I can introduce it and I think there's some additional language that yep you could add but thank you mr. mayor and council members and thank you all those in attendance for coming tonight this is a I guess a third step in our process of evaluating this very serious issue for the city we understand as staff we've been hearing comments and following up on issues for quite some time I think over seven or eight months now plus ongoing issues for several years on the the levels of the water levels on Twin Lake we had an initial meeting on October 8 2018 where both these representatives Tina Carson's from the Ramsey Washington watershed and and Brandon from the but from bar engineering presented some initial information and they received several comments from the public at that meeting Brandon spent considerable time and effort over the winter putting some models together and presented a second presentation on October I'm sorry on March 12th of 2019 this year and this presentation is I guess not a public hearing but a follow-up on those those two presentations primarily for the benefit of the City Council members that may not have been able to attend those meetings but also to consolidate some of the information and then provide this in the public record as we're on obviously recording this tacky or this presentation and making it available via our website and and on CTV so with that I think there's a one more comment about the process and then I think I would turn it over to Tina Karstens for three my introduction as well so first we're going to have the presentation but after that I will call for public comments after the presentation is complete and we'll allow each person three minutes to comment the council will not enter in dialogue with the citizens public comments will be used and this is a time for problems this isn't to be used as a time for probably problem solving or reacting to comments made but rather for hearing the citizens for informational purposes only to come back to take back to the watershed or the city staff so with that please okay thank you mayor members of the council and staff and residents for being here thanks for having us here tonight as Chris mentioned we hosted our you hosted a couple of public meetings with the residents of Twin Lake and we presented some evidence some information at the first meeting and then came back to the second meeting to answer some questions that the residents had regarding the water levels in Twin Lakes so I'm going to just go through some overview information about the watershed district just to get you all up to speed if you're not familiar with who we are and what we do and our role in this all right there we go brand-new can go in the next slide and then I'll turn it over to Brandon who has the data and the information and the summaries to share with you all tonight so I'm going to go over some background information the watershed district was established in 1975 we have 12 cities sixty-five square miles we extend as far north as up by a snail lake up in shore view is our an upper left corner and down in the bottom right pigs I like you'll see along the river there down on our southern border we also go east into Carver like in the Woodbury area so we cover a large broad district a number of drainage areas and a number of lake systems that we manage we coordinate our efforts between the city the county and our state agencies we work closely with our partners on issues such as this such as this twin lake water level issue this is twin Lake is one of the areas that is experiencing high water we actually have areas throughout our district that are either at risk of flooding or experiencing extreme high water levels over the past several years we besides managing flood risk we also do water quality monitoring and evaluation of projects to improve on water quality we regulate development through our permitting program and we have a natural resources program so we also do native habitat restoration projects and that's my intro to the watershed district unless there's any questions but I just wanted to give you an idea of the breadth of the area that we cover and the number of partners that we work with on these issues and it's been great to work with Chris and Bill on this on this topic and we definitely understand the high water level issues that we're experiencing and have provided a lot of time and an engineering effort to understand the systems and then so that we can move forward and talk about next steps so I am going to introduce Brandon Barnes who's with Barr engineering and he is our engineering consultant that we work with to investigate these areas so turn it over to Brandon public meetings and the way that we've kind of framed this is that we'll start with kind of a district overview talking about the areas that the district looks at and some of some of the roles that they play and then they'll dive in and go over some of the general drainage patterns and characteristics of the Twin Lake watershed in particular present and talk through some of the stormwater modeling the district has done looking at available historic available data and then wrap up as as part of the public public meetings we've received a number of comments from residents and questions about items to look into relate whether or not it was related to or cause of the water levels in twin lake and so I'll summarize a few of those and then pass it back to to Tina to talk about next and the next wrap up with with next steps so in terms of the overall districts perspective one of the things that they do is identify potentially flood prone structures they have a stormwater model that simulates runoff and drainage from there from the area within the district and they use that model to map the the flood plain and available information from member communities within the district to identify potentially flood prone structures the the image on the right there is the the district boundary and the points that show up are our structures that have been identified as being potentially below the hundred year flood plain as we identify those structures we're comparing the static water level to the low adjacent the estimated low adjacent grade for those structures and then the district proceeds with coordinating community community communicating with cities and agencies again to verify and then eventually mitigate that flood risk within little Canada there are several areas that have been identified within the 100-year floodplain and there's they've been there's been documented flooding in the recent history a couple of those areas are the Owosso Basin and the North Star state's development there's photos on the two photos on the bottom there from a storm