all right uh we're going to call the Scott County wo Watershed Planning Commission February 24th 25 meeting to order uh first order business uh is the approval of the agenda motion go ahead go ahead Brian Clayton Wagner here I'll move to approve we have a motion need a second Jay Fredericks I second it thank you Commissioners I will do rooll commissioner Schmidt I commissioner Phillips I commissioner Wagner I and commissioner Fredericks oh we had him there commissioner Fredericks did I get you oh there you are sorry my audio might have bounced out there for just a second thank you Commissioners all right I think next on the um agenda was for the Commissioners to have some time to for an intro and get to know each other a little bit um I guess I'll start off my name is Brian Schmidt and um I've been on the commission I'm I'm not even sure but it's been it's got to be8 n years something like that maybe Ryan knows right off but anyway it's been I've been on a while I've um um I just uh personal history for my work I've been working for Lester Building Systems uh for 37 years I've been on the town board which is a major interest uh for me and I've been on the town board in Blakeley Township uh since 1995 so 30 years coming up and as far as the commission I got interested in that because nobody had been representing so like I say I got on that many years ago and uh I've been on ever since so I guess next I can go sure all right Clayton Wagner I am pretty new this is only my second meeting uh I grew up in bplan and now I out live out in Webster Minnesota um so I'm I'm part of the Watershed uh got involved because natural resources and conservation is an interest to me an area of interest to me and making sure it is uh our natural resources are protected and it is Equitable for those who use it and those who need it so um I'm a family medicine physician through Health Partners practicing all around the Twin Cities for Urgent Care and then my home Clinic is in Apple Valley um yeah have a wife and three kids so that's me thanks Clayton uh anybody or whoever's next wants to speak up go ahead I can go so um my name is Jay Fredericks um this is also my second meeting um I'm relatively new to Scott County we moved here about a year and a half ago we spent about 26 years in Lakeville uh before that um I spent most of my career in it um worked for Northwest and then Delta and uh then Caesar's entertainment work recently for an ed tech company at the uh end of the year I kind of decided to semi-retire I'm still doing some IT consulting and was just looking for a way to get involved in um something that I haven't had time to do in my past with my career obligations and uh followed an ad in like a Scott County uh newspaper that said if you're interested and so I kind of submitted and after back and forth they asked me if I wanted to be on the Watershed representing Credit River which is where we live um I don't have any experience in the space but um uh I grew up in Colorado and have spent a lot of time in outdoors and things like that and so uh I thought it would be a good opportunity and uh hopefully I can uh do my job here and add some value along the way thank you thank you next perhaps commissioner [Music] Phillips oh hey everybody thanks I'm just joining from my telephone here picking my child up at the uh Bus St but yeah hi everyone I'm commissioner Phillips my name is Bill Phillips uh good to meet everybody especially um welcome to the new Commissioners um I'm relatively new as well started uh a year ago January think come in my second year now um but uh yeah so I live up in Savage I'm kind of the Northeast portion I'm a at large member um uh Northeast portion of the Watershed kind of right at the edge and know I'm at the just kind of Northern edge of it um uh my uh by trade I'm a I'm an septic inspector by trade Advanced septic inspector work for hennipen County I'm also a registered sanitarian um I inspect food beverage and lodging facilities I did actually used to work for the county Scott County Environmental Health um got to work with some of the great staff we work with um who are on the um on the board here um especially the staff and I used to be on a lot of the same construction sites uh the control inspections that they're on I were kind of we on the same sites uh um so I'm familiar with that aspect of the of the job and um and yeah still currently working for hennipen County as an inspector so thanks and uh welcome to all the new people and I believe commissioner Barton has also joined us by phone perhaps I was communicating with him in email he's having some some connection problems so well while we give commissioner Barton a couple minutes um why don't we uh give our other guests uh an opportunity to introduce themselves we have some other guests that are from some of our partner agencies and and County staff that are here with us uh on a pretty regular basis um I'll I'll start with Melissa Hansen from Spring Lake Township Melissa you just want to kind of introduce everybody let every know kind of what you do and um kind of what your interests are or or the Township's interests in in the WPC and and how you can uh how we can help you out um Melissa Hansen I'm the clerk for Spring Lake Township Lisa Quinn is our supervisor that's generally at these meetings unfortunately she was busy tonight so she asked me to step in um our concern and how we work together is around different water issues for the township um because the county is Our Land Authority um we look to them for much of the planning and uh work that's done in the township and we're most appreciative for that so thank you all for the that you do thanks Melissa um manager Looney um manager Looney joins us is from our partner agency at the PRI Lake Spring Lake Wata District um manager Looney would you be willing to kind introduce yourself and give us a few words sure um I've been on the Watershed District now six years and starting my 7th and um we're we appoint some of our managers to be lisons to our other partners in the county and I'm uh been appointed to be on the Scott W Mo planning Watershed District here so we're glad to to attend your meetings and see what's going on in the other parts of the county thank you manager Looney uh and then we have uh commissioner Brennan here uh commissioner Brennan obviously as you all know is one of our Scott County Commissioners and we're fortunate enough to have one of our commissioners uh Lia on to the the WPC so commissioner brenon if you'd be willing to introduce yourself and maybe say a few words to the Commissioners yeah thank you very much it's um great to meet everybody um I was here last month but I was on the phone so I wasn't actually visible so um I um had asked to be on the WPC I'm also the liaison to uh the PRI Lake Spring Lake Watershed district and the lower Minnesota River Watershed District um so it's felt like it was a good match to have a good overall Watershed um view of things when I when I uh have to have to look at them um let's see uh this week I'll be at in St Paul um I think there's three topics that I'll be um addressing with our legislators and that's one is solid waste and and the impact of solid waste on Scott County and the region um and um also the mentor choices for home health and human services and um the fact that in Health and Human Services we have a very Antiquated um Software System um I think we have portions of it that's from 1985 and they're still working on a green screen so um hoping to get that changed um because it takes a lot of time for our staff to work through that and it takes a lot of staff to actually work through it also so um that's what I'm doing and um it's great to meet everybody and I look forward to um joining in monthly thank you commissioner Brennan uh it looks like commissioner Barton you were able to um resolve the trials and tribulations of technology and we really appreciate that would you be willing to introduce yourself and say a few words and maybe what your interests are yes hi everyone uh so this is my yeah just second meeting I think um so I'm very excited to be on the planning watare Planning Commission uh personally I grew up in Scott County on the very Southern border um and my family had a farm there we still have a farm there so uh we have Barton pumpkins is kind of my second job after my full full-time one and so very involved in that so I kind of have grew up and come from a farming background and that perspective professionally I worked in Scott County in Shaka for a long time doing landscaping so construction and Landscaping uh went to school at the University of Minnesota for urban planning landscape design and then I've worked at a watershed District minihaha Creek Watershed District doing erosion siment control inspections and working in their regulatory department and then working on Grant programs and then for the last 10 11 years I've been with the Dakota County Soil and Water Conservation District working on Urban conservation programs and projects and then also serving as the administrator for another Watershed the water Lower Mississippi River watershed management organization so multiple kind of touch points in the Water Resources world I just went through my first Watershed Plan update process we finished at the beginning of 2024 for the Lower Mississippi River wmo so I'm familiar with that process and um all the different in the Water World in the Metro here so very happy to be here to participate wonderful thank you commissioner uh Kate would you willing to just introduce yourself and tell everybody what you do and why you're here certainly taking my camera on so I can show them hi I'm Kate salic I'm the environmental services manager I get to work with the great staff uh Vanessa and Melissa and Ryan um and all the great work that they do I get to keep um sort of a a dayto day or month look at that um I've been wiscat County for 20 years and Bill Phillips and I uh worked together a long time ago on septic so um I we're from familiar with each other's background and I am a resident here in the city of Shak so another interest in what's going on here at the W all that impacts me here as a um account resident so um new Commissioners thank you very much for your time we really appreciate that um and Vanessa I'll turn it back to you thanks Kate um oftentimes if uh myself Melissa or Ryan are unavailable you'll see Kate uh stepping in so she's a great resource she's often uh hiding out there in the background but she's actually a very important role and speaking of very important roles and last but definitely not least is our wonderful partner Troy at the S swcd uh I know Troy obviously were here the last meeting we' been at several meetings and we'll be at all the meetings of which we are very grateful but could you maybe introduce yourself and let all the Commissioners know a little bit about who you are and what the S swcd does sure be happy to thank you um and good afternoon uh commissioners so uh I'm Troy with the Scott St water uh Conservation District um I'm the district director so we have a staff of of 13 currently here and we get to provide a host of services to Vanessa and her group at the W Mo as well as a multiple County departments as well uh there's a couple different program areas that we're involved with uh the the most um prominent of those is the technical assistance and cost share program so I'd call that our bread and but and we we Implement that countywide for all the watersheds uh but the obviously the biggest line share is with the Scott wo we'll work with anywhere from um maybe 175 to 200 land owners a year in the wmo and put in anywhere from 50 to 70 projects um we like to report on them as frequently as we can so we include that project information in your monthly packets as well as you know all the um some of the important metrics that we have tracked um on a regular basis in in some of the other program areas in addition to technical setet in cost share we help implement the uh countywide clean water education program we'll do uh monitoring if there's a significant monitoring project out there we'll assist with that a lot of the field and data collection um we'll do inventory assistance uh doing resource inventory and assessments um as the wo needs them and also help with a little bit of planning so supporting for example the uh development of the the update of to the watershed management plan will provide support in whatever way we can so that's kind of how our involvement is thank you so much tro and thank you Commissioners uh with that uh Mr chair and Commissioners if you're okay I will roll into my admin administrator update sounds good please proed yes thank you thank you m chair uh so as uh commissioner Brennan noted uh it's kind of a large legislative session right now a lot going on uh one of the other hot button items which we are tracking here in Water Resources um that has a specific relevance to the work that we do here at the county in the wo is the governor uh proposal to reduce the aquatic invasive species funding by 50% um that's a bit unfortunate for us and it's quite concerning from our perspective because our aquatic invasive species Aid that were allocated to each year by the state uh is the only funding source that we have for our aquatic invasive species program um and there is no other there are no other really grants or other funding sources other than local funding taxes uh to to pay for this type of work so on average we receive uh roughly 75 to $100,000 each year and we spend $100,000 each year um you know we try to uh spend what we take in um sometimes we spend a little bit more uh but that work covers uh for example all of our boat inspections across the county uh and each year we have prevented aquatic invas species from entering um a lot of our lakes and also from leaving some of our Lakes it also covers rapid response uh which we have implemented as well so if somebody believes they may have identified an invasive species in one of our Lakes the rapid response funding pays to have some experts go out there and see if we can contain it if you can contain it and eradicate it uh quickly you have a much better chance of removing it from that Lake before it spreads for the entire like if we had to wait for like State funding or something like that honestly it would be too late so unfortunately aquatic invasor species Aid is about uh it's only about a $10 million program so cutting in half wouldn't really balance the state budget uh but it does have a lot of impact here at the County uh we pass a lot of that funding directly to uh our local Partners like the par spr Lake Watershed district and cities that Implement themselves and then we just plug the gaps uh through the county uh so this funding that is allocated only to counties and we're supposed to disseminate that to the Lakes as needed so that is the one other hot button item um we are hoping it does not get approved as is we are hoping it does not get reduced um and and really we'd like to just see that continue uh I think we'd be in kind of a tough spot here in Scot County if if we lost that funding as well as elsewhere in the state um in addition to that um again I I just wanted to thank all the Commissioners for being here realize this is kind of a new Commissioners but you all bring an amazing set of knowledge and experience and interests which is really what makes our diverse Watershed uh the best it can really be uh sometimes people don't quite understand what it is that water does but it's not really a pun that water connects us all uh Water Resources affects Health and Human Services uh it s our land and land use and development it it impacts our Parks um and ironically we uh our agriculture our Farmers our residents we we touch everybody one way shape or form uh it's part of what we love about the work and it's part of what makes the work so interesting but it also kind of makes it hard to kind of wrap your brain around well what all do they do well we do a lot of everything um and that also even includes groundwater so um it takes a little bit to get to know the work that we do and where we focus but uh just know that the work you do has a lot of relevant direct impact uh here right in Scott County so thank you all for being here we really appreciate it uh