Save Our Indian River Lagoon on 2025-08-15 8:30 AM - Aug 15, 2025

And you're there really to kind of fit and work around whatever is going to be best for the family. That's what I love. My big takeaway from the conversation is it. Morning. Don Dice. Here. Mark Schroep is not here. Richard Nipper. Here. Bruce Larson. Here. Kimberly Newton. Here. Deborah Harmon. Here. Laura Lee Thompson. Here. Nicholas Sanzone. Here. All right. Richard Bankhead and Aaron Adams are both not here. Kurt Smith. He's on the line. On teams? Okay. Yeah. Fred Goldstein. Here. Barbara Wall Scanlon. Here. Eric Maniz. Here. John Windsor. Here. Charles Venuto. Here. Okay. We have a quorum. Thank you. Approval of the agenda. Any comments? Motion to approve. Okay. That was Richard. Kimberly. We've got a second. We have a second already. Yeah. You first and her second. All in favor? Any discussion? Any discussion at all? All in favor? Aye. Aye. Aye. Minutes? Any comments on the minutes from last month? Motion to approve. Richard? Barbara? Any comments? Great presentations. Okay. Thanks. Thanks. All right. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? No. All right. We're moving right along to progress reports. Okay. I'm going to be very brief this morning because it's quarterly report time, so you're going to get more details from staff in a few moments. Just the top line, 111 projects completed to date, plus over 2,100 homeowner projects. Um, uh, and things that won't, that aren't, uh, exactly, sort of don't show up in the quarterly report. Uh, five derelict vessels removed. Um, we received, uh, a nice, uh, reimbursement check from the state for quick connects to sewer. Uh, and we've, um, just completed, uh, groundwater monitoring video that you should get at your, your meeting next month. Um, I want to take a moment to introduce, uh, two new staff members who've replaced outgoing staff members. So, uh, Alex Wren is a new mucketeer, and Jeff Beaudry is our new quick connect, uh, extraordinaire. So, um, uh, Alex has been here for a little while and is up and running, and, and Joel is, is learning very quickly. So, it's appreciative to have them on the team. And did you, did you email? So, okay, sorry, I was looking for a piece of paper. Um, there's just, uh, one event that I wanted to point out because it's not on the report, and it is, um, pollinator, uh, citizen science events. Um, so the MRC and Brevard Zoo are both sponsoring different locations. Um, Brevard Zoo has on Friday, August 22nd, they have staff supervised events going on at Geiger Point from 8 to 9 a.m. and Pineapple Park from 9 30 to 10 30. And then they have unsupervised, uh, locations at Fisherman's Landing and Kelly Park from 8 to 10 30. So, if you want to do that, you got to download your stuff from their website in advance. Um, the Marine Resources Council, it has events the next day, Saturday, August 23rd, from 9 to 1 at the Ted Moorhead Lagoon House. So, uh, fun, fun, delightful way to get some citizen science in, in our community. Um, and that's my report. Thank you. And we have Lori. Don, I just had a quick question. You, you noted a little of what they'll do. What specifically makes him a mucketeer, if you don't mind? Is there a specific role? We, we have, yeah, we have three staff that work on the muck removal efforts. And so, yes, they, they named themselves the three mucketeers and, yeah, it kind of, it's stock. So, I think that's very interesting just to learn that we have three dedicated staff just to muck. That's very important. So, thank you. There's a lot of, a lot of oversight when you get multiple sites, you know, multiple projects going on in different locations. Sure. Good morning, everyone. Lori. Um, we have received 4.6 million for the May collections and the total from revenue from conception is 470 million. And for the monthly financial statement, the anticipated 516 million in revenue by the end of the fiscal year, the actuals received so far are 439 million. And for the expenditures this fiscal year, the total assigned for the project and programs is 110 million and actual spent is 19.2 million. And now we're going to move on to the quarterly. So, this first is our quarterly table for our finance expenditures, which everyone should have got to receive that in their package from Jackie. I'm going to scroll through it real quick. And then our grant table here shortly. And then we're on to our grant financial tables. What, um, we have expenditures. And does anyone have any questions on anything? Yes. Yeah, quickly, on the, um, the monthly financial statements, when you do a signed year-to-date, what does that mean since the compensation benefits was only assigned another $1,000 for the month? How does that work? Compensation and benefits, that's a good question. That comes from the HR department because they're, you know, that's what they're keying in. And I noticed that it's going up and obviously it's under budget, but I couldn't understand how assigned from one month to the next. Actually, it was from June to August, went up $1,000. Mm-hmm. Um, I think every so often they, they look at, you know, how expenditures are going and we've had vacancies and then we have new staff. And so they make some changes, but I, I never understood exactly how those, um, you know, I'm, I'm worried about the actuals column and the actuals column reflects what we've actually, you know, spent on, on staff. Um, that encumbered column is all done by the human resources department. Okay. And this, and the staffing is the, the, the dollars. I can ask. Yeah, that'd be great. The dollars below are just for, because you've had lack of staff. Is that what it is? Or in terms of how you're under budget? We're only partway through the year. Right. But it's, but I would assume that the total assigned year to date and the actuals would be close, in other words. Um, we, we also, uh, had another position that we, um, have decided that we don't need to fill. Um, so that, yeah, change also happened in there sometime during the fiscal year. Thanks. Okay. All right. Perfect. Thank you. Yeah. Kurt. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I didn't realize I had my phone. It was, uh, you, did I get, when I said he's here, did anybody hear it? Yes. Okay. Yeah. We knew, we knew you were there. Okay. Thank you. We could sense you. All right. I will go ahead and start with the quarterly report. So this is, uh, for a reporting period, April 1st through June 30th. And, um, this is a presentation that correlates with the table. So all the yellow highlights show progress, uh, made from the previous quarter. Uh, the red signifies no progress and green means that it has already been completed. So to start with public education, we have seven projects in the plan. One is complete and six are underway. I won't go into too much detail on each of the campaigns because Brandon's going to be giving his, um, communications presentation right after this. Um, but I will note that the, uh, percentages here have changed. We based them off of the money spent instead of 10 years. So they, they did drop from the previous quarter. Um, and then the restore our shores program, uh, is now 65% complete and they're focusing on the outreach, oyster gardening, clam restoration, and the seagrass nursery. And they had a bunch of, um, outreach events and volunteer opportunities. And here they have the Publix workers helping them out, build habitats. Um, Melanie has started the pond watch program. This is under the stormwater BMPs. And so we're working with four, uh, I can't get rid of that. Will it move? No. It's determined to be in the center. Yeah, I don't think I can. Yeah. Um, so we're working with four HOAs, um, to, uh, better manage their stormwater ponds. So on the left here, we have volunteers from the country walk community. Um, in the middle here is Tortoise Island doing their water quality sampling. And, uh, on the right is, um, Longwood who is, they're doing a stormwater BMP planting some, um, native plants in their stormwater pond. And so there's a volunteer helping out with their contractor. And this is with a grant supported by, um, the National Estuary Program. Now I, now I can't move. Here we go. Um, okay. Sorry, I lost track. Okay. Wastewater treatment facility upgrades. We have nine, uh, projects in the plan. Four are complete. Um, that includes Cocoa Beach, the Palm Bay, uh, project Rockledge, and the city of Titusville Osprey. We have three in the design phase. Um, Melbourne's Grant Street water reclamation facility is going out for rebid next quarter. The West Melbourne, uh, facility just had their rebid opening on, uh, Tuesday. Those values came in at 10.7 million. So previous bids were over double. So this is a much better, uh, number to work with. And then the South Brevard County water reclamation facility completed their survey, environmental assessment, and initial geotech. And they submitted their permits. We have two rapid infiltration basin projects in the plan. Longwood was one of our first projects that's been completed. And we have not gone to contract for the Sterling House condominium yet. We have three package plant connections in the plan. Uh, Oak Point was completed. Willow Lakes is, um, underway. They just completed the additional survey and plan revisions for the utilities department. Um, the county received grant funding to assist the Cove to connect their package plant. But because costs were really high, they are considering withdrawing that as a package plant connection and, um, upgrading their plant instead. So we're working with them to figure out the decision-making process for that. For sewer laterals, we have six projects in the plan. Five smoke testing projects are complete. And then we are continuing to work with homeowners for their repairs. Um, to date, we have 1,122 of 1,184 repairs completed. Uh, for septic removal, we have 44 projects in the plan. Four are completed. And we have 14 in construction and, um, 12 in design. The, via, Kent and via España had two more connections this quarter. Hogue and Penwood each had one more. Um, the city of West Melbourne began construction on Lake Ashley and Dundee Circle last quarter. You might recall their contractor ended up closing up shop. They have since, um, secured a new contractor. They held their pre-construction meeting this week and anticipate mobilizing in the next week or two to continue on with that project. South Central Sea is approximately 99% complete. 149 of 152 connections are done. Um, the Mico sewer project has, the as-builds were submitted to Public Works for final review and expect, and inspection. Um, Sykes Creek M, N, and T started construction last quarter. Um, the contractor's focusing on Zone T right now and, um, installing sewer lines. And the vacuum pump house is currently under construction. Last week, uh, we received bids for, uh, South Beach's O and P. Um, it came in at $960,000 and contracting is underway. The Merritt Island Zone C and Zone F and South Banana Zone B should be going out to bid later this year. And, um, the, the others made progress in the design. And then, uh, the city of Palm Bay withdrew their Zone B septic to sewer project. So, those houses will now be eligible for septic upgrades. Do they, uh, do they, uh, do they, I'm sorry, do they say why? Yeah. They do not have any plans to accomplish that project by the 2030 goal. And they have many residents that are ready and have failing tanks now. Okay. So, do we then revise the nitrogen projections and everything based on that? That'll happen with the plan update. For, um, septic upgrades, we had an additional 98 applications this quarter and 81 more were complete for a total of 499. Um, and then for quick connections, we had nine more applications and 77 more were complete. For stormwater projects, we had three more completed this quarter. Um, 1304B West Arlington and Satellite Beach was completed and Flounder Creek up in Mims was also completed. And then Titusville Commons and City Hall tree boxes was completed. The table says 110. This makes 111 because it came in right after the tables were completed. So, um, and so they installed 11 tree boxes around Indian River Avenue in Titusville. So, the St. Johns River Water Management District Crane Creek M1 Canal Flow Restoration Project is at 99% complete. Um, and you may have seen that the governor was here on Monday to celebrate its completion. We also had the chair of St. Johns River Water Management District, uh, Rob Bradley and the FDEP Secretary, Alexis Lambert, here for that event. On the right, we have the Basin 960 denitrification project that's currently under construction. That should be substantially completed later this month. And with that is the, um, 958 vegetation harvesting project. So, they're kind of happening simultaneously. Um, the Apollo GA baffle box is currently under construction. Um, the box will hopefully be installed next week. And we're hoping to capture a video on that as it will be the largest box baffle box installed. And Danny, I'm sure we'll talk more. Okay, shave it away. Sorry. Um, we had bids come in for 1280B Flamingo, uh, road denitrification. That came in at 829,000 and contracting is currently underway. Um, we have the three pond retrofits. Uh, Welty is, uh, came out to 205,000 for construction. Lake Washington and Croton, 183,000. And North Wickham and Conservation Place, 394,000. We have 14 others that are in the design phase. This quarter, the Huntington Pond project completed surveys and will start modeling. Uh, Cocoa withdrew their Forest Avenue outfall base flow project. Um, Cocoa Beach's ramp road project opened bids and is contracting at 914,000. The Espanola contract is, um, being routed for signature as we speak. And the Coleman Pond, Tennessee Baffle Box, and Osprey Pond circulators, uh, contracts were all executed this quarter. For vegetation harvesting, uh, we have 10 projects in the plan. Nine have been completed. Um, this quarter, the unincorporated countywide vegetation harvesting two project was complete at Kelly Park. And we will have a video on that, um, later this morning. This project ended up removing 2.7 million pounds of vegetation, equivalent to 4,208 pounds of total nitrogen and 602 pounds of total phosphorus, per the laboratory analysis. And there's some before and afters of the work done there. Muck removal. We have 21 muck removal and 16 interstitial projects in the plan. Um, three have been completed for muck and two for interstitial. Um, this quarter, construction continued on the Grand Canal, uh, project with 493,934 cubic yards of material dredged. Um, a change order was executed to add additional muck to be removed. And this project will be, the muck removal portion of the project will be completed by the end of November and the dredge material management area site restoration will be completed by the end of February. So here, I wanted to share, uh, resident on Berkeley Canal shared the photo on the left showing the muck up to the water level, um, near their seawall. And then about one week post-dredging, our team went out there to check it out. And you can already see little fish swimming around in that exact same area. So, quite an improvement. The phase one portion of the Sykes Creek project originally dredged 76,500 cubic yards of muck. And now we are investigating disposal options and preparing a request for proposals for land orders, or, sorry, land owners, as directed by the board. Um, the O'Galley muck dredging project, um, St. John's approved the agreement to use the micko dredge material containment area on Tuesday. So we're working with FPL for an easement. And once that is approved, we will execute the contract to get the dredging started. Um, this quarter, the Cocoa Beach Golf Muck project obtained their, both of their permits for the Army Corps and FDEP and are working on, uh, bids. Those should be opened in the next month or two. The oyster bars, we have 26 projects in the plan and 12 are complete. Um, this quarter, the Brevard Zoo completed the North Indian River Lagoon Oyster 2 project, which installed over 21,000 square feet of oyster bars. And then they also, um, constructed 12,065 square feet on the North Indian River 3 contract. And for planted shorelines, we have 10 projects in the plan. Nine are complete. Um, this quarter, the Titusville Causeway Living Shoreline was completed. Um, the plantings here included mangroves, cord grasses, sea grapes, cabbage palms, and a few others. And here they are installing one of the trees. And, um, so Sorrel provided the cost share for the Living Shoreline portion of this project, but it was overall a much larger scale project that also included, um, planting four acres of seagrass, installing 650, uh, wave, sorry, I had to click a button, wave attenuation devices, and dispersed over 4 million clams. Um, so, and I just, I love this picture, so I know you saw it last quarter, but I wanted to share it again, because it really shows the, uh, wave energy being diffused with those attenuation devices. But no, now I can't do it. Okay, um, now we have our clam restoration. So we have, um, 10 of 11 farmers. I did get an application yesterday, uh, so that will make 11. And we did, last month, approve the BCR for, um, or approve the, to expand this program. So we just got the budget change request approved, and we will, these numbers will be changed next quarter to reflect those. Um, and we are also working on, um, getting the, uh, restoration of native clams for the Titusville project and the Grant Island, uh, contracts executed. So those will be getting started in the next, um, month or so as well. So as an overview, we have, um, annual reduction of 141,000 pounds of total nitrogen and one-time reduction of 132,000 pounds, equaling over 273,000 pounds of total nitrogen reduction. Um, we have received 212 scopes of work. 200 projects are in or have completed the design phase. 