Save Our Indian River Lagoon on 2025-05-16 8:30 AM - May 16, 2025

Let's get started with the Pledge of Allegiance. The states of America, to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Jackie, a roll call. All right. Don Dice. Here. Mark Schroep. Here. Richard Nipper is not here. Bruce Larson is not here. And Kimberly is not here yet. Deborah Harmon. Here. Laura Lee Thompson. Here. Nick Sanzo will not be here today. Richard Bankhead. Here. Aaron Adams will not be here today. Kurt Smith. Here. Fred Goldstein. Here. Barbara Wall Scanlon. Here. Eric Maniz. Here. John Windsor. Here. Charlie Venuto. Here. Okay. We do have a quorum. Will the agenda. Somebody. Move to approve the agenda from the last meeting. Thank you, Laura Lee. Thank you, Barbara. Approval of minutes from last month. Oh, let's vote. I'm sorry. Hey, I'm new at this. Give me a chance. All right. Let's vote. All in favor. Aye. Anybody opposed? No. Passes. All right. Minutes. I'll make a motion to approve the minutes. All right. That was Deb. Second. That was Dick. We will vote this time. All in favor? Aye. You were just trying to see if somebody was paying attention. It wasn't your fault. Yeah. Anybody opposed? Thank you very much. All right. Progress reports. We've got Virginia up first. Good morning. I'm going to be very quick because this is one of your quarterly update meetings. So you get a lot more details from Aaliyah in just a few moments. On the monthly progress report, I've added a line at the top right under the May 2025 progress report that is sort of a, you know, a running total of completed projects. So we're at 103 of the, you know, larger community projects. But I wanted to highlight we just surpassed our 2,000th homeowner project. So that's exciting news for us this month. Other things that won't come up in the quarterly for oyster monitoring by UCF. They went out to the Turkey Creek offshore site six months after installation. And the average density of oysters is now 1,400 oysters per square meter, live oysters per square meter, which is 14 times our target density. And 40% of those are reproductive size already. So that's super exciting. We've been super busy with number crunching this month. We have the budget changes have been approved to reflect everything that was adopted in the 2025 plan update. And we have prepared our fiscal year 2026 budget and submitted that. So that's it for page one. And then on page two, I just wanted to point out the long list of presentations, 10 presentations this month. And not listed on here, but just announced this week, the next tire amnesty opportunity is next week, May 19th to May 23rd, 7 a.m. to 2 p.m. At either mosquito control location, people can drop off tires in Titusville or Valkyria. Yeah. And that's my report on the when I was looking through the report for the central Florida oyster monitoring and they listed multiple means. I assume they're doing how many different areas that they measured, you know, or what the overall mean was for the project. It said four to 100 millimeters. Yeah, that was the range, the range of size. Right. It said the show the mean shell height. So I was just figuring mean should be. Oh, it says mean and then it gives a range. You can get it later. Was that just a typo in there or something? I think mean probably should not be in there. Yeah. Thanks. Thank you. Good morning. We have received $4.6 million for the February collections and the total revenue from conception is $452 million. For the monthly financial statement of the anticipated $514 million in revenue by the end of the fiscal year, the actuals received so far are $416 million. For the expenditures, the fiscal year total assigned to projects and programs is $85 million and actual spent is $9.2 million. And for the quarterly financial table, which everyone received, and then we're going to keep scrolling down until we get to the grant financial tables. For those of you, and just in case if you're wondering, Virginia has pointed out to me, the green means that we are completed. Right. And the gray means that the project hadn't been added to the plan yet. So that's why we didn't fill in zeros because it wasn't a project. Yes. And now we're into our, well, we're still into our financial tables. And now we're going into, we're still there. This is our grant financial tables for the quarterlies, to let you know, again, the years we had to combine 17 through 20 because it's getting too long on the table. So we're actually broken those, adding those up to some rate. Okay. Is there any questions or anything? Oh, yes, sir. I had one. So between April and May's monthly financial statement, the year to date assigned for comp and benefits dropped. It did. So is that a job you're not filling, or what is that? It was a reclassification of a position. It went from an ES2 to an AES. And then also we had an employee that had a career ladder adjustment, so that's why that dropped down. Okay. And then one was really small. The Sorrel Projects funds under operating expenses dropped like $700. That was due probably because of the plan update. We're updating. Oh, for the update of the plan. Yes. Okay, thanks. Anything else? Thank you. Thanks. And Ali is up. All right. Good morning. I'm going to be giving you guys the quarterly progress update for the reporting period between January and March. And this is all based on the 2025 plan update. And in your progress table, all your highlights in yellow are showing progress since the previous quarter. Red signifies that no progress was made, and green means that it is completed. For public education, we have seven projects in the plan. One is complete, and six are underway. The budget for this category is $4 million, and it's estimated to reduce 33,000 pounds of nitrogen. The fertilizer and septic maintenance campaigns are 93% and 90% complete. And the Restore Our Shores project is 60% complete. This project focuses on outreach, oyster gardening, clam restoration, and their seagrass nursery. This quarter, the Restore Our Shores team conducted 66 site visits to newly trained oyster gardeners, monitored some of their oyster bars, and maintained their seagrass nursery. And this photo is showing male flowers of Hallidulei Rydii in their nursery, which is a pretty big deal. For wastewater treatment facility upgrades, we have nine projects in the plan. Four are complete, Cocoa Beach, Rockledge, Titusville, and Palm Bay. The Rockledge facility completed construction in late December, and that was our 100th project completed. In this category, we have three projects in the design phase. Melbourne's Grant Street Wharf has been undergoing value engineering with plans to rebid in June. The West Melbourne Ray Bullard facility is also undergoing value engineering with plans to rebid in June or July. And the South Brevard County Wharf is in the preliminary design phase and began surveying and environmental assessments of the land. For our rapid infiltration basin and spray field upgrades, there are two projects in the plan. Long Point was one of our first projects that was completed, and the Sterling House condo project is not yet contracted. For package plant connections, there are three projects in the plan, and Oak Point is completed. The Willa Lakes RV Park is conducting additional survey and plan revisions. The county received additional grant funds for the cove to connect to sewer, and they held an HOA meeting to discuss their options to move forward. The plan has six sewer lateral projects, five smoke testing projects are completed. The county-wide repairs are underway with a total of 1,115 out of 1,150 completed. For septic removal, we have 44 projects in the plan with four completed and 14 in construction. The City of Melbourne has six projects underway and are drafting an amendment for soral staff to assist them with the connection process for their homeowners. The City of West Melbourne started construction on Lake Ashley and Dundee Circle, and on February 28th, the City was notified that the contractor had initiated the process of winding down its business operations, and since then has been informed that the company is permanently closed. So the City of West Melbourne is actively working with the surety company. A site meeting was held to assess the current status of the project and identify the remaining work to be completed. This project will move forward. There will be a temporary pause in construction activities, though. South Central Sea is approximately 99% complete, with 149 of 152 connections completed. The Mikko project is 96% complete, and Sykes Creek Zone MNNT broke ground this quarter. We have five septic to sewer projects in the bidding phase and 10 in the design phase and are making progress. There are eight projects in the plan that are not yet contracted. The four park projects, while not contracted, are moving forward. They're just waiting on some of the projects in the design phase to move forward. For septic upgrades and quick connects, we have a total of 1,469 septic upgrades in the plan and 876 quick connects. This quarter, we had 111 septic upgrade applications submitted, and 65 of those contracts were completed. So we have a total of 418 septic upgrades completed. For the quick connects, we had 16 new applications this quarter. 72 of those contracts were completed for a total of 484 quick connects completed. We also adjusted the TN reduction based on the latest models for these projects. Stormwater has 248 projects in the plan, of which 47 have been completed. This quarter, the City of Cocoa Beach-McNav outfall bioretention project was completed, and the project created two areas to store water to allow for infiltration and treatment. So you can see that in the photo, holding the water. And then in the back, the weir will allow heavy rainfall overflow if needed. Flounder Creek has substantial construction complete. This project is adding aeration and BAM to further reduce nitrogen loading. The skimmer will allow water to flow through the BAM material before being discharged to the ditch that leads to the lagoon. And this photo is showing the plantings on top of the BAM. West Arlington also has substantial construction complete. This is a dry retention pond with BAM lining on the bottom and sides. And you can see in the photo there, the white material is the BAM. Stormwater will infiltrate through the BAM material to groundwater, reducing flow through the outfall structure into the existing ditch. St. John's River Water Management District's Crane Creek M1 Canal flow restoration project is under construction and is at 90% complete. This project is reverberating flow to St. John's River. Titusville is 40% complete with the Commons and City Hall tree boxes, which we saw the video for last month. Basin 960 denitrification and Basin 958 vegetation harvesting are in the same area and have recently broke ground. They should be substantially completed in August. This project will clean the vegetative debris from the stitch and then install a sweeping device to prevent further debris buildup. The Apollo GA baffle box contract was awarded, and this is going to be the largest baffle box installed. Basin 1280B flamingo bids came in higher than expected and are trying to determine if the project can be done within the budget. And we have 10 other projects in the design phase. For vegetation harvesting, there are 10 vegetation harvesting projects in the plan and 8 are complete. These are a one-time nutrient removal project. Basin 958 construction started, as previously mentioned, and work is underway at Kelly Park for the unincorporated countywide vegetation harvesting 2 project. There are 21 muck removal projects and 16 interstitial treatment projects in the plan. We have three muck projects completed and two interstitial treatment projects complete. Whereas dredging has reoccurring annual flux reductions, the interstitial treatment is a one-time nutrient-removing project. We have two that are in the construction phase. Currently, the unincorporated Grand Canal project is about 88% complete and has removed approximately 453,000 cubic yards of muck. And the dredging resumed for that project in March. The Sykes Creek project has dredged 46,500 cubic yards of muck, and we're waiting to complete the O'Galley bid before proceeding with this phase 2 bid. The rebid for the O'Galley muck project closed on February 4th with contract negotiations underway. We have 11 muck projects in the design phase and four uncontracted muck and interstitial treatment projects in the plan. The Sykes Creek phase 1 project is complete, and that went to the island north of Kiwanis Park. Okay. Sykes Creek phase 2 has not been bid yet. We've purchased a parcel to use as a dredge material management area, and we've been working on getting that ready for use and have bid documents ready for bidding out the whole phase 2 project. However, we were trying to get through the O'Galley bid and negotiations and award so that we would know if there were any changes that we would like to make to make that project more competitive to get a better price. So we've been holding off going to bid on Sykes Creek while we negotiate the O'Galley project. It's been a long time since high school. Can you get to the second island by road, or is it actually an island? The second site is not an island. It's on the mainland behind Walmart. Okay. North of Walmart. Okay. Thank you very much. Just for that second site, is that because they can't use the island from the first one? The island is full. Back to vegetation harvesting. So that's a one-time thing. Are different municipalities or Brevard County expected to continue the vegetation harvesting now that it's been done? So the municipalities will have to get that into their city budgets then? So we don't require the cities to do that. We just fund the one-time effort, but we wanted them to experience it and see what the benefits are and, you know, see how it works and understand the equipment. For Melbourne Tillman, they actually used the dollars that we, that Swirl provided to purchase equipment. We have used the county dollars to purchase equipment. We've expanded our team. So our program will, is continuing, will continue. For the county? Yes. Okay. Thank you. It was an earlier issue. There were two of them. You mentioned the company that was pulling, doing septic, and then disappeared. And so I assume they got paid for something, or is that what the surety bond is, trying to get those funds back if we overpaid them for the work, or where are we with that? The West Melbourne. Yeah. Right. So they had to post a construction bond, and the city is working with the bonding company to get a second contractor to come in and finish the job. And then you mentioned real quick that there was a reduction, a change in the TN reduction levels for the septic, and was that up or down based on the new studies? I think all you're doing is adding what's coming up to the numbers, right? The new model took into account all the latest USGS soil conditions, and when all of that was incorporated into the model, the septic loading went down a little. Went down. Okay. Thank you. All right. For oyster bars, there are 26 projects in the plan, and 11 are complete. This quarter was not the construction season for oysters, but the zoo did work on constructing the Coquina Corral Wall for the North IRL II contract. There are four projects in design, and six are uncontracted. For planted shorelines, there are 10 projects in the plan, and