had been using um you'll see that we improve that capacity to 50 megaw um and it's all we had to do is add another Transformer and a circuit breaker and put some lines to the building and we could provide that 50 Mega wats and then you'll see on the left as you all know they're asking for 150 megawatt of power so where the dotted line is may not be exactly where it is but representative that there will have to be a new electric substation built to serve that need now I want to take a pause here and say that building a new substation is not a new phenomenon we are currently building a brand new substation to serve the needs of cerville because they are a growing community so we're building a new substation there this year I have expanded the capacity at 45 other substations we have about 60 substations in our footprint and we've made uh investments in 45 of those to improve capacity and reliability so this is what we do as a normal course of being a utility is to improve those substations all across our service area and that's one of the reasons we spent as much money as we did last year to improve reliability for all of you substation if you don't know about 10 to 15,000 people served out of every substation or customers excuse me so when a substation goes down a lot of people lose power that's why you want to really make sure they're reliable okay next so let me talk about what the mayor said I share concerns that you have when they say I need 150 megawatts of power and let me just be clear I was invited to a meeting where they asked uh they they we were presented with the opportunity and said we would like to locate here but we need to know what kind of utilities are available and here's what we think we're going to need our job as your public utility is to provide utilities that we can reasonably provide and we cannot prohibit a connection by law because we all selected MLGW to be our public utility we are some people will say a monopoly but we all voted to have MLGW as a public utility that comes with a lot of requirements that means I cannot discriminate who I provide Power to that is the law so I want to say though reasonably provided go back to what I said at the beginning I cannot disrupt the reliability of the bulk Electric System that serves all of us and I cannot diminish the reliability of the system that I have when I provide this service so that's the first question I have how will I ensure there's enough power available for all of my other customers the first step that was to say they wanted 50 megaw we know that's available it was available at the substation we talked with our partners at TVA and they said yes there's enough power to provide 50 megawatts without impacting any of our existing customers and I want I'm saying this specifically because there's two parts of this there's the generation can we generate enough power and then there's the distribution can I distribute the power to all of you those are two parts of reliability so our first question was can we provide the 50 megawatts the answer is yes and it won't impact the availability of power to any other customers the second question was they want 150 megawatts I cannot make that decision on our own the Tennessee Valley Authority who provides the power to us their board has to decide whether they can provide enough power anything over a 100 megawatts they have to decide and they're looking at the entire Tennessee Valley to say all the demands can we reasonably provide 150 megaw to this facility one of the predicates for doing that when there is a demand on your system and all utilities are doing this across the country uh let me again just take a quick pause what we used to do was we would build and we would just tell TVA give us more power build give us more power build give us more power we did that in this country all across the country those days are over now we have have to be more conscious because you've heard about all the things that are happening around the country the electrification of things is really going and we're struggling to keep up one of the first answers utility companies put into place is what's called a demand response program when the grid gets stressed in other words it gets very hot and there's a lot of demand for electricity because your your air conditioners are all running we ask people who have a very large load to decrease their usage and don't just ask we have a contract with them to reduce their energy at Memphis Light Gas of water today we have companies subscribe to this 250 megawatt that we can tell to bring their power down by 250 megawatts remember where I said 2,000 to 3,000 so 250 is a pretty good drop because what I'm not doing is asking you to scale back on your power I want you to have availability of power to run and live your lives and run your air conditioners there will be times when I might ask you to conserve but I'm not making you cut your power down to 20% so demand response is the key predicate and when I say demand response I mean cutting between 50 and 80% of their demand contractually when the grid is stressed and that happens maybe four to five times a year so for a company I can you know I can run for 360 days a year it's not going to be a problem and I will tell you 150 megawatt if we provide that 360 days a year that's not a problem don't I'm using that as an example could be 355 or whatever but only a few days out of the year is that a real issue when the grid is stressed that's when we ask companies to participate in demand response does everybody understand the concept they are contractually required to turn things off and reduce their load and if they don't they are penalized financially pretty significantly and if they continue not to do it then guess what we have the opportunity to just not provide the power okay we have our position is to the TVA board and to the company I do not support 150 megawatts unless they are enrolled in an aggressive demand response program that is our position I've advised the TVA leadership of that I've advised the company of that because I want to make sure that I preserve power for all of you let's go to the next slide so that's is there enough power for everybody the next is how is this going to impact my ability to distribute energy to all of you the questions I've heard from people is hey we have some outages so how's this going to affect our outages that's a distribution issue so we do a system impact study for 50 megawatts we did a system impact study to say okay of the circuits and those are the wires that go in and out the substations the Transformers will any of those be overloaded because of this is 50 megawatts and the answer for the 50 megawatt study is there is no impact our system can handle it because remember we have a lot of industrial um infrastructure in this area and the wires and the Transformers and the substations can handle the 50 megawatts the question becomes the 150 megawatts what needs to be done there we also do a system impact study for that what we found was to ensure that there's no impact anybody that $1.7 million of improvements are necessary for a transmission line I'll come back TVA generates electricity sends it over high voltage transmission lines to us comes to a substation and then we distribute it lower voltage this is a very high voltage transmission line that serves this part of the industrial area and what it needs to be is upgraded in other words increased in size so it's a thicker wire than can handle it I want to relate this to your house if you've ever had a lot of plugs in one outlet and things start getting a little you know the lights start flickering you have overloaded that line you want to avoid that and that's why we're upgrading that line so it can take more power and with that complete there will be no impact to our customers from a distribution perspective so I just want to make clear there will be enough power TV will decide if there's enough to give 150 megaw if they do provide 150 megaw with this upgrade complete there will be no no impact to your reliability just because of this project let me stop there and say this is one thing that we are doing last year we spent $212 million on electric distribution upgrades we are spending $20 million to upgrade the distribution system in Orange Mound sorry thank you is this one on okay sound different okay um so we're spending money the distribution system specifically in orang map we're upgrading substations and wires and poles all over our system this does nothing to impact that we have a to improve your reliability by cutting trees out infastructure the GD that work continues okay next so that's the power side we talk about the water side that oh I'm sorry this is a picture of what a demand response that looks like blue waves are the demand for energy as you go through the day and you can see there's a peak in the morning when everybody's getting ready to go to work and there's a peak in the afternoon everybody comes home from work they start cooking they do the laundry they do everything in the energy demand and it's hot so your air conditioner goes on there is a chance that you can exceed the capacity of generation that TVA can provide us when you get to that point you have a choice you have to ask people who are large customers to reduce their demand so that you don't get to a position where you can't meet the energy needs again I'll take a side note here we have had one occasion in our history where we have had where we exceeded the power needs of TV could Supply and that was in December of 2022 you all remember the Rolling blackouts that we had a rolling blackout is when the power company have a power to meet all of your needs we didn't have time to ask the companies to bring their power back down and so the only solution as ordered by TVA is to start cutting circuits and a circuit is 1500 people or so 1500 customers and that reduces the demand and you do that so that you power to as many people as possible and you rotate it around so that everybody's not out all at the same time that's what a rolling blackout is again I've heard some questions about we have these all the time one time in 85 year history of MLGW one time in the 95 year history of TVA it doesn't mean we haven't add outages because we have routine outages all the time car hits a pole tree hits a limb storm comes through those are routine outages but it's not something I'm forcing to happen Okay next I want to talk about the water and how important that is because that's one thing that everybody in our community understands is how good our water is and how much we want to keep it that way um the fir very first meeting that we had with the company uh I asked about their cooling needs and they said uh yes we're going to use need some water for cooling uh they could have just applied to the Shelby County Water Board and put Wells into the ground uh I made it clear to them they should not even apply you should take water from mgw to start but you shouldn't be using drinking water tooling your factory they agreed said well what's my options said fortunately MLGW the city of Memphis and TVA have been talking about building a recycling plant that takes Wastewater and recycles it for industrial purposes Richard can you go back to the