##VIDEO ID:6UoZk2v0WFA## all right so let's call to order the environmental advisory committee meeting it's August 14th 2024 2 p.m is 2 p.m. um who's doing the roll calls Meg yeah good afternoon everyone uh Thomas Bradford here Brad freeze here Russ Redmond clay Damon Jill W here Michelle shuss here Wade chance here all right so um welcome Wade thank you um our newest Committee Member welcome uh just briefly tell us anything you want about yourself sure my name is way chance I uh been in the village for about four and a half years saw an application come across an announcement that you guys looking for another Committee Member and thought you know what the heck I'd love to serve my community in some form or fashion I'm not an environmental expert so you know you don't have that to worry about or deal with but uh certainly uh looking forward to you know pulling together all the data and information uh that we need to make some decisions so appreciate you having MEC thank you um do you guys have any additions deletions modifications to the agenda none for me all right could I get a motion please motion to approve the agenda as submitted second all right that carries uh communication from citizens don't think so all right presentations so the first presentation is uh by Taylor Tucker The Reef resilience coordinator from the office of resilience and Coastal protection Florida Department of Environmental Protection I appreciate you coming out I appreciate your time and uh have at it awesome um well thank you all um for inviting me to be here today I'm super excited to talk with you guys um like Brad said I'm the re resilience coordinator for the Florida Department of Environmental Protections coral reef conservation program so I'm based in dup's West Palm Beach office and I help to coordinate coral reef management and um today I'm going to talk to you a little bit about Florida's coral reef Coral bleaching local management strategies and ways you guys can help protect um our nearby coral reef I have a video for you all and um we'll see it plays you should be able to click does not seem to be playing all right well I can send you guys the link later and you can look at it um but it's basically just an intro to Florida's coral reef so um it expands 350 miles all the way from the St Lucy Inlet down to the Dry Tortugas National Park in the keys and often we don't speak um about quals like we do with other animals however they are in fact animals um and many people don't know how to classify corals since they can look like plants or rocks but they're actually invertebrates next slide cool so when someone talks about a coral they're talking about a big family of these large poets um and the pops are the tiny building blocks that make up the larger animals next SL so corals are incredibly special organisms that make up a coral reef so they are the living structure made up of coral pops which are tiny animals that are all living together to build this very essential habitat next slide corals live in symbiosis with a type of algae called so and belly which gives them their color and more importantly zo Andi give corals the majority of their nutrients and return the corals protect um The Zo Andi from predators and they're also suspension feeders that eat zooplankton so they catch food using tentacles around their mouth and like jellyfish these tentacles have stinging cells which help them to kill their prey Florida's coral reef began forming 10,000 years ago different species of corals grow at different rays and here we see some Boulder corals growing on a nursery tree on the left and endangered pillar coral on the right branching corals like stag horn and elorn grow much faster than these mounding Reef building corals Florida's coral reef is made up of Stony Coral soft Coral algae and sponges like I mentioned earlier it's 350 M long and hosts over 30 million visitors each year showcasing its critical economic importance to the state Reef building or Stony corals grow over a very long period of time and they give the reef its vertical structure and this creates a really important habitat for all the other Reef creatures living on coral reefs every year Florida's coral reef supports 71,000 jobs and generates $6.3 billion in sales and income for Monroe Miami day Broward Palm Beach and Martin counties and those are just the num numbers it's not so easy to put a number on things like having the reef as part of where you live and your way of life recreationally and commercially and there's many different ways you can get to know the reef such as snorkeling fishing and my personal favorite scuba diving there's some animations on the slides that was yesterday so oh I have to click the mind as well this is not to mention how a healthy coral reef can protect us from storms healthy coral reefs dissipate up to 97% of wave energy and every year Florida coral reef presides $355 million in flood protection benefits to buildings and protects nearly $320 million in economic activity and also more than1 billion dollar in protection during extreme storm events for example after Hurricane ARA in 2018 scientists found areas of the reef that were fractured among other damage from taking the force of those waves for us there some animations here J better timing on animation I know we didn't s this up before I think this one's no so fish depend not only on coral reefs but also mangroves and seagrass fed so they can maintain their growing populations these animals spend their lives switching between the habitats and return to the reef when they are mature which is why these habitats are so important as well and showcases the importance of protecting all of Florida's ecosystem since they are all connected sorry no more animations I think last slide awesome so Florida squirrel reef is home to 517 species of fish over 6 vertebrates about 43 Stony corals and over 70 species of sponges all these photos were taken offshore of Palm Beach um Broward and Miami dat counties and it's not hard to realize why we need to protect such a diverse ecosystem so Florida squirrel reef is protected by state and federal laws all of Florida's coral reef is protected by the Florida coral reef protection act which states that all Stony corals octo corals black corals and fire corals within Florida waters are prot protected from take or attempting to take destruction sale or possession the US restoring resilient reefs Act was passed as part of the National Defense authorization act last year in 2023 this act reauthorizes and modernizes the coral reef conservation Act of 2000 strengthens jurisdictional coral reef conservation programs so in addition to Florida other jurisdictional programs are Puerto Rico cnmi US Virgin Islands um as well as American Samoa Hawaii and other coral reef territories and this act gives new Innovative tools and resources to these States territories and communities Additionally the US Endangered Species Act protects species at risk of Extinction and currently there are seven listed species of coral found in Florida um that are endangered coral reefs in southeast Florida are facing a variety of local and Global stressors resilience is defined as the ability of a system to maintain key functions in the face of such stresses stressors or pressures by either withstanding an impact or recovering from one when it happens coral reef resilience is ultimately about coral reef health and for Community to be resilient and must be able to survive reproduce compete for space and resources healthy reefs can better cope with and recover from major stress events like storms Mass bleaching events and coral disease outbreaks indicators of a healthy Reef include strong recruitment High biodiversity healthy herbivore biomass low disease prevalence and low anthropo impacts so some of the global stressors that impact coral reefs include increased frequency and severity of extreme weather like hurricanes and storms as well as Marine heat waves ocean warming and ocean acidification which all contribute to an increase in Coral stress and lead to Coral bleaching all right there's some animations on this one so um getting into Coral bleaching healthy Coral colonies are composed of numerous Coral pops Each of which contains zo andth within their tissues should be too close so getting into Coral bleaching healthy Coral colonies um will then become stressed when they're exposed to a stressor and their natural stress response is to expel their zo Andy the exact mechanism by which this occurs is the topic of a lot of research but without the zo andth the coral pops lose their coloration and what's left is the clear living Coral tissue covering their white Limestone skeleton and because the corals turn from being colored to appearing white that's why it's called Coral bleaching Coral bleaching is a natural stress response that can occur from several environmental disturbances so in addition to extremes in solar radiation or sea temperature it can also be caused by pollution oils fills low oxygen changes in solinity sedimentation as well as disease so there's this Zen thaty going away and then if you click again that's what's left over all right next slide so Coral bleaching is a gradual process and here you can see the progression from healthy colored tissue to then um bleached white tissue and it has that intermediate phase where some color is retained as well as it has some white patches and that's called paling or partial bleaching so are bleached corals dead um the answer is no so bleached corals are still living it still has live Coral tissue but the zanelli is gone therefore so is its color you're doing a great job um so if the stress is removed and the environmental conditions return to normal soon enough um you can click that Coral has the chance to regain their zo and thy and can survive the bleaching event it typically takes weeks to months for corals to regain their color which depends um based on the species of coral now click again unfortunately when water temperature increases it only takes a matter of days to weeks for a coral to bleach and if those stressors continue or they're severe enough for an extended period of time it can lead to death a main component of my work is to monitor which corals are bleaching as well as the rate of recovery after impact to determine the resilience of corals across Florida coral reef but whether the coral recovers from bleaching there are still some noticeable long-term effects since the corals have lost their primary source of food they have less energy available for skeletal growth and reproduction and their overall health has been compromised leaving them more susceptible to things like disease predation and death ultimately dead corals result in a loss of habitat for other Reef creatures and coral bleaching matters because once these Coral dies um reefs rarely come back with few Coral surviving they struggle to reproduce and the entire Reef ecosystems on which people and Wildlife depend deteriorate bleaching also matters because it's not an isolated phenomenon according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration between 2014 and 2017 around 75% of the world's tropical coral reefs experienced heat stress severe enough to trigger bleaching for 30% of the world's reefs that heat stress was enough to kill the coral so here's an infographic from National Geographic showing the history of mouse Coro bleaching events the first widespread bleaching event that we saw was from 1982 to 1983 and it was associated with an elmino event we then had Global bleaching events in 1998 and again in 2010 actually due to a cold water event but the longest event ever observed was from 2014 to 2016 with backtack years it means corals didn't have any time to recover before they were hit again with intense stress recently in early 2024 no announced that Coral Rees are experiencing the fourth Global bleaching event it started last summer here in the Caribbean and it's been moving its way um to other regions of the world including the Pacific so Coral bleaching impacts people's livelihoods food security and safety as mentioned earlier there are natural barriers that absorb the wave energy and the force of storm surges keeping Coastal Community safe bleach Coral also compounds the over fishing crisis by removing links in the food web and depriving some fish and crustacean species of a place to spawn and develop anyone relying on these animals as a primary source of income or protein will be in trouble finally Reef tourism brings in billions of dollars each year and supports thousands of jobs bleach squirrel reefs devoid if magnificent species jeopardize it all so Coral leaching can occur across different spatial scales either at the colony level or across an entire Reef as shown in the photos here I actually took all of these photos um myself last summer while driving while diving in the Dry Tortugas National Park um and they all came from the 2023 bleaching event the most important thing to remember when looking at these photos is that hope is not lost because their tissue is still there and coral poops are still alive they're just missing their Z andth due to stress and we did see um a high rate of recovery at these Reeves all right so Switching gears unlike Global stressors these local stressors are threats that impact our reefs here the most in southeast Florida as compared to other areas of the world they include unintentional harm caused by recreational diving and vessel anchoring on reefs unsuitable fishing pressure and the introduction of invasive species impacts from Marine construction and these pressures are all Amplified by the dense population that lives on the Florida coastline further with multiple stressors it's critical to make decisions based on science and engage all stakeholders early and often as these stressors need to be continually mitigated to effectively manage for long-term resilience and a changing climate so to mitigate and manage these stressors and impacts the coral reef conservation program or crcp was developed in the early 2000s our office focuses on five key threats to the reef listed here and CCP has a staff member or coordinator focused on each of these five threats so um my office focuses on the Kristen Jacobs coral reef ecosystem Conservation area which just got designated as an aquatic preserve last month which is very exciting um so we're in the process of developing a management plan and the ECA was named for the late Florida congresswoman Kristen Jacobs who is extremely dedicated to protecting the Florida environment so this section of the wreath runs through Martin County through Miami Daye counties and it's about 105 miles long so the maritime industry and Coastal constructions impact coordinator addresses Coastal Construction and Maritime activities that could impact our Coastal habitats in reefs for example activities could include infrastructure installation Beach renourishment and dredge and fill operations construction from these activities could directly harm the corals as well as hard bottom habitat um for instance if they are buried in sediment or experience long-term increases in turbidity from construction activities activities conducted by users who are unaware of the presence and vulnerability of the reefs can be reduced through strategies to increase the awareness and refine specific user practices so the awareness and appreciation coordinator Works to educate resitors and visitors about reefs through curricular public Outreach and media campaigns next Slide the primary objective of the landbased source as a pollution coordinator is to characterize the link between pollution and reefs in the ECA by working with researchers stakeholders and agencies to monitor water quality the coordinator can identify design and Implement activities to reduce pollution affecting coral reef ecosystems the primary goal of the fishing diving and other uses coordinator is to address the impacts caused by activities such as fishing diving and boating actions associated with these activities often result in unseen and unintended impacts of that alter reath ecosystems the coordinator's primary purpose is to identify these impacts and assess how they affect marine organisms as well as their habitat um and for myself as the reef resilience coordinator I work to understand the spatial variation of local and Global stressors I identify which actions may be effective against those stressors and decide where to implement priority actions to restore ecosystem services and maximize resilience potential