eight are complete. The Titusville Causeway project is underway. Sorrell's providing the cost share for the living shoreline portion of this project. All the riprap has been removed, and sand placement has begun along the shoreline. The wads are being installed with approximately 80 left out of the 662 in place. And this photo really shows how the wads are diffusing the wave energy from the left-hand side to the right-hand side. For clam restoration, the plan has funding for 11 farmers, and we have 11 active farmers. This is also a one-time nutrient-removing project. And then the two IRL clam projects are currently uncontracted, but we have been in discussions and will be moving forward soon. So overall, we have 137,355 pounds in annual TN reductions and 127,223 in one-time reductions for TN to total 264,578 pounds. The TP is, we have 12,000 in annual reductions and 3,972 in one-time reductions. We have received 203 scopes of work, 194 projects are in or have completed design, 141 are in or have completed construction, and 103 are complete. Here are the nitrogen and phosphorus numbers in a graph showing where we are with the completed projects, projects in progress, completed and in progress, and the plan updates. And financial graph with financial updates with our completed projects, projects in progress, completed and in progress. And finally, the cumulative total nitrogen reduction for all projects completed with sorrel. Any questions for Leah? I have one, so some of all the septic tanks, and we need, y'all gave a good while back on our county, how many were left. When somebody applies for them now, they all have to be individual. In other words, if somebody, we know that if somebody comes in for a large project, that they have to be, you know, to a sewage line or so. But we have this huge number of septic tanks, you know, to individual houses, including mine. Do, when you turn in for one now, if you had four houses, would that be, could you do that in septic tanks now in King County, or do you have to, where's the line? So, all new septic tanks have to be the advanced nitrogen removing systems. You have to connect to sewer if sewer is available, right? But if sewer is not available, then you still have the right to develop your land, right, which means you can use the septic system. So, it could be multiple houses if it was your land and you had 20 or 30 acres or whatever. So, for larger developments, you know, subdivision scale developments, there are different definitions of how close does the sewer have to be. So, you know, a quarter mile or half mile, depending on the size of the development. Okay. Thank you very much. On smoke testing, is that going to continue, or do you have neighborhoods that are in the future that you're going to move? We've completed all the smoke testing that's funded in the plan. We have an application for cities who may still want to do smoke testing, right, through the annual application, funding application process. But the county has smoke tested pretty much every home that's in the Lagoon watershed. Good. Thank you. Anything else? Thank you. I get to give you guys the communication quarterly report, too. So, again, this is for January through March. So, we have two graphs here, page views and site users for the SORO website. Dark blue is the total, and the orange is new page views or new site users. This quarter, we had 8,400 total page views, 6,400 new page views, and 3,600 total site users, and 2,400 new site users. For the Lagoon Loyal website, again, page views and site users are shown there in the graphs. We had 7,400 page views, 1,600 site users. We had 23 new sign-ups and 37 actions reported for this quarter on the Lagoon Loyal website. And these trend lines are showing the new sign-ups and actions reported on the Lagoon Loyal website. For SORO Facebook page, on the left-hand side is showing our follows, and the right-hand side is showing reach. And there's two, there's three colors there, but you can't see the dark blue from organic because that is in line with the reach total. Because all of our reach is organic, we don't pay for ads, so that's why it's a flat, light blue line there. We had 137 new follows, 33,000 reach. We had 2,300 engagements and 301 clicks on our Facebook page for this quarter. Our top two Facebook posts were the Protect Our Waterways fertilizer post that reached 8,500 people, and our Algae Bloom newsletter report that reached 7,800 people. Lagoon Loyal's Facebook page, the left-hand side is showing follows again, and then the reach is on the right-hand side. They had 66 new page likes. They reached 41,000 people. They had 1,200 engagements and 473 clicks. And their top posts this quarter were the Picking Up Pet Waste that reached 5,100 people, and the Protecting Your Seagrass fertilizer post that reached 5,000 people. For our Sorrel Instagram page, again, all of our reach is organic, shown on the left-hand side, and then our interactions on the right-hand graph. We had 37 new follows. We reached 2,500 people, and we had 628 engagements this quarter. And then our top posts from our Instagram page were both related to our 100th project celebration, one post reaching over 1,000 people and another one reaching 560 people. The Loyal Instagram page reaches on the left-hand side, and their interactions are on the right-hand side. They had 23 new follows. They reached 4,200 people this quarter and had 374 engagements. And their top two Instagram posts this quarter were the grass clippings posts that reached 220 people, and then the Protecting Seagrass starts with your yard that reached 216. Our Sorrel monthly newsletter, the monthly reach trend is on the left-hand side, and then the open rate is on the right-hand side. We reached 2,100 people this quarter and had an open rate of 64%. And then the Hab newsletter had 2,600 people reached and had a 59% open rate. And if you would like more information, you can sign up for our monthly newsletter and check the Lagoon Loyal website for tips and tricks on how you can help the lagoon. Any questions? Yes. I can't remember how it's put together on my desktop, but I was just looking on my cell phone. I get asked all the time, what can I do to help the lagoon? And there's so many volunteer opportunities with links on this one page. Is there a way to make that, and I think I've asked for this before, where it's really you can't miss it on our web page. So, like, if you scroll down on the cell phone thing, you get down to this bottom thing where there's all these blue bars and all these live links. Could we put volunteer opportunities there also so that, you know, I can say, go to brevardfl.gov, click on the manatee, scroll down, and then you'll see volunteer opportunities. It's just hard to tell people, you know, how they can volunteer, and there's so many options, so many ways they can volunteer. Yeah, I think we can talk to Brandon about adding that to the website. I thought I remember him saying something about updating the website. I don't remember if it was, like, it's a little difficult to update it very frequently, but maybe if there's links to, like, the Brevard Zoo's volunteer page and other groups' volunteer pages. Right. I mean, you did bring this up, and we did ask Brandon to look into it, and I don't remember what the details are, but we can circle back. That could be a Lagoon Moyle post at one time. Anything else? Thank you, Virginia. Just a quick question or two questions. One, well, the statement, fantastic that Brandon's tracking all this and really good reporting, and I think we're starting to see really good data. Are we happy with where we're at on it, and how can we boost those numbers? On one side, I'm super happy that we have such high-quality product and visuals and telling such a great story. Should we be putting some effort into beyond word of mouth to get those numbers out of the hundreds and single-digit thousands? It's such a good story that, you know, something on the neighborhood of 100 times the people in this room are reading something. Right. It's a big county. It's a big county. We struggle with that. It deserves. So we, you know, we've been, we've done two RFQs now, trying to select firms that specialize in this, that can help us figure out how to get the word out. We recently selected a new firm. That's part of why you saw some flat areas in the graph, because they weren't started on advertising and things yet. So hopefully we will see that grow here as they get up and running, and the Lagoon Loyal website gets replaced with a new website. But, yeah, we would like to reach a lot more. Well, there's 660,000 people in the county, and so, yeah, we've got a long way to go. And, you know, following on, I think that's a short-term and a long-term approach, too, is as we look at future year plans, how we're using this fund, that perhaps is a, the long clippings is a perfect example. Everybody should know that. You know, 9 out of 10 people who mow the lawn should, or have a lawn that's mowed, should have read that and know it. And we should start to set some metrics, perhaps, on what do we want to achieve in future years. Do we monitor media, like articles, TV, and that stuff that's coming out, and put that, links to any of that anywhere? I mean, you just had the one story on the algae stuff that was on the news, things like that. Did we push those out? Brandon, I think, keeps track of, like, relevant news media, but whether we're sharing them all the time or not is, I don't. It's a mixed bag, and there's a lot of misinformation out there. I mean, you have to pick and choose. But, you know, then are we blamed for cherry-picking? So, I don't know. It's an interesting idea. We can think about that more. Thank you. Well, Todd, welcome back. Good to see you. Good morning. Good morning. Pleased to be back here. My name is Todd Swingle. I do serve as the CEO of the Toho Water Authority. I'm also on a variety of both state and national boards focused on public utilities, water, and wastewater policy. And I'm a recovering sorrel committee member. Although, when I left, I didn't know that that was going to turn into more assignments than I ever had when I was on here. So, be aware when you get off the committee, it's going to turn into extra work for you. So, as we know, this committee has a variety of things you deal with, planning and policy, just the nature of the discussions, a lot of the things that you just saw is about data. Today, no data. That's really not the purpose of what I want to talk to you about. It's much more on the policy front, which at the end does tie into, then, the data that you need. And ultimately, you're going to do data-driven decision making. But my focus is policy and how that interfaces with the work that you're doing as a committee. I am also an engineer. So, just forewarning, we have a tendency to use a lot of acronyms. I will make a promise that as I go through this to try to identify those so that, but please feel free if I'm saying something and I happen to slip and not define that acronym, raise your hand, let me know, and I will try to cover that for you as well. So, just, I want to start with Sorrel and the work that you're doing. And when you look through the different contributors of nitrogen loading and the goal of the overall program to reduce nitrogen loading, we have a variety of different contributions. You've got atmospheric deposition, mutt flux, lawn maintenance, natural system restoration that helps, wastewater and stormwater. As we talk about wastewater, one of the things that I'll encourage you to think about is the variety of sources. We talked about already septic tanks, wastewater plants, and other different sources, reclaimed water. So, one of the challenges on wastewater is it tends to be a more complex subject because it is not singularly focused on just one way that those sources can contribute nitrogen to the lagoon. And this is a highlight. And, again, I'll thank Virginia for supplying me some of the prior charts and data that had been. And this is my acknowledgement to providing you some level of data to support the discussion. But you can see, as you know, muck flux of historic contributions are one of the major contributors. That next bar of groundwater comes from a lot of different sources that you have. Yards that are on septic. Well, even those, it's not just one thing. It could be the septic. It could be your fertilizer that you're adding. Other sources that are contributing. Yards that are on sewer. Same thing. You talked about leaking laterals, but you also have fertilizer application. Reclaimed water, which does have nutrients in it. Many people still apply significant fertilizer even when they have nutrients or have reclaimed water. And then natural areas. All of those compiled together represent that groundwater source. The challenge here is there's not one solution to groundwater. This breakdown really gives you insight of what you need to be thinking about from a project standpoint. I also want to set the stage for moving on more specifically to wastewater. When the Lagoon Plan was created, one of the big things was to focus on where we didn't have money, we didn't have programs to advance some of this nitrogen removal. And I pulled a couple of these quotes. And these are directly from the 2025 plan update related to wastewater. Because a capital improvement plan and funding mechanism for updating the county's aging sewer system infrastructure already existed, the original Save Our Indian River Lagoon Plan did not include analysis or funding for sewer infrastructure repairs. That is a basis for how projects that were related to sewer, they were not included. The ones that were included were above and beyond. It's also important to note that the funding raised through utility rates goes toward required operation and maintenance of the existing system and facilities, but does not pay for extending sewer service or upgrading the treatment levels beyond permit requirements. Again, quote straight from the plan, and I'll get into a little bit of funding sources for wastewater operations and how those then apply to some of the decisions that you'll have in front of you. So utility funding, traditional utility funding is three main buckets, the first two being the most significant. Impact fees, those support new development. So when you look and you have virgin property being developed, it's never been connected, it's never had a house, it's never had any sort of development, that development is occurring, there is typically a payment of an impact fee. That impact fee, however, one important note, covers things like expansion of your treatment systems and then major transmission to get to those treatment systems. It does not fund the actual infrastructure in that development. That is typically provided by the developer and then transferred, that ownership is transferred to the utility when that development is finished and you begin actually building homes or commercial. That's an important nuance because those individuals are paying for that infrastructure, but it's typically through their mortgage, not through utility rates. So when we start talking about extending into existing development areas, that becomes an important new equity discussion because all of your new development is paying for their own infrastructure that is localized to serve their own homes. Just want to make sure that makes sense. So that becomes an important piece. One of the important pieces