beginning to that picture uh to the to the where it shows the right there that Max and Wastewater facility remember I said it prod 50 to 70 million gallons of water a day and then discharges it to the Mississippi River what we're talking about is taking some of that water that goes to the river let's use that for cooling instead of ground water right the problem is it's not quite clean enough yet um to use for cooling purposes the basic example I give to people have you ever boiled water and then at the end of the day you have so much that you boil the pan out and there's a scale at the bottom of thean the minerals in the water that's what the Eid is like there's too many suspended solids it's inorganic and harmless but it will scale up and gum up industrial cooling so we have to go through one more treatment to make it good enough for cooling okay so let's go back to the water all right so they agreed and today xai City of Memphis wastewater treatment the mayor's team MLGW and our partners at TVA are working on the design for this gray water or water recycling plant so that we can take up to 10 million gallons of that waste stream and use it for cooling purposes xai has said they need 1.3 million gallons per day the Tennessee Valley Authority at that Allen plant uses on an average day 4 million gallons of water for cooling which is what caused us to start this years go and the City of memphis's wastewater treatment plant uses between 2 and 4 million gallons of water for their purposes as a part of the water treatment so that's a lot of water and the gray water would ostensibly serve all of them and reduce that Demand on the aquifer this is technically feasible um we were on a path to do this and as the mayor said he hopes that we can accelerate that and having xai here who is willing to help fund and build that for us is going to be a good thing for our community so it's technically feasible we've been in the middle of the design and I think in the next few weeks we will know the direction we're going I have to get a permit from the state in order to operate this but it is going to be a very good thing for our entire Community because it reduces Demand on the oct a million gallons a day is a lot of water I want to put that in context that we produce between 150 and 170 million gallons a day for all of our customers last December we in the water main braks we were pushing out 250 million gallons of water and you can see back in 2020 or 2000 one day we put 340 million gallons of water out we don't want to do that I'm just saying that relative to the overall demand that's what this is asking for now there's a specific well field that it's served by uh this this is within the capacity that was in that water line it's within the capacity of the pumping station that we have but again that's so we can get water now the ultimate goal is to use recycled water and I think that's going to come to us in a much faster fashion because XI is here so next I told you the process is underway to figure out there's several different treatment styles that you can use we're determining that now we're determining the cost but we're planning it for 10 million gallons a day so that it's not just for xai but TVA can use it for their cooling City Memphis ens and other industrial users could use that for their purposes too so that's a this is a really good thing for us and it's really unique for a city to be doing this and we'll be really on The Cutting Edge if we do this so moving on and now we're going to get to questions so let me just sum up by saying what I mentioned at the beginning my aim is to improve reliability for all of you and to ensure that you can live a life of comfort and convenience without having to worry about everything working we have we are investing a lot of money to improve the electric water and gas infrastructure for our community the initial indications of what we are doing is working the reliability of the Electric System is better this year than it's been any of The Last 5 Years and when I say that not just because of storm we exclude storms on day-to-day Blue Sky what you guys all say the Wind Blows the power goes out comparing Apples to Apples across all those years this year because of the Investments it's the best year we've had in the last years we're moving in the right direction we're not there yet but um I want to know I want you to know how committed I am and how committed I am to preserving the acid beneath our feet and that's the water that we have we want to make sure that this does nothing to deplete um the access to the water that we have and to make sure it's always available for you and for generations of your family that come so with that I'll stop I think we're going to move on to pre written questions yes so we uh are going to move into the Q&A portion of our presentation and if anybody still has a question card that's in the audience just raise it up and then we'll come around and pick those up and start collecting them and councilwoman Walker is going to uh lead our discussion in the uh Q&A go ahead and start got a lot of cards switch mics again just just be so some of these cards or questions were presented um through our portal um on the website when people registered and of course allowing folks to um be able to submit their questions in this way and uh after we after we do this um we will have our comment period Council thank you so much I'll collect they can hear you I I'll collect them okay thank you so here we are and before we get to the questions I want to do one more thing um Mr Zena this is John zena with um planning and zoning and they had a role in a portion of this and can you just speak to that that may cover some of the questions that we have thank you so much certainly thank you councilwoman excuse me uh I'm John Zena I'm the director of planning and development for Memphis and Shelby County uh and we have a number of roles in uh the development permitting process uh as councilwoman Walker mentioned uh zoning is one of those roles we also uh manage the uh building permitting and inspections uh for most of Shelby County including uh all of the city of Memphis uh and so our division was uh involved um uh early on when this project came uh about um first with any uh project particularly industrial scale project that comes to our community one of the first questions is for the area uh where someone is proposing to do a project what is the subject zoning and Zoning of course uh are the laws in place regarding uh what type of activity can go where um this area the former Electrolux facility where the XI project is going is in uh a zoning uh category of heavy industrial uh and I think that you probably can understand why it is zoned heavy industrial uh based on the um aerial photograph that President McGowan showed a moment ago this area is um also home to the power plant it's also home to uh the wastewater treatment plant those activities uh are not only uh very large and intense in size and scale but also uh they have a significant amount of noise odor uh effluent uh the type of um external factors that we want to keep away from uh more sensitive uses like residential uh and concentrated into specific areas uh where only heavy industrial activities can go and so that uh is why this area zone heavy industrial uh to be honest with you I believe that this area has actually been zoned for industrial for as long as Memphis has had zoning so that is 102 years now um so uh this is intended and has always intended to be uh the type of area where this type of uh activity uh would be allowed to be located so it pass the zoning test so what does that mean when uh when the zoning is when a project is in compliance with zoning uh from a development standpoint uh The Next Step at least for uh our division is they seek a building permit um so there are a number of different types of building permits that are required uh you have to get permits not only for any construction activity but any Plumbing any electrical any mechanical work that's being done in the building uh and then uh a permit to occupy the building and in this case uh XI has uh had to apply apply for and has received uh uh issued permits on all of those activities um there are obviously some uh some changes in the way that they will be uh receiving their power um uh over time and so new permits will be required uh when uh any changes are made uh and so they will have to go through the process a new uh when that happens again but one of the reasons uh that that I'm bring this up is not only to say that those permits uh did go through our office early on but also under Tennessee law whenever a project gets a building permit uh their rights uh are essentially vested to uh uh to be able to operate in that building so pass the zoning test check pass the building permit test check so um that is what has allowed this uh activity to go ahead and move in uh operating in a limited scale um and again if there are further changes uh to the activity they will come back and have to come back through uh the process a new depending on uh what the additional activity is uh that they have and that is true of any activity any use uh in any part of the city uh of course every part of the city is subject to zoning subject to building perit requirements uh and so these uh these actors are no different than than any other actors on any other piece of property I'm happy to answer any other questions you may have on on zoning and building uh codes when uh the time is appropriate thank you okay we're going to get started okay we have two questions from Mr Pearson who just left so I'm just going to take the one on top okay why are are there no public environmental impact studies in a justice 40 community that has been overburdened with pollution for decades so will an environmental impact study be done so clearly that's that's something that's out of mlw's wheelhouse here we're so that's something that's going to have to be answered by the company and I think whomever might do that environmental impact study so I'm not sure if that the health department or somebody but that has not been done to my knowledge and it wouldn't be MLGW doing that so but that's a question that we'll take back and see if if there's going to be something done there okay next from Judy Cox are there safeguards in place to shut this facility down at the first sign of damage to our water supply so we have um yeah first I think there's no risk of damage to the water supply as I mentioned we have plenty of water what we're looking at is the long-term access to water water and should we be using drinking water for industrial cooling purposes and we all agree no you should not and so but yes absolutely if if we found something that they were doing that could potentially damage the water supply you bet Our obligation is to shut that off just like any other company that would do that not just them but any company so uh and we have this today just so you know on a really low level there are customers out there who have irrigation systems in their yard but don't have a proper backflow preventor meaning that you could pull water from somebody's yard into our fresh water system and we shut them off immediately to make sure that there's no nothing