with that I can stand for any questions okay thank you Vanessa any questions uh for Vanessa under report so are are we going this is Jay Frederick are we going to like for example part of the materials for this um meeting was the final report on the um invasive species um thing are we going to talk about that in more detail in a bit or are we is this a time to bring up some comments on that oh excellent question Mr Fredericks um Melissa will actually do the the presentation of the report and then she will answer any questions you have and um that's really the best time to do that discussion is during that uh business item okay because I'll Reserve I'll reserve a point to make then kind of tying together that with the comment you made about the proposal from Governor walls absolutely appreciate it thank you any other questions for Vanessa okay hearing none uh excuse me next order would be Scott County swcd report from Troy yes thank you Mr chair so I'll I'll do a high level recap of the activities report found in your packet for February the first chart you see is active service request so the Blue Line indicates all the active service requests um these are land owners within the W Mo of the cont conted us with interest in uh doing a project or or addressing a a Water Resource concern on their property the green bar next to it indicates the portion of the blue that are actually projects so not everybody who contacts the office is going to result in a project on the ground in many cases we simply provide technical assistance and they're able to address an issue on their own uh but the green ones would represent the projects that we actually involved with and utilize the technical assistance and cost share program funding to implement so you can see right now we're at a relatively low uh point in the in the series of graph or or months you see for the past 13 months there um which just tells us that we got to start knocking on doors sending out and targeting land owners uh reaching out to um you know to let everybody know out there in areas that we want to work that we have grand funds and and have projects that we might be interested in promoting and uh funding so that's what we're doing now and we typically do that this time of year is to do a pretty significant Outreach effort as well that Troy this is Jay Frederick so a question I have is is there additional data available that would um describe the dispensation of of those um requests meaning that you know for each of those bars is there something that says you know well which ones are you know rejected or sent back for more information or which ones do become projects you know again I I see the data but I'm not sure exactly what story it's telling me um it's telling me that we have more requests than projects assuming that there's some sort of onetoone Correspondence there but it doesn't really talk to you know what's you know what's the story behind the gap between those two numbers do you have that information yeah um we can certainly put that that data together there's a as you're sort of alluding too there's a ton of data Behind These numbers this is just a very high level representation that really talks about volume on a month-to-month basis but yeah we can disaggregate this data and drill down to whatever type of metric you wouldd like that is more meaningful for you I would probably want to work with Vanessa and Ryan to figure out exactly what that data is and we could then present that it seems to me and again I don't want to be out of school it's my second meeting but um I'm just trying to apply my sensibilities here um it it seems to me that you would want to know um you know what what happens to these requests that come in and and again I don't know what the various buckets are obviously one bucket is it gets you know transitioned into a project but I don't know what happens to the others and I don't know whether there's ones that are you know project worthy but either we don't have the time or the money and so they're then out there kind of in some holding you know pin until they are able to be um addressed um some of them as you say may be um um handled through other um ways it just seems like that would be you know I I don't know if there's a percentage breakdown but it just seems like there would be some more informative information that would allow that chart to maybe come alive a little bit more other than just a pure counting yep absolutely y we we do have data behind that and can probably get something that you're looking for be happy to do that okay great thank you y no great question Mr chair commissioner Fredericks uh one other thing to kind of note here just as a FYI uh when we put together our annual report we will have a breakdown uh graph that basically shows the different uh areas that these projects fall within so you've got your your soil Health your traditional uh erosion and so forth Urban uh all the various different categories so um like Trey said there is more data behind all this but just as a heads up too that when we do share you share with you the annual report there will be some more details that that um are shared too with with that data and more of a breakdown of project by project where did they all fall within different categories um so just kind of as a heads up and that's usually the like April time frame when you'll see that at one of these meetings it's it's due it's a state required uh annual report so the deadline is actually the end of April so we'll usually have it for you at the April or May meeting depending upon the workload that week don't again don't get me wrong I don't want to go nuts I don't want to get overly granular where we're counting like onesies Tuesdays but maybe let's start obviously let's start with the data that you have certainly before you would go out and try to you know capture new data but just maybe we can talk through how to make this picture a little more meaningful I mean I went through the last year or so of reports I know it's something that gets reported monthly and that's great but it's like okay you know so what I mean you know what's it what's it actually saying no those are great questions and and uh commissioner Frederick this is your report so if there's things that we can incorporate and do differently I'm all in favor of working with uh the staff and and coming up with something that is is not just data but is information and and that's what you want to be able to um to see and we can certainly do that so be happy to so in keeping with that that the next two are graphs that kind of drill down two specific areas of of work uh the specif a subset of those the of the chart you see above the green um Are soil health and cover crop projects and this uh graph with the brown Hues on it is a specific metric talking about Acres of soil Health practices that that we've enabled countywide and um so you can see that our our efforts have been paying off as we f Focus this as a priority area and that's being reflected in some of the results that we're seeing in numbers um similarly equipment rental program uh we have equipment uh that we actually rent out to to producers to be able to do certain types of conservation uh productive production techniques uh no tail uh specifically uh and doing seating of perennial cover and various types of projects like that and this is an indication of how many acres our equipment it's being used on uh from year to year and you can see from in 24 we had actually a record year uh we had almost 3,000 Acres covered with uh our various pieces of equipment and and at some point if there's interest we can show you more detail maybe do a presentation on what that equipment looks like what it does and and how we use it so we can drill down on that as well cost share funds is just a snapshot of our current sorry sorry this is Jay again and again this is interesting but I guess I would want to understand the so what so again it's a bar chart it shows you know that you have equipment you have the coverage that is maybe going up slightly year over-year but how does how does that tie back to something that is Meaningful you know what does it you know what does it do what does it save you know um what does it you know help right otherwise it's just kind of data but it doesn't really say anything and so again I would encourage just in general from my perspective you know coming from a corporate environment is it's kind of a limited value if it doesn't tie back to the so what and so I would just encourage that absolutely commissioner Barton you know I would say when I I look at that graph there's there's definitely a difference you know the the first one you're talking about Jay where it's basically one year month to month that kind of just gives me a sense of the the annual es and flows of interest that the S swcd is dealing with and you know increased interest it would be interesting to see those active requests for assistance in projects similar to how you have the other two charts over the last six seven eight years that's a different set of data in you know how much are people coming more to the s swcd for assistance than they were five years ago or less and is that resulting in more in general or less projects year-over-year one way that I think about this is I don't know like maybe there's a comparable ways like water quality monitoring data it's like well we we take samples throughout the whole year and we have less samples or more samples but then really we're looking at just that that tells us something but another way to look at it is year-over-year over the last 10 years what is the trend and so you know maybe that's kind of where our wersh Planning Commission board heads are is looking at those long-term trends and so back to that one like the soil Health cover crop practices I can pull out of there you know there's definitely a trend in you know we've gone from I don't know 12300 um cover crop soil Health practices in acres and now we're you know getting close to doubling that over six years so nearly double the Acres of cup crops you know implemented annually on Scott County Soil so that's that tells a lot the amount of residue management at least being reported to the swcd is higher you know maybe some people were still doing it so it's interesting and getting out what you're saying Jay is like how do we tease out that huge increase in residue management 2024 is that are we better reporting or recording data or was there actually is there a reason why there's a huge increase in residue management and maybe this is something you talked about last year when that kind of came out but also nutrient management numbers have really gone up so what does that attribute to and maybe you know there's there's additional Staffing that has been and funding that has been provided by the state for soil health so we are we attributing those things you know to to correlate those together um and then the cedar numbers yeah that's again just kind of looking over long terms so that's at least how I'm um interpreting this data but there's certainly other ways that you could slice and dice it to get um more information out of it that's right and and then again the part that I'm also saying is so like that cover crop so great it's double I assume double is good but I don't know what it actually means so you know is it saving you know x amount of erosion is it you know why is doubling good other than it's just twice you know again it's maybe it's implicit to everyone it's not necessarily implicit to me as to why doubling I take it at faith that it's good but why is it good and can we explain that somehow in a way that is consumable Mr chair commissioner uh projects it's a great question and um and maybe we need to do a little bit more background too uh on those items in particular just I won't get into heavy details of this but like soil Health um the initiative there was a big push in our current plan and so the idea of that that graph is is meant to kind of show how are we doing with that metric with putting additional resources in um focus ing more on that and that's also the nutrient and residue management is more of a heavy emphasis on those and that that graph is intended to kind of show the more effort being put into it um what are the results and and the results are that we're seeing an increase in the number of acres for those and so I think we could probably give more background to and that might help with the context of of some of these as well if you think that would be um beneficial yeah and again like I'm not trying to blow anything up I'm just coming in cold trying to consume it and to you know understand what it means again if it means something to everyone else and I missed the context point three meetings ago I'm good I'll catch up and then we don't need to worry about it I'm gonna jump in here uh this is a great conversation um Mr chair and Commissioners H here's what we can do and and this comes from many different perspectives but you know like you said fresh eyes new eyes different perspectives and this is exactly what we want to hear these are the things we want to hear about um so as Troy mentioned the purpose of this uh report is is to provide an update on our programs here at the wo that the S swcd is implementing for us and then also to share things that we have in common through our partnership that are being implemented however the the piece that's probably missing is again we're starting to tease this out is how does this tie into what we're supposed to be doing how does this tie into our goals how does this tie into what we're uh We've promised to achieve so I think what we can definitely do is sit down and kind of go through the report and and actually insert those connections as to how this connects to our plan how this connects to our goals how this helps us achieve what we committed to do um and that probably is one place to start that can make it um more consumable and more relatable um and a little bit more action based rather than just datab based so we'll definitely do that yep and I agree it's um I look forward to working on that at the end of the day we want this information to be useful and helpful for your purposes not just to report numbers um we get to certain places where we are because of past interests or questions I mean the whole addition of the soal health coverop practi is because there was interest in it so so that satisfied that but we're not going to sit still and and and get complacent about it we want to make sure that this data is Meaningful and and I look forward to working with staff to help that um being as lightening and enlightening as possible and we do have the data so we shouldn't have a problem doing it it's just more of knowing EX exactly how to present it so let's uh keep going Ryan uh the cost share funds are just a snapshot of what's available within the Scott wo the award amount is total active rewards so these are grants that are in play not expired um and then the encumbered amount show how much of that we've we've already dedicated or committed to projects and of course the balance uh so the next item is clean water just reporting some high level uh activities associated with the Clean Water education program there's about a dozen Partners to the education program the Scott W MO is a Lion Share they contributed over half of the total funding for the program um and it was really initiated by the wo um for a countywide effort um right now uh Shelby Roberts Who U manages the program she's our education specialist she's putting together the annual report so you should have a copy of that in the very near future as well as a copy of the 2025 work plan and similarly if the report isn't providing the data you find it most useful then we can uh certainly address that as well um we'll skip down the next section is water quality groundwater rainfall monitoring so as you can see uh no big surprise we don't have any activity this time of year with respect to any monitoring uh the groundwater obser ation well is a countywide uh um measurement program we have about a dozen and a half Wells scattered throughout the county that we monitor on a quarterly basis uh that we report that out just basically tracking groundwater elevations at different aquifers within within the