144 have completed construction, you know, are in or have completed construction, and we have, now it's 111 with the Titusville project. So, I should have changed that, sorry. And then here is a infographic representing all of those numbers. It's a little easier to see this way. And then here we are with, um, the money. And that is all I have. Any questions? Gary, when you talked about it, the front about the wastewater treatment facilities, and you had a new bid, and it was half or thereabouts. So how does that fit with the original cost estimates, the most current bid? Uh, so, like, compared to Sorrel funding? Yeah. So the, I, yeah, I think we're, Sorrel's providing $6.5 million. They also have a, I want to say $2.8 million grant, so it puts them very close to having all the funding they need. Thank you. And that bid in half is for the same amount of work? They, I don't know exactly what they changed, um, but they changed something to make it a smaller scale project. But it should still have the same nutrient reduction. Thanks. Good morning, Brad. Good morning. All right, so we're going to talk about, uh, communications for the second quarter of the year, so April through June. And, uh, this is the overview on the Save Our Indian River Lagoon website, so the county website, uh, you know, saw a little bit of decline in the page views and site users, but nothing to be too concerned about. Um, our Lagoon Loyal website, we did see a larger dip there. Um, and some of that, so we have transitioned from the old website that MTN had managed, uh, and our new company, Sparktide, has moved things over to a new website just to make it easier for editing and purposes and things. And we also were phasing out the, um, coupons. So there was a big blast that went out to a lot of the members and things right, you know, before, in the couple months before that. So we think that's what caused that larger spike in people going to the website, and then it dropped down to kind of where it was before. Do you have to re-enter at all to get back on Lagoon Loyal, or? Um, so, yeah, you'll have to, uh, I think you do have to, on the new site, resubscribe to that. It has your account, but it might make you make a new password or something. Okay. Yeah, they're supposed to port things over, but they, yeah. That'd be good to make, have everybody know that's current member, that we're a member. Yeah, and they, they sent all that out in the emails to the people to let them know what they need to do. Okay. And, uh, so they're working on how we're going to revamp that. So for right now, there's no reporting of your actions on the site. So that got phased out this last month. And that will be coming back, just in a new format from what was done before. Brent, how has the response been to your survey that's asking people to provide information on, on the Lagoon Loyal program? Um, I'm not the one conducting it right now, so Spark Tide's been doing the- Got it. So I haven't gotten the report from them yet, so I don't know what the response numbers are. Uh-huh. I see it a lot. Yeah. Yeah, we put it out to the members first and the businesses, and then rolled it out last month to just the general public. Great. So I should be hearing something by the next meeting. Hopefully I'll have some updates on that. Thanks. And, uh, same thing with the, um, sign-ups and then the actions. You saw a spike in those because we were reminding people to report them and get your last, you know, minute actions in before we, uh, shut the program, that part of the program down. And then you see the actions drop back down for the month of June because that's when we phased it out. And then, uh, the Facebook, uh, we're, you know, continuing to get new followers, about 65,000 people reached with our posts in those three months, and about almost 4,000 people engaged, so either commenting, liking, sharing, all those posts. And our top posts were from our World Sea Turtle Day, and then, uh, one of the days our staff went out to help with the, uh, seagrass plantings in Titusville, so, uh, both of those got a bit of attention with the Sea Turtle Day shining way above everything else, but, so, a lot of people like turtles. And the, uh, Lagoon Loyal Facebook, you know, about, uh, 15,000 reach, and, you know, the engagement's a bit lower than our, uh, Sorrel website, but, um, we're just getting the new team sort of oriented on, you know, what to respond to and when to kind of let things go, um, depending on the, the comments and giving them their FAQs that they need to use, so they're getting in, in line with that. And then the top posts there were the, um, Stormwater Pond BMPs, basically, best management practices for how to treat your Stormwater Pond to be, uh, lagoon friendly, and then one with our National Wildflower Week, Pretty Pictures, draws people in. And our Instagram, Instagram's always been, uh, lower interaction than our Facebook, but, uh, we're still gaining followers there as well. And our top posts were the National Alligator Day, and then, uh, post on what to do with your grass clippings. Lagoon Loyal Instagram, they, uh, been performing a little better than, uh, Sorrel does on their reach, but, uh, their top posts both involved a day that they were doing a community activity, um, at Malabar Community Park. And then our monthly newsletter, the subscriptions to a Keep Climbing, we have been seeing a slight decline in the open rate, but we're not that concerned because the average open rate for the nation is 42%, so we're still well above the national average. And then our harmful algal bloom newsletter hasn't quite been climbing the same way. We've had some people, you know, unsubscribing from that, but not that many. The dip you see from January to February, you know, we did the year, that's just because there was an extra week of, uh, email sent out, so we just add in everyone we've contacted for that month. So you'll see some fluctuation per month, depending if there's four or five weeks in the month. And that is our overview on our communications. Thank you. Great, great open rate, by the way. That is a really good open rate. For Instagram, I'm having a similar, on a lot of the channels that I manage, and we found that there was, uh, like one of those key phrases, it's kind of popular right now, that I wouldn't have believed it if it wasn't for the young person in the office telling me it, but this, dot, dot, dot, and, and then something else, and a bunch of pictures, I mean, almost like a magnitude of significance better than a lot of the other things that we were posting was just a picture of, like, a nature trail. It was like this and a picnic. Huge reach response. You couldn't imagine the things on social that actually grab attention. So, that's a little food for thought. One other thing, Brandon, the, um, I saw the dip and almost had a heart attack, and then I realized it's your scale. So, you may want to adjust the scales a bit on your graphs to make them more realistic, zero to a hundred or something, versus that. Yeah. Okay. People usually use that to do the other side of the equation, as if they made a big improvement. Yeah. Anything else? No, great one. All right. Thanks. Yeah. All right, we're ready for, for, um, other reports and special presentations, and the first one is on the new stormwater rule that we've long been awaiting, and this is going to be on the screen, and it's Borja Crane Amores. I'm, um, Program Management Director for the Division of Water Resource Management from the Florida Department of Environmental Protection. Borja, can you hear us? Can you guys hear me? Yes. Yep. You can go ahead and share your screen. Can you guys see me as well? Yes. Okay, good morning. Good morning. You can say more if you want to about yourself, or anything about the program. Hi, Evan. Can you guys see my screen? Yes. Okay. But you're not in presenter mode yet. We see the sidebar with all the upcoming slides. Yes. That's it. Good morning. I appreciate the introduction. Thank you guys. Thank you, Brevard County and the Citizen Advisory Committee for having me on today to continue to talk about the implementation of the state stormwater rule. One of the things I thought was important is to still continue to talk about the history of the rulemaking process. And so this rulemaking effort started back in 2020 under Senate Bill 712, which was known as the Clean Waterways Act. Essentially, that bill directed the department to adopt new rules to support and improve the water quality in Florida, including the updates to the stormwater design criteria and establishing and strengthening the operation and maintenance regulations, as well as establishing statewide consistent inspection frequencies. From there, we established a technical advisory committee that met over 13 times. A summary of that report, that tax summary report, is on the department's rulemaking website. We then hosted rulemaking workshops, as well as initiated a public hearing. And so on April 28th of 2023, the department did file a rule package for adoption with the Department of State. Now, due to the cost of the rulemaking, which was about $1.1 billion, because there was some lower-cost regulatory alternatives that were submitted, and as well as the amendments and certain provisions that were done under Senate Bill 7040, was essentially went into effect and signed off by the governor of Sanchez on June 28th of 2024. Where a majority of the changes in the rulemaking were done within the applicant handbook, Volume 1, on the sections that you guys see on the screen, as well as changes that were made on revisions done to Chapter 62-330 of the Florida Administrative Code. And this was essentially to provide statewide consistency on all of the stormwater design criteria to ensure increased treatment and removal of nutrients from stormwater discharge, as well as strengthening that operation and maintenance requirements. So these permitting requirements will establish a consistent application of net improvement, as well as the performance standards, to ensure that reductions of pollutant loadings to a water body where existing water quality does not meet those standards. Strengthens the requirements for the operation and maintenance, establishes the associated guidelines and plans for those regulations, includes new training opportunity that I'll talk about later, strengthens the record and documentation, and again, establishes that framework for the statewide consistent inspection frequencies. I did want to note that there were updates to the applicant handled Volume 2. The Volume 2s will still retain the attenuation requirements, as well as the special basin area. As I mentioned, there are several amendments and provisions that were done under Senate Bill 7040. Some of those things were grandfathering provisions that you see on the screen. These grandfathering provisions can be found in Section 3.1.2e. And so these activities would have needed to be either submitted or approved by a local government or an agency prior to January 1st of 2024. And if they meet those requirements, they are essentially grandfathered in from the new rule requirements until the specified expiration date. I thought this slide would give you guys a good visual effect of sort of the implementation timeline. And so what I want to do is maybe start in the middle of this, the dam criteria, the operation and maintenance, plus the cost estimate, as well as the operation maintenance plan, and then the operation maintenance certification inspection requirements. Those newly adopted forms are required as of today. So as of June 28th of 2024, when the rule went to effect, applicants are submitting these new forms with their application. If you want to look down at the bottom, the qualified inspector, this was also part of the amendments in 7040. There was a grace period that pushed this out 12 months. And so this requirement is now due as of June 20th of 2025. And I'm going to touch a little bit more on the qualified inspector program later on in this presentation. And then the last one, if you want to look up, is the performance criteria. Again, this was part of the amendments that were done. This was an 18-month grace period. And so the new performance criteria will go into effect on December 28th of 2025. I'm hopeful that this slide of this visual effect kind of gives you a quick snapshot of the criteria done in Section 8. This is probably the biggest and most important changes that were done in the rulemaking process. This is sort of the evolution from the volumetric criteria to a treatment-based performance standard. A targeted percent reduction is sort of what we're looking for. This is where ERP applicants would be required to demonstrate through calculation or modeling that their stormwater system will provide the treatment efficiencies outlined that you see in this table. These new performance standards are based on a two-pronged system where an applicant would need to have their project reduce a level of nutrients equal to pre-development or required to meet a treatment performance efficiencies listed in this table. So whichever is the more protective criteria is going to apply to their project. At a minimum, all sites, all applicants will need to start with Section 8.32 for their stormwater management system where they will be required to achieve an 80% nutrients reduction for TP, total phosphorus, and a 55% reduction for total nitrogen. You need to meet the pre-equals loading rate, so whichever is the most protective criteria is going to apply. And so depending on where you are within the HUB-12 watershed will depend on the criteria that applies to you. So if you are in a HUB-12 that discharges to an impaired water body, you'll find yourself in Section 8.3.4 and looking at the 80-80% for TNTP as well as the post is greater than equal than pre-plus net improvement. I did want to point out on redevelopment, also part of the amendments that were done, and to help encourage, incentivize redevelopment with the understanding that there's very little to note stormwater treatment on site, the original 55% for total nitrogen was reduced to 45%. I just wanted to talk a few things about some tools that we have on our Resource Center website. One of them is this online interactive ArcGIS map that contains the newly defined HUB-12 definition that was part of the rulemaking process. It also includes layers on waters not obtaining standards, the TMDL layers, and OFW layers. If you look on the right-hand side, it kind of did a mocked-up example. The highlighted blue is the northern part of the Indian River Lagoon watershed, and that is the HUB-12, with the overlay of the impairment, which is impaired for nutrients, as well as the overlay of the OFW. So in a hypothetical potential project scenario, an applicant or their project upstream of the impaired OFW, the applicant would need to consider a 95% reduction of TN and TP and post is greater than or equals a pre plus net improvement for this particular project. And so the goal here is to have this interactive GIS map to help, you know, navigate an individual as to what criteria and the rule would potentially apply to their project. Mine was to develop to help calculate by hand the nutrients loading rates for a pre-development condition and the post-development condition before treatment. There's a couple of factors that this is based on, the land-use type, the hydrology of the site, as well as the event being concentration for both total nitrogen and total phosphorus. There are several models that can also be used. I think EPA has a couple models, and I think most folks in the state of Florida are familiar with BMP trains. The next thing we did is we adopted Appendix O in the rulemaking process. This is where all of the traditional BMPs can be found, the literature, the efficiencies of those BMPs, as well as providing the design aids for green infrastructure practices are within Appendix O. The other thing we did is we, for BMP treatment trains, we developed the formula on how to calculate a treatment system in a series, so that formula is in rule. And there is an expectation that a single BMP best management practice will no longer be able to meet the targeted desire requirements, that you're most likely going to see a series of BMPs to achieve that goal. The next thing we did is we provided language on low-impact design, as well as green infrastructure practices. DEP has some great information on green infrastructure. And so the idea here is that designers and developers will maximize the design space to incorporate green infrastructure practices into that, or in conjunction with traditional BMPs. And then the last thing here is we put language for alternative design. This is sort of where the innovative technology concept is for now. I do have another slide to talk a little bit more about that. But I do want to note that this technology from the vendor still must be verified through engineering plans, as well as representative monitoring to ensure that it's going to perform as expected. And then the last grouping here are alternative methods that were actually established in the Applicant Handbooks Volume 2. They were brought over to Volume 1 to provide that statewide consistency. So if you're not familiar with overtreatment, this is where a portion of the site is not treated, and another portion of the site is treated to a higher degree. The next one is the off-site compensatory treatment. And this is where the owner of the development has land available, not at the site location, but elsewhere where they can treat the required amount of stormwater treatment upstream. I do want to note that modeling is required to account for the locational factors and to ensure that there's no localized adverse impact to the untreated project location. And then the last one I think most of you guys are familiar with are these large regional systems. This is outlined where a larger stormwater system can allocate treatment, stormwater treatment to a set drainage area. The next big kind of rulemaking initiative was in Section 12, the operation and maintenance. This section was re-advised to include and to ensure that entities capable of performing the operation and maintenance of these permitted management systems can do this in fortuity. These provisions include a better outline of the O&M plan, the cost estimate plan, as well as the supporting documentation to ensure that the O&M entity is aware of their requirements and obligations. An O&M plan was also established. The expectation here is that the stormwater system, this plan would identify the stormwater management systems, the location, the inspection