okay uh welcome everyone to the January 27th 2025 Watership Planning Commission meeting um I'd like to call this meeting to order the time is now 4:01 p.m. the first item on the agenda is the election of officers um usually it's the outgoing chair that starts the election but our chair and vice chair's terms were up last last year so we have no outgoing chair or outgoing Vice chair to start the election so staff will start it um the first order of business is to uh elect a new chair um just to kind of give you an idea of some of the responsibilities of the chair um the chair leads the meetings and keeps the agenda moving forward the chair also asss um certain documents that are in the packet including the minutes um if the chair can't be at a meeting then the vice chair would run the meeting um the chair and vice chair terms are one year um and then typically the vice chair becomes the chair the next year so uh so with that do we have any nominations for the chair for this commission for 2025 don't be shy sorry I'm late I just joined no worries commissioner Wagner welcome uh this is commissioner Schmidt I would nominate Joe Phil for the che I will go ahead Clayton I will second that run and hide for so many years right uh so we have a first and a second um I can't remember do we need to call three times or since we have first and a second we just accept that well just Melissa if I might um chime in so you wouldn't need any motion or second on nominations you would just call for three three times and then you close the floor to nominations okay thank you and if and if you only have one then you can uh appoint The Chair by acclamation okay thank you so that was the first time so do we have have any other nominations for chair do we have any other nominations okay I'll close nominations for chair and commissioner Phil uh congratulations have I been volun told I'm sorry I think I've been volent told yes I think so I think so I think so so now that we have a new chair commissioner Phil if you'd like to start nominations for vice chair all right I uh will call for nominations for vice chair any nominations for vice chair any nominations for vice chair I'll nominate Brian I was gonna I was gonna nominate you Clayton in about no no no are there any other nominations are there any other nominations one more time are there any other nominations okay do we congratulate cck do we congratulate him now on his uh nomination yes yes Mr chair so now we have a chair and a vice chair commissioner Phil is the chair for 2025 and commissioner Schmidt is the vice chair for 2025 thanks to our more tenure Commissioners for stepping up there appreciate it what a great team okay go ahead Melissa I'm sorry um do we do the roll call for this action that I do not know apologize I don't believe you need a roll call if there's no motion and you're just declaring the chair and vice Chair by acclamation because there was only one and no votes occurring then you would not have to okay thank you Trey that makes sense okay so we have our officers for 2025 thank you very much for your uh endorsements I guess um number the next item on the agenda is approval of the 2025 meeting calendar it's an action item Mr chair if I may just uh quickly describe the calendar as soon as Ryan gets to it on the agenda here so the calendar as you can see that pink circle indicates the the meeting dates um so the WPC meets every fourth Monday of the month um The Only Exception would would be May um the fourth Monday is Memorial Day so we moved up the meeting one week so you'll see it's actually May 19th in May instead of the 26th um this is a big planning year the last few years we've met mostly virtually and only once or twice in person but this year we plan on meeting um in person at least three to four times um and one of those meetings will be the uh the estimate Mo tour in September um we will know probably uh next month what months we will be meeting in person venessa and I are still kind of discussing that but they'll mostly be geared towards the Plan update and certain exercises to get your input into different um areas of the plan so so with that that's all I have to say about the calendar any questions on the calendar all right I believe we have to take a vote we're ready for the vote all those in favor of the go ahead oh sorry um I would take a a roll call because it's an action item I believe okay commissioner Schmid hi uh commissioner Phillips all right commissioner Wagner is this on the calendar action item yes approve um commissioner Barton hi and commissioner Fredricks hi and commissioner Phil hi did we have a motion to approve in a second than we might have missed that I would I would move to approve unless I missed something sorry no commissioner B I think you are correct we would need that uh initial Motion in second yeah I'll I'll make that motion after the fact we don't need to go back in Mr Barton thank you very much do we have a second is commissioner Phillips I'll second that motion all right thank you so we've got a first and a second and uh We've got the roll call vote all right moving on then uh we have got the approval of the agenda and meeting minutes for the November 25th 2024 minutes do we have a first and second or you want to the roll call First I'm kind of confused I'll make a motion to approve even though I was not there I believe I can make the motion to approve it but I will abstain from voting commissioner schm second okay we've got a first and a second now Melissa you want to do the roll call yes I'll do the roll call um commissioner Schmidt hi commissioner Phillips all right commissioner Phil all right and I believe the rest of you have to abstain um but I can go through the rest of the list because you weren't here so commissioner Wagner I will abstain commissioner Barton I will abstain commissioner Frederick stain thank you Commissioners I think I hit everyone didn't I moving along then um the uh s smw administrative report Vanessa is she on I don't see her on quite yet U Mr chair so maybe we can can go to the next we can move on Circle back to that one bad quote bad quote Clayton you get that one um ongoing business let's let's get the report from the s swcd yes Mr chairman thank you and good afternoon Commissioners so I will Bree through the report found it in your packet um if there's any questions at the end of of items that need more clarification or or uh additional information I'll provide that uh at the end so we start out with the technical assistance and cost share program the chart show there shows the active service requests for the last uh year running you can see as of January which is the far right set of columns the blue line is the number of active requests within the Scott wo's jurisdictional area so it's around 130 of those 130 about 75 to 80 are actual projects these are projects that are in various stages of development implementation or construction and close out so you can see which is typical that um better than half of all the active service requests are projects um moving down the soal health practice Acres this is not much changed from the last meeting Brian would you be able to advance that a bit uh Troy hold on one second I ran into a snag here I'm gonna have to stop sharing and then reshare my screen I can't see it all right can everyone see that now yes okay all right Sor about that so these two practices are just showing h a couple of metrics associated with our technical assistance and cost share program the soil Health shows the number of Acres of of those three different practices that we have uh utilized uh cost share funds or incentives to promote and you can see obviously a 24 just blows away every previous year in terms of number of Acres uh that were uh cost shared and installed we almost hit 3500 the equipment rental program Acres um I thought 21 and 22 were going to be about the most Acres we'd ever get on the ground uh but we surpassed that this year again um and we almost hit 3,000 Acres so that's the number of Acres that are noil conservation equipment was rented out to land owners um with throughout the throughout the county and this is countywide so it does include uh other Watershed districts in which those uh pieces of equipment were uh utilized the soil Health practices is the same that's countywide but it's safe to assume that the vast majority of each of those is within the wo see and the wo covers the Lion Share of the area within Scott County uh cost share funds what this does is show uh in terms of an active um Awards or budgets that we have on the books right now we have a little over $815,000 in Awards and have encumbered um a little over 50 well let's say 54% of those already that means that these are carryover grants that we've already used some of the funding up for uh there is some new funding in there because we started at a fiscal year um but the upshot is we have a little over $373,000 of cost share within the Scott wo at the current time so we got a lot of work to do uh what we're going to be doing when you look at that number the 373,000 and then you look above where we have a lower number of active service requests what that tells us is we need to like start putting our uh foot on the gas of it in terms of marketing and reaching out to land owners doing some Outreach letters door knocking and things like that to actually promote um the tax program promote the funding availability for priority areas and priority projects and we actually are underway with that effort so over the next couple of months we'll be doing a lot of that Outreach marketing and um and door knocking to because our goal is to move all that money this year clean water education program uh so we honored the yes sorry this is commissioner Fredericks I have a question yes does does that funding go away if it's not spent or at what point does the funding go away if it's not spent yes uh Mr F commissioner Fredericks um that's a good question so some of that will go away for example funding that is provided through the Scott wo's budget through the local uh Levy those are only usable within the current budget year or fiscal year so a piece of that funding a piece of that 8 71,000 is the wo budget and will expire as of December 31st now there's also grand funds embedded in that number some of those grants expire this year I think uh Ryan you correct me if I'm wrong but like a portion that is EPA funding there's maybe what 50 to 100,000 EPA funding that that will expire actually in August um other grants might expire December 31 this year but some grants I'd have to check the exact expiration uh but a grant could go multiple years Beyond this year but if I'm not mistaken most of this year actually does expire this year but we will be getting another Grant I think at some point here in the near future um that will be added onto this amount that will expire three years from now so if you see that number grow up we're going to be getting a grant that that would extend beyond the current year so if it expires would I understand then that it would almost need to come back again as if it was new funding or correct if it expires then and it's the wos from the wo's budget your budget it will go back into your fund balance for um basically consideration for use of next year but it doesn't automatically re uh Bas roll over so then it would be stacked up against other priorities at that point in time and then maybe that project would go forward or maybe a different project would in its place exactly it's like uh you start at the a starting line all over and you decide what your priorities are and if you put it back towards cost share that's fine otherwise if there's other priorities you could you know it's your discretion so definitely kind of use it or lose it correct correct yep exactly and in fact this year we did not use it all we is so much Grant funds that we didn't use all the local funds so that did go back into fund balance for the to the wo um if on on the other hand if Grant funds if we lose if we do not use them and the grant expires they go back to the state and they you know good luck getting them back everywh okay thank you for that you're welcome so uh moving on to clean water education so we honored uh Maxine Hughes she's a resident on oow Lake uh she was recognized at the state conservationist of the year uh conservation leader banquet um in Bloomington uh she was at actually the area four finalist so our association has eight different areas throughout the state one of which is the Metro and out of all 11 Metro counties Maxine Hughes was was voted the uh area uh winner uh so we were happy to host her at that event and recognize her for all the great things she does on her property and in the community um we began discussion with City reps on designing and distributing postcards for maintenance professionals and proper salt application so this is a time of year we do work with our all our partners on promoting uh proper salt use uh we began compiling as we do each year this time uh our annual report as well as our proposed work plan and then we will be meeting with all our uh squet partners coming up in here in February and talking about priorities and projects for the coming year water quality so we finished up the large Sand Creek water quality mon monitoring project for the year we submitted all that data and uh we also submitted a application or a proposal to do additional monitoring through the What's called the swag program or surface water assessment Grant with mpca and we'll be monitoring a number of uh streams and lakes within the scottw mo through that through that Grant project as well where are those new monitoring sites that you've never done before or your this some are I would have to say we probably monitored at everyone at some point before but not regularly okay is that is a swag Grant is that new or is that a rolling one that you can every 10 years so we did a a uh sweep of sites both streams and lakes about 10 years ago so 2015 uh and 2016 and now npca comes back every 10 years to do their intensive water quality monitoring