county so we didn't take any readings this past month uh but we'll every quarter like I say so four times a year and we'll report that out and on occasion uh I've we've had Commissioners request well what's happening with our groundwater so we do do a maybe extra report in your packet once or twice a year to show what the trends have been for the year and then for the past 10 years so you can get that as well precipitation monitoring that's just kind of an FYI to kind of see how we're tracking in the year we have uh we have about a dozen sites around the county uh where we have volunteer monitors that that report rainfall and we have one here at this Jordan field office and so that's the light um or the dark number or dark chart or bar that you see that's the average and then the lighter blue shows kind of what we actually recorded for the year so you can see where oh sorry hey Troy uh Clayton Wagner here I have a question if if that's okay um with regard to the precipitation monitoring do you work in conjunction so you you mentioned it was all volunteers and whatnot do you work in collaboration with other uh entities within the county like um mosquito control district and whatnot to I guess prevent Silo station and things like that or we have our own yes commissioner Wagner what um we do is this is uh with the state climatology office so we collect the data for well it's actually with the DNR but that goes into a state database and that's used by multiple um just about anybody can use that data so it could be mosquito control it uh the data does feed uh long-term trends which help establish atlases or guides that are used for engineering purposes I mean there's a whole host of things but it's part of a Statewide initiative um and I I don't really know the full extent of how that data is all used but it's it's definitely available and used for multiple purposes okay got it question yeah that answers the question I was just I was clarifying if we weren't uh duplicating the task of measuring um measuring precipitation so that yeah that clarifies it thank you yeah you're welcome I oh I was jump in we do really hate duplication so if you ever find duplication we'll definitely sus it out and get it sorted out so it's a great question to ask we do receive a grant from the DNR every year that helps pay for some of the effort um but again it it's part of a Statewide program uh managed by the DNR Construction rosion Control this kind of a snapshot again if you want more data on what this means but essentially it's just showing uh month to month how many inspections we're doing for the county on construction sites uh we're checking for erosion control measures and ensuring their compliant with the uh County ordinances that's the blue bars and then the purple line just kind of a graph to show the number of new plan reviews that we completed and typically the number of plan reviews that we do one month might reveal themselves in more inspection six months from now uh but it's just kind of a one snapshot on on the amount of activity out there with respect to um building permits and again just one one metric subed assessment so you should see a draft report coming through pretty soon uh we we have completed the Raven stream one and two uh those were two phases and those reports are under final review um I've been meaning to get that out uh for a while now but we're pretty close on those and then when they are um uh released then and I'm sure that there'll be questions on them and maybe we can get in more detail at that time in terms of what what these are and what they mean and and how we use them uh but I believe Vanessa correct me if I'm wrong but they they would be used as part of your Watershed Plan update to help Target and prioritize uh down the road maybe all right I'll skip past the Wetland Conservation act um with buffer law so I'll just touch on that we we do inspections for compliance with the state buffer law we do a third of the county every year so every three years we we review um a certain area and uh this past year we did the Southwest area of the county what Southwest third if you will which covers pretty much all W MO area in that part of the County uh compliance is is very good but we have some situations where it's not significant but we're seeing some encroachment into buffers over time so one year they could be compliant and then we come back three years and they're five feet into the buffer just from gradually kind of encroaching into it and those are kind of the main issues we're dealing with now probably a dozen or so cases out there out of thousands of parcels maybe a dozen or so where the uh the minimum buffer width is less than what the state law requires and we just work with them one-on-one to try to get back into compliance excuse me finally I'll report on our native tree seed and plant sale program so so far or at least as of reporting uh we had 242 orders and sold over 12,000 trees um and then the final part of the report just uh tables out the number of new applications for the technical assistance and cier program that we received um the approvals and then the payments so you can see we had one smaller project for cover crops 1,700 approved this past month and then did a little over $47,000 in payments and U I think that'll conclude my report Mr chair and if there's any questions I'll stand by thank you TR appreciate it I had a I had a question um so on this that you're going through right now can you go back up to the golf course one so can you go can you go down just a little bit to the data at the bottom so this I think this is I I mean it's interesting to me on the you know kind of the before and after uh again this to me ties to the so what of the project is okay well this is what we accomplished we were able to reduce the soil erosion etc etc the one thing that I guess my question is is if I understand the T the data table the right it's kind of getting to like a unit cost per unit of improvement um if I understand it correctly and I guess a question would be is there some you know goal for that because if you look at this versus the next two projects these ended up costing about five times as much per unit of improvement so again is that well I guess is it no able in advance and is that something that we use as a criteria to decide on projects because you know again know nothing about it but just consuming the data it would seem like this was a much less bang for the buck project than the other two yes and yes to both both your your questions so we routinely look at cost benefit we do a an assessment of each project before we decide if we want to fund them the cost benefit also dictates how approval happens if it doesn't meet certain thresholds established by the wo then we don't approve them we actually kick them off to you guys and you decide whether or not they're worth funding and that's based on a unit cost uh specifically for sediment so that's the metric and if it's above a certain threshold and we set that on an annual basis then then then that approval is more subject to scrutiny and you know more uh intense uh uh determination of it's worth funding in this particular one you see it's not particularly cost effective but you also see we did not use any wo funds on it we knew that this wasn't that cost of effective a project so you we used other sources of funding not wmo funding and that was specifically because of what you're looking at it was relatively High now just because it's high doesn't mean it's not a good project but it you know it determines the level of scrutiny and before we actually decide to go ahead with the project well sorry it it it also depends going all the way back to the first chart of what was left on the table in order to do this project so again if in those blue you know blue lines we left other projects on the table I would hope that it was because they were less efficient than these they would either be less efficient not not in these than this one right they could either be less efficient or maybe is this wasn't a project that was feasible like in some cases it's just not a costeffective solution um and we would we would basically um make that determination and and leave it at that others there's just not a project to be had from the start the landowner was just interested in how they could do something on their own so that's that's the technical assistance piece of it where it wasn't necessary they were looking for funding they were just looking for that technical help on what they could do uh but yeah those are all good questions and and kind of all all of them actually get go into play when we're actually making decisions about what projects we fund and which ones we won't I I will add uh commissioners and Troy that the one other component which Troy mentioned was that uh this one happened to be eligible for other funding sources which are generally other grants so it is also possible and does sometimes happen that another project is left on the table that may have been more cost effective because it was simply ineligible for that funding based upon location type of project etc etc so and uh we between us the s swc all of our partners we go after a lot of Grants um a lot of what we do is Grant funded uh but those grants have a lot of requirements tied to them and unfortunately they don't necessarily fund everything but sometimes uh it does occur where a lower cost benefit project is eligible where a High um higher cost benefit sorry uh project is eligible where a lower one is not so that's one other situation in which something like this might get funded over a lower cost higher benefit project just as a question the the funding source of cooperator is that then the submitter or is that somebody else corre that's the the land owner typically it's the land owner that's their share of it so in this case it was the golf course correct okay exactly go ahead Joe Barton commissioner Barton if I could add to um one thing that's important to remember with all these projects is that it's it's voluntary conservation so um you also have to weigh you know we we're using public funds responsibly for projects that we see value in within our Watershed but we can't force land owners to do these projects in most cases so there's an aspect of you know playing with the playing ball with the people that want to play with us right we we want to maintain positive relationships we want to be reactive and um responsive and provide services to people that come to us the wmo and the s swcd for service so you know when I look at that too I mean it's not as costeffective as other projects but that's a still a pretty cost effective stabilization and so you kind of just got a away um you know if we don't provide any funding and we say sorry it's not cost effective enough for us there might be nothing that happens and that bank just continues to ER road so it's weighing you know the the relative cost Effectiveness or benefits of a project against that project just not happening at all should we choose to not support it so there's a there's definitely a balance in a lot of other things that play and just yeah the fact the the term voluntary conservation I think is the biggest takeaway too here with the fact that we just um we're relying on willing land owners to participate with us to make these improvements great feedback um I guess but you know Joe because of your I think other background what is or isn't still cost effective if someone has zero contacts like me um that was part of my question is are there targets or you know here's a onear project versus a two star project versus a three star project you know I I don't know what those mean all I can do is look at the data and say well you know this one costs four or five times more than the other again it's kind of like what I said earlier you know on the surface that's bad but I don't have the context to know whether it's really bad or not bad you know may maybe the other ones were like dynamite unheard of um cost Effectiveness and this one is more typical I just don't have that context y but that's why it's a it's an Absolut great question um and that's why because it's getting that context uh which has made uh additionally more uh challenging and and fascinating for you because uh this happens to be a wmo program uh which as commissioner Barton mentioned is volunteer is voluntary uh and we this is not forced uh this is not ever used to have somebody meet a regulatory requirement because the wo itself is a non-regulated entity however when we take off our wmo hats and we put on our County hats uh because that's the same staff does both jobs uh the county itself does regulate and um you know so you kind of also got to like you know there's a lot to wrap your brain around when you're looking at the kind of of things that we show you um and is it you know for the wo is it for the county where is a supply so it's is a very good question and some really great conversation um it's very funny because you know my understanding this is all public record right absolutely so again if without going to a ton of extra work I think and again I have no idea if people read this or don't read this or you know I don't know but to the extent that we can make it to where it's not inside baseball and there's something that helps people know is this good bad you know whatever in an easy way I think that's a good thing it's a good thing for me because I know anything about it but again if people who want to read this and come to conclusions of whether the you know we're making good decisions or bad decisions or using the money wisely or not using the money wisely I think it's just a helpful thing to do to that point um Troy I really I like that you guys have like kind kind of Baseline metrics for cost Effectiveness for different project types maybe there's some kind of reference to that annual Baseline and where this project Falls in that's included standard for fact sheets I feel like that would kind of get at what Jay's asking about like is this yeah I mean it's it is only one metric you know so take it with a grain of salt but that would show where you're at in terms of cost effess Effectiveness compared to the Baseline so the same thing y I want to jump can you guys hear me yep okay I want to jump away from the cost efficacy just for a moment I want to I would like someone with engineering or Watershed background to explain to me a portion of this Photograph now that I have the I'm not driving and not just listening in um what was the thought process of removing that tree along the bank and putting rip wraps in I I just I like someone with more um more experience in that regard than me just explain it to me and we don't have to delve into it I just want to know TR do you want me to I can Mr Mr chair commissioner Wagner so in in um and I don't know the exact background of this particular project but um just from a general sense uh this this why that tree would be removed is the the bank itself is vertical um in the the before picture uh and with that it's just going to lead to instability uh along that bank and um I I don't know if it's outside of it's flood plane or not it's hard to tell um if there is sort of a a flood plane on that side or not but if there's not a flood plane it it's just going to keep going it'll just keep eroding and it'll lay that slope back so more than like that that tree in time is going to end up in the the cck and then the photo on the bottom the after what they're essentially doing is they're Expediting that process of erosion that's occurring to lay that slope back so they call it an angle of repose so you know nothing's really going to want to grow on a vertical slope so what they're you're trying to do is lay that slope back to an angle that stay a that that won't continually erode and lose soil there and in order to do that to actually lay a slope from vertical one: one to probably a 3: one you have to actually remove some of that material and with that that that tree would go um through that process and so the idea is basically creating a stable slope um and and kind of laying it back awesome that if that makes sense yeah it does thank you for um teaching me in that regard welcome counter intuitive so appreciate it I will add Ryan does an excellent job with a whiteboard