Save Our Indian River Lagoon on 2025-09-19 8:30 AM - Sep 19, 2025

It's a call to order and a pledge of allegiance. Don Dice. Here. Mark Schroep. Rick Nipper. Here. Bruce Larson. Here. Kimberly Newton. Are you on, Kimberly? Yes, here. Good morning. Deborah Harmon. Here. Marley Thompson. Here. Nicholas Sanzone. Here. Richard Bankhead. Here. Aaron Adams is not here yet. Kurt Smith is not here yet. Fred Goldstein. Yes. Barbara Wells-Canlon. Here. Eric is not here today. John Windsor. Here. And Charlie Venuto. Here. We do have a quorum. Thank you. We'll have the agenda. Do I have it? Motion approved. Thank you. That was Richard. I'll second. You'll second? Yeah. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Opposed? So that passes. Approval of the minutes. Kimberly, Kimberly on? She's on, but if you want her to be able to vote, we need a motion from the committee to allow her to vote virtually. Okay. I'll make that motion until I heard a vote. Second. Second. That was Richard and Fred. Kurt Scott here. Thanks. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Do we want to do the agenda again or? No, it's fine. All right. Yes. Everything's good. Okay. Approval of the minutes from last month. Do I have a motion? I'll make the motion to approve the minutes. Richard. Anybody second it? I'll second it. Barber there. And all in favor? Aye. Any opposed? So that passes. All right. Progress reports? Thank you. Okay. Good morning. We are now at 112 community projects completed and over 2,200 homeowner projects. The South Central Sea septic to sewer, all 152 properties are finally connected to sewer. And there was a huge sigh of relief in the office. That's been a long haul to make that happen. Six more quick connects to sewer completed. 31 more septic upgrades. Two more repairs to leaky private laterals. Two more derelict vessels removed. And we have a new video for you on groundwater monitoring near the end of today's agenda. The Sykes-T septic to sewer project, construction is proceeding at a nice pace. The pump station foundation has been poured, and line installation is still proceeding down the right-of-ways. Myco septic to sewer, this says final as-built are under review. That project has just a week been accepted by county utilities and DOT, so there's still some as-built issues with driveways, but that doesn't affect our ability to go ahead and send out letters for homeowners to be able to, for property owners to start connecting to that new service line. So that's major progress. South Beach's O&P, the low bid was accepted, and so the contracting for those projects is underway. Jumping down to the Crane Creek M1 Canal, FP&L installed the power, and so field testing is ongoing. They're working on a few more punchless items, but that project should be operating soon, we hope. Grand Canal muck dredging, we've now dredged over half a million cubic yards from the system. The O'Galley muck dredging, we got the St. John's approval for the disposal site. We're now awaiting a consent agreement from FPL, and we hope that was going to be last week or this week, but it should be any day now, we believe. So Sykes Creek muck dredging, we are moving forward on the request for proposals for landowners interested in taking that material. We've met with purchasing, going through the final reviews of the advertisement document. Hope to have that out on the street shortly. If you know anybody interested, please send them our way, because we will not just post through the normal advertisement process. We'll also contact anybody that we've heard of that might be interested to make sure they know that it's open and ready to apply and the deadlines. So please, please let us know. And the Titusville Causeway Resilience Project, they're installing reef arches at the west end of the shoreline. They're supposed to be arriving today. They're here. They're here. Okay. And installation, are they working this weekend? Yeah. Day before yesterday, they haven't started yet. Definitely. So, yeah, that is happening. And then on the back side, Melanie has made a few more presentations on her pond pilot program. Those are proceeding well. I got to do an adaptive management presentation at the Florida Lake Management Society Conference. Brandon's done a couple presentations, including a sort of, you know, summary of the Save Our Lagoon program at the Marine Resources Council, Brown Bag Lunch. And I'm looking forward to presenting to the Melbourne Regional Chamber of Commerce next week. Fred? Just a quick comment. I attended that presentation by Brandon for MRC, and it was excellent. I'm the one who requested the slides. By the way, that was really well done, so thank you. Great. In terms of upcoming science forums and public events, the Indian River Lagoon Coalition is having an event at Dixie Crossroads on October 2nd. People do need to RSVP to that. There's limited space and a very full list so far of attendees. October 4th, we're participating in the Space Coast Print Festival, trying to get out to different audiences, and we'll be doing a Giotaku tabling event. Ocean Research Orca is doing their annual Day in the Life of the Lagoon on October 9th. October 18th, it's missing from this list, we'll get it in next month's agenda, but is the Indian River Lagoon Day at Front Street in Melbourne. And then October 29th through 30th is the now annual Marine Resources Council Low Impact Development Conference. And in terms of future topics next month, we'll be focusing on the fourth R or the third R in the plan, the restore piece. So all of our natural filtration systems, oysters, clams, shorelines, and seagrass. That's my report. Thanks. So financial. Good morning, everyone. Good morning. We have received $4.7 million in June collections and $4 million for the quarterly discretionary. The total revenue from conception is $479 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 $449 million. And for the expenditures this fiscal year, the total assigned for the project programs is $111 million. And actual spent is $28 million. And I do want to follow up. I know last month at the meeting, Mr. Goldstein was questioning about why the comp and benefits total assigned had increased to $1,000. So I just wanted to give everybody the report that we budget for career ladder adjustments, vacancies, and staff. But the main concern is watching the actuals of what we are spending. So I just wanted to follow up with that. Okay. Any questions? Can you scroll back up to one page to those numbers? So if you look in that actuals 2025 column, you see the $479.615 actually exceeds the county's projection. We've been just below projection for many, many months now, but catching up. And so this month we finally caught up. So happy news. In looking at those over the past years, they always seem to cycle low early, come back late. And then I noticed exactly I have an extra column in mind that shows where you're at. So it's great. Thank you. I have just a general question, if you don't mind. Of that money, you said there's money that's encumbered, is locked in for projects, just haven't been done. Have we got any dates on those kind of projects, how long they've been sitting there? Is that another report at another time? Yeah. So the quarterly report, progress report, that we color code it. So you see anything that has progress in the last quarter is highlighted yellow. Anything that's completed is green. Anything that's an orangey-red color, that has been sitting idle. Do we have anything in place to push them along or to reassess whether or not we're going to keep doing that? So Terry, yes, Terry Breeden has been sending messages to the folks that have not been moving their projects along, asking for updates, expecting the committee to ask those very difficult questions in November, if not before. Okay. Yes. Perfect. Thank you. Exactly. That's what we expect of everybody, to really review that and to comment on it. And if the money is not being used, we need to shift it to something that will use it. No problem. That's our job. Good job. All right. We're going to do all things muck today. So we're going to start with a video. The spend, the price goes up. It's one of the laws of the land. Right. Not in particular. It depends on the project it gets moved to. Yeah. And so that's not in particular. So don't bank on it. I didn't not bank on it. It's just generally happening. Nothing good to know that. You know, I equated it to your wife and you are starting to build a house tomorrow and the scope's pretty clear. You put it off for two years and it's going over budget. So, excuse me. You ready? All right. We're ready for the video. We're here today at the Grand Canal site for muck removal off of Pineda