in 2011 where there was the water levels encroached on to properties and then Ryan drive over top to him there was inundated the city staff also has response to or gets calls from the automated automated lake level sensor and Jarvis Lake there's an emergency response plan for structures that are below the flood plain on that lake as well what brought us here today or brought us part of this discussion though is is regarding twin lake and so within Twin Lake there's there's really no historic or very little historic record continuous record of lake levels the district in the county did start monitoring and measuring data beginning in this summer of 2018 and that those are the points that are shown on the shown on the plot here the overflow to the MnDOT system is was surveyed and estimated at seventy seven point zero and then our estimated low home on the lake is a seven or eight point zero so this gives some some context on how the rising levels are approaching both those elevations I will mention here when we were brought into the discussion based on an atoll information historical documentation of the lake the the the lake levels have historically fluctuated somewhere between an 866 and 870 so it gives some provide some perspective on what we're seeing here in terms of elevated lake levels currently so the sub watershed and drainage patterns Twin Lake the the watershed the area that drains to twin lake is shown on the figure on the upper right it's a just under two hundred acres and there's there's some various land uses here the the key characteristic of this lake is that it's land it's a historically a land block basin I'll get into that in a minute but in general that means that it doesn't have an defined outlet that conveys water away from the lake for water bodies with that are characterized as land Locke you've got seepage into groundwater or evaporation those are the two primary outlets for lakes and so when you get years with high precipitation and large influence that drive the volume driven flooding for these types of basins and because they don't have an outlet the change back to a normal condition can be slow it can take several several years depending assuming on precipitation record that we we experienced so when the when the district was asked to get involved one of the first things that we did was go and collect the baseline survey of structures within the watershed we wanted to make sure that everyone was talking about the same elevations and similar structures and there's there's three really three key locations here that I'd like to cover and they're they're numbers one five and six and I'll cover them in that order something to note here the lake the current lake elevation as of yesterday was up to a seventy-five the estimated low home that we had surveyed is on the north of the lake and then there's the the controlling elevations here and we'll get into a little more detail on those three elevations in the next couple of sites so zooming into that location 1 this is the crossing at Twin Lake Boulevard the five-star state's development is on the north side of clean light Boulevard and Twin Lake is to the to the southeast here at this crossing there the slope light rain flows back away from Twin Lake to a lift stations at the thatl low point here in five star states that lift station connects to a gravity line that runs along the development and discharges or outlets just upstream of the culvert below the roadway and then the that culvert conveys water into Twin Lake the the overflow from that road is is fairly high and then the Swale the high point in the Swale that would control the elevation at which Twin Lake can back up is up at a seventy eight point one some photos of the area here this is the the green the green symbol here is an indication of where the photo was taken in this case it's looking back on the Swale towards that lift station and then zooming it moving in here this is the lift station that pumps out to a gravity line that runs behind the lift station and then out what's just upstream of the culvert that then drains into Twin Lake and that's the that's the inlet to the culvert than that that's connected to twin I'm jumping ahead here to the next location I'm calling this location five this is now on the southeast corner of twin Lake there is a railroad track here that separates Twin Lake from the property just south of the lake and there's a few structures here there is a there's a small corrugated metal pipe that's below an access trail here that a drink that drains back towards towards Twin in that direction there is a a culvert underneath the railroad tracks there's the the controlling elevation is at the upstream end here it's an eight seventy two point three but the culvert in this direction is tip or is drains flow from Selva tracks back into Twin Lake and then the the third culvert here is there is a PVC pipe that conveys flow from this small holding area into a larger a larger inundated area and in this case the controlling elevation is at the downstream and it was surveyed at me at seventy three point four there's been talk with the property owner self with the railroad tracks there had been a check valve that was installed in this pipe I've got a few slides of it further on that check valve has is not currently in but I'll talk about what the impacts of that may may have been and then we've served surveyed the overflow from the rail if if water were to overfill to railroad tracks it's up at them just under an eighty eighty one so similar here these are photos that were taken last fall when or last summer when the water levels were quite a bit lower than they are now I've included these you can see the illustrate the different pipe crossings here so this photo was taken looking towards the Northwest this is the inlet to the culvert that then goes below the railroad tracks into twin this is the inlet to the PVC pipe that connects the two holding areas here and the location of the the check valve that we'll talk about in that pipe is underneath the head all right it's in that pipe there this is a photo looking kind of to the southwest along that access road and then the jumping ahead here to the next location this is this is location six so location six is the ultimate kind of outlet so to speak from from the system this is the property south of the railroad tracks and this is six ninety four and this is MnDOT stormwater pond it James into 694 when that we that area was surveyed the the overflow is that there's an that kind of separates MnDOT stormwater pond from the property self or the railroad tracks and that that overflow is approximately 877 once water gets into that MnDOT pond there is a large culvert then they that