pulled into the water system so every day at locations all over the city we make sure we protect our water so that nothing can get into it all right and I'm going to take a point of personal privilege real quick to my far right and your left we have councilwoman District 8 Super District position three Yolanda Cooper suon next to her is former councilwoman Patrice Robinson and next to her is the mayor of White Haven Hazel Moore thank you all for coming next we have from Andre does xai plan to use these generators for longterm or is it the ml is it MLGW plan to give them power more power than originally quoted so I guess you want to share about the generators first sure um so we are providing 50 megawatt of power now we know they want 150 megawatts that is subject to TVA approving that um it is our understanding that they're going to use uh what they're called aerody derivative uh generators in the short term uh until the substation until number one TVA gives them permission for 150 megawatts and number two the substation that would provide that 150 megawatts is built out and so they intend to build the substation to MLGW specs the faster that they build the substation once they get approval the faster that they will not be using those generators any longer but the specifics of that will have to get from the company but that is our understanding of how this is going to work all right structures of this magnitude will will produce a consistent humming sound the humming sound is a public nuisance and these companies place these structures in low economic or impoverished areas I request that you expound on these topics so do you want to speak to the noise so I'll give I'll kind of talk about what uh what Mr Zena talked about this is a heavy industrial areas I I've I've seen the concerns in Los Angeles they put this in the middle of a neighborhood literally in the middle of a neighborhood and that was the noise where this is to Mr Zena's Point new core steel is there the Tennessee Valley Authority that combined cycle plant is not a quiet thing when it's operating the wastewater treatment plant is not a quiet industrial use so uh and this is about one it's a about a mile and a quarter west of too Fuller State Park and about a mile and a half away from uh the residents of boxtown so which I think are the closest by so I can't give you the specifics of the humming sound but I will say that unlike what we've seen in other communities this is definitely in an area that is away from it's not right in the middle of a bunch of houses so uh and it's a very noisy industrial area so we'll we'll have to see okay from Dylan Jones how can you assure residents of South Memphis that this will be a positive change with so little leadup time before opening so let me talk about the positive change what I will tell you is that our responsibility is to make sure that we do no harm and to make sure that we do not diminish your reliability of electric power and that do not diminish the availability of power and that we do not diminish the access to Fresh drinking water those are the that's the Baseline I have to make sure that it doesn't harm any of those from Memphis Light Gas and Water I think the mayor talked about the positive sides of the uh you know and again I'm not an expert on property tax and those kinds of things but uh a very positive thing for us is their ability to accelerate this gray water facility or reuse that will reduce 10 million gallons of Demand on the aquafer from this area area so I think that's a good thing that we've been working on for a long time okay from Julius Holly so there are four questions here let me get you to pick a number one through four okay three okay well xai be in control of utility cost no uh that's a that's a great question though um xai will pay exactly the same rate as other commercial customers pay for their water Gas and Electric so will pay the the prevailing rate that commercial customers pay for all of their utilities they will not be in control of anything okay Patricia mcneel how does the amount of electricity used will impact Memphis does what does xai impact the environment so I mentioned that about the impact of the electric grid they will add some to the load it won't always be 150 megaw it will go up and down TVA will decide whether they can meet that bulk amount our job is to make sure that when they use that energy it doesn't impact my ability to distribute it to you all and that's what we're going to do um what was the first part of that although electricity electricity impact on Memphis right so if TVA says they can provide the power I know that it won't affect the distribution system so the question for all of us is not just um this facil facility but the rise of data centers across the country the electrification of things the demand for electricity is going up very rapidly in the country and can we all keep up so this is a microcosm of what's happening in the country that we all have to pay attention to and so when when MLGW starts talking to our customers about conservation and keeping your thermostats at a certain temperature we're all going to have to start paying attention to um the amount of energy we use it's good for your pocketbook but it's good for the overall environment and for us to keep up we're g to all have to do things like that across the country okay you Ed the term data center can you share with so what that is yeah so data centers are what companies are using to do high-powered Computing to drive everything all of the I don't want to pick on companies but Amazon's one I know because we get packages to my house all the time and to process those orders they use data centers so that they can get that process very quickly every company in America America is now having a data center from insurance companies to Health Providers to Medical providers uh because it gives them a high-powered ability to be responsive to your needs and that's but they use a lot of power um the AI data centers use a inordinate amount of power because they are doing what you know the machine learning and that takes a lot of power for those chips um to learn U but that's that's what's happening across the country we in Memphis Tennessee and the Tennessee Valley compared to the rest of the country are significantly underpopulated with data centers significantly underpopulated Believe It or Not compared to other parts of the country but that's what we're this is just a big one that's coming quickly and from Robert Phillips is the total cost to serve the axi project going to be born by a x AI or will the total body of MLG customers pay a portion of it okay so the cost to serve uh will be exceeded by the revenue that they produce so their energy bill we anticipate will be $7 million per month is how much they are going to pay MLGW every month we have calculated what is MLGW is incremental cost to serve so how much more does it cost me to serve them they will pay us more money than it will cost them cost us to serve them why is that if I added up 150 megawatt of individual residents I have the lines in the street the line to your house all the Transformers that's a lot of work for me to keep up with to keep 150 megawatt this is one facility with 150 megawatts I'm one big Transformer a couple of big lines not much maintenance but they're paying the same commercial price for electricity it's all in one spot so the cost to serve will be less than what they're going to pay us compared to other customers that acrs benefit to all of us because that puts some more money in our pocket doesn't solve our problems but it'll be a little bit more money that we can spend on the rest of the system okay um once again pick a number one through four four feel like I won the dating game from Paula sensing with the largest computer company in the world attract possible foreign slash enemy countries if a World War III should happen Okay that's well out of my leak to guess but I will tell you that it's a really good question because um I I want everybody to be clear there are Bad actors all over the world um at MLGW and the City of Memphis every year we stop billions of cyber attacks billions with a B our it teams there are people out there who want to get access to your data they want to shut down the electric grid just because they can billions of attacks on our system our it teams at the city and and MLGW are among the best in the industry at making sure that we protect that information but your question is a good one there's a lot of people that don't love like Mr musk and his company so you can bet they're going to have the same kind of cyber attacks I don't know physical attacks World War III I mean that's for somebody else to decide but we're a logistics Hub uh we are the global logistics hub for North America so uh when you move products Memphis is in the equation so I don't think it raises the the level I wanted to Circle if they're multiples I just want the circle one that we responded to okay from Mary James how was this xai approved without the council's consent and what incentives will we as taxpayers receive so there will be no incentives to the company from MLGW and as I understand it there will be no incentives there have been no incentives asked for Shelby County Commission or Memphis city council um I will tell you that the approval of the project Mr Zena talked about zoning approval and those construction permits for MLGW we did this consistent with how we do every construction project every new demand for service there if it's above a certain level there's a system impact study and hearkening back to the beginning I am a public utility and I cannot refuse service to people where it can be reasonably provided that is the chartered Authority that we have to do this um when a individual requests a a new home to be built in the connection there we do the same kind of analysis for that home a smaller company a large company this is what we do hundreds of times a year I want to mention system impact studies we didn't just do this one this past year we did 150 system impact studies and it's not just for companies in Memphis and Shelby County because the electric grid is interconnected and the power that people provide outside come through Memphis and Shelby County just to give you an example example a wind farm in Oklahoma was going to generate power why do we care because it's going to come through Memphis and Shelby County to get to other parts of the country we had to do a system impact study and that company had to pay to make improvements to the transmission system here that's how connected our electric grid is so we do hundreds of these system impact studies every year and this is consistent with what you ask our 2600 employees to do each and every day but the statutory request is anything above 100 megawatts has to go to the TVA board and that's where the Authority for providing that much power will come from I would say that if people want to change that that's a legislative thing that could be changed but that's we're we're doing everything exactly as we do for every industrial customer and Commercial customer okay again pick a number one through three one okay this is from Dr Brenda Hardy were there any was there any consultation with a knowledgeable