Causeway in Satellite Beach. Muck is this really fine grain, organic rich sediment that settles on the bottom of the lagoon. So excess irrigation and rain carry sand, mud and plant material like grass clippings and leaves into storm drains, rivers and canals. Muck is bad for the lagoon because it's high in nutrients, phosphorus and nitrogen, which make it near impossible for natural seed grass to grow on the lagoon floor. At this site, we are starting with a hydraulic dredge. The hydraulic dredge practically works as a vacuum cleaner, neatly and accurately removing the muck off the lagoon floor. From there, the muck is pumped up to our upland site here, the dredge material management area, the MMA. The first stop up here is our sand separation basin. In that basin, the larger sand sediment will settle out of the muck. From there, our muck is sent to the geotubes. The geotubes are large permeable bags that contain the muck inside but allow the water to flow out into our controlled swales. From there, it's sent to our back end to get hit with treatment prior to discharging back into the lagoon. So these geotubes are being hit with a plate compactor. This essentially shakes the bag and gives it enough pressure for the water to escape and the muck to stay inside. So this Grand Canal site in particular is unique using the geotubes because the contractors had to get creative with such a small space to work in for the DMMA. So traditionally, the muck would have to settle out very slowly and in a large basin, but instead here it's pumped into the geotubes to dry. Once the bags are dried and deemed safe, we haul them off to a permitted disposal area. An example of a permitted disposal area would be like agricultural land where they till the muck into the soil and it's used as a natural fertilizer for plants to grow. One of the reasons we put muck removal in the Save Our Indian River Lagoon plan was that it's a legacy load that leaches nitrogen and phosphorus that feeds the algae blooms. So by removing the muck, we are decreasing the food available for algae blooms, we're increasing the oxygen levels, we're providing healthy bottoms for seagrass and other organisms to recolonize. So at the end of this Grand Canal project, we will be removing 2.7 million pounds of nitrogen and over 590,000 pounds of phosphorus. This is equivalent to the weight of over 136 school buses. While we are removing muck, we also need people to help us slow down the production of new muck. So many of our other projects, like our stormwater projects, can tie into this, but homeowners can also help out by controlling some of the components that make up muck. Things like keeping their grass clippings out of the streets and canals or reducing the amount of fertilizer they're using, picking up their pet waste. All of these components can feed that muck and create new muck. So we need to work together to slow down the process of making new muck. Residents can find tips like these and other ways they can help the lagoon by visiting lagoonloyal.com for easy ways they can decrease their own pollution footprint on the Indian River Lagoon. Any questions on that? I have a question for Abby. Where do you put the sand that's separated originally in the first phase? They use some of the sand for, like, basic site maintenance, you know, when it rains to build the roads back up, the berms, and then the contractors are responsible for dealing with the rest of the sand. So right now it's just stockpiled. Okay. I have a couple questions. So with the dewatering, I mean, the research has shown that almost all the nitrogen is actually in the water between all the sediment particles. So what is the process? They talk about treating the water before they put it back into the river. What is actually the process they use to do that to make sure that the nitrogen is actually removed? The specific process itself, it's proprietary to the company. They do treat the interstitual water, but it's similar to, you know, what they use for advanced wastewater treatment to remove the nitrogen. And then we have standards that they have to meet, and the days that they don't meet those standards, they don't get paid for treatment. And the days they do, they do get paid for treatment. Okay, that's great. That's great improvement from the first project. Are people hearing what she's saying? Is that microphone working? Can you hear me? Just barely, we can hear you. You're talking softly. I can repeat that. So the process itself is proprietary, but it's similar to what they use for advanced wastewater treatment. And then the county has set thresholds for them to meet the contractors, and they get paid on the days that they do meet those standards, and they don't get paid on the days that they don't pay for performance. And so is that, are you guys tracking local water quality to actually see where they're putting it, if there's higher nitrogen levels versus, say, a mile away type of thing? Because I understand they don't get paid if they don't meet the standards, which is great. It's a good incentive. But from the perspective of higher water quality, for them, it's a financial decision. But for the system, it's kind of a bigger, okay, they're not doing a good job, but what's the longer-term impacts? So we did do that level of testing at the discharge from our first project, from the Turkey Creek project, and we found a very small plume. That was before we started doing the interstitial treatment. We do test the water before it's discharged, but we don't test the canal after it's discharged. Okay, one of the reasons I'm asking is, you know, talking to a lot of people who spent time in the water, anglers and guides, and anyone who spends time out there, it's very patchy. You know, the algae blooms and the seagrass recovery, and there seems to be patterns developing on that patchiness. So that's why I'm asking the question, because there's a lot of sources of the patchiness, but if this is one, then maybe there's other things to think about. And then the second one along the same lines is, when the sediment is taken elsewhere, say, farm fields or whatnot, are there programs testing the effluent to see if it's higher nitrogen loads? And one reason I ask, it's not about the sediment, but biosolids coming up from South Florida is a huge problem, especially farther north than here. And the second being that in Indian River County, they actually stopped some of their reclaimed water irrigation because the nitrogen load was so heavy, it's causing localized. So are we tracking? I mean, I think this is all fantastic, but I'm kind of asking next steps. Are we tracking what happens to that nitrogen when we take it somewhere else? Is it just eventually coming back? So we have not done that sort of sampling. The Florida Inland Navigation District around their dredge material management sites has collected surface water and groundwater samples to demonstrate that that hasn't been a problem with their projects. So we haven't, you know, duplicated the spending to do that for our projects. We have looked at a larger scale on impacts to the lagoon, and Abby's going to present that data later in the agenda. So if you want to question more when we get to those slides. And with the interstitial water, we do have a video that we did on that as well. It's on our YouTube channel, and we can have Jackie share that link with you if you'd like. Yes, two quick questions. You said that approach was used where you don't have enough space. So have you compared that to the other and said, here's what we have for outflows based on either one, and is one better than the other? The geotubes are more expensive, so we only do that where the site size necessitates it. Okay, and the second question is, how many times have you not paid them? Do you know? Or that they didn't meet standard? Yeah, we do know. For the MIMS project, they were never able to achieve the targets long enough for payment, and so that was $400,000 that did not get spent at all. And so that water went out? Yeah. Not meeting standard? Gator, it's... They're meeting the standards more than, I think it was 87% of the time. Okay. Yeah, so once they got it down, they got it down. Yes. So just for clarification, I think there's two figures that are tracking the nutrient removal. There's like the one-time removal total, and then there's the ongoing every year total. So I assume that the muck removal goes into the one-time removal category. Or is there a lingering impact from muck removal that would add to the yearly total? So for muck removal, what is tracked in the plan is the flux reduction. So if it's not there, it's not annually releasing nitrogen and phosphorus. So that's a recurring benefit, and