on impact fees, it has to increase capacity. If it doesn't increase capacity, it's a renewal and replacement project. It's reinvesting. It has to increase capacity. These are very rigid requirements that are established in state law. User rates and fees, much more flexible. You can do a lot of different things with user rates and fees, but there are some core things that they are used to invest in. First, it's just day-to-day operations. Power bills, paying people, chemicals, all of the different things it takes to operate those systems. It's also infrastructure renewal and replacement. So when you think about all of the different pipes that are running throughout the county, as those need replaced over time, it's those user rates and fees that typically provide for replacement of those. So when you have concerns about sewer spills or failing infrastructure, it's these user rates and fees that are typically used to pay for those. They also provide for regulatory compliance. That's one of the things we'll talk a little bit more about what the regulatory requirements are today and moving forward. And then finally is assessments. Those are varied. A lot of places don't do them very often, but assessments can be used. And an example would be in a septic-to-sewer conversion that if local government decided that we have an area that we want to provide sewer, you would typically construct that sewer, and it has to be paid for somewhere. Sorrel is providing some of those funds in many instances. There can be grants that come in, but often there is a homeowner component. There is typically some flexibility for utilities to do an assessment that would then be paid over time through the property tax bill. I have a question. I'm dropping back here about a paragraph. You said when a development comes, there's impact fees, and you use the term they're paid for with their mortgages. So that's a one-time, but it's still a one-time thing. It's not an ongoing thing. Yeah, so if you think about it, in any given subdivision, you're going to have your water pipes, your wastewater pipes that are right there in that subdivision, and there's a cost for constructing those. Those become part, and it may not be the mortgage, but it is a one-time construction of those that is, when you buy that lot, it's going to be embedded in that lot cost. After it's transferred to the utility, it then becomes the utility's responsibility. Typically, there are some private, some systems will be kept as private. It is more common on major residential developments that they would become public infrastructure, and moving on forward, then the public utility would operate those and then repair and replace those over time. Thank you. So again, sorrel prioritized funding, three real components. Beyond compliance, so what are the things we need to do to do better, to remove more nutrients, to improve the health of the lagoon that aren't the minimums required by regulations? Value, everything you see on your reports talks about dollars per pound. And so what is the value that is being returned so that you're prioritizing your investments in the most positive way? And then no clear funding source. So that's partly tied to this beyond compliance, because we all know funds are limited, and your focus is on doing what you have to do. And so when we're trying to move beyond compliance, there's often not a funding source to be able to provide for that. This is a little bit of breakdown of how your funds have been allocated, and you can see that by and large the nutrients, the investments have mapped very closely with the percentage of nutrient contributions to the lagoon. Two notable exceptions, atmospheric deposition, pretty hard for us to do a lot with that. The other has been septic tanks, where there has been an overweighted investment in septic tanks compared to the contribution. But that was a conscious decision of this committee that it was a major contributor, and it was a place that we needed momentum in order to move those programs forward and get them launched. And so that was – so this is part of why you have this committee is to make some of those decisions that aren't just pure numbers, because if there were pure numbers, there would be a lot of these bars that would look a lot differently. And so it is one of the things that I continue to support is that this committee has a very well-rounded approach to move – and a multi-pronged approach to move Lagoon Health forward with investments across a lot of different performance areas. So again, beyond compliance projects, over the last several years, you can see a shift even on the wastewater side. The original plant only had two of those wastewater plants in place. You can see a number of others have been added over time. Why are those being added? Some of that has been the choices of you as a committee in adopting these projects as they've been submitted. But I'll get into why you're seeing more of these projects that has a lot to do with regulatory and compliance drivers. So times are changing. I have been in this business for quite some time. I think I'm hitting about 35 years now. And it is the most active regulatory environment I have seen in my entire career. You take a look back at wastewater regulations, and they really – a little over 50 years ago was the advent of the Clean Water Act. And we saw massive changes in regulatory requirements and also federal funding and investments. We're now seeing a renewed interest in wastewater regulations that are driven heavily by nutrients and protection of water bodies, but also emerging contaminants and other concerns that are arising. With that, we're seeing a massive change in new regulations. But what we don't have today is the historic federal funding that was present back when those things just started. Today's federal funding is a fraction of that federal funding that occurred back in the 80s. And if you take a look at some of the budget proposals that are moving through Congress right now, one of the big programs is called the State Revolving Fund, and it has been a huge reduction in the initial proposal in the budget. And that is – so there's – challenging – it is becoming a much more challenging environment for utilities and for local governments to be able to plan for these types of improvements. And so hence the interface between things like funding sources through sorrel or grants or rates, but also then those compliance requirements and the legislative requirements that are moving forward. So since 2020, we've seen quite a few changes. 2020 was the advent of the Clean Waterways Act, which is Senate Bill 712. A friend of this committee, Senator Mayfield, has been here a number of times. She was the sponsor. I actually presented to her committee when that was adopted on some of the requirements that were there. We'll get into a little more details, but really a very far-sweeping requirement in terms of ramping up performance across a number of areas, including wastewater, septic tanks, and other areas of water quality. In 2021, we saw Senate Bill 64 adopted, which addressed reclaimed water and domestic wastewater discharges across the state, basically requiring that surface water – non-beneficial surface water discharges be eliminated. I'll get, again, into a little bit of details on that. BMAP updates occurred. Those were really 2020, but the report was issued, I believe, in 2021. 2023 moved us into House Bill 1379, having to do with additional environmental protection requirements. 2024, House Bill 1557, some restructuring and shift in program responsibilities for the Department of Environmental Protection. And then 2025, we're in the BMAP update process again, and I'll get into some of those as well. So those legislative focus have really encompassed several different things. A lot of what I'll talk to you about here is going to be septic tanks and wastewater facilities. But another major piece of a lot of that legislation has also had to do with incentives and funding and then also reporting requirements. One of the things we're seeing a lot more is that increase in reporting to local governments, to the Department of Environmental Protection, but also reporting to the governor and legislature as well, because there is a renewed and a very heightened focus on environmental performance, specifically related to nutrients within the state. I'll cover incentives and reporting. I'm not going to get into a lot of details. These are – there's just a lot of them. At a high level, incentive programs that we're seeing, new and expanded grant programs focused on both resiliency and nutrient removal, extended permit durations, which has value. So you're making investments that are millions and millions of dollars. Getting a permit that is a little longer duration is very valuable. So there's extended permit durations for meeting your goals, for taking extra steps and things of that nature, and then also expedited permit reviews in certain instances. There is extensive reporting to the governor and legislature. An example of some of those are septic tank conversions and sewer connections, highlighting those rates. Projects aligned with the achievement of BMAP TMDLs, which is Basin Management Action Plans and Total Maximum Daily Loads. And so there's about 25 BMAPs in the state, and those loads represent the maximum load to go into that water body of these nutrients. SSOs, Sanitary Sewer Overflows, and reporting so when there are sewer spills. Those have a heightened reporting requirement as well. And then how some of those grant programs are being funded and allocated. On the septic tank front, also referred to as On-Site Treatment and Disposal Systems, Senate Bill 712, the Clean Waterways Act, was a requirement to implement a fast-track approval process for advanced septic. So that was, we're already starting to see that shift to advanced septic. Rulemaking requirements for these locations, so setback requirements from water bodies and things of that nature for siting of these on-site systems. Forming a technical advisory committee to develop additional rules, because this was not something that was really prevalent in the state. Local government requirements to retrofit or upgrade these on-site systems, where 20% or more of the nutrient load was from wastewater. And then also adopting a remediation plan for how these existing septic tanks were going to be remediated by July 1st of 2025. And so that is an upcoming deadline. As we moved on, House Bill 1379 started to get into even more detail. So required local plans for providing sanitary sewer services for developments over 50 lots. So getting at these, some of that new development question, so prompting those new developments. It didn't mandate those things in terms of that they have to go a certain direction, but what it did do was require a much more thorough review of the feasibility of extending centralized sewer. And then that had to be embedded in the comprehensive plan updates for local governments. And that deadline has already passed and was back in 2024. Probably one of the most noteworthy changes was here related to the lagoon, which was the connection to central sewer or advanced septic requirement for all new development by January 1st, 2024. And then for existing properties by July 1st of 2030, that will be a significant one. And so one of the things that as you as a committee think about deadlines and how those work, and that's one that I would really call your attention to because that's not very far away. And so that is one that's out there that directly affects both this committee, but are locally here in Brevard and other communities around the state. House Bill 1557 then clarified some of the DEP requirements. Previously, septics had been regulated solely under the Department of Health. Now DEP much more engaged. Moving on to wastewater or public wastewater facilities, back to Senate Bill 712 and the Clean Waterways Act. Again, local government requirements to develop a wastewater treatment plan, and so how those wastewater treatment plant improvements would contribute to achieving TMDLs in these different water bodies. Adopting that wastewater plan by July 1st of 2025. I mentioned that we're in that BMAP process, and those draft BMAPs, and I'll get into much more detail on those, are moving forward right now, and they are very specifically intended to comply with this deadline. Biosolids rule revisions, implementing additional depth to groundwater and best management practice, BMPs, reviews. I do want to highlight biosolids as an example. Biosolids misapplied can be a very big problem. They can cause nutrient impairment issues, but also, how many of you have gone to the bathroom recently? We have to treat that wastewater. Most of our wastewater is treated using biological processes. Biosolids often get mischaracterized as applying human waste. It is not. It is not human waste. We use a biological process of bacteria that consumes human waste, treats that, removes all of that. It is those bacteria that are the biosolids. In many cases, properly applied, that is a very effective soil supplement. Farmers can use it. It avoids additional import of nutrients and fertilizer into the basin, and it is a necessary component. And so we talk about the interconnectivity of all of the decisions we make with other things. As we treat to higher and higher levels, and we generate a byproduct, if that byproduct has to go somewhere else, if we incinerate that, if we haul that to somewhere else, that creates additional energy use, that creates additional cost. So there is not – these things have a tendency to get looked at in a very narrow bucket. And in reality, there is a lot of interconnectivity between the decisions that we made. And so biosolids absolutely need to be managed effectively, but there are very beneficial approaches to be able to manage biosolids in a way that has productive environmental benefit and avoids environmental impairment as well. A couple other things. Those wastewater treatment facility discharges to the Indian River Lagoon, IRL, must be by AWT, which is Advanced Waste Treatment, but by July 1, 2025. That is discharges, though. Note that that's going to be different than just reclaimed water. So reclaimed water is not a direct discharge. So this requirement, again, is very near term. These last two I want to highlight as well because they're not necessarily something that is drastically new for utilities, but what it emphasizes is an enhanced focus of state regulations on wastewater entities. So any utility in Florida knows we're going to have to deal with hurricanes. We're going to have to deal with very wet weather events. You've got infrastructure that's going to age over time. This puts some more explicit requirements on those. So the first is development of a power outage contingency plan. I know a lot of folks, there will be times that it says that, you know, that I've heard a lot of comments, well, we should put a backup generator at every single lift station. You can do that. That's a lot of mechanical equipment. And, again, I've been in this business quite a few years. The most of my systems that I've ever seen out in any given hurricane has been about 60 percent. So if I've got no more than 60 percent out, then that means I've got 40 percent extra infrastructure deployed that's not being used in that event. Now, that might still be a good thing that that contingency is there. But one of the things is that