yes and this one i want to let everyone know this will be recorded but i'm going to wait one more minute to start just in case someone else signs on so all right this is steve dodge assistant city engineer of ember grove heights you're here for the local storm water impacts meeting this is to make sure we are working with the citizens of immigrant heights and the public on addressing any stormwater needs of the city and what is called our municipal stormwater ms4 program that we work through permitting annually with the mpca now if i can just get this to move so i'll be presenting i just want to acknowledge nicole portugal our engineering technician who helped prepare a lot of the event and slides and there's my contact information if anyone needed to get a hold of me and the agenda is going to be i will go through a presentation that's basically going to go the history of swift and mpds and the ms4 program what is called the six minimum control measures mcm that the city is required to report to the mpca about every year annually and the accomplishments and goals that we've gotten through so we're in the ms4 permitting program with the mpca that is a document we put together each year we have an example of the document the draft version that is here on site and it involves a couple different components the mpdes system is on the left here it's the national pollution discharge elimination system and that's just to make sure that construction activity uh within uh immigrant heights in the state is not polluting our waters of the state and in order to get an mpds permit you have to have a storm water pollution prevention program and a swip and a swift for a city is a program and a swift for like a development is a document that they need to put together for the city and the mpca and the mpc will give a permit for any development that's over an acre of disturbance area and that's how they get their mpds permit is by providing a swift document saying how are they going to make sure they control their erosion and sediment control and other things that happened with construction so the mpds and this ms4 system really was been created based off the 1972 clean water act that was passed by congress and that was to address uh the pollution that uh from point source point sources uh such as wastewater treatment plants and um you know construction activity uh industrial sites um and um so basically what that allowed things to happen after night 17 1972 is there was a separation of what was a storm water system in a sanitary system before that time many sanitary systems actually dumped into storm water systems and then into our lakes streams and ponds so these meetings are important because we want to interact with the uh and educate you know with our citizenry and receive comments uh from the public on interview of heights storm water program in any one of the measures that we're responsible for and also just review do an annual review of our progress and how we're doing and of course we also need to hold public engagement meetings like this in order to meet the ms4 permit requirements so the the six minimum control measures that uh that permit what would like us to do is uh you know public education outreach you know then we have to have the pub you know look in ways we can have public participation involvement we also review annalee our stormwater system and identify illicit discharges through a detection and elimination system and we look at all of our construction sites going on throughout the city annually and you know verify they're meeting the stormwater runoff control measures and we also have what's called pulse construction but this is the permanent stormwater facilities that are out there we're responsible obviously for the city stormwater system and ponds but we also will work with our partners that have private stormwater systems and ponds and then we have the pollution prevention good housekeeping for our own municipal operations so that is our parks our salting anything we do our own stockpiles in the river of heights anything we do that could have an impact on storm water quality so just going a little deeper into em what are called minimum control measures one and two which is a public involvement outreach and particip participation we you know we do uh several articles in insights newsletter each year in order and that circulates to over 36 000 residents and that is one way we can share you know some some basic public education needs for rain garden programs or maybe proper ways to get rid of your leaves so and many things that can impact storm water there's also the landscaping for clean water workshops that we work with through dakota county and we have residents that annie participate in that and uh there is also design courses and there's a couple rain gardens built out of those courses from residents participating both rain gardens and native plant gardens and then we also update our public works web page for ms4 information which has the city's swift and annual report on it so we obviously hold this annual meeting but there's other things that we are working on constantly for public education outreach with our partners in stormwater and that includes the board of water and soil resources bowser dakota county soil and water conservation district the lower mississippi watershed management organization and the the eagan invergrove heights watershed management organization and the minnesota city stormwater coalition we have representatives from the city working directly with and on the eagan in lower mississippi you know watershed management organizations and we work regularly with dakota county soil and water and some of the by working with some of these groups uh there are state fair exhibits that are uh that are done through the lower mississippi river organization in the eagan igh wmo also does rain barrel programs they provide library clean clean water bags for public and children to be able to explore uh ways that to keep storm water clean we also collaborate with these other stormwater groups that i have mentioned the one thing we do uh annually is verify if there's any illicit discharges in the integral of heights and you know a very uh common listed discharge would be like a an an accident where there's an oil spill or something like that and we have protection measures to try to stop such spills from getting into the storm water system in downstream waters and so we work with public safety we work with the state when these type of events may occur but there are larger events but there are smaller items that we keep track of and and work with um contractors developers residents uh in businesses uh through sediment erosion spills and accidents um industrial sources that may have some waste and it could be failing septic systems and also illegal dumping so there's an or it could be a um contractor that is illegally dumping something on our streets or in our drains that's reported to us so this year um and i'm sorry this review what we're doing right now is for 2021 which is last year's activities