conveys that stormwater to the southwest that stormwater goes to the ditch that's that goes around Northstar estates and then eventually into Jarvis Creek and the failing chain so generally how drainage how drainage works in the water shows you get twin for under normal flow conditions water flows down towards that culvert below the railroad tracks and under low flow this culvert into twin is at a lower elevation than the culvert that goes into the the wetland or the the inundated area here and so water flows into twin lake on the north side of twin lake water typically drains to that low point where there's a lift station that discharges it to a gravity line that then also flows into the lake once it's in twin lake again there there's no outlet until the water elevation and twin exceeds the overflow from the entire system which is that and at 877 at which pointed over Hopson with a into the MnDOT system so talking through lake levels here one of the things that the first public meeting that we heard from residents was that there really is no record of historic lake levels and there was we received several comments regarding when the lake went exactly the lake levels rose and what might be the cause of that and so to investigate the timing of those lake levels and try to piece together historic record the residents applied a number of photographs that were were used to estimate historic lake levels we took those photographs and then compared those to the results from the district stormwater model to try to pinpoint exactly when the lake elevations rose and use that information then to estimate whether or not the rise in lake level was due to historic precipitation around or potentially some other cause that couldn't be explained with the stormwater model so what I'm showing here is a plot here that will build on is over the next couple of slides on the the y-axis here on the right lost my laser printer the axis on the right is is elevation the access on their axis on the left is elevation the access on the right is rainfall the blue lines at the top of the plot that's daily rainfall and it goes from January 1st 1997 through the end of 2018 that that time period was selected because that's the time period when photographs were made available from from the residents there's a number of dashed lines that go across the screen here the first one is the culvert below the railroad track so this is this connects the property cell for the railroad tracks into Twin Lake the next one is the culvert that connects it's parallel with the railroad tracks so it takes water from that little that one Dacian area to the the Southwest the yellow line here in the middle that's the current water level out there as of yesterday there is the the brown line here this is the existing overflow to the MnDOT system and then the red dashed line that's the estimated little structure on the lake in 2018 the district and county started collecting or measurement lake level measurements on the lake and so those are the red points that that show up and to extend that record residents provided a number of photographs and those are the purple points when we got the photographs there is there's some uncertainty associated with estimating water levels that are shown in the photographs we're trying to compare historic landmarks with current aerial imagery were where there's uncertainty not all the photographs had time stamps on it so there's some uncertainty in terms of and you know which month or when exactly that ever info occurred but in general we we get a sense that for the most part the lake level looked to be made a fairly consistent level and then in about 2013 we saw a fairly rapid increase in the levels so what we did is we ran we use the district stormwater model to run the historic rainfall record through it and the black line is the results the simulation results and so the the outcome here is that in general it's a fairly good comparison historically the the district stormwater model shows that the lake levels the simulated lake levels generally match the information provided by the residents and then about 2013 when do due to the rainfall we were seeing a rapid wear I heard a large rise in elevation from the lakes we zoom in here on the part here we have data that was actual measurements that were collected we can see that the model does a fairly good job here and in general within a few tenths of the measured elevations through the end of 2018 so the the general conclusion that we could we could make here is that the the the precipitation record seems to be the primary cause here for the change in lake levels it doesn't it's not necessarily explained by other changes within the watershed but we did it we did look at those who know I'll talk through some of those here as well again we received a number of a thing for requests to look at from the residents varying from you know again collecting the survey information evaluating precip and the historic overflows there were questions regarding groundwater and water quality we looked at water levels and East badness to look hidden over if there was a potential discharge from an adjacent watershed we've looked at water levels from West badness and then are reviewing collecting information on local storm sewer information and reviewing that information as it becomes available and so I'm for the interest of time here I'll highlight some of the items that are in green the other items that I'm not highlighting tonight though have been discussed and presented in the previous public meetings and those presentations are on the city's website so the third the first piece is that we looked at was the historic precipitation data and the Minnesota DNR the the state climatology office records monthly and annual precip depths what the plot shows is that the the blue numbers are in the wettest 30th percentile the green the green numbers are in that 30th the 70th percentile and the red are in the the driest 30 percentile and as we look at as you look at the annual depths here on the right there's there's quite a few numbers that that show up in blue well we find when we review that record is that there are quite a few years where a number of the recent years show up is in the the wettest years really in the over the hundred and twenty-eight year period of record one way to look at here in the last six years we've received approximately seven years worth of rainfall and that again in a landlocked system that's volume-based the the more runoff that's generated the more volume that gets to lake to the degree of the impact on water levels we would anticipate after looking at priests the the precipitation record we did take a look at the historic overflow from the lake