frequency, the maintenance task for each of those stormwater components, and then information on the owner, as well as information on any manufactured proprietary device, should be kept within that plan guidelines. And the last thing we required is the cost estimate. This is where this estimate should be calculated in current year dollars. Essentially, it's to determine the operating expense, the costs associated with the inspections, maintenance costs for the remaining useful life of the system. You should also take into account the replacement costs and the deferred expenditures, and basically a budget for the potential for a replace or repair of that system at the end of its life. You mentioned earlier about the qualified inspector here, and so for the last eight months, we've been working diligently with the University of Florida and the IFAS extension, so shout out to Dr. Beam. But this course agenda is required, excuse me, this qualified inspector is required because the operation maintenance inspection certification form requires a qualified inspector to sign off on the inspections of those stormwater management systems. And so in the rule, we provided some flexibility on who a qualified inspector could do these inspections, and one is a registered professional, two, somebody under the supervision of a registered professional, and somebody who's gone through a training. And so in the rule, we put the minimum requirements, there's five minimum requirements that would establish this rulemaking training. And so we worked with the University of Florida and IFAS extension to develop this training curriculum. And so this course agenda is about 10 to 12 hours worth of material. There's a $100 training fee associated with taking this training. An individual would need to achieve about 75, would need to achieve 75% on the final exam. It does require recertification every five years. We did not require continuing education credits. And then we did establish a repository data system to track and maintain of those individuals who passed this training so that their active status could be available for anybody who would need somebody to do their inspections on this process. I know from talking with the University of Florida, they are looking at developing professional development hours, so stay tuned on that. But again, the importance of this is because a qualified inspector is obligated or required to sign off on the operation main inspection certification form, as well as those inspection checklists that goes attached to that form. The other thing that we've been really working on, at least since the TAC committee identified, or we had conversations on the BMP library, we've had numerous conversations with other states who have an innovative program. And so I'm pleased to announce that we have a concept in place called the Florida Cistern. It is the Florida Center of Innovative Stormwater Technology and Engineering Review Network. The concept here is that we would consider having a technical advisory committee that would receive applications of this innovative technology for their review. We at DEP are developing the standards or standard requirements, such as a quality assurance project plan, sampling and analysis plans, and technical evaluation reports that would go into standardization of what the committee would look at recommendation. And so that would be the goal. The committee would identify a BMP that beats and achieves those desired requirements, and then there would be a recommendation for use in the state of Florida. Now, the ultimate goal here is that this recommendation would come to the department, and then we would adopt that innovative technology, that best management practice, and incorporate that into Appendix O, statewide use, and it would be that statewide consistency that could be used anywhere in the state. And so I've talked to the ERP Stormwater Resource Center, and we developed this because we knew we needed to communicate our strategies, and it was important for us to get the information. And so this kind of living website, I call it a one-stop shop, has a lot of good information, all of the updated rules from the applicant handbook one to the volume twos. We have some real-world project examples up there as well, where we've taken a permitted project that was done for net improvement and overlaid that project with the same footprint to see how that project could achieve the new performance requirements. We have direct links to the green infrastructure practices, the interactive ArcGIS map that I talked about, links to the qualified inspector training is on this website. The commonly asked questions, we continue to update those, so I take a look at those. Anywhere from just how, what is this permit rulemaking mean, to some technical questions on grandfathering and minor versus major modifications, those type of questions are a part of that. Guidelines on the O&M plan to help navigate an applicant through this process. So there's a lot of good information on here, and so I encourage you guys to take a look at the website and reach out to me if you guys have any questions or concerns or anything you guys would like to see put up on the website. Like I said, it's a living, interactive website that we're continuing to monitor and make updates as needed. So with that, I'll turn it over and I guess open it up for questions. Questions. Come on. It's got to be. I'll start it off. What's the department doing towards staffing for compliance? Sorry, say that again? What's it doing for staffing for compliance? Are you depending on this inspector program for compliance? And then? The compliance of the inspections of these systems? Yes. And performance. So that application form and that inspection checklist would be submitted to, you know, either DDP or the Water Management District's e-compliance portal. And so there would be recommendations as to what is needed, if everything's satisfactory or there are some minor repairs, that there would be a follow-up to that. So depending on what the issue that is identified with that particular system would be a follow-up from one of those agencies. Is there staff available for that? When you talk about a registered professional as oversight on the inspectors, what is a registered professional? It was a professional license, a PE license, professional engineering license. So that was one option of someone who could go out there and inspect these stormwater management systems. And so we provided flexibility, and that flexibility included this training to provide individuals to go through a training that gets certified and the ability to do these inspections. And so, again, we provided the minimum requirements, and the rule was used to establish this training that was done by the University of Florida. Any other questions? I have a question. Yeah. Thank you for your presentation. That's definitely a great update to last year's little intro to this. Is there any specifications regionally? Are there any variances? I mean, Florida has such different topography from, you know, top to bottom. Are there any variances allowed, or is there specifications based on where the location is, or is this just blanket for the whole state as is? Is this question for the performance criteria or for, like, the innovative technology and what testing would go with? Just the initial plan, engineering plan. So I know there's a list of different options in the train. Is there any consideration to where, if it's coastal or interior, south Florida, or is this requirement just the same regardless? I understand the question. The performance standard requirements is statewide. You're in Excambia County or Miami-Dade County. But for the training, for the concept of the center, the Florida Citrin Center, we are still in the process of developing that field testing, the laboratory testing, where the locations, how many locations in Florida, we would simulate that. So there would be somewhat of a variation, I guess. We would have testings probably in North Florida, Central, and South Florida would be part of this process. As well as, you know, considering the data and testing that have been done at other states and how do we incorporate those into our process as well. Yeah, Kimberly. And a lot of this is going to be predicated on what the committee looks at and the feedback or request for additional information they may have on the information that's provided to them. Okay, thank you. Yeah, Kimberly, the table, the one table did show differences for OFW waters, for impaired waters, OFW impaired waters, which would be the Indian River Lagoon. And so, you know, differences there. I think that was towards your question. Yes, definitely a little bit based on that. And then impaired waters specifically for every body of water pretty much in the state. But Lagoon obviously takes precedent. Right. That's a double whammy there. Got you. All right. Thank you. And thank you again for the presentation. And let me try to. So, like, all impaired waters in the whole state have the 80-80 requirement, 80% reduction. But how you achieve that 80% reduction is going to vary depending on whether you're on the top of a dune or you're in the 100-year floodplain. And so what best management practices, what green infrastructure, what you choose will be site-dependent, but the combination of BMPs that you implement has to add up to whatever the required reduction is for the, you know, in this case, the 80% reduction or for us where we have outstanding Florida waters that are also impaired, 95% reduction. And that's all the variances with the redevelopment versus that. And then, of course, utilizing that green infrastructure aspect that you mentioned is hopefully going to take off. Yeah, and for redevelopment, I know the technical advisory committee, you know, grappled with that quite a bit because if you make it, if you make redevelopment meet the same standards, that is going to be so difficult that those sites won't redevelop. And you'll actually encourage sprawl, you'll encourage development to go to Greenfield instead of, you know, staying, keeping intensity where the people are, where the development already is. Absolutely. And that infill, and again, we don't need to say SB 180 right now, but there's definitely a lot of infrastructure aspects that would be cost-effective to mitigate there. So thank you, Virginia. Some of the stormwater projects that are being done by Sorrell are examples of treatment trains. So, yeah, so they're very good examples. Go ahead, Charlie. Yeah, so just maybe to summarize it from my mind. So the laws are, the requirements are telling what has to be met. Yeah, can you put the microphone? The, you know, what the levels of reduction have to be. But it allows a lot of flexibility in how those requirements are met. Do I understand that correctly? Right. Yes, absolutely. I really like the aspect as well, the innovative part, where they're encouraging new innovation, you know, where to put that tree. So that's, yeah, thanks, Don. Mr. Chair? Yes. I wonder if we could get a copy of Four Hot Slides. That would be very useful since there was a lot of tables in there and really good material. Sure. I'm sure we can. Well, thank you very much. Yes, thank you guys for your time. Yeah, thank you guys. Appreciate it. Thank you. Next we have restoring the historic hydrologic divide, which is very significant to what we're doing. And this is Mark Van Heeden with a supervising professional with the St. Johns River Water Management District. So the M1 canal was probably very much in your focus. Hi, good morning. Thank you. And thanks for the opportunity to talk about this significant water quality project. So I'm Mark Van Heeden with St. Johns River Water Management District. Talked about the Crane Creek M1 flow restoration projects. So starting all the way back in 2014, the Florida legislature passed Senate Bill 536, which directed DEP to study how stormwater could be used to meet future water demands. So the St. Johns River Water Management District commissioned a feasibility study to study, create and evaluate and prioritize potential stormwater capture projects that would benefit the ecological health of the Indian River Lagoon. The overall concept being that stormwater could be used as a source instead of sending it downhill at a tide. So the Crane Creek Project was one of the projects identified in the 2017 Lagoon Physibility Study Jones-Edmunds prepared. The project was highly ranked due to the cost benefit compared to other water quality projects. And the project's located in Brevard County. The M1 Canal and Drainage Basin includes parts of Melbourne, West Melbourne, Melbourne Village, and parts of unincorporated Brevard County. The project restores base flow from a diverted watershed back to the St. Johns River. The project treats the water before going back to the St. Johns River as well as reducing nutrient loads. Oh, thank you. You didn't do that? Well, it's got great timing. So to best describe the project, I like to start with the LIDAR here because it really tells the story. This map shows the elevations in colors. And so to orient you a bit, you can see I-95. I'm not sure if this, you know, the pointer's not working, but you can see I-95 on the western part. And then you can see the airport. And Crane Creek, of course, all the way on the eastern part, which discharges to the Indian River Lagoon. And so the highest elevations are represented by white, followed by red, which is lower in elevation, and yellow and green being the lowest elevations. So the north-south white ridge you see there is the highest elevations, and that's the ridge. And it's the historic drainage divide between the Indian River Lagoon and the St. Johns River. So, and this ridge goes all the way from northern Brevard County all the way through Indian River County to the south. And it varies in distance from the lagoon, from the western edge. Here it's about two miles, but the further south you go, it's a little bit further west. So, you know, any rainfall on the west side would historically go to St. Johns River, and any rainfall to the east of that ridge would go historically to the Indian River Lagoon. And so about 100 years ago, the M1 canal was built that cut through that coastal ridge, effectively draining the area from the St. Johns River Basin and diverting it to the Crane Creek and the Indian River Lagoon. Oh, it changed again. Along with that drainage came all the nutrients and suspended solids. And over time, the area west of the ridge became developed. And the M1 canal is now an important flood control feature. So the point of this project is to restore that as best we can. So here on this next slide, you can see the main components of the system. So this is the operable weir, an east pump station, a forest main, a stormwater treatment area, a west pump station, and then a discharge into the St. Johns River. So the weir is located right at the historic ridge, and it holds enough base flow back so that the east pump station, so I'm moving about three miles to the west here, I'm going back here, to the west, can pump the water back from the M1 canal into a 24-inch stormwater forest main to the west. The pipeline, shown in orange, was directionally drilled under I-95, as well as gas lines and FPL transmission lines and under the St. Johns Heritage Parkway, and finally makes it to a stormwater treatment area. And then the stormwater treatment area is the stormwater pond with a long flow path that increases residence time where sediments are settled out and that nutrient load is reduced. Next, the west pump station takes that water from the stormwater treatment area through a second 24-inch stormwater forest main, and then ultimately discharges to the St. Johns River marsh and then the St. Johns River proper. So staying with the big picture, I'm putting some numbers to it here. The project will reduce untreated stormwater discharges to the Indian River Lagoon by about 7 million gallons per day. The second benefit is that that is used for water supply for downstream users in the St. Johns River. It's estimated to remove about 24,000 pounds of nitrogen and 3,100 pounds of phosphorus per year from the lagoon. The project cost is about $23 million. And so we have grants with DEP through federal sources, $4.5 million. Brevard County, Save our Indian River Lagoon, almost $2.9 million. And FDEP, another grant, $2.4 million. And then the district paid the remaining balance. And in addition to that, Brevard County also donated the land on which the stormwater treatment area is located. And I'll talk about that a little bit more here. So construction is complete. 