and and so we update our storm sewer maps each year also and in the process of reviewing our whole stormwater system and and then working with uh our um working with our system we also inspect at least 20 percent of our storm water out falls in in our ponds each year just to verify that they're in good working condition through these processes we've uh we only had one illicit discharge identified last year that was reviewed and investigated and we did it put a nose a violation out for that illicit discharge which means that now we're required to provide cleanup so when you get to the construction site stormwater and runoff control um we basically sent out a 172 erosion sediment notice violations so you can a lot of extra construction activity and emerald grove heights and so our staff technicians and consultants we hire to oversee construction activity we we make sure that the contractors developers and anyone working in the city is stays in compliance and doesn't impact our waters in a negative way so we do weekly inspections of all construction sites throughout our city specifically those sites that are an acre or larger disturbance but we also work in you know keep track of smaller sites of building sites and that that may be promoting uh erosion and it may need to be managed better um but besides weekly if there's any half-inch rainfall event or bigger we'll do another inspection to make sure that after a major rain event all their erosion control measures such as silt fence that holds back sediment is being maintained and corrected if it has had a failure so as part of the uh part of the permanent stormwater management system which is by mpc called pulse construction but that's just the systems that have been built throughout the city and now are in place that's ponds manholes pipes and network our storm water network so we enforce you know the one-inch infiltration requirement throughout the city when the projects are being designed and developed we also have a uh two uh manage stormwater management plans in our city one is the fourth generation stormwater management plan that covers all the requirements of you doing development in the city of emerald grove heights uh except for there's a northwest area 3 000 acre area in northwest part of a city where a lot of development's occurring right now and that area there is has a series of landlocked basins where no storm water really leaves the whole 3000 acre area and so we have a more stringent component rather than the one inch infiltration requirement we have what's a five-year storm water volume requirement so that's more like a 2.6 inch requirement basically it's much more stringent and that's because we're trying to protect the natural basins we have in the northwest area and make sure they continue to function like they did prior to any development coming around them the we also update our city-wide storm water inventory we have 236 bmps uh which would be basically ponds and infiltration basins and features like that 113 miles of storm water sewer and over 1400 catch basins that that we maintain throughout the year so our maintenance staff who we should acknowledge uh spends a lot of time uh also maintaining our storm water system throughout the year and then we have continue with our private stormwater facility maintenance oversight program so last year in 2021 these the 13 plan reviews were shown are basically major projects those are projects over one acre or larger that's what we keep track of for the purpose of this report however we do many more than that dozens more reviews of small building permit style projects that come through our city and engineering is part of the sign-offs of building permits when they come through our city so we're one of the departments that need to sign off on it so that means we also get an opportunity to review it and make sure measures are being taken to handle construction activity in a proper manner to protect our waters and so we have eleven development projects that require you know large storm water facilities and maintenance agreements that we work out during the planning and approval stage with the staff and city council the last mcm minimum control measure is six and that's pollution prevention and good housekeeping and that's our own municipal operations you know so we inspect as i mentioned earlier are all falls and ponds about 20 percent a year and in order to cycle through that every five years and then we can identify through that any minor or major maintenance activities that occur and what we consider a minor maintenance activity is something our staff our maintenance staff has the equipment and the staffing to be able to do the repairs themselves major meeting activities are something we typically have to hire out to a contractor and then our maintenance staff also does street sweeping in all of our city streets every spring and fall sometimes periodically again if there's something occurs that needs sweeping and then public inspections of the stormwater facilities so some other items that are out there is we construct storm water quality improvements and city and county projects we work partnership on those type of activities we we continue to do a private development review review and agreements and i spoke about what's called the idd the illicit discharges our ms4 program or npds but we make sure we our staffing gets annual training on this so they're up to speed on the most current requirements and then we create pamphlets for city hall and we have a roanside rain garden program that's on the city city website we have over 60 roadside rain gardens that have been been put in by the city over many years of reconstruction projects and that's to help catch that first flush of pollutants off the street and get them treated in a rain garden so other objectives that we want to do for the future is we want to develop a televising program for our storm water system for asset management and to verify areas in need and repair of our storm water system we want to continue to apply for stormwater grants we've been very successful over the years and getting those which helps with some of the cost of improvements and we also are have developed and will continue to improve a capital improvement plan for storm water purposes and we you know the goal this year is to make sure we have a five-year plan that gets before council in the next year or two and that we then work out a way to fund that and then you have the ms4 permit compliance uh updates that we do annually and we do want to identify more funding revenue for stormwater improvements and that's something we are working with council on and we do have bioretention standards and details that we want to keep on our city website for citizens developers contractors to have available to them and further develop what are called our municipal operations our enforcement response procedures which are erps and our standard operation procedures of our maintenance staff which are called saps the uh other objectives is we want to continue to work with administer our northwest