agency such as EPA prior to the agreement with xai specifically regarding the effects on the environment and the health of the surrounding Community uh so MLGW did not do that we have our internal again our look at the I would suggest that we and TVA are the experts on the impact on the elect system we and the and the and our team are the experts on impact on water and thankfully we have uh partners that protect our aqui for the University of Memphis who can help us understand those things so I think we have a really good feel there the other environmental factors are not and again I'm not trying to um say that as an excuse I I'm just not an expert in that area and that's why we have other agencies that control those kinds of things okay this is from Brandy Price this is a comment so I guess you can comment however you like um Elon Musk is a resource desperate who is known to break contracts MLGW has not been able to appropriately get power to all of its customers safely what do you say to your prior customers who've asked for de degrowth thank you in energy use for degrowth degrowth okay so I think I I'll come back to what I said before is my job is to protect the reliability that you have to make sure we do no harm to my ability to distribute so what we have several contracts with him and that is uh electric service contracts and water uh our contracts are to provide that 50 megawatts at electric service agreement there are about four of those a water and a gas contract um they will build the substation that will provide 150 megaw if at the end of the day he decides to pull up stakes and leave ml MLGW will not be out any money we will have a brand new substation that will have been built that will now be a part of our system at their cost um and so and again there won't be any impact to your reliability of electric power or or the availability of water to any of our customers and so we think we've done a pretty good job of protecting you throughout this deal from Kathy ner this is all together what monitoring regulations will be enforced and by whom and why aren't I guess this is xai using recycle Wastewater for the cooling well we hope to be using recycle Wastewater ASAP and I think this was going to going to get get us there we all agree the mayor and I were introduced to this project the first thing the mayor said is are we going to get him on the greywater system so the mayor and I uh are aligned on that as everybody in the community so we're going to get there and I would tell you that the path we were on with TVA and the city was going to take us a few years longer the opportunity here is this is the richest guy in the world we ought to take advantage of that and say will you build this for us now and do it faster and that we can all take advantage of it so that's what we have asked um the regulatory Authority we we will govern the water we'll govern the electricity I'm sure the health department will monitor their emissions if there are any our understanding is that the emissions from this facility are just water vapor and heat that come from the evaporative cooling but there's not they're not producing a waste stream or smoke stacks or anything like that I'm sorry mean we have a protocol can you fill out a we do have okay okay okay we have public comments in a little bit and you can share at that time thank you Bob Ingram is there a backup system in event of another ice storm like in February 2 of 1994 where over 250,000 customers were out for over a week yeah that's a good that's not an xai specific question so I won't go into depth but that's what we're building is is a system that has redundancy when you see an MLGW budget we had money in there for for utility scale batteries we are in the process this year and over the next few years putting batteries in our system so we have we can charge them and have it available to us it will it solve all of our problems no but it will help uh we have in our budget to do some solar in the next few years to add some additional generation um there is no way with an ice storm of that size uh it doesn't matter how much power we have it just takes down the distribution lines um and so we'll get into that but we're hardening the system so that we have more reliability and it sounds mundane but trimming trees is the key to making sure power is available when you have an ice storm because the trees fall on the lines and that's typically what causes the most of the outages from Jacqueline Malone what is tva's opinion regarding this matter TVA is again TVA Tennessee Valley Authority is the one that produces all of the Power for local power companies and then we distribute it as I just mentioned we would like to have batteries and some solar so we're helping to generate some power their opinion is that they are studying it very carefully and their board is going to determine whether they can reasonably meet the Power required from this facility they agree that the 50 megawatts is okay they agree that um the company should be on a demand response program uh as as a predicate for their approval uh now I can't speak for the board they will make their own decision but um I've made it our position pretty clear that a demand response program where they are contractually obligated to bring down their load um I would not support the project unless they are subscribed to that it's not just a wish the company is going through their process of determining how much they can shed so they're act actively in that process now so I don't know what the opinion of the board is but I know what the predicate is for getting into that and that would be demand response and then they'll determine if they can supply the power okay this next question is from Reverend Gordon Meyers and since um he's a member of clergy I'd like to take a moment of per personal preference and recognize my pastor Reverend Dr Earl fiser um abisinia Missionary Baptist Church literally literally up the street around the corner thank you for coming um and Mr Reverend Meyers wants to know has MLGW done a human cost benefit analysis of access to water and health slash mortality impacts of burning fossil fuels uh no not specifically that study and again we're not burning fossil fuels if there's a question about the generators that they're using that's probably the health department and or the company to talk about uh the access to water as we mentioned that is the most important thing Mak sure we have clean drinking water and that we have plenty of it and I think the gray water facility helps us get to that point well past what they would be using of our aquafer water for cooling so so for clarity you're saying that the the generators are not using gas no the generators are using gas I don't know that they've done a we have not done a health and human impact study of what those gas fir generators do again that that's not something we're an expert at nor do we have uh you know the ability to do that study so okay I'm not saying we not in the community we don't have that ability I'm just saying MLGW does not and again I think some of the questions if I can't answer them um Council Walker put this on because there are questions about water and electricity and many of these questions are now environmental which is a little out of my expertise so um go ahead okay again one through four picker number two okay is using solar energy being considered to offset the drain on our power gri yes so MLGW and I I want I want you all to hear this today Dennis and I have talked about this as of others um in our long range plan we have um a budget to acquire and install utility scale batteries those are very large batteries that can provide 20 to 100 megawatts of power that we can dispatch when the grid is pressurized instead of asking you to cut back we'll discharge more energy into the grid that is a good thing that's a start over time we'll have several hundred megawatts of batteries in our system that is best practice solar uh we want to generate power and we want some solar in our system uh you've heard some discussion about solar Folks up in the Millington area tried to put a moratorium on solar so not everybody likes it in their backyard but we think we have locations where we can put that some of it is in this Industrial Area can you go back Richard to the map if you look at go zoom in one more I think it's there I'm sorry well just north of where that wastewater treatment plant is can you zoom in Richard there yeah okay I'm GNA Point sorry can you guys see this all the way at the top see where that curve is that land right above where it says right above where it says CSH Nash and there's that right there that that land right there that's owned by MLGW and when we did our integrated resource plan we identified that as a location for solar Generation Um we could do 100 megaw of solar there and in our plan that is one of the locations that we'd like to do that so it's right adjacent to this facility and so yes solar is in our plan and if we can get that accelerated we will definitely do that but it's in our plan we have every intention of generating electricity with solar power here at ml MLGW I have to work with our partners at TVA because today in my contract I'm not technically allowed to generate power um I have to get an agreement with with TVA for us to do that but I want to let you know I am very optimistic they have been very helpful in helping us get to that point and they are encouraging us to move forward so yes we're going to be generating some power here in the next few years from JP Memphis residents are subject to blackouts and brown outs will X AI making Memphis its home will it impact MLG W's ability to grow its own dependability or will X ai's power requirements take priority over memphis's residents okay I'll answer that in backwards order no your power is more important than theirs period that's why they're on a demand response program and they have to come off of their power when we order them to theirs is less important than yours uh the second question is about brown outs and blackouts i words are important and again we've only had one blackout in our history brownouts are when the power company voluntarily or involuntarily changes the voltage and everything in your house dims we do not have those and we have never done those at MLGW does that sometimes happen yes but it's not because I ordered a brown out or a blackout we do have regular outages as a result of trees and cars and old equipment just burning up yes that's the stuff that we're working to improve reliability this xai thing has nothing to do with that reli day-to-day reliability and we still have lots of funding it doesn't take away any funding doesn't take away any energy and doesn't take away any intention of me improving your reliability so again I know it people say we're we're blacked out all the time blackout is a specific thing where I say the bulk energy grid is at risk and I have to start cutting people's Power by thousands of customers again one time in our history we've had to do that and we want to avoid that at all costs I will tell you in all fairness every megawatt of power that's added to the system challenges a system to have to generate more power so I can't say there's no additional