99% of things is what you said before, which is these couple last little details. I think right now we're just getting a SIM card so that the telemetry works. So we're that close to it. But it's all working. The pumps are working right now. Okay, so I'm just going to go over a couple of the components here, starting with the weir at the ridge. This project uses what's called an Obermeyer weir. These are specially designed steel plates that are raised with a bladder that's inflated with air. This type of weir has a couple of advantages, first being that any debris that can pass over the weir, reducing obstructions and reducing maintenance. So this is an important canal. It can't get obstructed. A lot of people live behind that canal. So also in the event of a hurricane or tropical storm, the plates are lowered well in advance, and the canal bottom kind of returns exactly the way it is today. So there's no change in flood control. Here we go. Okay. So the picture on the right is when it was being built. On the top is an example of that. That is the Obermeyer weir. While it was still dried out, we were putting it in. And on the bottom is another similar system. This isn't from St. John's. This project is another project. Okay, so here's just a quick video showing that structure. You can see on the right is the Melbourne Square Mall. This is right on Hibiscus west of Evans Road. And you can see over on the abutment wall those wall plates. And so the weir would come up for those plates. You'd see it would come up against those embedded plates within the abutment wall. You can see there's that dividing wall down the middle, and that's to help with maintenance. So down the road, if the sediment or something breaks down, we can close one side, dry it out, work on the project while keeping that flow through the other side. And I know it doesn't look like there's much flow coming through right now, but there is. It's a deep channel. The bottom of the elevation is around elevation 7. And the tops of those plates, when they're all the way up, would be around 14. The water in this picture is right around 9 or 10. We're looking west now. We're looking north. On the other side of this is the Oaks movie theater over there. Just orangey a little bit. Okay, so now the next one. We're moving west now to the East Pump Station. It's located on the west end of that M1 canal. There's no changes in the canal between the weir and this structure. So this structure you see here, the water comes in through that, through gravity, into a wet well where there's a pump station. It's much like a lift station you'd see for sanitary sewer. So in there, it has three 40-horsepower pumps and pumps those manifolded together into a 24-inch force main. It wants to move along. Sorry. So anyways, these systems are all telemetered, and they have automated systems that will turn on and off the pumps. So from there, that stormwater force main, just shy of a mile, it goes to the structure on the right circle there. That's an inflow structure into the stormwater treatment area, and that flows through this pond. There's the peninsula that's right down the middle here. It gives it some time before it flows into the west pump station that's on the left there. So here's the west pump station. So you can see these are the three 40-horsepower pumps. There's one of our construction inspectors sticking. This is just to show you the scale of these big pumps that are moving quite a bit of water through. Again, into another 24-inch force main that runs along the Heritage Parkway and then along 192 and ultimately the St. Johns River. And finally, here's the structure. This is just north of 192, and so that's the outfall structure for the whole thing. And then if you look at the bottom picture, all the way at the bottom right-hand corner there, that's that same structure. It goes in through the marsh, and way off in the distance on the top left is the – I think that's Lake Washington. You can about see that from there. So that's the Crane Creek Project in a nutshell. It's restoring flows, improving water quality, and benefiting both in the River Lagoon and the St. Johns River. And I'm happy to take any questions. Questions? Go ahead. Go ahead. That was great. I really appreciate that. I have a bunch of questions, but I guess I'll start with the first one. Up in northern Brevard County, like up in the Scottsmoor-Mims area, there's a lot of concern from residents that adding additional water to the St. Johns River from the south is going to flood their properties, you know, up in the – as the water moves north. And then you think about what happens in Aster every year. So is there concern from the district that this additional water is going to flood properties to the north? Right. Great question. So, fortunately, the amount of water we're talking about coming from this project is just orders of magnitude less than the base flow even from the St. Johns River. But in the event that a hurricane or tropical storm – because that's when people flood. In the event that's even on the horizon, we know it's coming. A couple of days before, the system is shut down. So those weirs go down, the water returns to normal flow, prevents any additional flows that you'd see in the St. Johns River. And it stays off until the flood stages in the St. Johns River receive back to normal levels. Okay. Thank you. Richard? Yeah, I was going to ask if you had – I'm sure you do – efficiencies for that treatment or you just throw it into the wetlands and – We do, and I don't remember. 80% is – let's – knock it around in my head, but I can get you those numbers more exactly. Okay, okay. The control structure, who maintains that? Is the district maintained or did you hand that over to Melbourne? The district maintains it. Okay, okay. And the same thing with the controls. So you have the SCADA and you can see what's going on and make the – okay. Right, all redundant SCADA control until I'm matured. All right, thanks. Go ahead, Kimberly. What is the vegetation maintenance plan? So, I mean, really not much in the stormwater pond itself. It operates like a stormwater. I'm sure if we see maintenance problems – I think you saw at that East Pump Station there was some floating vegetation. That's the reason we have some – sorry, some flashboards and some ballers to prevent some of that coming in. But the district would need to go out and clean any of those intake structures out. And is there a plan for what that clean-out would be? Would it be mechanical? Would it be – Mechanical at this point, yeah. We don't have any plans to spray anything. I mean, it kind of depends. Once we get the thing running, we'll have to decide exactly how the maintenance is going to play out. Okay, and then if you did use spray, would you include those numbers into what the total reduction is for your – Well, so we're going to be monitoring this project for a while. So we'll collect the water upstream and the water downstream just to verify that the nutrient loads are what we're claiming they are and to see what's going into the St. John's River as well. Okay, and then also with maintenance, before you lower the weirs, you mentioned that it also holds any kind of debris or objects that may come from surrounding properties. Is there a system in place or is that like an eyesight kind of check before you lower the weirs? Right, an eyesight type of thing. It'll be nothing more than what goes in that canal today. Okay, so before you would lower the weirs ahead of a storm or whatever event might occur, would there be a check to make sure no debris would block the flow? I mean, it would be the same debris that was in there today. Sure, if there's something that would vent flow or cause obstructions downstream, we would certainly take a look at that, absolutely. Okay, and do you know if that's already in the plan, if that's part of – That's not part of the plan, mostly because it's the same debris that would be in there today would pass through as if the project was not there. Okay, so when you said that the weirs withhold debris from going in, where would that debris collect? No, well, it passes the debris the same way the canal passes it today. Mostly, we didn't want to put a structure in there that would require gates or anything mechanical because that could be more maintenance during a storm. It needs to be open, and so instead of a top closing gate, this is a bottom opening gate. So it just pretty much allows the same – whatever's there today is going to pass the same as it does with this project in place. Okay. All right, Nick. Kind of jumping off of Kimberly's first talk question about the vegetation, along the slopes, you were saying there's some growth. What's the salinity in the water over there-ish, do you know? I don't know the salinity in the – so it should be pretty much fresh. Well, I mean, this is collecting water from stormwater runoff. So mostly fresh? Mostly fresh, yeah. Okay. I'm just imagining the maintenance could maybe be avoided if the littoral zones were planted with native plants that would be able to be maintained or at least grown and patterned. It's a lot more manageable. Absolutely. I don't know if you could get Spartina grasses in there or even mangroves, but there's a lot of surface area along the sides of all of that canal system, right? There is. I mean, and we're not doing any work in the canal system at all. And really, this water isn't taking any brackish water whatsoever. Purely, you know, it's going to be fresh water all the way through. But, yeah, that's an important littoral shelf. I mean, it's right now has a little littoral shelf, and that definitely helps with some of those nutrients. It's mostly just grass, and I saw some Australian pines, I think, over there as well. I think at the East Pump Station, but not really associated with our project. There is some there. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Go ahead. Just quickly. Thanks. One, I think the project is great. The issue that Laura Lee raised, obviously, includes individuals north of our county who are screaming about water pushback that way. So I think, I mean, one of the important issues I think we need to explain to people is, while this was 100 years ago, we're trying to make it like it has been. We happen to build in some places that are difficult, obviously, but it's important for people to understand. I think it happens a lot with what we do around the lagoon. People don't understand how it was originally because they haven't been here that long, or me for certain, as someone like Laura Lee might have been. So I think, as you talked about, I think you used the term, you know, return it. We'd open it up to put it back to normal. Well, actually, we'd open it up to put it back to abnormal, in a sense. Right. And even this project is a bit of a compromising. It's not getting every drop of water. When storm flows happen, they're going to go over that weir, and it'll go to the same place it goes to today. It's really capturing the base flow. And I appreciated the minuscule amount you mentioned, but I think people need to understand that as well, obviously. It really is such a small amount. We're talking, I was actually talking with one of the modelers just yesterday, and I don't have the numbers off the top of my head, but we're orders of magnitude less than even the base flow in the St. John's River. Thanks. Charlie, go ahead. I was just wondering, what other projects are on the horizon that would have the similar benefit to the lagoon, even if they're outside of our county here? Well, there's one real nearby, the C-10 project that's under development right now. We're not under development. We're under design right now. We just procured a design engineer, and we're right now negotiating the first 30 percent design drawings as we speak. That would be a big project, too. Good. Doralee, go ahead. Was there already some culverts in place under I-95, or did you have to design a whole passageway under I-95 to move the water to the other side? And the reason I ask is because we have a giant dam up in Titusville area made by I-95. It's got some little culverts under it that doesn't seem to move the water west the way it should. Yeah, so for this project, we did have to directionally drill under I-95. This is all new. Through, you know, a 24-inch pipe, 30 feet under I-95. I'm always amazed that I can even do it. It seems like it's magic going under those that far of a distance through a corridor with other utilities. Do you have any plans to do any projects similar to this up in the north end of the county, like specifically Titusville? So I might not be the best person to speak to that. One of our, I think, our strategic planners would know better than I would about the north of us. The city got a half-million-dollar grant from DEP to look at redirecting water away from the Indian River. So hopefully you guys will be involved in that because I think there's a lot of opportunity there. And so, you know, we have a really long residency time up there and nowhere for the water to go. So it would be good if we could get it turned away from the river. Virginia, hasn't there been a study in that direction of diversion? What was it? We have not done a study. The district has done two iterations now of feasibility studies, you know, looking for big opportunities throughout their whole district along the lagoon. And I'm not aware of anything. Yeah, I just hesitate. We did do the study. And then the results of what projects are moving forward, I don't know. Right. So the Titusville project that made their top ten or whatever is expanding on chain of lakes. But I'm not aware of a rediversion. Not either. But the C10 and Felsmere. So, you know, when you look at, and you had, Mark had the wonderful LIDAR that shows that white sandy ridge. And so when you look at what is draining to the Indian River Lagoon, that sandy ridge controls, for the most part, a lot of the northern part of the county. It's when you get to the southern part of the county that there are all these major canals crossing the ridge. So, it'll be very interesting to see what Titusville comes up with. But it shouldn't be on the scale that we've seen with the C1 rediversion, now this M1 rediversion, the C10, Felsmere, the C54. Correct. Right. Does a similar LIDAR map exist for the northern part of the county? Absolutely. Yes. How can I get a hold of one? Where can I find it? That's the North, Virginia. Yes. Yeah, it's Bach. We'll put that on Bach. It is interesting to see how far that ridge. Go ahead. Just out of curiosity, is any of the infrastructure used for this project going to be shareable with future projects, essentially? Like, if you're doing new canal rediversions, are they going to get to share some of that and kind of down the scale of any future efforts? I don't know of any plans to share any of this infrastructure with any other projects down the road. I will say the stormwater treatment area that they're using was a 60-acre site that the county provided, donated for the project that was also doing compensatory storage for the Heritage Parkway. And so we saw an opportunity for that land to do double duty in addition to compensatory storage for flooding to also be able to do stormwater treatment. So there's already a cross-connect there. There was, and a huge cost savings, too, since we were under-designed at the same time that that stormwater pond was – or actually, it was a borrow pit for the Heritage Parkway. And unfortunately, we were able to build it in the configuration that we had designed. It's worked out real well. Good. Thanks a lot. Go ahead. One more. As Virginia was talking about the ridge, and we're talking about restoring or adjusting flow to protect and to kind of preserve the lagoon and the people that live here, just curious of the historical hydrological system that was in place, you know, if there was no system like that you created and the ridge was there, how much water that would run off in the lagoon would, you know, accumulate in the lagoon? And then would there be any groundwater flow underground towards the St. John's naturally if the water was high enough in the lagoon? Would it move west underground hydrologically? Is that what would have happened? I don't know. Curious. Yeah, and that might be a bit outside of my expertise. I mean, there's – you know, interestingly on those – you can see where the canals are dug are always kind of the low point of the ridge. And so those are the spots. And this is throughout Florida. You know, they find the low spot and cut it through. But as far as, like, the groundwater steepage, how much wood have gone, I don't know. But, yeah, that's a good point. So the St. John's River in our part of the county is around elevation 20, 22, right, whereas the Indian River Lagoon is approximately sea level. So, right, so the groundwater is going to be moving the other way. Right. There's no – it would flow over the ridge before it would flow under, I guess, because of the height difference. So the pressure would be – Yeah, the pressure would be to the east. Right. Okay. Thank you. All right. Thank you. Thanks. Great. Thank you. Thanks, Mark. All right, we have Dani Straub on small box, big impact, baffle boxes in action. She's the assistant city engineer for the city of Melbourne. Okay. Are we going to hand out from you? Yes. Thank you. Yeah. Good morning. Good morning, Dani. My name is Dani Straub. I am the assistant city engineer for the city of Melbourne. And this is about our baffle box program. Big boxes are small – well, it says small box, but Melbourne is not known to do small boxes. I'll go into that a little more here in a minute. But they do make a big impact, and we've found that they need our most cost-efficient way to treat stormwater. All right, so just a little bit about Melbourne. So the city of Melbourne is that green space up there for the most part. But population numbers are just under 88,000, 20, 24. We're 51.5 square miles. We collect an ERU rate for our stormwater utility at $44 per ERU, and an ERU represents 2,500 square feet or one single-family house. So it doesn't matter if you live on a quarter-acre lot or a 10-acre lot, because we have both of those representatives in our town. You're going to pay that same rate for your ERU. And we collect a little under $3 million this last year for our stormwater utility rate. A million or so of that goes towards operations, salaries, equipment, educational programs, and those things. And we use about $2 million of that to do construction and such. This is a baffle box. So baffle boxes have been around for a long, long time. We started using ours in 2015, marked 2015. The first one went in at Lime Street. The water comes in from one side, runs through the box. As the box is wider than the pipe, the water slows down and allows the sediment that's within the box to settle out into the three chambers. The red pieces are in our modern boxes, and it prevents the sediment from stirring up as more water comes in and keeps the sediment in the bottom of the box. The generation two or three boxes have, our boxes at least, have a stainless steel trash bin that collects the material that comes in, all sorts of material that comes in. And then the water pushes through the box and then up through the skim boss max at the end, which has bold and gold in it, and then is treated. So all of our base flow that throws to the boxes are treated 24-7. Anytime there's water through, it goes. In the event of a rainfall event, this boom on the back floats up and down. So if we have a storm event, it flies up out of the way, and it allows the water to discharge through the box without causing any flooding upstream. Our concern when we started our baffle box program was to ensure that we've got to treat the water, but we can't flood the neighbors. So we monitor