as part of their uh wraps program so now it's up again the lower Minnesota River Watershed is is you know hit at 10e Mark so we're doing it there and we have seven streams in Scott County Four Lakes in Scott County including Melissa help me I think it's Cedar McMahon odow and one other uh is it th I I believe it is th yes and then we have two lakes in uh Rice County uh Phelps and Cody so thank you yeah you're welcome uh the groundwater observation well so this is a DNR program we have uh 19 or so wells around the county where we collect data in on a data on a quarterly basis to monitor groundwater levels and every once in a while we'll is uh prepare a report and and share share that with the Commissioners on what the trends have been and where current status is of of water levels the precipitation grass just shows a two-year rolling um data of the comparing the average amount of rainfall that we received here at the Jordan field office compared to what we actually measured so you can see for the month of December uh we're a little bit behind on the snowfall so therefore you see the discrepan see between the average and what we actually uh read uh for the month of December construction erosion control so this graph the the bars show the number of inspections we completed both permit and development so permits are like homes principal structures uh additions garages things like that so for the month of December we did almost 100 inspections uh which is uh understandably lower than what we would do during the summer and construction period the purple line shows the um number of plan reviews we uh conducted for the month and you can see that number is is on the downswing uh which we do expect to see typically this time of year um and that is shown by the the number on the uh numbers on the right side of the graph so about I'd say maybe five six different plan review views for December uh but it's been high as 15 uh in the past per month subwat set assessments so we completed the first draft of the Raven 2 stream um that's in my court um uh our our team member Chase emers uh finished the phase two report we also finished the phase one for Raven stream we're going to deliver that to the wmo together as a package uh as soon as we get through the um state Grant reporting season here I'll be able to focus on that and turn that over to Ryan and Melissa and Vanessa for for their review uh Wetland Conservation act um we typically don't have a lot of action this time of year so you won't see a whole lot there uh just a couple of te meetings really uh with various City Partners I'll skip down Ryan I think the last thing I'll touch on is um the buffer law and the native tree mix so our tree program so buffers we complete a annual status review on onethird of all the buffers uh every year so we have the county divided into three segments or sectors if you will and we did the Southwest sector this past time which is Blakeley bplan helina in that whole area we did find uh probably two dozen Parcels where we uh found the uh buffer the required buffer to fall below the 30 foot minimum or and or 50ft average uh but we suspect maybe as much as a third of those are are actually not compliant the other uh 2third um they're they are found to be less than those minimum footage however there are certain nuances to the law that allows uh reduced widths and uh we feel that they may be basically falling under some of those um exemptions one would be for example enrollment and CRP so if um one of the buffers if a buffer is enrolled in the conservation Reserve program basically they're exempt from the buffer law requirement another example is if they use what's called alternative practices for example let's say they're doing no till uh on a field they could potentially reduce their buffer with down to a minimum of 25 ft so there are scenarios where you can be less than 30 feet and so knowing exactly what the farmer is doing or what uh program they may or may not be enrolled in take some time but our initial estimate is that maybe eight aren't are out of compliance and maybe don't fall in a line with one of those exemptions uh finally I'll just mention that uh we opened up our tree sale on January 1 uh we're already sold out out of a couple of species and and so if um any of the Commissioners are interested in ordering treats through our program this year the sooner uh the better um the last item I think I got a couple tables there Ryan so uh for the new Commissioners each month what I do is report on actions that we have taken either by staff action or by board action to approve new CER applications through the technical assistance and cier program so you can see we approved a little over $49,000 in new applications and this is through December and January so if if uh the commission Skips a month I'll report on both of those months at the same time and then payments list was extremely long and you see we did a little over $50,000 in payments as well during that same period Troy can I ask a quick question yes sir oh this is commissioner Phillips uh just if you scroll up on there what was a well decomissioning is that a what is that the top one so so a Wy commission commissioner is where um a a licensed well contractor comes in and actually uh decommissions a active well or maybe it was a nonfunctioning well but the well casing was still open and therefore susceptible to inviting contamination into the groundwater so a decommission is to basically utilize either cement or something called clay banite clay that actually get fills that whole well casing they remove the pump all the wires and backfill that casing with concrete or this banite clay which permanently seals that so it prevents uh contamination through that opening in the ground gotcha so it's a basically a well abandonment abandon correct same thing okay gotcha yep in fact those those terms are used interchangeably gotcha thank you for that I uh I just didn't know we we paid for it but it makes sense it's a point of contamination and potential you know groundwater contamination so I suppose um abandoning them is a one of our kind of our services we provide correct and it is a priority practice and you'll see the Thousand there on the right side so that's two Wells uh Mr Felman actually had two Wells that abandon typically um you would see 5500 so that's our maximum 1,000 per well so since he had two Wells he received $2,000 got it thank you certainly and with that I'll conclude my report and stand by for any questions all right thank you are there any other questions for Troy Troy it's uh commissioner Phillips again hey quick question I did see this is a little off topic but I did see in the last it might have been a couple articles ago on the Scott County scene um there was a contact person for um stenciling storm drains can you tell me who that person is yes that would be Shelby Roberts he Outreach and education specialist got it thank you you're welcome other questions Troy all right do you have anything else for us Troy no Mr chair that concludes my report thank you sir okay let's go move on to program updates Ryan shair Commissioners good afternoon um just to kind of give everyone the new Commissioners heads up of uh kind of this item because it'll be an ongoing item every excuse me every meeting um both Melissa and I kind of give highlights over the past since we've met last of kind of what we're working on and uh maybe anything that's kind of upcoming um and so for for myself um last we had met uh was in November and I had uh informed the Commissioners that we had an acceptable bid for our um paa Creek Ravine stabilization project and that bid was roughly 653,000 and the winning uh bid went to V uh Company Incorporated and they have since started the project so they started about mid December um with the idea that the we would want them to be substantially complete with that project by the end of February and the reason for that timeline is that uh when working in a ravine setting um that handles flow um once the snow starts to melt and and in March we tend to get um you know periods of higher precipitation um we we'd kind of want to be done in out of there at that point um but the reason why it's not fully complete is there is a component where we want uh live in this case shrubs planted um within some of these structures for vegetation and so obviously that um wouldn't be possible in in winter months so um substantially complete means basically all the structural components of the project are complete and then U the remaining portion that uh they still need to work on they come back between April and June and do the uh the actual shrub planting so that projects underway um they're probably roughly at the halfway point um so we're feeling good in terms of um excuse me in terms of meeting that uh February deadline um when they first started it was um fairly difficult for Access up and down the the Ravine um I know like Troy's been out there before and it uh um not not the easiest site uh that was kind of one of the challenges that we thought was that um access just getting up and down the Ravine was going to be tough um the contractor has kind of mitigated that they've done a good job of dewatering there is flowing water um at the tail end of the project it's kind of interesting there's uh water up at the top um mostly seepage coming out of the side slopes and then in the Middle where they're at right now it's almost pure sand there's there's no moisture whatsoever and then down at the bottom you actually have flowing water so um that was kind of one of the challenges of this project but um they're doing a good job and with the warm weather this week they're actually at a great spot uh to be where they're at in this Sandy area where it's dry so um hopefully this can kind of keep them moving along and um and like I said we're still anticipating that that project should be done um at the end of February and then uh I don't know if it'll be this year but I'm assuming at one of these upcoming tours we will um go out there and take a look at it and you can actually see um you know the project itself and all the work that we did and and I'll likely be the one kind of giving that that talk and presentation about all the things things that went into it I will also once this project is done likely March where it's substantially complete I'll put together a PowerPoint and I'll present it to the Commissioners as well um at our meeting and just kind of walk you through all the different stages of the project from start to finish and um kind of show you all the exciting and fun things that uh that we're working on this past winter so um that's consuming a lot of my time uh right now and then the other component the only other update I really have uh for this meeting is that um we were talking a little bit about grants earlier uh commissioner Fredericks and Troy were kind of going um talking about them and so those grants all have reporting requirements that are uh due and um they all kind of fall within the same time frame they're grants through mpca and also Bowser so uh npca stands for Minnesota Pollution Control agency and Bowser stands for the board water and soil resources so those um have been kind of our bigger Partners in terms of Grants lately and um we've got a number of Grants with them that are paying for some of the cips like the P Creek project we did a streamate project last winter uh one of the grants paid for a portion of that as well and so what we have to do as staff is basically um any expenditures that we had towards these grants we have to report on that um go into the state system it's called elink uh it's their reporting uh software and uh upload our invoices our um time that we've put towards the project so there's a whole slew of kind of things that you have to go through and upload and then they review it um and we're kind of in the the part of that right now so everything's basically due this Saturday so uh needless to say with the you know construction project and this reporting and I I think I got five of these grants to report on um it's a busy week and uh and also we utilize the soil and water for uh some of the components of these grants so when we're talking about the Kare projects um you know that's where the soil and water is is kind of doing a lot of the work in terms of getting those projects in the ground um all the contracts and uh applications status reviews all of those so we work hand inand with them um on these and so you know when we get to this point in reporting you know we're having those conversations back and forth about documentation and what we need and and all that so um they're fantastic to work with and um and we're making some progress on it and uh with that I'll stand for any questions about either of those items any questions for Ryan Barton no questions Ryan but it sounds like a great project thank you thank you it's a lot of information Ryan thank you it's nice to see you're probably putting in 40 hours now that's great yeah I think there's some weeks where it's more so any other questions for Ryan going once going twice okay we move on to the program updates with Melissa thank you Mr chair um before I start those I just want to apologize for the first part of the agenda and stumbling through that I just realized that I don't know if I've ever done the election for this commission before so I apologize that we stumbled through that a little bit but um so I just have a few updates for you so last year the DNR announced their Aquatic and basis species Grant um application process was open so I applied for that for four different lakes Cedar man oal and th um I did reach out to them today because we haven't heard anything and they indicated they're still reviewing those applications um and they hope to reach out um hopefully by next week uh to let us know um they do send out what's called an unofficial um notice which they'll send out to everyone that either people who were selected or who weren't selected uh but basically they said that um we should know for sure uh either within a week