you'll hear a lot more about that in Dr. Fox's presentations. In that video, Abby also gave you the total volume, the total mass of nitrogen and phosphorus removed, but that's not what is the basis of the plan. For the interstitial treatment, that is a one-time removal, and so in the plan, that is only tracked as a one-time removal. Okay. I have one more question. Sure. So in talking to the project manager for the Titusville Causeway, did the fill that you used, did that come from the Scottsmore find site? It came from one of the find sites in the north. I don't know whether it was Mims or Scottsmore. Okay. He said it came from the north. But he said that find was not going to be used in that site anymore. They're not going to be putting dredge material there. Do you know anything about that? I do not. We did recently inquire about placing material at that site, and they did not indicate, yeah, that. But we can follow up. Would that be the Scottsmore site or the Kyla Road site? We were talking about both sites. Okay. So if either of them was available, they... Isn't it me, and one of them, they wanted to feed to them the mock, and so we haven't pursued it further because we haven't really needed to, but we got our answer. So we can follow up. Yeah, I was just curious. You know, if they're not going to use the site, does that mean that they really are going to try to use 80% of their dredge fill for beneficial projects, like I heard they said they would? I mean, that's an Army Corps goal as well, right? And they partner with the Army Corps on their projects. So, yeah, that probably is their intent. But they still need to dewater somewhere. Okay. And I know there was discussion about we couldn't use one of those sites because they were going to be developing it as a DMMA. We had used the raw land, so that may be part of it. Okay. There may be a little lost in translation there in terms of what the use, what the continuing use. Well, the Scottsmore site, I was just up there yesterday riding around, checking it out, and it is, the habitat now is really, really nice. I mean, great big trees have grown up around the outer edges, but there's a lot of pepper in the middle. But it would be nice if they're not going to use it for dredging, if it could, like, somehow not end up in the hands of a developer. Thank you. Sure. Laura Lee, actually, that's a nice tie-in for what I was going to ask a question about the site itself. Is there any plans for the site itself after the project's completed? Looking at the video, which, again, great video, really educational, easy to digest, but looking in the background of the video, the Australian pine in the background, the Brazilian pepper in the background, the project site itself, is there a plan for the site afterwards to become some sort of park or location? Because I grew up in that area and know that area pretty well. I've used it as a boat ramp many times in that area. And removing the Brazilian pepper for the project site to be installed is great because you're removing that source. But after the project is done, are there any plans to turn that into an educational park where you could talk about the project, the success, what went on there, so that when people visit it, they get connected to the project and to the environment all in one location, planting the mangroves over where the Brazilian pepper and the Australian pine are. Really could be long-term beneficial to the education and the outreach to the community about what's going on. Is there any plans for that at that location? I'm going to turn to – there's a whole restoration plan for the site. Yeah. Is this – can you all hear me? Yeah, there is. There is a restoration plan. There will be plantings, and I think there is some exotic removal component to it. But I'm not really sure about the history. There was some history with the residents not wanting this converted to any kind of park. They didn't want any parking, any people. So I think this was a very – this – we're going to plant and be done there. That was what we were directed to do. Yeah. As someone who grew up there, that's going to get used whether they like it or not. It would be nice if it was a facility that was managed well. But I understand the predicament that you're in, and I appreciate the work that you're doing. Thank you. Thank you. Virginia, we're ready to move on. Okay. Love the dialogue. So first of all, I wanted to start with a happy National Estuaries Week, which starts tomorrow. Yay. It's featured in the Water Management District's newsletter. So I wanted to quickly just sort of, you know, back up and talk about how muck remediation ended up in the project plan to begin with. And so in 2016, right, we had this horrible fish kill. We came up with a strategy of our four R's to reduce the incoming pollution, remove the legacy load pollution that had already accumulated over, you know, decades of putting too much in, restoring the natural filtration systems into the lagoon, and then responding annually to new information and new opportunities. And as described in the video, right, this legacy load is high in organic. It's lighter weight than sand. And so it accumulates in these deep pockets in the lagoon. And that means that we can go to those deep pockets and vacuum it out. So these graphs, the left side, the blue bars are nitrogen. The red bars are phosphorus levels. The top row is the Banana River Lagoon. The middle row is the North Indian River Lagoon. And the bottom row is the Central Indian River Lagoon. And for each graph, you know, they're the same. So the first column is stormwater loading. The second column is groundwater loading. The third column is atmospheric deposition. So, you know, air pollution falling back down on the lagoon. The short one there is point sources. So this includes all of the current wastewater discharges, including line breaks and, you know, emergency overflow events. And then the big bar on the right is the flux of nitrogen or phosphorus from the muck. And so you see it is the largest source of nitrogen and phosphorus in the Banana River, in the North Indian River Lagoon. And it's not the largest in the Central Lagoon, but it is significant. So it really matters where you are in the lagoon, how significant the muck is. So back in 2016, there was a lot that we did not know. We had these acoustic maps from the Water Management District of where we thought soft sediments were in the bottom of the lagoon. It was actually a measure of a lot of water in the sediments. And so that reflection of watery sediments was thought to be an indicator of soft sediments, but it turned out it was also an indicator of shelly bottom, like shell hash. And so we really had to go all over the lagoon with poles and poke, poke, poke, poke, poke, to figure out where the muck was and how deep it was. And so the folks at Florida Institute of Technology developed a system. We developed a phone app. We partnered with Marine Resources Council to train volunteer citizen scientists to go out with poles and poke on a 100-meter grid in all the places that we were curious about. And you see those little maps in the middle of the screen. We could then take those individual point data and estimate the edge, the depth, the volume of these muck deposits in deeper areas of the lagoon. And at the same time that that was happening, the researchers at Florida Tech were pulling actual core samples from the muck, taking that back to the lab. Not all muck is the same. You'll hear a lot more about that. Different muck has different amounts of organic fraction in it, and it releasing different amounts of nitrogen and phosphorus. So with that information, we can really fine-tune the limits of our projects and go after the worst muck that is having the biggest impact on the lagoon. So the previous bar charts just had four or five bars. They talked about groundwater as where nutrients were coming from. Groundwater is the conveyor of the nutrients. It's not the source of the nutrients, right? The source is what's polluting the groundwater. So whether that's septic, whether that's reclaimed water, whether that's pet waste, fertilizer, all those. So we've broken that groundwater into several different component parts. And so when we do that, you see that muck really, really dominates the picture of the lagoon. So this differentiation was based on our groundwater well data, but we also collected other sources of data. And so when you put all of that into our pie chart, you see we have on the left side lots of sources that we are going after. On the right side of the pie chart, we have atmospheric deposition, which is federally regulated. There's not a whole lot that we can do about that