as well so uh next time we get together if you want a visual he does excellent drawing he'll never admit to that but he actually does a very good job of it thank you r y okay any other questions for Troy if not next would be program updates from Ryan cheer Commissioners um so I've got um kind of some brief updates and then actually prepared a PowerPoint presentation of our paa Creek uh Ravine stabilization so hopefully that will elicit some more conversation get to see the project um and then eventually hopefully you get to actually see this project in person so um but first I'll start out with uh the updates and then we'll get into the PowerPoint so if you remember at the last meeting we talked about that week um was kind of a big week for us we're doing all our reporting for state grants and so happy to report that um all of our reports got in on time um so we've got a couple of them through the Watership based implementation funding uh We've also got some Shoreland uh grants we also work with the SE and water on some of the natural resources block grants that we get from the state those all got turned in on time as well and then we also have another Grant through EPA so um the ones I guess I was responsible for there's five of them and they all got in on time which um it's kind of a stressful week so I'm glad that's that's over and we're past it uh one of those grants was a final and so we just got word this morning that we have to go through a reconciliation with uh the Board of Water and Soil resources so that was for a stream Bank stabilization project that we constructed the last winter the previous one and so we will then work to comply with all the requirements of that submitting our staff time invoices all that information it it's actually all in their Reporting System already but um we'll put it in email form and uh get it sent off to them here within the next week or two say in uh layman's term that's basically called an audit yeah by the state of your project what it is yes thank you so and audits can be a little scary so um we'll see how it goes but we feel confident um with everything and um we'll report back once we hear from uh the state on how we did with it so uh next so our the nine elements Grant um is a a phased Grant and so if we complete all the phases it's actually a 16-year long Grant um and so phase one will conclude this August so we're kind of on the tail end of that Grant we're starting actually phase two the process of getting that executed and phase two was intended to pay for this P Creek Ravine um as you're going to see in the PowerPoint the project is largely complete not fully but largely um and so we are in the process of working with the Minnesota Pollution Control agency and also Environmental Protection Agency on you know how do we kind of pivot um or do we have to Pivot you know could we still use some of these funds for that project or do we have to get creative and and think of um another way to use those funds and not to alarm you there are plenty of other opportunities to use them it was just sort of we plann for the last five years since we've known about this phase to time the the start of that Grant with this project and it didn't work out um and that that's life sometimes and so now um we'll work with npca and just kind of see where we go from here so this kind of give you a heads up on that um we are also in the process of submitting um this would be our third or actually our fourth round of wbf which stands for water based water shed based implementation funding and that's through Bowser the Board of Water and sore resources uh so we're in the process of submitting an application uh for the next round of those funds and then after the application process assuming it gets approved we will go through it's called a work plan approval where you actually outline all your activities and that's sort of the kickoff of that Grant once that gets approved then you execute your contract you can start work on the projects after that so um we're in the process of that uh as well and I guess I'll stop if there's any questions for that because the next step in this would be the um the PowerPoint so I'll stand for any questions on any of the uh the fund Grant stuff we've been working on all right well hopefully uh this is at least somewhat an exciting to share this is what I've been kind of doing for the last uh well to give you kind of a background on these larger scale projects this one we actually started working with the consultant in 2022 uh so it's it's kind of been a long process um what part of the delay was is we had two cips going at the same time and we didn't know the funds of which one would be funded by which Grant and so they're not always typically that long you know a two plus you know almost threeyear period but um this one did take a little bit of time um to give you even further background to understand why we chose this project is um we did a study in 2015 uh feasibility study and it was basically in a nutshell we were looking for the highest sediment contributors to Sand Creek and why you might ask why is this P Creek P Creek is a tributary to Sand Creek so it um it flows into Sand Creek and it was part of our scope the area that we wanted to uh look within so through water quality monitoring we know that middle Sand Creek Watershed uh which stretches from basically south of Jordan to north of new preg uh that that stretch of Sand Creek has 10 to 15 times the um total susp ended solids of any other Watershed um on Sand Creek so we know that that particular area is um contributing a lot of sediment U but we also knew that the corridor from Jordan to south of shaki like sver corn maze along 169 so from about sers to city of Jordan uh that area too is a bluff and that's where kind of P Creek runs and we knew that that was highly erosive from working with land owners in that area being on site looking at these Ravines so that was also part of the scope of this feasibility study fast forward to this project this was actually one of the highest uh sediment contributors that was identified in that study but being the the scale of what this is we knew it came with a a large price tag um and so it took a while to build up our own reserves and lining up um additional funding for this project to actually be able to implement it um this project the winning bid came in at 653,000 roughly uh for the project and so for us that's a fairly large project um it's one of our larger cips that we've uh done over the last you know 10 to 15 years so want to give you kind of some background of of the why why we're here why we did this project um why this particular Ravine stood out um so in that study they did what they did is they compared two years of liar data which would be your Contours and they compared the two years to be able to tell the difference so in that span of of those two years worth of lar data how much did it change there would be a void between those two because Contours in one year compared to 10 years down the road the the difference is really showing how much erosion is happening how much of that that land is sort of washing away and this particular site showed up as being one of the highest contributors that that liar data that we use showed was very actively eroding and that's why we ended up pursuing it so and I'll show you the actual numbers here in a minute of what we're looking at for reductions um but I'll just get into it and then just stop me um if you got questions about what uh what we're looking at and I'd be happy to explain so just briefly uh design touched on a little bit these are just some uh Snippets of the design uh from the actual plans that srf uh completed for us so they started in the winter of 2022 and they completed design of this past summer which then allowed us to go out to bid in the fall for the project um and basically uh to make it as simple as possible it's a lot of rock and it's a lot of fabric that went into um the uh stabilization of this particular Ravine so preconstruction some sight conditions so you can just kind of see um it is uh actively eroding Ravine with areas that um are stable uh you can kind of see as the trees are growing towards the channel there there are areas that are actually stable within this Ravine and then as you can see in the side photos there are areas that are very much unstable active sloughing um rotational failures um and and all the above with this Ravine and and so it was a good candidate to to use um these are actually the reduction numbers so it's getting close to 500 tons of sediment per year uh close to 500 lounds per year of phosphorus being um reduced by this project this one project um just some challenges of what we faced uh throughout construction of the project um it's a very weird site it's uh just under 2,000 ft long this stabilization and up at the head of the Ravine you have water and then in the middle part of this Ravine no water at all pure sand in the channel and at the very bottom you've got flowing water so very odd interesting not not normal I guess um and that poses challenges the the flowing water in particular at the bottom posed the most uh challenges and and why we wanted to work on this project in the winter is partly for that reason that some of those seeps actually froze over on the head of the Ravine that helped us um it always had flowing water the entire time uh during construction at the bottom um and never once had water in the middle so um other challenges uh top right you know just weather snow luckily we didn't have much of it uh you know did cause issues and Equipment slips and all that um when you're working on steeper slopes uh and then the bottom right photo is our access so the very first week they started to work they had you know equipment buried in some of this stuff before they sort of built themselves a road um and um I'll show you some pictures of their flow management they put in some pipes uh to be able to cross the Ravine in a few spots and once they got that kind of in place that that access road there was really no uh issues from that point on in terms of just uh access for equipment uh so here's the clearing grubbing um so obviously with this project we had to clear out some of the trees that were um within the construction limits kind of a neat operation one that I had not seen before um you this crew that came in it was Castle Rock was the sub for excuse me um clearing grubbing taking the trees out it can be a oneperson operation that excavator and chipper you see on the right hand side uh kind of neat they drive the excavator and then with a remote control within the cab of the excavator they have the chipper follow them so um kind of you know interesting and and I didn't know that technology sort of existed till they wrote on site using it and um that chipper is pretty serious it uh it can take care of some fairly large logs in a matter of second so um that's just showing them kind of chipping some logs in one of the staging areas middle photo just shows some of the cut logs or trees that are down and then this left-and U photos that they actually repurposed some of the logs to build a bridge over the channel and then you can kind of see this blue pipe that was the pipe that actually held uh allowed flow to continue to move through that area uh a lot of fabric encapsulated lifts so the brown material you see that's what the they call them FES lifts um they stand for fabric encapsulate lift U what it is is basically they they have this double wrapped blanket it's um a coconut and a straw um fiber blanket that they peel that back they put these wooden forms that you can see in the front of the structures um they put those down they wrap the fabric and then they fill that with uh black dirt something that's actually going to grow vegetation then they seed that down with Native vegetation and then we will come back with uh shrub plugs this spring to actually plant within those structures but each of these uh fabric encapsulated lift areas it typically had three rows some instances we were able to reduce some of those numbers based on just we didn't want to have you know a higher humped lift that has nothing on the back side of it so if the Ravine itself um was flat or um you know we couldn't tie into it very well could reduce them at times but generally speaking it was this three encapsulated lifts above all of our kind of rock structures Turf reinforced matting so there was an existing project on this Ravine that had failed previously it was a wooden crib wall and we wanted to address this this was a major concern of one of the land owners and so what a Turf reinforced mat is it's a really heavyduty plastic mat that gets laid down um they use these helical screws to basically go in and um anchor that matting to the slope and it's intended for these steeper slopes um where it's it's you know the design life of these is is quite long it's in the decades um where that material should not deteriorate it's not like a normal um blanket not like the straw blanket you see on top of it it's this is some heavy duty plastic and then they actually put the black dirt on top of it so you can kind of see the green is that that trm that black dirt on top is intended to once again have vegetation growing through that matting the long-term solution is vegetation to stabilize that slope um and that black dirt is obviously then intended for something to be able to grow through it um like with any of these projects um these aren't cookie cutter this isn't like a road or a structure so for instance this Turf reinforced matting I think we doubled the quantity that was on the plan um and that's just part of some of these projects is that uh we can certainly identify what we believe to be the right amount and you get out in the field and you start working on it and you just see that you need more of that that material than you originally thought and so contractor was great to work with they were flexible um and easy going going in instances like this where we needed to adjust here's another example of an adjustment so the rock ditch check so this is a tributary Ravine that actually flows into the main Channel you can see the rock there on the left is the plan quantity um and then you can see the kind of the survey tripod those yellow poles next to it you can see that's still in the Ravine and there's not rock that's going all the way across what that means is the plan Quant he showed that was the amount of rock the plan had the photo on the right actually shows what needed to go in so we basically doubled The Rock there to be able to capture all the flow if we left it as the photo on the left you'd have flow skirting around our Rock potentially causing erosion undermining what we did and so once again it's an example of you got to adjust on the fly with some of these projects to be able to actually fulfill the intent of what you're trying to accomplish out there and you know sometimes it means additional funds um in this case we were actually able to work out um you know deals with the contractor on reducing some of the other quantities like the lifts to be able to accommodate you know added Rock in this situation uh we're just going to get into some terms that are unique to this project um we could work with another consult consulting company uh similar project and they might just term something different this is uh what they uh termed a rock riffle um it's basically rock all throughout the channel and then it's got those FES lifts on the side the rock riffle has um a higher elevation of rock on the front end sort of acting as a check Dam so water flows down the channel hits that higher amount slows it down lets it build up accumulate sediment on the front end hopefully drops some of that and then flows over the rock into the rest of the structure at the very end of it there's a pool that once again there's Rock built up at the very end that water pools in front of it hopefully sediment drops and then it spills over the top of it so there was a few of these structures that they were that they built um here's a picture of what it looks like when it's done hard to see The Rock how I was describing as higher in the front low at the very end and then high at the the very very tail end of it but um just gives you an