there were a number of documents that were reviewed we did a survey here in 2019 we reviewed the plans for the MnDOT recent unweave the leaf project and that showed the over Florida pond 877 as well the district did a study on twin Lake in 1993 that showed the overflow at a seventy six point nine and then one of the residents provided plans for 1966 that showed the overflow a little bit lower at about a seventy four to a seventy five in in in all of these cases here the the overflow wealth since ninety three the the overflow is set higher than the elevations that are in the lake with the sixty-six plans were a seventy five now we would the current level would be approaching that over full that was showing enough the 1966 plans this is a this is an image of the the 1966 plans here in just two just to highlight a few things here one of the things we're looking at is general drainage directions so this is looking at how well a flow gets from the railroad tracks in the upper right here to the interstate here is this 694 and the 1966 plan showed a ditched connection through here the profile of that ditch again this is 694 and this is the railroad track showed that water close to 694 was conveyed into the MnDOT system and away from Twin Lake drainage for most of the ditch it was sloped back and eventually would get into Twin Lake and scaling off those elevations there was a High Point close to the railroad tracks that is somewhere between a 73 and a 74 the plans are a little fuzzy but when you zoom in on it and then the high point in the ditch is somewhere between an 80 74 and a 75 and that overflow is consistent with historic studies of this watershed at that time so if we look here in the these are the recent water measurements dating back to the mid 2018 the 1960s over flow it would have been hit in about April of this year the overflow of the MnDOT system is up at a 77 here and then again they'll estimate low home so it's it's above that that elevation I'm stepping through a couple of things here that was investigate that we were asked to investigate one of the items that came up was there was a check valve that had been installed in the pipe on the property south of the railroad tracks essentially what the check valve did is if water levels on the north east side of that check valve got high wouldn't let water flow to the southwest it would push that water into twin so when we were when when the city and city and district staff were made aware of that with the city's city staff went out and observed that check valve getting removed quickly thereafter one of the things we did look at though was what what the potential impact could have been of that check valve so essentially it was preventing flow from Twin Lake from backing up and getting to this inundation area in a new area here without that check valve that elevation of a seventy three point four would have controlled how water would have gotten to this area so when we look at the recent measurements here if the water level wasn't above an 873 four it couldn't have backed up there if the water level exceeded in 875 it would have overtop the roadway or the path above that culvert so this is kind of the range in elevations where there would would have been a potential impact in Twin Lake and the x-axis here showing time this is from the winter here of 2018 through the the time when the city staff went out and observed that check valve getting removed one of the other things we again we've looked at was was groundwater the district doesn't maintain a ground groundwater model but we've reviewed available information including the groundwater model that was developed for the Met Council and in general regional groundwater flows from the Northeast to the southwest and so a twin light gives a pass through lake where water flows in one side of the lake and the other side of the lake there's there's limited seepage you know there's limited data there there's a USGS study that estimates the seepage rate and but but really ultimately there there's a lot of unknowns associated with the role that groundwater plays and the overall water balance for the lake just generally speaking recharge rates have been at historic highs here when looking at that Met Council model what that means is when recharge rates are high there's a lot of surface water than in us infiltrating which is consistent with what is being observed within the Twin Lake watershed speaking from it just a you know general characterization here is that you know for closed lakes the where groundwater is made may be one of the primary outlets from the lake when when groundwater when groundwater levels are higher that can affect how quickly you'd expect the lake to draw dalaman so getting it that that's where the the change back to that perceived normal can take several years finally here one of the one of the the next things we're looking at here is there's historically high water levels really throughout the district right now and one including one of the areas is West badniks lake this is an area where this is just to the north west of the five start States development the current water level and in West badness right now is an 884 to the normal outlet from West badness is in a is it's a 15 inch culvert that flows along the highway and then discharges into the Jarvis Creek watershed there is a topographic firm or a ridge that runs along the the east side of that I guess that triangle there and west badness and then there's a 24 inch RCP or a 24 inch storm sewer pipe that with an inlet on the northwest side of the five star mobile home development that runs through the through the development this is the the storm sewer that the lift station connects to and then outlets just upstream of the culvert that drains into Twin Lakes based on available lidar data this plot show well this plot shows the water levels and west madness lake since about 2008 and the approximate farm elevation based on MnDOT are the minnesota dnr lidar data is shown there as well historically those lake levels and west badness and below that berm elevation but recently they there is they've exceeded that elevation and there is water that is within that on the other side of that berm so what that means as of today is come back here the area on the southeast side of the berm is is inundated and there the water is flowing essentially there's water coming through the berm and reaching that 24 inch pipe here's another photo taken from that area looking back toward towards the berm there and that water is is being conveyed from this area and is reaching is currently reaching Twin Lake so our current understanding here are the system just to highlight a few of the points that we hit alright I summarized