Okay, we're ready here. We'll uh start the June WMO meeting. Um for the call to order, is that is that just me calling it to order or do we need to take attendance or anything? Uh no, that's just you calling it to order. Okay, very good. Um and we will start with uh looks like everything's uh information tonight. Um so new business uh first would be the 2024 annual report for Melissa. Yep. Thank you, Commissioner. Um there is a link in the packet. So Ryan, if you just want to click on that link and open it up and then we can take turns just doing our highlights. We're just going to point out one or two highlights from the annual report. Everyone um was mailed a hard copy of the annual report. So hopefully you had time to review that. Um is the link not working? I was just going to ask is it not Sometimes when you open up a new link it's not showing. So let now that you said that let me know if you see it now. Yep. Um, maybe can you make the screen a little bit bigger and close out the sidebar there? Let me I can zoom in bit. Um, I don't know about the sidebar. Oh, there we go. Good job. You let me know what pages you want to go to, Melissa. Um I wanted to talk about um the lake water quality but let's just slowly through these first couple pages. We can just go through those really quickly. Um, oh, one thing I wanted to point out on education outreach, probably on the next page, I think is right here. So, I just wanted to point out that um for the workshops in 2024, there was a great response to the prescribed burn workshops of 65 people signed up for that. So, I thought that that was really amazing. I don't know that we've ever had that many people sign up for one workshop um in a year. So, I just wanted to point that out. And then you can keep going to whatever I think the CIPs are next for you if that's what you were gonna highlight. So yeah, the the CIPs that we're highlighting, we actually talk about two because with um them being winter projects, you it kind of carries over into um two years. So, we talked about last year's uh stream bankank stabilization project um where it was on Sand Creek um and kind of highlighted that. Biteon Company had that that project that they completed for us um giving all the kind of numbers associated with it in terms of um environmental benefits and costs of the project as well. And then also talking about the start of the CIP that we're been more recently talking about that's on Pika Creek. So that's the ravine stabilization that um that Vite also won the bid on that as well and basically gives the benefits and and numbers for that project too. And then here's just pictures of the sites um beforehand and then some during construction. um highlighting a another stream bankank stabilization project. So this is actually um one that we completed uh with the S and waters help. Um so kind of on that same theme of another another stream bank project on Sand Creek. Um so just once again giving kind of the numbers of who paid for what and how much benefit um environmental benefits that we received on it and then just some pictures of of the project uh before and then during and and then after construction of that. Uh I think we can scroll through these. Um, nothing of of real note with those. You can keep scrolling. Okay. You tell me when to stop. Uh, as soon as you see the water quality graphs for the lakes. Okay. Next page. Right here. Right here. Okay. Um, just wanted to point out a couple things on these graphs that we see. Um, just getting to my notes here. So, with cedar, um, it's kind of hard to tell. I didn't put a trend line on here, but this brown line is the total phosphorus measurements. And if I were to put a trend line on here, you can see, um, phosphorus over the years has really on a decreasing trend, which is really good for Cedar Lake. Um, I did uh have some comments from the uh Lake Improvement District board this year again that early May the water clarity was amazing on Cedar. So, we're starting to see at least in the spring some improvements with that. Um, you want to scroll to the next right there. So, Odow um Od Melissa, this is Joe Barton. Um, what are we all attributing that at Cedar Lake to? Um, well, what we've been doing on Cedar Lake is really uh tackling the curly leaf with whole lake treatments. So, the last three years we've been putting in a herbicide called Floridaone and putting it in very very early in the season. So, by the time May hits, um, the curly leaf is pretty much dying off or or dead or very affected. Um, so we think that that's part of the reason. Um, you know, I have heard from the the board that there are a few more whiteboard boats on there. So, there's definitely a lot of activity on Cedar Lake, but at least in the early spring, we're seeing really good really good water clarity. Okay. And are there any other projects planned on cedar? Um not yet. Uh we are having discussions which I'm going to talk about in one of my updates. Um we are planning some new strategies to help improve water uh quality on Cedar Lake. Um so I've been working with some vendors and we're having a big open house in July, but um I'll be talking about that in my updates. Um Okay, sounds good. Um, so with Odell, we're not really seeing any trend. Um, it's still not impaire, you know, it's not on the impaired waters list. It's still got really good water quality. Um, just nothing really trending on that lake for 2024. uh McMahon um we are seeing at least since the drought years um total phosphorus and chloro A have dropped which is good uh McMahon is still not on the impaired waters list either and we're trying to keep it that way um so it you know the the drought years the three years of drought with the water level dropping in McMahon there was still a lot of uh boating activity on there because we know that from the watercraft inspection report. Um but with water levels a little bit back up. The good thing is is the phosphorus and chlorophy are dropping again. So um and with bol would be the last one. Fol is on a improving trend as well for phosphorus as you can see with that brown line at least since the early 80s since we've been monitoring it. Um, but you know, last year the watercraft inspection report showed a lot more activity of Boers on Th. I'm not sure why last year was a big year for Th, but as you can see that did kind of reflect in the in the water quality monitoring of kind of spiking on total phosphorus and chloral A. So, and that's all I had, but I wanted to just highlight for you. Uh, one last thing I can quickly talk about the Sand Creek monitoring. If you just want to scroll to the next page in 2024, this was a big endeavor. Um, on our part to collect water quality data on the whole San Creek wershed. If you scroll just a little bit further to show the map of the extent of all the just a little bit further down to show Oh, no, no, no. 925. I just wanted to show the monitoring locations in Rice and Lura County as well. So um our S SWCD took on this big endeavor for us in 2024 and monitored all those sites uh last year. So all of that data is in bars in bars hands. They are working on that data analysis and I should have a report before the end of this year to show you. So this is also to inform this next plan update. And that would be all for me for this. And Mr. Chair, I didn't have anything else to highlight as well for the rest of the report unless there were any questions that any commissioners had. Did anyone have any questions about the report? Okay. Uh hearing none, I guess next would be the tax application for shoreline restoration. Ryan, Mr. Chair, commissioners, uh good afternoon. So you'll notice that this is a information item and it's not an action item. Uh so just want to make sure to clarify that. Um and I'll explain why that's the case here. Um, so this is a project uh actually related to Commissioner Barton asking if there's any projects on Cedar Lake. Well, here would be an example of of one uh cost share project at least that we're uh working on. Um so this is a uh shoreline restoration along Cedar Lake. It's a little unique in in that it's actually two different land owners that are working together on this project. Uh Nathan Zner and Julie Miller. Uh so the