idea of you know magnitude of the project and what they were kind of doing uh these are log drops so these were an alternate that they added to the project they were I think roughly $40 $50,000 and we were able to construct them um the neat thing is is they actually salvaged all these logs from on site so not everything thing needed to get chipped um or the tree contractor actually took some of the logs on site and repurposed them as well um but this is basically a um kind of a v or a u shape where water hits these logs flows into the Rock um and then continues on down it's it's the intent of all these um uh structures that are placed in the middle of the channel just slow that velocity down as it's moving down the channel so they're all strategically placed um as we move down the channel of um of the Ravine uh heavy toil protection so just kind of showing an arrow view I was able to get up on top of the um embankment and just kind of take some photos looking down little on the left you can kind of see that log drop structure the U shape in front of the The Rock there and then also the photo on the right is showing kind of heavy and light toil protection and I'll show you um oh sorry it's showing the heavy toe protection for this one it has the lifts On Top of the Rock and then I'll show you what light til protection um is as well but once again it's just different terminology so instead of having a lift On Top of the Rock here there's just no lift it's just a um lesser scale I guess is how I'd phrase it for the stabilization method um that granular material was used throughout the project that um 3-in minus that you see down below our granite rock um that's basically just to kind of hold everything together act as a base for everything to kind of sit on some more parts of stabilization just thought they were kind of neat photos um looks a little I think it looks kind of um better from this aial kind of view I hope to get some drone photos from the contractor they flew it with a drone um out there as well so um once I get those I can share that with the group if they'd like as well um one unique thing we try to accommodate the land owners this is all voluntary and so if there's reasonable requests um that they have we're happy to help if it helps facilitate this project and this was one where the landowner asked if on one of these Rock stabilizations if he could actually have a Crossing so he could get access to um the other side of the Ravine uh on his property and so um we were able to accommodate that and uh this is his kind of ATV UTV Crossing across the uh the Ravine so just kind of want to show you that we are willing to work with these land owners and um we understand the what they're putting into this project we don't pay them for anything um so they're dedicating these easements that allow us to come out of here and just the the inconvenience that they they face during the the um construction of these and so something as simple as this is is something we serve certainly can work with them on these are just some CH logs we placed them at areas where there wasn't other stabilization that we felt as though um maybe could use some added protection um we got to go back and actually stake these down and I'll get into that on the last slide too uh restoration work so they're like I said they're they're largely done with the project there's still work to be done but um they're uh they've kind of got a lot of their blank blanket mulch perimeter control all that um kind of in place um and just kind of waiting for the next steps um which we need to add some Staples in some of the blanket areas um areas that got mulched that need blanket um not from a permitting standpoint but just from we'd like it to have blanket um they will put that in when conditions will allow they're going to do some touch-up work seating you got to imagine that when we get snow melt and rain fall events um we're going to have to do some amount of touchup work on on what they did we'll continue with our erosion control inspections which we required to do for our permit and then we're coming back with shrub plantings in the spring and summer um and then the contractor is on the hook for one year to ensure that both the native grass seed forbs that are planted and the shrubs are um still you know in adequate condition they're not they're not dead so so they'd have to replace them if that's the case so with that a lot of information um be happy to answer any questions thank you Ryan uh any questions for Ryan it's Jay a couple quick questions so understanding the scope changes when you get on the ground and things are maybe different than what we originally thought but is the underlying structure of this was it a fixed bid contract was it a tnm contract yeah Mr commissioner Fredericks um it is so the way we've got it kind of structured is it's an itemized contract that is awarded to the lowest responsible bidder so um Vite was the lowest bid and the responsible part of their bid is that they you know provide us their insurance they meet all the in our bid packet we outline all it's like 300 Pages we outline all these various things that they have to comply with and so once we determine that they've they can comply with all of those that's what leads to the being responsible um and then um yes it's an itemized bid but um you we can work with the contractor like for instance Rock went over uh fabric went under a little bit and so we can work with the contractor on on on ensuring that it's fair both ways fix bid with a change order process attached to it yeah you can do yep so you you could if we deviated you know from the quantities there is a process in place for doing change orders yes we didn't do any for these as of now um but you can and there's a process that we have outlined for doing that and they did the engineering and the construction or was the engineering done separate so the engineering was completed by srf Consulting um and we did a request for proposal for that so we had actually received two proposals to do the design work they also provide construction observation which means that they're on site when we request them to be out there to determine that the contractor is building things according to specs if we have questions um and so they were on site a fair amount we'd schedule meetings for them to be out there during different phases so the important things were when they first did their first rock riffle we got the consultant out there let's make sure they know how to do a rock riffle right so then the next one we all are on the same page of that's how you build this rock riffle same thing with all the other structures Rock ditch check Rock Cross V log drop all those we would make sure that the Engineers are on site during that process so we all agree it's being built according to plans and then the actual construction itself is a separate process from the design work so it's a that's where we put together basically like a few hundred page packet of all the things permit design um you know if there's if it's a federal or a state Grant what are the requirements of those and so you have to meet wage rates you know the the employees need to be paid um and compensated a certain threshold um to meet that prevailing wage and so and we have to verify that public B type stuff yes y so and then I a last question I guess is do the engineering firm Andor the the contractor do they have any uh accountability for the outcome meaning that you know I I don't know what you know you started with what the current um situation was with I can't remember 400 500 um um tons of uh uh sediment per year um and phosphorous and by the way quick side note do do I because there always on the ones I've seen so far there seems to be almost like a direct ratio of like one pound of phosphorus per ton is that kind of the general rule do I get that pattern right yeah you you can use that as a general rule of thumb which in this case it's not it's not a coincidence that there the exact same number so yes in this case it was a one: one ratio but is there like a was there like a stipulated desired outcome that we reduce it from you know 400 and whatever to 50 or something like that and then if there is do they have some skin in that game or is it just they did their work and it is whatever it is so yeah there's um great question so yes the the actual erosion rates were in the 500 tons and 500 lounds of phosphorus and then with the project you're making somewhat of an assumption on a percentage base of what it will achieve aeve and so it's it's based on um the design and all that that goes into it that you make a determination off of what it's currently eroding and by this project we all agree that this by installing it to what it was designed it will then reduce it by that amount my point is so like if the Rock rle and pools don't work and there is more erosion or there is more siment ending up Downstream is that kind of like oh well or do they have some obligation that okay wait a minute you need to I don't know increase the height of the rock riffle or you need to dig the pool deeper or whatever do they have an obligation for that gotta y one second here I'm just going to jump in with one analogy that could be helpful because again great questions um in in a little bit in a little ways it's kind of like a you get a roof estimate for a house and you all agree that if you build this roof as designed it will protect your house and you know it's generally protecting your house if you're dry inside I mean that's what works for most people um with these kinds of projects we don't necessarily know exactly the amount of sediment because we're not measuring it after the fact to know that those the amount of sediment is literally being reduced by that amount because we're not collecting it at the at the bottom however much like if you get a roof if you get a hole in your roof you know there's some failure somewhere so if there is a structural failure within the project that does go back and get corrected so we can identify things like holes and and specific point failures um but we're not actually measuring um the Quant quantity of sediment we didn't capture it at the beginning we didn't so to that extent it's it's a little bit of an an assurance based upon the initial engineering um and what they are on the hook for would be things like a hole in your roof something that's a point failure that you can go back to and correct okay thanks that's helpful yeah um and then the only other thing I would add is um because we're we we addressed this earlier but it was last year so some of you weren't here um if there are um any major changes that would affect the overall approved funding limit for this project uh those actually do have to go back to board and do go uh with an RBA and that goes into the board packet so even though we do have a process for change orders to adjust for um minor things or moderate things within the contract uh if there was a proposed major change to the cost that would increase the cost AB above what board had approved because of the size of the project uh it would actually have to go to board approval first so they do they do have a limit that they can't exceed without board approval yes good point um yeah if we were are going to exceed the approved amount there are the process in place of what we need to follow and that does include getting approval before doing the work okay any other questions for Ryan thanks Ryan yeah not project commissioner Barton just thanks to staff that's a big project to to tackle and yeah it's a unique one those large Ravines are not easy to work in no thank you yeah it's uh they're fun um they're challenging uh days when it was a high of like one degree you know probably would rather be in the office but there were some nice days out there too so um it was it's a fun project they're all unique and and um glad we're at this point of it another thing to think about J2 to maybe get at some of your questions um I mean it's it's not like Building Bridges you know there every with everything there might be a natural disaster right so you might have an earthquake that affects a bridge or a road but there's these are natural systems and there's just so many unknowns that you you got to rely and build upon the previous data so so there's assumptions from the initial study that was done by somebody and that led to the next step of design and then the design is done by the consultant engineer they're held to you know design standards and then they're responsible for the decisions that they have under their purview and then that gets translated to the construction documents so you can only hold you know like then it gets to the contractor who installs it you can only hold the contractor to what the design and the engineer told them to build so there's there's a shared responsibility on some level depending on what the issue is with the contractor the engineer and also just us the owners the The Watershed being the owner of the project and staff expertise um and then so it just depends on what the nature of whatever issue there's probably not a one- siiz fits-all if if something might happen with the project down the road you'd really have to try to figure out where in that chain of command and chain of decisions does the responsibility lie and could you prove that one person failed or is it just there's there's a level of unknown with these natural areas and when you're dealing with water in general that there's a lot of unpredictability built into it completely understand that and I obviously understand you know it's like if the engineer says to build the wall this way and the person does and the wall Falls over you know that's on the engine not on the contractor I totally get that um I guess I was just trying to understand you know is there was there you know specific kind of goals understanding all the variability that you talked about that said hey we're trying to you know go from X to Y and just understanding what responsibility does the engineering firm have it you know you you mentioned that there had been a previous attempt I guess to you know to do something with it you know I assume assume that that engineer got paid but obviously didn't you know it didn't work so you know you know how do you how do you break that chain to where the engineering firm has some you know responsibility other than making a pretty design and cashing the check then you might be getting into project lifespans so is that it like the totally understand I'm just generalizing so no yeah but like I think what you're referencing is that there was a previous thing that failed which was an old wall right right Brian you said something about a log wall that been there and I don't know if it failed because it was 25 years old or if it failed because it didn't work yeah and and so that crib wall is um like a a compared to the project we did this might be exaggerating but like a grain of salt on a on a beach you know or section of the beach you know it was a very small project compared to what we just did um from talking to land owners I I don't exactly know how it failed why it failed um but nonetheless it it failed uh whether it failed after its you know design lifetime or due to circumstances that you know each project is is designed to a certain threshold and and for us we were responsible for 25 years of Maintenance so that's sort of our bare minimum you know we need this to be designed at least to the last 25 years and so um and and they they do that based on precipitation and all these other factors runoff coefficients and volume and and lots of things that go into it but um but yes there are certain standards that need to be met um but you know once it gets built and constructed and we all agree it was built according to the design you know then we do kind of take over some of the respons possibility of it and you know knock on wood not a lot of our big capital projects have needed work some work has been done nothing like huge where it's catastrophic you know that a failure has happened where the whole Project's not working it might be like a little portion of it that could be touched up um and we'll hope our our you know uh that continues with this project too that we don't we built it in a way that if we have