and then sometime in early March we would um have the uh Grant funds to be able to um apply towards either one of the Lakes if we if we do um get selected so um we do to the new Commissioners we do have a um in our land and water treatment program we do treat for curly leaf on four different lakes all the the Lakes I just mentioned Cedar mcmo D and th uh we do partner with Lake Associations on the lake improvement district when we can um so with Cedar Lake Cedar Lake is a very large lake it's 800 L 800 acres and so the planning for that occurs in December so myself the DNR and the lake improvement district meet to talk about the treatment plan for Cedar in the following year um we have been doing whole lake treatments on Cedar those occur shortly after ice out so I have already applied for that permit and that permit was approved by the DNR so Cedar Lake would be all ready to go for our uh treatment vendor uh when ice out occurs um but for the other Lakes um McMan odow and th I do need to go out and do a delineation survey on those and I typically do that in May and then what I do is I um look for curly leaf and I record it in a field um application U on my iPad that I have and then I create a map and that gets sent to the DNR to show where Cur Leaf is occurring and then they kind of draw in treatment areas that we that they'll approve us to treat for cly leaf on those Lakes so um I have been working on in started in 2024 a survey with the University of Minnesota this is our third time doing this survey with them the first time it was in 2011 and then in 2018 um and then this survey is to help us gather more information to inform this Watership Plan update uh but in 2024 we sent out, 1500 surveys to different um residents in the scoto area um we only got about 404 surveys back um so it's about 28% response rate so we've decided uh with the U ofm that we're going to do one more mailing at the end of February to try to get some more responses um but the in the questions that we did ask and there are going to help inform this next plan and then my last update is that um I've got three Grant projects that are being funded by The Watershed based implementation funding uh for 2024 and 2025 I'm still waiting for bar engineering to give me some quotes on one of those projects um and once I get that hopefully this week um then I can give that information to Ryan and he can input the work plan into eink and we can start that Grant agreement process to get those grants um grants get those grants in and start working on the projects um and that's all I have for that at the moment I can stand for any questions if anybody has any any questions from Melissa don't be shy come on someone's got a question all right thank you Melissa moving right along to uh new business we have got the tax application uh if you want to go and run through them Ryan actually I'm sorry Mr chair there's one item still under ongoing business oh I missed it your Watershed Plan update I'm sorry yes and Ryan if you could scroll up because that item is up in front of these nope too far it's right after Troy's packet it's the Milestones sheet right there yeah okay um so this will be uh an item on the agenda every month under old business I put together this Milestones sheet just to kind of give you an idea of where we are in the planet update process so this first section sorry I can't scroll I'm going to have to have you scroll for me Ryan but this first section um number 10 um that's ongoing that's a part of the plan um the water the Land and Water Resource inventory um all staff is working on different sections of that that we should have that done in April that's the goal and then we can give you that as like a draft chapter to read um we are the ongoing um of advertising for public engagement opportunities you know we did that all through phase one um but phase two we will continue to do that um so that's why I left that as an ongoing item um a lot of things are complete as you can see in Green Line 18 the iding of the major issues to address um we still have to yet go to our County Board um to kind of have them you know say yep we're okay with these kind of final issue statements our intent was to go to them in February um but we found out after the packet went out that now that Workshop date is full and so we need to push it out a little bit further but we are going to continue to work on um drafting some goals based on the issue statements that we kind of feel we know are going to continue into this Next plan um and so next month I'll bring you those issue statements and maybe some draft changes that we might have to those based on the input we received in Phase One um as you can see on line 24 that's where we are today is at this meeting and um we'll have you do a prioritization exercise at the end of this meeting but our intent for line 26 was to go to the SBO board in February that's now getting moved to March um and then if you want to scroll down a little bit further so this I okay you can stop there so this document I'd like to label it instead of draft is um I'd like to label it as a living document but I couldn't customize that uh stamp there but um so this will change as kind of we move through the different tasks and make some adjustments but the plan at the moment is to in February March staff will kind of go through some of the goals and start maybe making some changes to those I have a meeting set for March 12th for the next Tac Workshop which they will go over the goal statements once we kind of have some draft goal statements from their input I'm going to do A needs assessment exercise with them basically what they're going to do is the goal statement will be stated and they're going to tell us what do we need to do in order to meet that goal and so with all those needs that they end up listing there then I'll work on a gaps analysis to figure out are we missing anything or are our programs that we already have covering what they say we need to do to meet that goal so my hope is in March to do that same exercise with you so March might be our first in-person meeting with you um at least that's the plan at the moment and then so April will be kind of figuring out what our gaps are and then again in May is my kind of uh Target date to go over what do we want to prioritize you know what does that look like because for this plan we have to prioritize and we have to Target um and we'll go over it we'll get into more detail on that um this spring but I just want to kind of give you an idea of kind of what the next steps are and kind of the the draft timeline for those so that's all I have so far with this again it's it will probably change a little bit by next month as we kind of refine more things but with that does anyone have any questions on this sheet at all so I'm Clayton Wagner uh I'm extremely new to this group obviously could you speak to with regard to these goals what is coming down on high from the Federal Federal level state level and how much latitude the county has with regard to shaping the future of our wmo did I see oh Vanessa is on Vanessa do you want to tackle that absolutely um it's an excellent question commissioner wner um it's it's two-part just for clarification are you asking about what effect the county has versus the wmo or just kind of this body in general all would be great because I'm okay learning it all uh I guess um yeah with regard to this body and with regard to um I I suppose there's different wmos for each yeah go ahead it's a very excellent question and um you were very brave to to um volunteer to one of the most uniquely organized wos in the state there are only two that are organized like us most other Watershed districts watershed management organizations in the state of Minnesota are um freestanding entities there's only two that are actually operated by a county Austin Carver County wo um there are some uh that are operated by S qu conservation districts but you know generally speaking we're pretty unique so you don't often have a situation where um you have the entire Watershed agency uh their board their governing board uh happens to also be the County board so uh a similar example is with the Vermilion joint Powers organization which does uh split between Scott and Carver Scott and deot County and that one does obviously have a couple of Commissioners from uh Scott County and a couple Commissioners from Dakota County but we're unique your your entire board is made up of your County Commissioners um you'll notice we have a county liaison commissioner Brandon is here she's one of your County Commissioners obviously so to that end uh the Scott wo our watershed management plan uh is also adopted by the county as their Water Resource plan of their big County comprehensive plan part of the reason why we're trying to get this done now is so that they can bow it in there so in that extent we probably have a little bit more influence as a wo is as far as how Water Resources operate in the county than most so that's that piece as far as what's govern what's what's required by the federal government to this level state law has pretty much equal or gone above what's federally required um so there are f Federal rules and regulations but in this extent it's mostly state regulations mainly through the Board of Water and Soil resources it does identify certain things that we have to address in our plan and it does say we have to have goals what those goals are are actually decided by the planning process so the citizens the residents our technical advisory committee and then our WPC uh and then you feed that all to the board so in that extent you have a lot a lot of influence to help guide and and and determine that um and then from like a regulary standpoint obviously when our plan becomes the County's plan that also affects development and ordinances so but it is primarily state level now in other states it's a little different but Minnesota has um uh I don't want to say aggressive is not the right word but we're very proactive in the state of Minnesota with our Water Resources rules so we're more robust than the federal government to begin with so so thank you for that Vanessa is that helpful that is helpful I guess I just to Pro a little bit further um analigus to how a Township would be the County May dictate the the future plan the 10-year plan of uh of land use um you know what's considered uh retail or residential Etc and the township can be a little more restrictive but they can't be less restrictive or that's how I understand it how like I guess how does that equate to Water Resource Management is it the same um yes in as much as our portion of the Water Resource uh guidance that we create here in the wmo is what guides those land use requirements by the the townships and the cities and the county so um in this case many of our townships have uh for one reason or another the county is the zoning Authority and some of them have a few more restrictive requirements but by and large most of our townships have the county doing their their zoning Authority um almost I'm thinking I'm literally going through in my head I'm trying to think of those that might have more restrictive in the townships Water Resource requirements some will only because they're within a different Watershed District in some areas so if you're within the Prior Lake Spring Lake Watershed district and a couple Within the laowa Minnesota River water district in a couple areas they have more restrictive Water Resource requirements but that is the Watershed District providing guidance to those cities and townships and then they kind of have to adopt those that information okay thank you I appreciate that Vanessa I I unfortunately enjoy talking about this which can be a little problematic so I'm trying to keep it short today because usually I'm sure I'll have more question and I will find your email and take it offline if I need to but uh I want to thank the other Commissioners for let letting me um let me kind of go off on a tangent so no much appreciated commissioner and again you know we have a lot of great Commissioners also here I mean uh commissioner Schmidt commissioner Phillips you know they both have their own experiences commissioner th has been here for a long time uh you know commissioner Barton even though he's new obviously has a lot of water and so anybody else's and Melissa Ryan if anybody else has an idea you can always jump in as well um so doesn't have to just be me well thanks for all that Vanessa that's what question I was gonna ask on behalf of the the new folks is to the explanation of how we work with the county and the township so you uh took that from me that's perfect perfect so any do you have anything else Vanessa oh no I do do not thank you commissioner okay Melissa would be good to move on yes Mr chair okay actually Melissa on a new business now sorry I had a question this is Jay Fredericks so I kind of consume the input that's been received from uh both the public and other um concerned um parties I guess just a basic question is I know there's still maybe some more Outreach going on but do you have everything you need in order to kind of complete the work or are there gaps or inputs that you would still need washed in to finish the work yes uh commissioner Fredericks uh we will do a phase two I think that um it's important to get input especially from the lake groups because we did a separate surveys with Cedar Lake improvement district McMahon odou and th lakes and as part of phase two which I plan on doing in June is to get input from them on what management actions we need to do on those Lakes to keep improving them um we will also do uh we think it's important to get a little bit more input from the public public um we think we got a pretty good um pretty good number of people um giving input this time but we did a pretty robust um public engagement um plan and we got way more input this time than we did previous plans um I think it would be important to have people uh at least for phase two I think some kind of a strategy input some kind of interactive