here is - is that Twin Lake is historically landlocked and it currently is landlocked now there the water is not leaving via surface outlet high water levels were or are primarily due to precipitation there hasn't been a what I mean by that is there hasn't been a change in the system where that would have gotten more water there earlier and then based on available information that we have to date the modification south of the railroad don't appear to be affecting the current levels in the lake based on what we're seeing in lake levels and west badness in flows from west badness have contributed to twin lake this year and again because because of the outlet of the lake that change back to normal can be slow and for the next steps here I will invite Tina back up to talk about with the district looking continuing I can see this see this screen so there's some things that we've committed to continuing doing with our city partner and district will continue to collect like level measurements and provide them to the cities they've been posting them to the web site so that you can keep up to date on the levels of the lake we continue to monitor water quality that's a concern of ours also and we have a long historic record of water quality data for this lake and we'll continue to do that we're going to look at the and coordinate with st. Paul Regional Water Services and Vadnais Heights regarding that upstream drainage system that Brandon just mentioned that that is new information to the residents tonight that we have just investigated and determined to be a cause like you said for the 2019 season that has contributed water because our water levels are high in West fatness just to give you maybe a little overview a quick overview on that system West badness is connected to grass lake which is west of there on the other side of rice streets part of the snail lake Regional Park system along Graham zero that's another landmark so there's a grass light there's a large wetland system and then there's snail lake to the north snail lake is primarily landlocked and similar to twin lake it has an emergency overflow at a much higher elevation but grass like in west badness act as an equalizer at these levels they are the same elevation so water levels in that whole area are very high you might be aware that rice street is closed currently in one direction they have it open so we we have a whole system of hot water level that is now contributing water to the twin lake system because of those high water levels so we're going to coordinate with them learn more about that system and what is going on with the berm and the elevations and we're also looking and evaluating with the city potential system modifications and what that might look like for a long term solution or a long term resiliency for this system you know we don't know what the future holds for water levels we don't know if we'll continue in this or we'll get some lower levels but we want to look at building resiliency into our systems and that's our goal also for that Wesley West badness lake and grass lake area we're looking at that whole area and how we can provide more storage opportunities in that system so that we don't have excessive water levels like we've been seen so we're going to be evaluating those as Brandon mentioned at the very beginning that takes some time and some study based on what our downstream impacts are because this is just downstream of Northstar estates where we haven't known flood risk to habitable structures and also to Jarvis like that where we have four homes that are within the floodplain area so we have to be real careful about how we look at transferring that risk may be from one place to another so that is something that we're committing to continuing to work with the city on and with that so I guess we will take any questions from the council let you make up questions I guess open it up to the residents that would like to make comments item that come on please my name is Joel Prelutsky I've lived on the lake for 34 years and I was just wondering why the natural flow of the lake was disrupted and why can't we solve that problem it seems like a really simple problem to solve twin lake is very small the chain of water that we'd be sending the water into is a whole lot larger it'd be like taking a foot of water out of our lake and maybe adding a quarter of an inch to a number of larger lakes and it would help I mean there are homes that whose footings are in the water right now that has never happened in 34 years and it's not all rain certainly rain has had an effect but the lake used to have a natural outlet and when they did the unweave the weave project they altered the land where the water used to flow and now our lake is backed up it's five and a half feet over its high mark you know I look at all the statistics and it just looks like we can spend another three years going over statistics and we could solve this problem by allowing a little bit of water to flow out of the lake into the natural flow that it's done over 34 years that I've lived there and I don't see it impacting that much if we reduce that lake by a foot of water which will save a lot of homes and there are a lot of people there that enjoy living on the lake and they've got outbuildings in the water the footings of their homes are now saturated with water and another foot and their basements are going to be destroying their homes are going to be destroyed you know it's created a lot of work a lot of hardship for people who live on the lake and I just think it's a solvable problem but we can't wait another three years to get a lot of statistics I mean the statistics are great but I mean action would be a whole lot better that's all I have to say I'm Terry Slyke I'm also resident on twin Lake and my concern of question is that the pumping station at five-star mobile home park my understanding is that there or what I would like to know is are they continuing to pump water into that drainage line that flows directly into Twin Lake if they are continuing to pump water from that little spot in their mobile home park that needs that needs to be stopped I don't like I said that needs to be investigated because I don't know if they're continuing to pump it or not but right now that's the main source of water coming into Twin Lake so I'd like to see if that could get looked into thank you thank you hi I'm Frank Fretilin 3205 Center Bell Road I'm on the south side of tracks where everyone thought the water was coming from my question is and I've talked to watershed and I know all the problems down south but as he went through the ditch grade I have a plan that I dug up from 66 but county ditch 16 was part of the overflow can you okay this