through Coral restoration I also coordinate the Caan and bleach watch Citizen science programs so Sean um it's called the southeast Florida Action Network it's a citizen science reporting and response system designed to improve the protection and management of our offshore Coral Rees so if you're in or on the water you can report any unusual sightings along Florida correl Reef including Marine debris vessel groundings anchor damage invasive species harmful algal balloons fish disease fish kills discolored water and more there's no special training needed you just report what when and where the incident was observed either online or by using the hotline number and if any of you are divers and you want to take your citizen science reporting to the next level specifically for Coral bleaching and disease we encourage you all to um join the Bleach watch program so Bleach watch acts as an early warning system for Coral bleaching in southeast Florida and the purpose of the program is to detect and monitor Coral bleaching events so so I can't be everywhere on the reef all the time so I rely on the citizens and stakeholders to submit photos and data um and I even got 20 reports just last weekend so um I've grown the program over time and now we have over a thousand observers in the program um and we've expanded to be all throughout the Florida Keys as well so you can become part of the Observer Network um by participating in a training session I have an online recording that you can watch and I'm also hosting a training at 4C dive shop in Boon Beach next Thursday so here are some other ways you can help to protect coral reefs when you're directly on the water and other actions that you can protect the reef in your daily life so for one you can use Palm Beach County's four moring buoy sites we have between three and 20 moing buoys available at four sites between Jupiter and boa Ron coordinates are available on the Palm Beach County website but we're also happy to provide waterproof brochures for you to keep on your boat you can also download the ezri field maps app and view the coral reef locator map to see where your vessel is in relation to the wreath this helps you not illegally anchor on Coral Reef habitat and avoid damaging coral reef and alternatively it allows you to see where coral reef habitat is located and nearby moring buoys to find the perfect snorkling spot when you're out on the water and in the water diving and snorkling you can report Marine incidents like Marine debris and invasive species to sein and like I mentioned earlier if you're dive certified you can become a Bleach watch Observer and learn more about how to identify and Report Coral bleaching in disease um lastly and most importantly you can remember that you can make a difference anywhere and everywhere to help protect our nearby coral reef so some options are to look for sunscreen that has reef safe ingredients um containing zinc oxide or titanium dioxide sometimes if it's say reef safe on the bottle or the brand itself it may not actually be re safe so checking the ingredients is always something I would recommend avoid fertilizing when heavy rainfall is predicted and sweep up and store excess fertilizer because all of that is ending up in our waterways join cleanups in North Palm Beach County with loggerhead marine life center and the Surf Rider Foundation um you can also utilize the beach buckets at Jupiter Beach and Coral Cove and help support reusable alternatives to single use plastic um and then you can also look for sustainable Seafood options at Seafood watch. or on the montere Bay Aquarium website so if you would like more information about Florida squirrel Reef or to access our educational and virtual reality videos you can visit our website at floridas reef.org um and with that thank you all so much for inviting me um I appreciate the opportunity and happy to answer any [Music] questions questions I do have a quick question you mentioned that they have the beach bucket they're already there that's one concept that we have talked about so they definitely are there and they're set up for people to just Community interaction by cleaning up okay that's good yeah um they have them at Civic Center they have them all along Jupiter Beach um they have them at longer head they host cleanups every Saturday morning um the Friends of Palm Beach they do pretty regular cleanups that's on their website as well and then Coral Cove definitely has buckets as well great thank you I have a question may I um uh thank you for coming today and um can we use any of this to help our toqua citizens learn more about bleaching and for example can you send us a link or give it to the Community Development department and they can share it with us and we can put it on our website or we can put it in our village newsletter so that people come informed that would be great you have my PowerPoint so if you just want to convert it into a PDF so it doesn't show my notes um yeah feel free to post it wherever I notice I mean I I heard you you pinpoint the multiple sources of bleaching the problem causing it but I'm curious in Florida here in South Florida when uh hurricane season in and we segue into winter and theoretically the ocean waters get cooler MH do you see any re uh uh bleach Coral start to come back when winter comes along yeah and um that's something that we did last year so um we do bleaching monitoring surveys from the beginning of August through the end of October um because the heat stress is delayed so even though it's started getting hot in June it takes about 8 Degree heating weeks so 8 weeks of accumulated temperature for them to show signs so we're starting to see bleaching and paling i' say like within the last week it's kind of started to show and that will continue until November December January depending on the severity of the bleaching so last year they didn't recover until February for some of the corals and the keys but up here we actually had an upwelling event where the current ran South instead of North and it brought a lot of cool water so our corals up here recovered months faster than the ones in the keys it really depends on like how much temperature stress okay interesting well thank you very much yeah thank you guys so so you have mentioned uh the designation of an aquatic preserve and that's the reef that you handle right the yeah that re section I guess yeah so now all of it's protected so we have an aquatic Preserve in the northern part we have biscan National Park and then the Marine sanctuary and then drag for National Park I was just sced when you say protected what is that mean because there there are some areas in like for instance the keys where you can't fish you can't all you can do is snorkel or dive you can't touch anything is that kind of the idea or is it less that um so you can't touch any of the coral like currently here but I know what you mean like exclusion zones and um they wouldn't be implementing anything like that right now um we had a meeting with our stakeholder group yesterday so um we host public meetings twice a year it's called the um Southeast Florida coral reef initiative so we have a group of 60 people from all different stakeholder groups and they come together and they help us um working on our management plan right now so our management plan will be published in the next year and that will kind of outline everything um in terms of what we're doing and all of our projects but I don't think there's going to be any regulations besides like Federal um laws implemented right now okay um and so what if if you had like a magic wand you could say Village of Testa what you know H how can we help you and and I know Tom just alluded to it is it just like advertising some of these programs like cfan uh getting the word out to the citizens and Anda I would say awareness awareness awareness building awareness in the community I think is the main thing that's helpful um you know participating in cleanup programs or you know just enjoying the marine life that we have and like watching other people like share your joy and like enjoying the ecosystem I think you know if people love something they're going to do more to protect it yeah can I jump in how how important is the suntan lotion situation because I don't know that everyone knows about that yeah so I would say that climate change is probably you know the big thing here um but you know sunscreen is an easy way to feel like you're making a difference and um water quality is a huge issue in Florida so I think any effort to reduce the toxin load and the water is definitely going to be helpful yeah yeah so this I've seen this firsthand out in the keys and it's a it's an eerie thing when you see these beautiful corals and everything is just white yeah it is bizarre and this had come up on one of our past meetings that's the reason I I wanted you to to come here and and give your talk and I really appreciate your time one more question it's a little bit unrelated and I think the D is part of this um the fish down in the keys and I think even in biscan Bay that were spinning have they come up with what is causing that yeah so um great question all of the reporting programs we all talk to each other and check in once a month so Kyle Luba um he's down in the keys with FWC he's been like the head of all those reports and I talked to him last month and they haven't um figured it out exactly um we've done tons of water quality testing we think it's just maybe an analy that we've never tested before in the lab so there's no like procedure to test for it so it might be something that we have just not been able to detect um but they're thinking it's some kind of water contaminant but we just haven't been able to to Source it and also um the spinning has definitely calmed down there there's like almost no reports of it now so maybe it was just a flare up but yeah that was definitely weird you guys heard about that right no I didn't and there was even one in Tampa too when he's in Tampa they think that they were swimming yeah they were just uh spinning in a circle mostly the sawfish which is but there were other fish species as well right yeah it was the most concerning one was the sawfish because it's like very endangered and there's only like um a certain number left in the population they're also a very deep water species they were coming up Shallow so that was weird but yeah I don't haven't heard anything concrete sound very suspicious yeah cuz it was all over the news down there for for a while and then I don't really hear anything more about it and I went on the website and not much of an update with regard to the cause yeah they spent a lot of money trying to figure it out and they just haven't been able to pinpoint it yet unforunately but there's some analytes that like certain Labs don't test for things okay can can I ask a question yeah um so we had the Village Council had um is it Lena fix from the The Reef Institute came maybe two or three months ago and so she shared kind of what they're doing and also some of the I guess like the synthetic corals or the the the stuff they're trying to do to create new corals um can you maybe share what what you're what they're doing doing and how that relates to what you guys do yeah so I actually was with lenita yesterday she's one of our um main Vice chairs for our stakeholder group so she's great I work with her a lot um we have a program called the Florida squirrel Reef resilience program and I'm one of the heads of the coral Restoration Team so we meet with all of our restoration practitioners um every month so there's like Coral restoration Foundation there's M Marine Lab there's the reef institute there's Florida Aquarium uh University of Miami and Nova Southeastern and those are like the main people doing Coral restoration right now um as well as some others in the keys and so what we do with them is we give a lot of grant funding towards their projects we have like resilience funding as well as like restoration funding where we have about 9 million that we spend out every single year so she's one of our awardees for the grants and they're actually building a new facility that we're going to go check out next week and to expand their operations so yeah she also um they developed a movie recently with some Partners in the Keys in NSU about their work so can try and find the link to that online yeah that we could put that onsite too yeah would I have her I have her presentation oh yeah yeah I think I sent it to everyone you they do great stuff though all of our restoration practitioners they they were the first ones to outplant in Palm Beach County do you feel the state they could be doing more to support these efforts I mean this is like a huge deal do you feel like said $9 million I mean how much do we really need yeah I mean well we just got funding to have $9 million for the next I'd say 20 years and um we've really focused on um this new act that just got passed this past year so it's called the Florida scroll Reef recovery and initiative act um and that's going to be funding basically the operations the grow out the expansion the transport for all of like the baby corals for the next 20 years so I feel like there's definitely been a heavier emphasis on restoration I feel like we're doing a pretty good job right now nice all right anything else quick question now just out of curiosity say there's bleaching on the reef out here or anywhere what level or degree is used to determine when it needs to have these restoration corals applied to it yeah so restoration is kind of like an intervention tool that we use to help rebuild the reef it's not necessarily like a fix all for bleaching because you really need the temperature stress to go down right so you can outplant corals but those outplanted corals are still going to be affected by bleaching so that affects everything you know so if we don't lower the carbon emission then you know the outplanted corals may not be doing well either um but we have been doing genetic sequencing of the corals we're just finishing that we're developing a genetic management plan to build out the most resilient corals that we can and run thermally tolerant you know experiments and so when you have a lot of genetics in the population and like diversity and resilience outting those corals then they have a better chance so if that kind of explains your question um in areas where they're really affected by bleaching and say that Reef was degraded you can outplant corals there but typically we don't use bleaching as like an indicator for restoration okay I'm so sorry can I ask one last question how how much does the coral bleaching and the reef dying impact water water Clarity is there like a correlation between Clarity and reef Health yes I would say that the bleaching doesn't impact the water quality the water quality would impact the bleaching so it would be the other way around so if you have like pollution in the water or toxins or there's a lot of sediment um that's going to cause the coral to bleach but the bleaching Coral doesn't really affect the water the clarity itself okay yeah and my number and my emails up there I love to talk about this so you can call me anytime you can email me with any other questions you have okay well thank you I live around here happy to come back appreciate it thank you guys all right next presentation uh Mr Michael Tomkins senior project manager ecosystem restoration planning and project management section of the South Florida Water Management District to spit that out thank you for for coming thank you for your time and um let you get started all right super and uh all right um yeah right so as mentioned my name is Mike Tomkins I'm a senior project manager at the Water Management District my primary project is the lock River uh Watershed restoration project um this project was uh authorized by Congress in 2020 and it's a partnership that we have between the Army Corps of Engineers and the Water Management District and so the federal government and the the state cost share the design and construction and maintenance of this project throughout throughout its life um so the purpose of the locks river water restoration project is to improve the freshwater flows to the Northwest Fork of the locks river which is a nationally designated wild and Scenic River and to restore the hydrology and connectivity of wetlands and Weds that form the historic headwaters of the river goe to the next one there we go and then the objectives of the project objective