total length between their two properties is the 163 ft. Um what makes this project a little bit unique into why we needed to move so quickly on it is that we are utilizing multiple grant sources for this project. We're actually using the remaining funds of our both our EPA and our WBIF grant. Um, and if you recall, the reason why we had to move so quickly is the EPA grant is ending here soon. Uh, so the actual expiration date of the EPA grant is August 31st of this year. Um, but our report is due 30 days prior to that, so July 31st, and then all the payments and everything. So, we've kind of got a self-imposed deadline of June 30th. Um, and so this project is a bit larger scale. If you notice the the estimated cost is 45,000 uh plus. Um, so it's just there's a decent amount of uh earthwork of pulling the banks back and they just needed as much time as possible to get out there and start to do that work and hence that's why it's it's information um to you. So just kind of going over the information here. It was $45,630 of the total. The EPA grant um we were encumbering $10,24. The WBIF grant was $9,996. Local general funds um would be then $21,47 uh which then the balance would be $4563 from the land owners. This project was actually targeted by staff. So our EPA grant had Cedar Lake wershed as the wershed and we were focusing on there was three different wersheds. Cedar Lake was one of them and we had a decent amount of money that was still in that pot. So that's why we were out staff from so water out there targeting projects on Cedar Lake and this was one of them that uh came from that effort. Um and why it's here at the docket is because the benefits aren't super great on the project. However, I say that with the caveat that what we try to utilize um grants for is there's a certain bar that you have to hit um a numeric value that we promised we would hit from a sediment and phosphorus standpoint savings. But once you get above that bar, you know, you you can then start to fund maybe some projects that aren't as good. And so early on in grants, um, you're you're I don't want to necessarily say cherry-picking, but you're trying to pick projects that have higher benefits because you promise those those goals and with the hopes that on the back end, maybe it's not as critical. And so this is a a prime example of how you kind of want it to work out where we had a a fairly expensive project come in and instead of using all our local dollars uh to fund it, we can actually use these grants to kind of help offset our costs. So it's sort of that benefit to us. Um so the docket requires projects that exceed 170 pounds of phosphorus and sediment and tons of sediment per year to go through the screening committee process. It exceeded both of those thresholds. Uh, this one did go to the S SWCD June 18th board meeting was recommended for approval and then because the grant was expiring, we needed to move as quickly as possible and so Vanessa administratively approved it uh last week to allow the contractor to get out there and start work on the project. So, um, kind of a lot of information to pass along for this project, but just kind of wanted to share that with the group and see if there was any questions. Thanks, Ryan. Joe Barton. Um, just curious, is it is the plan to just do primarily rock? Will there be any native vegetation above the rock or what does the overall stabilization process look like? Yeah. Um, Mr. Sher, Commissioner Barton, uh, great question. So there is rock at the toe um because of the wave action that's happening with this um uh particular site. But then what they're going to do is pull back the you know the the slope is is near vertical um above the toe of that water and ground interface. So kind of that rock is at that water line helping with the wave action. they'll pull the banks back and then actually put all of that into u native vegetation and then there would even be then a buffer up on that upper end of native vegetation too. Um just sort of you know the the rocks helping with that erosion but then you know the long-term solution is that that vegetation kind of establishing and holding that that bank together. Okay. Thank you. Yep. You're welcome. Yeah. here and you can see the current site. So you can maybe not vertical but you close to Yeah. Yeah. And that's a pretty steep slope probably 8 nt 10 ft at the highest. Okay. Any other questions? If not uh this will be the WM goal summary. Melissa, thank you, Commissioner Schmidt. Um, so in your packet, I put together a memo um of all of the input from that joint uh meeting with the SWCD board on um what everyone came up with with a measurable measurable goal tasks. Um, so what I did is I took all the input and I started to kind of combine like uh like comments or like ideas just so that you didn't have a whole list of every single one that was mentioned. Um, and so I tried to condense it that way. Um, so I just put those into a memo as a summary for you to show you all the input. Um, and yeah, if you just want to scroll down. So, we will use these to consider when we start uh figuring out our prioritization and and um kind of finally settle on a final draft of goals. But I also included the the technical assistance or technical advisory committee input as well in that summary in there too. And so if you were to go through those and kind of do some comparison, there was at least one um in kind of each goal of kind of the same input from each different meeting. Um, so the the good thing is we're finding some commonalities in both of your exercises together. Um, but I just wanted to present this to you so you can see all the results. We will revisit these once we um get back to talking about the goals. Um, does anybody have any questions on these at the moment? Just clarify this. Oh, Commissioner Barton, sorry. So, just to clarify, so this is a brainstorming session. So, staff will take these all the results of this brainstorming session. and it still may be condensed and um then it'll come back somewhat more succinctly and officially to to us for more feedback. Is that kind of the thought? You're not so much looking for feedback directly on this maybe more so the next time we see this in a more condensed form. Yes. Okay. Yes. So today I'm going to the next thing I'm going to introduce is kind of prioritization. Um, next month we'll come back with um kind of looking a little bit further, deeping a little bit further into prioritization after some feedback today. And then we'll also probably bring the goals next month also and and start talking about them a little bit more because we did introduce those. I just we just didn't have all the detail that goes along with them. Um, I don't feel that a lot of the detail in the current plan is going to change, but some of it will. And so once we kind of have a prioritization strategy and we can start refining some of the goals and some of the descriptions of the goals, then we can look at condensing these a little bit more. These ideas, I I think we're I think we're in pretty good shape with with the ideas from both groups. It's kind of a lot of the things that we or we're anticipating from what we already know about the wershed and what a lot of our issues are. Um, but yes, we'll introduce prioritization today, get some feedback from you, bring it back next week and kind of refine prioritization and then talk about our goals. And I want to talk to Vanessa about whether we want to start putting some of the measurable tasks next month. It might be too much information to talk about in one meeting, but that's kind of the idea right now. That's the strategy right now is to come back with you with those. Okay. Yeah. Thank you. Okay. Melissa, you wanted to go into prioritization then? Sure. Um, so in the memo and the packet, I just wanted to Hey, excuse me. Sorry. This is Jay Fredericks. I just wanted to let you know I joined a little bit ago. I'm unfortunately we're on vacation. We're in like the mountains of New Hampshire and I have really poor cell service. So, I wasn't able to call in earlier, but I'm here and will be here as long as I can be just to let you know. Okay. Thank you, Commissioner. Oh, and I see two more has joined us as well. Thank