exercise is what we would like to do sometime in June with even just the general public um which I think would inform kind of shaping our programs to see if we need to make any changes to any of our programs or to any of our our strategies in our that are in our current plan or maybe some information that we don't realize that we might need you know so it sounds like so again to be clear I totally get it more input is better that's kind of an endless um thing right but I guess I was asking if there was maybe something more surgical that you needed to um you know sus out and it sounded like that that was the case with the lake groups you mentioned and then it sounded like maybe you had some different approaches that might get you some different inputs um in addition to just you know again more of the marri that that's certainly the case did I understand that correctly yes and I and I would also add that um you know when I do that gaps analysis to figure out do we have any gaps anywhere I think that might kind of also help inform how we shape that phase two input process okay thank you and I would I would add commissioner Frederick's to what Melissa said is because we are taking these in pieces right now we're looking at primarily the issues and because the input that we received from the public and our technical advisory committee which means you know that's our cities townships and so on um is very similar to the issues that we received last time and we don't have any really unique outliers that are making us question do we have enough information on these issues I think we feel very comfortable right now that we have enough input on the issues um so for that piece I think we're good I it's as Melissa said there are a couple pieces coming up that we might not um but we'll see how those shake out and we will certainly let you know if we don't feel comfortable with the information we have um and we'll look to you for recommendations okay thank you yeah commissioner Barton I would say overall very impressed with the extent of Outreach you've done so far it's a lot of different events a lot of mailings and you know even almost 30% response rate that's pretty good um and so it makes sense to kind of do a little bit further with Lake organizations and I was wondering if you if there's like any Sportsman's groups or groups like that because you have the people that live on the lake and the people that live on the lake have typically similar opinions about their particular water body but then you might be kind of get some different opinions when it comes to the people that are bopping around different lakes um for fishing yep that's a that's a good question commissioner Barton and I did invite um those Sportsman's groups to um the phase one public input process so I did include those groups on those emails um I didn't include them to do the specific Lake resident survey but they were included to do the overall public input survey for the issues and concerns and um I don't know for sure if they did it because it's all an you know Anonymous we don't know who actually fill it out but yeah but they were invited yeah great thank you I'm gonna have to hop off the call since I have since I'm speaking right now I'm gonna have to hop off in five minutes but um just an idea probably not for now but for next time maybe we have a little bit of time at the beginning just to have a little intro with all of the new Commissioners and uh just a little bit about our professional backgrounds personal backgrounds where we live and why we joined the uh group that sounds great in fact that was on my my notes Here toward the end of the meeting so let's uh if we could put that on the agenda for next meeting I think that'd be a great idea before you leave I wanted to say uh at the end of the meeting but I'll do it right now just wanted to say welcome to the new members and appreciate the insights and skills that you're going to bring bring to us and as well as as well as understanding staff and their different roles it's it's incredible group it's very informative and they're usually way above my head but um I appreciate all of it thank you okay with that um and if you got to leave Mr Barton that's totally understandable I we all understand um I think we can move on to Ryan's new business sure Commissioners um so these next three items are all information items um and one thing to note is that these would typically be action items and I will explain um why their information here but just wanted to kind of clarify that um so the first two that we're going to go through um the first one is going to be uh Jim jaron's uh filter ship re-enrollment contract and so this is a contract where Jim juson has planted a filter ship um along a tributary stream that contract expired and he was looking to reenroll it uh in our program and to give you kind of some background on re-enrollment our current plan um we don't have a he heavy emphasis on on re enrollments um but why this one is here is we have come up with kind of a prioritization and um the swcd staff actually goes through proactively looking at contracts that going to expire filter ship and Native grasses are two kind of incentivized uh practices and I guess tree shrub is too now but um uh a lot of these are filter ships because the native grass program didn't kind of get going um until a little bit later the filter ships kind of were the first ones to go um so we typically see more of those coming up for re-enrollment and so what they do is we've set forth criteria that because our current plan it it talks about um incentivizing change but not sustaining it and that would NE that would mean that we're you know not heavily emphasizing doing re enrollments because it will hinder you moving forward getting progress moving forward so um part of it too is the hope that um by incentivizing it to start that maybe the land owner um appreciates it um you know sees the value in it and is willing to leave it in beyond the contract term um that maybe the financials of it weren't the biggest driver um so just to kind of give you the background on that so this one though did end up as sort of that tier one I think it's four tiers they break them down into and really we only fund the the tier one uh projects and it might not even be all the tier one projects we set sort of within our uh budget a we parcel off a small amount of it to go towards these re-enrollment so that way you know it it wouldn't eat up a lot of our uh budget so those are kind of the the ways that we mitigate the um not putting a lot of money towards these um so with that with the background uh this is a 1.8 acre filter ship uh the rate for re-enrollment is $100 per acre um which equates $1,800 and that's for a one-time 10-year contract so there is no opportunity to reenroll it after this one additional contract so it's it's very black and white that this is a onetime deal um and they get 10 more years and then after that then it's not eligible anymore for um re-enrolling uh so why it's informational is that we wanted to utilize we were talking about it commissioner uh Fredericks was talking about earlier the use it or lose it so we didn't have a December WPC meeting thus um number of years ago I think it was two years ago the WPC approved Vanessa being able to administratively approve up to her um amount that she's authorized by the county to approve contract so that's $50,000 so this Falls well within under that uh threshold and so um it's been administratively already approved and so we're just bringing it to your attention that you know um that this would have normally went to you but because of the end of the year and trying to utilize those funds we did need to approve it prior to the January 2025 uh meeting so um I guess I'll stand for any questions on this one and then we'll we can kind of move on to the next one Clayton Wagner again um how I guess how many of these re-enrollment do we have how often do you have the land owner requesting to uh jump in for another 10 Mr chair commissioner Wagner uh very very little and the idea is to be proactive that if we we want to go to the ones we want to reenroll less than waiting for them to come to Us in reenroll um so that's why they're the so and water is going out and identifying the really top tier projects that are going to be expiring and then we kind of go to them and say well are you interested in in re-enrolling um and if they are then they can sign up and if they're not that's completely fine too um so for this year uh to answer if it helps put it into context we have two it's this one and the next one we're going to talk about so in they total you know a few thousand dollars so um the cap we've been using is 10% of our overall budget um and if we don't use it towards reenroll then it gets opened up to other projects so we usually know at about September October is how many we're looking at and then if we don't have you know up to the 20,000 then we'll uh use those funds for you new projects thank you yep so this is J Frederick's a question so for those that don't reenroll or or we don't seek their re-enrollment what actually statistically happens do they no longer keep the the the filter strip or do they keep the filter strip whether we do or don't renew it's a great question um and we have actually um created I guess a sub group of staff from the soil and water in the wmo and it's something we're curious to see too how many of these are actually staying in beyond the term it would be nice to build up a database to sort of have a better idea of you know 60% of land owners leave their filter ships in 5 years after uh the terms have expired just to sort of know that um so basically once their contract expires they are free to do whatever they want now some of these filter ships fall under the buffer law and if they fall under the buffer law which requires them to have prenal vegetation um we don't offer the the cier to those there it's already a requirement and um and we're not tacking on to that um so yeah we're we're still kind of figuring out what are a lot of people doing and so how we would determine if they're still in is you can do aerop photography review so we um it's not annual but it's close to annual we have um uh ARL imagery flowing in Scott County and that's available to the public staff too where you can actually go through and you can you know talk between you know 2022 and 2024 and you can see if that filter ship was removed you know if that if their expiration date was 2023 you know is it there in 22 not there in 24 you would know that it's gone so so we are in the process of trying to figure that out too if that answers your question I think it's an interesting question because you know I mean in a perfect world people would be incentive just to leave it in place um I guess you don't want to reward the people who you know are only doing it for the money so to speak as opposed to whatever so it's just kind of an interesting um situation in question um you know to ask so thanks for that yeah no yeah you're right it is interesting and this is sort of leaving a little bit of um you know the possibility that if if there is just a really good site and we and as the wo we want to see it stay in this opens that door for us to be able to to do that um but yes you're right if if it's driven by financials then eventually it will be taken out you know because at some point there is no more opportunities for re-enrollment so um perfect world you're right they stay in but you know we realize that's not the case something sorry and again just if I go off on a tent I can you know follow up offline so everyone doesn't have to go through my education process but um for for other mitigations like ground cover planning things like that are those also eligible for re-enrollment or is it just this um so right now we've currently got it at uh filter ships and native grass plantings and also tree plantings are new I'd have to double check if we have have them eligible or not but uh right now for sure filter ships and Native grasses are uh eligible okay thanks three and shrub is not eligible at this time Ryan not is okay it's only filters and conservation cover the the idea is that we want to try to Sunset this at at some point where um we we wouldn't necessarily make it as common as it maybe is now if that makes sense any other questions out there Ryan commissioner Schmidt um what was the original enrollment rate and was it a 10 year and also in the re-enrollment um do you think you'd be able to stretch that contract from 10 years to say 15 or even 20 even at just at the $100 rate um Mr chair commissioner Schmidt I don't know what the exact rate was when like Mr jurus signed up 10 years ago um it's fluctuated you know right now it's currently around $200 an acre um so it probably was somewhere in that b part give or take you know maybe 50 bucks one way or the other um in terms of stretching it out further uh it's a possibility I know some folks have turned us down because of the rate being um so you know this so right now the $100 an acre is half of the uh the going rate for a new one and so that for some hasn't moved the needle enough to where they didn't want to sign for it they thought that was too low um so there is that possibility that if we stretch it out further that you might lose more um but it's always you know it's worth a discussion for sure I mean when we do our um annual docket review that's a great item that I can put a note in it that we should at least have that kind of conversation yep thank you yep you're welcome Ryan are you going to go through all of them or just the jural one oh sorry I wasn't sure if if you wanted to any questions on the jural one I guess anybody have any questions on that so very long um M commissioner so I don't need to go through all the background of everything on this one U basically same exact same situation as the Jim jurus one same rate um it's a smaller filter ship it's 1.1 Acres um the location is obviously different it's in um uh these strips are around counter ditch three and 10 um but same