risk but when a community grows like cerville is growing Germantown is growing they're adding new customers it's the same as adding a new Factory it's more customers that have to be served so the more people I provide electric power to and our growth of electric power is going up that is more risk to all of us in the country that the bulk Electric System can't meet it and I want to be clear about this TVA provides us all of our power if they don't have enough through their generation they buy Power from myo or from Entergy or from PGM and they import it and that power can be coming from as far away as New England or Florida or Atlanta or Oklahoma we are all connected and so to the extent our country has an increasing Demand on electricity let's put it this way if if xai had gone down to South Haven and said I want a th000 megawatts of South Haven you'd be like whatever that's in Mississippi I'd be saying hey we got to pay attention to that because guess what electrons go where the demand is and I worry about the impact to us so just because it's in Shelby County in Memphis doesn't mean that's the only reason we pay attention to it we got to see what's happening across the country and all around us because we have to be able to meet that demand so I'm sorry for going on a little long there but yes it's a complex thing it's not just will this impact my power because anything that happens around us impacts our access to electric power our next one is from Sarah Houston r x AI TVA and MLGW in communication because there has been conflicting reports on the future of a recycled Wastewater facility so what is the latest status of the commissioned engineering study yes so we are on communication and meeting weekly um and so yes the communications are I think there's been some reports that they're ready to build the system next week I think that report is if permitting wasn't an option or or wasn't an obstacle and we knew what we were going to build they'd be ready this is an indication that they're ready to go they're not ready to build next week there's not a permit there's not a finalized design or engineering drawings we're working on those things but very soon we'll decide on which system we're going to go with and we'll decide on how long it's going to take to get the permit and when I say the permit it's because the city of Memphis has to modify their permit so that we can use some of that Wastewater for recycled purposes the state takes a is going to take a close look at that because they don't want you just pulling recycled Wastewater off and using it for for something that they wouldn't approve so the state's going to look at that to make sure that they could do that they're doing the right thing and as soon as that's permit comes in and we have the design I believe it's going to be being constructed the indications I'm getting from the company are they are ready to go immediately with a system that will serve all of their needs and they would very much like to build the system large enough to serve all of tva's needs and other needs and just so you know there's another company down there called new core steel that also uses water we're going to ask them if they'd like to participate as well and next winding down next D Thompson will xai change the delivery of utility services and if so how no it will not change the delivery of utility services for any of our other customers I do want to be clear we are all connected but there's a specific sub station that serves them if they somehow overloaded that substation the only people that lose power is them and the other customers right there the substation that serves White Haven and the other areas around there is a different substation so uh it's not going to change the delivery of energy um it's not going to change the availability of water for anybody I just want to assure everybody that I'll note for our friends at protect our aqua for and the University of Memphis the Davis well field is something we pay a lot of attention to but the availability of water our pumping station down there's a 30 million gallon capacity pumping station other words it could produce 30 million gallons of water a day it today is only producing between 20 and 22 million gallons this will add a million to that there's lots of capacity so I don't want you to worry about having enough water again I'll come back to the beginning but we don't want to use our water for cooling computers or cooling um the power plant we want to use recycled water for that that's just intrinsically a good thing to do but I don't want you to worry about this impacting your availability of water and will this impact our sewage operations in any way no it will not uh the it will actually improve our sewage operation because it will actually reduce some of the load on our wastewater treatment plant some of the discharge into the river because we're to treat it and make it cleaner and so we'll be discharging less treated water into the Mississippi again which is a good thing for our community okay this next one is from heru and the question is and you can just kind of we've had this already what is the purpose for the company or use of the company uh this is a as I understand it it is a uh artificial intelligence supercomputer um that can be used to help um them do calculations and things that as I understand I'm not an artificial intelligence expert but the power of art artificial intelligence is that what takes human beings days and weeks to do it can do in seconds and so I just think about the power of what St Jude researchers are doing and what people who are trying to solve complex problems are doing that's the power of artificial intelligence um so again I have no idea how that's going to benefit all of us but I do know that um there are people that are excited and enthused people much smarter than I that say we can use this for good and now we're hearing from Joshua Perkins what are the implications for air generators that xai is already used yeah I think I think the question is about the aerod derivative turbine generators and uh obviously they desire we desire our community desires them to be on the power grid instead of using those uh temporary generators I don't know the air quality permit uh for that area I do know that we're all concerned in this area about maintaining air quality um in my personal view the very good news is we got rid of that Allen Coal Fired plant and when we replaced it with the natural gas plant we reduced emissions by 80% in this area which is a really good thing this adds a little bit more back to it but nothing like what the Allen plant was doing before but certainly I think it's a desire for all of us to have them use less of this in the short term typically these Aero derivative generators for all of you it's a jet engine exactly like the jet engines they use on 747s and so these are much cleaner than the ones that they used to use a long time ago but again they're supposed to be used for peaking generation like when we need energy really fast we turn this on for a short period of time and then we turn it off they use it can also be used in emergency mode when New Orleans lost power through that whole storm Katrina came through they deployed a whole bunch of aeroderivative generators to provide Power for people because they couldn't do it any other way so these are really good to provide short-term temporary power uh you're not going to use them for long-term uh generation okay the next one is from Glenda Hicks I think I can put this this is together um who's paying for the 1.7 million to upgrade the transmission line for this one customer and will it cost the major other industrial customers for these improvements who's paying for it the company will pay for this so when we do the impact study for for you to get this load you have to pay for the improvements to the system and so just like when they build the substation they're going to build the substation for us or we're going to give them a credit back for that because typically we would build the substation because we're going to sell them new electricity just like I'm building the substation in cerville MLGW is paying for that and those customers out there the new growth will help us pay for that substation the same with these improvements um again the cost uh of doing the improvements will be borne by them they will pay have it done if they get a credit back from us it will be from the money that they pay us in other words no project no Revenue no improvement needed and so we will all benefit from the additional electric power they're sending to us but short story is they're going to pay for the $ 1.7 million upgrade okay and at this time I'd like to recognize state representative Joe towns who has joined us thank you for coming pick a number one through three three what or where is this is from Latricia Adams what or where is the comprehensive environmental risk assessment and feasibility stability plan okay so um again ours is restricted to the availability of electric power and to water and I'm very confident in the the water plan that we have specifically moving to the Recycled water and as it does to the aquifer and again our dedication to that is indicated by the funding of the study that protects the aquifer uh and the electric side we're very confident that we have a mitigation plan for electricity to reduce the impact again I do not uh would not be conducting that environmental study on the particulars of what an a AI generation or what an AI facility does typically but I do know and and I like you I'm encouraging like as soon as we can get them on the grid if they get the power then they move those generators away and and then they're producing just heat and water vapor for cooling so but I have we have not done in nor would we be in charge of I think the entire environmental study okay this has no name what will Peak demand be for the new facility will freshwater or waste water be used to meet the needs of the new facility I think we answered that so right now they're using water from MLGW that's already being produced and put into our water pipes for cooling um and uh we want to transition that to the Recycled water we've answered that and then the peak demand of the system is 150 megaw they will not use 150 all the time sometimes it'll be much lower but it does if anybody's PID paid attention to what um was said in the news these things use power uh very um their power demands change pretty frequently and so it won't always be 150 megawatts it will just at its peak be 150 megawatts okay do we have any more questions that haven't been cards cards that haven't been right here bring your car or can we question oh Dennis do we have some from Dennis she's gonna look through them Dennis real quick okay here you are Dennis okay we got him I have that's AR the first question is fine the first one is fine okay from Aon Lewis and he's a Community member with the with your community what's your community community advisory Council Community advisory Council and he's with sa the southern Alliance for clean energy and I am the Civic engagement coordinator for sa the southern Alliance for clean energy and I just wanted to share that and we also were responsible for um creating the