you. Bring me down. Um, okay. So, if you had a chance to read through this memo, I first put in here kind of what our what's in our current plan and how we decided to prioritize the current plan. So the first the first thing we did is to look at these larger water resource outcomes and the human health and safety aspect came directly from our county board um strategic plan that human health and safety kind of um should be one of the largest priorities. Um the rest of the items came from the public input process and that feedback. And so we went through an exercise and had um our WPC and SWCD board um rank these. And then the next thing we did, if you could scroll, was to narrow it down a little bit more with looking at particular pollutants because we had impairments back then. Um and so how should we prioritize some of the pollutants that we have um in our you know impaired waters and then to also further define which particular water bodies we should target and work on and prioritize in the plan. We developed a whole list of water body attributes uh and and ranked those on on how to do that. So, if you could keep scrolling and then I just kind of put in some of the text that's already in the plan on what the thought was back at that time. Um, so if we could scroll down just a little bit further. Okay. So, little bit. Okay. So our overall kind of priorities and strategies in our current plan was to you know the protection of human health and safety uh with with respect to both you know protecting groundwater and exposure to toxics and bacteria um was kind of one of the top priorities and then protection and prevention. we should focus on, you know, higher than restoration projects. And then soil health was really important because soil health really ultimately affects water quality and all those other um water resource outcomes is what we call them that were on that list. Um and what we heard back then was also to to really you know with some available information is to just get started on implementation rather than waiting for um studies and more planning to get done. So the path we kind of took with this plan is to um if you could scroll a little bit more Ryan. Thank you. So, what we ended up doing is we picked water bodies that had a public access because that public access really gave um that water body a more uh regional availability. Um if it had a public access, we could actually get on the lake and do some work. Um but it also um benefited a larger amount of people rather than just the people that live around the lake and have direct access from their shoreline. And then we the streams that we really prioritized and focused on um had a lot to do with the fact that they had a TMDL study on them. Um and we had a lot of support for San Creek and Credit River through other agencies. Uh but the Sand Creek TMDL that we did was uh a very large endeavor. We knew that one of the biggest impairments we had with um Sand Creek was total suspended solids. and one of our subwaterersheds was really some of the highest loading sediment to the Minnesota River um in the whole Twin Cities metropolitan area. So, we took the priority of focusing on TSS reduction and and ultimately phosphorus reduction because phosphorus is bound to sediment. Um the Blakeley area ravines because it's such a highly erodable area. Um and then Credit River, Credit River had a TMDL. Um it was delisted for turbidity and we created a protection plan on Credit River. So we've been we've been following this course of focusing on TSS. We have been focusing on bacteria um in different ways um through our uh technical assistance and cost share program um and through education and outreach um and making available water testing um for private land owners. Um but really the focus has been on uh for the streams anyway uh sediment reduction and phosphorus reduction. Um so during the phase one input process we in those virtual stakeholder meetings we wanted to hear from stakeholders you know how do you think we should do prioritization in this next plan and we got a lot of different um options and ideas and I just kind of wanted to go through some of these um before we kind of get into what staff is thinking. Um so the first idea was to prioritize by beneficial use and beneficial use means you know um it's a term used by the um pollution control agency. Uh it characterizes a water body um that beneficial use for aquatic life, aquatic recreation and aquatic consumption. Um they're very broad terms. Um, if something is um impaired for aquatic life, it would mean that it has a macro or fish um index of biotic integrity, meaning it it doesn't meet um what would what you would expect to have for fish or for macro invertebrates in that water body. of aquatic consumption. If it's impaired for aquatic consumption, an example would be um that water body has a mercury impairment. So, it's a toxic. Um so, you wouldn't you there's a warning about um consuming too much of a fish from that water body. Now, the DNR uses this and these are the categories on the impaired waters list. And so, you know, the pros and cons to some of these, a pro to using this would be that it would be consistent with the categories in the impaired waters list and what some of our water bodies are listed for and consistent with the DNR, but we feel it's a really broad prioritization to to try to do at the local level. Um, so this is something the staff um wouldn't suggest using as a prioritization. Uh, nearly barely. I know some organizations are using nearly barely uh which which really means it it's they're waters that are close to meeting standards. So they're either barely meeting the standards or nearly meeting the standards. Um, and we think that that's good for waters that might be close to meeting those standards, but staff talked about this and we feel that our waters are either meeting the standards or they're not even close to meeting the standards. So, we feel like this might not be a good fit for at least our area. Um, high value resource or habitat prioritizing by that. Um, we think that the pros to this would be, you know, it's it's good for waters that might be uh Oh, sorry. This is uh it's good for waters, you know, for improving habitat. Um, it would work towards the goal of improving our IBI scores because we have, you know, if you remember, we do have a lot of fish and macro invertebrate impairments in our streams. Um it would also follow the preventive or protective goal especially of the county board. Um the kind of the cons part of it we feel that you know we would need to clearly define what that highv value resource habitat is for this. So we really don't have a definition for that. Um and and we may have to you know we might have to merge uh multiple state definitions. um and some of our like high use lakes might not fall into this category. So this might be something you know a way to prioritize it would be better for our streams. We felt um we could look at prioritizing by total maximum daily load stressors. So, when the PCA completes um like this this larger RAPS study that they're doing, it's a 10-year study um that this is the first year that they're doing monitoring on it to update um the study for our area. again, um they list in that report stressors and there could be multiple stressors per stream or per reach. Um and so like the pro to using something like this would be, you know, using the stressors would help with we thought the fish and macro invertebrate assessments that we have and we could also use this for some targeting. um in certain areas. Um the only con that we could think of of to using this is that you know sometimes the stressor is a pollutant so pollutants may be prioritized. Um but that's what we're that's what we're doing now. So there is the idea of using Met Council's priority waters list. Um so that would align with u Met Council's 2050 um water resources policy. Um and some of these water bodies are already a priority water in our current plan. So what they have listed for the Scotty Mo for priority waters are Cedar, Clearary, McMahon and Odow for the lakes and they have Credit River and the Minnesota River listed as priority waters. So there are already waters that we