there's a lot of utility strategies to be able to put standby power, standby pumps at larger, more critical stations that are more susceptible to those impacts, that have higher flows, that need to be responded to more quickly, and then to use portable or other type systems to get to those ones that aren't quite as critical. Because at the end of the day, I would also encourage you to think about the fact that everything we do is a draw on our citizens. So we can spend their money in a lot of different ways, and we need to look at that holistically. Because at the end of the day, you know, one of the beauties of Sorrel is that we are pulling in those tourism dollars as well because of the way that that tax is generated. But there's still a sizable portion coming from our residents, and we need to make sure that we're using these dollars in a very balanced approach to achieve the environmental benefits that we're looking for, but also considerate of what that does in terms of economic efficiency and that we are truly achieving that balance. It can't just solely be about, let's do things the cheapest way possible, nor can it be, we can protect anything, but it would be so prohibitively expensive. And so it's that balancing act that we really have to strike. These requirements, and again, I want to commend Senator Mayfield because she was very, she and the legislature was very receptive to say, and we as utilities were saying, we're fine with the requirements. We need to figure this out. We need to make sure that we are protective of the environment and the public that we serve. But we also need to do that in a way that helps us at least manage those costs and rates to keep them affordable. That next system, the collection system assessment, repair, and replacement action plans requires that utilities, as part of their permit renewals, goes in and looks at, that does assessments of the condition of their collection systems, that does thorough analysis of where spills might be occurring, where problematic pipes are occurring, and has a financial impact plan in place to be able to address upgrades of those systems. And so that is a more formalized requirement than has historically existed to be purposeful about going in and ensure that those systems are operating as intended. You mentioned the biosolids, and there's an appropriate way to dispose or use those. How do we identify what's being done and how they're doing and if it meets that? So part of that biosolids rule was reviews on the permits for those facilities and, again, implementation of those best management practices, some additional restrictions that said you've got to be a certain distance from water bodies. You can't apply if the groundwater is too close to the surface. So it's a combination of some enhanced restrictions that were scientifically based in order to say, you know, you need to apply these in a way that we don't think they're going to contribute to those problems, but then also through that permitting process. And is it reported? I mean, is there some place you could go to find that? You know, it's through DEP. I have not gone in and looked to see exactly where those are at, but it would be through DEP through that permit process. It's the same question that may be caught in definitions here. You're talking about those solids. The solids that were brought here out of the Okeechobee area and dropped, are they included under the same rules? So that's just some of the facilities. So that means it has to be a certain place and can't be close to the water, and those are those requirements there for that. That's good to know. Yeah, those were revisions in that rule. So there's still biosolids out there. Well, in Brevard, I think Brevard has some. Those are the state laws. Individual local governments can have additional local laws as well. As the state was developing their new rules before they were adopted, the county went ahead and adopted a moratorium on any new permits for biosolids application in the county. That was initiated in 2018. We worked with Senator Mayfield to get a special exception to the— As the new state rules were adopted, there were still questions about whether those rules were going to be protective enough for water bodies that were already impaired, like the Indian River Lagoon. And so we got an exception in there that the county could—we were listed specifically, Brevard County can keep its moratorium as long as it doesn't change any of those conditions. So over the course of the five, six years, there's only one active permit still out there that hasn't expired, right, and no new permits. And that's over in the St. John's basin, not in the Indian River Lagoon watershed. Well, that was a question that I assume goes with St. John's also, St. John's. And then DEP, you know, acknowledging that they didn't know everything they wanted to know when they adopted these rule revisions, they also funded, I believe it's four or five different studies that the St. John's River Water Management District is leading. Those studies are supposed to be completed later this summer, and that data will be fed back to DEP to look at whether they need to— or, you know, how they might want to revise their rules further for biosolids. And I think that's an important piece to note, is that there is a lot— there's—these rules continue to evolve, and in some instances, such as protection of the lagoon, there may be more restrictive measures put in place until you get the scientific data. In other instances where the impacts aren't quite as significant, you can do the scientific research before adopting the rules. But, you know, really one of the takeaways is that both the science and the policy continues to evolve, and that is one of the things that translates back into funding challenges, because think about it with your own house. If you had to comply with the building code that was in place, and you had to do it every time it changed, so you just built your roof, and five years later, the building code changes, but you have to comply. So that's one of the challenges that happens in this type of operation, is that you've got major infrastructure investments that are generally 30- to 50-year investments, that are plans that you're putting in place, you're putting rate strategies in place, and how that interfaces with policies, and the pace of policy change becomes very important, too, because that becomes one of the challenges of making sure that you can have appropriately financed infrastructure. And this is where, you know, I can only speak for myself, but as a utility manager, one of the things that I advocate for is I'm a strong advocate of good regulation. You know, good, predictable regulation for me. I have even made a statement on a national stage that says that I would forego any future grant dollars ever if I could have really sound, predictable regulations, because the grant dollars that we see for utilities are, they're important, don't have no desire to turn away a grant dollar. But in the same token, when rules are unpredictable or they change frequently, the amount of infrastructure investment that happens dwarfs those grant dollars. It's huge. And so this is where I strongly advocate for groups like Sorrel and the wastewater entities that you have here in the county to really partner because we can do much better as a water sector, as citizen groups, as investments like Sorrel to really plan for the future and be thinking not about next year and the year after that, but 10 and 20 and 30 years out so that we're heading in a good direction. So what I have up here is the 2021 Indian River Lagoon Basin. This is from the Banana River Lagoon. The three different BMAP documents very much mirror each other. I'll call your attention. One of the things that you see here is total nitrogen limits of 3.0. There are companion phosphorus limits, too. Those are generally at 1. But if you note the right-hand column, the TN concentration for limits for all other disposal methods, including reuse, is set at 10. And so that was the first step in putting limits on reuse to make sure that there were nutrient controls. When I go to the next proposal that's currently in the 2025 plan, you'll see a couple small words that represent a very significant difference. So I'll go and finish on with some of the other rules that have gone in place. Senate Bill 64, again, across the state, a plan for eliminating non-beneficial surface water discharges. That plan had to be complete by November 1, 2021, by all wastewater entities, with implementation by January 1, 2032. So that means that every utility in the state has to eliminate their non-beneficial surface water discharges. That rule also included quite a few other things to promote direct and indirect potable reuse, but promote reuse in general as well to make sure. So this was much more driven by water quantity and some of the water resource constraints that exist in the state. House Bill 1379, which was just passed in 2023, then took that one step further is that discharges, any discharges that were occurring in a surface water in a BMAP area were required to be advanced wastewater treatment. In 2024, there was an additional bill, House Bill 1557, that said that reclaimed water irrigation requirements, if the DEP determines that reclaimed water is causing or contributing to impairment as part of a BMAP, the reclaimed water must be advanced wastewater treatment by July 1, 2034. And so that is a notable change in the state that says that if DEP finds that any given wastewater plant is contributing to that nutrient impairment, that plant has to upgrade to advanced wastewater treatment. So here we come with... I'm sorry, Dr. So we've had a hurricane and we've had a lot of water, a lot of rain, and the WWTFs are discharging into the lagoon. In that emergency discharge situation, because they're discharging so the plants don't become overwhelmed, is that the right kind of... Is it at the limit that it's supposed to be, or is that kind of overlooked? It's definitely not overlooked. I mean, that, you know, and it depends on, you know, each individual utility has its own set of permits. So by and large, those discharges, you know, some utilities may have an emergency discharge permit. You know, I can't speak to each individual utility and what those might entail. By and large, utilities are expected to avoid those discharges. But we do recognize that, you know, just like our storm systems aren't designed to handle 20 inches of rain in a day, the wastewater systems get overloaded as well. And so one of the challenges that utilities face is that top linkage to storm systems. So every manhole for a wastewater system is out in the street. And so when that manhole is under two feet of water, there's probably storm water getting into those systems. So, but what happens after that is DEP does a pretty exhaustive review of those, the actions that those utilities took, what spills were reported, and determines whether it was so extensive that it was an act of God, that it was, that it's, that the utilities did or didn't do the things that they should have done to prepare for that. If they didn't do the things that they should have done to prepare for that, then they will typically get some form of fine. And associated with that fine is some form of consent order that says, here are the things that you need to do to improve your system, to address what we observed. And that is a very site-specific consent order review that says, what are the conditions? You know, and it may be that the conditions were just so bad that there's really not much you could have done. But in other instances, you'll find that the utility wasn't prepared. They didn't have their power contingency plans in place. The infrastructure was already failing, things of that nature. And then the answer will be different. Okay, thank you. So on these new, these new BMAPs that are coming out in 2025, on that far right column, you see a slight change that says, wastewater treatment plants not listed in Appendix G, all other disposal methods, including reuse. So it still has the 10, but they've added Appendix G, which ties back to that legislative mandate that says that DEP can determine which wastewater facilities they consider to be causing or contributing. In this instance, this is the list in the Central Lagoon. This is the list in the North Lagoon. And this is the list in the Banana River Lagoon. And from a practical standpoint, it's every wastewater treatment plant in Brevard County. Now, DEP is still working through some of this. They had a pretty tight time schedule. It's entirely possible that some of these may not be listed. The utilities have the opportunity to demonstrate or prove that they're not causing or contributing to that impairment. But because of that change in the BMAP, that would prompt all of these utilities, any of these wastewater plants, to upgrade to advanced wastewater treatment, even if they're not discharging to the lagoon, just so it would affect their reuse water as well. Again, just because they're listed here, these plans are in draft. That doesn't mean they will stay that way. But in order to not be listed here, that utility will have to prove that because of how they manage their system, where their discharges are located, the levels of nutrients that they operate at, that they are not causing or contributing to nutrient impairment within the lagoon. Now, again, I mentioned and talked about the challenges of these changing regulations. So this is a little bit of the anatomy of wastewater projects, just to put it into perspective. And I will tell you that this is an optimistic timeline. This is a timeline that works if everything goes right. You can easily, on the planning front, one to many years. I've seen wastewater projects take 10 years or longer to plan. If you really got it together, maybe you can get it done in one, but that's tight. Design and bidding, two plus years. I've seen that go three or four or more. Don't forget that in parallel to this, you've got to be planning for these projects. These projects, I got some data the other day that showed that historically, we were running about $15 to $20 a gallon on new wastewater plant construction. That's only five years ago. I've seen projects as high as $40 to $60 a gallon now. So we've seen wastewater and industrial construction significant, even as high as inflation has been, this type of construction is outpacing inflation. So when you think about setting rate plans and things of that in place, it's very challenging. Construction then, two to three years, that's usually pretty good. You know, it's uncommon that it would go drastically because any given contractor that's getting in there, they're wanting to get in there and get the work built. So that number's pretty good. Then this is the big one, the operations life. These projects are tens of millions. Some of the bigger ones can even be hundreds of millions of dollars. In order to manage that infrastructure expectantly, you're expecting to get 30 plus years out of it. If five years later, that plant has to be modified because of another change in a regulation, that's one of the challenges. So that's where that predictable regulation so that we're thinking as far ahead as possible is really important. We're talking about nutrients here, but I want to put on my supportive hat for all of your utility directors around here. They got a lot coming at them, and it's