locally except, you know, encourage less pollution. And then you see muck flux is a very large wedge of the pie. And so the TMDLs, the Total Maximum Daily Load Standards, and the Basin Management Action Plan Standards for our areas of the lagoon, Banana and the North Indian River Lagoon, require 50 to 60 percent of nitrogen reduction. And so, you know, when you're looking at how the various slivers of that pie add up, it's really hard, it's really infeasible to achieve 50 to 60 percent reductions if we can't do much of anything about atmospheric deposition and if muck flux is just continuing to grow because there's still too much pollution going into the lagoon, we're not taking muck out, muck, muck is just, you know, growing. So, you know, in addition to that, muck gets stirred up by waves and it smothers and kills. And we know from prior work by Dr. John Treffery that if we could shut off all these inputs, if we could stop all the other pieces of the pie there, muck would still be fluxing for over 100 years. And so, you know, do we want to wait 100 years? What is the wildlife, what is the marine life going to do when it's being smothered and deprived of oxygen for 100 years? So when you think about those deep pockets in the lagoon, you can think of them as dumpsters. And right now the dumpsters are overflowing. So we in our office talk about it's time to take out the trash, right? When the trash is overflowing, you've got to empty the trash bin. So that's what we're working on. I'll say that we, right now, the current plan allocates a similar amount of funding to septic system sewage and muck flux, right? So around $170 to $200 million for each of those. And the impact of that money reduces the septic and sewer load by around 30%, reduces the muck flux by around 30%. But 30% of a big wedge is a much bigger impact than 30% of a smaller wedge. So in addition to, you know, we've got to do as much as we can on all those other parts of the pie, restricting how much pollution is coming into the lagoon. We also need to stop making the same mistakes that allow too much pollution to go in in the first place. And so we have succeeded with a whole bunch of regulatory reforms on the local and state level that help stop pollution before it's even generated. So that's my quick little primer before we hand this over to the Florida Tech team. On the pie chart slide, when you were talking about the other categories before, you know, groundwater was on your other chart. But on the pie chart, groundwater wasn't there. Is the groundwater on the pie chart the septic more or less? So in this pie chart, we've taken that groundwater, we've divided it into the septic and the reclaimed and, you know, the actual sources that are polluting the groundwater. Perfect. Just wanted to clarify. Excellent. Thank you. You have a guess. Atmospheric deposition. How much of that is coming from rocket launches? And do you expect that part of the pie chart to grow with the phenomenal predictions of increased launches at the space center? I don't. So in reading the EIS, the draft EIS documents, I believe it said it currently accounted for four or seven percent of the nitrogen. But, you know, if they're discharging more, that percent is going to go up. Thank you. If I could jump in. Just keep in mind that those atmospheric sources are coming from us. And so with this rapid growth in population of our area and the desire to have more tourists coming here all the time and that traffic on 95, just think about all the automobile exhaust. Because as efficient as the automobiles are, they're still cranking out some of these air pollutants that have been plaguing us for 100 years. Yeah. And so I'm sure Virginia remembers a long time ago that we used to have an air quality monitoring network in Brevard County that the county ran. And it was subsidized by federal funding and county funds. It went away when there was, you know, there's no problem in Florida. The air quality is fine. Sure. And so, like everything else, you know, if you don't keep a track on it, it's going to degrade. And it's really important. I know the rocket thing is a big focus for people now. Don't ignore all that car traffic. Please don't ignore that. It's very important. So, according to EPA, you know, on a national scale, atmospheric deposition is about one-third from people's cars and emissions. About one-third is from all the trucking and trains and, you know, boat transportation. And then the remaining third is industrial. So, yeah, the car piece is a very important part of the puzzle. And we don't have a whole lot of industry here. So, I would guess that the car piece for Brevard is bigger. And the car is going to Port Canaveral is pretty important to think about, too, and why they're going to Port Canaveral. Go ahead. Virginia, back to the mucs. Thinking long term. So, we pull the muc out. We know the general sources of it. Is there, lack of a better term, kind of a watershed scale map of current and, with land use plans, predicted sources of future muc? So, for example, you have a great list of things that are being done to address what would contribute to the muc, like stormwater. Do we have an idea of, like, hot spots for inputs that would be contributing to muc? Not really. Dr. Treffery did do work, you know, decades ago on the amount of sediment coming down the tributaries. And then he repeated that work in the 2016-2018 time frame and found significantly less. So, all of the stormwater erosion control measures that were adopted in stormwater rules in the 80s, I think, made a significant difference in terms of just the fine silts and clay and sand material. But the nutrients are still a problem, right? And they're coming from all of the sources in that pie chart. Sure. And then feeding the blooms, which then rot and contribute to the muc deposit. Sure. So, I guess what I'm going to do is, so, with future development, different areas may have plans for X density. If that area is a hot spot already, does that go into, say, land use decisions? Because of those effects downstream that would be higher there than another spot? So, we, as part of compliance with, is it 1379, House Bill 1379, we had to do a septic, all of the communities had to do a septic and super plan. We had to look at growth projections over the next decade. So, we looked at, you know, based on current growth patterns and where available land is, we looked at where we thought growth was likely to be and at what density. And then based on that, we identified areas that would be most beneficial to somehow ensure that they develop as sewer rather than septic. And that was all turned in in a plan last summer and has been incorporated into the Basin Management Action Plans in this last annual update. Great. Thank you. And I guess, also, what you can't forget is these are also collection points for debris. And debris includes seagrass leaves and things like that over time. And so, these are just really, a lot of them are collection points and deep, deep collection points. And so, that's going to continue and that's why it's going to be a continuing thing to maintain these areas. No, I agree. But in addition to the deep muck, most of the shallows have thin layers of muck as well. And that gets, every time you have a wind event, it gets spun up. And so, that's how I'm thinking regionally because, yes, you have the hot spots. But large areas where there's no seagrass have some pretty thick. Yeah. Part of that is the dumpsters overflowing. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. That's why, yeah, regional. Yes. In terms of that, as I pulled tires out of Sykes Creek, I had one buried a little bit deeper. And right underneath, it was this incredible layer of shell. Yep. Incredible layer of oysters. You know, they were there before they're gone. And it was maybe that far under. Yeah. Well, we're going to hear from the fellows, the people from FIT. I heard on NPR on the way in that you guys are going to talk, so I'm excited. Well, good morning. My name is Ben Cruz. I'm a graduate student at Florida Tech working towards my PhD. First of all, I want to say thank you for sending the invite. It's not every day I'm asked to talk to the actual stakeholders of the projects I'm working on. So it's nice to meet you all. I'm going to have to kind of move this. Oh, much better. Okay. So we talk a lot about muck and its impacts on the lagoon, but not many people talk about what muck actually is. And so during the course of this talk, I want to just go over what defines muck. What is it made up of? How do we understand where it comes from? And how are those processes natural and how are they advanced through human infrastructure growth? So muck, we talk about the organic matter content being the most important thing, but it's important to note that muck is mostly water and fine-grained inorganic material. It is, at worst, up to 20% organic matter, but that organic matter is what causes the adverse impacts. And its isotopic signature, primarily the delta N15 ratio in the muck, is also the same as the benthic algae in the lagoon. So it is not necessarily sewage or other detritus fueling the blooms. This muck is actually a very significant source for the blooms in the lagoon. And I really want to hit muck's role in the nutrient budgets of the lagoon. As Virginia said, the dumpsters are overflowing, and they are. Muck is quite a significant impact for the lagoon nutrient budgets. So what is muck? It has historically been really hard to define, and Dr. Treffrey gave us a really great qualitative definition back in 1997, saying that it is this black, fine-grained sediment with a high water content. If any of you have ever been in the lagoon and scooped up some sand, it is going to be this almost mayo-y, like mayonnaise-ish texture, and it's going to smell like rotten eggs. It is pretty gross when you really pick it up. But that is kind of how, if you're just out in the lagoon, take a scoop up, and you fill it in your hand, it's going to feel very squishy, very mayo-y. That is muck. Congratulations, you found a muck deposit. But qualitative definitions are not necessarily great for studying it and how we can actually map it. And so Dr. Treffrey came up with a list of boundaries for how we can actually define muck more quantitatively. And so muck is typically, on a Munsell soil chart, a color 5Y3 over 2, and that just tends to mean that it is a black to gray sediment. It is 50% or more water by weight, or 75% or more water by volume. So if I were to fill a bucket about yay big with muck, after the muck settled out in the water column, about this much of it would be muck. The rest of the bucket would be water. If we took the water out, the water would account for about 50% of the weight of the full bucket when I filled it up with muck. And 60% of the solids in that muck mixture are going to be those fine silts and clay particles that all the organic matter is absorbed to. And 10% or more, and as I just previously said, up to 20%, in some of the worst cases, are going to be that organic matter that is responsible for those fluxes. So we have this nice qualitative and now quantitative definition of muck, but that brought us back to a nice middle ground of how do we find it and map it, which led us to its pokey. And as Virginia said, we are out there poking and poking and poking. I think it's actually just easy. Can you all hear me if I just talk like this? No. Oh, okay. Can I carry this? Okay. Sorry. Bending over is... Okay, so muck is very pokey. If you reach down and feel it, it's, like I said, going to be very slippery. But if you take a PVC pipe off the side of your boat, you're going to poke it down. You're going to feel what kind of feels like something, but it's not quite the bottom. And then you can continue to poke through it to where you actually find, like you said, when you dug up the tires, the shell or the other sediment that's going to be underlying the muck. And this is a photo of a PVC pipe off the side of a boat going through what looks like submerged aquatic vegetation into the sediment. And so we started poking the sediments. Not me personally. I was not around for the beginning of this project, but I have done this. And so what we have done in the past is we've gone through and we've poked the sediment. And then we went down and validated it with scuba divers to ensure what we were feeling actually was muck. And we did this time and time again and got us to this nice little relationship. So if you're looking at these graphs, you're going to see probe penetration, and that is just a proxy for what felt like the top of the muck and then able to go down to the harder sediment and porosity. And so porosity is just going to be a proxy for the size of the sediment. So as porosity increases, your sediment grain is becoming smaller. So this is going to be our fine-grain sediments. So as we were able to penetrate deeper into what these muck deposits were, we found that it actually correlated very nicely with the fine-grain organic matter or the fine-grain sediment, which was the characteristic we were looking for in the quantitative scale. And also on top of that, we were able to find that as the probe went deeper into the sediment, it also correlated quite nicely with that organic matter content. Two of the quantitative metrics for muck, and so this middle ground between the qualitative and quantitative actually allowed us to find muck fairly reliably and fairly quickly in the lagoon and make maps like this where we could go through and say this is a fairly good map of where the muck is accumulating in the lagoon. And we started doing this over and over and over to where we have mapped a good amount of the muck in the lagoon now and actually started mapping some of the major and most well-known muck deposits that are accumulating in the areas that we expect them to be the most. But as we're talking about muck, it is important to note that muck and other mud sediments in the lagoon are not necessarily unnatural, right? So barrier islands as they exist go through periods of regression and transgression or periods of which they go further towards the ocean or further towards the landward side. That's typically a function of sea level and just sediment supply in general. But as barrier islands move, particularly when they're going through transgressive stages, they get overwashed quite a lot by the ocean going into it and they bury a lot of this muck or other muddy sediments under a layer of sand, right? And so in many cases, we actually see a removal of the muck from the system as it is buried through these overwash events. As our population has grown and infrastructure has grown on the barrier islands, we have stabilized our barrier islands. So in many cases, rightfully so, we are trying to avoid overwash events. Nobody wants to see anyone lose their house. And so one good place to really talk about this is the Spashan Inlet. The Spashan Inlet before 1940s was what was called a natural inlet. It is now stabilized. But it went through these periods of opening and closing and even in many cases migrating north and south upwards of a mile, right? So every time this inlet would open and close, it would be filling in the lagoon with some sand and in many cases burying some of the muck, creating flood shoals that later became other bits of a wetland in the lagoon. Many of these wetlands now have been converted to mosquito pits, dredge and dredge spoils have also been included in this. Mosquito pits, in some cases, we've even developed them. But one of the impacts of this is those wetlands that were created either from burying the muck or just piling up sediment created avenues for the nutrients in the muck and the other organic matter to be broken down and utilized very quickly by the vegetation on those islands. And so we've seen over time as we've developed them and used these areas for other things, we're decreasing the system's natural capacity to actually utilize the nitrogen and phosphorus from the muck. And so our system has fundamentally changed over time. We have also seen an increased amount of freshwater inputs into the lagoon, so much so that we have in three separate instances now have projects where we're pumping water back to the St. John's River to account for the freshwater inflow. And we now have more basins, right? So historically, the Indian River Lagoon had less sub-basins, but as we have built causeways, we have impacted the hydrological movement of the lagoon. And so in some cases, we're seeing increased flow in areas that historically did not have it. And in other places, we're actually seeing a total dampening of the water movement entirely, which, spoiler, is where you're actually going to see some of the most muck deposits. Muck deposits, since it absorbs to the fine-grained material, is effectively going to be a function of the amount of energy wherever you're at, right? The less energy where you are, the more it is easier for fine-grained sediment to actually settle out and accumulate. So with all this said, it is unlikely that we're going to ever return the system back to its 1950s condition, and a lot of that is just a function of population growth, right? So we've asked questions about land use. As you see, we are building and building more houses in Brevard County. We saw a slight dip last year compared to the previous years. But our population is growing, and