our flows prior to construction, and then we have a tendency to be a little probably generous in how big our boxes are, just to make sure that we're not causing any additional flooding upstream. We have several different kinds of baffle boxes in town. We have first-generation baffle boxes, which are just concrete walls, collect some trash, not as much, but definitely collect sediment and such out of them. We have boxes that have just skimmer baskets on the inside that collect debris with no bold and gold, and then the rest of them all have bold and gold in them, so they all get treated stormwater in multiple places. We have them all over town. This map indicates that most of our boxes are in the north IRL, so the city of Melbourne is in two basins, so we're both in the central IRL and in the north IRL. So we have targeted the north because we have loadings for our basin management action plan requirements. Central didn't have loadings until the last couple years, but now our other boxes are headed in that direction. We have 16 operational boxes right now, and they are all cleaned monthly. We established with the first box, then that was the concern that we had heard from all of our neighbors is, well, you've got to maintain them. I go, all right, well, let's do it. So this is all the boxes that we have in play right now. The ones highlighted in green are those that have been provided sorrel funding. There's two in there not highlighted because we haven't gone out to contract award with those yet, so we did not include those. But we want to thank you and the board for the just over $1.95 million that you guys have provided for us for our baffle box projects to do these seven projects. You've been able to offset almost 29% of our construction costs and allow us in the last five years to do all of these boxes that we probably would still be waiting on for funding to be able to do because we not only used the funding that Searle has provided, we've used that as match adjacent to our DEP grants and our legislative grants to allow us to be able to do these at a much lesser utility cost because our utility rate is lower than anyone else in the counties, and so therefore we just don't collect as much money to do construction. But thank you. We average loosely, I don't know, $800 per pound for nitrogen removal with these boxes based upon our construction cost over the last couple years. Our boxes are not little. We don't do little boxes. We have little boxes, and they're kind of funny when they go out to bed because everybody's like, what? That's only coming on two trucks. So they get a little surprised. This is our thrush box that we installed a few years ago. As you can see, it involves a lot of coordination with the contractor to get the hole ready. They've got to prepare the hole. They've got to make sure the groundwater is being taken care of and provide enough base material underneath it so these boxes sit. We use exclusively Old Castle boxes, originally Sun Tree, which were developed here in the county. They were purchased by Old Castle a few years ago, and we've been using their boxes for years now. When we made the decision to go with baffle boxes as our product of choice for construction and nutrient removal, we wanted to make sure that our crews could go out and maintain them all the same. Our wastewater department tries to use the same pumps on all of our lift stations because it's easier to send John out at midnight to go fix a pump if he knows what he's going to. If you've got 14 different types of gadgets in your system, you have to bring 14 different sets of repair kits. The baffle boxes were the same way. We wanted to make sure that we could clean them and maintain them all the same, and we've had very good success with ours. So there's some more pictures of them installing them. So it's a day's worth of events, and occasionally it's a couple days of setting these in. Picture on the upper section, they've set the stainless steel baskets on the inside. They're not installed when they come. Old Castle has to come and install those pieces separately, but they have to be placed in the bottom of the box before the tops go in because they don't fit in the grates, the holes on the top of the box. So, again, this is at our thresh location. They're setting the last piece. This box is big, but it's not our biggest one. It's our third largest box, I believe. Each of those pieces have a bottom, a riser, and a top, depending upon the height of the box. They each have hatches across the top. So that it allows for our staff to be able to open them up, maintain them, and clean them as necessary. This set of pipes is just south of Parkway, just west of the railroad tracks. So it drains a section of canal that ties into the, eventually wraps around sort of the Wickham Park ponds. Its water continues that direction. So they have set that final piece. And just to give you perspective on, it's not tiny. I could live in it if I wanted to, but I don't really want to. So as part of our maintenance operations, we had to make sure that we provided for some way to maintain them. So we had to provide training for our staff. So the vendors come to our facilities. They brought in a mock-up clear plexiglass baffle box, and they talked about how the parts and pieces work and how they show. They've been on site with our crews and are available for phone calls whenever we get something unusual that occurs in a box. They've been really helpful on allowing us to call and say, we got this basket keeps popping open. We don't know why. And they'll come out and take a look at it, and we're just a little tiny off-center. We got a leaf in the way. So, you know, leaves make big differences, let me tell you. We also schedule them once a month. That was super important for me because I wanted to make sure that these boxes didn't become impacted, and then we caused flooding upstream. We also do spot checks before events and after events to see what we've caught and what needs to be cleaned so we can get it out as quickly as possible. So we created an inspection form because we didn't have one. So this is our inspection form we're currently using. We're in the processes of doing some GIS inventory updates, and as part of that collection system, we're doing with a digital form. So we'll be able to collect this data so we'll have it a little easier for me to pull it out of an Excel spreadsheet versus having to flip through all the pages. So they go out and they inspect each of the boxes. They write down what they find. They provide us with pictures. They let us know if there's anything that needs to be broken, if we need to replace any parts and pieces, and then as necessary, they will create a work order to do that maintenance. We find all sorts of good stuff. We find balls and shoes. I don't understand. I have two children, and I know I've lost a few shoes over – I mean, my oldest is 16. But dear Lord, some of these people are buying shoes for these kids almost every day. And they're all left shoes. And they don't match. And so I don't understand. But we collect a lot of leaf debris. I mean, we're in Florida. We have oak shed three times a year, so those oak leaves come in. And you would be amazed what a little tiny oak leaf, when you get a million of them in a baffle box in this chamber, it will literally coat the entire screen. And you can't get water through it because they are stuck. They're like glue. So we pull the trash out of each one of these. We collect all of it, all sorts of plant vegetation, depending upon which section of our system it is. Some of them are plantier than others. Some of them end up with a whole lot more hydrilla than others. Some of it is just dead vegetation that's been washed down. It's just – it's amazing. This is one small, small box clean. And they traditionally pull about a million pounds of debris out of the boxes on a yearly basis so far. That's about – that's our average. But it's all sorts of good stuff. We also have a tendency at two of our boxes to collect critters. We have a box over off of Sarno that is historically known to be our gator box. There's a mother gator who is nested somewhere nearby. And since almost the day the box became operational, every year we end up with a critter in our box. What we found is the smaller guys like to get in the baskets. They hang out in there. And then they'll also hang out in the section between the boom and the outfall of the box itself. It's still water. There are little fishes that like to be in there because, again, it's still water. They hang out. They find safe to leave. We have luckily not had to have any of them removed, but we open the box. We go, hmm, we're not cleaning that right now, and we have to come back. So what else do I have in here? This is – before it's cleaned and after it's cleaned, we just collect a lot of stuff. It's just – it amazes me. We've collected – I think the last year with the phone call was, Danny, I have five propane tanks. And I go, huh, where did you find them? In the Cliff Creek box. I go, in the – in the box? And they go, yeah, there were two of them in the skimmer box, so in that stainless steel box on the side, and there were – the other three were floating around. It had propped up, opened the weir because it had gotten underneath the box, and it propped it open. I don't know where they came from, but we collected them. We disposed of them properly. We have also collected palm trees. We call it the palm tree, a 10-inch diameter palm tree. It washed down in the stream that we – the water came through. And these are our crews as they head out to clean our boxes. The city of Melbourne has its own wastewater – wastewater, sorry, stormwater, because we also have a wastewater – a stormwater vac truck, and they use them monthly to clean them. That is them getting the grossness out of the box. It's – all of that is sucked up into our vac trucks, and then our vac trucks are cleaned out with all the material, and they're placed and hauled to the dump as necessary. We just collect a bunch of stuff. Again, you can see in this one where the leaves have run up against the edges of the boxes, and that provides – slows down flow. We collect coconuts. Those are what those darker, round things in that greeny area of grossness is. It's just algae that we've collected over – collect algae. It just keeps it from moving it from downstream because that red boom in there floats up and down as necessary as it works. This is, again, cleaning another one of our boxes. All of our boxes have square hatches on them for the most part. We found that those are the easiest way to maintain them. This is one of our projects at Sherwood – it's a Sherwood Park project in the Sherwood Park neighborhood. It is not a park. It is in a subdivision-named park. As part of this project, we installed the weir across the ditch, which you can see, so we hold back more of the base flow to route it through the baffle box. This baffle box also has an educational hatch on it. We have not funded yet the park portion of this project. Eventually, there will be plans to put some park amenities out there, but right now it is just stormwater. It is not for public access. We've learned a lot of things since the first one. This is a picture of one of the ones that has gone in over off of Lime Street. Well, it's off of Croton near where Lime Street was. It was our first one. One of the other things we learned with this one is don't schedule your lane closures at the same time the county is doing a major drainage replacement under Wickham and has Wickham Road closed. The county manager doesn't like it when the road's closed. So scheduling when your closures are going to be from what some of these boxes are very important. Maintenance of traffic. Round hatches are not easy to maintain. So round hatches were developed to be able to maintain sewer manholes, and for the most part, you're not going down in a sewer manhole to pull out a lot of trash. I don't know if I have several of my guys have. They all have their confined entry training, but it's one of those things that you're not in there as often as you are monthly with a baffle box. Trying to pull all the debris out that 24-inch manhole cover is difficult. You can go with a 36-inch manhole cover, but those hatches weigh 120 pounds, and having a single person go out and move a manhole hatch of that nature is not easy. I could not do it, and that was the other thing when we started this program is we decided that we needed to have alternate staff members other than our inspection crews to be able to go out and do inspections as necessary, and if you can't open the manhole cover to get into them, you can't very well do your inspections. So we have gone to square hatches, and, well, we learned a little more about that too. So square hatches are great in that you can get in and maintain your boxes. The vendor for a very long time called these Danny hatches because everyone was calling and asking for a square hatch, and they go, you mean a Danny hatch? And I go, yeah, because the rule was if I couldn't open it before or after a storm event, then it didn't do any of us any good because a lot of times after a storm event, our staff is spread so thin that me, the engineer, needed to be able to go open them to make sure that if we had a flooding concern in the neighborhood, we knew what it was being caused by. And if I couldn't get the hatch open again, I couldn't tell you what's going on. So the one on the upper corner is one of our bell boxes, and the way that box was designed is the hatch is on top, there's a throat down two or three feet, and then there's a flat top on the box, and then it continues down into the chamber area. And we just grasped around the boxes. What we found is they're not necessarily as safe to work around. They're not unsafe, you just have to be cautious because it settles, there's grass, you've got to mow over it, which is kind of complicated. You've got to bring the weed eater in to have all that material removed around the edges. So we've gone to hard concrete tops. Yes, it's more impervious space, but it was safer for our guys and easier for them to come in and be able to walk around them and do their job effectively. Also a whole lot easier to set up the tripods for their confined entry in the event they needed to go in a box when they're on a solid surface. All these things, manatee bars, there's probably an official name for it, but that's what I've been told. I don't know why they're there. I don't remember when I did the design that I called them out, but they showed up after the box was in place, and I went, hmm, this is going to be a problem. It catches the debris. That's great. But when you have a large amount of hydrilla or vegetative mass that ends up on the end of your pipe, you've got to send a guy down there to clean it. It's complicated. It's not complicated, but it's not the easiest thing to walk down that rubble riprap. If somebody hand him, the track hoe comes over and drops the bucket in for him to load it in and then climb back out. We prefer to let the material to be truthfully go into the basket than we know we've contained it, and it's easier to clean out of a basket than it is off the end of these grates. And the other are these lovely educational boxes. And I know there are several municipalities have called and asked about them, and I have a love-hate relationship with them. They get scratched. I was amazed at how many people were out there throwing rocks at them. This is the one at Sherwood. They would pick up the big rubble that was in the ditch hardening section. We hardened that section to allow for the water to actually to slow down because it provided for a rougher surface than what was out there and prevent some erosion further downstream. They also steam up. So the humidity on the inside of the box is like your window, and the outside air creates a differential, and then you end up with fogginess. This one we had to actually clean off before we could take it. So any of you guys are going to use these, and you're going to do some sort of magic presentation. Go put some Rain-X on the inside of your box before your staff shows up or your presentation of folks come up so you can have a cleaner inside. They're also just darn big. That's a really big hole. Trying to put your tripod up that doesn't fit over that size hole for your confined entry can be problematic. We are lucky in the sense that this one hasn't had any requirements for us to go in the box to be able to get down in there, but it does cause issue. You have to sort of think through that. Is this the box that's going to have the need for you to go into it often? You're just going to have to think through with your maintenance crews and determine the right harnesses and tripods for them to be able to get in and out of a set box. The other thing is these boxes have latches on the top of them so they don't blow open once they get full. I don't know if I can pause that or not. So as you can see in here, this one's a fairly shallow box for us, but he's got a wooden pole with a ratchet on the end of it, shooting for a quarter-inch nut. You can do that at five feet. I'm not quite sure how we're going to do it at 23 feet. So we're working with the manufacturer on different ways to be able to open and close and lock these boxes as they continue to get deeper and bigger. The other thing is those two little rings that were on the front edge of that box is where he's supposed to go grab them to open them. We've already moved away from those little holes, and we use the hook just to pull the boxes up. These swing open. We have others that slide. So the manufacturer has changed the way they have done the design on some of these boxes, and we're just continuing to evolve as these boxes are being built. We're going to need some things in the future, and some of these are going to kind of sound a little silly. We need some new selfie sticks at our guys, but part of the problem is just finding them that are long enough because we need to be able to do inspections inside the box without having to go in the box. So when you're 10 feet below yourself, there's not a selfie stick that's really long enough to do that, and I'm not really comfortable duct taping a