not just nutrients. You got resource limits on water. You've got resiliency. We talked about power outages, things of that nature. You've got nutrients, but you've also got emerging contaminants. There's recently been issued new rules on drinking water standards and that may also affect wastewater discharges for PFAS. They've been in the news, obviously, over here with Patrick Air Force Base and other places. They're common in firefighting foams. Every single one of us has these in our body. Your Teflon pans that you cook with have them in them. I mean, it's not just firefighting foams. If you have a waterproof jacket, it was in those materials. They're very pervasive. Those utility leaders also have to manage different functions, reclaimed water, collections, biosolids. They all interface. When we just talk about one of these regulations, it's not as simple as that. Each one of those regulations affects the others when it comes to operating that utility. And at the end of the day, every one of these plants is in place to support the public and provide public value. And this is about what it looks like because it gets a little chaotic putting all those pieces together. So as that turns back to this committee, I would encourage you to kind of reframe a little bit of your funding and what that looks like. You know, collection rules have been strengthened. That's still an operating requirement. I don't know that that changes much in your approach. Historically, in one of the quotes I included early on, there was a funding source in place. There were requirements on utilities to operate effectively. Sorrel hasn't traditionally funded collection system improvements and R&R from that standpoint. But on the treatment side, beyond compliance is now compliance for both wastewater and the on-site systems. Things that previously didn't have a funding source, didn't have a requirement, now do have those requirements. So I encourage this committee to really think about that. Hence my questions over here on the right. How do we handle these changing rules related to funding priority and eligibility? How does accessibility of funding sources affect our priorities? These wastewater plants have to upgrade. That's now a compliance requirement. It's their obligation to figure out how to pay for those as well. That being said, this is a funding source that's intended to benefit the citizens of this community. And so it's not as simple of an answer as it might have been seven or eight or 10 years ago. Rates are a funding source, but wastewater investment needs are growing. So how does that affect the decisions that you make? And then there's trade-offs with other project types, capital investments, utility costs, wastewater treatment facility upgrades versus individual costs on a septic. Any given homeowner, they can get a second mortgage. That's probably a little harder when you're talking thousands of individuals, people in a lot of different economic circumstances as opposed to a utility that maybe has more bonding capacity and things like that, but that trade-off. Because ultimately, every drop of this money is coming from our citizens regardless. And so figuring out what works best of the choices that you make with this interface of policy, with the interface on the citizens and the investments that they make, and those borrowing capabilities. And then just the value of the sorrel investment choices. It's not always going to be as simple and septic tanks is one of those good examples of where, you know, the cost for nitrogen removal on septics has been higher, but it's also been one of the best opportunities to leverage state dollars and other matching dollars that have been brought into the community that if there wasn't that overweighting on the septic side, you wouldn't have been able to capture those external funding dollars. So thinking about not only the dollars that you're allocating, but the multiplier effect as those go into other funding sources that you're bringing into the community. And then thinking as well that that cost per pound of nutrients are removed because there always needs to be that thoughts about efficiency. But it's not, but it's one of those, and I talk to a lot of our staff all the time that with KPIs, they're indicators, they're not decision makers. You know, they are data that we should use to influence us using our brains and listening to people and factoring in things that won't always have pure numeric answers to them. And I think this cost per pound of nutrients removed is one of those, that it is a good start of making your decisions, but your decisions are much more complicated than that. And at the end of the day, adapt, adapt, adapt. Everything's changing. Costs, regulatory requirements, funding availability, priorities, all of those things. I encourage this committee to continue to think not only in the plans that you have and just the projects and the concrete projects that are right in front of you, but how these things interface with all of the other policy elements where they're regulatory in nature, growth management policies, those kinds of things. That was probably a drum that I continued to beat when I was up here. It was that we do need to be thinking about how the work that we're doing interfaces with growth management policies so that things aren't undoing the work that's already being done. So just glad to be back here. Happy to take any questions. Other than the extra work, nice to see that I'm looking forward to the conversations and the decisions that you as a committee make because they're important and they're impactful and it's not just, and these are happening not just here but across the state as well and so happy to entertain any questions. I have a question. Todd, thank you. That was a really nice overview of what it's like to work in the water and wastewater industry which I did for about 30 years. My question for you is from your informed perspective as a former member of this committee, how well do you think we do in Brevard County to plan regionally for the big issues that involve wastewater? It strikes me. I'll let you answer the question but it strikes me that we're pretty, we do a good job but we're pretty scattered in terms of where the real responsibility lies. I'm aware of some things that are happening up related to the space center. Where do you think we need to go and how well prepared do you think we are to deal with these longer term growth management issues that you've raised? Yeah, so I operate a utility that is not here and so I'm hesitant to comment on the specific status of any given utility or their planning but I will address the what do we need to do and for me what we need to do is to work collaboratively and it's not just in any given space. It's not just in the government space. It's not just in the utility space. It is to work collaboratively to understand what our priorities are. It is to launch those hard discussions about not just what needs to happen next year but be thinking about very far out. That is one of the tendencies that I see across the space is that there has a tendency to be thinking far out might be five or ten five years maybe ten and the reality is given back to my timeline if you conceptualize a project today it's not out of the ground for at least five years seven to ten is probably more likely and so if we're not thinking twenty and thirty years out then we're missing the boat on where we need to go but we've got to launch those harder discussions too because it gets because what you run into is planning for twenty years out and paying for it today ends up being a tougher challenge and especially when you've got the economic environment that we've got where you've got rising costs and variable interests and all those kinds of things and it gets hard and it gets hard to create a sense of urgency for something that the benefit is going to be twenty years out so I see that as one of the biggest barriers of how do you ramp up the conversation about the importance and the investment needs today for something that the reality is if we don't invest in it today it probably doesn't hurt us that much tomorrow or next year but the further out we go the more impact it has and it's again talk to people a lot of the times you know if you start if you dig a hole you don't fill the hole back in right away that hole gets filled back in probably at about the same pace that it got dug and so that for me is the biggest challenge is creating that sense of urgency and priority and working collaboratively to have a longer term plan and I didn't mean to put you on the spot with this because I know our utility folks in the county and in the state of Florida do a really wonderful job with that very difficult balance that they have to make I just wonder if we have the right structures I mean is the county level enough to drive it or is there something else that we need it's a question for the table you don't have to answer that no and I can't I mean there are all kinds of different structures and some work well for I think again it goes back to those become very individual choices I've seen authorities and consolidation work in some places I've seen you know just well operated long planning utilities for a single local government that have worked well in everything I deal with the thing I see is that there's never a one size fits all approach but having both the sense of urgency and the flexibility to make the right decisions is really key you raise kind of an interesting issue so if we think about it the utility company our citizens pay for that in essence we're paying for it and the same hand with Sorrel we're paying for it except we get a chunk decent chunk from tourism and things like that and I'm sure utilities have chunks that maybe come from the Fed just like we do so should we look at projects and say if they do X it's going to cost the citizens this if we do X for them it's going to cost the citizens Y and there's a lost cause for what we might have done else wise in that case absolutely I mean I think at the end of the day delivering the objectives which are you know public health and the environment at the lowest cost to our residents possible is the end game so absolutely okay thanks so Deb opened up the box with her comment about the space center but atmospheric deposition it was like the fourth highest contributor to nutrients in the lagoon and we're having you know these proposed dramatic increase in launches at the space center and so you've got Brevard County citizens paying to clean up the lagoon but I don't see a whole lot of activity going on at the space center how can we create a sense of urgency from the federal government to do their part on monitoring and cleaning up the pollution that they're causing from rocket launches I'm a simple utility guy so somebody else is going to have to answer that one that's a complicated I was going to say those emissions too are from car exhaust and from power plants we can buy electric cars to help do that to reduce that but it's an unregulated because it's mobile emissions so it's not a stationary source rocket launches so they're pretty much off the table when it comes to regulations can I make a recommendation too that maybe I mean I just read a study on nitrine coming out of exhaust to the rocket nozzles and whether it's impactful or not depending on height etc but there's more and more data coming out and then obviously you have the water systems and the others it would be nice to be able to get some information or some data distributed I'd be interested in it on that to understand what are the impacts that we know today I've talked to the professor at Utah who's done the sound studies down at Starbase and he just released a report in February that shows a map taking those data and applying it to our area so we get a sense of dBs at various distances and I think those kinds of things would be good to know now what we can or can't do with that I have no idea at this point but yeah is it possible to get a presentation on that or would it be meaningful can you send me that paper sure and I'm going to talk to the professor in June he said he was too busy the one from Utah about that but maybe we can find out how far out do we have to go to get him on our calendar thanks Todd can I get one more question more theoretical great presentation good to see you back Todd with all the advanced wastewater treatment plants coming on do you see a more beneficial use of their effluent is something that may be used for other applications maybe even going back into the potable water system yeah absolutely again it's a very localized discussion there is no one size fits all approach the state just in I think February or March did formalize the potable reuse regulations that cover both indirect and direct potable reuse so that is a possibility there's utilities within the state and then certainly nationally that are looking at both forms of potable reuse so either directly into water supply or back to the environment that goes into a groundwater storage then comes back as potable supply and it really is a journey for utilities because even for a utility that's using it for irrigation one of the things I advocate for is treating water like water and so just because it's reused doesn't mean that you can't have conservation and reuse effectively that being said it is at its core it is also the disposal mechanism for those wastewater plants and so it's our irrigation use and other things are not linear and so making sure that you're able to handle wet weather variations because it's the worst of both worlds when you get a lot of rain people stop using or they don't stop but they certainly cut back and that if you have any infiltration and inflow issues you get more wastewater and so you've got to be able to store that and so absolutely yes but it's again a utility specific decision that needs to be made based upon there may be certain utilities that have a higher industrial base others that have a higher residential base some that are more mature in their processes how can you get those rules through so again I would encourage all the communities to look at their specific situations and to look at this as a journey one of the things we plan for is everything that we do on a strategic initiative we're looking at maturity model approaches here's where we want to be on down the road we know we can't get there right away here are the steps to get there and so I think everyone should be tackling your question as in that maturity model type approach okay thank you you're always welcome back and we next we have Josh Hibbert with sewage lateral repair program good morning everybody I'm Josh I'm the contract administrator for SOREL but I also manage the homeowner grant program for the leaking laterals so that's what we'll be going over today I know it's been brought up a couple times already smoke testing and leaking laterals so that's cool if you're very familiar with it good if you don't know anything about it that's fine I would say excuse me the next sorry the next 10 minutes or so will be life-changing either way so and while I get over this it's okay we're gonna watch a video we'll all get up to speed so one of Brandon's beautiful videos that's what I call them so Logan if you don't mind if you can hear me please roll the video we're here today in Merritt Island where we are doing smoke testing to look for deficiencies in the sewer and lateral lines