I don't think it's fair to say that it's going to stop. So how do we now move forward understanding that we have more and more people coming here, and a lot of the land use problems are stopping the lagoonal's ability to deal with the nutrients? And so understanding the pathways for the nutrients into the IRL, these graphs are made with the data from the updated 2025 soil plan. And so muck flux from a lagoonal side is a very significant portion of the yearly loading of nutrients into the lagoon. But there are many places, as we touched earlier, like the Banana Lagoon, where it is a quite significant portion of the flux into the lagoon, over 50% in many cases. And so, as I said earlier, muck is mostly an organic mineral, but it is that fact that actually causes the organic matter to accumulate there. Have any of you ever put oil into water? It doesn't want to mix. So most organic matter is also hydrophobic, so it wants to stick to the closest thing that is not water. In that case, it is going to be those fine-grained and organic minerals. And so the fines become quite coated in organic matter. And if we look at the carbonate isotope of that organic matter, we know it is a mixture of terrestrial and marine carbon, so it is not just lawn clippings or leaves. It is also different algaes and stuff that are dying off and accumulating in these areas. And unfortunately, a lot of that organic matter is quite refractory, so it is not decomposing very quickly. It is decomposing slowly. So in many cases, the muck is actually acting as like a slow-release fertilizer, and that's not great at all. And I've already touched on this a few times, so the reason why these fine-grained organic minerals are so good at absorbing organic matter is, one, because the organic matter is hydrophobic, but another because as the surface area-to-volume ratio increases in our finer sediments, it just increases the capacity for those sediments to actually accumulate more muck. So on this graph, we're looking at porosity, and again, as porosity increases, our sediment size decreases, and then LOI is just a measure of organic matter in the sediments. So as the sediment size decreases, the organic matter content is increasing. And as I mentioned earlier, the deeper, less energetic areas of the lagoon are where we're going to see the most amount of this accumulate. And so overall, is muck a sink for nutrients? Yes and no. So muck deposits do accumulate all of the organic matter and the fines and can act as a sink if it somehow becomes removed from the system, either through an overwash event or from a dredge, right? And so we see a lot of these discrete pits that are possibly like previous dredged canals where the muck accumulates in them, but as the garbage bins overflow, it gets washed out into the lagoon, and a lot of our sediment is now becoming a more continuous muck pit where the muck is integrating into the actual sand. And so one of the most pervasive issues with the muck is that these large discrete muck pits are actually impacting the surrounding and adjacent sediments' ability to absorb nutrients that are actually causing many of them to become sources of nutrients themselves. And that leads directly into Dr. Fox's talk, so I will pass it over. Should I have any questions? Yeah. Residence time and flow, you know, how that comes into deposition, I'm sure. Yeah. Any comment on that and your regionalization of muck deposit? Yeah, so the flow really is probably going to be your biggest indicator of where the muck is, right? If there is very little energy going through a canal, any fine-grained sediments that find themselves in that sediment are going to have a lot of time to settle out in that particular area. So the residence time of that water parcel going through that canal is increased, and so that is a direct reflection of the energy going through the canal, and as you decrease the energy, the finer sediments settle out much quicker. Thank you. That was for everybody's benefit. Thank you. So this is great. There's been a lot of talk on, it covers the background behind this, so thank you, Virginia, thank you, Ben, and thank you, Abby. So our talk, this next one, is pandemonium in the Indian River Lagoon, so phosphorus and ammonium, right? When we put them together, it's pandemonium. And together, they really have caused a little bit of that. And so we're talking about benthic nutrient fluxes in Indian River Lagoon, and I want to start this by talking about the regime shift, right? And so we've talked about 2016 fish kills, and we've talked about kind of this flip-flop, right? The Indian River Lagoon used to be characterized as kind of a seagrass habitat or seagrass-dominated system. We've started in the last decade or so, right, this flip to more of an algae-dominated system. And if we look at some kind of conceptual model, so this is Ask Me et al. 2019, right? They just kind of proposed this model where as we increase nutrient concentrations in any kind of marine water body, we're going to initially see an actual benefit to the seagrasses, right? If you fertilize your plants, they're going to grow a little bit better. But what happens is as we add those nutrients, right, we also are fertilizing those algae, right? And as we increase the concentration of algae, they're starting to block the light and lead to harder competition for that seagrass as the seagrasses are no longer receiving as much light, and that causes them to start to be stressed and struggle and die. And so we can really start to see how increased nutrients contribute to a flip-flop from a seagrass-dominated system to an algae-type system. And so we've seen this, right? If we look at the seagrass data, about 2010, right, 2011, we saw that first super bloom, right? And that's exactly when we started to see this massive die-off of seagrasses. And I just want to point out that we've been working on this for a few years now, right? And in the past couple of years, we've actually started to see a rebound of seagrass. And so there's some really cool things happening out there. And so I just want to recognize those good things that are happening. But as we think about this, I want to look at this figure, right? And so this is looking at the phosphorus concentrations in IRL at a bunch of sites managed by St. John's over the past, since, I think, 2000, right? If you look at 2011, right, the phosphorus concentration in the Indian River Lagoon nearly doubled, right? I didn't believe this, right, for the first few years that I was looking at it. I'm like, is there a systematic error in these data? And it just didn't make sense, right? What mechanism, what thing changed? We didn't suddenly change the development. We didn't suddenly change runoff. We didn't suddenly change irrigation practices to that extent in 2011. And so is there a mechanism that can explain this, right? What would cause just an overnight, almost doubling of the phosphorus concentrations that coincides with, basically, that regime shift that we're talking about? And so we start to look at those sources, right, those mechanisms of nutrient inputs. And so we're going to start to talk about muck fluxes, and I'm just highlighting here, I don't know if you can see it, the kind of pre- and post-2011, just to highlight that change in concentrations. And so what is a benthic flux, right? I think everybody's heard it about the times, and some of you might think mathematically, don't worry about these equations, right? It is not trying to overwhelm anybody, just saying that there's a lot that goes into this, right? And there's a few different ways that we measure it. And we're accounting for a diffusion coefficient, right? And so this is unique to each ion or each nutrient element, right? And it accounts for things like that porosity, so that water content of the sediment. So really fine sediments that have a very high water content, they have higher fluxes, right? And this gets really important when we start to think about what do we do about this, right? And so if we cap the sediments, for example, that natural overwash, that actually adds a layer of sediments with lower porosity that changes the calculations here. It changes that diffusion coefficient, and we can actually decrease fluxes significantly by just changing the physical properties of the sediments. So that's one of the things that we're talking about more recently is things like capping, right? And so I just want to show you this to talk about, as I'm talking about fluxes, if you look at the bottom, there's an equation there that we use to normalize them to a consistent temperature, right? If I measure the flux in February, it's cold. The bacteria are decaying things more slowly, so we're