is this is village of little Canada Minnesota this is the ditch map county ditch 60 and anyone who has been a resident of little Canada or the area knows of county ditch 16 and since I was a kid we had that going through our fields but anyway this is the pipe covered underneath the railroad tracks and comes into my property here and also I do have a lot on this side on Twin Lake which is completely under water now too this pipe comes out at a 72 for I have on my plans 70 2.45 and this profile I'm not so sure that it does come up to a 73 because all the inverts and stuff it flows from the 72 45 to a 72 3572 2170 215 and 7,200 that was the old county ditch 16 before the highway went through so my question is when unweave the weave or when the highway first went in how did they shut that ditch off because that overflow should be out of 72 I mean not a 77 and there there was a car I did all investigating I could I've been on my property for like forty some years but my property only went about to this ditch and I bought this land now in the last ten years and a clove of family owned all this property before and firmed it I had one of the sons out there we found a culvert here that they called their culvert went over there field road which went underneath the fence and that's at an elevation I believe at the 72 so I know we got trouble down salt and Wasel Basin and Jarvis and everyone else but I guess who made the determination all right I'm sorry that we weren't seeing what I was talking about but this is the culvert and an invert of that is 872 45 and all the way down on this profile I think the profile of surf and buyer engineering was talking is the ground profile the straight line is probably the pipe and it shows the 872 but anyway all these inverts and culverts here are all dropping from that 872 45 now somewhere along when the highway department come in that culvert is no longer working and that berm is built at an 877 that's five feet higher four and a half to five feet higher than what that flow was from county ditch 16 which was part of the overflow from the lake so I'm not opposed than anything but I'd like to know who made the decision to make that over for the 77 which is a taking of this land it's all under water now and it has not ever I've never seen it come about 272 for all the water has always drained into twin lake which he was stating there he'd never seen it that high the culvert the culvert that I put in there I dug ponds here and I put that confident just for a road crossing there that was at the same elevation as this invert so what happened when I put that culvert and I was actually taking more water into mine instead of going in there it would come so I put that tip-up culvert and I had a valve that I forgot about and one of the neighborhood small-dollar behind and at that time we looked at it the water and the other side of my culvert and then my farm was only two tenths of an inch lower than the lake level so I mean we really went didn't hold anything up to speak of because it the culprit has Rock around and it was letting that flow in there and it actually it it flowed back farther or and the roadway was going they're already so we didn't really hold anything up there other than a date or so but anyway that's my question and we've talked about it and I know we can't just rush that water on them but we've had some ideas that maybe we can put a weird do some ponding here and put a weir system or a bell so when it ever do get this high water it holds it up so it don't flood downstream and then you let it out gradually keep that water level down to at 72 okay which would be three feet higher the lake I mean three feet lower than the lake is No thank you Frank [Applause] hi I'm Andrew Malone I live at 3282 hamilkar time on Twin Lake in regards to some information we have been sharing amongst ourselves residents on the lake and so forth we did have a document from the watershed management plan and in section 2.3 I should say 2.4 a spot 3 it does say under normal hydraulic conditions Twin Lake remains landlocked as we know the predicted hundred year flood level for Twin Lake is eight hundred and seventy three point eight the reading as of yesterday was eight hundred and seventy four point nine seven we have surpassed our hundred year flood level and meaning there is one percent chance in any given year for that to occur well guess what we hit the one percent so with that said it does say it goes on to say if regular discharge from Vadnais Lake is expected in the future the district may consider installing an additional culvert through an existing dike that guards the entrance to the i-69 culvert to allow increased capacity from Twin Lake to a lower level there are things in place already to help us out we just again we need some action here we are if you're talking about 878 for that one measurement that Brandon had noted so 877 is when it goes to the MnDOT pond our lowest level resident he will flood at 878 I mean that is terrible to think about it is our main source I is our northwest corner it is the water that's coming as we now know from west Vadnais and then flowing through Northstar estates with that lift station if we already have another diversion through they they already said there's another outlet to the Jarvis grist mill again I agree can't we divert more into that region we are a bathtub filling okay and the faucet is running hard and you know how the bathtub has that little you know don't overflow the tub you know we're too darn close to it and it's very painful to watch all our property it just it's disappearing and again it's a lot of years and it's a lot of blood sweat and tears that people have put into their homes I'm new to the area but it's it's painful to see and something has to be done sooner than later we cannot wait on this anymore thank you [Applause] I'm married talega and I live at two five three twin lake trail I have spoken before in our meetings regarding our Dec 20 by 24 foot deck that used to be in our yard that is now in the lake and has been for three years back in 16 I our deck started going into the lake and so I contacted job cars of Joel Carlson and I he referred me to Tina Karstens and I got an email from Joe Hansen I'm sorry anyway Tina responded to me Twin Lake does not have a pipe to outlet it does though have a high water overflow that goes to the southeast of the lake and into the MnDOT ponds adjacent our modeling shows that the elevation of the overflow is 881 feet which is definitely I would hope it would be wrong this is about seven feet higher than a hundred year flood level of the lake of 873 we believe that a rebound in the regional ground watered levels along with a very wet 2016 and starched 