the county's involvement is we're contracting USSI to perform the smoke testing on our behalf and also on the behalf of the natural resources department they're the funders through the soil program this is an interdepartmental project the natural resources and saving river lagoon program is coming in to help the property owners address their side of the problem so smoke testing is one process that we can do to find defects where they pump a non-toxic smoke down into the pipelines and it will come out of the ground or broken pipes missing clean-out caps any areas where there might be a defect so the smoke is produced by using it's essentially a lawnmower with an inverted propeller and what we do is we use vegetable oil we heat that up on the carburetor and what it does is that fan then push that vegetable oil into the system it goes about 1200 feet in either direction but what that does is that every house is plumbed into the sewer system so as that smoke is pushing through the system it's supposed to come out of the vents on a house that means your house is properly plumbed where smoke comes out of the ground as a clean out or a manhole lid and cover or a service line our crew will use our software they take a GPS of it they take an image of it they use temporary spray paint to document it so the intent is to do a full defect report and that data is then provided to the utility with Brevard County to process and determine what to do with it after that what we want to do is we want to reduce the amount of storm water that's running off from rain into these openings and then also there's groundwater beneath the grass and the pipes are oftentimes submerged in that believe it or not and so if there's cracks or openings in the pipe and you have water entering the pipe the pipe is not under pressure so the water is going to go into the pipe and that's going to be moved along to the pump stations what does that mean for the utility we're treating groundwater or we're treating rainwater and that's unnecessary really for us and when we have heavy rain events such as hurricane Irma that water can overwhelm the system and lead to sewer overflows we're trying to prevent sewer overflows because that is another source of nutrients into the lagoon and we also use that funding to leverage state grants to help expand the program and cover more area and also to help us provide financial assistance to homeowners so we also have other grant programs for homeowners to do things like upgrading a septic system or for homeowners that are already along an existing sewer line we have a quick connect grant to help alleviate those costs as well for property owner needs assistance they can contact us at rlproject at brevardfl.gov all homeowners in the county can get involved with restoring the Indian River Lagoon by visiting lagoonloyal.com on that site they're going to find simple tips that they can do around their own home to reduce their nutrient pollution footprint everybody like that one pretty good so here's just a brief overview of pretty much what they talked about in that video but I found the most interesting part of this is probably the door hangers so that way people are aware and they don't start looking out the window and thinking the whole neighborhood is on fire or whatever so I'm glad they do that but if you're going to take away anything from this presentation it's going to be up there in the upper left that's really what repairing the leaking laterals is the overarching purpose and goal of it is to reduce the amount of inflow and infiltration which is a fancy way of saying water that shouldn't be going in there that affects the lift stations it can cause overflows eventually at the treatment plants when there's heavy rainfall events or hurricanes so that's what we're trying to do with this so far we have smoke tested over 442 miles of sewer there is a code enforcement component to this and of the 761 cases that have been open 719 have already been resolved 94.5 percent compliance and then there's also been 20 voluntary repairs which are people that don't have a code enforcement case but they have documented that their sewer lateral needs to be repaired and we've helped them with that as far as the smoke testing there's a lot of different defects that can be identified the most common ones are missing clean outs caps and broken clean out caps but it's a host of other issues that can be identified through smoke testing speaking to clean outs here's a cracked one this is a real life defect that was identified through a recent round of smoke testing does anybody know or have an idea of how that clean out got cracked lawn mowers yeah yeah I would say probably 99 or maybe 100% of the cracked clean outs are because of somebody running it over with a lawn mower and then I imagine they finish mowing their lawn and put the lawn in the shed and go in and have ice cold beverage of choice and a snack and then they go on with their life you know and forget it or maybe even not even know that they broke it so it happens often here's another one it's what they call an illegal connection it's this one just a random pipe coming from out behind the property there just dumping into a wide open clean out so problem with that is the clean out not having a cap to let alone with whatever is they're dumping in there so that was fixed the next one I hope everybody's sitting down it's pretty wild but there were many of them that's why we do it so you have just a wide open manhole no lid you can see tons of the smoke coming out it kind of looks to me like that also is at a lower elevation or at some sort of there's an incline away from it so when it rains I imagine that there was probably a lot of stormwater dumping into that and for who knows how long also I think little Timmy probably could have fallen into something like that or somebody's beloved pet or whatever it's dangerous so that's okay because we did the smoke test and we found it and it's been prepared so but there were others too so now with the smoke test this is what the report looks like this is an actual one too but I wanted to show you what the customer property owner receives there is as I mentioned there is a code enforcement aspect to this so they don't just get this report it's not just knock knock here's your report FYI and then nobody ever follows up on it so code enforcement is managed by the utility services department here with the county the customer will get that report that I just showed you along with a courtesy letter that has sorrel's information if they want to apply for a grant to help pay for the repair 30 days later if there's no response or the repair is not made they get what's called a notice of violation and that part it really goes from zero to 100 from the courtesy letter to that it's like four pages it's saying what's going to happen if you don't do the repair should they not respond to that most do pretty much everybody responds to the second one but if not then they'll receive a notice of hearing and they also get that one posted physically on their property with a wooden stake right there for everybody to see and then at that point there's enforcement costs and daily fines that accrue up until they make the repair thankfully there's only been a handful of those that I'm aware of and most people that I talked to I guess I failed to say my previous position was doing this with utilities before I came over here so most people that I talked to and I think you'll be happy to know they want to make the repair they're happy to do it and they're happy we did the smoke test and they all say I want to do it because I love the lagoon just like us so luckily there's very few of those that go in front of the special magistrate and then lastly the grant program there are funding available up to $10,000 to replace the entire lateral and many times it can cost that much to do to do that usually it's for older homes where it's made out of cast iron or orange bird or whatever it is that it's completely failing and then we provide $2,000 for smaller clean out related repairs that those don't cost that much but it's there if it does it's reimbursement based but we do have seven contractors that are pre-approved so we can pay them directly which is a pretty nice convenience for the property owner so they don't have to pay out of their pocket and wait for the reimbursement and then the grant though it's only for lateral repairs we're not doing renovations or cosmetic things in the bathroom and stuff like that so and also they don't need to have a code enforcement case if they're aware that they need a repair and they're able to provide evidence either through photographs or video we can accept that and help them make the repairs so long as they're within the Indian River Lagoon watershed and here's a nice flyer that we give them to with the notice of violation courtesy letter so they can get in contact with us and that's all I got anything nothing any questions thanks for listening thank you what do we have in Virginia yeah so your agenda says performance monitoring what we're trying to do over the next several months is work our way through the plan the different project types how do we select those projects what are those projects how's it going you know what are all the considerations for those projects and then what does the performance data show for the projects that have been completed to date so the agenda said performance monitoring but I wanted to back up a bit and talk about the project selection as well and so a lot of what I'm going to say overlaps with Todd's presentation but just to you know back some of that up so just before we were tasked with coming up with the Save Our Lagoon plan we had been working on the basin management action plans the total maximum daily loads and trying to understand what the sources of pollution were so this is flow station data USGS has a number of flow stations in the major tributaries in the county and a number of other locations and so the vertical axis is how high the flow rate was and across the bottom axis is time so how does that flow rate change through time and so you see it's very dynamic and the peaks are large rainfall rate and the troughs are when it hasn't rained for a while and that is the groundwater seeping into the tributaries causing that continued flow even though there was no rainfall and so if you look at the troughs where it's all gray that water is primarily groundwater and when we look take a sample of that and look at the nutrient concentration it was high it was unusually high for groundwater and that's what led us to realize oh our groundwater is a major source of pollution to the Indian River Lagoon and we've got to figure out what's polluting it and address those sources so obviously you know the first thought is septic systems right and so you know we went through several iterations of modeling the septic loading from every single home on septic and business on septic in the county and then you know identifying clusters you see on the right all those yellow dots you know clusters of highest loading systems where it makes sense to bring new sewer service to that community and get all those homes connected and so we went through this process and you see the list of names on the left right not very creative names just following the alphabet because we went through the county and we just circled all these clusters and then for each cluster like how many lots is that estimate the cost based on linear footage of sewer that would have to be installed how many lift stations right and then we have this model of what is the loading impact of those systems on the lagoon so that's if we stop that by connecting them to sewer that's a reduction we can come up with a cost per pound benefit right we did that countywide to come up with the projects that were in the plan but when we did that and all the modeling indicates that septic systems are responsible entering the lagoon so groundwater is 50 to 60 percent of the loading going to lagoon so septic is not the only problem right so that led us to a more broader approach of what are these other sources of pollution to the lagoon this is the graphic that Chuck Jacoby used last month and it's really primarily on what are those stormwater sources some of those stormwater sources some of the things that pollute stormwater also pollute groundwater right so think of agriculture right you have agricultural runoff that is polluting the stormwater but you also have excess fertilizer that is soaking down into the groundwater and is contributing to groundwater pollution however in Brevard's portion of the Indian River Lagoon we have very little agriculture left so you know that's that's not it so you know what are these other groundwater sources and there are not a lot of good candidates out there to try to find cost effective options to go after but one of the things we thought of was this irrigation water so every wastewater treatment plant has a permit like Todd said and each of them has individual requirements according to their permit but they all have some sort of monitoring component some are monthly some are quarterly some are annually some have to monitor for different things but they have to monitor for nitrogen on some sort of frequency and so this is a fraction of a report for one of our utilities and you see the nitrogen concentration there 2.2 that's less than the 3 milligram per liter that is the advanced wastewater standard the number of exceedances there zero right so that's that's all good but we could go to these reports for every wastewater system including the private package plants in the county and average them over time so we looked at a three to five year period of record and identified you know what is the average concentration of the effluent coming out of each plant and and then we compared that to well how much could a sod yard absorb and so everything that's above that red line is probably soaking into the groundwater and becoming a problem and so we looked at all right so for these facilities what is the permitted capacity right what is the what is the volume what is the concentration how much load is that now a lot of that is attenuated by the sod or attenuated in the soils over the pathway before it gets to the lagoon so what is the attenuated load that actually gets to the lagoon and if we upgraded that system what would the what would that upgraded attenuated load be what would the difference be right so then we went through for each system what would it cost to upgrade we had actual cost bay and titusville nobody else in the rapid fire that we had to pull the plan together had costs available so we used an EPA standard of six million dollars for an upgrade it costs way more than that now as Todd alluded to right but you know what is the load reduction what's this average cost so we could rack them and stack them just like we did with our septic neighborhoods so priorities and the blue line is the effluent coming out of the plant and so you see the blue line was spiking fairly high pre upgrade the dotted line the dotted vertical line is when the partial upgrade was completed the solid vertical line is when the upgrade was done and then you see after that time the blue line the effluent coming out of the plant is well down below the target our contract with Titus Phil for 6 milligrams per liter and the green lines are the three private homeowner groundwater wells that we installed to