have prioritized. Um, moving on to the watershed health assessment framework or WAP. Um, I I am a little bit familiar with this. I know part of like Spring Lake wershed district used this um framework in their last plan update. Um, I was involved with some of that planning or at least on the technical advisory committee team for that. Um, I think that we might be able to use parts of this maybe for targeting. Um, I'm just not sure how upto-date the data is and I didn't really dig into this really extensively, but it looks like it would require a lot of GIS work. Um, and I feel like we kind of already have a really good handle on what our priority waters should be. So, I'm not sure that this would um I'm not sure that using just this alone uh would get us to where you know we want to be. Um and lastly, what you know how we did our current plan is um really targeting by pollutant. So focusing on a particular pollutant um with the goal of reducing that pollutant and hopefully um delisting some of our waters. Um you know the cons to that which we've learned over the years is that you know reducing pollutants takes time. Um it takes education and it takes money. Um and it doesn't prioritize protection. It prioritizes more restoration. Um, I did ask this same question and and went over these options with the technical advisory committee on our uh May 12th meeting with them. And just to let you know, some of the feedback that they gave us was that, and I heard this from at least three people on that committee, is that uh you know, if if you're showing improvements or improving trends, then they recommended that we stay the course of what we have been doing. Um, you know, a lot of them are familiar with some of our work that, you know, they they understand that we have momentum, you know, at least for sure with land owners and our technical assistance and cost share program. Um, so they felt that we should stay the course. And so what I'd like to if I could share my screen, Ryan, um, I just want to show you a few things here. So, um I know we haven't shared this with you yet because we're still uh there's still a couple sections that need to be uh filled in by staff, but um one of the sections that I was able to complete uh is some of our, you know, stream water quality trends. Um I'm still working on finding the information for E.coli, whole lie. But as you can see, the green arrow means it's an improving trend. Um, Met Council did do a um an assessment um kind of an update to um Credit River in San Creek um looking at the data again through 2021 and doing kind of a reassessment of the trends that they're seeing in in water quality. And as you can see, Sand Creek and Credit River have an improving trend for nitrogen, um, total phosphorus, at least for Sand Creek, and for total suspended solids. So, this tells staff that what we've been doing is working. The only thing that I um may be changing is this arrow here. Um the recent um Credit River data analysis that bar just finished for us in their report actually shows that that chloride in Credit River is actually on an improving trend is what they found. So um so this might be changing. Um so I just want to show you share a couple more things here. Um, so again, just to remind you back from January when we kind of went through all of this background data, is that we do have multiple impairments. um many fish and macro andvertebrate impairments, meaning they're not we don't have the assemblages um and the different um variety of species in our streams that um that would be expected and we do have a lot of ecoli or bacteria impairments. Um but looking at these different streams, um at least in the TMDL, uh that total maximum daily load study, it does then list what uh the PCA and that whole technical team thinks are stressors for each stream. So, let me Okay, so this is what um staff has talked about recently. So, what we were thinking, um, and this is what I would really like feedback from everyone on here today, is just in general, we're not getting down to the nitty-gritty details, but just in general, what staff was thinking is to go with kind of two different paths in this plan. We have non-impaired waters and we have impaired waters. And for our non-impaired waters, we would take more of a protective or preventative approach, um, which is preferred by our county board, and I grabbed one of the strategies out of their strategic plan, um, to kind of reinforce that. Um, but staff also thinks that there might be some restoration that may be needed on non-impaired waters, but we would consider doing that if it was an action to help keep it off the impaired waters list. And for our impaired waters, you know, looking at all of our different options, um, staff does like the TMDL stressor idea. We also like the habitat or highv value resource idea. Um, but just to give you an example of what some stressors are, especially listed in the TMDL is, you know, these are all different kinds of stressors. Um, and there's different ones for different streams, but just to give you an idea, uh, you know, utrofication is a stressor, which just means that there's either too many nutrients in it, or it could be, um, a lot of algae or a plant shift or having influence from a lake or a wetland that might have high nutrients. you know, nitrates, you know, we know that tile drainage is a is a, you know, a source of nitrates. We do have some carsted um topography in Scott County. Um so all of these different things um you know, we're thinking about taking into consideration of of prioritizing um for this next plan. uh and and we wouldn't have to use all of them. Maybe only some of them like altered hydrarology and channelization. Um you know with with channelization we know that um the drainage authority is um or has abandoned some um county ditches so far. Um whether whether that continues or not I I don't know but somewhere down the line in the future you know the next 10 years when the plan is adopted uh maybe the altered hydraology um could be addressed um if there was a ditch abandoned and and there was a opportunity to do like a remandering project um on that stream. Um, so at least with introducing this idea, I I'm I'd like to hear some feedback from from the commissioners and see what what your thoughts are. I'll go if nobody else wants to chime in. Um I'm having a hard time totally understanding prioritization. So before I kind of dive in, can you kind of are we is this more a exercise of prioritizing I don't know like water bodies and which water bodies we want to focus our attention on or is it more like some of the things or like you know stressors I'm you know are we trying to really prioritize water bodies or prioritize what type of practices we are going to implement within the watershed to improve water bodies. Which way do you most look at this? I Well, that's a fair question. So, I look at this kind of both ways. So, in the in the um in the current plan and in the memo that I talked about, you know, some of the water bodies that we currently work on. um we would like to continue to work on um that's kind of some of the feedback that we heard from the TAC is to stay the course. Um and we are currently working with bar engineering on a couple different studies. for updating the San Creek total maximum daily load model um in that study that we used to that we've been using for the last two plans to focus on improving San Creek. Um so that study is going on where bar is updating the model the swap model and going to be updating scenarios so that we understand what would be some of the best practices to help improve Sand Creek. Okay. Um, we're also working on uh with bar on updating the Cedar Lake total maximum daily load model so that we know uh what practices and and maybe some different strategies on how to continue working on Cedar Lake and improve water quality there. Um, okay. So, so it's kind of both. So, you know, for years we've been working on the Sand Creek wershed and on Credit River, uh, and all those small streams in the Sand Creek wershed. Um, we now h we now have a lot of subwaterershed assessments on those. Um, and so we know what what targeted conservation practices we could work on. Um, and that's more