number one restore the wet and dry season flows to the nationally designated wild and Scenic Northwest Fork of the locks River objective two is to restore oysters sea grass and other estrine communities and the lock River Estuary objective three increase the spatial extent and function of wetlands um objective four restore the Watershed connections among the lock River Headwater natural areas to improve hydrology sheet flow Hydra periods natural storage and vegetative communities and then objective five to restore the abundance and diversity of native plant and animal species in the Watershed um including natural areas in the river and Estuary last one there so this is sort of an overview of the lock River Watershed um the project broke our uh different elements into three different flow ways and so we've got flow way uh one two and three you can see them color coded on the map so flow Way 3 is to the north floway 2 is this uh empowement to the west and floway three uh is to the South uh we're bordered pretty much to the north by the c44 canal and to the South by the c-51 canal to the west by the L8 Canal um within flow Way 3 there's a a component up in Jonathan Dickinson State Park that's the kitchen Creek um restoration um number two there moonshine Creek and Gulf Stream East we're going to be um putting in a weir in moonshine Creek and then doing some regrading in Gulfstream East um Cypress Creek Canal we've got some structures that uh Martin County put in a few years back we'll be automating those so they don't have to send people out to maintain them and open and close them When Storms are approaching or seasons change um it's also going to be a spreader Canal that's going to pull water out of the Cypress Creek canal and spread it into the Cypress Creek Natural Area and then we'll be building a flow through uh Marsh in what we'll call Gulfstream West and to try to attenuate flows up in that flow way three and then Palmar East is just doing some grading and some plugging of ditches to try to restore the wetlands and the hydrology of this very large area a flow way 2 will be um an above ground empowerment uh it's got 9500 acre feet of storage planned um also have four uh aquafer storage and Recovery Wells that will go into the flow we too those are those like yellow uh plus signs that you see on the west side that may not actually be where they go but I mean just conceptually we plan to install ASR wells in flow to that'll be the primary source of new water that comes in to uh the lock River Northwest fork and then flow way one we've actually already constructed g160 and g161 the project is really just going to look and make sure that those structures are built to the proper specifications and they don't need any modifications we assume they're going to be in pretty good shape though then we'll also do some uh work in uh The Grassy Waters triangle this is a section of Grassy Waters preserve that's just to the north North Lake and just west of the be line right there some over drying that's going on we're going to try to hydrate some wetlands in that area and then we're going to build a pump station that will pull water out of Indian Trail improvement district pump it into the M Canal that would then route that water through grassy Grassy Waters preserve and then it would go through flow way one to the north to be discharged through g92 into the Northwest forur so just kind of an overview map there over the next slide please okay so what are the project benefits um big benefit is to restore flows to the Northwest uh Fork of the lock River we anticipate that the project would achieve 91% of the uh Target flows in the dry season and 98% of the target flows in the wet season this is expected to promote the recovery of riverine freshwater species uh and and estrine zones for fish seagrass oysters and other protected species that are present in the lock River um the project is also going to improve Watershed Wetland hydrology uh we'll be improving 17,000 Acres of existing or former agricultural lands um and uh improving 10,000 acres of existing natural areas um overall we'll be improving or connecting what will be about 78,000 Acres of habitat and in addition to just you know the environmental benefits there's also going to be recreational opportunities that the project will provide there'll be kayak launches uh some modifications to some of the trails systems Bridges and and things of that nature to improve uh hiking opportunities in the lck river Watership um next slide so this is uh the project schedule the Army Corps publishes an update um every year this is the integrated delivery schedule which we call the IDS it's got uh sort of a a road map for how all of the projects that are part of ser will be sequenced and and and constructed what I've got here is just the timeline that we've got for the lock River Project um so you can see there's some different colors up here we've got black and blue black means that it's the Army corps's responsibility blue means it's the Water Management District's responsibility and so for this particular project the Water Management District will be constructing all the features for the lock River Watershed resoration project um we uh I guess I could to explain here so you see these dotted um lines that indicates when we'll be in our design phase of the project the solid lines indicate when we'll be in the construction phase and those Diamond symbols indicate when construction would be complete and we would be testing to make sure that the project is U operating the way that it's intended um and so basically for all the components in flow 1 2 and three we're in design right now with the except C of those ASR Wells those aren't going to start the design process until 2027 um and so we're in design presently we're looking to start construction in FY 26 um in flow way one and uh a part of the construction in flow way 2 has also been a kickoff in FY 26 and in flow 3 also so pretty much FY 26 is when most of the construction gets going and then we look to have all that construction wrapped up by 2032 all the testing complete and and everything fully operational by 2034 next slide please so this is just a little bit more of a detailed look at what we've got going on in flow 1 um so to the South we see the S100 Pump Station um ultimately what that's going to do is pull water out of the Indian Trail Improvement District's uh upper Basin uh actually I'm sorry the lower Basin um so the water quality within it ID is really really good in comparison to some of the other sources that we looked at for the project and so um what they do with that water presently is it's often discharged to tide it's sent to the c-51 canal and it's just lost to tide um at at that point and so rather then allow that water to leave the Watershed we're going to capture it um pump it into the M Canal that would route it over to Grassy Waters and then it continues to path up north there um and the grassy water triangle we can just a little bit closer shot of where that's at um the purpose and flow we want is just to capture that excess water that we would lose to tide um restore and enhance connectivity for wildlife that's the primary purpose of the triangle um we are expecting to execute an S so for the design of floway one in the next couple weeks um we're trying to get that really done in fy2 24 is the goal right now uh next slide uh low way to this is sort of the Crown Jewel of the lock River Watershed restoration project um this is the c18 West impoundment with the four Co located ASR walls um the purpose of the impoundment is to provide water delivery to the Northwest Fork of the locks River to achieve the restoration flow targets um water will be stored during the wet season and recovered during the uh dry season to establish more natural seasonal delivery of water to the river um we are capturing water that would otherwise be delivered outside the lock River Watershed and redirected to the Northwest for of the river uh the empowerment will be filled by uh discharges that come from JW corporate Wildlife Management uh area that's just to the west of the empowerment um and also from the C8 West Canal which is this canal that runs just on the North Boundary of the empowerment it collects water from the hungry land slooh area um and then we'll recover groundwater from the Florida aquer for those ASR WS um just kind of get a rough idea this is the mecca property I don't know if you guys are familiar with that it's pretty much out in Indian Trail improvement district it was acquired by the district I think in around 2014 it's just been kind of sitting there waiting for something to happen uh and it's a great opportunity for us to use this this property that we've had for quite some time um it'll have a embankment that goes all the way around it we'll store about 7 and A2 ft of water inside the empowerment um and then during the dry season when the flows in the lock River sort of decrease we'll release water from the empowerment to supplement those flows uh next slide please this is sort of a artist conception of what the empowerment's going to look like once it's completed um in the Southeast Corner that's a a water repumping plant that the city at West Palm Beach currently has in place out there they'll be uh just right next to that'll be Recreation uh facility which will allow for folks to um access the interior of the empowerment so that they can uh enjoy kayaking or hiking along the crest of it or something of that nature and then that's also going to tie into the c18 West Canal so there'll be a lot of areas for folks to enjoy kayaking and um fishing and things like that um we executed a design contract with arcadis and FY 23 we've already completed surveying GE tech for the project uh modeling is just about wrapped up right now we're kind of reviewing the modeling for groundwater in H&H uh right now um and then we should be starting preliminary design in October of this year and then we'll have intermediate and final design phases after that um next slide please so uh zoomed in a little bit on Flow Way 3 what we're not showing here is the work that's being done in Jonathan Dickinson State park that's just off the screen to the top right and we're also not seeing the stuff that's called Gulf scream East um so Gulf scream East uh that's just on the east side of I95 uh north of Cypress Creek and it was a former Citrus field that's got a bunch of ditches out there um ultimately what we'll do is we'll regrade that area fill in all the old agricultural ditches try to um re create some of the flow patterns that were out there naturally uh that'll feed into moonshine Creek it'll feed into Cypress Creek it'll create all sorts of excellent weap habitat out there um so that's what's going on Gulfstream East Gulfstream West uh that's that triangle just to the west of 95 that you see the red uh around there um that'll be a flow through marsh um idea there is that we can capture flows that are coming from Hope St Lucy Conservancy District that's are sort of flashy we can pump them into Gulf Stream West and uh kind of hang on to them for a little bit to attenuate the high flows maybe provide a little bit of treatment at the same time and then release from Gulf Stream West when the time is right there um Palmar East is mostly going to be uh connectivity and hydrologic restoration that's that uh section that's called Nine gems sort of big section to the top uh that you see there um we'll be filling in some ditches there uh building a few structures um and just trying to connect that whole area so that it's one big continuous uh hydrated Wetland um right now it's a little bit overd drained there's some agricultural ditches and all sorts of things that just drain that stuff really fast we'll slow that down um Mac da spreader Swale say I skip over no I think we're good um Mac Dairy spreader Swale that is wish I had a laser pointer um it is sort of in the center and what we'll do is we're going to yeah there we go right there there's a we'll build a pump station that's going to pull water out of Cypress Creek Canal it's going to pump it into the spreader Swale and then that water is going to sort of sheet flow to the East and that meets up with the South Fork of Cypress Creek um Canal um so that's the Cypress Creek Weir and there'll also be some BM improvements that go on there so that we ensure that we don't impact those neighbor hoods that that um are just to the north of the Cypress Creek canal in that area um also going to be automating some uh culverts there I think that's the s14s if I'm seeing that from here uh they're already built we're just going to go out there and put some automation include them in our ska Network so they can be operated remotely um so what's the purpose of all this yeah restore the Hydra period um improve the ecological function of the wetlands improve the timing of the discharges to to the Northwest Fork restore the historic topography reduce overd draining enhance habitat for wildlife by restoring the connectivity and hydrology and uh flow Way 3 design contract executed with wsp and FY 23 um survey and Geotech have just wrapped up for that project we're currently doing modeling for the kitchen Creek portion of it and and and we've also got started with the Gulf Stream East portion and they're working on a regional model as well for flow three right now but making great progress in flow 3 um next slide so some of the early work that we've been doing um Gulf Stream East I've kind of highlighted it in green here so it's just to the east of I95 um so as as you're leaving Jupiter heading north on I95 right as you go over the Cypress Creek Canal there's a bridge on the east side of the road would be the Gulf Stream East property um what we've been doing out there to this point is just trying to handle the Exotic vegetation that's out there so you can see this image on the left from June 6th um all that vegetation that you see out there is really Brazilian pepper um and so what we've done is we went out there and we've done a bun of Mowing and now we're working on doing some herbicides so we're trying to knock all that pepper down so that when we you know get this Wetland restoration kicked off we don't have to deal with a bunch of exotic vegetation so like and I mentioned you can kind of see all those uh agricultural ditches that run north and south for the most part through out this area those are all going to be filled in and regraded and we're going to kind of try to restore some of the natural depressions that are there try to find some of the natural flow paths and see if we can get those restored as well uh but just real early stages right now we're I think our biggest uh question mark right now is how do we deal with this uh ditch that runs through the center and kind of bisects the north from the south and working through some options on that right now uh next slide please this is just some of the equipment that we used at golfstream East they had this big uh uh essentially mower that would go up to one of these brazillion peppers and within about 3 seconds it would be a pile of sticks so really really quick did uh I think that's about a 450 acre parcel that we uh mowed north and south to get rid of as much as that pepper as we could and then the next phases of that we're going out there every six months or so and treating with herbicide to make sure the pepper doesn't come back um next slide yeah I think that's pretty much it and then I've got one more slide after that that's got some contact information that's got my email and phone number um there's another project manager that works on floway one that's Meg tickner um she's U just getting started we won right now like I said they Haven have had an that should be executed very soon and then Jen leads is uh overall in ecosystem restoration and planning so in case you guys have questions after this meeting these would be the best contacts so with that I guess I could answer any questions that you guys have comp Jill did you raise your hand go ahead ladies first go ahead thank you so just because I hike a lot in the area I love what you're doing will any of it be accessible by hikers to be able to enjoy the area or is this fully for you know restoration for the water great question I I me too I I love getting out hiking uh through JD is one of my favorite areas to go and Hike um I think that the project is really going to enhance hiking opportunities I it's definitely not going to limit them we um the Palmar East property which is just