monitor the system you know the impacts of this project pre and post and so you see you know some high green spikes before the project and you only see one little green spike recently after the project that could be you know fertilizer application that day or something the left box and whisker plot shows you you know what was the variation and what was the mean and central tendency of the data before retrofit versus after retrofit so now we know these projects or at least this project works so this is just a snip of a fraction of the table of contents in the plan right so today we talked about wastewater treatment facility upgrades and so that would impact the effluent coming out of the plant it would impact reclaimed water not all effluent is used for reclaimed water some of it is sprayed in spray fields to get rid of it some of it goes into rapid infiltration basins so we also looked at what could we do to treat to make the spray field attenuate more nutrients or to make the rapid infiltration basin attenuate more nutrients racked and stacked them just like everything else to come up with the highest priorities in the plan private package plants there are a number of those we also looked at their effluents we went through those same reports they have to provide to DEP and prioritize them do we connect them to sewer or is there some upgrade that we can do at their site Josh just talked to you about our sewer lateral program next month we're going to be on septic to sewer and septic system upgrades the month after that we'll be focused on stormwater treatment and the month after that we'll be on muck removal in the lagoon so just a taste of what's to come and so then the Todd talked about this right and I've shared this before too right we have more than just those three wells in Titusville we have 44 wells and so these are the groundwater concentration data from natural systems septic system communities sewer communities reclaimed communities before and then this is Titusville after but we used this data to then be able to take this total groundwater load and differentiate it into these four columns that Todd shared with you how much of that load countywide is from yards on septic versus yards on sewer versus reclaimed water and then we can look at produce this graph to show to compare how the funds are allocated to where the loads are coming from while I'm up here I just wanted to share two more little tidbits Todd also talked about and Fred you followed up with it's not just that we have this lagoon money we're able to go get grants to leverage our own funding with tourism contributions and grants so the house and senate are still working through the budget process for this year the indian river lagoon restoration program that was part of the bill a couple years ago creating this hundred million dollar a year program for funding for grants for the indian river lagoon there's no hundred million dollars there right there's fifty million in the senate proposal there's zero in the house proposal so we are we're not expecting a good year of grants if you look at these other lines there is agreement fifty million the lines below the yellow agreement for springs restoration for the keys and for biscayne bay they're still just above the yellow you know hundreds of millions of dollars proposed for the everglades all of this funding had been coming from the seminal gambling compact right that was a rule change last year that those revenues would fund water projects for the state of florida so the house is now proposing to repeal that earmark and the senate is saying well let's cap it at three hundred million a year but if you cap it at three hundred million a year it does not cover the 350 million proposed for the everglades plus the ninety million for springs and the florida keys and biscayne bay right even if the lagoon is at zero so this is going to be a really tough session for us and I mean it's always fun to share bad news right but I thought you need to know right so that's yes Virginia I understand that the rationale they're using is that especially for the land conservation is that there's money already in the bank and they haven't spent it all but it doesn't seem to take into account the process of acquiring land making the purchases and I wonder is the lagoon in the same boat pardon the point to you there but I don't know what the backlog is of those dollars certainly you know when you propose a whole new grant program hundred million in a year you know two years in a row right people are running as fast as they can to get those projects designed and permitted and break ground but yeah probably a lot of those dollars are still sitting in the bank you know haven't been reimbursed yet but that's what you have to have that certainty that the dollars are there so that you can get the project going can we get this presentation and also Todd's presentation given to the group please a lot of great information you can see now drinking with a fire hose people this is what it's all about go ahead just a quick question and a comment so I was in D.C. this week doing some health care legislation advocacy work and I happened to meet he was with AIDS as typical but in Congressman Herodopoulos office he was there and so I talked to him about the lagoon and he mentioned two bills possibly that they're looking at to get money down here are you aware of that and working with them on that or is there anything we should look at or do around that so we have two proposals that we had worked with Congressman Posey and we were in the appropriations bill last year but then all of that was zeroed out with the continuing resolution that was passed for the current federal fiscal year so we've been working with Congressman Herodopoulos office and his staff on updating and resubmitting those proposals which he has agreed to do and that's been done so yeah I believe those are the two projects he was very positive it was a quick one because he was heading out the door yeah they've been super helpful to work with great thanks next up thank you oh this is I'm going to try to shorten this a lot because we've covered a lot of this but I saw the same thing I come from a regulatory background and I saw the same thing happening that Todd mentioned was that golly a lot has happened in the last five years that just is overwhelming to us all but anyway I also wanted to follow up with Virginia's presentation last month and show you where the data came from that she was using and make sure that you understand that because this all started with the Clean Water Act as Todd said in 1972 and it wasn't until well the data started in 1987 so the data goes from 1987 through present and it was really started for that for the 1990s when we finally provided guidance on the impaired waters on what it means to be impaired waters and then the IRL and the BRL the Indian River Lagoon and the Banana River Lagoon were both listed as impaired and but even before that in 1989 was the swim plan that was done by the Water Management District and that showed as Virginia mentioned in an earlier presentation in March that 40% of the pollution in the Indian River Lagoon was from wastewater and 60% was from stormwater and we had to start looking at muck and there would be a problem there could be a problem there with muck and so anyway we got the impaired waters declared it wasn't until 2009 we got the total maximum daily load developed for the Indian River Lagoon system and in that time we got the seagrass die off and the super bloom and all that happened too that was independent of all this happening and so in 2013 the first BMAPs were developed and 2016 was for the Indian River Lagoon program soil program here but then in the 2020s is when it really a lot happened the BMAPs were looked at again with the new modeling in 2021 and now they're being revisited those are really the source of a lot of the projects that come into the program here but then I wanted to mention the Clean Water Act first I wanted to mention the System and Basin Act of 1990 that was when really the surface water discharges the wastewater treatment plant discharges were eliminated from the lagoon and also required looking at the alternative of wastewater reuse and we know the problem that we're facing now with wastewater reuse and encouraged the collection of centralization and collection of treatment in the IRL basin so that was back in 1990 BMAPs we've gone over the Clean Waterway Act in it transferred septic tanks from DOH to Department of Health to DEP the Department of Environmental Protection required all wastewater treatment facilities to go to AWT but it didn't give any date requirement there new requirements for preventing sanitary sewer overflows and underground pipeline leaks and required the passage of the stormwater rule this was back in 2020 required the passage of the stormwater rule and we've been we had been encouraging this all along and then the BMAPs for agriculture and golf courses best management practices got to define those acronyms and then the house bill Todd's already gone over this really well but this was a this is a real game changer because it put dates on things actually and there's the last one is is the hundred million that you heard disappointingly it was a promise that's not going to be held but these are this is from a determination regarding the necessity of wastewater treatment plans this was a DEP office of general counsel determination to get these wastewater treatment plans done and the on-site treatment plans done this is something you should really get from Virginia these are really these these are good plans they're there for the future the next 20 years and they're good they're good reference documents for you all to reference and see where the county is going to go with sewage treatment plans and also those on-site systems that won't go into sewage treatment plans so something to think about and to get and read then we have finally the storm water rule the storm water rule was passed finally and it does beef up storm water regulations in general and this kind of goes through it mandates maintenance on those systems and monitoring and then this follows up again on the clean water act that asked for this to be done and that's really it so a lot of change in the last five years and it's something that you should all be aware of any questions yeah don great job as always but maybe for the group could you give a operational definition of best management practices especially in the context of requirements versus nice thing to do well there really it's the language of shall and should you know and it's all in there and we hope that they act in good fashion but often times you have to you know lay it out for them and specifically and I don't know where you want me to go with this well just I was hoping to just for the educational especially for folks who may not be familiar with those terms like you are since you've worked regulatory you know there's requirements and then there's BMPs yeah requirements you have to do yeah and then best management practices are something that you should do and that you should but they should also be put together in a form that's required by the rule the specific rules so there should be language in there for you to put together your best management practices and these were specifically for golf courses and what's the other one agriculture which isn't agriculture again isn't a major source here but golf courses is mainly just overall management of them I think it's a term people are going to see a lot while they're on the board so if it helps right best management practices are sort of a toolbox of ways to do things you know better either to you know grow get more out of your agriculture and pollute less but different tools are better for different crops different applications different sites and so then the Florida Department of Ag and Consumer Sciences has developed you know specific manuals for cattle for row crops for you know different for citrus that go through all those best management tools and figure out which ones apply to these agricultural practices in the state of Florida things that really ends up ends all the reports and so we'll go to the next video so the my lagoon story video that Deb did is the video we have today and Logan's going to load that up I have a lifetime of memories on the Indian River Lagoon but perhaps some of my favorite are from my childhood when my parents would bring us over to visit our aunt and uncle and Sebastian and he would take us out on his boat to the spoil islands and we would have great picnics I would cut my feet through the soles of my kid's sneakers walking on the oyster beds that used to be there and just having a wonderful time afterward with the fish and shrimp and big family dinners that came out of the abundance that was in the lagoon then I wanted to serve because the lagoon's been part of my life when my husband and I moved here in 2013 we didn't realize the lagoon was in peril it was a shock to see the changes in the water quality the absence of a lot of wildlife and shellfish and also just the algae that was growing on the bottom of the lagoon where seagrass had been I mean I had seen my first manatee in the wild down by those islands so that's why I chose to get involved I actually think there are two challenges associated with the lagoon the first one is just the complexity of the system you know we're talking about miles and miles over 70% of the lagoon is in Brevard County and the conditions vary widely it's a natural system and what works in one part of the lagoon may not work in another part it's a highly varied living system and I think that the foresight that went into the creation of the cleanup plan is amazing in that it allows the committee and the scientists involved in the program to make adjustments as time goes along in response to what's really happening in the lagoon the second challenge I see is really public awareness of the work that's being done and how important it is to continue to sustain that beyond this initial 10 years of the plan so the actions I'm taking in my own life are varied they're little things like being careful about not letting my grass clippings go in the lagoon or the tree leaves out of the oak tree behind my house but I'm doing some big things too I'm involved as a donor and as a volunteer and as a board member of Keep Brevard Beautiful which for 40 years has helped keep Brevard looking good and does literally hundreds of cleanups every year to help keep trash and debris and pollution out of the lagoon and it's really really gratifying to know that that support for the lagoon continues to people who are willing like me to lend a hand and do tangible things that we can do to keep our waters clean I think it's important that we protect the lagoon because it is a source of life for us here not just because of the economy not just because of the enjoyment that we can get out of it but it really is the source of life for this paradise that we have here that we all want to be proud of the old business and new business we have three public comments first one's from Craig Craig Wallace good morning Craig Wallace with the Brevard Indian River Lagoon Coalition thanks for all the great dialogue that went on today I thought the reports were great so one specific thing I want to talk about today is a big part of what we do is educating the public on what's going on you know we do straight talks