situation these were the two that Rose the highest on our priority list and so um same thing we wanted to utilize 2024 funds and so that's why it's been already administratively approved and we're just informing the Commissioners here tonight of uh that action so I can unless there's any questions I'll keep keep rolling here under the next one uh this one now is different uh so we were talking about well decommissions earlier commissioner Phillips had brought it up so this is actually a situation where we've got a well ceiling um different this is not a re-enrollment um what happened here was um we wanted to once again utilize 2024 funds and so this item couldn't wait until the January 2025 meeting so it was once again administratively approved um by Vanessa and what this was it's a Well ceiling for Valerie Hagen and um you know she uh you can see her applicant share was close to 3,000 um we've got a cap on our well ceilings and she hit that at $1,000 um but one piece of this too is and this is not um any sort of of precedent we're wanting to set but this she did have the well sealed before the contract was signed and so anytime you're utilizing Grant funds that's a a big no Noe we're not using any Grant funds for this we're only using uh local funds and we felt as though as as staff that um it was warranted in this case U there's a high emphasis on you know groundwater contamination in preventing that and so um the timeline of her sealing it was kind of imperative that she did it and then she was looking for the um you know cauer afterwards after having conversations with staff and learning about it and so um we felt as though in this particular situation utilizing local funds with the small amount that it was that um we would basically have a waiver in this case that that she'd be eligible so but I want to emphasize this is not a precedent this is this is a a interesting case which in my timeline of being here I I don't know if we've ever done it so this is not something that's common and not likely to you know happen again anytime soon uh so with that I'll s any questions on this one questions for Ryan all right well thanks Ryan and moving on to Melissa thank you Mr chair um so this next item is just to inform you of um we went through the current plan and made a list of all of the items whether they be goals or strategies or actions that we talked about in the current plan that we said we were going to do something so in the cover letter I just kind of explained that that there are there are a few items um on the list that you'll see in just a moment um that weren't completed and and so I wrote in that um column kind of an explanation of why we haven't completed that yet so there's different reasons why but okay stop right there um so what I did is I went through the plan and and some things are goals some things are strategies because in our strategies chapter we wrote um a narrative of things that we were going to do rather than have a list um and itemized list like like that's in our implementation section is actually a table a list of different things but the strategy is more narrative on some things and so I pull little sentences out of there so as we go down the list it's either checked as a goal or a strategy or an actual action item that we took from um the implementation section um I tried to reference what plan goal went with that goal strategy or action item if it had a priority area who was responsible and then whether it's completed ongoing in process or not completed um so if we'll just scroll really slowly here I'm just going to point out the ones that are not completed so in that far column so the first one here is to um so what we did is um we I had GIS um do kind of a random selection of parcels in the wo area I think I asked him for I don't know a couple hundred Parcels to just randomly select and I had sent out letters to all of them asking if we could come and Sample their Wells and what we were looking for is atrazine and arsenic um and we had started looking for atrazine in 2011 in the last plan because we didn't really have any kind of Baseline understanding of the quality of our groundwater besides what we uh the information that we get from water test kits that environmental health um distributes to people who need to test their well um but we didn't really have an idea of how agriculture might be affecting groundwater so we were looking for atrazine which is a common um common compound in um agricultural chemicals so in this plan we said that we would do it again um and so we haven't quite completed that yet um a second time so I put in here that we'll budget for that in the 2026 budget to kind of inform the county groundwater plan because we are going to do also a county groundwater plan because we haven't had one in quite a long time um so this next item you know there's like I said earlier I have three projects that are um going to be funded by that 2024 2025 Watershed based implementation funding so that first one there is going to be under the that and the second one the ditch multiple purpose assessments it's not actually an assessment that's what we called it in the current plan it's really a study so that um I'll get into more detail on that one when we um hopefully next month we'll have a grant agreement in place or at least the work plan submitted in eink and then I'll go through some of those projects a little bit more detail with you but uh so that study and then if you want to keep scrolling and then there's I got a question on that sure um when you I when you um kind of took the random survey and contacted all these land owners did you get had a pretty good success rate on people volunteering to to have their well sampled um it it was okay actually in the presentation that I'll go over next I'm going to actually show some results from that and I have numbers in there um so actually that's that's coming up I can show you what that is yeah thank you yeah but that's a good question yes yeah kind of fascinating me but yeah um so then that the Third project there is um updating the Sand Creek um tmdl model so that's coming up and then the update the total suspended Sol is Trend analyses um we're actually having bar engineering um so in 2023 we had our s CD do uh monitoring in the credit River Watershed so they did the two main core sampling sites and some synoptic sites which are just sites that they visit on a monthly basis and take a just a small number of uh parameter readings there um so our s swcd did all that monitoring in 2023 and in 2024 they did the larger Sand Creek Watershed monitoring which was quite a heavy lift um so this just talks to uh having Council update those total suspended solid trend analyses and we're actually having bar um work with met counil to to do those Trend analyses and put these in the reports that they're they're creating for us from all this data so I'm still waiting for the credit River data analysis report from bar but I expect to have that before the end of February and then I hope to get them started very soon on the Sand Creek data analysis um now that our SRB CD has all that data uh uh QA qced for us so um so if you want to scroll a bit further um so as you can see we got quite a few things done um so there were a couple of things um so in a couple places in the plan we said that we would uh do a plan amendment to update some information and the first one was you know how Troy talked earlier that the Minnesota Pollution Control agency every 10 years does this wraps study wraps stands for Watershed restoration and protection strategy it's basically their monitoring the the larger Watershed that covers multiple counties and then they're doing a stressor analysis and completing a report on the condition of all those water bodies um when that was complete in 2009 no sorry when was that last one complete trying to remember maybe that was 20 sorry I'll have to look up that date but anyway we didn't get a plan Amendment completed uh during that time and you um our former manager who used to be with the scoto retired Vanessa came on and then right after Vanessa came on Co hit so we had to kind of adjust all of our priorities um for different things and different projects that we were working on so the couple of minor amendments that we were hoping to do um didn't get completed during this plan cycle so if you want to scroll a little bit further and again um again it's just another statement in a different section that talked about uh doing a plan Amendment um and then that last last item on there um I'll let Ryan talk to about these next ones these are in the implementation section are the larger CIP projects Mr chair commissioner so this Cedar Lake Wetland restoration wet detention Basin is a um a field that's uh kind of on the south end of Cedar Lake um where it has uh you know a direct Outlet into the lake and upon um reaching out to the land owners uh they did give it consideration to do do the project but ultimately in the end they just were not sure what they wanted to do with that piece of property um they weren't sure if they were maybe going to look at developing it um which would actually kind of uh accomplish the goal of what we were looking at so we were just looking to basically um remove that uh that tiine and restore the Wetland um uh so they weren't sure what they want to do so we did reach out uh tried to you know have a project go in and um they said no so just so you know the new Commissioners know we we um we work on a voluntary basis for these projects so you know land owners have the ability to say no and that's completely fine and then I'll let Melissa talk about the Cedar and McMahon Lakes alen treatment yeah so in this current plan we had thought that maybe Cedar McMan Lake would be ready for an Alum treatment which basically um it's a treatment that you do to kind of lock phosphorus into the bottom sediment so that it can't be resuspended into the water column and cause algae blooms um but after kind of review of water quality data for McMahon we realized that it really doesn't need an Alum treatment and then um Cedar Lake just is not ready for an Alum treatment there's still um we believe many more years of uh working on some of the issues in Cedar Lake before it would be ready for an Alum treatment um so that's why we didn't do that one yet the phase three helina Broadway near Channel settlement control so the the name helina Broadway is basically we used uh naming convention with the two closest road intersections so that project is located um just below the water tower uh in Jordan at s Creek and unfortunately the land owner during the design phase passed away and upon giving the rest of the family some time you know to grieve and uh we reached backed out to them and and um you know proposed to continue the project and and they did not have an interest in in doing it and so um that's why that project never went in uh Salsbury Hill the county 51 Ravines so this was kind of when I started um at Scott County and so my understanding is that we were looking at we did a study for reviewing both uh Cory Creek which we ended up actually completing that CIP and also Salisbury Hill were basically in that same report and so my understanding was they were kind of looking at just doing one and I think Cory Creek uh one out because um there's a little bit more traffic on um the downstream road that was uh having that um that bridge plug up with sediment and uh flood um and so that's partly why then we didn't pursue the Salsbury Hill uh Ravine project was we did the cor Creek project in in its place so Mr chair Commissioners for those of you who are are newer or just as kind of a refresher a really easy quick and dirty way to look at this is our Watershed plan is pretty much what we promise to do it is literally our recipe book our chore assignments it's everything we PR we promise to do basically for the next 10 years and how we're going to do it this list basically assesses did we do what we said we were going to do and how well did we do it at the end of the day we were very very successful we got almost everything done there's yes there's a couple of things every Watershed District or wo has a few things that they just don't get done you put really you know really big potential projects on there you might not get them done but by and large we were very very successful um probably one of the more successful wated agencies around um in this last planning cycle uh so we were very we were very glad to see that in this assessment um but that's literally what we're doing here is we're showing you all of the things that we promised to do and and did we do them um some of these things obviously are going to be ongoing we've been doing them we're going to keep doing them couple of things are going to end up finishing before the plan cycle ends uh and that's kind of also how Watershed districts and watershed management organizations are evaluated by the state uh because the work we do takes so long to show a fact you know something we might do in a lake might not improve water quality for 10 15 20 years how do you assess if what you're doing is effective how do you assess if what you're doing is responsible and efficient and this is how um we assess that kind of information so if you're looking for a really high level quick dirty like why what is this all for what does this mean that's kind of my two cents toss in there Ryan can you scroll just see if there's anything else that was helpful thank you um these might be the last two so Blaha Ravine uh and Chestnut Ravine were both uh cips who identified in the plan but we would assist the cities and so um the the city you know have yet to approach us about you know completing the project so if we're not the lead on it so if they were to come to us um and wanted to have pursued it we would have you know assisted however possible but um that did not happen I think that might be the last one yeah is there any questions on this at all or so basically we wanted to check ourselves to make sure there isn't something that we still need to do