2017 explains the higher than usual or ever water levels we are experiencing once in a lifetime once in many lifetimes conditions in this lake and when we see a faucet that's on all the way such as the culvert coming in the north west corner and we see the water coming from Lake badness through this what used to be a dry stream and we're seeing water coming in all around the lake and our trees are all just dying hundreds and hundreds of trees at least what how many sheds are in the lake now our shed is in jeopardy now you know it just makes sense if you turn the water on here you unplug it over here you know something's got to be done we're we're begging you hi my name is cliff I hear I used to be the administrator of watershed district now I'm on the board of managers I want to say that I've heard I hear you and Ashley Tina's reported your past meetings to the board and were well aware of your concerns and we're also very concerned I actually conducted some of the original ditch inspections for the watershed district back in the early 1980s and I knew at that point that I 694 construction had impeded the previous level of the old ditch outlet there also used to be a ditch outlet from West Venus that went down to the south as well and that was cut off by 694 completely there was no outlet at all left in that place and Twin Lake was very stable for a long long time and it wasn't really an issue but I think there's combination of events that are happening historical annual excess precipitation increasing area-wide groundwater levels which is why White Bear Lake is now back up over normal level and now living for the first time and I don't know 10 12 years West our grass Lake is high which also receives flow from Owasso and Wabasso Lake there's there's flooding in the area between snail Lake and grass lake that hasn't been there before unfortunately this is all a hardship to a lot people and we know it particularly impacts you and we have done in multiple watershed management plans in the past and Twin Lake has been a stable landlocked Basin and now it's not so we realized that we really need to go back and take a look at what used to be an emergency outlet level and when that something needs to be established and so there are some other issues upstream we'll look at the mobile home park situation water overflowing from West badness system into this is not acceptable so will we have to deal with that and and see if we can figure out some way to read it or pipe an emergency outlet into the MnDOT system that will set a forum or a reasonable high water level so we will look at that I promise you and staff and myself will acquaint the rest of the board to this issue and once we identify these few other pieces of information that we need we'll get moving I want to promise you though that this isn't something happens overnight this is something that has to be we have to these heads of projects are not cheap so money will have to be obtained plans will have to be completed MnDOT has to be involved which who knows how that will go but we'll have to deal with that well the Canada's help would obviously be appreciated so I mean if there's more comments that's fine that I just want to let you know that you are being heard and we will take some action on this issue I think we've been on the lake the shortest amount of time so I'll try to be the briefest my name is Burt Johnson I live with my lovely wife almost our one-year anniversary at 205 Twin Lake Trail and we've lost about 30 lineal feet of our yard so we started with a 3/4 acre lot in about August of last year we have about maybe a half acre lot at this point and you know I attended the October meeting because we care we cut down 15 huge cottonwood trees along the lake because they were dead and we care about the the long-term this is their forever home here in little Canada and we cut those trees down the water piles were on dry land they're not all under water and we can't really do a whole lot about it we've had we've worked with Bill from from the city appreciate his offer to help with with that we've told other residents about it you know the firt when we went to the meeting in October the and and I and I appreciate what the gentleman from the watershed just said the presentation that we heard from Bari engineering in the watershed in October said that our lake Twin Lake has risen commensurate with other lakes in the area based on rainfall that isn't true now we're hearing something a little different which there are two pieces that weren't involved in the watershed presentation I think we should highlight here first there's their sewer caps on the southeast side there's sewer lines that run through there that are now completely submerged they're under about five feet of water from what I understand those need to be looked at I think it's under the jurisdiction of the city you should know about it hopefully already do it was not included in the watershed presentation secondly the the MnDOT ditch that mr. Fred Allen brought up earlier whether it was MnDOT that filled it or somebody else that filled it the ditch that ran through the through the Jarvis system that ditch was filled in at some point that was not part of the watershed presentation that might very well be part of our solution but starting in October then continuing up until this date we have not heard solutions we're out of time for we're going to take studies and we're going to look at the over a period of years we're gonna collect more data we've run out of time this is an emergency and it's emergency now we need to do something about it now we need help from the city we need help from the watershed district consistant help appreciate the idea that mr. fretilin brought up earlier I think we should work together with everybody around the lake just my own opinion we're gonna need your help we're gonna need your help to make sure those sewers don't back up into our lake and destroy our lake and our property values we've lost property value that's losing tax base we've lost people here have lost a lot of memories and and structures that have fallen into the lake and we have we have a Public Works problem we have a tax base problem we have a potential environmental problem and we have we have to act now we can't delay thank you [Applause] my name is Ahmed Chandra and I just wanted to put a face to the number of 3331 Twin Lake Court that's our house we built it in 2001 we moved in so we've been on the lake for over 18 years and I just wanted to echo the need for action there's an urgency I know we can meet here and then we'll all go home but we have to go on home to to a place where I can see the water level just approaching and it seems as if you know nothing is being