directly you know west of JD huge property also um we're looking at getting that tied into the uh to create sort of a loop for the ocean the Wake Trail oh nice so that you'd have kind of a northern section of it too so we're working on that with Maron County also all that land that we own so yeah you can see that nine gums parcel there um we actually own that um with shared with Martin County and so we're Partners in in managing that area but yeah absolutely we are are looking to enhance hiking opportunities there's also um as part of the ocean Del Lake Trail and I don't think this figure shows it but it's in Gulf Stream East there's a Crossing on the ocean of Lake Trail where it goes over hope Grove of ditch which right now is a low water crossing we're going to build a bridge so that you don't have to go through the water so that's great nice Improvement there is it all in connection with that LX area of a bridge are you guys in connections with them I know they bought a bunch of that land to preserve it um I know that's over in Martin County but right yeah I think they're I mean they're within our boundaries it's it's where we get water that's going to be ultimately uh diverted into our kitchen Creek restoration okay um I don't think there's a lot of coordination necessarily with lockal loaly but I think it's loal yeah right only seen some science when driving on Bridge Road but no I don't have a lot well thank you for your presentation that was are are you or any of your colleagues on excuse me the uh what I think is called the uh lockah hatchee River coordinating Council that was created by FD to look at well to engage all of the local governments in the uh Watershed for the lock hatche on ways and means to reduce uh poll ution into the waterways are are you aware if any uh South Florida Water Management District people are attend those meetings I well um I think I think you're referring to the lock River Management coordination Council that's usually they H those meetings at the Lock River environmental control district it could be yeah I could that's what it's called yeah LR lock River Project initiative is another one that I always kind of Wonder for which one we're talking about so you guys do par absolutely um that's I I think that's mostly a partnership with the D and the Water Management District to come up you know with a plan for how we're going to conduct the restoration um that's where the targets for what our flow rates that the lanard dam really came from was with that partnership and so I know the district scientists are you know definitely engaged in that um management the lmcc and they're actively working updating the uh management plan for that presently right that's right yeah absolutely it's a attended by the district and we participate so um trying to Fig figure out how to phrase this so the water that you P well a large part of the new fresh water flow that would end up at the North Fork of the L locky River that's going to emanate from Oobi correct uh no no I don't think so that's actually a great question and that was when we were you know in the development in the planning and imple in the pr phase you know the big question is where can we get water what are the different sources and certainly we looked at getting water from Lake goobi we also looked at getting water from what a lot of people call the rock pits uh out west of the c-51 LA area yeah and basically those Alternatives were all rejected because of water quality concerns so Lake Oobi has a lot of water quality concerns High turbidity nutrients cyob bacteria blooms things like that um the rock pits the c-51 L8 had some other issues um different issues most of those were related to to conductance in the water being a little higher than we'd like um and so the source of the water that's going to be going to the lock River will be mostly um from runoff that's coming off Indian Trail improvement district or from natural ANS that we've you know improved our capacity to hold water there and the water quality within Indi Trail improvement district because it's kind of a low intensity uh area is is really good in comparison to these other sources out I guess what's confusing me is that it appears to be that there's a canal interconnecting with the lake that runs to the proposed impoundment area which would eventually send water into the slew but you're saying that that water in that Canal is not coming from Lake oel uh correct yeah it's not presently and so there is what is called the m0 canal that runs East and West ties into the la8 canal on the west side and that's also going to tie into our empowerment on the east side that Canal primarily runs to the West right now and so when I is working to drain their uh system they'll pump water um into their impoundment which is also to the West and then that flows uh out uh to the la8 canal so that's just another path for them to discharge water primarily it discharges water to the South to the c-51 canal but they've got some capacity limitations so if they've got a lot of water to get rid of they'll pump water to the west and discharge it to the LA Canal but water only goes to the West we can't pull water back from the LA East into the environment well you just solved a major concern that I had was that if FD was working to reduce pollutants in the locki river but we were going to add Lake oovi water to the river it sounded like it was a waste of the time Sly you know conflicting uh things but I'm glad you told me this the uh are we able to use like a link or something to share with our citizens in Testa relative to the work you're doing well trying to think of like what's the best thing that we could share and so so the Army Corps of Engineers has a lockah hatchee waterers shed restoration web page that contains the project implementation report which has a lot of detail I think that still might be the best link to share if you were sharing any link and you said Army Core the Army Corp and I'd be happy to to dredge up that link and share it with you all after thank you Michelle no good thank you yeah I just have one question uh Michael uh on one of the last slides here you mention mentioned a couple of of benefits here improve flow restore topography improve timing of discharges reduce overd draining are there any valuable lessons from your perspective that have uh allowed us to get to the current place we're in where we require these improvements has something occurred over the past that has allowed for this to occur perhaps lessons that the council here could benefit from understanding well really what we've got in the lock River um is a really effective drainage system and you know that being the primary purpose of of the Central and South Florida project was to drain now that that worked really a little bit too well um and so the purpose really of the locks is to try to reverse some of that overd draining and so that's what we're doing all this regrading out here but you know the big thing really is I don't know I was I imagine some of you have been down the L River from riverb you can kayak it's a lot of fun if you haven't done it absolutely recommend it it's it's gorgeous um in just very recently in June and this happens frequently in the in in the dry season um the Flows at the lanart dam were down in the you know 10 CFS range our MFL for flows over that Dam are about 35 CFS um our Target really is quite a bit higher than that um 50 to 68 CFS depending on where you look and so um you know because we have these these issues you know this overd draining and this this lack of water going you know down the river uh you know ultimately that's what we're trying to restore we're trying to get that back to the way it used to be we we we essentially have cut off the headwaters to the locks River and so we're trying to kind of reverse you know some of that stuff so rather than just draining everything straight out to the ocean to try to hold things you know on the landscape which is going to improve um conditions habitat conditions for all sorts of fish and wildlife and and Native Plant communities um you know when you have a a field like this that's totally drained um it's a perfect environment for exotic species to come into when we regrade this it's going to be a lot wetter out there it's almost difficult for these exotic plants to even grow in those areas and so just as a way to maintain these big properties one of the important things is just to put some water out there so going to ask a followup question how would a field like this become overd drained yeah it's it's all the system of canals that they've dug out there and the purpose of that was to drain it for agriculture and um they essentially have channelized uh everything so that it drains very efficiently into Cypress Creek to the South where it goes to the east into moonshine Creek and right into the locks River But ultimately when it rains out there it drains off the land you know almost instantly and if we just plug those ditches and kind of Disconnect those connections the water's going to get held on the land and raise the groundwater table that water will eventually work its way into the uh creeks and River but it'll be a lot slower go thank you so I have a follow up to that because that was great uh question Wade how are there things that are being put into place so that we don't get to this position again in other land I mean I love that we're taking back this land and um bringing it back to Nature is there are there other Parcels that you guys are looking at is there can we expand this to make it you know keep our our native Native oh within the Lots well just yeah I mean all over our County you know because this these are huge Parcels that were used for agriculture which of course we needed but are no longer being used there are other areas that you guys have your eyes on the we we certainly have um thousands of Acres that we've got on the wish list yeah it's it's um you know it's a prioritization process you know which one do we need for a project is there a project that's in mind presently does it have funding you know that's going to move it up on the list for Acquisitions but yeah there's a a lot of land that we'd like to ad it comes to my head but mine right away is where Indian Town Road uh curves into be line on your northeast corner I guess they call it hungry land or it's like that area but they're selling little Parcels you can't even get to I mean literally they're like acre 5 acre and you'll never be able to build on it and I just think to myself oh when's the day that that's going to become a residential area and it's just Prime for keeping being bought and keeping the way it is for the drain and the run off and the animals so that's just where my mind goes when I see those great example you know what could happen right so yeah there's a lot of parcel I think that's the ban by land Parcels that you're referring to over there which and and the Water Management District with willing sellers we've approached um sellers have approached us and we've approached some sellers to try to acquire some of those parel and I think long term we'd like to acquire a lot of them but um there's thousands of of them it probably take 30 years that's what I'm told to maybe acquire all of them um but that that is something that I think we're working toward I think the timeline on it is probably extended but yeah that's a concern thanks uh so my question you I see that you have a lot of um old Agland that you're utilizing are there tests done before you start flooding Agland uh tests for fertilizers pollutants chemicals that may have been used in the past AB absolutely great question and I mean you know it'd be it'd be kind of a bad planning right to I I had to ask the question though like this right on on some polluted land that and because there's examples throughout the state where that's happened and there's been sort of ecological disasters as a result but yes absolutely we do that sort of testing um so on this particular property for example um we have a real estate group that goes out we hire typically Consultants that can go and they collect samples at a lot of different locations um and and look for a host of uh different contaminants from toxic metals to pesticides um uh radioactive material other types of hazardous waste they look at the whole gamut of things that could cause problems out there um and before we can even start construction we've got to have um that assessment conducted we've got to send all those results up to the DP to the Army Corps to fish and wildlife so they can review uh you know what we're seeing out there and everybody has to kind of sign off on it and say that you know this is this is acceptable for us to go ahead and construct the project now so absolutely that happens and we are certainly um concerned about making sure that there is no hazardous toxic or radioactive waste does here that can cause any problems yeah um I guess to follow up on that after this project is completed waterers being uh I don't know held in that Agland is there ongoing testing moving past that that will you know prove what you you know you guys had tested prior actually another great question um um yeah so yeah we had somebody go out there beforehand they said it was all great does anybody check right so absolutely we do um after construction is over I mean the before testing gives us the green light to go ahead and do construction after the construction is over we've got that operational testing and monitoring phase those are the diamonds that we see on the IBS schedule um during that period of time we're going out and we're taking confirmation samples that the sediments aren't going to be contaminated that the surface waters aren't going to be contaminated and that this project itself isn't going to cause any Downstream effects like it's not going to have a bunch of erosion and carry a bunch of sediment off site and discharge that into the Creeks or something like that or take pollutant with it and so there are assessments that are done before we actually turn this into a fully operational project during that testing phase to ensure that we don't have those types of situations present that makes me think of the herbicide that's applied for the invasive so there's her side being applied to all that parcel where's that go great great question um so there's a lot of different herbicides that that our vegetation management folks can use to to take care of the types of vegetation that we see out there they know that we plan to start construction out here in about two years um they know that we intend to flood this property and so um they've made uh decisions that are compatible with that plan they've picked herbicides uh that degrade very quickly so that by the time we flood this they'll be gone they've also um you know go through this not just with an airplane and they spray the whole plot we've actually got people out there with backpacks that go from plant to plant and they spray them individually so we don't just you know spray the whole area we try to minimize the amount of herbicide that we're uh using out there in general um but those types of analysis uh like we're we did you know the before we'll do those after and make sure that we don't have that step question so how much filtration happens at like the lot Hatchi slw and Grassy Waters before that water even hits the lockah hatchee and then if that's is happening do you have any tips for us for what we can do to to you know clean the water and our own storm water system before it gets into lockah hatche do you guys have does your storm water system discharge right to the lock ofe or the do ditch which I think we're doing a like a living Shoreline or water filtration system there right one of that sounds that maybe this isn't the area this one anyway but I mean the types of things that would be beneficial I suppose sailes of you know something that water that's coming uh you know run off that's coming off streets or something you know if that goes into some sort of filtration area like a sale and then that percolates into the groundwater or then is discharged into the surface water at least we get a little bit of settling in the soil that helps it filter out some of the contaminants sounds like you guys are but but do the lahache slooh and those other Grassy Waters is that is that cleaning the water before it gets here or that would be excellent water quality everything that comes I mean Grassy Waters is used as a drinking water source for the