going to measure a lower flux. How do we compare that to something that we measured in July or August, right? And so we can do that. We've measured fluxes throughout the year at a few sites. We've been able to come up with calculations to normalize things to a consistent temperature. And so, again, a flux is either a release or an uptake of nutrients by the system. And so I have the two arrows there, and there's a balance, right? We spend so much time talking about inputs of nutrients, but why can we put nutrients into the system? Where do they go, right? There should be an equal pie chart that's showing how it's leaving the system, right? And so those nutrients are typically assimilated into the system, into the seagrasses, right? If we're growing biomass, that's taking up nutrients. If we're growing fish and have a sustainable fishery, that's taking up nutrients, right? The bacteria living in the sediments, they're converting the nitrogen into gas that leaves the system, right? Phosphorus is binding to those sediment particles and being buried, or it's washing out into the ocean, right? There's some balance, and all of it's being removed to balance those inputs. And so all of the inputs we talk about have to be balanced, or else we start to see things like algae blooms and a deteriorating water quality. And so when we look at this balance, right, so just the size of the arrows have changed, we have kind of a story of two places in the lagoon. We have these healthy seagrass beds where we actually see things like sediment and biomass taking up nutrients. The sediments are actually a sink, they're removing nutrients, and kind of helping us to balance out all those things that we've put in over the years, right? Then we get to muck, where there is no question that muck is releasing huge quantities of nitrogen and phosphorus from those muck sediments into the overlying water. And so we measure these fluxes, right? I gave you some math, now we're going to say how do we do it, right? We jump in the water, we go collect some sediments, we add pressure, we extract the pore water. And so as we talked about, these sediments are more than 50% water by weight, 75% water by volume, some of it is actually 90% or more water, right? And so we can extract that water, measure the concentration of nutrients, and then look at concentration gradients, which we use to calculate fluxes. And so there's just that simplified equation there. And so we're looking at this gradient at the top. And so we've been able to use some techniques to make a really efficient way to do this, and we can measure nutrient fluxes at all of these places that we've probed in order to figure out where is the muck fluxing the most, right? Which places are the most bang for our buck when we go to do some kind of remediation? Also, we've been measuring fluxes. So this is using sediment cores that we collect. It's looking at those concentration gradients. We can also calculate flux by just looking at the change in concentration of nutrients over time. Again, not trying to distract anybody with that, just showing you that we are, there's a lot of work that goes into this, and we measure the flux. So this is a lab setup where we can control the temperature, we can control the flow rates, we can control everything, and measure those changes in concentrations over time. And we can even control the different gases, right? You can control the oxic state of the water in the sediments to look at how, as we see a change in redox state or hypoxia, right, how that changes those fluxes. And so we've set this up, we measure the change in nutrient concentrations over time in a water column containing sediments, and we subtract from that, right, the change in flux in just the water. Because there are processes happening in the water also, but we're trying to isolate just what is the different sediments doing, right? What is sand doing? What is muck doing? What is anoxic sand doing? And so we do this both in the lab and in the field, and we're able to get a bunch of different ways to validate those fluxes, and these methods all agree pretty well when we do them at the same sites. And so let's look at muck flux. So this is, the log of LOI is just a logarithmic, so we're compressing the scale of organic matter basically times 10. So the 1.4 would be 14% organic matter in this case. You notice that as we go from zero, very low organic content, there's very low fluxes. It's pretty much a flat line until we get to about 10% organic matter, right? So if we go back to the work that Trefri did a few years ago, right, 10% organic matter is where we define that threshold for muck, and that is really where we start to see those fluxes really increase dramatically. And so I'm going to talk about the muck flux, but I think we also can't forget about those really low numbers, and I'm going to come back to that, and then Rebecca's going to follow up with just what do those numbers mean, those lower numbers moving forward. And so we talked about where the muck deposits are, and so there's a story of two types of muck, right? And there's a gradient. It exists on a spectrum. We have muck from the purest muck that we can find, incredibly high fluxes, to muck that's been mixed with sand. And so this is a little cartoon of what we're calling discrete deposits. And so imagine somewhere where we dug a hole to remove sand to build up the land to build houses or to build roads. Those pits are now low-energy environments. They collect the fine-grained material that's now decomposing, releasing nutrients. And this is where we find that really pure, fine muck that is fluxing huge amounts of nutrients. We also have continuous deposits. And so this terminology John Treffer and I came up with, it matches kind of the geological definitions of where we find different substrates. But the continuous deposits are the really deep areas in the lagoon that are low-energy environments. The fines are settling there, but there's less of a relief, right? The immediately adjacent sediments are at a closer depth, and so we have a lot more mixing, right? The muck in those deeper areas, those continuous deposits, tends to be mixed with the sand a little bit. The fluxes are lower, but it's spread out, right? And so when we talk about the trash can is full, these discrete deposits are fantastic trash cans. They're collecting those fine-grained materials. It's well-isolated. It's easiest to stick that vacuum down there and suck it out, right? When those are full, they overflow. That muck is mixing with the sand, and all of a sudden we have a whole lot more material to deal with, right? It's a lower flux, but it's spread out over a much larger area. So once it overflows that trash can, so think in your house. Your trash can overflows. You get pasta sauce all over the carpets. Now instead of just taking out the trash, right, now you have to change the rugs, right? And so if we can avoid that overflow, I think there's some incredibly, there's incredible value to that, and I think it's something that's kind of my nightmare, right, is that overflowing muck and it no longer being contained. And so just interesting when we look at kind of that discrete versus continuous, there is this pretty good correlation between increasing fluxes and the relief, so the distance between the surface of the muck and the adjacent sand. And so Ben talked about, and Virginia mentioned, that we can find muck by probing, and so this is great, but we have to go out and probe. And so how can we do this faster? How can we find muck in places that we can't necessarily probe? And we can actually kind of see it from space, right? And you can't actually see the muck from space, but we can use LIDAR, right? We can use some tools. We compare this to our validated places where we find it. And so LIDAR, again, light detection and ranging. This is satellite-based, and it's highly accurate, basically a measure of depth of the lagoon, so we can look for those deep spots, right? We can look for target spots that we can now go either probe or use to ground truth, kind of mapping the whole lagoon. And so we've ground truth this using the ways that have been talked about already today. And so one of the challenges with this is finding those fine-scale resolution, right? LIDAR from a satellite has some resolution that's going to be bigger and not work very well in the canals, but this is really great for identifying muck in the open lagoon. And so what you can see here is the depths, and you see a bunch of red spots. Pretty much all of those red spots have muck in them. But there's things that we have to consider, right? We've defined separate depth thresholds for muck based on that ground truthing