current share the pennies program Mr mwan give your claim to ignorance on the phenomenon given your claim how about I start over given your claim to ignorance on the phenomenon of cost shifting how can you reliably and absolutely assure us that this is not a deal where some rate pairs will subsidize xai financially right so just so you guys know Aon and I had a separate conversation and he asked me about the phenomenon of cost cost shifting so that's what this is about so I'll go back to what I said before um I'm doing work at 45 substations across the area I'm doing work in Orange Mound that's tens and 20 of millions of dollars so yes that's being paid for MLGW rate payers as is the new substation in cerville as is all the work I'm doing in in um substations across um our service territory um I mentioned to you that this substation that's being built is being paid for by the company and they will get a credit back uh out of that $7 million that they pay every month because MLGW would rightly for other utility for other companies build that substation today we are building and modifying and upgrading a substation for St Jude for their expansion um we just rebuilt a substation right here on mil Branch Road to serve all of our customers spent tens of millions of dollars rebuilding that um the cost of maintaining the electric distribution system is born by all of us and when uh company comes uh we have to balance whether that's going to be offset by Revenue that new revenue and new electric sales and so that's what I mean um with respect to this phenomenon as Aaron calls it of cost shifting or burden shifting um I will I guess I could say it like this if this company was not going to pay us $7 million per month for electricity um there would be no need to upgrade the sub station and no need to upgrade uh the power lines or anything else and they are paying for all of that with the revenues they're paying us if cerville wasn't growing there would be no need to put a new substation in cerville if orange Mound wasn't having reliability issues there' be no need to put new infrastructure into orange Mound so yes we have 450,000 electric customers and it's our responsibility to make sure that everybody's reliability is improved and that means that we spend some money in some areas including tree trimming there's a lot of folks who don't have any trees in their areas are served by underground infrastructure but I'm paying a lot of money to trim trees all over our service area so you can't say one for one that everybody's money stays where it exactly where it is we share it all for the Improvement and the enjoyment of reliable power for all of our customers okay Paula a what is the time frame for TVA to approve the use of the 150 megaw good question they will have it at their board meeting uh but they are waiting for a request from the company just to be clear the request has not gone from the company to TVA yet they are working on their reduction like how much can they reduce for their demand response program so um they have to prove that case so I think it's going to be in the next month or so the request will go to the board oh okay again that's my knowledge I I don't I don't track the applications but that's what I understand so pick a number these are Dennis's questions pick a number one through five oh five we haven't had that yet five five I hope the last one was the best one Dennis all right they're all good of course they are yeah I know hone does xai have any plans to make their processing system more energy efficient yeah are they researching alternative cooling techniques yes so that's a good question a better pose for the company because I don't know but you can bet we're paying attention there are chips that are being produced that use a lot less energy and I think those show some real promise for this there are alternate cooling schemes that people are coming up with all the time for this very reason um the best one we have right now is let's use recycled water um but there may be some in the future that comes so I think there's going to be a lot of changes in this space being driven by uh technology and I think this AI can help us with that but yes absolutely um there are some changes in the industry I can't tell you what they're doing specifically that's a question for them but um I think we should all push for whatever is the most energy efficient use of this um for our community okay and lastly um this is yeah got this one okay next to the last so um I have another colleague in the audience Tracy who drove down from Nashville Tracy mcneel thank you for coming and anyone else who has traveled outside of the immediate Memphis Area thank you for coming so will fxai will impact will xai impact or accelerate the TVA plans to expand gas at the Allen plant and build out an additional proposed a derivative Aero derivatives um I don't think it's going to accelerate this is my opinion they had put forth some plans um at the Allen plant and again I'm just saying what I know about the TVA plant there are there's the combined cycle plant And Then There are 16 what are called combustion turbines uh you remember what I called talked about jet engines these were 16 like 707 which nobody here has flown on in 20 years that's the style of jet engines those are those are all obsolete and they're proposing and but they're existing today and they use them to some degree today uh they're proposing to replace those with newer more efficient aerod derivative turbines uh that is still going through the design it's still going through the environmental approvals and so I don't think that xcii can accelerate that at all it's just a question of whether the board approves that whether they get environmental permission to do it so it's just um one of the things and again um the understanding that I have is that those are for Peaks so if we're reaching a peak in the afternoon they turn them on for two hours or three hours and then they turn them off when the peak has passed so but that's what's happening all it's happening all over the country and at many of the the power plants okay no name not happy and this is the last one and then we'll go to the comments not happy with cold Ash res a do through the Shelby going through let let me edit this not happy with coal ash residue going along Shelby Drive in White Haven in the White Haven Neighborhood Elon Musk why Memphis why okay so two things um and again this is a TVA question but for every everybody knows what the the question is when the Allen Coal Fired there was a coal plant that generated energy there it produces coal ash there were two coal ash disposal areas on site uh when they close the steam the coal plant uh they are removing that coal as and putting it into an appropriate disposal facility that means there are big trucks that are taking that coash and transporting it to a new facility um I know they have a specific route I know that's been an issue again that's something I think we can talk about the second question was Elon Musk why Memphis the only thing I could tell you is what we were told you have a facility it had infrastructure and had utilities available and for um for them we they asked us and we gave them answers here's the facility we have water we have gas we have 8 megawatts we have 50 megawatts of power um and I guess other places were not as responsive with their answer but so we gave them the direct answer and I think also um if I can talk a little bit what our role was in that at the beginning was we were very direct and said but you shouldn't be using aquafer water for the long term um and that their leadership agreed they said okay great we don't think we should be using drinking water for cooling what's the option so how do we figure out how to help you get that done and um we said you have to be under demand response program so other companies will say well let's go back and look at this we said that's a lot of power you're going to have to be on demand response so I think responsiveness when I say that that's what I mean I told them what we had I told them if you want that much power you got to be at least on demand response and I think long term you got to be using recycled water because I think that's what all of you would have said okay and now we're going to have the comment period we are getting close to the 11:00 hour is about 15 minutes yeah and each person will be given about 3 minutes if you have um something that you wish to say um make a comment now it's just like we do at our MLGW board of directors meetings you know have to run hold on hold on don't have to run one second can we start with the lady who had the followup with the baseball cap you come up front and I'm just gonna we're gonna we're gonna we're gonna shut it down at 11 though did we bring what the giveway not sure honestly we gathered some but okay these are for comments and we any questions we'll record them and follow up these are just four comments okay but if you ask if you ask a question we'll write it down okay the water of if the rec water is not up by the time they start their operations I'm ass that to if it takes them 10 years to get that recycled up means there steady tapping into our fres water if we're relying on them to get that up then we are at risk of losing water having a water there is a company from Saudi Arabia that's been using in Arizona that has come in with their intention to grow or veget they came in and [Music] started shab those farmers and also the communi are at a Dr I'm afraid that's going to happen to us one more thing about the the plan for your electricity your plan a is to get approval from TVA if they don't get approval from TVA what's Plan B okay thank you your time is up thank you to I guess statement ask a question related to the Memphis Flyer August 8 2024 Edition by the fly sta their concern was the city council most of the members are gone and the MLG and board didn't know anything about X AI until June what have you also state that Doug MWI pretty much approved this without the councel and the board accurate or inaccurate I certainly enjoy it thank you Scott bberry with the Sierra Club short comments many groups and I understand reporters have reached out to the Shelby County Health Department to find out whether any permits were required for the aerody derivatives that the facility is running I was down there yesterday and they're running um and and Shelby County Health Department says they know nothing about it we want to find out more about that because if they do go into a demand response program but they still need to run their computers I'm assuming that they might curtail their use of MLGW power but then continue to operate those eror derivatives there and so we want to find out what the error impacts are for the community coming from that and then my other suggestion is they should be doing a green invest or energy power I can't remember tva's program directly with companies there's land immediately surrounding that Electrolux plant could be covered with solar and and they could just not be needing to buy Power from you at all they could have their own system down there thank you than thank [Applause] you hello my name is Aaron Lewis I'm uh the local representative for the southern