we'll get into the implementation section plan to talk about all all of that stuff. But but I guess our focus is, you know, we heard that we should stay the course and keep working on these these water bodies that we've been working on. Um, but we have to have more of a defined prioritization in this plan. Um, and so I guess that's that's where we are with this right now. Um, the Okay. So, so the water bodies is probably still like the the main first goal is what water bodies and you kind of already have an idea of which ones are the priorities and have been the priorities, but still formalizing that and kind of just tying it to a process versus history and what people have just kind of prioritized in the past. Is that accurate? Yes. Okay. Um well to that end then I I do kind of think about this in two different ways. Um there's kind of like there's the water bodies and specific watersheds and then there's what you do wow wide right so there's proactively this is what we're going to be very proactive in with capital projects with seeking grant funding to focus on the water bodies that we have said are the highest priority in a way or in like you know in 1 2 3 4 or in some kind of categorization like priority 1A or priority one is, you know, six water bodies. Priority two is six water bodies, whatever. Um, and then separately there's also the watershedwide, like what are we going to prioritize for soil health that even if it's not in one of those specific watersheds of a priority water body, there is still value in providing funding or assistance to the SWCD for other practices throughout the entire WMO. So, I kind of see those as two separate things and I I mean I think it'd be cool to somehow reflect that in the plan, too. It's just like we'll have to come up with some good terminology for that. But it's, you know, it's priority water bodies and then it's what does the water body need to improve water quality and then it's watershedwide. What do we agree should be done watershed wide regardless of what watershed it is in? Those are kind of two ways that I see it. Um, so when it comes to water bodies, um, I I'm going back to what we did for the lower Mississippi River, WMO, and it was, you know, you gave all those different options of, you know, like beneficial use, nearly barely, high value resource habitat, TMDL, the Met Council list. I guess what we did was kind of a mish mash of all those things. Um but we also put a high value on public water bodies. Um and that would I would advocate that this um commission should do that as well. And you know I guess that doesn't mean that you can't do you know improvements for private water bodies. But if you have to choose you know you might have similar size or scale water bodies and one might have public access and one might not. So that would be one thing. And maybe I don't know all the lakes, you know them better. So maybe we don't even really have that issue here in Scott County. Um because most of them probably are public. But that would be something to consider if any of those major ones on the list, Cedar, McMahon, Odow, Thold or Clearary, I suppose. Is th Yes. Yes. Odow is, McMahon is. So we don't really have that issue. Do you do we? No. The exception would be Nash Lake. We have over the years gotten calls from homeowners on Nash Lake, which is not a public lake. It's it's a private lake. Um. Sure. Yeah. So, so for that reason, maybe it is worthwhile to have that codified in the plan that you know, again, to to have something for staff to fall back on. And like this is this is why we agreed through the planning process that resources go to public water bodies first. Um, and that we don't, you know, for private lakes. that's that's not the focus. We see that more as the private property owner's responsibility. So I would say then if if there is one or two examples, it's worthwhile to have it in the plan. Um and then yeah, I guess you know back to the WMO lower Mississippi River WMO plan. You know, we talked about impaired water bodies. We basically broke it down to priority 1A was lakes over I think we just did 10 acres. um public water bodies, not public wetlands. Um if they were impaired, if they had degrading water quality, or if they were prioritized for protection by the PCA. Um and then priority 1B would meet those same criteria, but they were lacking public access. And then we had priority two water bodies um that had public access. They may be they may have been considered a public waters wetland, but they were still had some recreational value. Um maybe they were part of the fishing in the neighborhood lake or they just had some other high ecosystem value. Um and so just putting some criteria to it that's, you know, some kind of mishmash. It doesn't make sense to me to like just follow any one of those other options that you kind of laid out. I think it it's you as staff probably know best what would that mish mash be that makes sense for the water bodies we have um that's defensible and yeah just makes sense for our wershed I guess and um so again that's that would be my suggestion is you know and then also you kind of come up with that list and that prioritization and then you might have the outliers where you think okay through meetings like this in the future it's like Well, all right. That's the what the prioritization says, but this lake actually is used in this way. And this lake actually, it doesn't reflect it, but this is like a super high value fishing lake that regionally people come from all over to use that lake. And so it has higher recreational value than maybe otherwise says. So yeah, in my opinion and and from what it sounds like you teased out of the surveys is that human health and safety, groundwater protection, soil health, surface water quality protection or kind of the main top things. Um I don't really know how to decipher the human health and safety one aside from like ecoli as an issue and water bodies. Um, and again, like groundwater protection, that's that's totally separate, I guess, in my mind when we're when we're prioritizing the water bodies. We're talking lakes and streams. So, groundwater and soil health are kind of not really relevant metrics. Um, so yeah, I guess that's that's my thought process is like um this is what you have here, the prioritization discussion. I think um taking one step back before you get into the impaired and not impaired waters, it's you know what's the size of the lake? What does it have for recreational value? Is it public or not? Is it a wetland or a lake in its classification? And then get into is it impaired or not impaired? Um and then yeah again then totally separate for prioritization I have in my mind how it I can best make sense of this is like what practices for soil health or projects um or erosion control regardless of where they are in the watershed would those be worthwhile efforts for implementation? So, this is Jay. I guess I like the way that that was laid out, but then I also would ask, is there a I don't know, a filter to put it through to then say where do we actually have the opportunity to, you know, impact because just because it's the highest priority, you know, I mean, world peace is the highest priority, but we probably can't, you impact that I'm being facitious, but is there some sort of filter that says, "Okay, laid out like that was, which I liked a lot, but here's where we can actually affect change. Here's where we can actually have an impact which may not strictly follow the priority order. Does that make sense? Yep. Okay, I think that makes sense too, Jay. And I would I don't know what staff thinks. I would almost think that's like the next level of more detailed planning when you get down to like the subwatershed assessment where you can really dial in that kind of stuff or do you think there's some kind of GIS analysis Melissa that you could do to try to tease out that like feasibility or potential for you know partner involvement or landowner involvement? Well, one thing that does come to mind and that we talked about um in the current plan is that uh one of the reasons why we chose some of the lakes that we did choose to focus on is that we do have partners on those lakes like Cedar Lake. We