telephone to an end of a stick yet. So we're trying to figure out what the best ways for us to do on it as our boxes continue to get bigger and deeper, what our ways of doing visual inspections on those boxes are going to be. We also need to figure out some flexible tubing on our back truck. As that video showed, it's a hard metal tube, and try vacuuming without bending your knees. It's very difficult. You know, with our modern vacuums at your house, you bend over. Some of them even pivot points so you can get underneath the sofa and the couch. You can't do that with a back truck because it's a hard metal tube. So we're looking at retrofitting some of our ends of our tubes to provide some gadgets. There aren't any commercially made gadgets to attach to those back trucks, so we're having to do our own design in-house as needed to figure those out. We also have safety issues. Big hatches, deep holes involve providing confined entry and making sure all of our guys are trained properly, getting them new harnesses and new tripods attachment as possible. Also, we're working with the manufacturer. There's abilities to place, not have independent tripods, but there are ways to attach tripods to the hatch itself or to the box itself so it allows us to have to have less number of tripods because the tripod is dependent upon the size hole you're going in, and so the one at Sherwood can't use a regular tripod because you can't get one over the hatch. You have to use a different mechanism. So each one of these we're evaluating and trying to figure out. We also need to put some new tops in. I've got three old-school boxes that have round hatches that have been retrofitted. I've got two more that need to be retrofitted not only for hatches, but they need internals installed because they're just regular Gen 1 boxes just collecting settlement. We also need some new personnel. We'd like to have a dedicated mowing crew for our baffle boxes because each one of those areas has a little different need depending upon where it is. Some of them need to be weed-eated and edged differently than others because they still have the round hatches on it so as we move around. We also like to hire a baffle box maintenance crew. Our oldest box is about 10, well, the oldest new box is about 10 years old with the internals in it. So now we're starting to look at, okay, so there are wheels internal for the weirs to be able to slide up and down on. Those are going to need to be replaced at some point in time. Do we have anything? Are the baskets, do they need to be the hinges on them? You know, those parts and pieces need to be done. And having a person dedicated who can fix all those parts and pieces make our lives a little easier. Thank you. We have stuff coming soon. And I'm going to apologize for these last two slides. I'm not sure what I did when I put the presentation together, but they're not as clean as I would like for them to be. But this is the Cherry Street box. I don't know if any of you have driven up and through Melbourne lately, but there at the corner of Cherry Street and US 1 is where this box is going in. It is in line with an outfall to the lagoon. It's going to street all of that neighborhood to the west of it near the SCAT Center. It is, while not big, it's very deep. Yep. So this box is loosely 22 feet deep. That's a long way to take a piece of PVC and hit a quarter-inch nut all the way at the bottom of the box to try to get those boxes open. So we're working with the manufacturer and coming up with new methods to be able to maintain this one easier. They're helping us with that for this one, and so we'll hopefully be able to have a better program so that these type of locations can go everywhere. I want you to look at the top of this box because the next one's got slightly different. So this box goes all the way to the top with the hatches on the top. The other new one that's going to go in next Tuesday because they got their airport train permit yesterday is the Apollo GA box. So the Apollo GA box is there at the corner-ish of the Apollo and General Aviation just at the end of the runway in Melbourne. It's big. It's big. It's 23-ish feet deep. It's a little deeper than the other one, but it is a much bigger box. The canal system out there is much larger, and so having to find a way to be able to get the water in and out to make that work was a little challenging. Also, the shape of the existing ditch that the box was going in limited us in some ways to be able to how wide we could make that box. So this box is 26 1⁄2 feet long by—oh, I've lost the dimension. I have to go to my notes. I'm sorry. It's like 30 feet wide. So this box is also unique in its nature in the sense that traditionally we put two sets of baskets in that you could claim them as two boxes. They're one cover system for me, so I call them one box. But we've actually opened up the middle of this box to allow the water to come through because of our constraints. So water is going to be diverted through the two boxes through the single opening. But as part of that, the structural stability of the box, because of its depth, was compromised because we were taking out a middle section of the end of the wall. So we did what I didn't want to do and put risers on the top of these. So we've got a little under six feet of riser on these boxes. We worked with the manufacturer to make sure that they understood that this riser section had to be bigger than the hatchet was itself. So we had to make that hole as big as we physically could because if you have to stand here and run a hard straight pipe down to here, you've got to be able to get coverage of all of the basket to get all the debris out of. So we probably spent two or three back and forths trying to get them, the concrete guys, to understand the maintenance guys because they could build it, but they couldn't maintain it. But this box is coming in on Tuesday. That's the plan at the moment. I'm going to go inspect a hole this afternoon. Um, and it's, uh, 12 to 16 trucks worth of material that comes in. Some of these pieces actually come in on their side and have to be rotated before they can be set in their, in their hole. Um, our, I think our max pick weight for these pieces are 54,000 pounds. Um, but there's like 19 or 20 pieces of this box that come in. So we're excited. Um, it will be the, the largest in the U S, um, with Cliff Creek being the largest next one down east of the Mississippi. So we're not afraid of big boxes. We're also not afraid of the big benefit that they give to the lagoon. Um, they are with the boxes that have been installed at the moment. We are almost meeting all of our requirements for the 2030, um, North Lagoon nitrogen removal rates. We're pretty darn close. Um, so we, you will be seeing more of these for the central lagoon section of Melbourne as we go. Thank you. Yes. Danny, thank you for that presentation. I'm going to put my keeper of our beautiful hat on. Um, who knew a million pounds on average, and that number is going to grow in terms of the stuff that is removed from these battle boxes and from the lagoon, but I couldn't help but see the trash component of that. Do you have any thoughts about what we might be able to do, um, as a community to maybe reduce that element of it? I have some thoughts, but we'll talk about that later. So trash is hard. Um, a lot of the boxes that we've installed, and some of them are in neighborhoods that, um, we had a big push at the very beginning of the B mapping process of, oh, everybody needs to have grass in their front yard. You need to put grass, you need to, you need to have grass in your yard. And I'm like, well, but I have a homeowner that has to make the decision between sodding his front, re-sodding his front yard and, and maintaining his yard and paying for a gallon of milk. So a lot of our trash and sediment debris come from those areas that they just, don't have the funds, um, to be able to maintain a yard in some form or fashion that's going to prevent that debris coming. The other thing is people are lazy. I, I admit it, I'm lazy. Alex, can you go to the kitchen and get me a glass of water, please? I mean, that's what I do with my 16 year old. Um, but we're lazy humans. That's just the nature of who we are. So we see a lot of trash because, oh, I just finished my Starbucks. I'm just, but I don't want it in my car because there's a little bit of stuff in it. And it's going to make my car smell while I'm sitting at the parking lot. Oop, out the window it goes. I mean, we see littering like that. Or it's at the parking lot. They take it out of the car and they sit it next, on the ground next to it. You see that sort of trash all the time. Um, the other thing is with the vegetation that Florida has, um, there are a lot of folks that still aren't educated on what the vegetation you should do with when you go trim your stuff out of your yard and when to trim it. Um, I got a call the other day. So when are they going to come pick up my pile of yard debris? And I go, I don't know. Did you call and make a request? And they're like, oh no, you're supposed to just pick it up. Well, that's not how waste management contracts work anymore. They just don't automatically pick up a pile of debris. You have to make that phone call. The other thing is, you know, somebody needs to come power wash that concrete thing in my front yard because I want to put my, because my yard debris sat on it really long and it's all funny colored down and I go, concrete thing in your front yard. So I pull the address up. It's a drainage inlet. They've piled all of their leaf debris, leaf debris and stick debris and all of their trimmings on top of a drainage inlet for how many days and how many rainfalls. I don't know. But all of that material gets washed down into that inlet because there are a lot of folks that don't realize that, don't realize that Melbourne, Brevard County, Florida is a separate stormwater system versus domestic waste. There are still places in the U.S. that have a combined system and they think, oh, anything that goes down that storm inlet is going to go to the wastewater treatment plant and be treated. And that's not how it works in Florida. So you would think in this day and age everyone would know that, but I still get phone calls regularly about those questions. So trying to educate the people that trash just needs to go in the trash can, needs to be collected by a proper agency and then processed properly. But the other thing is, you just have to be careful with what you do. I mean, we have a list of discharge complaints all the time about paint because they think, again, that storm inlet is going to the wastewater treatment plant so I can pour down the house paint done on the storm inlet. So it's just continuing to educate our citizens as they, A, have been here for a while or B, is as they move it. Thank you. You're welcome. One quick question for you and then maybe for Virginia. What's the estimated lifespan on none of those? So the concrete structures themselves are a 50-year lifespan. The bold and goal is depend upon who you talk to, is 25 to 30 years depending upon. Our bold and goal mix is very specific to, it's a standard mix for the manufacturer, but we don't use any of the bold and goal mixes that have wood chips in them because it allows for a little longer longevity within that system. Great. I think I should get one CEU after that presentation, by the way. And so up in Sykes Creek, I watched them install a baffle box, but all it is is a concrete box. Are there any standards or would there be potentially any standards to ensure we put in boxes that do a little bit more like these are in locations? And these were ones where the pipe flows right into Sykes Creek. So the whole concept of a baffle box was invented here, right? And I think you got a really good impression from Danny of this evolving need and understanding of how they work. And so there are areas of Merritt Island where we installed second generation with the leaf traps and the leaf litter in that community and the behavior of the people in that community was just such that it was constantly, you know, we're also doing monthly cleaning of the leaf traps, it's causing flooding. And so there are some areas where we have had to go back to the first generation baffle boxes to prevent flooding. But certainly, you know, we're going with the second generation leaf traps and third generation Bold and Gold or other media, you know, depending on, I mean, every single one is designed individually for the needs of that community. Great. Thanks. That was great. Go ahead, Richard. Yeah, mine's more of a statement. You did a great job on forethought, trying to figure out what you're going to do and thinking about what could happen. And then to follow through, you know, you did what you said you're going to do, which I fear a lot of folks don't. They build these things and don't build them back and do the maintenance. You did the extra follow through and then follow up. I mean, every time you built one, you found more, a better improvement each time to make it easier to maintain for your folks. Because if it's hard to do it, they're going to avoid it. And you did a great job. You should be the standard for what other people do. I'm absolutely proud. Thank you. You should be proud. We are. We are. Yeah, definitely. Anything else? No question from Lorelei? Fred actually covered it. I was going to ask you about those first BAPL boxes that you put in. Do you expect that you're going to have to pull them out eventually and put in better, more technology? No, the concrete, the concrete's solid. So we don't have any issues with the concrete. So we have three boxes that we have already retrofitted. The one at, over at the end of Paradise Boulevard at Riverside. There's one in the O'Galley Yacht Basin down in the Harbor area itself. And the third one is down off of Melbourne Ave East. We, and I will tell you, the Old Castle guys did not like me for any of those. Because they all have round hatches and they're all super, the one at Mel Ave is super shallow and it was a, it's not very fun. But they did it anyway. Those three are going to have new hatches. Those are the three new hatches. But the other two that we have, the one up at O'Galley and Mosswood, we did not install that. It was actually installed as part of our county project way back in the beginning of our stormwater utility back, 99, 2000. But that one's going to be retrofitted along with the one over on West Melbourne Ave that was installed 2005-ish or so. Pop the hats, the tops off of them, put the new parts and pieces in them, and they'll be able to treat just like they have been. But they'll be collecting the material and the nitrogen removal in those. So you can take your old boxes. If your structures are stable and, you know, don't have concerns about flow and flooding issues, if you've got some of those, you can work. But a lot of those older boxes that are just the Gen 1, you have to be careful with when you retrofit them because if you put the screen baskets in, you're going to cause flooding upstream if you can't keep the leaf debris and the other material collected. So that's why the newer boxes are bigger than what the first gens were. So some of your first-string boxes just can't be retrofitted with skimmer baskets. But it doesn't mean that you couldn't put bold and gold in them and put an upflow filter in them to still get some treatment out of them. You're just not going to necessarily catch all of that stuff as it flows downstream. So one of the first stormwater projects completed under the swirl umbrella was retrofit of Generation 1 baffle boxes to Generation 2. The county had applied for grant funding to help pay for those retrofits, and it didn't come, it didn't come, it didn't come. We had a contract. We made it happen. And then all of a sudden the grant money arrived. We had just retrofitted all our boxes. So we now had these interlocal agreements with all the cities, and so we said, can you guys retrofit any of your boxes? And we did a dozen of them. Oh, no, I don't think we did. I think ours, we had just completed ours, and you go, oh, now I have some money for you. And I was like, oh, dang it, dang it. And we weren't ready with the other two. But, yeah, so we're going to continue to look at the older parts of the system. Um, baffle boxes, while they're expensive to put in when you're talking a $2 to $3 million project, depending upon where it's at, um, they're still cheaper than a pond. They're still more, they're not more efficient than a pond, but in overall longevity, they're easier to maintain for the most part. Um, and you can put them just about anywhere. They can go in the middle of the road. You just have to close the road down when you're out there cleaning them, versus buying up land to create a pond to be able to do treatment. One more. Um, you probably already know the answer to do this, but when you have a long period with no rain, and you get a heavy rain that scours the lines, you know that's the time to already go out there and clean. Okay, I figured you had that one figured out already. Yeah, no, no, um, our guys not only during, and I say rain events, because on occasion we had a, well, we unfortunately had structural damage down at one of our civic centers, because we got four inches of rain in about five seconds. Um, our guys have gone down and checked the two boxes that are nearby, just to ensure that they didn't end up with any extra, we'll get extra debris. If we've gone for a long period of time, it's been super dry, and then we get a bigger rain, we end up with more stuff in the boxes, because washing downstream. Thank you. All right. Um, by the way, these flyers are what we send to our, to the public when we put a new box in. Um, we use this as our sign, um, at our baffle boxes for education purposes. Um, so it just kind of gives you a little sort of pictorial version of what a baffle box looks like. I have another presentation, Jennifer Thompson, um, from staff. Very. No expectations, right? Yeah. You can do anything. Wow. All right, so I work with the Natural Resources Department. I just want to say thank you. It is wonderful to be in a room full of science-loving people. This is a great