city the city is extremely picky about the type of water that gets put in there in the first place so they they don't even like to take water from the rock pits they're looking at conductance that they're worried about everything going into that so the water that comes out of as a result of that is actually spectacularly good and um I'm not sure about the water quality in lockah hatchee sleo but I would expect it's very good also because it should be mostly a rain driven system not a whole lot of influence from thank you last chance okay all right thank you very much Michael appreciate it your time and your presentation I appreciate it thank you for the invitation thank you thank you all right next uh presenter Sue are is that you on all right uh thanks for holding on can I still up for this yeah so um our next speaker is Susan penella she's the president and co-founder of the Jupiter narrow Conservation Alliance and she's going to talk about the Jupiter nrows restoration project great thank you for having me um are you able to share my screen I'm sharing it from my perspective but can you see it I guess that's my question it looks like we are yeah I I see a Jupiter narrow thing okay great I think just maximize there there you go see that now well thank you again for having me I really appreciate it and I'm excited to share what we're doing with the Eros Conservation Alliance um the chicken hereros is really a very special place to me um uh my grandmother bought in one of the Beach Road buildings Lamar preconstruction in 1969 so my family has been um right there on the Jupiter Narrows ever since and my husband and I had the opportunity to buy um at Lamar in about 13 years ago so it's very near and dear to our hearts um so I'm sure if you all spend time on the water in the Jupiter Narrows you've seen the condition of the mangr islands um along there I don't know how long youve all been in town but um I started putting together a a photo album for a 50th anniversary party we had for our building and when I pulled out these pictures from the 1990s I mean I knew the mangroves were deteriorating but this shocked to remind myself what they look like when I was younger um so we've got three Vantage points here on the left we're at Lamar which is 375 Beach Road looking South to the lighthouse here it is in 1995 here it is in 2022 so you can see how thin they've become this one's really striking looking straight out I remember as a kid standing in fact that's my my little kids out there the dock and you couldn't even see the navigational Channel um to across the mangroves were so thick and we remember fondly just all the birds hundreds and hundreds of birds in there and all kinds of wildlife around it you can see the manatee right here underwater this is what it looks now looks like now in fact this right hand side has already broken off and then now we're looking North so this is before the clion building was built so these were just empty docks looking North and there was a big Lush Island there and now if you've been up there you've probably noticed it's split into two islands so long story short this was about three or four years ago I was looking at these pictures and I was like I've got I've got to do something and I'm I'm not a marine biologist or anything so the first thing I did was I picked up the phone and I called FWC and I happened to catch a woman who um to this day I talked to I absolutely love her she's now with Noah but um she came out with a representative from the Palm Beach uh County Environmental Resources management group and they snorkeled around the islands and they agreed that these are so vital to the ecosystem um and really should be saved and we heard Taylor talk a little bit earlier about the importance of the mang mangroves and sea grasses but I mean this is where the fish spawn this is where the manatee get their food um and we see I do still see a lot of different species there but definitely less than we did when were more uh Lush in fact FWC shared with me a comparison of 1977 to 20122 and you can see so let's start at the South this was one big island that extended all the way under the bridge now there's two but the one on the Northern side is barely there the second island here has completely disappeared this is an open area and then the third and fourth were I my recollection as a kid was they were almost connected it was almost one big island but now you can see not only are they separated and smaller but this top one here has splitting too so alarming just alarming this is what it looks like from the ground and again if you're out there in your boats or swimming or kaying you see this this is the southernmost Island right by uh ocean villas right just north of the bridge and this is what it looks like from a different angle this this is the one straight out from Lamar and this is the side I was telling you is already have broken off and and going by the wayside and then this is what is north of cleden U just on the edge of Coral Cove Park where it has split into two and we had some experts come out and look at this and their comment was oh my God these from the water these look like mangroves do after a hurricane has hit so anyway I got all worked up about it I was excited Ed that FWC in Palm Beach County you know sort of reinforced what I was saying and so that began phase one and I just started talking to anybody um in the area who has done restoration projects who um knows what they're talking about just to really learn and really Define the problem at the same time I was listening to my neighbors everybody was talking about the state of was mangroves and I remember having a meeting with a bunch of people at the tiki hut behind Island house where people were talking about what can we do what can we do uh we wrote letters to FWC to appeal for something to be done and then up until this point FWC thought they had a pool of money that they could use towards a project like this and they were working with the folks at University of Miami who developed the seahive I don't know if you're familiar with it but it's a um manufactured wave attenuation device that's like a cylindrical concrete um device that breaks the waves um but in the early spring of 2023 FWC my contact called me and said you know the money has now been allocated to a different project so I'm really sorry but we don't have the money but honestly you'd be better off if you went off on your own and did this not through the government because it'll take too long but I'll help you I'll be your mentor and I'll I'll advise you and so forth so we decided to start with a meeting of residents in March of 2023 and we had FWC in Palm Beach County actually present to the residents about why it's so important to try to save the mangroves and the Sea grasses and Tom I know you were there at that evening uh Peter dwit was there from uh across the way the Jupiter Lighthouse um and the takeaways for me were a a lot of people care about these about the the ecosystem here and we had a really good turnout from a lot of different buildings B they were interested in looking all the options not just seive but let's look at let's look at um all of the potential Solutions and see what's best and most you know most um likely to succeed and part of the reason we didn't want to pursue the seahive is they wanted to do a test and control because it was a new uh technology and that means you put them in front of one and you leave the other ones by themselves and we weren't willing to see the ones that weren't uh protect protected die so we decided to pursue other options so I left that meeting thinking okay now we got to find some more expertise more manpower and some more money and so I was very fortunate to be introduced to the Volo Foundation I don't know if any of you are familiar with them they're down in Palm Beach Gardens they have a relationship with the ocean Conservancy which is the oldest nonprofit in the United States devoted exclusively to Ocean conservation they introduced me to JP Brooker who's the Florida director and he immediately said community-led efforts like this have to happen and I will partner with you on this one because this succeeds this can be replicated in other areas of the Indian River Lagoon and or in the broader Florida um uh Waters and so that was a game Cher and that's what I call kind of jumping to phase two so with the extra Manpower and expertise pie we started by raising awareness we published an opinion piece in the Palm Beach post and the invading sea the invading sea is a um it's an online repository of articles that all of the Florida newspapers can access uh we developed media materials we have someone working on a film to document sort of this community-led effort we held a media day and had great coverage I don't know if any of you saw us but we were on all the major networks and most recently in Florida weekly so we really started to get some traction at the same time we continued to build the network and talk to people who were in the in the field we went back to our neighbors to reconnect with them and so I have a representative in each of the major buildings who liveed in that vicinity who agreed to forward on information to Residents and we sent out a survey we got 63 responses and what was most striking to me was of the respondents 87 % said this typee of project is extremely important or very important the other striking result from the survey was we asked them if they'd be willing to help in a variety of different areas from fundraising to marketing to donating money themselves and so forth and over 70% of the people said yes so I knew we were on to something and that there was certainly an energy in the community to make something happen so the next step was to really professional I I like to call it so we incorporated um in Florida as Jupiter herero Conservation Alliance we received our 501c3 status we've developed a website that I encourage you to go look at Jupiter neros conservation.org um and set up emails and so forth and then we hired tayor engineering um they are the Marine engineering firm that's working with the Jupiter Li house on the restoration around um that whole area they're also the engineering firm that has done a lot of work in the lockah hatchee river so we interviewed three different engineering firms we selected Taylor because of their kind of intimate knowledge of this whole ecosystem um and so the first thing we had them do was conduct a submerged aquatic vegetation study or a seagrass survey that's required because you need to know what's there underneath the the water um because you can't displace a lot of seagrass just to protect mangroves and so we needed to know what was there you can see on this map the area that they actually surveyed so it's from south of the bridge right at the J club marina all the way up to just into Coral Cove Park north of this northernmost Island what they found was five different types of seagrass and a really robust um coverage it wasn't as dense as we've seen in the past or they've seen in the past but there was a lot of coverage um they also saw a lot of anchor uh and propeller scarring in the seagrass um I know this is an area where a lot of boats Park And so there's a lot of um seagrass that's get gets torn up when engines get stuck and anchors are dropped and so forth um and then the next thing we asked him to do we said okay now that you know what's there in terms of submerged aquatic vegetation tell us what's possible give us an idea of some of the concepts that could happen and so they went out and put together some Concepts and did some had some discussions with the uh D and the Army Corps we call them kind of pre-application discussions to say hey this is what we're thinking is this a nonstarter you know should we keep going what they heard was yeah keep going and what they proposed was a limestone Breakwater on the west side of um I call it three of the islands so we actually surveyed four Islands um the one that was south of the bridge by the jib Club has actually done better so we decided not to do anything there but the other three we would do limestone break Waters around them um we were really excited about this option because it has proven to be successful um right right in our neighborhood this top picture is south of the lighthouse I'm sure you've all been down there to their Shoreline um but they've seen tremendous growth in recruitment the mang Gres Behind These breakwaters and then this lower picture is in the lockah hatti river ement area Central ement area and this is where in three years they've seen over 500% increase in Seabass um just around the breakwaters so very exciting to see the possibilities here so that was phase one and phase two they cost us about $660,000 as I said before the first phase of it was the bolo Foundation they funded they basically made a donation to the ocean Conservancy to to have them work with us on this and then the second phase was another $35,000 the ocean Conservancy paid for the seagrass survey and we had a handful of private residents who kicked in money to pay for the concept designs the website design and so forth we're now in phase three and this is where we've now gone back to tailor engineering and we said um help us get permits and so that is where we are in the process right now tailor engineering is having some pre-application discussions with the EP and the Army Corps they're putting together engineered designs uh to try to get the permits developed the reason I put this picture here is um I feel like there's a tremendous advantage to being right across the street right across the water rather from the Bureau of Land Management project because we're using the same engineering firm T Hiller is going to the same permits to talk about it it's the same ecosystem um so uh it there's a lot of advantages to um following their lead if you will oh let me go back to this picture I want to point one thing out so those several people said okay so you put a break waterer here you put another one here you put another one down here what about where we used to have a m a whole set of mangroves because we wanted to explore this to Historic level levels unfortunately it's extremely hard to get something like a limestone Stone Breakwater permitted where you don't actually have something behind it that you're trying to protect so it's almost like it's too late there so then all the residents along here said well we'll put some skin in the game let's at least educate people about how important it is to be cautious in this area we it's such a fragile ecosystem so every single condominium building on their own Nel bought signs and in the case of um Cliven a banner just to say caution critical mangroves and seagrass restoration underway and the idea being actually the idea came from um people we had talked to at the Wild and Scenic Film Festival we set up a table there and we had many boers and paddle boarders come by and they were they had no idea that we were looking at this they they recognized how important it is because this is an area everybody loves and once people understand how much the mangroves contribute to the clearer water and all the wildlife in it I mean we all have a vested interest in trying to save this ecosystem and so we put these signs up in the hopes that people who would at least look pay attention we have our um QR code on it so they can go to our website if they want to learn more but it's a first step to try to educate the public about how important it is to be cautious here at around this time we started um we're also looking at applying for some grants and um as part of that learned that it's really helpful to have endorsements for on the local municipalities and um organizations who are related or interested in what we're doing so uh many of you may know we did get a letter of resolution from the council the village of tested Council stating that they support our efforts and and what we're trying to do we just got one last week from Palm Beach County environmental resources management um and we're getting one from uh Peter dwit at the Jupiter Inlet Lighthouse outstanding Natural Area he's very interested in what we're doing because he recognizes that what he what he's doing on his side of the Waterway is certainly going to impact the amount of traffic the amount of people the amount of Recreation on our side of the Waterway and so um if we don't start educating people and uh putting a project in place we'll lose that part of the ecosystem and then we