lives of clean energy I'm also an engineer I'm a civil engineer by training I say civil engineering mathematics and computer science I work for a big tech company in the past Google and um I also work for for Memphis Light Gas and Water engineer and the only Department that uh designs for all three service Commodities electric gas and water um this phenomenon cost shifting as I understand it is we've always done business it's happened all of the country and the widespread nature of it does not justify it so how it happens is the the analog the analogy that I think a lot of people understand is Road networks when people buy Priuses or electric cars that don't use gas at all they visit the B the gas pump less often they don't pay as much gas tax and so it is effectively Shifting the cost away from people who do not have those more efficient means of getting around uh they bear that burden disproportionately the same thing is true for any infrastructure that's always the way we've done it but not only that MLGW has a history of not recouping costs especially in the department where they haven't updated their schedule charges for Developers this is a development project yeah it's to train his AI but it's a development project has the scheduled charges been updated it's been seven years and Co has happened since 7even years we have Transformers and other electrical components that have increased 20% and there's always a chasing of recouping the cost if we don't update that as often as we can Mr Lis your time is up no it's not okay we have a time that's acely they didn't say for the other yeah thank you I prefer to see it yeah the timer has to see not she didn't speak up for other I'll stay out of it I'll stay out of it also I just want to be consistent that's fair so this is what we're faced with it's widespread but not only do is there this issue of Shifting costs but also developers lie and I'm not and I'm not theorizing I have proof I've saved where there submitt to MLGW on what developers claim they need in material costs and how we Overlook or they would Overlook matter of so not only are they not being charged a market rate for the material developers lie on the materials cost the engineers spec it out they charge it out based on what they claim the materials how many materials and then when the field gets out there thank you Mr Lewis okay I apologize Miss Madden um city council is two minutes MLGW they do three minutes so someone was signaling me that the other person's time was up so they probably were assuming it was that the twom minute point and I apologize thank you thank you all can I have 10 more seconds for my Interruption sure okay so um additionally two days ago Doug admitted that this was a subsidy in so many words he may not have caught it today I checked in again on the matter of the cost he said it's not Happ GES ex used to but then said in response to Mr lynches who I love he's also an engineer he's brilliant that there's an parents need to upgrade the hardware with any increase in Energy Efficiency just like the cars on the road that's what shifts the cost everybody thank [Applause] you hello everybody hey how you doing I just wanted to touch back on the question that was not answered by you uh you uh saying that you're using solar panels and green energ to expand on our energy use but in reality and all the research that has been done on the environment impact uh green growth is not where we want to be when we trying to save the human species uh we are trying to uh focus more on degrowth uh because we're instead of getting rid of fossil fuels we're using uh climate change we're using green energy to Simply expand our energy use which is not going to actually save us as a people as a living people in society two uh the cost of uh the environmental cost and cost of of using green energy such as uh um you know electric cars and all the stuff that gets pushed on to Southern Nations for the manufacturing cost uh such as the Congo which use slave children to produce these Goods to make your reality even possible and three um we uh you said that no one way to prevent blackouts is to cut uh trees but when you go down Winchester almost to Kirby in front of your facility in mmgm facility you have trees hanging on power lines hanging and Frid not even just hanging they're afraid your power lines are afraid where children walk uh go to school nearby and you putting actively putting lies and dangers so we when these when these three things are coming up in mind then uh how can we entrust that you are even telling us the truth as you speak now how can we even trust that our lives are not in danger right right now so that's what I'm trying to say so green growth is not the answer green mechanism and economic growth is not the answer uh the real answer is to slowly take away these things these costs uh uh of uh fossil fuel use and actually find uh better ways to uh you know to get people transported around town and more safely like public transportation actually funding public transportation is going to actually save this uh our society is that's going to save your children's children's lives but uh yeah um energy cars is not doing it uh electrical cars are not doing it like I said it still depends on slavery thank you okay I'm Barbara child I'm going be briefing to the point uh I'm focusing on solar energy I don't know why we don't put more emphasis on that I hang out there in Hawaii they've been doing solar out there uh people do you know the bill that they get per month is $42 a month uh anybody who's over 65 years old gets it put in for free okay if you follow the latitude from Hawaii across to Memphis cuz we're in the subtropical Zone if it works in Hawaii it will work here if you ride from here to Chicago you see windmills if it works in a cooler area it would work here so if more emphasis was put on that solar we would have to deal with a lot of the issues now thank [Applause] you uh good afternoon good morning um I am a health care provider and so my specific um interest is the health implications on our community um we mentioned the zoning of this area and I would just like to uh make sure that everyone understands that the zoning that has historically been done has been in communities of low socioeconomic status and our minority communities so the effects the environmental effects on this community specifically air what we breathe water what we drink and food that we eat have a much more drastic effect on our communities the mayor did mention that this project is really focusing or um focusing on the health of our community on the wealth of our community but I would just like to say that the wealth of our community really is the health of our community so I would um there are a couple of issues and first of all I would really thank the councilmen and I would thinkk like to thank U MLGW for coming out and for answering these questions and for having this uh Community Forum specifically there are a few things that I like to just focus on have studies outside of MLGW and our local expertise been looked at to see what the full implication of having this entity or this this um uh XI in our community if we cannot answer those questions I think those resources like the EPA and like those uh and some entities that are familiar even the health department but there are so there are National entities EPA that are knowledgeable and may even have uh previous projects that have been explored and that can easily let us know what the health implications have been on other communities that have been in similar uh situations during this the course of this uh discussion I've often heard that we have to wait on the company to let us know but I would like our leaders to take a different approach and let us outline and set the guidelines that the investing companies have to meet let us be on the proactive end of requiring what is necessary in our community in order to come in and service our community so that in uh would mean if we're not able to answer the questions on the environmental effects let's put that or require the company to have an unbiased and uh report an independent report on how this has affected other communities and as far as investing infrastructure let them invest in our stem programs and our Educational Systems let us be thank you thank you good day I'd like to say thank you to the Commonwealth in the room that know about the elephant in the room i' just like to thank the engineers and all the Commonwealth thank you ladies for doing your research thank you Doug thank you all thank everybody for having this meeting um I'd like to go back to when I first m moved home 20 years ago and I wanted the farmers market in South Memphis I had to jump through all sorts and kinds of Hoops just to get an outdoor Market I had to go to the land use control board the city counsil the County Commission even the Chamber of Commerce had questions for me who knew who knew why Memphis and who is in charge of disseminating the information out to the Commonwealth we're not talking about the people up here we want to know about the people down here that can't come to the meetings that CU they working the play Memphis like ass robers you know dou you and I talked about that me calling it Memphis like G and robers I'm coming up with something for TVA I'm coming up for something but we need transparency that's all I'm hearing in this room really is who knew how long they knew who gets to move move here and the Commonwealth don't know anything about it until it's almost [Applause] happening uh hi my name is Zoe dwinger I'm a Memphis resident now I'm not a professional but I just came up here to put on the record that I don't want this facility in my city um I've done a little bit of research on this man you know not not a whole research paper but from what I've seen you know he he's quite famous for his safety violations you know in Tesla you know yeah I mean I we're streaming live could you please refrain from using thank you thank you my mhis um but yeah there's there's a whole lot online about how he goes after whistle blowers you know that bring up these safety violations safety concerns and I just I just really don't think it's a good investment for mempis and you know this I wasn't alive for the do bubble but the you know from my research this whole AI thing you know it it seems like it's going to be a lot similar to the dot bubble where a lot of people are going to be investing in it and not A lot's going to come out of it but that's my op peace thank Youk you I know we're coming up on time my name is Sarah Houston um I just want to thank y'all for having this meeting for everyone coming out asking amazing questions and um you know y'all have been answering a lot of questions outside of the scope of mlw's work so I would like MLGW and city council to leverage your power and ask the Shelby County Health Department to host a similar meeting and respond to these questions they have the Air Pollution Control Department we know nothing about these air emissions and the actual impact of running these gas fire turbines right now they are burning gas right now and we know nothing about the long-term impact of the aquafer from their standpoint with the water quality Branch the groundwater