and we still have time to do it before the plan expires uh but we wanted to show you that uh you know looks like we're doing pretty good looks like we've almost accomplished everything that we said we were going to accomplish so thank you very much thank you very much so um I guess moving on to the next to item F Watership Plan update issues priorization presentation and exercise thank you Mr chair and Commissioners um I wasn't going to go into great detail with this I put it in the packet to just inform you that um so what I did is I took all of the input from the residents the stakeholders and doing those uh Lake surveys and I started to form some themes from that information and so I put together just kind of the shorter document just describing those themes and that feedback from everyone um and so this was really meant for kind of a a summarized version for you and I'll also provide this for the county board when we when we do get to meet with them regarding issues um but that's really all I wanted to talk about with this just some and one more thing for you to read but it'll also kind of help you with with this prioritization exercise that you're going to do um in a little bit here uh with that is there any questions on this at all or think it's well together yeah okay exactly thank you um okay I think there's just a short little memo just saying that I'm gonna give a presentation yep okay so if I can share my screen Ryan and while she does that I will add one anecdote uh Mr ch Commissioners uh we did ask a lot of information too regarding groundwater specifically because uh ground water and the rest of the work that wmo does kind of align in some extent so rather than do a lot of Citizen engagement spec separately for groundwater it just didn't make any sense so we asked more groundwater related questions at the same time is doing our general Water Resource questions uh it may be that at the end of this some of those qu some of those issues some of that input will be split off towards the county groundwater plan and uh some of it will just be kept with the wo but if you're if you're curious why there seemed to be a higher level of groundwater questions than or groundwater issues than previously uh that's probably why uh that being said groundwater has always been probably the top priority of the wmo for the last chunk um uh but that's just a little bit of additional in site especially for the newer Commissioners who might not have been aware okay thank you Vanessa um I'm hoping everyone can see the presentation am I correct yes yep okay you're not seeing this little popup box that says your computer's about ready to restart do you no okay good okay so I got a a few slides here to give you some information kind of on the the water the current wck conditions and kind of a background to help give you some more information to do the prioritization exercise on issues and concerns so I will try to go through some of this quickly um I just wanted to describe your role um with this so you know all we ask is you know if you can come prepared and and if you're able to review the materials before the meeting and um you know we went through the same kind of bullet list with our technical advisor committee you know just respect all input be open-minded you know not all voices are represented and we want all of we want to hear from all of you you know if possible so this Step Up step back is just make sure you're heard and but make space for others to be heard and we've had great active participation so far and we're loving that that's for sure um if you have any other Communications about the plan update just route them through me um and then you know we just always ask that you work with the spirit of brainstorming and and we'll keep everything on the table in the beginning of the process and then we'll start kind of narrowing things down as we go along here and then our role will be to you know make sure that all the agendas are prepared and all the materials that you'll need to make informed decisions will be emailed out at least a week in advance um we'll provide the data and information to help you make informed decisions we'll start and end on time and we'll you know we'll all be respectful and and open-minded and when we're in person we'll bring snacks and drinks Melissa yeah sorry I did note we usually mail it out Wednesday so it's not technically a week in advance that was my bad I should have caught that okay well um so I did update this plan schedule to change the we did adjust doing kind of a phase two in June but we did start uh back in July with the official kickoff meeting with the WPC and the County Board and our public input process went through September um since then we've had uh a meeting with our technical advisory committee and today is with you and oh sorry I did forget to update that that we aren't actually going to the board now until March but our plan our current plan expires in December 2026 so it's my goal to to have it hopefully adopt it a little bit early um the Board of Water and Soil resources that does do kind of like the final review on our plan and um approves our plan um I believe there's a couple meetings towards the end of 2026 that we can't go to their board uh with the plan so we we hope that we can have everything ready to go for their approval uh more in the fall rather than towards the end of 2026 so that's the goal here um there are specific requirements in Minnesota rule 8410 for developing Watershed plans we do have to have an executive summary that landed Water Resources inventory that I talked about that we're working on we have to have measurable goals for at least these five things and then we do have to have a prioritize implementation um table with schedule cost funding source responsible party and and then talk about an evaluation procedure in the plan so there those are just kind of the bare minimum um just really quickly that's so the beginning of the process started with um a board action to the board allowed us to start the the update of the Watershed plan and then after that I sent a letter to all of the kind of agency partners so all the state agencies and our local uh Watershed groups um surrounding counties all of our cities um even some of the departments in Scott County like Parks um asking for their input on what are what should be our priorities and and what do they see is issues and concerns and so that feedback produced and I just did it kind of a general topic that you know most of the comments we received were regarding surface water concerns mostly surface water quality concerns and then groundwater quality and sustainability kind of raped next and then I kind of put them in order from there but um so we do start out with asking that stakeholder group uh first and then we have a kickoff meeting so that kickoff meeting happened on July 22nd and Vanessa went through a couple different um exercises with the WPC and wo board and one of the thing she asked is to kind of rank their uh overall importance of these General topics and that's how that kind of um fell out of there is that groundwater was their most important topic and Then followed by natural systems um and the input uh with natural systems ranking so high is um was really nice to see um because I I don't remember that following So High um last time when we did the current plan uh so that's good to see because as you'll see as I get into this um presentation that we do have U fish and macron vertebrate um impairments on a lot of our streams so this next subject I will let Ryan talk about yeah um so this is just to kind of give you some background uh with Scott County and the geology and in history so um you know there's things that that we uh since settlement have had on the landscape that have uh you know POS challenges for us development agriculture um just to name a few but also um you know some of this is just uh based on our you know landscape our setting and um you know natural causes so uh to kind of give you a background of you know Scott County and how that kind of plays a role um if you've ever heard of uh you know 10,000 years ago we had Lake aasis that was kind of up in the Red River Valley and then extended up into to Canada too so this giant glacial Lake um that eventually was eroded by what um was called glacial River Warren so glacial River Warren uh formed from erosion that um that led to the draining of that Lake glacial River Warren is what we now know as the Minnesota River Valley so um kind of on that uh western part of Scott County uh you can see it on this uh hillshade map um you know kind of that line you see kind of almost like a break and that is where the river used to be um obviously now the Minnesota River is a much smaller uh River within that Basin you can see it on this map here you actually see the the river itself is just a fragment of what that glacial River Warren used to be so massive River one of the fastest flowing uh rivers in in history of time um you know was there and and what happened is that continually just down cut right and so everything else that fed into that glacial River Warren down cut as well and so we've had um a lot of of emphasis has been on Sand Creek for instance um part of the challenge of Sand Creek is that it flows through a bluff area um just between north of Cedar Lake to the wastewater treatment ponds in the city of Jordan it's it's almost a couple hundred feet of elevation drop for that stream which um you can see by the the uh photos that are in here you end up with these just massive sloughs of of when that stream is cutting through that bluff area and it can get outside of its flood plane like it is in this instance and pushes up against that bluff wall you just get Mass wasting happening with the stream and so Sand Creek is one of the biggest siment contributors to the Minnesota River um and so this is partly it this middle Sand Creek has 10 to 15 times the um total suspended solids the sediment um in this stretch and we know that for monitoring and it's because of these Bluffs and so we've had an heavy emphasis on on um curving these and trying to reduce the erosion but uh the point of this is just to kind of let you know that you know some of this is you know somewhat natural and and it's a Challen we face um and and we're still trying to improve that but to give you perspective that um photograph there is actually one of the cips that we um uh built so from stream to top of bluff is 100 feet roughly so it's a giant site and you can see how you know exposed that is and how many dump truck loads of sediment are ending up in the the stream um because of that and and that's why we're focusing on those areas to reduce that that that siment loading so just giving you some background Ryan where in the picture was the project was it the left picture where um so these pictures are both pre project um so the the project itself and if you're curious I can send you photos of it after it's done it's at the between the basically where the water meets land um and what it was is the series of log jams where it was built out into the stream and what it does is it relieves pressure press on that bluff so flow is pushed away from that bluff and in between the structures it creates an Eddy and that um basically will allow sediment to drop so in time you're hopefully building a shelf across that whole um toe of that slope and what that's going to do then as the upper Bluff still erods now you've got a shelf for that sediment to build on and as that slope continues to fall back you actually might get some vegetation when that bluff reaches it's they call it an angle of repose if it's straight up and down you're not going to get anything to grow on it but as it slowly tips back there's a certain point where vegetation starts to grow on it so it's not preventing the erosion what it's trying to do is reduce the amount of sediment that ends up in the Stream as it continues to lay itself back if that makes sense got it thank you and I will uh just for the benefit of our new commissioner ERS as well um it happens to be that the wmo is one of the leaders of these types of projects in the state we're not usually a two our own horn kind of folk but it is worth worthwhile knowing that uh a lot of the other state agencies uh and other Water Resource agencies uh look to our projects such as this um for leadership and as an example uh you'll notice the Board of Water and Soil resources has frequently highlighted these capital projects that Ryan has helped put in uh so it's one of the few things that we are especially proud of and sometimes we'll kind of talk about more than others um the quirky part is that they're usually tucked away and so nobody sees them so probably our our biggest uh one of our biggest successes is something that most folks never see okay uh moving on I just kind of wanted to give you an idea of uh what the general land use is in the county and this is in percentages I got this from my Council but you know there's still 42% approximately of land and Agriculture and still about 26% land that's undeveloped of course these numbers are from 2020 and we still have more development happening um but there's still a lot of you know undeveloped land in the county and so we do know that more development is expected so that is something to to keep in mind and um um that you know there there's small percentages of homes and you know when you do look at a map and you see all the impervious surfaces um especially with the cities here as we see here it seems like there's there would be more impervious surfaces but really um you know Credit River just Incorporated so it's still a lot of uh rural residential landscape but um I do have another slide coming up that'll talk about areas we're going to be seeing more development occur um so what I wanted to Oher uh question in the in the last slide does the county have part of their master plan to escalate any of those like Park the one that comes to mind is the park recreational preserve is like is like do those projects just come as they come or is is there