started fundraising and so in mid June we sent out our first um appeal to the people in the local area and any people who had come to our website and put their names in and I'm really happy to say we've raised $7,000 just since June really in what eight weeks um we've raised $85,000 so far in 20124 we're also reaching out to foundations in the area and I'm excited to tell you that just um two weeks ago we formalized an agreement with the Andrew red Harris Foundation I don't know if you're familiar with them um but Andrew Harris lived in one of the condo buildings right adjacent to this ego system U for two years before he tragically passed away was hit by a boat um in the inlet and so his parents set up a foundation in his name to build um I guess was quite a water guy I never had the opportunity to meet him but um so they they basically do mostly offshore reefs to build up Marine nurseries ecosystems and when they heard about our project they were very excited because obviously this area is very near injur to their hearts with Andrew having lived right there and they had several of their supporters saying you know have you thought about an inland reef and so when they knew we were trying to sort of save this whole ecosystem seemed like a real perfect fit so we have um they are going to be uh working with us and supporting our efforts and then very recently we're also reaching out to local businesses NOS any local associations um that are interested in what we're doing so we'll get to that in a minute because that's where I could potentially use your help um so that's phase three phase four and and we uh the permits as you may know take an awfully long time to get but we're hoping to get them sort of end of first quarter maybe second quarter of this next year um and at that point need to be ready right away to jump right into construction uh bidding process um and having final engineering drawings done and then we hope to be in the water sometime in 2025 with this restoration big motivation for us to get in the water um next year is to try to get in the water while the Federal Bureau of Land Management is working on their project across the way we've talked to Peter about it there might be some opportunities to find some economies if we're doing this at the same time in terms of mobilization or whatever so that's why this estimate of the cost for the construction the installation um is quite variable depending on um what kind of economies we might achieve uh this number also includes a threeyear monitoring program um which would be required I'm sure from either the Army Corp probably the D um so we're planning a monitoring period for three years as well so you might be asking how can we help and I would say inviting me to speak to you all is a huge help first of all because I think this truly is a community effort and the more people in our community who know what we're doing and what approach we're taking uh the the better so if you um I'd love it if you could spread the word tell people about what we're doing encourage them to get involved um and also if you hear of ideas for funding funding opportunities or networking opportunities whether it be local businesses local foundations occasionally there are grant opportunities where the grants have to be written or submitted from a municipality so who knows there might be an opportunity to work with each other on that um and we would be thrilled if you would be um willing to write a letter of support for our efforts as well because as I said that can really be helpful in um Grant applications so that's what I have for prepared remarks happy to answer any questions you all have start here sure Susan thank you uh your energy and passion is um I think a I wrote down passionate Community Advocate like you really set the standard for someone who gets involved in you know something you're passionate about and driving at home um a a couple of things that just thoughts here and and I'm really keying in on your last point about uh funding and networking i' I've frequented that area quite a bit and I see snorkelers and voters and you know there's there's a lot of marine life in that area and a lot of people who are enjoying it um including the boers that anchor in those exact spots that you say you know showed um showed issues right or scars I guess is is the term that you used um have we have you thought about uh funding um uh requests from voters themselves like when you when you said get in the water on the construction I'm thinking like is there an opportunity to get in the water with the people who enjoy it each and every day and I'm sure there are going to be all types of folks that are going to respond differently to that but even and and just a following thought on that too is um you our local schools local high schools local middle schools I see from some very young people there diving snorkeling and operating some sometimes very expensive boats and it just seems like our next generation of people that we could educate about it because I was unaware of most of the things that you just talked about today so it really educated me okay well first of all thank you for the for the question yes to all of the above um so part of the project uh will involve some Mangrove planting behind the Breakwater to sort of supplement what what we have left of what's the islands that are there um so our plan we would be to get the schools involved we've talked to mang already about it um we've talked to uh wild blue Seas who are involved in in um some you know the mangrove planting so definitely we want to engage the schools not just for the planting but for the education because we really believe if the kids really learn about why this ecoystem is so important they'll go home hopefully and tell their parents about it and it just sort of the word spreads um that's number one um in terms of Voters I've got a call set up with um the gentleman who runs the West Palm Beach um uh fishing club so that's a the fishing Community right there the boers we've got some names of people at the Marine industry Association um our priority right now has been the immediate recreators um and I know that's I know that's voters too um we've talked about going to some of the bo vental places I know they encourage people to come down and park in that area but so our approach would be that's fine but maybe could you share some information about how they can be more responsible uh when they are coming down and parking there um we've got postcards available to people who rent the canoes at the get up and or kayak at the get up and go kayak right down there by the bridge so they're sharing our information there's postcards at the Lighthouse for people who go Vis at the lighthous so we're getting there we have a long way to go but um again if you have specific ideas I'm all I'm all yours no I appreciate it I I don't know that I have specific ones and just trying to help you know uh brainstorm a little bit on all the great work you've already done and and I want to comment on the energy um thank you for that comment but I have to to say because it's like I started this with trepidation because it's like I don't know what I'm doing the more people who were excited about what we're doing and who really believe in it that energizes me even more and I just see this community growing and it's I I find that incredibly fun and motivating and uh I couldn't think of anything better to work on during my retirement um hi Susan and thank you this I also didn't have any idea that this organization existed and it's wonderful and to hear this information um one of the aspects that's been addressed before is the boting community I am a Boer uh the whole safety issue with that speed through that particular channel has obviously been brought forth and did not pass um is there another opportunity to readdress that in aspect to what your organization sure so I'm really glad you asked that because I meant to mention that we are in regular contact with people who are uh taking different taxs towards the same end goal one being the speed limit um we support those efforts um we do believe that the speed limit would help in terms of reducing the wave action as well as making it a safer environment it's not a cause that we're taking on as an organization as an organization we're really focused on the restoration and that's intentional because the speed limit issue has become so divisive and controversial um and we're taking an approach that everyone will benefit if we can save this ecosystem everyone fisherman and so we're trying to include people in a in a positive way um so that's kind of how we're I mean I know a new traffic study was just completed in fact it was just sent to FWC I think last week someone sent it to me um and I have heard that FWC is looking at it again I just don't know exactly what that means or what the timing is but um we we couldn't afford to wait for that and that alone wouldn't solve the problem because even when boats go some of these big four and five engine boats that come through I can assure you living right there even going slowly they kick up a Title Wave I mean so and the speed limit thing is a night and holiday I mean a a weekend and holiday thing that they're proposing and um these mangroves need more help than just that okay that that and that was my thought is because I imagine that that Mangrove deterioration has a lot to do with that wave action with the increased amount of boats over the past decade and then of course the speed and power it's dangerous as a small Boer to go through there but um interesting that's something to look at um so historic photos that showed existing mangr the D doesn't recognize to come back in as a restoration is that what you're saying well so when I talk to I think it was my contact at Palm Beach County Environmental um they will occasionally do programs like that without you know where they put the break water without something behind it um plant behind it but it requires a very specific um depth of water and whatever and it sounds like it would not be an easy thing in our area um I think the easier thing there might be to look at seagrass restoration and although I know seagrass is very hard to grow but if you can save what you have um and provide the environment that seagrass wants to grow in it will recruit and multiply um so we don't want to give up on that because obviously if you look at the historic pictures um there was a lot more there than there is now but right now we're focused on let's just triage and try to save what's there and then figure out phase two okay and just a thought off the top of my head I don't know even what this would look like but uh different anchoring options I know a moing buoy isn't an option because it's so shallow there but I don't know if there's other con Concepts out there for more to keep people from throwing their anchors in that sand yeah we can look into that I mean part of the problem that I witness is you know people go there and park at high tide and then they're having a good time and they kind of lose track of time and the tide goes down and then they're stuck right they blast their renes to try to get you know that salad going up in the air yes um okay well thank you I pass to my uh sue you know I support everything that you've been doing and um uh I was there Monday on a photo assignment and um I was stunned uh in regard to you know late morning on Monday with the majority of the parking spaces on the on Beach Road already taken I mean and then of course you had the uh the oblivious voters coming through with their wake and the there's no enforcement or was no enforc it's just sad um but I support you and in regard to our Communications what if anything can we use in regard to what you just showed us Andor on your website to help spread the word here in taquesta um I think I I would certainly steer people to our website um we still have more to add to it in terms of what the we we we haven't yet sort of made public what the uh solution looks like what the break Waters would look like because we were waiting for the engineers to come up with a not just a concept but something that's more concrete that they're going to get permitted um we are just about there so maybe maybe putting something like that up um with the plan and a link to our website and um just inviting people to get involved I um I think be very helpful maybe we talk about about that offline okay well thank you sue can I sue this is Jay with staff we can um try and coordinate with our um Lori Lori McWilliams our um clerk to put something on social media so um maybe Tom and I can reach out and do that just to help educate people that would be great thank you yeah it's it's so popular I mean everyone loves that area U but as people have said you know you can love it to death and that's what's happening I had no IDE Su Jill wenta thank you so much um that was a great presentation and brought a lot of light to myself um having lived here since 99 I had no idea the amount of um destruction that happened to the mangroves and um my background is landscape so it's very sad to me to see that um personally um have you gone to like the jib Club to to spread the information and the other marinas because you know all those are the people using the boats over there uh maybe to educate them in a way yeah so we haven't been to the jib Club specifically we've been to the uh the jib Club condominium okay and the Jupiter Inlet Colony we're going to be presenting to their Commissioners um uh in the fall um yes we should go there I think the boat club the boater the marinas that we have kind of more mind are the ones further north where people think are coming down and parking more from there I that's good information I I always assume the jib club marina was more big fishermen going there South out to the inlet sure but they're also you know yeah I agree with you but they're residents from here and a lot of residents that um care about our waterways that I know of a few live on Jupiter Island so maybe those would be somebody that could step forward um it just was something that came to mind especially with one of those little islands is right there right by the jib Club absolutely um and then the marina that is North where I I forget the name of it it's right where that new boutiki hotel was bought is it water point maybe Water Marina Marina and there are a ton of boats in there you know Tiki 52 things like that all the everybody just cares so much so I'm really glad that you're bringing light to to that issue and you know it'll be repeated from me all over the place because wow I would love to see nothing more than that to be restored thank you so so you have my well you should have my email I put it up there it's oh at Jupiter narrow conservation.org what I would ask is I I love all your suggestions if you have names of people like make an inter to me um I'd much rather talk to an indiv ual then sort of send a blanket email or knock on a door you know what I mean if you know people I would love an introduction well I can certainly ask around for names I don't personally but I will I will definitely be asking around you said sue Jupiter nar.org no Jupiter Naros conservation.org conservation okay way too long and and to piggyback on Jill's Point too there's the the boat club there so you probably have a lot a lot of like inexperienced boter that rent boats and are members of The Boat Club and they don't know any of they don't know this stuff so maybe having the boat club tell people not to go there would be helpful educate them right not droing anchor yeah I mean even the general population I just had a neighbor send me an email literally this morning saying oh my gosh over the weekend there was a mother watching her three kids climb on the mangroves oh and person yelled out and said do you know what those trees are and she said yeah they're mangroves kind of like you know right right oh Lord so we got to get into schools and educate the kids and you that would be another good idea bringing it to the schools yeah apparently Jupiter High School has a really active conservation group yeah um and so we've talked about in the fall connecting with them and seeing if they would help us do some education progam and what about at the elementary I have some connections over at Limestone that you know you start them young they're the ones that are going to be telling their parents not what not to do you know if you if you let them know there's at least three schools