board we need the health department here and they have been silent to the public and the mlw and city council yall have a lot of power to request them to actually come before the public we really really emphasize that and um the woman that spoke earlier about you know us having the plan I do think that is an amazing idea and the idea for an environmental justice strategic plan that combines our n 3.0 our climate action plan our resiliency plan with human health impact and how are we making sure that this development is not furthering these environmental burdens this environmental racis in this city has se for a very very long [Applause] time uh hello uh thank you all for having this meeting uh the presentation and all the questions um there's obviously always more questions to answer uh one thing I've already pointed out to MLGW management and board about Lowden County Virginia um the cost of uh they've promoted attracting data centers all over that County and adjacent counties as well and it's now called the data center County of the whole country unfortunately now the local utility the people are expected to pay a 30% increase on their utility bill by the year 2030 because of all the costs associated with supporting this multitude of data centers that have moved into lowen County uh secondly there's also a demand for increased development of uh transmission and distribution lines into that area and I don't know if that is included in that % increase or if that's just another cost increase they're going to have to deal with but we need to know that here because you know xai is one Center but Memphis is a great place and lots of other data center companies are going to be coming to Memphis and saying I want that same deal that X done right I'm going to build a data center I need your water I need your electricity at those same rates that the that you're charging X secondly related to the rates yes it's true the power you know moves around it's kind of like water it finds the lowest spot um and where whatever capacity you have the system finds a way to handle it or to get that power from somewhere else but you eventually have to build more and the cost is higher I'd like to see a good Financial calculation that directly relates to the cost associated with supporting these data centers I don't think it's profitable and and in the long run it's going to cost Memphis and our citizens a lot of money the third thing obviously a lot of people have said we want more solar you've got $120 million you've heard me on this multiple times and I know you're going to be doing stuff near xai but we need solar and batteries around the whole city there's a lot that can be done there and there's opportunity to buy solar and I know you've got a plan and it's you're working on but we need to accelerate that the people want it the community needs it the opportunity is there what what more you know is there to say let's do it thank you very much thank you this is going to be the last comment session we just need to start winding things down thank you sir go ahead well I I'm the person everybody's been waiting to see I'm the last one in line but I would like to say that uh um I've lived in Memphis Tennessee most of my life it's a great City great people we've got a lot to be proud of and um the one thing that I do want to say about today is um we've got to go forward but we've got to go hand inand with uh social responsibility and um I think the best example of that over all the years I've lived in Memphis was at one time I 40 was going to cut through over and park but now some years later we've got one of the greatest zoos in Memphis we wouldn't H we wouldn't have that if I40 had been pushed through over in park so I think it's mlg's MLGW responsibility to protect the community and it's Elon Musk and people like him to push us forward into the future thank you thank you very much well that is going to conclude our commentary at this particular time do you have uh closing remarks Mr President sure I whoa sorry I'd like to just take a few minutes first of all thank you to everybody who took the time to come out this morning thank you to everybody who has expressed their opinion and has voiced their concern and asked some really good questions and uh I just I truly you know want to thank you for the that investment of your time and your passion our job is to serve you you asked for a public utility and we are here as a public utility to serve your needs and so um we are eager to do that again I just want to emphasize my job is to protect your access to power and to water and also you know we provide natural gas today too I know there's a lot of opinions about that but to protect your access to lowest price uh and best service that you can reliability is job one for us and we are on a tear to improve your reliability because all of the things that we just talked about are trumped when your power goes out everybody has a big concern about all kinds of things then your power goes out and that becomes your number one concern so and I hear about that every day so I want to make sure that we get there just a couple of things um first of all there's some really good uh uh some again some good comments here to you Mr Lewis I will challenge you what you said I never did say that there's a a shift of cost that's your interpretation of our private conversation I'm not going to argue here today and I'm glad you recorded it without telling me you were because I knew you would I know I'm I'm familiar with that so and you can bet your bottom dollar I knew that was happening already so the bottom line is um that there are some good questions the schedule of charges haven't been updated since 2017 guess what we're doing now updating the schedule of charges uh nobody likes the rate increase that we put into place a few years ago for electric but again uh this organization has been singularly focused on keeping the rates as low as we possibly can and that cuts both ways we have incredibly low rates we are the lowest uh three sector utility in the country we had had one electric rate increase in 37 years one and two rate decreases during that same period of time so you cannot invest in reliability without the money to do so so it gives no pleasure to have to do that but it's a moderate rate increase uh at MLGW that we put into place so that we can make these improvements to reliability um again I understand the passion that everybody has but I would be remiss as the CEO of the organization and I understand it's a friendly joke here in Memphis but I will tell you uh there are 2600 people that get up every day and come to work earnestly to do good work for you and to help you live a life of comfort and convenience So when you say Memphis like gas and robbery I take it offense to that on behalf of our employees they get up every day to try to serve you very well and I understand nobody likes writing the check and I understand when you think the bill is too high but it's not because the people are trying to do a bad job they are trying to do a great job for you and MLGW is a treasure for this community talk to people in any other community that do not have a public utility we want you to be proud of this utility because it is yours the other thing I want to say is if you had a private utility here do you think that the private water utility would be coming to the table to say I would like to sell 10 million gallons less of water every day they would not be at the table only because you have a public utility are we saying the right thing to do is to help our community invest in a recycled water that means I end up selling less water every day to our customers a private sector company would be saying there's no chance I mean that's Revenue to us so there's a lot to be proud of here there's a lot of passion and there's a lot of change that needs to happen and I also want to say the last thing I am committed to advancing this community's climate action goals as they are represented in the climate action plan for Memphis and Shelby County uh Mr Lynch said very well let's do it solar and batteries um the one point of personal privilege I will tell you is that since I got here I said why are we not doing solar and batteries and let's make it happen we put it into the budget and we are started I can't speak to the last 85 years all I can tell you is where we are going now and we as a company are going to invest in batteries and solar because all of you want us to do that and it's the right thing to do again I have to get my TVA partners and I'll figure out contractually how I do that I just need your support to say we want this so I could figure it out but we are moving this organization to be in a place that you all uh get the power that you need you get the water that you need it stays the cleanest and most con consistent and best in the country if if not the world and that you'd never have to think about us because everything just works that's where we're going I got lots of work to do I will never tell you today that it's all solved because it's not but I got 2600 people that work up wake up every day trying to make it better I earnestly believe that I have retirees in the room who did that for 20 or 30 years I have people who have been part of MLGW for a short period of time who woke up every day trying to help so we are part of your community and we want to be part of the solution for all of you so again I am so thankful for the opportunity to be here with you and it's my privilege and our team's privileged to serve all of you and to be held to account for what we do um that comes with the territory so there's a reason we're here today uh because we feel passionate about serving all of you so with that I'll turn it over to council M Walker thank you for those comments and thank you everyone who made this possible thank you president mwan thank you Miss Madden it's been a wonderful team seen and unseen and I just appreciate everyone who was a part of the equation to make this happen today I want to thank Mayor Young director Zena and of course my Council colleagues who were present and I'm just glad that this took place I hope that it was something meaningful to you there was a lot of information shared and finally I want to share this yesterday I was in a meeting yesterday afternoon and someone asked me how I felt about the climate of the country and you know we have this election coming up in November the main thing is that you vote and when people tell me that they don't vote I don't get upset I just respond well if you don't vote the people are still making decisions that affect you and so we have this upcoming election state and federal and just in case you didn't know this current Administration Federal Administration has done more environmentally friendly legislation than any other time in history please google it to find out more about it and also specifically the IR inflation reduction act and make sure you spell that out because if you just put in Ira you might get Irish Republican Army so um but just want to say that that we have some amazing things going on from a legislative standpoint federally as it relates to climate change and our sustainability future thank you all so much again for coming [Applause]