to go all the way up to the top of the Ravine we'll find a way to do it but that's not exactly what we want to be doing is is going to fix those and so it's important that before everything's kind of done and established that we all agree that it was done according to our plans okay um next will be program updates for for Melissa thank you Mr chair I'm actually going to share something here but um not going to talk about this quite yet I need to give you some other information first so sorry let me reshare that here we go okay first I'm going to start off with a couple of projects and then I'll get to this map here but I thought I'd give you something to look at besides me um so my updates are the Aquatic invas aquatic invasive species control Grant um the DNR um offers this grant um each year and in November of 2024 I applied for that grant for Four Lakes Cedar MCM odal and th um that Grant would have helped pay for curly Leaf Pond wheat treatments which we do on all four of those Lakes uh we were recently informed by the DNR that none of our lakes that we requested were uh granted uh those Grant funds um we have gotten grants in the past from that grant program but this year we weren't so lucky um it is a random selection process that the DNR does to award those grants I'm not quite exactly sure how they do it but they say it's a random selection so hopefully next year we'll get lucky again um with that program um so last year we started a survey um with the University of Minnesota which we've done this survey a couple times now over the past years uh once in 2011 once in 2018 um and once in 2017 but we really directed that towards um questions on our cier program uh but our plan um we had put in our plan to do it again before the next Plan update um so I started that survey last year we did three waves of mailings to 1,500 randomly selected land owners in the scoto and we've received about 390 surveys so far out of 1500 um so that response rate is about 27% um kind of a bit on the low side so we've decided to do one more last mailing which I'll be uh getting out next week with some helpers so the survey questions um that we uh formulated this time are going to help us inform the Watership Plan update so I do expect to have results of that survey Sometime Late summer to and we'll bring those um to you and we'll talk about those results and how they might help us inform the Watership plan uh my next update is about the map that I have up there so um our s swcd staff collected water quality samples for us uh throughout the entire San Creek Watershed which is the beige area on that map uh for us in 2024 it was a very heavy lift and we appreciate them very much um so I just put this map up to show you the scale of the work that they did for us they monitored so all the black locations are our core monitoring site there's 12 of them um so they went to all of those sites bi-weekly starting in believe it was May through September for sure I think I think some samples were taken in October and then all those green sites there's 38 of them are are what we call synoptic monitoring sites so go to them once a month and the the idea is to get to them all around the same time in the morning before um the temperature starts heating up and the sun's out nice and bright and those monthly sites they're collecting um just little bit of data but trying to get a snapshot in time on what's happening on different reaches of the stream besides just what's happening at those black core monitoring sites so at those black monitoring sites they're taking a a couple bottles of water samples and there's a whole list of parameters that um the lab was going to an analyze those samples for um and so not only is it in Scott County but there was a few sites here in rice and L seur County to capture that um upper Watershed um information uh so with that we've hired bar engineering to do the data analysis on this Sand Creek data for us um because it's it's just a lot of data and a lot of information um but this data will help us inform the Plan update um so besides you know taking all the prameters and doing the analysis and telling us if they're if we're exceeding any state water quality standards I've asked them to do a few other things with the data so our current Watership plan expires on December 6 of 2026 and in that we state that um it currently includes long-term numerical water quality goals and shortterm numerical water quality goals um the current interim and long-term goals for r Rivers um is that they meet water quality standards and to continue to meet water quality standards in Minnesota rule 7050 you know or the appropriate water quality condition for that region um so what I'm asking bar after they analyze the data is based on the results of the analysis explain to us if that is still a reasonable goal how we stated in the plan secondly um if there isn't if there's water if there's parameters that aren't meeting water quality standards I want them to recommend strategies that are that are not included in our current Watership plan to be considered in this next plan strategies to help reduce those exceedances and then also to explain how many times over the course of the next 10 years would they recommend a whole watershed water quality monitoring schedule um because this is the first time in the last eight years of the plan that we did this whole scale Sand Creek water quality monitoring um so I want to see what they come up with if we should break it down into the smaller stream subwater sheds or if it was beneficial to do it all at once like this like we did um so sorry I'm G to stop sharing that and I'm unless you want me to put it back up because you have any questions um I so the next topic would be the Plan update the phase two that we're planning I recently had meetings with Marcia Barcelona barcela O'Neal who's our Scott County community outreach specialist um and then Shelby werts um she's our education Outreach specialist with the Scottish wcd to talk through ideas about phase two um our focus is on reaching the underrepresented or under heard communities in the wo um and we aren't sure yet what information we want to collect from them but we'll figure that out when um we complete a gaps analysis that will be the next step after our technical assistance um technical advisory committee meeting me which will take place next month and I'll talk a little bit about that on my next item but um so the target month to for us to do phase two is June of this year um and so I'll I'll let you know more of that as that kind of that planning progresses and we have a little bit more information on what we're going to do um and that's all I have for my updates at the moment so I I can stand for any questions if anybody has any Lissa you said you're ask commissioner Barton commissioner Barton Lissa you said you're asking bar is that just uh as part of like the annual monitoring report that's this is done every year is this a separate project that you're asking bar to undertake with this larger scale analysis that's done and if it's a separate project how frequently is that done and is that done on a regular basis or this is just for the Plan update so we we don't um so in our current plan I should probably show that um so so we don't monitor every single U monitoring station every year like some organizations do we just decided early on not to spend a large part of our budget doing that so we selected in plan there was a schedule of what um stream we were going to monitor that year um and so for 2023 we monitored all of credit River the whole Credit River Watershed and for 2024 we decided to do all of Sand Creek to inform the next plan so each year it's typically just one stream um and then we decided the way that we wrote it in the plan is that we would couple years before the Plan update do this larger scale monitoring yeah okay thank you so we are open to ideas on a new strategy in this next plan it's just that you know doing all this monitoring on this scale really takes a you know a large budget number and we were trying to do more implementation um than monitoring great thank you any other questions uh if not uh next would be under new business results draft priority issues for the 2027 Watershed plan Melissa um actually I had one more item under ongoing business um I don't know if uh it was the water Plan update I just had a milestone sheet in the packet um I was just going to quickly explain that yeah thank you so I just each month I will update this sheet and then put it in the packet and you know maybe explain a couple little things but if you could just scroll down a little bit Ryan um so you'll see more about boxes under 20 through uh 24 have been checked that are complete that we've uh done that uh issue prioritization exercise um and I apologize line 26 I thought I had updated that date we had intended to go to the County Board in a workshop on February 18th that's actually changed we're going to the County Board on March 18th now um to a regular board meeting with our prioritize issues um um and so we are if you can scroll down a little bit more to the next page uh we have an upcoming meeting on March 12th I believe with the technical advisory committee um that will be showing them the updated issue statements and then going over goal statements and having them do A needs assessment an actual activity and we would also like to do that with um this commission as well so we're hoping that the March meeting could be an in-person meeting to do that I think that would be much easier to do yep and just a reminder because the timing is so great H that's when we're um hoping to do the joint WPC and um s swcd board meeting so and that's all I had for this update for now we can move on to new business and I think Melissa you can go ahead and just jump in okay sorry so thank you very much for all of you that um took the time to do the survey for the issue prioritization um while I was on vacation Vanessa collected those from the WPC and did a similar ranking to them that we did with the technical advisory committee responses um so what we did is kind of a waited scoring to figure out which ones were really um voted the highest and then we took those uh higher ranked statements and I started filling them under what our current issue statements are in our current plan to see are are the issues that are in our current plan still the issues or do we have some that ranked high that that aren't an issue and we need to create a new issue statement um so if you want to scroll more down to okay that's good okay so then staff met last week and we talked about each issue statement I showed them how things were falling under those and we decided to go ahead and modify some of the statements and that's what's in this memo the modifications from the feedback that we received from that that prioritization survey as you can see issue one we're recommending no changes um we feel that this is really an issue statement that's not going to change it's you know it's based on we have a geologic setting that's highly erosive um and you know it's just our setting and and where we're located and so that's we feel that that's going to carry through um probably for many generations of plans um the second issue we we recommended no changes um we felt that you know agriculture is still very um present in the county and it will be for for quite a long time and so you know agriculture along with many other things has changed the landscape so we've we didn't make any changes to that um let me stop right there does anybody have any feedback or comments just on the first two statements I have specific and general commissioner Barton I have specific and general comments I'll just wait till the end okay um as you can see issue three we felt that that's still an issue um but then uh Vanessa recommended adding flood plane to that because she's uh working with a lot of different um land owners and uh on flood plane flood plane things so that needed to be inserted in there um number four you know surface water quality is impaired we know we have a lot of impairments um and more have been added over the last 10 years to the you know impair Federal impaired Waters list um that'll probably continue to happen as long as PCA continues to monitor for different things and we find different things but we just expanded that issue statement um issue number five um the portion that we um did a strike through came from one of those U ofm surveys that we did um I think it was the 2018 survey that we did with the uamas that we found um that information came out of that survey so we put it into the issue statement at the time but now we don't believe that to be true um and I think Troy you'd probably agree that um there are a lot of land owners who who do Implement conservation on their own and that who also you know work with our sbcd to do conservation so correct yeah so we did add a few other things um you know from some of the education outreach comments that we received so just you know we're we're very general in the issue statement we will get more detailed in the description of each issue statement and that's coming next month um so issue six Urban Development and land use has altered the landscape and additional development land use changes are expected so we just added a few more words in there and I don't know Vanessa if you want to speak too because um that morees this is one that you often see a lot of watershed agencies combine into just land use however the wo is still unique in that it is um largely divided in between heavily urban areas and then heavily agricultural areas and we felt there was a lack of focus by combining them and we really felt that the best work we do is by identifying the unique nature of both different land uses under their own issues um and again that was also resonated by the comments that were received from the state agencies the board Partners WPC teac Etc so okay issue number seven we did receive lots of comments about localized flooding issues throughout Theo um so we decided to just shorten the issue statement that there that localized flooding issues are a concern and we will address that in more detail in the description of that issue um and we struck out the rest of it um that keeps moving okay we did take out Issue Number Eight um we just felt that yes there are Upstream portions of Sand Creek Watershed there are other plans now in place that do cover those areas that are swc CD um is involved in so we just didn't feel like it was needed to call that out we will talk about that under other issue descriptions but we didn't we felt we didn't need it as its own separate issue anymore um we recommended no changes to issue number eight because we know that the cost of addressing all Water Resource issues is undetermined is likely High um we don't feel that that's changed um I don't know if you want to talk a little bit more about that one Vanessa or not um no eight if you look at uh so each of these issues within the plan gets a narrative below it that identifies specific subtopics um so this one tends to hearken to operational strategies that can be challenging where we should prioritize our work as a wo versus our partners what we have the capacity to do uh based upon the size of the agency we are uh versus what we we simply could not do um with the unknowns in the cost of manufacturing and and production those kinds of things so that's just kind of what issue8 captures and then um you know uh the only other thing I might add is that they got a little bit renumbered because we crossed out the original number eight so and actually nine there is a modification to that it's so that I think the underline is is missing to that issue statement but and isue N aligns with the County Board strategy as well so um and then issue 10 uh we had the same issue statement in the current plan and we felt that that still holds true now there are three new ones um and since you wrote These vess let you describe that so basically when we took in all of the input from the state agencies Partners WPC Tac board and looked at uh the data we have over the last 10 years uh it became pretty clear that we have some issues that probably deserve to be broken out a little bit different uh now in the end there we have three new