and various engagements with the public along with Brandon and everybody else is trying to get the public engaged but one of the things we've identified as an opportunity is to try to get a spot at the zoo where the public can come by and talk about we can talk to them and they can ask questions about what's going on there so there already is a spot there and for those of you that visit the zoo probably know that there is a restore our shores kiosk there so what we decided is well one of the issues they have there is it's kind of dark and it's just not really inviting to a lot of people as they walk by and they don't even know what it is because there's a lot of signs and you know what does that mean so you really need people there and they do have they do staff it with volunteers at times but it's not typically people there so we decided that we maybe we could do something to help so we talked and we kind of figured that one of the things you've got to do is you've got to address the children you know if you've got something that can grab the kids attention as they walk by then maybe you have to pull the parents in and you can talk to the parents so we had we've talked to several teen groups but one of the organizations that's kind of volunteered pretty heavily here is the aqua science program at Cocoa Beach High School a fairly new program Cole Maness has been here and talked a couple times about their programs if you haven't been out there to see it it's really amazing they have a whole lab there but anyway but so they their students you know found out about this obviously Cole told them about it and and volunteered so they came out and spent an hour or so at the kiosk just to kind of get an idea of what was there and talk to some people as they as they came by and they got really excited so they put together a presentation on all the things they thought they could might be able to do to improve the the engagement with the public and that sort of thing and so we're now in the process of trying to set up so that we have both an adult and a teen in in the kiosk for at least a weekend a month so what I would like to ask you if you were interested to contact me and if you'd like to you know spend some time it wouldn't be all day we'll do shifts there but if you're interested in getting involved in that program I'd appreciate it so we're going to do our first one will probably be a memorial day weekend and then we'll go on from there so thank you for the time yeah all right we started the meeting or early in the meeting about a social media post and what we do here with the committee and what the group does but you you guys at the coalition also have a pretty regular posting that goes out to the public and you distribute that to other organizations as well I think the latest one was about lawn debris doesn't go down the sewer so do you have any idea of how big that reach is yeah the reach and I think the maximum reach we had was probably on the seagrass post and I think we had something like 30,000 on that it varies from you know a couple thousand to high numbers so yeah and so the key thing there is to it we're engaging various organizations as you mentioned I think we've got like 20 different co-workers that basically we send a message out to them and they distribute it out to their their base so and that's something we're continuing to grow that so if anybody would be interested in in tying into that let me know about that also because more more the merrier on that but it's we're trying to get you know it's not just one person to one person it's one person to many and get get that engaged but get that common message out there in there the messaging we do is right along with what the county does so basically we took the the monthly calendar that Brandon put together and we're using that as the base and we we send the messages out based on that and great great response to that thanks Chuck thank you I have Michael Abdel good morning everyone I came in today because I'm dealing with Terry for the clam program and the restoration and grant program and we'd like to say thank you for that opportunity and we would hope that you would continue that and possibly entertain expanding it we had we had 12 grants before and we would kind of like to get up into that 30 range because we're putting a lot of clams in the water and we're doing a good job with the river and it's you know it's it's a small portion of a you know 2 million gallons 3 million gallons a day doesn't seem like much but it's more than what was going on before and it's economically it's helped us because of the some of the catastrophic losses we had from some of the hurricanes and things like that that have come through so I just want to say thanks for the past and hopefully we can do something in the future all right thank you what's your phone number I'm sorry what's your phone number 708-305-0236 we're down in Body F and I live in Barefoot Bay excuse me couldn't hear the light I said we're down in Body F and I said my number is a mid Midwestern number but I live in Barefoot Bay how have you seen survival before I'm sorry well it's been spectacular this year I mean literally we just pulled bags that we planted in February and our survival is more than 90 percent so thank you yeah I've got this thank you okay thank you have a good day thanks Edward McConnell everyone and I want to also thank you for the grant program because I was able to take advantage of that not once but twice once after Ian and once after just recently what was it Milton I graduated FIT in 1987 with a environmental science and aquaculture degree and I worked at Harbor Branch the following after graduation on an economic feasibility study on growing hard clams in the Indian River Lagoon after that project ended I went to work for a private company which grew clams from 87 probably till about 95 or so across from the old sea great manor in Melbourne Beach I currently live in Melbourne Beach I've been living in there for the last 40 years and been farming clams for 38 years of that 40 years being here I just wanted to thank you like Mike did I grow clams in Indian River and in Brevard County we have come a long way but we've seen a lot of changes in the lagoon and we've learned a lot over those years on how to deal with different obstacles but the clams I know are helping clean the lagoon and we try to make sure that we're very environmental friendly the way we do it and I just wanted to offer my help if it ever comes up my I think emails on the card and I've been doing this for 40 years so if anybody has any questions down the road please feel free to contact me I kind of dropped I was kind of active in I wouldn't call it politics but we got some issues through Tallahassee and was very active until my first daughter was born and then I kind of dropped out of everything and just concentrated on work and family and my youngest daughter is graduating Mel High next Friday and just graduated Eastern Florida yesterday so I'll be available so I just thank you again for the grant thing and hopefully you'll redo it where do you get your seed plants from okay several places I have some that I work with Harbor Branch on if they have excess I hold their seed in case they have like a disaster so I have some of their seed which I end up keeping a little bit of it but I hold theirs in case they have a problem because they use theirs for restoration I think they work with the zoo and some other agencies for restoration I also do restoration with the drone drop with the seed comes from University of Florida's I think it's marine land up in St. Augustine and Mike Sullivan also has a hatchery there who does the restoration seed spawning and he gives me he just gave me some seed last week that I'll grow up for the drone project or we'll also put some in the field for grow out in case any restoration grants come through that they want the seed that's the wild seed and the wild seed and the farm seed is really technically the same thing because as the BMPs state is you can only have seed that is from your area so it's kind of redundant that they have a wild seed and a farm seed but in any event we also farm seed and our seed comes from those two hatcheries or the bulk of our commercial seed right now I have to send broodstock every year to a company we work with in the northeast and that company spawns for us gets approval from veterinarians and the state agencies all approve it before it comes back down and then so we get it about 500 microns or half a millimeter and then we grow it up in our upweller systems which are different item that's out of marina and those those actually are just like I call them giant filters because we can have 10 million seed in an upweller when they first come in and then by the time they get to about four to six millimeter we're probably only having about two million seed in that upweller but we have about 10 upwellers and they're about 12 by 32 and each one has like trays and those trays are just clams that are filtering the water that we basically get it pumps through the water gets pumped into the tanks and goes through the screens so the water going out of that upweller is incredibly cleaner or stripped of algae from what has come in and we know that because even though they don't always do it I keep telling the guys you got to rotate the trays you got to rotate the trays when they don't rotate the trays the bottom trays are big the top trays are small and the reason is because all the food's getting stripped out of the water so we bring the seed in and then we grow it up and a lot of it ends up on our leases but more ends up to other farmers around the state and in fact because one thing about the program is there's several farmers now younger people that are getting into it which is nice to see because after the 2004 hurricanes almost every farmer like just quit they just said forget it we're done and we're at the point now where it's some younger people coming in going hey let me try that so they buy like 50,000 seed and put it out and try it so this program actually would really help the new people coming in which would help everything I think thank you for your time what's your phone number it's on the card I'll put it on the card if you want I was I was advised not to say my phone number to the world but thank you I'll give it to you I just said I don't think you can get it afterwards yeah yeah he's got the card here let me get it so as part of alia's presentation right one of the things that we've completed is all the clam aquaculture grants right so that's what this request is they want more all of so the the clam aquaculture grant program was carved out a few years ago from the oyster restoration money that had been established for each sub lagoon so all of the restoration money in the central lagoon basin has been contracted has been allocated and contracted and so the challenge is you know if we want to do more if we want to continue that program you know here we are in year nine I mean it's good news we've completed a program but there's there's interest in growing the program so you know how do how do we do that it it means either taking money away from another basin which means they're not going to get as great the water quality benefits as originally allocated between banana north and central or taking it away from a different project type the stormwater projects are the ones that are typically the easiest to take from because not all of those have entered design nobody spent any money on those last stormwater projects but all of the stormwater projects in the central lagoon have already been allocated and are moving forward so you know it's it's really a challenge to figure out where to come up with funding to continue the clam aquaculture grants if if the committee wants to do that go ahead so in the fall when we have that little tiny bit of extra money that we allocate can they participate in that program coming up this fall yes so you'll keep them informed we can do that thank you and Virginia these are commercial operations correct and this is an expansion they would expand the commercial operation is that what that would be used for is there a point just as a business that they expand themselves based on their own revenue generation or is it just not feasible um so these are six thousand dollar grants okay uh to place at least half a million seed clams and so they're spending about five thousand dollars on the seed clams and then the other thousand dollars on nets and personnel you know other other equipment sure great thanks yeah so i think the initial point and maybe we need to put this on new business or something on a future meeting for discussion but is was to sort of keep them in operations or jump start new operations right ed's point was you got a potential new generation of people interested and the water quality is finally such that you know there's reason for them to be interested but now the grant program is used up it would also be good to have a to have presentations uh on where we're getting success with clams too uh some of that data is available and so we need to understand where we're getting success and to to where to where to go with that one final one that too i mean obviously six thousand dollars in the grand scheme of five hundred and something million is pretty tiny um what happens with the interest we're earning on this is that available or has that already been allocated too so um all of the principal is allocated to projects and the interest is funding the employees right and the ongoing operations got it remember that thank you we're to the point where we open it up to the committee and and any any comments from the committee my guys you got a lot of information today huge i'm having a little trouble seeing oh seeing the presentations on the letters you know you know the words the size the size that's the only one yeah yeah that's a good idea oh no i just got the seating chart do we need a motion for that unfortunately i just sat down where my nameplate was no we can we can certainly do that situation no no it's not a big complaint it's no no we want you to be able to see the presentations for sure yeah no there's no problem with that john i think um todd really deserves some accommodation here he was his report was unbelievable to me um just powerful yeah so uh he left before i could run over there and thank him but we really owe him a lot of things that's a lot of research and a tremendous presentation yeah and they're all good but that was we missed really unbelievable we missed todd's yes just his balance and his and his approach and on finance and how we should approach finance but that's what i hope y'all learned from that is the balance that we have to that we have to always look at anything else uh good session okay well that's if that's it we're early we're out of here thank you the opinions expressed by any member of the public during any period of public comment do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of the board of county commissioners of brevard county florida space coast government television or the program sponsor and are solely those of the presenter the board of county commissioners of brevard county florida space coast government television and the program sponsor hereby expressly disclaim any and all responsibility or liability for any defamatory or slanderous statements expressed by any member of the public during any such period