have the lake improvement district that assesses themselves $40,000 a year to help um implement lake management projects. And then Odal and Thol Lakes pay their share, pay 50% of the treatments that we do on the lake. Um, Clearary can get funding from Three Rivers Parks District. Um, it's just McMahon Lake that we haven't done a lot on because we don't have another financial partner for that, but um, but that could change, you know. Um, that makes sense. I mean, that sounds like that might kind of get at that and that could be mentioned in some kind of prioritization within the plan that Yeah. the availability of partner funding and matching funding from local sources. That seems to make sense and that would make those a higher priority. So, it sounds like it might be worth doing at the next meeting um the exercise that we did uh for the current plan on some of those water body attributes or do or would do you think that the staff should just come to you uh at the next meeting with kind of what our thoughts are on on kind of narrowing down some prioritization cuz last time if you scroll up I don't know what I'm sharing anymore here. Are you wanting me to share the pancet again, Liza? Yeah. Do you want to share that? Yeah. All right. you tell me where to go. Um, so keep scrolling up a little bit to the water body attributes table. Yep, that one. So, we actually went through an exercise to um, you know, get the WPC's input and the SWCD board's input on, you know, what should we consider um, when looking at a water body to prioritize it in the plan. you know what kind of attribute and I mean to be honest ultimately we didn't fully follow the ranking just because you know we did focus a little bit more on whether it had a public access because we needed to be able to get on the water body to um implement some kind of a management um practice or improvement. Um and then we did try to focus more on does it have a citizen financial support or a partnership um and help and um so you can see whether it had a public ass access or not kind of ranked 14th on the list um even though the partnership ranked a little bit higher. Would you find it valuable to try to do this kind of ranking or do you think staff should just come to you with some ideas next month and then we can talk through it again and kind of try to narrow things down a little bit further? So, you're saying take those attributes in table, this is Commissioner Barton, uh, take those attributes in table 33 and put a number value to the lake for each one of those to like compare Cedar versus Odow with a final score or has that already been done? So, this is what we did for our current plan on how we were going to prioritize certain water bodies, whether they were lakes or streams. Um, and we didn't rank each attribute against like Cedar Lake, we ranked it against another attribute. So, it was an ordinal ranking. Yeah. Exercise. Okay. So, so this is just telling us which attribute against other attributes is ranked to the highest not at all towards which lakes. Okay, correct. Yeah. I mean, I think it would be um I feel like staff is probably going to know better. Okay. If if we were to try to put these attributes to the lakes and then score them somehow, I feel like staff would probably know better and then some of them you can I don't know. Um yeah, I feel like it'd be interesting to see what you came up with and then we could respond to that, I guess. Okay. Yep, we could certainly do that. And I think a, you know, a bigger underlying question too is just I don't want to do a versus, but like lakes versus streams, you know, generally where do you put your time and energy? Um, because yeah, we do have a lot of streams and it's just a lot of surface area and you could spend a lot of time. You could you could just focus on Sand Creek for the next 10 10 years and that would be a full workload for five people, you know. Yeah. So, but is that the goal? because the end, you know, the water resource of concern is Sand Creek, but also the Minnesota River. And I don't know, like if if we prioritize recreation or um you know, if human health is a concern, you know, do we have a whole lot of people recreating in Sand Creek aside from the falls at Jordan? Um probably not. So then, you know, so I I don't know how to tease that out, but in my mind, there's still like an unknown. There's a question that hasn't been answered of like the lakes versus streams question about not I don't want to create a versus, but you got to choose where to spend your time. So, which one is like more important um in terms of capital projects and focused attention versus, you know, if there's a if there's a huge erosion problem at Sand Creek, well, yeah, if if we got a willing land owner and somebody comes to us and we identify an issue, yep, you're always responsive and you do that. But um should we be seeking out projects to improve Sand Creek and erosion along Sand Creek as capital projects or should we seek be seeking out and studying projects to improve Cedar Lake as capital projects when you have to choose between those two? That's the question I'm in my head that I don't really know the answer to. Yeah. No, that makes sense. Yeah. Okay. Oh, that was great feedback. Thank you. Mr. Chair, commissioners, uh this is Commissioner Phillips. Um just wanted to get my feedback here. I I like how this is laid out. It seems to make sense to me. Um, I would just uh advocate uh I think it's mentioned by um Commissioner Barton and others that you know staff you kind of seem to know best on these history of of um of the prioritization and I I would just support support staff in that and I would just stay the course. Um I like the idea of if it's um you know if it's impaired versus not impaired. Um so that Melissa when you kind of summarize that see didn't make sense. If it was not impaired um continue the course. If it was impaired um excuse me if it was impaired um if it was not impaired to go in preservation mode is impaired to stay the course. I think that's how it was brought up. But anyways, I just wanted to support staff in that. I like how it's laid out and I would I would uh kind of support that. Um, one question I had, Melissa, I thought I heard you mentioned chlorides in the Credit River were improving. I just wanted to double check that. I thought that was true, but um just wanted to not sure if I heard that wrong or not. Thank you. Um, yes you did, Commissioner Phillips. Um, and thank you for your feedback. Um, from the water quality monitoring that was done in 2023 by our SWCD, that data analysis that I had bar do in the report that they gave me shows um an improving trend in chloride in Credit River. Okay. So that that's a good thing because I think my understanding is most lake rivers and streams around the state are getting worse in corite. So that's seems to be bucking the trend there a little bit which is a good thing. Yeah. Yeah. It could be attributed to also that, you know, the city purchased a um I can't remember exactly what it's called, but it's a more of a precision um salting machine, if you will. Um, so it it doesn't put down as much salt, but it's it's um it's still effective in, you know, keeping the roads clear of ice. Um, I just can't remember. The city of Savage or City of Credit River, sorry, the city of Savage did that. Sorry. Oh, got it. Okay. That that's that's a really positive change right there. So that's really good to hear. Yeah. To to help reduce their chloride impacts to the river. Thank you. Yeah. No, thank you. Does anyone else have any input that we should consider for prioritization to bring to you next month or Okay. Well, thank you for the feedback. That was very helpful. Um, we'll come back next month with something a little bit more refined for you to react to and and we can have more discussion on that then. Okay. Uh, thanks to Ryan and Melissa for all the new business um, information. Appreciate it. Um, next would be ongoing business, uh, Scott County Soil Water, uh, district for Troy. Mr. Chair, uh, commissioners, so Troy is not at the meeting, uh, here this evening. So, we weren't going to go through his staff report. Um, we were just going to basically stand for any questions. Uh, if