done I know that and I appreciate everyone coming out here and everyone paying attention to this issue but the time for action is now and collecting data and it's just not going to cut it you know the water level you know what my house and that's the threshold of my house my the yard is disappearing day by day and to hear that there's water gushing in even when it's not pouring rain it's very disheartening and to know that even without rain it's it's going to continue to disappear in the watershed that's that's draining into into that whole drainage area is is is is really sad to see and I think that we all were we're all here intelligent hard-working well-meaning people that we can we can do something about the sooner or later because I think we just have a few weeks left is is all and to just quote that 877 overflow is is is kind of a little bit of a inaction excuse for inaction I think we need to not wait for it to get to that point it can be done I mean we can do a lot of things if we work together I don't think our requests are unreasonable this has been going on for four years I understand the water low at the rainfall level but we can we can put a man on the moon you know we can go to Mars and so on so we can take care of this this is literally in our own backyard mine literally and yours figuratively [Applause] hi i'm cherylin claire summer I live at 285 Twin Lake Trail been there about 30 years this has impacted our yard greatly we have we we had two weddings in our yard in the last two years I couldn't have a garden party right now in our yard it's so bad we lost apple trees are our neighbors lost huge cottonwoods I I know other people have as well but what I hear now is that the water from other areas from other basically other watersheds are slipping over into our our watershed into Twin Lake so my question is I don't think there's a map there's anyone here from phenom oh why aren't they here why aren't they doing anything to address the issue that that on the sun the south side of east Vadnais there's still water coming in it might not be the main problem but can't we do something to get rid of that culvert it certainly has created a problem for the neighbor on the north side of the they've got a big giant pond now I mean and what can be done in terms of thus in the roads the stormwater used to go down in our yard that we live on the end of the cul-de-sac it used to go into like an area that had cattails and that sort of thing which would would I'm talking about water quality now it would reduce the sediment it would hold it and now the water goes directly right into the lake it's underwater you can't even see it anymore if you were tried if you're in a boat so that's something that needs to be taken care of and I agree time is of the essence from the time I took pictures like a week and a half ago and I took pictures today you're welcome - oh I'd show them - if you're going to look at them but the water has come up it does in that short period of time so there's people that this is their house these are our properties that we've lived here a long time we have to do something and we can't wait can't wait another day really [Applause] my name is bill bond cows can live at - 1/7 Twin Lake Trail and I don't know anything about engineering but we need some action now why can't we Skype some pumps there's an away there's an existing emergency flow why can't we start getting water into that at least that's a start while all the other studies are done and that ditching work is done at least we can start that now Thanks ok well thank you everyone I mean if this was appreciated we've got the watershed here the city has heard this I guess work begins well work has been ongoing and work continues and I'm glad cliff was here and added some additional statements to it so again it needs to go to the watershed to the state MnDOT and and it's going to be up to to us in the watershed to coordinate all of that you know issues that maybe it hasn't been made in some of Tina's responses related to our sanitary sewer system and met councils system I think probably what's that better than I remember the council we have a sanitary sewer line that runs along the south edge of twin lake kind of runs parallel with the Met Council line that also runs through there we actually tie into that line along that stretch so our line is a 12 inch concrete pipe and the Met Council line I've read in the measurement but it's at least 40 inches and so the water is certainly getting in there the Met Council did go to their manhole on Friday and they put plugs in the holes that are in the manhole cover but it would take a complete blockage of one of those pipes for that sewage to start to back up and then it would take us not knowing about it right away and the question is would it reach a house first or would would it starts filling in the lake first either way it's bad situation but you know the Met Council line the 41 inch lines I can't remember hearing of any blockages and most of our blockages are on 8-inch lines not on 12-inch lines but we will definitely access hopefully we have a manhole that we can access and take a look at that system and on occasion to make sure that it's uh that it's still clear so ultimately the main impact is is inflow and infiltration we did speak we can have to go you know it's it's not other than the possibility of a backup which is a fairly remote possibility as long as we're maintaining inspection is there would be a very remote possibility the main impact is flowing gravity lies down into the system and the plants the Met Council treatment plants are treating more more inflow and infiltration of stormwater than they need to so that's and it's actually been done with this ours are ours is a sealed current sealed lid met councils has been sealed with additional measures so it should have reduced or eliminated most of the inflow other than groundwater can flow into any sort of normal cracks you know anything like that that I'd be in money in the system anything else again Tina I don't know if you have any final comments so then we'll be contacting you and back yeah we'll be in touch with all the residents and the city and like cliff mentioned we have a board meeting coming up and so we'll make sure we give them an update about this meeting and cliff can address the future plans for the lake with the board so well we'll be in touch yeah and I guess likely with that there may be longer term plans but if there are shorter term notes that that will help you that's what we do so it will be okay top priority all right thank you thank you thank you thank all of you preciate your your input hopefully we can get this moving toward solutions okay again thank you everyone