issues but we still actually at the end of the day went from 11 to 13 so it's not really that much and overall we really didn't change many of our issues that much um but one of them uh is that there is a rapid and increased shifting from historical uses of surface water resources in the wmo new and involving uses need to be incorporated into future watershed management uh and this is across the board from like for example during Co there was a significant amount of increased recreational uses on our Lakes uh there's an increased interest in using our creeks and rivers for other recreational uses more fishing and interest like that that we maybe haven't had in the past uh a lot of those things that when we've managed the wmo's resources in the past we've used a specific kind of set of of resource uses that the residents have traditionally done but now they they are shifting so it's good to incorporate those shifting uses to make sure that we're aligned with how people want to enjoy and use our Water Resources um and then the last thing that's combined under that one is in fact just that we know that there is a likely shifting and development which could likely lead to abandonment of ditches uh agricultural ditches uh in the next planning cycle and quite a few of them um and so that would also really affect the work that we do uh issue 12 as go ahead vaness says Jay so just is I understand you know that I'm sure that there's a goal to keep these kind of short sweet bullets but is there a reason why you didn't elaborate on that shifting from X to Y instead of just saying shifting because it's like or or how does someone get to what you gave is a little more commentary um is there not a way to incorporate that in the bullet with maybe just a few more words yep so the issue statements themselves should be pretty clean and concise that's generally what is is requested of us from the Board of Water and Soil resources so we include those details in the narrative section so if you look at our current plan you'll notice the issue statement themselves we try to keep pretty clean and simplified and then the um deeper uh more specific details we we add to the narrative section underneath it but this is so that it's it's more clear to understand I think if if each of the issues became linkly paragraphs themselves it would be hard I'm not I'm not advocating for that but if I distill if I distill what I think you said is that the rapid and increasing shifting it sounded like it's more from I don't know what agriculture to recreational I mean you know is is is five more words going to give you kind of the gist and then there's more detail later or do you like it just being kind of a hanging statement ah I see so in this case this one is want to call it ever so slightly catch all of a few different very different things part of it is uh the the likely potential of significant ditch abandonment in the next 10 years and that's based upon landos on the other side of the spectrum how people are actually recreating in our Waters has also changed so it's hard to kind of put that into one descriptor so they actually it's why I didn't because it would have been very lengthy um I actually had that I actually had that same thought I I would actually recommend pulling those apart it does sound like Recreation is the main is one focus and if if ditches are Focus I feel like we should call that out specifically in this in this issue statement um so you know is there a possibility to yeah separate those and maybe it's recreational use of surface water resources is changing da da and then something more specific to ditches to make that clear that that's that's the actual issue that that we will be solving I can yes I combined them to limit the number of issues uh to make it so we didn't have a grocery list of issues but adding one more issue by separating those two would certainly not have uh be detrimental so certainly I can do that sure or maybe it's you know again looking big picture if it's it ditching kind of gets lumped in with agriculture often um you know we do have you kind of did this a little bit um uh let's see here yeah in this case it's more ditch abandonment so because the ditch abandonment changes that resource to be more of a multi-functional ditch and puts it more in the purview of the wo or we will start to probably look at what types of like best management practices and Capital Improvements and the downstream impacts um of that resource or of that uh resource change I probably wouldn't attribute it specifically to agriculture um and the land area around them tend to shift a little bit to be more urban which is generally what's leading to the dish abandonment okay it is a unique uh 10 years coming up with with that that shift sure we probably won't see that one on every plan sure yeah yeah I guess that's my only hang up does it make more sense then when you talk about to to lump it in with expected development increases then you know issue number six does that make S more sense for something like ditch abandon abandonment to fit under there um possibly I will noodle on it sure and adjust definitely yeah both of those are possible I'll go back and look at the comments to a little bit um and just see the bulk of sub comments which way they kind of seem to lean a little bit more all right good questions so uh issue 12 this has been coming out a lot in the last 5 years um there's really a limited understanding of the local Aquatic Life and biodiversity and the impact that this has on our ecosystem Health um in the past multiple plan Cycles we really haven't focused on the Aquatic Life and biodiversity and it's it's becoming um much more of uh an important priority for everybody so it just to itself it it becomes its own kind of new issue um and until we have a better understanding of that um Aquatic Life and biodiversity we really don't really understand the full ecosystem health and then Issue 13 um this one is primarily morbid acknowledgement of the increasing impact extreme weather and climate change is having on local Water Resource Management um however because it influences pretty much every other issue on this list um moving forward the issue itself will be addressed through the goals and priorities um of those other issues all right and with that commissioner Barton and others will we stand for any questions I'll go first sure uh um number two just going in order here back to the top wonder if it makes sense to add um the landscape and drainage of the Watershed has been significantly altered by agriculture um I just kind of like having the tie to Water Resources in all of these versus just saying general landscape drainage kind of just starts to get at the the issue of water um I think the order this is kind of bigger scale uh question or comment the order kind of matters so you know I tend to think that when I look at all of these Issue Number Four would be my issue number one um just surface water quality I feel like as a wmo that's kind of our main charge so I would move to say take issue number four and put that back at the top as issue number one um same thing with six the landscape and drainage patterns land Urban Development and land use has altered the landscape and drainage patterns and I understand what you're saying about hard stop additional development and land use changes is expected I kind of I think I understand why you why you did that um another thought though I mean if if new development is proving to be like a pretty big issue May Merit its own issue as well does that make sense versus just separating it with another sentence within that issue so we'll leave that one up to you but I could given the nature of Scott County and what could be coming in the next you know 10 30 30 40 years maybe that merits its own issue um and then a couple like number seven and number nine I think I would prefer seeing just like maybe more of a more clear and active voice with these so like number seven localized flooding issues are a concern it's a very broad statement I would prefer if it said something like local the issue the issue is not that there is a concern the issue is that localized flooding causes damage to infrastructure roadways buildings or something like that does that make sense we're making the cons we're making it sound like the concern is the issue versus what the actual concern is does that make sense does is that we have multiple concerns which that gets added into the narrative section so honestly great minds must think Alik did noodle on that one a lot as thinking well could I could we summarize it by saying what are those specific localized flooding issues that are concerning to us and it became a very long runon sentence and so that's where it kind of got this is the title of the issue and then the narrative section called them all out sure and I will look at it again broader turns maybe once we see the narrative yep that will help us inform what an alternative title could look at but that's kind of my general comment is just like more of an active voice and specifics which again you you will have a narrative that talks about that um but like for example the other one I thought of was number nine there is increasing concern over the quality and quantity of groundwater resources so if I was to rewrite that with more like of an active voice um there is an increasing demand for use of groundwater resources and increased presence of poll pollutants in groundwater resources something like that just more specific right in the issue about like what's what's the problem versus the general concern title um and yeah that's the other one it is difficult to show the benefits of Watership based improvements over the long term just wonder if there's a different way to word that but um I don't have a good example something just about how it almost almost stating that the opposite stating the same thing in the opposite way is that you know the acknowledgement that it takes a long time to realize improvements you know um so the problem is not that it it's hard to show it the problem is that it's actually just hard to do it's hard to show improvements or it takes a long time to show improvements just another way and before I get too far into semantics those are my specific and general comments thank you for entertaining no actually oh that's good feedback thank you um commissioner Barton would you be willing to email those to me and Melissa certainly yep um we don't care it doesn't have to be uh well well written out we don't need full sentences bullet points would be just just wonderful if that's all right yep I will do that thank you I took good notes but you never know um I could probably the only thing I probably would comment on at the moment is the one thing we'll probably leave I mean I'm happy to rearrange them in whatever order you want um because that being said from a planning perspective from the way that we're doing our plan and there are definitely many ways to do these plans that statute allows um we don't prioritize our issues we just list them out as these are the issues that are known our goals should generally address the issues but our goals and our priorities are then what we prioritize and focus on we don't actually even necessarily commit to addressing all of these issues ourselves in our plan we might state that somebody else will be addressing those issues but we do recognize that it is an agreement that these are the issues um so to that end I don't want to mislead you that I will will happily rearrange them but that doesn't necessarily mean that that becomes a priority that will come out in the goals and prioritization section certainly yeah that's just more more of a mental mind game absolutely yep okay so with that um that's really good feedback thank you so much um this is an action item um so we got some great feedback we we are meeting staff is meeting next Wednesday to um I've set up kind of a standing um Watership plan development meeting for staff to talk about different things we'll talk about all these changes um but I guess we're looking for a recommendation is there is there a timeline commissioner Barton is there a timeline that these would have to be modified to for you to move on to the next step are you bringing these to the board for approval we are bringing these to the board on March 18th yes so you're looking for a motion for a recommendation to proceed yep um yep what we could what you might consider entertaining is a motion to proceed with um incorporation of Commons as able uh because we won't have a chance to come back before a board one more clarifying question commissioner Barton is there do we have the ability to let these remain in draft form and let that be known to the the board that um so if if that is possible I'm seeing nods my motion would be to um make amendments to what's in the packet based on this conversation and then forward those but that they remain in draft form until uh this board can review them again along with the um further descriptions for final approval at a later date yes absolutely and it is noted uh we do note here and uh to the board that they are draft uh they can be changed pretty much all the way up to plan approval obviously it gets harder the further you get along in the plan to to add issues but it is also not unheard of um on that note uh you know I Vanessa I want to Echo what you said I don't want to I don't want to go down a hole of prioritizing one or the other you know for example my neighbors out here all they care about is groundw surface water isn't I mean it's important but that's their priority so I don't want to prioritize that being said with on that note I want to uh Clayton Wagner I want to Second Joe CH motion to approve in draft form okay we have a motion in a second Melissa or Vanessa absolutely Commissioners I will do R commissioner Schmidt hi commissioner Phillips hi commissioner Wagner hi commissioner Fredericks hi and commissioner Barton hi thank you Commissioners okay last thing is for Melissa on the 2020 for watercraft inspection report yes thank you uh Mr chair I just put together a oh sorry I need to share my screen I just put together a quick PowerPoint this is what I do every year for this report just to kind of highlight some things for you and so um I'll try to go through this quickly because I know that we're over time um so the inspectors ask a few questions of Voters that come to the access and want to launch at the access and then they make some observations so the report does list these I just wanted to point them out um some of the questions that they ask and it takes about three minutes for the inspection itself for each person who wants to launch um so we had quite a few inspections that were completed this year um so the total number you can see from this chart Cedar Lake East which is the largest um Public Access on Cedar has typically been the busiest access for us over the several years that we've had uh Waterfront Restorations do watercraft inspections for us um so they started inspections on May 17th and then ended them on September 28th so this is I like this chart because it shows um kind of a quick breakdown for you for each Lake um again Cedar Lake East is our busiest access and this is the number of hours that the inspectors worked at those accesses and you know especially at Cedar East they're doing you're doing a good number of inspections per hour um but I like to see the breakdown um this way I also ask them to do this because I really like to know when are the busiest weeks of the Year typically in the past the busiest week has been the week right before the 4th of July um this year it happened to be the Fourth of July week but this helps me to determine how many hours to to schedule them um you know and know and seeing the data I I know to you know um have them reduce their hours towards towards the end of the season and I also have have them show me when are the busiest times of the um of the season so that I know what time to schedule them um um and you'll see Monday Tuesday Thursday was added on here the DNR surprisingly had enough staff that they actually started sending some staff to some of these Lakes um in past years they've only been um putting inspectors on the lakes that have Zebra muscles on them and fortunately so