that go up to maybe as high as eth grade in to Quest of property yes yes absolutely yeah well if there names of people that you want to connect me with yeah I I'll actually I can do that I'll soe I'll look into that um thank you connections to schools do you have more questions I know I'm good thank you so one quick question um you had mentioned grants and the possibility of municipalities partnering with uh what you're a uh nonprofit right yes and sub submission of Grants have you identified any I have um and but right now we're we're not ready for that yet so we're very small but my mean you know lean and mean organization uh what we've been advised on the Grant front is not to go after federal grants because the administrative burden is just honorous even for big organizations um so I do have a list of grant opportunities right now we're going for what we' call the lwh hanging fruit which are the easier the family foundations where there's just less um you know paperwork and all that kind of stuff but they're definitely on our list and once I identify them um if there ones we want to go after I would Brad would you be the person to get in touch with yes please okay great thank you um all right anyone can can I piggy back on Brad's one because I so this is Jay with staff um was Florida Inland navigation Grant is that one of the ones you've looked at yes so that's one I think we would have to be the partner on um and be the applicant but our residents I believe pay fined uh assessments but we've never actually gone after a fine Grant so it could be the perfect opportunity for us to to go after one so put that on your list when you're when you're talking to Brad please yeah let me research someone did um I think it was my contact at Palm Beach County sent me that one who said you should look into that so let me let me look at that and um we'll be in touch for sure great I think that's it sue thank you so much I appreciate you holding on for what about an hour before you you you got the opportunity thank you very interesting thank you again for having me and um yeah if you guys are willing to write a letter of support um that would help too so if you can talk about that amongst yourselves excellent all right we'll have a good one thank you thank you thank you you too take care you too okay all right so we have 35 minutes left and we have more than 35 minutes of stuff in the agenda in my opinion so let's uh War do this quick so the consent agenda can I does anyone have any changes or modifications to the Past minutes no you want to make for me to make a motion where are the minutes I don't even see them on the agenda consent consent agenda oh pres yeah okay I got you uh I make a motion to approve the consent agenda which includes the minutes of June 12 and July 10 for the EAC second a second all right that passes now you got to vote somebody say all in favor signify by saying all in favor signify by saying [Music] yay yay y or nay all right um it's good old business uh well hold on one second do we need can we yeah I was going to say can can can you make a motion to move the lockah hatchee River District discussion that we referen before the meeting up now uh locky river that that was I think going to be a staff discussion but you could you could I don't think it's an actual agenda item on here but you it is not oh so I thought I remember talking to you before the meeting thinking that or asking maybe was Jay is the only really time sensitive item that we have is item number 12 which is the discussion on meeting times and dates that would be and then I think we're trying to get this a speaker from the lockah hatche River District to the next meeting so we wanted to get uh he he wants an idea of the type of questions you want to discuss okay so those were the only two time sensitive things so I think if you want to make a motion to move that it up and add the lockah hatche River District discussion I make a motion that we uh move up in our consideration of the agenda item 12 which is a discussion on EAC meeting times and dates and followed by a discussion of what we want the next months or is it next month speaker for from the locky River District to touch touch on when he or she gives that speech second all those in favor I is okay let's start with number 12 then um go no no go ahead go ahead we're short on time so I was just trying to jump right in and go quick jump out for one second away okay yeah but I know you know where I'm going okay so yeah just just a quick update so um at the recent Council meetings that the Village Council has pointed out that we only had one candidate for EAC um fortunately we got a great one so that it all worked out but they were curious if um you know that the meeting times um you know are preventing people from wanting to join or from participating as you see we don't really have much citizen engagement here even though those were extremely interesting topics we discussed today um so the council just wanted wanted the EAC to discuss whether to keep meeting schedule as is to shift meetings to night meetings I believe historically The Village had them in the day because the clerk's office managed these meetings and they were a little reluctant to do night meetings they they already have a lot of other night meetings now Meg and I are kind of handling the meetings and we're we're able to stay at night so so that's in play and then the other option they said was um you know I think the EAC was founded was it four years ago Tom 5 years ago to kind of address very key impressing environmental issues and at that time it was decided to meet monthly so now Council has wondered you know now that some of those things have been addressed would it be more productive to meet you know every other month or quarterly um in which case if we were having night meetings I suppose we could rather than having a two and a half hour day meeting we could have a bonly 4-Hour night meeting or a quarterly you know 4our night meeting and pack it all in so uh just four hours or two hours whatever sounds good for you guys um two is good but uh but yeah so that was that was just uh Council wanted feedback from the EAC um before they you know took any action or even thought about it so you want us each to put a little input in yeah sure okay um I wouldn't suggest quarterly because it takes us so long to get things done agreed so I I would not recommend that every other month possibly four hours no way that's too small for detention SP um would it benefit other people to or engage other people not only to attend but also to come in the evenings probably um would it also engage other possible candidates to become a member if we change the time to a morning before the day work day begins possibly and yes probably evenings and I'm open to any of them I have flexibility for so I'm open I agree um is it possible I I too am flexible it doesn't matter if it's morning evening but I do think quarterly is too far apart but is it possible we could do a hybrid I know it can get confusing but say like every other month we had a night meeting which and if if it if the turnout was no different than what we have we can say okay let's not there's no need to have a night meeting something like that um I'm just asking I'm not saying we should or shouldn't I'm just thinking would that help us gauge if nighttime is the way to go evening time is the way to go one thing I forgot to mention too getting professionals to come in the evenings is probably more difficult right so it's been really easy for us to get these great speakers to come out so if you have them in the evenings it's difficult for them to come out and of course the meetings are recorded right so what happened today everyone can go back and see that still so that's a good point is this room available in the evening like we can it can be available in the evenings yeah did everyone kind of give their opinion you're the next year I think so yeah I I did I don't know if wait yet I haven't yet I mean I I really don't have a strong opinion one way or the other I I I I guess my question would be which who are the main constituents we're trying to serve it's our residents then I think you know we we need to adapt around their schedule if it's us we adapt around our schedule if it's the speakers uh then we adapt around theirs I don't really know the answer to that okay that's a good point I I'll share a little bit of History I think I told Jay this in an email um so when Wednesdays was chosen because there was no uh conflict with any other meetings and the like Jay said the village clerk's office took care of all of the administrative related matters uh except I had to always do the agenda in the backup and so forth but the um uh I lost my train of thought the uh uh they did it during the day for two reasons they a a staff would be here B staff probably didn't want to work in the evening and C uh there would be no overtime costs that would end up being charged to the village for people working more than the 8 hours or 40 hours a week or however it's compant that's basically all I remember about it from five years ago is how we got to where we are today I like your thought Tom on the hybrid for now see if I mean maybe it yeah maybe it's every other month and then one month it's morning or afternoon whatever works for everybody and then the other month is in the evening and see if it brings people in because that would be great um but then the the month that we're during the day we can still have the presentations I don't I mean I idea I'm flexible I don't know if you guys are I can work my schedule to make it happen I feel like this particular committee is not um something that have a High attendance from our community and um as we engage the community it's going to be through our communication pieces and I think for this topic that we that we are serving that's the best way to engage the community is through education and communication it's not going to be to have interaction and hear occasionally of somebody well I definitely don't want to opportunity to have access to uh presenters because we gain so much information from presenters and again our job would be to disseminate that and make sure it gets to our community maybe one suggestion would be to have once a year just one night meeting where you provide kind of an educational thing where you say Hey you know residents of taquesta come out and hear what the EAC has been working on but also share your own input so it could kind of be a two-way street I like that a that's a good or like for example today we had a lot of uh interesting speakers if we if we can forecast or set aside people who say yeah yeah I'll be sure I'd be happy to come and speak and then we schedule it for that one night a year thing and we and we let the community know somehow through platforms that might I don't remember who was on the uh EAC at the time but back maybe four years ago three years ago we uh we invited the Florida friendly Landscaping people and they could only do it in the evening and that was when we had the most people from the community ever show up it was maybe it was half the room but it wasn't you know standing room only but they showed up and that was a topic of interest and it was in the evening so that leads circles back ground to that idea I think too there's an opportunity like I'm brand new right so I'm asking questions you guys probably already know the answers to but do we do we have a stated mission statement we have an expected outcome from our committee that we're trying to drive toward and if we do then I think then you know we just track against okay the meeting time or the constituents or whatever right whatever challenge that we have in front of us how does it support our mission or how does it support our outcome uh that we're all trying to drive at and if we if we're real clear on that then it seems like the rest of the stuff is going to make be easy decisions to make easier that's true well we do have a mission statement was stated in a resolution adopted by the council that created this committee okay and basically it had said two things one is that we were required to review Test's comprehensive plan and to uh opine on every environmental issue within the comprehensive plan which we've already done and the other thing and I'm really you know paraphrasing it says that we are to make recommendations uh in our advisory capacity on any and all things related to environmental issues within the village of Testa or potentially in the village of Testa so it's really those two things all right I've already had this discussion with j when he uh first brought to my attention um I'm totally against having less meetings I think once a month is is you know still inadequate because of the sunshine laws and our inability to communicate outside of this room so we got like two hours a month basically to uh interact and I think that's so important it's Sunshine laob so we have to kind of hold on to that but um I would like to try it in the evening I think that'd be kind of interesting um I fear if we have like set aside one meeting per year at night uh that meeting will be stacked even more with presenters you know what I mean it and which isn't a bad thing especially if there are citizens that more citizens that come um but it kind of takes away from our regular business it almost becomes like a open house yeah presentation type thing which I'm totally for as well yeah I feel good about that um I I say we keep it as is um at 2 o' or 5 o'l if we try it for a month or two and we have the same amount of people coming uh then we just kind of discard the evenings and and then just keep keep doing as we're doing Mak should we go like once a quarter we have an evening and the rest remain the same just to give it a shot well in in my mind it feels like evening meetings if we if we want to do a trial basis it needs to be a like a special thing where you like today to me qualified as being special we had three good presenters about subjects that many people in the community could relate to or have thought about ETA you know um well I mean one thing we could do is towards the end of the year kind of put our heads together and say which of these speakers would we like to reinvite to come out because a lot of them are just trying to to reach in audience so we know jupyter Naros is trying to get their message out um and I'm sure a few of the other ones are so we could then just kind of pick three three or four ones we think are are the most relevant and important and then invite them back great I like that here's another thought keeping in this Loop does it have to be a EAC meeting that we offer an evening to um the citizens of information and education and have these speakers does it have to be at a meeting I'll talk to the Village manager but I I mean I think you guys could sponsor a special once a year thing and still have your regularly scheduled meeting if if that's what you wanted so in North Palm Beach um their environmental commit there would occasionally hold a special speaker series on Saturdays and they would invite someone like from the Florida friendly landscaping and invite people to come out um and then still have their yeah so you could you guys could do an evening special meeting a Saturday morning special meeting whatever you think is is beneficial um and still hold your regularly scheduled meeting but I'll confirm with the clerk's office and Village manager I like the yeah I can sound that um I like I find it I find it funny though that you came to me and said oh we need to reduce the amount of meetings and now we're add I just wanted to pick your brain on it I just want to see your head was that well but is is is it a given that we're all okay with staying with a once a month meeting during working hours yeah I mean I try and make them as often as I can I've had to zoom on a few I've missed a couple I'm personally I'm fine with it um I don't again I don't think there's a draw from the citizens to attend this if they're going to attend a meeting it's going to be the council meeting agreed this is behind the scenes working and then gets presented to council and brought out at a council meeting I agree with that all right so the motion would be to keep it as is and we can maybe discuss at a later date maybe next next month um the possibility of kind of a special uh presentation sponsored by the EAC y yeah motion um yeah if you want uh I trying to remember what you said I'll make the motion can the chair make the motion