anyone has any, we can try to answer them. And if we can't answer them, then we'd, uh, we take it to Troy. He's uh he's out of the I think country even um right now. So, okay. Any questions on the the report from the staff? Um hearing none, I guess we will move forward on to program updates from Ryan. Mr. Chair, commissioners, uh just brief updates here. Our capital improvement project, the ravine stabilization is largely uh done. Uh vegetation is coming in nicely. Shrubs were planted in uh May. Um the the subcontractor chose at that time the hottest uh week. If you remember, we had a a nice stretch in May where it was got pretty warm. Uh but luckily a lot of the shrubs from going out there and subsequent site visits uh they are growing quite well. Um there is one thing that just popped up. So on the very upper end of the ravine uh the very most upstream end there was an area where we had identified it's called TRM and it stands for turf reinforced matting. Basically there was a slough along the side of the channel. Um basically the the side slopes leading down to the channel. And there was a previous project there and it it um it hadn't really worked and so we basically replaced that project with some TRM matting. Well, right next to where it was identified, it basically looked the same. It was this bowled out area and so we went ahead and actually um added that to the project. So, it basically doubled our TRM matting. And uh maybe it's a no good deed goes unpunished, but that's the area that um there's a little bit of sloing. And so what happened is um the other TRM where we had originally planned for it, it had fees lifts, the fabric encapsulated lifts at the bottom, basically stabilizing the toe. Well, the area next to it, we had added it, but we didn't add the fees lifts at the toe. Um not necessarily thinking that that could be I wouldn't say an issue, but just something that that we didn't didn't think would pop up. But what it did is it basically shifted down um a couple of feet maybe maybe not even two feet, maybe about a foot. basically that it just shifted and so um we had money still available in our budget for SRF to kind of look at it and they also had Gail Tech on retainer and so I met with um one of their representatives on site uh last Friday and he's basically coming up with his recommendations and I did already talk to the contractor kind of made him aware of it. Um, so I I it's not any sort of major change. I think the original thought was maybe this is about5 to$10,000 worth of work, but we're, you know, everything else turned out so nice that it's well worth the uh investment to make sure that this area uh does not come unraveled and then leads to other, you know, potential issues. So, um, with that being said, the project as a whole turned out really well. Um, contractor did an excellent job. um we just have this little bit of touch-up work and then um and then we've got our one-year vegetation maintenance and and then that'll kind of wrap up the project. So um so yeah, that's where that one's at. And then last thing is our EPA grant that we had touched on with that uh Kasha project is coming to an end. And so um we were putting together the final report for that. Uh so the month of July, we'll kind of be pulling out everything together. um you know it's a half million dollar grant and so there there'll be a decent amount of work that goes into the final report that you have to kind of outline all the different activities that we had in there and and kind of give the results. Um you know do we hit everything that we said we were going to and I think generally speaking we we did across the board with everything. So um really good grant and MPCA has been great to work with on that as well. So with that I'll stand for any questions. Any questions for Ryan? If not, we will move on to program updates from Melissa. Thank you, Commissioner. Um, few things here. So, I've got several studies going. Um, I had a check-in meeting with Amit from the University of Minnesota on the landowner survey that we repeated this year um to help inform the wershed plan. Um, he's working on that data analysis. He did show me some results um from kind of the the last few questions. I know one of them was um I wanted to hear from our residents, you know, how should we by be prioritizing our plan? Um, I didn't put them in this packet yet because he's not done with all the results. So, I will be bringing that to you once I have um the results from all the questions from him. I'm hoping to have that by August. Um, we had a couple different kickoff meetings for some studies um uh with and so Megan Tusca, our water resources engineer, um is going to be taking over management of these studies for me. my my workload is just too heavy right now with the watershed plan update. But we kicked off with bar engineering for the San Creek TMDL model update and the scenario update project. Uh the Cedar Lake total maximum daily load model update um which will then help um rewrite the Cedar Lake implementation plan and inform the wershed plan of some projects that we could put in there. Um both of those studies will be complete by the end of this year to help inform the plan. Um bar is currently working on um the San Creek WHED monitoring data analysis. Um you know that was a heavy load that you saw in the annual report. So I don't expect to have results from them until probably later this year. But that data will also help inform the plan. And then we also had a kickoff meeting for the county ditch 4 re-imagining study. Um and again Megan Tusca is going to um be taking over project management on that for me. Um and Houston engineering is who we're working with. And so that study is really, you know, CD4 is um about a six mile portion of Credit River and it's in the city of Credit River and um Credit River is we have a protection plan over Credit River. And so this study is just kind of looking at um you know there are some areas on Credit River that do have flooding issues um and what if a big if CD4 should be abandoned someday, you know, how could we reimagine Credit River and help protect the water quality as the city of Credit River builds out? Um, so that's kind of what this study is about is just helping us determine where some best management practices might be able to be placed and what areas, you know, with that do have flooding issues right now, you know, what what could be done to help reduce those impacts and overall protect credit river water quality. So, um, so those projects are kicking off. Um, that one is a two-year project. We won't have the final report for that one until um sometime middle of next year. We did ask them for some kind of preliminary results by the end of this year to to help inform the plan. Uh for curly leaf pineweed management, um I completed a post treatment survey on Cedar Lake on May 22nd. So again, Cedar Lake, we've been doing for the last couple years whole lake treatments of an herbicide called Fuidone, um, which does a really good job of killing off the curly leaf. I did that post- treatment survey with the DNR, um, to check the effectiveness of the treatment. We did find some large um, patches of curly leaf. Um, they they did look like they were affected, but they were kind of also actively growing. So, I contacted our vendor who does um the treatments for us. That's PLM. And I heard back from PLM and CPRO. CPRO is the company that manufactures the herbicide, but they also have um a technical specialist that works with um PLM and the DNR for their products. Um and so, CPRO actually asked if we could go out on the lake and so he could see them. So we did that on May 29th. So you know a week after um he took some samples, he took photos and then he wrote a short report for me. Um and he felt that curly leaf was going to die off Elisa's patches within the next couple days. and they did, but it was helpful for I forwarded that um short report to the lid um because they were getting questions from residents around the lake and so they shared that on their on their website. So that was helpful for them. Um so for watershed management plan update stuff um so in March we had the two meetings for measurable goals. Uh we worked on that data