far our Lakes don't in the wo um so we did have Waterfront Restorations um move inspectors um to different days of the week to get more coverage you can see the coverage or the inspections were really low during the week they're typically very high on the weekends those are the busiest times we did have a lot of an increase I should say in violations this year um so Minesota losses when they show up at the access they have to have the plug out so that they're not holding in the W any water in their boat um we had 28 plug violations this here in 20 or I should say in 2024 which is an increase I'll show you the next chart um and and this is pretty typical the mo a lot of the violations also are people forget to remove plants that are either stuck to the trailer underneath or stuck somewhere on the boat or on the motor um but mud is a concern because mud can hide in Bas of species especially zebra musles and this is where I quickly plug no pun intended the importance of the aquatic invasive species funding because that is what's paying for these inspections and those capturing of violations yes so I added this in here because I think I I really like to see what's happened um over the course of these inspections you can see that you know we've had an increase in violations of plants um and you know the first year that we started doing this there was a a lot of plug violations and we did a lot of education and it really dropped and now it's starting to increase again so um we need to figure out why that is but I did talk with um Shelby Roberts and she is going to do some uh targeted or very specific Outreach for this so that we can bring those violation numbers down 2025 hopefully this is again a perfect example of we know literally that these inspections prevented these aquatic invasive species from entering and leaving these Lakes um it's not a what if it's not of maybe it did maybe it didn't this is a literal on the ground um proof of fact that that's what this funding did so yeah and again just to S you across the board over the years you know Cedar East you know we typically have that's a busiest access there's a lot of inspections that happen there um you know it just kind of fluctuates from year to year um it was a surprising to see th there was a lot of um inspections that occurred on th and I didn't change the number of hours um so a lot of people were starting to use th Lake in 2024 again um one of the questions they ask is what was the last water body that you visited and we like to know that to know um are they coming from a water body that is infested and trying to launch at another water body and um you know surprisingly a lot of people are coming from Cedar Lake and going to another Lake but I like how they color code this to let us know that the answer that they give tells us that you know some people are coming from an infested Lake and then trying to Lodge in our Lakes um and so they just give a submarine it's typically just you know the weekends are the busiest um Staffing was improved in 2024 you around covid time they had a lot of they had a hard time getting people um to be inspectors they were just you know was a lot of uncertainty around that time um but for you know each year we get the same response that a lot of the um voters thank the inspectors for being there and for you know doing these inspections to protect our Lakes so it's been we've had really good feedback from voters I wanted to show you this this is um the Minnesota aquatic invasa species Research Center um created this model to determine what is the risk of other water bodies um in our County for zebra muzzle investation um and so as you can see because prior Lakes have them they've had them for years Spring Lake was at a really high risk and now Spring Lake does have Zebra muscles they were uh reported I think two years ago now so they are infested so um Cedar Lake is you know you know a little bit up there from the rest of the Lakes but uh we did have a scare I think it was two years ago a watercraft inspector caught somebody who came to the axis and who had zebra muzzles on their watercraft and so um they didn't let them launch they made them remove them and then they could launch so we almost got zra rles introduced into Cedar Lake so these inspections are really important to us they've protected our our Lakes more than once and then I just broke this down quickly for you to show you that this is the DNR inspection hours of Scott County and they did um come to uh Cedar and odow spent 80 hours on our Lakes which was really helpful um hopefully in future years they can uh continue to do that and maybe increase hours but I just wanted to to show you that they do spend a lot of time on Prior Lake because Prior Lake has Zebra muscles and that's really the goal of the DNR to do those inspections to not let those zebra muzzles spread to other legs um and then really quickly they they do show us where there are other Aquatic inesis species that we need to be aware of um that are close by so star Stone wart is another invasive species that's um uh very um very hard for watercraft to get through it's very dense and very thick matting um and it is in hban County right now so they're just letting us know that it's close by that we need to continue to be aware of that um and then another thing that's starting to move towards the Midwest and is here in the Midwest is hydrilla which was actually a a um uh aquatic plant that they use in aquariums um so it is starting to spread I've read articles that you know Florida State spends millions of dollars just trying to manage this so unfortunately it is spreading closer to us and we want to be aware of that as well and I don't know if you could read the fine print but the ideal breeding ground for mosquitos is not something we need in Minnesota so hydr would uh be very very problematic so just just to give you some numbers um we do get about just over 69,000 from the um AIS prevention funds each year um I spend 40,000 just on watercraft inspections and we give uh 207,000 to P Lake Spring Lake for them to do watercraft inspections and for them to do um early detection surveys and some Cur Leaf treatment um so we spend all the money every year and if if that gets reduced in half um you know the half of the amount would be I think I saw some numbers that were like 34,000 we would get that's not even enough to cover the Limited hours that that $40,000 um pays for for watercraft inspections I could actually use the whole 69,000 for watercraft inspections but we need to share so um yeah we're hoping that that funding does not get cut into half so Melissa I have several questions but I'm also mindful of the time so is that something that I should pursue offline or do you want me to ask them now I'm happy with you asking them now um so I guess my first question is who who's the audience for this report and for your summary who's who's the audience for it um well we do post it online so anybody can access this information and the data so the general public and us to help us plan from year to year okay but you don't have to submit this to you know someone you know to explain what you did with the money or things like that the DNR does ask if we could fill out a metrics form to know how we spent the money but it's not required um it's not this form or it's not this report no it's it's not no it's not required and and is this the primary work product that in a sense addresses the Aquatic um invasive species work that we do yes this is where the majority of the limited funding that we get goes towards um to protect our lakes that aren't infested that but does this report the primary work product that reports out on that I guess the the AIS plan Melissa as well well so let me let me connect the dots of where I'm going so so and I knew nothing about the governor walls proposing until this call but when I read this and I think there was a draft of this maybe last time as well and then this was a maybe more advanced draft I saw it before someplace in something that I read and maybe their previous meeting or earlier in the year or something but I it was a year ago I don't know I might have up I might have stated that it's coming for this meeting but this is the first time this is the second time I saw it was in some reading somewhere so but anyway that's neither here nor there so my sense is again back to the points I made earlier this evening is you know what is it that we're trying to achieve because if I understand correctly what we're trying to achieve is you know either um preventing aquatic invasive species introduction um preventing the mechanisms that do that mud whatever um maybe improving that you know I think in deep in the report there's like a probability slide that talks about the probability of infection going forward and so I guess a goal would be to um reduce those probabilities you over time so to me that's the outcome the Boating inspections and all that are just the means to the end and the report as it's currently presented spends the vast majority of time and I would say in way more granular detail than is necessary for maybe anybody except for you who's trying to manage the Staffing and whatever you know of cutting it 10 different ways and you actually get really deep into the report like 30 pages into it before you start talking about the invasive to species and the different types of contaminants and things like that and so my sensibility would say the report should be focused on what the outcome is the desired outcome is and that should be at the front of the report and then the how which is the Boating inspections and things like that should be maybe even in an appendix of okay this is how we're actually accomplishing the what because on its own the inspections are just in means to an end and whether you do more of them or less of them I get it to I totally get it but the what what's important so like if I'll play Tim Walls if I came to Tim Walls and I said okay you know Vanessa Ryan Melissa tell me why I shouldn't cut your money and you would say well because then I can't do as many inspections and then I would say okay so what wh why tell me why that matters well you know I don't know that you kind of tell that story you produce a whole lot of data or this um you know water front Restoration Group presents a whole bunch of money cutting it by day of week time of day you know where they've been where they're going all this other stuff and I'm not saying that that's irrelevant but it just is part of getting to what we really care about which is hey we want to keep the invasive species out we want to catch people that are bringing mud in on their boat we want to do whatever and so again I think a lot of the information is there just if I'm reading it and again I'm applying kind of what I would apply in business to this it's out of order you're telling me what you're doing you're not telling me why you're doing it and you're not telling me what the outcome of it is you're just telling me about activity and activity does not mean results so I just think that I would swap some of the sequencing of it now if this is some template and this is a template that has to be submitted to somebody okay well then ignore me but if it's us trying to manage this and whatever I would swap it around focus on the outcomes that we're looking to achieve the measurements and metrics that we're trying to make better and the how is the how many inspections days of weeks inspections all that other stuff very important for you to manage it I 100% understand that but to me we're mixing it in and like I said I mean in some cases we get I just kind of you know 30 slides in before we get to something 50 slides in the one that has the probability of of of um future um infection which I think is important is on slide 56 of 57 and and no one 99.99% of people are never going to read all the way to slide 56 so anyway that's just my two cents which you can do with it what you wish okay no no that's good feedback let me let me jump in so it is it is all great feedback um let me hit this ever so slightly by saying we probably misspoke the largest purpose one of the largest purpose of us using this report or obtaining this report is actually for our subcontractor of water front Restorations to actually report to us as to what they did during the year so really the bulk of it is really that company telling us what they did and how they did it and we do in fact use it heavily to plan for the next year so we probably would not pay them to to add to the the why the the results to our AIS program in this report because that's not actually what we pay for them to do however with the definite validity of what you're bringing forward um through our ASAS program because obviously this is a component of that larger program it does have value for us as staff than to take that report that was produced to sorry published and given to us by waterfont restoration based upon their activities and incorporate that back into the program and say what did this actually accomplish that's great you did that many inspections that great you great it's great you caught that many different AIS um violations how does that affect our program what does that actually mean so my suggestion or my evaluation would probably mean for staff to go back and add that component to um our actual program it's what I'm thinking off the top of my head sense and again that's why I asked who the audience was and that's why I asked all those questions up front y um and I'm not diminishing that value but otherwise it seems like you know people that got a little carried away with Excel and PowerPoint and produced a whole lot of cuts of data that I'm not really sure add a ton of value to again anyone other than maybe you and Melissa um so I wouldn't put that in the report that you published to you know a general audience because again to me when I read it it was like okay wow they got a lot of time and energy to put into cutting the data all this way and again not even knowing that someone had proposed a funding cut I would say well I know one place we could cut funding would be to stop producing reports that have you know 57 slides of which you know maybe five or 10 of actually have meaningful value in general so again just take do take that on um again I know not of what I speak but that's that was my gut reaction to it uh no those those are very thoughtful comments and um again we'll think I'll noodle on it and I I think I have a a good plan moving forward um because yes again we definitely need Waterfront restoration to report on their activities so we have numbers and data but not necessarily every data document makes a good public report and should not necessarily be used as such so um a very likely more effective use of that report would just be for staff to actually apply it back to the program and publish that so yeah thank you if you can tie it to the outcomes that you're trying to achieve I mean obviously the ultimate outcome is no infestation but if it's some of this other stuff that's where I would focus because that's you know one's just the means to an end and if you basically say Hey you know here's what introduces these things you know here's how we catch it therefore you know whatever it just to me reads in a more logical way I think all the information is there I think it's just out of sequence understood hey Brian and if anyone wants to keep going but I'm going to throw it out there I'm going to motion to adjourn I'll second um I only got I only got three Commissioners so commissioner Schmidt hi commissioner Wagner hi commissioner Fredericks hi thanks Commissioners I will say these first couple few meetings with new Commissioners are definitely running longer I will admit we have almost never actually gone over so they will uh they will um go shorter as time goes on uh but this is all great conversation and great learning Curves in the beginning um I will tweak agendas in the future to try to accommodate more and awesome conversation I will absolutely admit I was I always get worried when we get new Commissioners that we won't have enough interaction because they're too afraid to to ask questions um so the fact that you ask a lot of great questions is wonderful um but I need to accommodate for that so I apologize