chair can make the motion no unless it's in unusual circumstance you can I make the motion that that we keep the meetings as is and look into adding a special Saturday or evening meeting to accommodate our residents change change meeting to an event change those meetings to an event that one yeah the one speci it would be at a regular meeting it would be a special event so repeat it for me oh my gosh just made the motion just second it come on okay I wanted it to be clear there's not come on I can only say it once [Laughter] Tom oh okay I got the picture I just didn't who's going to Second it somebody second it thanks okay all is in favor I got all right so um the next is not on here but it's something that is time sensitive that um I think we can discuss in 15 minutes yeah go for uh so the locky Hatchy River District is coming next month uh to speak at Council to no to you oh to me to to to I thought to council even better okay um and Jay wanted to get an idea of the types of questions it's kind of difficult and that we don't have the information first but um what kind of questions we would have for the lockah hatchee River District okay and to define the lockah Hatchi River District because I always have to re reuse this myself a special taxing Authority that their mission is for the quality of the waterers and sewage that's part of it okay anything else in there well they uh some of their original charter was a what we used to call a sanitary sewer taxing district in other words they before uh modern sewage treatment began in this region uh taquesta was really only one of the F where Constitution Park is today on Dober road that was a sewage treatment plan and obviously for these you know in the colony to Questa Jupiter Jupiter's much smaller in the80s and 70s and the unincorporated areas of Martin etc etc it's inefficient to have all these separate sewer companies or municipal or otherwise so the legislature created this District that goes basically up to Bridge Road in Martin County and all the way to Donald Ross Road on the south and that's the regional Sewer District all sewage sanitary sewage flows to them for treatment the pumping stations are owned by them and we all pay our quarterly Bill to the rocki River District but over the years as they got their original charter under the way they morphed it I don't know if they actually added it to their Charter but they morphed into how do we protect the river uh because it was in their name you know locks at you River District environmental control district was what it was so they do in my opinion they're doing monitoring periodically that their website you can see where they're say they have like they call it hot points where they've taken a reading that's too high on this that or the other phosphates or whatever nitrogen um so that's now something that they also engage in is to uh uh make sure that the the river water quality is good they they may not actually do anything about it but they uh they want to let us know if it's improving staying the same or getting worse and would that be relative to because it used to be so much was on septic and that had an effect on the waterf yeah and that relates to a question I'm going to suggest but uh yeah uh well no originally it was just for efficiency but then over time as we more further and further into the 70s and the early 80s it became fairly well known and documented that septic uh content did end up being in the nearby water bottles and so that once that science became uh given that's when they the log they set they stepped up their game relative to mandatory conversion from septic to sanitary sewer systems okay so my first question first is yours about the lift stations so let me do your thing that my question would be for loat River District is what the village is on now sewer but it's my understanding that the west side of the lahache river is still on septic the W over in unincorporated pondage you mean off like Road Jupiter Farms too yeah so I would kind of like to know what the plan is plan is for septic to sewer conversions you're going to get up F out in Jupiter Farms they go all the way up to Bridge Road in Hound too so you know what are they doing up in Martin County unincorporated Martin County so yeah that was going to be one of my question questions was you know where are you with your septic to sewer program I know that up in Martin County um it's a huge change that they're uh they're just starting mandatory switch over from septic to the um sewer for the properties that are anywhere close to the waterways so that's been something that um you know I see on all the different blogs and talks and it's been big discussions out there that you can find it's expensive it's expensive and well yeah I mean we had it 20 years ago and just finished paying off the the assessment um but up in Martin County you know it's tough to make changes but they're they're doing it um I don't know at what speed what rate but well to Quest so I I had to be the uh Point person during all that stuff in the uh I don't remember 80s or 90s anymore but the um the battle into Quest was they didn't want it we spent over a half a million dollars fighting them in court when we lost the uh and then they turned around and took their costs of of Defending what they wanted to do and they added it to the assessments that doesn't seem legal there AR there well that's what they did anyway um uh I I'm kind of digressing but they wanted to use what's called a low pressure sewer system where there is basically a tank that is implanted in someone's yard at the appropriate spot and it has a grinder in it in other words it's actually uh is it word instead of being like a community system it's an individual system that by low pressure connects to the distribution system that ends up at the treatment plant so requested people did not want that they wanted traditional gravity and pump powered systems that move SE SE sewage onto the treatment plan and the price differential is great okay low pressure is much less exp maybe cost about 50% of what a standard system like we probably all have here in Desta um so one of my other questions is in addition to your pump stations that are have been identified as being susceptible to rising sea levels which you can cause backup sewage blah blah blah which we discuss with the council is if you if a person has a low pressure sewer system in their yard in these areas that are have already already been uh transferred to sewer systems or in the areas where they haven't done it yet what happens when there's flooding and there's a low pressure sewer system yeah there's a tank you like a 60 maybe a 100 gallon tank in the ground and if it can't go anywhere I assume it's going to back up into the house so I that's like my second question about sanitary sewer is what's the effect on flooding to a low pressure sewer system I assume it's not no I'm just that's a great question they're not going to be expecting that one no uh yeah leave top Michelle did you did you get all the ones you wanted I did those are think what else I wanted to ask what about just general water quality in the locks kind of like we heard about today what they're doing cuz that was fascinating and how they're managing you know the natural plant life and how are they managing all that and to where what I mean like Tom you asked up into Martin County I mean what what area are they focusing on and what's their future plans because it's such a oh I just love the it seems unfair if if if they were they went through a period of time where they were making everybody including to Quest to do it but if they if they're backsliding you know that the one way of looking at it is that they hit certain people hard and they're just like you know not politically or otherwise not worrying about the others I don't know but that's that's bothersome I don't want to be a negative Nelly but um but environmentally if that they came at us about it all being environment then we'll bring it to the rest of them environmentally everybody needs go for it yeah exactly um you know they my I I know this is negative so maybe we don't want to do this but their executive director Audrey Aubrey whatever his name is I forget um he never answered the greenhouse gas letters and emails that I wrote him saying you know we're doing greenhouse gas analysis here at the EAC and and we were looking at Green house gas production in the community and we're looking at the municipal and I can't remember which one it is but part of the analysis was that was done was that they attributed the the greenhouse gases generated by locki River District to treat our sewage is part of that equation and so if we want to reduce our greenhouse gases the question is what are you doing at the plant to be efficient in the consumption of energy etc etc etc so that you could and in there no answer in fact he asked me he did he responded and asked me what what is this all about why and that worried me because it made me think he didn't even know a greenhouse gases he's a biologist but I they never answered and I don't know if we want to bring that up let's see how the day goes how we got him in front of us yeah okay yeah we'll leave that off the list but keep it in mind I've never forgotten it because I can't stand it if you write a government official and they never respond it's like sticks in my head so was it mentioned about their sort of Blind Eye to the public utilities threat assessment report yes uh what are they doing about the pump stations live station so we'll we'll ask what their plans are and if they're looking at funding sources do they do they even know is it is it on the radar do you have that report or can it be accessed yeah we can we can um I think it's actually a draft and is it was it public consumption the meeting you went to Tom public consumption so you went to like a workshop about this report right have they circulated the report yet because I think it's still in just draft format I I thought it was in draft form that they were announcing that's how I learned about the yeah lift stations being risk I don't think it's I'm not sure if it's uh available for the public yet if it is I'll I'll email it okay when my followup this might show a little bit of my ignorance but is there connection to Lake o Kobe because I love that being brought up that um to was it Mike Michael that I I mean the what happens up in Martin County with the release of the Oak chobe and we've been so blessed that that doesn't happen here under I mean that would be my priority is to not allow that in our area and I don't know if the lacache River District has any poll on that but that would be one of my questions well did did I Mis I'm keeping that tell me if I misread that gentleman from South Florida waterm he made me believe not coming from that it's not that water is not coming from Le that's what I heard him say I want to make sure you know let's add that if I heard him correctly so I I was looking at a map to to check it m the water is going through a canal well it goes north to the St Lucy and then it goes south um and then from the south there's a there's another Canal that goes off towards that catchment thing they're creating but I think he said that once it goes south it gets diverted South you can't also divert it off that South route to that East catchment area so so the south is is that's I believe where they're putting some some charges go into lak worth Lagoon in the Boon Beach area I'm assuming that's where that water is going if I heard him right he's saying that you they can't divert it like it's South Southeast he said you can't divert it Southeast and then have it go down another uh thing towards towards our area towards lahache slooh and and Grassy Waters but that's probably a good question to ask yeah I think I heard him say he could divert it again North but I don't know about straight ACR yeah I think he said because I think it is technically North like the way that it okay it runs you have to look at it North Northeast who's the lockah hatchee River District accountable to that's a good question we get to vote on the uh what do they call them director they have they have a five member board of directors that's elected by the public and then they oversee the staff there the same way like the council would oversee the staff here at the Village okay thank you okay um do we know if this fellow or girl or lady that's going to make the present have they got some things they wanted to share with us not sure Mar Margie um from our our utilities director had reached out and just said that you know that we want a presentation and they said you know what what what do you guys want to hear about so they probably have some stuff to share but I think they're more interested in just addressing your questions I don't know if you guys all know know this but the cost of uh sewer operations has gone through the roof across the country because of you know inflation uh energy costs power cost whatever but locket River all the almost 40 years I've lived here they are relatively efficient and they have a fairly reasonable quarterly sewer bill I agree uh I like for example in West Palm Beach their sewer thing is probably 50% higher than what we pay it's uh so they do that's a a thing that they do a good job on is keeping their cost under control but does that mean they're not doing some of the state-of-the-art things to reduce and pollution and greenhouse gases and so on and so maybe that's how they keep it so low could seriously no I know I know money to be who did you say was higher Tom pardon who did you say was 50% higher West Palm City of West Palm yeah all right so it's 4:30 I know there's a hard stop in this room it can go a little longer okay okay all right if you want to just wrap wrap a few things up yeah um so I would I would suggest then if something pops into your mind as a good question for them just email it to Jay and uh I think we got pretty good list yeah all right that's good all right all right well so so go ahead go I was going to ask a question but go ahead I mean to tackle some of I don't think it's probably right to tackle some of this stuff when we have minutes left when we're already at the Hard stop I think so what I would ask for is a motion to take all of our old business and new business that has not been discussed today and move it to the next meeting I'll make a motion to do just that second I second all those in favor I I motion cares um quickly I any comments questions um no thank you for uh having those presenters today um that was great it's overwhelming the amount of agencies and organizations that exist there's just no way to just go in and find so seeking those out then having them present to was wonderful good I agre yeah I thought they were they were really good I enjoyed it um oh before I adjourn uh future agenda item uh so I went out and got these speakers um I'm thinking of or trying to think of things environmentally that make sense to discuss at our meetings and there's a a memo a staff memo template that Jay sent me I'm going to email it to all of you have J meal to all of you and if something comes up or you think of something that you think is would be important for all of us to discuss they're pretty simple to to fill out a subject and just a quick little outline and uh maybe back up if it's something that requires a little more backup what's the little box on those that says piggyback yes or no that's oh that that's our our agenda Software System so that's what we have on all of our agenda items at every meeting piggy back Brads is more of just it's a Word document and you write it as a separate memo it's not it's not that type M okay just was wondering in government do you know what piggybacking means uh yeah you want to get something past you p on another one piggy back piggy back on a contract because that contract's terms and conditions is better than what you can individually so that's why I wanted to tell you that in future agenda items because I hope to get future agenda items from all of you that would be great great so you'll send us that format yeah either myself or J J okay yeah I'm I'm I'm sorry I missed what was that um that template the I will send that out um any other things all right good I uh doing a great job oh thank you he just he's keeping us on our to um I would like to call this meeting adjourned so move second all right we're out of here thank you did too good of a job I tried to stay at 4:30 but gave a little G now but you reedom agenda