change. Um, and so we're going to pivot a little bit away from the, the engineering side, more towards the biology. And the ecology. Um, so I'm the environmental specialist. I'm usually the, the girl in waders and, and looking real pretty out in the lagoon or in a storm system, uh, looking inside baffle boxes, lifting manholes. So I'm delighted to be able to dress like this today. I appreciate wearing my heels. So we've got this gorgeous lagoon. We all know, you know, back in the fifties, forties, we see pictures, we see artistic renderations. Um, that's not what we have as much anymore. Um, so how do you cure that impaired waterway? And so we start talking about some of these different, um, issues that keep coming. Nature, she is, she's a fickle lady. She likes to change her mind. Uh, she likes to fill in things. Uh, people think they're so smart. Mm-mm, not all the time. Um, so we see these algae blooms, uh, conditions change, especially here in Florida, uh, at the drop of a dime with all the water. And all of a sudden with the people living here, you get these changes. Um, sometimes that happen quite fast. So when we've got these waterways, we know we need to improve the water quality. We know the, the biology and, you know, people from fishing aspects are like, wow, I used to have so many sports fish in this great cove. And now I'm lucky if I find some mullet. So what do you do? Um, so we decided to take that step back and figure out, all right, as a human, what can I really try to, not necessarily control, but, um, to, to focus on. Maybe to try and improve, because there's so many different factors. Uh, we talked about litter and, uh, animals being here. Um, the nitrogen cycle is something that at least we know, um, on the ground level and in our waterways. What we can try to, um, improve in and make conditions ideal again for them. And specifically, we are looking at that denitrification system. So, uh, we're going to be looking, I know it's a, it's a lot of science. I'm going to keep it light. But, um, when you look at the nitrogen fixing bacteria, we've got nitrates and, and that's what's feeding the algae. It's what's, uh, harming a lot of the organisms out here. So, we have taken, uh, again, that step back and looked at some of the projects that we can implement that is going to denitrify our water. So, one of them up in, uh, District 1, a lovely, uh, ditch that goes directly to the lagoon, towards the end of the basin. And so, what we looked at is natural conditions and how can we kind of augment that? How can we use that to our advantage and allow for a good environment for the bacteria to take that nitrogen out of the system and back up in the atmosphere? That way, we're not feeding the algae anymore. So, uh, we looked at, uh, it's over 300 linear feet of, um, that, that kind of dried grass area. So, we laid, uh, 36-inch pipes down there and we line, or excuse me, inside is 50% sand with 50% of wood chips, um, big surface area. Something really good, dark and wet all the time. That way, the denitrifying bacteria is going to be able to live in there, uh, and thrive. So, after we built this, uh, back in 2022, we looked at, um, what, how are we going to sample this? Um, because it's an open system, right? So, you don't want birds pooping or fish swimming up into my, uh, my sample gear. So, what we looked at is the water coming into the system, which is that black pipe on the left. And then also, as it's pulled inside, we've got a, um, a solar panel. You can kind of see there in the background by the truck. Um, it's creating, like, basically a vortex and it's pulling the water on two different sides underground where you can drive that easement. And it, it makes, like, a, uh, circular pattern. And so, it's spiraling that water into, uh, and through that media, that wood chip and sand. That way, we can bind some of the phosphorus. That way, we can, um, have a perfect environment for the denitrifying bacteria to live in. Um, and then that little white PVC pipe is where it all comes back out into the same swale, excuse me, same ditch. So, when we sample, we're only looking at what's coming out of that pipe. Now, you'll notice there's a lot of riprap. That's to help out with the, uh, the organic nitrogen. So, our focus was the inorganic nitrogen, uh, the nitrates and the nitrites. So, with that, we did pretty good. So, nitrates like that first phase, um, but the nitrates, that's what we really wanted to change because that is what the algae loves to feed on. So, we did a tremendous job of taking away their food supply. So, a lot of the, uh, you know, going forward, you look at that downstream compared to the upstream. And so, you see a lot of vegetation upstream. You see, um, you know, fish are kind of hanging out, but there's a darkened color. And then downstream, you can see physically that, that condition of water that's been improved. Um, as that water hits the rocks and then continues downstream, now you've increased the oxygen and the clarity of the water. So, um, we've been sampling that twice a month for, since 2022. Uh, we're going to continue that process. Again, we're looking at the, uh, the binding of the sand, uh, with the phosphorus now. Um, but the, the nitrate, nitrate is really what we were focusing on in the beginning, um, to, to get that out of our water. Um, that way it's less food potential for the, uh, the bacteria and the algae. So, we also looked at another project, um, down in District 4. So, this is going to be Melbourne. And we looked at, um, as opposed to the, the, the direct water quality that was going down a canal way into the lagoon. And we want to do a little bit more of a scientific study. Um, open systems are great because that's mostly what we have. But as a scientist, it's a little tough to say, well, this is the one thing. We definitely change that. If it's not contained, it's really difficult to say it was definitely us. This system does that. So, what we did, we came out and this is, you know, the pond's lovely. It's great. And it, and it does its natural, uh, reduction of nitrogen and phosphorus. However, we came and we added a little extra goodies. Uh, so, we get the pipes. Um, so, these are also 36-inch, um, uh, corrugated pipes. And so, we put them along that bank. We used something that, uh, hmm, I don't know that we're going to use again. But at the time, it seemed like a great idea. We called it, the company called it a thirsty duck. And it draws in water at a particular, um, depth. When the, when the water arises, it'll suck in the water and allow it into the systems. Um, so, as water is flowing into any of these three, it's diverted from the same source. So, you've got one source of water that you're easily able to test. It goes into these three pipes. Each of the three pipes had different media. We tested, um, from EcoSense, the Nutrigon, uh, mixture, which has some organic and inorganic compounds. We have bold and gold, um, which again, or, uh, mostly the inorganics to bind, and then wood chips in the third. And so, it was a simultaneous, water is moving the exact same time. It's about a three and a half hour contact time, uh, through about 300 feet of media. All come from the same source. So, again, it was a really nice scientific study. Um, this has been going on since 2017. So, we've got some data for you guys. Um, basically, what we wanted to know is, what should we be using? If it's saturated all the time, if it's not exposed to the oxygen, if it's conditions that we usually see in these channels, what should we be using? You know, we hear about different cost analysis benefits and the breakdowns. But really, until you test it out in the field, you don't know. Um, so, that's exactly what we did. Uh, so, when you start looking at the percentage, mm, certain numbers jump out at you. Um, the good news is, what we usually use for our, uh, Brevard County systems is the wood chips. Um, and sometimes we'll add sand or, um, iron-enhanced sand. We'll, we'll add some goodies. But again, in 2017, this is what we, those were the three primary targets. Um, so, looking at the wood chips, we definitively found out that that was the front runner for reductions. Um, and also for the cost, uh, benefit, that is definitely what we were hoping for because it's sometimes not as, uh, expensive as your, your Bold and Gold and your Nutrigon. Um, and we've, we've got that readily available. So, uh, thankfully, uh, that's continuing as far as a sampling project. Um, again, since 2017, that is, uh, a lot of sampling, a lot of different rainy seasons and hurricanes. Um, the only hiccup with this particular project is, again, I was talking about that thirsty deck. When water elevations are at a particular level, that's when it pushes through. Uh, Mother Nature says, I'm going to give you 0.02 inches today, and I'm going to give you three inches tomorrow. So, you try to play with those numbers. It is difficult, uh, with the volumes because things have to be kind of just right. Um, which is why there's not a huge number of sample events because you have to have, uh, nature kind of cooperating with us, uh, to push through that water, through the system. So, you don't want to sample stagnant water. Um, you want, um, you want fresh, whatever that bacteria is, is feeding on, and then the cleaner water downstream, that's what you want to sample. That way there's not any kind of, uh, bias in there. So, when we're out there sampling, we're looking at which, which media is going to be more, uh, suited for a particular site. So, as long as it's saturated, um, again, so now there's not oxygen for that bacteria to feed on, now you've got these numbers. Um, so we learned, uh, very important lessons. Uh, FDEP here recently has asked for, if you're going to use something else other than the bold and gold, um, you need a lot of data after many years of, uh, for research to say definitively, yes, this is working. This, this is how much nitrogen is being taken out or how much phosphorus is being taken out. You can get the credits. Um, so this will be continuing. Um, the only thing I'll touch on for this one, uh, organic nitrogen. So, again, this is a denitrification system. That wasn't the goal. It was inorganics to get rid of, which most definitely happened looking at those numbers. What we did was we took a step back and said, all right, well, what else can we do? How do you address the organics, uh, in the system? Because the water is coming in from wetland areas and, uh, developed areas. So we've got a lot of trees, a lot of leaves, uh, all coming in. And, and so that, that changes the numbers a little bit. What do you do? So in order to address that issue, we've taken that step back and looked, we're, we're adding in a, um, solar bee. So that's going to be taking water from the bottom and kind of pushing it up and aerating it a little bit more, uh, which should be able to take care of some of the organic components, just making that overall health of the pond increase. Um, but as far as the underground part of this, and a lot of times we use, uh, this media in like just swales, ditches on the side of the road that you'd never even know is having treatment. Um, we're looking at what is the most beneficial in our systems. Uh, we get different salinities, we get different pHs, depending on where you are. Um, even the districts, um, again, that first project I showed you, Sunset, there's a higher salt content up there. Well, that's going to react differently in our media. You're going to have different variations in the bacteria. So anyway, there are some really good outcomes with this, um, as far as reducing our nitrogen, that's all going downstream and eventually into the lagoon. Um, we were delighted to see that statistically significant changes, like we are making a difference with the, um, the, the nitrate especially. Um, but all these components are helping clean the water quality and, um, downstream. Downstream, the issues, you don't see the vegetation growing in and choking out the, uh, the ditches. We're seeing improvements. So that is about all I've got. So thank you for having me up here, and I will be more than happy to answer any questions. Yes. Um, does it do, does one of the mediums last longer than others? And what's the replacement on these? So, uh, that's also part of the study, uh, with that second project I showed you guys. We, again, you hear things like, oh, it's about 20 years for wood chips. No one's really studied that, but we certainly haven't. Um, so this is, again, very few projects are isolated. You've got all these other field components coming in and, and wreaking havoc. Um, this one doesn't matter if a hurricane comes through, doesn't matter if a flock of birds comes over. And that is what is going in that pipe, so we're able to definitively say that is the wood chip, um, versus the, the bold and gold versus the nutrigon. So, um, we're, we're actually looking into that, um, continually, actually. Uh, so we're looking at the microbial population in there, uh, to see, is it, is it sloughing off? Is it adding to the nitrogen at some point? Because we've heard, yeah, uh, stories, but no one has any, I haven't seen a study yet that says 13 months, that's when things start changing, that it, you see these little augmentations in numbers sometimes with, again, outside influences, because usually you don't have a closed system. So that is absolutely something we're investigating, which is why we're still, uh, sampling to this day after, what, uh, eight years. So we'll be continuing that probably until I retire. Good. More questions? Yes. Um, yeah, I was just wondering, um, I think you answered the question in what you were just saying. So that, the Sunset, um, Avenue, um, project, that's just a sampling thing then, right? You're just diverting a little bit of water out of the ditch and through your system and then looking at what it's, what it's done when it comes out, right? So the idea with that, oh, sorry, go ahead. Yeah. So it, it's not like you, it's not like a baffle box where you're filtering all of the water that's in the ditch. Correct. It's just a test. Correct. Okay. So at a particular level that, that the ditch water is going to come in and get pulled into our system. Um, so really we're looking at just having that outflow, better water quality than what was coming in. Um, that particular area, well, you know, it's your district. Um, the idea of, uh, slightly developed, uh, most of that water basin, that is agricultural. Um, there's a gentleman up the street that has a whole mob of, uh, emus. So we've got hairy cows and the next property over. So again, it's very, uh, rural. Uh, so, so yeah, the, the idea with that particular project was just how can we minimize the, the nitrogen that's going into the lagoon? Well, I mean, it's, it's more than just a, a test. We looked at the base flow, right? So, you know, 356, 365, however many days there are here, my brain's not working, but you know, most of them, you have very little rain or no rain. And so you have this, you know, base flow coming down again, and then you have a handful of days with, with heavy flow. So if we can design a system and optimize its performance for those base flow conditions, we're going to capture most of the nitrogen and then, you know, the storm events exceed that. And so the project was designed to capture just that, the daily, the, the regular daily flow and treat that. So when you get a bunch of development, does that change your results or change, change your plan on what you got to do to reduce the, the nitrates? Yes. Okay. So, so again, you start looking at, I'm not getting a science nerd out on you guys, but you'll look at the, the species of nitrogen. It comes in different forms. So the organic and inorganic, if you've got a lot of woods, if you've got agriculture, um, up there, there's still orange trees and all, you're going to look at more organic because you're, that's, what's going to be coming in. Um, if you've got this, uh, highly developed area, like in the, uh, Melbourne area, inorganics, that's where you need to focus, um, the nitrate and the nitrite, um, because that's, that's, what's going to be coming in. That, that's from our fertilizers. That's from the, so a lot of the, uh, the, the human impact, it's going to be, uh, more towards this denitrification process that's underground without any oxygen. You need that bacteria to break down to get the nitrogen back up in the atmosphere where it belongs. Um, but it definitely changes also the, uh, the flow because if you've got nice agriculture undeveloped, it's going to percolate in the soil. It's going to take its time and so you get less flashy conditions. If it's developed, you get a lot of water all at the same time. It's hard when it's pushing through a system real fast. There's not that contact time. The bacteria doesn't, can't grab onto stuff fast enough. So, uh, so yes, we do. And then that's, that's an engine. We got a lot of engineers, so they look at that, tabulate the flows and then, um, how to slow down. So, uh, Danny was mentioning it in, um, other presentations with the weirs. There's, you got to, depending on that pipe and the inflow, it slows things just that little bit. So as it's going through media, it has a chance to actually do its job. Um, so yes, we do certainly change things with, uh, depending on that, that basin and what type of water is coming in and if it's, if it's paved versus percolating through the soil. Yeah. Go ahead. Great presentation. Uh, a couple of questions about, so what is the residence time that works best for getting the inorganic out versus the organic? So for the, uh, the wood chips, uh, definitely we're looking at about four hours. We've done an independent study, uh, with different conditions. So again, you start changing salts or pH and that, that timing, um, and the population of bacteria changes. But, uh, so what we're finding is about three and a half hours is that, that really nine, three and a half to four hours is a great time for wood chips. Um, still working on the other, uh, less organic, uh, mixtures like the bold and gold and the Nutrigon. Again, usually we're hearing four hours is that kind of sweet spot though. And the wood chips works best for what we've seen in both conditions