analysis. Um, we're still working on adding uh a little bit more data to the land and water resources inventory before we can share that with you. There's still a couple sections that uh definitely need some input from staff. We've updated the issue descriptions some more because we received separate comments from the Department of Health and from the Board of Water and Soil Resources on more information that they thought we should put in there. So, they're getting a little long at this point, but there's but um we we did add the information. Um I had meetings with Odow and Tholan to help their lakes since they are um a partner that does um bring financing to the table. Uh so I will try to incorporate what they're asking for. Basically they would like to do more management of aquatic plants on their lake. They have two invasive species. Um but they understand and and we'll have to get into this discussion as well. Do we continue with curly leaf pondweed treatments in this next plan? um we have it in this plan as something that we do manage because it does affect water quality. Uh but that's but that's a policy decision that will we will um get to especially for the implementation section of the plan. Um I am I've set up an uh a meeting for an open house um for Cedar Lake and the Lake Improvement District residents around the lake. That's on July 1st. It's a Tuesday evening and we're doing that at Cedar Lake Farm Regional Park and it's really to discuss lake management options to help improve Cedar Lake. I'm doing this in advance of the TMDL model update being done, but uh really we kind of know um we kind of already know what some options need to be. Um, CPRO has been really good as a technical resource and then PLM with the multiple different lakes and um, examples that they have and that they work on, they've been a really good resource, too. So, this open house, I've invited all the the lake residents that are um that live in the the district and so it's really going to be focused on lake management options. I have Molier. I don't know if anyone here has ever heard of Molier, but they have a new technology. It's a nanobubble technology um that helps improve lakes. Um it also helps um get rid of muck on the bottom of the lake and it uses um oxygen in tiny little nanobubbles. Um so they'll be there with um their display board um describing kind of how that technology works and how it can help improve Cedar Lake. And then I'll have PLM and CPRO there with a a different kind of strategy um to help improve the lake. So anyone that's interested in hearing some of that information is welcome to attend. and I can send you more information if you'd like, but we are starting at about 6:00 at Cedar Lake Farm Regional Park for that. Um, that would be great if you could send info on that, Melissa. Sure. Yep, absolutely. Um, and then just a last update on kind of the phase two for the plan update. So, we did phase one last year. Phase two, as you remember, is more focused on reaching our underheard, underserved um community in the county. And I've been working really closely with Marcia Barceletta O'Neal, our community outreach coordinator on phase 2. And we have some dates set up. Um this Wednesday evening we are having a focused conversation with the um East African Women's Group and that's at Clearary Lake Regional Park that starts at 6:00. Um we'll have about an hour. We have about five questions for them and I'm creating boards of each question and I've had that translated into Somali. So, um, so we'll have about an hour with them to to have them give us input and then Allison Adrian from Three Rivers Park District is going to kind of lead them in um, a yoga activity. Um, and then this group um, meets I think it's either once a month or every other Wednesday themselves um, to talk about different things. So they'll then they'll finish their uh meeting, but we we're happy that they're giving us some time to get their input. So this Wednesday, Clearary Lake Regional Park at 6:00 is when we're doing that. Um two more events um for the phase 2. We are doing Sunday, July 13th. Um, Marcia has um talked to a church that's going to allow us to um have a focus conversation with the their Hispanic community there. So, after church when the people come out, we will be outside the church with our boards and able to ask questions and Marcia will have everything translated for us. Um, so that'll be at 2 o'clock as a church in Shakape. um I can share that information if anybody's interested in attending. And then so those two focus conversations and then one just general open house that's open to everyone, you know, um kind of in that group or category. That's on Thursday, July 24th, and that one's from 6:00 to 8 in the evening at McCll Pond Environmental Learning Center. Um and so we'll have flyers that we're going to be passing out at different organizations in the county and um be giving some to the um health and human services department in Scott County too for when they have clients come in. Um so those are are the three planned events for the phase 2 portion of the plan. Um so that we can make this plan a little bit more um equity focused. Um and then the last thing is our um can I just share one quick image? Um the last thing is this image that we um had created last year. Um it's on our website or homepage on our website of what does a Scott demo do. I've had this translated into Somali and into Spanish and so we will have um you know the correct board at each event um so that that community can can understand all the different things that we do. So that's all I have for my updates. If anybody has any questions, I'm open to questions. Any questions for Melissa? Mr. Chair, uh members of the commission, this is Commissioner Phillips. Um Melissa, what was the uh the event over at McCon ELC? Can you just repeat that uh the time, place, and the topic again? Thanks. Sure, no problem. Yes. Uh, Micole Pond Environmental Learning Center. So, that's Thursday, July 24th from 6 to 8. And that's kind of the larger open house event that will invite, you know, all different groups to to really target, you know, our underheard, um, underrepresented communities in Scott County. Um, so again, we've um, uh, we've created a flyer and Marcia is going to be bringing them to the different organizations that she's familiar with in the county. And then I'm going to be bringing some to our Scott County Human Health and Services Department for when, you know, their their clientele come in that maybe they can see the flyer if they're interested in in coming. And then we have about five questions that we're asking um at that phase 2 event um just to help us, you know, better do better outreach and you know, have more of an equitable plan this time um for everyone in Scott County. And um I can definitely send out a list of all these you know, phase two events. Um, and the flyers, if you know, if everybody wants to maybe have the option to pop into them, you know, we can definitely send out a an email of those. Definitely won't come to all of them, but it'd be nice. Yeah. If maybe some are in some people's backyards, it' be nice to know know when they are if it's not too much work. Yeah. No. Yes, that's agreed. Okay, any other questions? All right. Uh, last would be the WO administrator report for Vanessa. Yeah, Mr. chair. Um Vanessa was um planning on sending me her updates by email and I I think um she must have ran out of time so I did not get anything from her so she'll have to give her updates at the next meeting. Okay, very good. I guess then the last uh thing would be for adjournment. We would need a motion to adjourn. Barton, I'll make that motion. The second This is Commissioner Phillips. I'll second it. Thank you. Okay. Um, are you going to do a roll or? Yep. I'm going to take a roll. Um, Commissioner Phillips. Hi. Commissioner Barton. Hi. Commissioner Frederick's. Hi. Commission prayer. Commissioner Carrer. Yeah, I'm sorry. My mic got stuck. I Thank you. And Commissioner Thails. Hi. I think I've got everyone right. Commissioner Schmidt. Hi. Okay. Thank you, commissioners. Have a good night. All right. Thank you. Thank you, Melissa and Ryan. Have a good night. Thank you. You, too.