area standards as a 3 000 acre area the northwest part of our city continues to develop and we can will continue to work with our partners of the lower mississippi river minnesota city stormwater coalition mpca and the eagan igh watershed and dakota county soil and water also are the main partners that we continue to work with so other than that i think the other items in green we've kind of already identified and that is the end of my presentation and we'll now open it for questions we have we have a couple people here that are live in person and then we have a couple of people that are also in uh on the web so you can either type in your question or nicole can um unmute you and you can ask your question that way so feel free to ask the question if you're lying here too in person does the city work with the dnr for planting or putting fish in the ponds and lakes in the area and do they do any testing for invasive species okay so the question is the city working with dnr on uh basically you know placing fish you know in in our uh what in the public waters of the state and uh and do we work with any testing um of the waters to identify contaminants or or invasive species basically so so yeah the city is not participating in any of the testing measures that is out there for following species of lakes and that so we don't one thing is we don't even have enough funding right now to maintain the infrastructure the stormwater system uh and then secondly is uh that's something that actually hasn't been brought up before i've been doing this for a few years now so it's a good point we'll log down that question you know in our annual report so when you ask when when the citizens uh submit questions and we basically are if it's a question of importance that needs a response we typically need to at least add that to the annual report and um if it's if it's a question of significance if it's something we don't need to act on it may not get in the report but at least we'll acknowledge a question was asked you know yes so i remember before you said something like there were 172 charts and discharge citations yeah so do we track like here's the companies that have a normal record of having a problem and then when we get their permits more scrutiny in the future what comes with that so the question is there is uh almost a couple hundred no notice of violations for like erosion control measures and stuff like that of the stormwater program and um and the question is you know do we keep track of who are the bad apples basically so we can scrutinize them a little more and the answer is we work with a lot of the same contractors and developers over time and yes we already kind of know those that we need to maybe uh keep track of closer or scrutinize we don't keep a list no we don't do that um but we you know everyone is pretty much treated the same as far as following the mpds guidelines and that's so the bottom line answer is we can we treat everyone the same as far as meeting the meeting the basic measures that they need to meet the violations uh typically are we are basically done within 24 to 48 hours in most cases and if they do not comply we have other measures that's actually written into our stormwater management plan we have other measure measures to take them into violation where we can do a um you know basically in order to stop their project you know through building inspections and that can get a developers or a contractor's attention real quickly it's called a stop work order and so all that is written in our code and if it goes even further we can take them in the violation further where we can take them to court or find them so we we actually have measures where we just kind of keep stepping it up the enforcement action um and me normally once we hit the second step which is stop work order once we hit that stage they come into compliance real quick because a stop work order means that not only is the development stopped it means the house building is stopped everything is stopped until you come into compliance so it's a pretty pretty strong measure and and we only use that when there's someone that's substantially in compliance obviously but it works very well any other questions out there from our online participants okay we can go ahead and unmute them too if it's more comfort for them to talk i did ask if they wanted to okay okay so no questions from the online any further questions from anyone here does the city have a process by which volunteers can do some planting to avoid erosion around the lake or in some cases just to clean up the trash that accumulates over a period of time okay so the question is do we have a city program to work with plantings around the lake and or cleanup of trash and the city does not participate in a program for citizens to clean up trash within our system but we do promote them to contact the city maintenance staff and the city maintenance staff is basically it gets put on a tracking record so they know to go out and clean an area and that system usually works pretty good and as far as working with landowners on vegetation maintenance i'm not aware of any program we have but typically the county or the um dakota county saw on water may have some programs uh that that would you can enter into for shoreland restoration but the city does not have any programs and shoreline restoration i'm aware of some some of the land around the lakes is our plan right of course that would be the place where sometimes yeah so the general comment we have is from there's a member here that lives near assembly lake and uh that maybe the city can look at opportunities to uh because there's parkland you know within that lake also to help with vegetation maintenance and around the lake and or work with the citizens on a volunteer cleanup program like to do at the highway program so those are good comments um we'll have to talk to the parks department and see what they think of that so any other questions out there okay well i do appreciate the looks like about four people got on on web base uh virtual session and we're also doing a live session at the same time so there's a couple people people here in person if you could just share your basic information with nicole portugal who is monitoring the web-based portion do you have at least their name yeah okay so we so we do have your name which is good so we know who participated so i appreciate that um if you have any further questions or information there are comment cards here in person that someone can write something down you can also message myself or nicole and i will go back to the starting page where it has my contact information and so feel free to send me an email at s dodge at ighmn.gov and if there's a further comment you may have wanted to make or a question you may want to ask that being said are we about done then okay looks like a couple people just joined or okay all right well thank you everyone uh we're gonna stop right here and i appreciate everyone for participating in the annual meeting you have a good day you can stop recording now