inorganic and inorganic? For what I've seen. As long as it stays saturated. Yes. Yeah. Cause again, you get organic components and you dry out that water. Well, you can get black mold and you get a whole different set of problems. Things start breaking down. So, and that's true for the Nutrigon as well. Again, they've got organic components. So you dry up that water, um, and all of a sudden your media is exposed. You're going to have just like your bathroom at home. It's not like we're going in there with bleach and spraying stuff. So maintaining levels is important. Absolutely. Uh, final question about the wood chips. What are they made of? Is it cypress? Is it oak? Is it, what's the wood chip composition? So it is playground braid two inch wood chips. And that is all I can tell you. Gotta be hardwood, not softwood. Okay. Yeah. Sorry to put you on the spot. Didn't know if there was like a specific of like, oh, cypress works better. I don't know. Okay. I, I don't know that the county is going to be, uh, inputting cypress wood chips into our systems. I would like to think now. I would make my heart sad. But, um, yeah, that's, we, we have a, uh, a source and that's a great question. Perhaps engineer who, this went in the ground before I was hired. So maybe they would know, but I, yeah, I know we look at the, uh, the manufacturer to make sure that there's not extra goodies on the wood chips. So they're playground grade. Great. Great presentation. Thanks. Could you pull up that last slide again? Absolutely. So I was looking at this and I was saying to myself, okay, that first column, those numbers on the top relate to the numbers on the bottom, right? Uh, so the percentages were, uh, you're looking at the end and then each of the three medias. However, that these are the overall, um, annual averages, the, uh, the numbers that were used for the percent change, that was every single event. What's the percent change? Got it. Okay. So that's why when they're all the same, you're actually showing some change in the bottom. Okay. Thank you. Yes. That's, that's why there's some slight differences, um, because I, sometimes there's outliers, right? So when you look at averages, that's going to automatically bias your data set. Um, so what I did was looked at each individual event and I did the percent changes just to look that way it's post hurricane. Oh, all of a sudden we have five milligrams per liter of nitrogen as opposed to our average point two. Um, so that, yes, that way it, it eliminated a lot of the bias for this percent removals. Great. Thanks. Of course. That was good. I, I love number questions. Anybody else? Fantastic. Well, I appreciate your time. Thanks for having me. Well, thank you. Thank you. All right. We've got a video. So the, uh, closing out the presentations with another video. So this was up at, uh, Kelly Park in Merritt Island where we had, uh, some, uh, stormwater treatment areas that had been overgrown with vegetation. And, uh, uh, as we've discussed previously, some of the new people might not know, but, uh, our natural resources, stormwater management has tried to reduce any spraying in the areas that they manage and pretty much have eliminated, except for a very small amount of chemicals, they have to use in areas where they can't get mechanical harvesting to, they're able to now use mechanical harvesting in all these areas to remove this vegetation. So this is showing you some of the, uh, ways that they do that. Today, we're at Kelly Park West on Merritt Island harvesting cattails mechanically out of the stormwater pond just adjacent to the park here. So mechanical harvesting entails using equipment and personnel to remove the aquatic vegetation as opposed to spraying. So in this specific case, today we're using an excavator, which is parked behind us here, to get out onto the marsh and remove these cattails. These cattails are sitting on, on basically a bed of muck. So we've got what are called like marsh mats. We drive out on the marsh mats and it gives us a nice stable place to, to set the excavator and start removing them and piling them up. So in addition to the excavator, we also have a specialized boat that we use called a WeDo. It's a, it's a really, really interesting boat with a bucket on the front that uses hydraulics to remove the plants out of the waterway. It also has a cutter bar on it where if we cannot remove them, if they're too deep, we have to use the cutter bar to cut the weed itself. When the boat gets the rake full of vegetation, in this case, cattails, he'll bring it over to the bank where we have another excavator sitting and he will remove it from the water and pile it. Cattails are a native plant in Florida. However, they can become invasive, especially in stormwater ponds that have a lot of nutrients. When they overtake that pond, it reduces its effectiveness on treating stormwater. Both the vegetation and the muck gets hauled away in a dump truck to the landfill. Once it's there, the landfill uses it for beneficial purposes for covering up the top of the landfill at night to trap in the odors and keep the garbage from getting away. Removing the cattails not only increases the footprint of the stormwater pond to allow for more treatment, but it also removes the nitrogen and phosphorus pollution that gets sucked up and absorbed into the cattails themselves, removing pollution twofold. Prior to the harvesting program, the stormwater ponds were treated with herbicides to get rid of this vegetation. Now that they've implemented this program, they've been able to reduce the amount of herbicide used. So while we were here, particularly behind me, we found several feet of legacy muck that have been basically sprayed with glyphosate for years and years and years. What we've decided to do, it's kind of outside of our spectrum of work typically, but what we've decided to do is remove the cattails off the top, then return at a later date and remove the legacy muck. This project is being funded by the Save Our Indian River Lagoon Half-Scent Sales Tax. We estimate that we will remove roughly two and a half million pounds of vegetation before the job is complete. Even though mechanical harvesting takes more effort, we felt it was important to reduce the amount of chemical pollution that was going into the lagoon through herbicide. You can reduce other chemicals that can get into the lagoon as well by reducing or eliminating your use of fertilizer and also making sure you keep up on your car maintenance to prevent it from leaking oil and other fluids that can flow down storm drains and into the lagoon. Find out more ways you can join all of us in getting to a healthier Indian River Lagoon faster. Visit us at lagoonloyal.com. That's a huge project. Yeah. What phase are you in as far as going back to get that muck, that legacy identified muck, which was that like in the initial prospects for this or was that just like you found out and you figured it out and added to it, that's excellent. Thank you. That's huge. This needs more publicity. Yes. Thank you. If I could just add, and I want to say that again, you mentioned for some of the newer people, this has just been such a groundbreaking, you know, you talk about baffle boxes being created here in Florida and the first and second generations and all of that. I mean, the work that's being done in this area specifically by going back and identifying that heavily sprayed muck, that's huge. So it really, I would love to see this data shared or in some kind of set that can be shared at some point in time. This has really described how cutting edge this county has been in a lot of aspects of this. Well, I know in the past too, the city of Melbourne really was interested in moving towards mechanical harvesting. So, I mean, Danny, you're still over there. Hey, great presentation, by the way. But just to, like, take some of this information back and to show the funding, the actual, you know, cost management, the crew. She was talking about a maintenance crew specific for baffle boxes, you know, something implemented in with mechanical harvesting on the same crew. Just because I know there is a lot of interest and desire for other municipalities and entities to do this. So that's huge data there. We have actually evaluated mechanical harvesting for our ponds. Melbourne doesn't own as many ponds as you think we do. I think we're at 20. So we just don't have as many ponds. There are a lot of ponds in Melbourne, but we don't maintain them. So most of ours are within our regional parks and ponds, parks and stormwater ponds, specifically for roadway projects. So we have looked at that. And unfortunately, our ponds, being the size and shape and the vegetation that we see in them, don't really qualify for us purchasing a harvester to allow us to do that. So we've actually talked to Titusville, because they have one, and a few other, yeah, trying to figure it out. So we're still working on trying to find a way to get the material out of the ponds. But mechanical harvesting is something we do, but we don't necessarily do it from the water's side. So, yes, and I worked with the city council was very gung-ho about it, and we're actually trying to divert some funds that were going towards spraying contracts some years ago. So just, again, with the new equipment, with the new generation of side mechanics that are available, I wasn't calling you out specifically. I was just saying it was great. I know that you were one city that had expressed interest in the past. And we continue to look at different ways to be able to maintain our parts and pieces. But, again, with our stormwater rate being what it is, some of these funner, newer technologies are a little outside of our budget at the moment. Sure. And, again, thanks for walking up, but I didn't mean to call you out specifically. But, yeah, just, again, to be able to share that data set with that information would definitely be excellent. Because, you know, some of these projects that we're funding or assisting in funding that we discuss and, you know, recommend funding for here in this committee, when the same entity is going back and adding, even out of necessity to maintain ditches, roadways, if there's an offset there of, yes, we're taking this much out, but how much are we putting back in through other projects, especially that are adjacent to or in the same watershed, you know, acute area. But it's just definitely something as we move forward that I would like to see a little more concentration on, that balance of, okay, where do we go from here? What options do we have? Like she mentioned, the mechanics, the funding wasn't there for Melbourne at that time. But as we move forward, and Brandon definitely called it out, more time-consuming, more work, but the benefit is definitely there for our goals, for sure. Go ahead, Nick. So, can I jump off of what Kimberly's talking about? Is there an interlocal agreement the county has where a municipality in Brevard County could borrow or subcontract out the team to use that same harvester? So, that was definitely part of our, you know, long vision strategy. So, what we found is that the first harvest takes the longest amount of time, and then after that, you've removed a ton of nutrients from the system, and so the regrowth is slower. We're still trying to get through the first removal on all of the county's facilities, and then hopefully we can get into a maintenance mode and have time and equipment that could be available to partner with the cities. Perfect. And you have moved, excuse me, Nick, you have moved so fast on all of this. I mean, from discussion to implementation to, you know, success videos, it's gone very quickly, especially in comparison to some of the other new techs. So, thanks again. Thank you. All right, on the old business. Any old business? Any new business? Well, there will be new business coming up. So, we'll put that to later. We have one general public comment from Vince Lamb. Good morning. I'm Vince Lamb from the Brevard Indian River Lagoon Coalition, and we have an event coming up that I want to invite all of you, everybody in the room, to attend. And October 2nd, 530 in the afternoon at Dixie Crossroads. We're hosting an event focusing on fishing and lagoon restoration. So, we're working really hard to get the fishing community to attend, and we've got an outstanding lineup of speakers. I'll share that with you a little later. We're finalizing that. But we've got sponsorship from Hells Bay Boat Works, and I will say that Chris Peterson, the owner of Hells Bay Boat Works, is going to share his perspectives from his time on the board of Captains for Clean Water. What we're looking for here is we've got a panel that's entirely made up of people that are part of the fishing community that are going to be speaking. We're going to have at least a 20-minute Q&A at the end, and we're hoping to get feedback from the attendees in terms of, you know, what do you think works? When you think about fishing and, you know, what that we're doing, if the lagoon restoration is considered to be working for lagoon restoration, I imagine we'll hear a little bit of the other part, too, of some of the things that we're doing that the fishermen don't like. We probably need to know that, too. So we have a capacity of about 150 people. Laura Lee is feeding us all. The first 45 minutes, we're going to have some really good music, and the exhibits will be open. And we'll have, I think we're going to have eight different organizations exhibiting, including the county and the IRL NEP will be a part of that. We're going to try to have some exhibitors that are fishing-specific also. Then we will launch into a program of about an hour, and then we'll have Cash Bar open afterward, and I encourage people to stick around for a while and share their thoughts. So it's a free event, but we're requiring registration on our website. I've got some cards here that have a QR code that will take you to the website. But, you know, we're just limited to essentially the first 150 people, and, you know, plus we'll have probably 20 or 30 associated with the exhibitors and speakers. So we'll have a good group of people. We're going to try and capture some of it on video so that we have, you know, so that if there's some real gems here, that we've got that captured for use again in the future and expanding beyond, you know, the direct attendance. So I hope that all of you and everybody in the room here will, you know, save the date, sign up, reserve a seat, and you're welcome to be a sponsor. You'll see that, too, where events, you know, took a little money to run, so we welcome that. Our sponsors will get this T-shirt. So, anyway, I hope to see you. Thank you. Hey, Vince. Nice T-shirt, by the way. That's on October 2nd. Yeah. Will you also be at Indian River Lagoon Day on October 18th? Yes, yes. All right. Great. Just checking, making sure. Okay, good. Yeah. Okay. Any other, by the way, suggestions from any of you are welcome, too, in terms of how we can make this as successful as possible. Just one comment. Now that I've heard it's 150, I'm glad I already signed up. It's all over Facebook, so thanks. Thank you. Any other public comments? That was the only sign-up sheet I had. All right. Comments from the members. Any final comments from the members? Wow. Go ahead, Loralee. We've got seagrass growing all along the west shore of the river in front of Titus Hill. So, after all of my complaining and pushing and threatening, it's a miracle. It's astonishing. I mean, a year ago, it looked like a desert. You know, and this year, you can stand on the Rotary Pier, which is just across the street from Dogs or Us restaurant, and walk out on the pier and look down into this just beautiful seagrass. It's all covered with epiphytes now, so it's not so beautiful anymore, but there's so much life there. It's so full of life. And you can look south, and as far as you can see are the brown patches of seagrass. A lot of Calerpa, too, out on the offshore end, and it's covered with epiphytes, too. But I'm amazed every time I walk out on that pier. So, I hope that the seagrass is moving south and that it'll just keep marching south, but I think it's miraculous the way the Titusville shoreline looks now. It's incredible. Thank you. And we see manatees ripping it up, too. Yeah, they're having a good time. So, yeah, it's pretty phenomenal. We are getting a bit of a bloom going, you know, in some areas of the lagoon, so just watch out for that. The bloom report is really good. The weekly bloom report is really good. So, sign up for that if anybody hasn't. I think you need. There is some good seagrass news from the south, all the way down to Captain Hiram's. They reported it right outside of Captain Hiram's. There's seagrass. Good. For the first time in, they can't remember. It's been about eight years the entire show. Go ahead. I'd just like to thank the presentations. They've been great the last two meetings. They really have. And I also really appreciate the fact that we're starting to get presentations on outcomes, on data, on what's going on and how it's changing. But I think at the end of the day, we can report all the process measures we want. But unless we see some outcome measures, people are going to wonder what the heck are we doing. So, I really appreciate those presentations that we're covering that. Don, one more. I know I'm a broken record, but October 18th. Well, you've got ten more minutes left. No, ten more minutes. In your really good day, Front Street Park in Melbourne. The committee's putting it on just like it does every year. And we've got some great vendors lined up, and the coalition will be there as well. And hopefully, they'll have those really cool shirts for sale. We'll see. Thanks. I hope to adjourn. We're adjourned. 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. If you want to perhaps address the question. I don't know, Dr. Thornton, I'll jump in just quickly from the perspective related to the first question there, Trustee Appelgarth. Related to the student success counselors and the academic advisors, this has been an ongoing piece for a period of time. A prior administration, I don't want to belabor the whole piece, but this was a seven-year process. The prior administration...