like a a goal that the board is pushing to reshape um well I do know that that Parks does have Master plans on on the different parks that you'll see on some of the upcoming Maps um I know that a lot of those Master plans I just talked to Patty from our parks department she said a lot of those Master plans are currently kind of out of date that they're they're doing more um than what's in those current plans um as far as the county board's goals I don't know if vanessa if you have anything to add about the county board's goals for Parks but uh we do hear from the residents because the county takes a a resident survey that our residents definitely like the parks and trails and um they'd like to see more of that uh uh but as far as if more Parks is going to be included in the county it's it's really dependent on if they can acquire more land from land owners and then the cost of that land um yeah are you commissioner wner are you looking uh for Park specifically or just how land use is being developed within the county trying to find the audio button uh yeah I I guess if if there was a better idea of how like what the goal is what's what's the future state with regard to is there a push to um like directionally Implement more Parks I mean I know with like the Blakeley Park that the one on the very left hand side that's that's obviously a a long-term strategic plan for act you know acquiring some private land owners and things like that like what's what's the future state that that's laid out right now uh okay EXC okay so excellent question so um for ease of Simplicity here we'll just go with the The Three Rivers County Park system uh because obviously U cities and townships have their own Parks as well which are basically independent of of that system but um so yeah our our parks department which they just sit next to us at the in the building they're not far away or anything um they're part of our our department overall uh they do have their own kind of planning process and I know like Melissa said yes Patty is in the process of working on updating many of those now that being said the work that we're doing right now will feed into that process and actually help them prioritize areas and we also provide input into that process so basically what we do here feeds into them and then it's also a little bit of Vice Versa if if Parks is a specific area that they are looking at developing sooner rather than later and they're kind of also like us are kind of in process we'll generally kind of work it into our plan as places where we can do more restoration work more protective work um we're just lucky we Haven to be able to work very closely and back and forth with them because they're part of our department um so it's probably the best answer I can give you right now is that they're they're kind of like us in that they are working on updating a lot of their Parks plans um and that our role is to help guide them as far as as the water resources and keeping those protected and working that into the park system and then as well when there are opportunities to do that so we did that with um the it's it's in Spring Lake Township the um well not Spring Lake Township I'm sorry I apologize uh in the City of Prior Lake um in Spring Lake itself that that Park we we did a little bit of extra work with the park system to help get a little bit more resource protection in natural areas worked into that plan so thank you yeah great question yes great questions so this might also be a little bit helpful too so this is a map from the 2040 County comprehensive plan so this is what's kind of planned for zoning um into the future that this whole white area is going to stay in what's called agricultural preserve so why per 40 for houses um and then this transition area which is where it'll go down to you know one per 10 acre clusters um these yellow areas kind of surrounding the cities are the the urban expansion areas um and you can see along the 169 Corridor is where you know the city's been kind of planning for that commercial and Industrial um growth and then some of these other areas over here you know in Spring Lake Township are going to um eventually be you know one per two and a half acres and then again one per 10 acres um over in this area um and the purpose to showing you this is you'll see as we go as we progress through these slides is that keep in mind where this plan to growth is when you think about uh when you go through the prioritization exercise and think about what uh what might be issues or what might be concerns um so let me get ADV to the next slide here so so more development is expected so this is the order orderly annexation areas these Brown areas and not all of these are completely up toate uh we learned um Bell planes uh so what happens is a city uh works with the township and they put together an agreement to Annex certain Parcels in um sometimes they give a time period in that agreement and sometimes they don't um but bplan just updated theirs and I wanted to put the layers of streams on here so you can understand that if these Parcels start getting annexed into the city you know there are water resources that could be affected and we want to make sure that the city is going to you know plan to protect um those Water Resources um new prag currently their uh agreement with the township was done last time in 1978 but we just learned from the city that they are now in talks with the township to update uh this agreement so we expect this annexation area to grow um Elco New Market uh does not have uh an agreement with the township um but they are planning on growing you know out from the their current boundaries um I believe the Jordan and prior Lakes Agreements are fairly new so that's about the extent that we um can expect them to grow and then the Shaka and Louisville Township um I do know that they they in their agreement they created zones and I think it's up in this area where they labeled like Zone e and f that they can't addex those areas until like the year 2050 so there are some areas that might be annexed in sooner than others but the purpose of this was just to show you that there is growth or more development expected and we don't really know exactly the timeline and then actually a good example of a project we recently did uh the city of PR Lake reached out to us again uh for Campbell Lake and because that was an area that was going to be annexed soon and they wanted assistance with developing a regional storm water plan so that as development moved out in that direction the natural resources were already protected the storm the regional storm water system was already in place which makes the development transition much much easier and rather than peace meal so for example we have an area where there is a much larger storm water Pond that many different properties could potentially feed into rather than having 900 ineffective rain Gardens kind of thing uh and so it's kind of like lying road infrastructure if you can lay the road infrastructure it makes the development easier so we worked with them to do something similar with water resources so that's an example of how the growing development and how we work with like cities and townships in that kind of area uh Vanessa uh commissioner Phillips here um can you go to the last slide um that area of land south and west of Spring Lake is that the Prior Lake expansion area or Shaka uh right here that by like 13 and 282 13 282 yeah it's south and west of Spring Lake yeah that would be prior Lakes expansion area Okay so they're looking to expand there to the West okay yeah all right just curious thank you yeah okay I just wanted to show you that because of our underlying geology we have um a lot of aggregate deposits which are these Brown areas or Santa gravel deposits throughout the county and as you can see a lot of them lie along this 169 Corridor um as we move through these slides you'll see that these are these are some sensitive areas um because of the underlying geology so just keep that in mind um and I also wanted to put this on here because we did have some comments um from our residents that they were concerned about more mining occurring um in the county you will also get a PDF of this whole presentation um so you can look back at some of these um so I just wanted to show you this really quickly to show you that there are critical habitat and scenic areas throughout the county this is actually from our current plan so it does need to be updated but we do have areas along this Corridor that have rare animal or rare rare plants um we also have a lot of rare animal and plants in our Parks um and sometimes outside of the parks um but there are Federal and State Recreation areas along this Corridor as well and as you'll see a lot of the parks um information is outdated because this map was created back in 2018 but that was the whole purpose of this map is just to show you those different critical habitat areas that we do have we do have flood plane um this was updated not that long ago um so the flood way these dark blue areas um uh cannot be built in um we do have flood Fringe areas um and I don't have my notes in front of me to remember uh what the rules are for some of these Vanessa do you remember flood Fringe yeah okay if you can help me out yeah as as we mentioned or maybe we haven't I apologize we wear two hats so um your wmo staff is also your County water resources staff so one of the hats we also happened to wear is the flood plant Administration hat um and uh flood way is as Melissa said we we don't allow any um homes or buildings within the flood Way flood Fringe there is some very very limited development um and encroachment in the flood Fringe um board has has has directed us to um be pretty um uh proactive uh we have found that the more we get ahead of development and the more we help people through the development process by by getting them the information on flood ahead of time flood we and flood Fringe it's is much much better so like for way for example flood Fringe you can put in you know you can put in some roads and you can put in some parking areas and some buildings certainly um but you know for example you might want to put in a building that has an attached parking well the building might be allowed with the building Pad but then once you put fill in for the parking that's actually exceeds so then you need a conditional use permit anyway it you can see it goes on and goes on so the more we're able to get get ahead with development help help folks through the process um the better uh and I say that because at the end of the day yes we do certainly have some development allowed in the flood ringe uh but it can be very complicated and uh we try to help people through it as best we can um by and large County does not prefers not to put buildings in the flood Fringe but um that doesn't mean that they're absolutely not allowed and then as you can see you know the general flood plane there's a lot of gray areas throughout the wo um so that General flood plane just means that there's no flood study that's been done um so it's treated like the flood way um until a study is complete um this is a map from our current plan just to show you that there are a lot of surface waters um and so ditches are included on here the national Wetland inventory is included on here but we do have a lot of water in Scott County Melissa one sec uh commissioner Phil does need to step out um is it okay if we have the vice chair sure I apologize but it's a meeting I thought I could get to okay we we don't actually usually run past six so that's not this will be one of the like one of the only ones during the year I think we'll run past six so yeah there was a lot of good questions my apologies but thank you okay yeah no worry thank you for stepping up y by bye okay um so these are all the streams in the wmo that are on the federal impaired Waters list um so and you'll get a PDF of this so you can look at a little bit more in detail but I did uh list all the streams list their impairments and then I kind of totaled everything over here by the impairment or pollutant category just to show you that we have a lot of water bodies that don't meet the fish species that they should have or the macroinvertebrates which are those water insects that fish eat um a lot of streams are impaired that they don't have those um species that they they should have um from other reference streams and we do have a lot of water bodies that um exceed eoli bacteria um standards so you know as we get deeper into this we'll have to talk about strategies on how to uh work towards improving those imp ments so our Lakes we have several lakes that are listed on the federal impaired Waters list you know the highest um the highest number of impairments is mercury which we don't work on Mercury reductions um that mercury is uh really uh transported um by atmospheric um transport kind of mechanisms um um so really there are a lot of water bodies throughout the entire United States that have mercury impairments and that's more of a stat managed issue uh but we would uh talk about managing for nutrients and we do have one lake that is um on the impaired Waters list for not meeting uh fish species that it should have we do have a lot of Highly rotable soils uh throughout Scott County and the and this uh map was created by um the S swcd this is in their comp plan and I thought it was a really nice map to show um that we do have areas that have highly erodable soils um so it just kind of in in a lot of different areas of the County uh so that's just something to keep in mind um as we go along here um I I really like to this m in their comp plan as well this is uh they did an assessment of crop land that's with within 300t of a water so as you can see all these different areas that you know there's there's crop land um close to those water bodies and Troy I know you mentioned in your report that um you know you look at buffer compliance law is there anything else so you did kind of talk about that is there anything else that you want to say maybe about this map or do you think it was covered in your um I guess you know we'll um what I would say is that I think that going forward we we do have to do these status reviews because there's there's a tendency I think to migrate into buffer areas and we got to kind of stay on top of that and and like the first round of inspections we did for the buffers and many of these streams you know have the buffer requirement we saw very good compliance initi But as time goes on we see a little encroachment a little more encroachment and so we got to just keep folks honest and I'm not saying they're intentionally doing it but when you have big equipment out there and maybe you have Hired Hands they don't really understand you know the hard Edge that that buffer really has so um the thing to note too is that there are there as I mentioned a number of exemptions so while we often talk about you know streams are required to have this 50ft buffer that's that's not necessarily the case in every situation so but um yeah we'll we'll keep on top of that and 300 is a good good number um and the reason we we picked 300 is because you generally have what we call sheet and real erosion can happen for a length of 300 feet generally once once water flows more than 300 ft it starts concentrating into bigger and bigger like rivulets and you start getting more what we call Classic type of erosion so anything within 300 fet is susceptible to um degradation that is in many cases not even visible because the amount of erosion is happiness is is very thin very you know you don't see these classic signs of erosion but nonetheless less sediment and nutrients are leaving the field um and many times it's not even you know noticeable great thank you for that TR um okay thanks for hanging in there we're getting close to being done here um so I did look at some of kind of our major streams and some of our lakes and I did put together a kind of a water body Trend analysis so the good thing is met council did update some of the trends for Sand Creek and Credit River and we we are on an improving trend for total phosphorus nitrates and total suspended solids for Sand Creek uh met Council has a monitoring station right at Jordan um and so they do monitor Sand Creek and they monitor Credit River they have a monitoring station at the end of credit River in the city of savage um so crit river is also improving for nitrates and total suspended salads but they didn't see any significant Trend in total phosphorus um oh sorry oh wow I don't know I could do that um we do have some lakes with an improving Trend uh odow McMahon have improving total phosphorus um OD doubt is one of the our better water quality lakes in the wmo so we we want to cons we don't want to see a a a decreasing Trend in anything in that like for sure um the Minnesota River uh I don't have any updated information yet to update that but back in 2009 it was improving for total phosphor and total suspended solids um Cedar Lake is definitely a challenge um I can get more into that depth in another meeting but Cedar Lake has some history to where I think it's going to be a challenge to really uh improve that Lake but so far it has some improving trend of phosphorus but no change in transparency or chlorophyll a Clear Lake is monitored by three bers Park District um and I think over the three years of drought that we've had um took its toll on Clear Lake um so it's on a declining Trend and then th lake is also improving um the nice thing to see about Sand Creek and Credit River uh with an improving trend is we've put a significant amount of money in larger CIP uh projects that Ryan works on for Sand Creek so it's good to to actually be able to measure that Improvement so this is a map from the Minnesota um geologic Atlas for Scott County just showing the infiltration rates meaning how long do it take from something that ends up on the surface to uh reach groundwater so as you can see from this in this you know this 169 Corridor area you know there is a lot of sensitivity and susceptibility uh to possible contamination just because of our underlying geology in this area um so you you can look at this later on once I send you this PDF but you know just notice that there are areas that it that there are more susceptibility to groundwater contamination so we'll get into strategies on that um in the coming months there is a lot of groundwater quantity or groundwater level maybe monitoring that happens um throughout Scott County this came from a dnr's website um and our s swcd staff um contracts I don't know if it's a contract with the DNR but they do a lot of the fieldwork on going out to these observation Wells and measuring the water levels in there for the DNR um the different colors of these uh pins uh just represent a different aquafer that it's measuring so blue green and the brown is just measuring different ographers in the county and then this is a map of the drinking water supply Management areas so these are just areas that um have to do with Wells like the city Wells and that these areas um you know we want to be conscious of any oops any possible contamination that could happen um in these areas and the Department of Health I know works with the cities the cities do have to put together a Wellhead protection plan to make sure that their Wells um uh that no contamination gets introduced into their Wells um but I just wanted to point out that there are these Management areas throughout Scott County in a very large area up in this area along that you know close to that 169 Corridor um so this is results from uh water test kits that are sold through the county um through our Environmental Health Department um staff at the in our Environmental Health Department puts together kind of this graph for us every year um so just to show you that this is the number of kits that have been sold and what they're testing for um and in 2024 it shows an increase in the percent of lead and manganes tests that were over the standard it's mostly because more of our residents are becoming aware that we have these tests available and more people are starting to test their Wells to see what's in their groundwater um we know that high arsenic is linked to depths of Bedrock I don't know if you knew this but we do have um areas throughout the county that groundwater wells will measure arsenic um I've tested our well we've we've got arsenic coming from our well as well so um and throughout the county there's a lot of heavier soils a lot of clay soils that uh we think you know do a pretty good job of filtering out um nitrates so in 2018 we did this random oh was there a question Clayton I hate to ask a question if we gone over this much but I just want to touch on um is does it fall to this body to get that Baseline and that future uh observations with regard to like everything that's going on in the Elco new market area with the Niagara bottl imp plant or is that state level DNR and I don't want to jump into I it was a yes or no question we don't have to jump into it I can ask it later because for in the with being conscious of time but that was my question I I will very uh quickly answer yes and no so I will offline go over that with you thank you that's all I need it's a great question so in 2018 this is getting to your question uh commissioner Phillips so in 2018 when I did that random private wealth sampling we only had 34 people agree to let us come and Sample their Wells um so we tested for chloride nitrates Arsenic and atrazine um as you can see the results here you know 29% uh detected the presence of chloride we think they were more at a um kind of a baseline um already existing in the geology level we we looked for chloride because we wanted to see if any um areas were being impacted by you know our winter maintenance you know chlorides are getting into our surface waters we wanted to know are they getting into our groundwater so that was the purpose for measuring uh for chlorides um you know nitrates have actually been pretty low uh throughout uh most of the county I believe there are some areas where they are a little high um you know 73% of the wells detected arsenic that's um you know and we've had more people sample their Wells for arsenic since then and it's you know it's pretty widespread um there are a few areas of hotpots um but it's pretty widespread throughout the entire State actually um and then the good thing is we still we detected no atrazine in any of the wells um okay so this is the last slide so what I want to show you here is you know we have I believe it's a 126 years of precipitation and temperature data um and so the DNR climatology office holds all that data and you can go on their website and you can actually create these uh graphs yourself so I was looking for Trends in average temperature and this is data very specific to Scott County itself and as you can see from Over the 126 years of data you can see this trend line increasing so we've been increasing in temperature 8° F per decade and this bottom graph is for precipitation as you can see again that purple trend line is increasing so we've been increasing in precipitation 34 in per decade over the last 126 years so we are getting wetter and we are getting warmer so that's it for some background information I just wanted to give you some information to kind of help you make some U more informed um uh decisions on this exercise that you're going to get um so just to go over quickly again in March it's our hope to go over some draft goal statements um maybe talk a little bit about prioritizing water bodies how that might look and then do A needs assessment activity and then in April for sure I'll be doing going through that gaps analysis figuring out where are do we have any gaps um and then again we're going to eventually need to figure out how do we prioritize and how do we target things that will then inform what our strategies will be for the plan uh really quickly so that phase two public engagement I was going to see if anybody had any ideas on um you know what we should do maybe for an activity for that phase two but I think we kind of already talked about that that maybe that gaps analysis will kind of help us um uh determine what what we're missing and what we want to hear uh from the public otherwise did anyone else have any other ideas on that phase two public input okay hearing none I'll move so the next steps is we will email you a link to a survey and I'm going to email that out um tonight and then if we would ask if you could you know click on that link and if you need to review any of this information I'm going to send all this out to you and if you could complete that survey by this Friday by end of day that would be great um so we'll take that and we'll go through all that information and kind of do some data analysis and then um come back to you with uh those results and then again if you have any questions about the plan update you know you can reach out to me directly and I can help answer those questions and if it's something that everybody would benefit from hearing then I can discuss it at um our next meeting then just to put things into perspective so that survey is taking all of that initial input we've gotten and it's created a bunch of issues but now as you know part of our governing body we really need you to kind of tell us what you think is the most important least important literally helping us rank these issues and and and helping us get your guidance on how how much time effort and Focus we will spend on these in the next planning cycle so it's one of those rare times when taking a survey will make a huge difference it will so with that email I'll have the survey link and I also have a separate document kind of giving you instructions um so it's a little bit more information on how to answer uh each of those kind of issue or concern statements that we heard from that phase one input process so we kind of paraphrase some things categorized some things together and made a list of what people thought were issues and so we'll have you kind of rank those um so that instruction sheet will explain everything well I just one thing can they can they pause and go back to it because now I think about it it's kind of a longer survey or does it is it kind of like a one andone um I think it's a one andone you can't save and go back to it you have to finish it once you start okay so maybe it's like look at it once and then close that and go back to it after you've kind of looked at it and know how much time you're going to need yeah yeah that sounds good yeah yeah so that's all I had I'll stand for any questions if anybody has any sorry we went over but there was some great questions tonight uh Ryan do you want to throw the agenda back up there please for sure I think it's a j is the the next one yeah yes I will make a motion to adjourn so we we have a second I actually been slacking we have a motion in a second yep all right Commissioners I will do rooll uh commissioner Schmidt hi commissioner Phillips I commissioner Wagner hi and commissioner Fredericks hi thank you so much Comm we very much appreciate it yes thank you so much for hanging in there thank you all so much for uh being so informative and obviously all the great work you're doing so I appreciate your patience with me no we love it uh it you uh you came into the probably the biggest Avalanche of information you will probably ever encounter so um it's not usually this much and this much at once so you we appre we very very much appreciate apprciate it and um it just takes time to take it all in and we're here to help we'll happily chat with you whenever you want um sometimes probably more than you want feel free to call us we can schedule meeting lunch whatever um absolutely and I will definitely I can touch base with you again too regarding groundwater uh because that's a a great conversation too and it's weird and complicated a lot of it has to do with we don't like duplication so we tend to just find the gaps and try to to figure out what our role is to fill the gaps but yeah here appreciate it I'm