for each of the sub-basins, right? In areas where there's more scouring, right? So in the middle of a causeway where you have water channeling through, we actually, there's deep spots without muck, right? And so there's a lot that goes into finding muck based on LIDAR. It's not just if it's deep, there's muck. But this has been really valuable, right? In order for helping us take that probing data, that ground truthing data to the entire lagoon scale. And so muck or depth alone, right, does not explain that muck distribution, but we're able to model it. And so water depth, right? This is interesting. So we talk about those kind of muck deposits in the shallow water and absolutely in pretty well-restricted areas we find it. But in general, if we look at water depth, and I've used feet here, right, as a scientist, as I'm like meters by foot, like that big. So we see the organic matter content increasing with depth to about 10 feet, right? Once we get to 10 feet, right, in the lagoon, then we're pretty much at that muck threshold, and the fluxes and organic water contents get pretty high, right? And so it's pretty cool that we can use depth as a really nice proxy for where we're going to find muck, and then even the composition of that muck as it lies on the spectrum. Just some interesting things here, right? Canals, they're between houses. If you go out in the lagoon on a really windy day, the lagoon might be wavy, right? You go in a canal, it's dead calm. So that's a really low-energy environment. It collects more fines, even in shallower water, right? And so the canals tend to be a little bit unique. And then I've also highlighted on here discreet. And so this is where we have a dredged deposit, and you'll see at like nine feet, you're hitting the edge of it, you're hitting the sand, you move over a little bit to the deeper area, you've hit the surface of that muck. And so we have directly adjacent to each other really nice clean sand and muck in those discrete deposits. So again, it's well-contained, right? Where those continuous deposits, just it gets deeper, it gets progressively muddier and muddier. And so we can take those water depths, we can use the deposits that we've probed to kind of train a model that's looking for all of the parameters that lead to the formation of muck. And so we can find a deposit, we can come up with depths in each region that correspond with those muck components, and we can pick another hypothetical place. So we look at a deep area, we apply this model, and we can kind of get an estimate as to how much muck is there. And so we've used this to come up with unique depth thresholds for each sub-basin in each area to identify those different muck types. And so doing this, right, the surface area to volume, or surface area ratio from our probing to LIDAR, we range from 0.75 to 1.38, right? So and so our model depths from LIDAR are pretty close. The average is, the mean is about one with a little bit of a range. And so this LIDAR is very accurate at finding the muck. And so 1.03 plus or minus 0.18 is our precision with the LIDAR trained based on probing. And so why are we doing all this, right? To get those muck fluxes. Because muck is releasing huge amounts of nitrogen and phosphorus. And so we've gone through, this was John Trafford and I, and we probed a whole bunch of the lagoon. But again, we weren't able to probe it. We weren't able to sample the fluxes from everywhere. And so we use these models to now expand those values into all of the other areas. And so if we take the discrete areas and the continuous areas, so again, those well-defined deposits versus those deep, expansive areas, and we apply this model, we come up with some mean values or median values for discrete deposits. For nitrogen, it's 37 tons of nitrogen per square kilometer per year, which works out to 329 pounds per acre per year, right? And so from the discrete deposits, again, these are those really well-constrained things. It's about 18 pounds of phosphorus per acre per year. If we look at the continuous deposits, again, those vast, deep areas that aren't as well-defined, so where the trash can is overflowed a little bit, the fluxes are a little bit lower, right? But it's a much greater expanse. It's much harder to do something about. We're gonna be dealing with a lot more material and a lot more material that has less of that muck in it, right? And so those, about 89 pounds per year and six pounds per year for nitrogen and phosphorus, respectively. And so we put all of this together, we incorporate it with all the other nutrient sources, and we get those pie charts that you've seen already today with muck accounting for more than 50% of the nitrogen and phosphorus in Banana River, right? Banana River has a unique geographic situation where we don't have major tributaries. We have relatively small watersheds, and so the muck is contributing a large fraction of the total. And so we talk a lot about muck, right? And so I'm going to end on looking at some fluxes from the sand, right? And then I'm gonna hand it off to Rebecca, who will talk about the broader impacts of muck, right? And so ammonium fluxes from sand, what you're looking at is a zero value, right? So the zero is in the middle, that's no flux. Above zero, the sand is adding nutrients. Below zero, the sand is taking up nutrients. So remember those arrows at the beginning, we have some balance. So this is ammonium, right? This is nitrate, this is phosphate, right? We see pluses and minuses. So can we start to explain why is it positive sometimes? Why is it negative, right? And just a hint, hypoxia, right, is one of the major drivers of this. And so if we look at the consequences of bottom water hypoxia, when we see hypoxia, it's almost always a positive nitrogen flux, right? It's almost always a positive phosphorus flux. And so if we can start to map where the hypoxia is, right, then we can start to understand how these fluxes from the sand are behaving, right? And before I turn it over to Rebecca, where is hypoxia coming from, right? The decomposition of muck, we talk about nutrient fluxes, that consumes oxygen, right? And so these muck deposits are consuming huge amounts of oxygen. So when we see the bottom going hypoxic, right, the fish swim away, we may not see a fish kill, but we're seeing the loss of a lot of things on the bottom, right? We're seeing changes in the geochemical behavior. And so Rebecca's going to talk about how those hypoxic zones, we're starting to be able to kind of see that there's more hypoxia in the areas surrounding muck, right, than in areas kind of distant from muck. And so I'll turn it over to Rebecca to finish up on that. But I guess any questions for me? So a little bit off topic of deepwater muck, but your presentation brought this to mind because it is a point of concern with a lot of anglers, is thinking of them as discrete sources, mosquito impoundments. So when they open the gates, I mean, you can smell them miles away. And they also seem to be areas of high drift algae abundance during winter. So would you expect similar scale type of events, even though it's shallower water, that you would see here? I mean, it's a different issue, but at the same time, it's the same kind of approach and equations. So you're thinking about the hypoxia issue or fluxes or...? High nutrients, for sure. I mean, the algae gets so thick, sometimes it's five, six feet deep. Yeah. Fewer fish, the smell, the sulfur smell, so it's definitely hypoxic at some points. So we have not looked explicitly at the mosquito impoundments. There's been some interest in, right, could we use those as wetlands, right? Because the idea behind mosquito impoundments, and so one of the slides Ben showed, is those flood shoals that used to exist behind the inlets were more or less intertidal, right? So you'd have them be flooded part of the time and then dry part of the time, which created this perfect environment for the bacteria that helped to remove nitrogen, right, and the sorption of phosphorus because you continue to bring in more material. And so the mosquito impoundments, a lot of them were made by we dug out certain parts of the lagoon to make it deeper, so that area was always flooded, and then we piled it up to make those kind of upland dredge spoil areas that just are never, they're always dry, right? And so we got rid of that kind of intertidal zone, and that intertidal zone was incredibly effective at removing nutrients. And so the mosquito impoundments, there's been some proposals that we can do some slight modifications that may actually contribute to them removing some more nutrients. So that's something that people have considered. I don't necessarily know what their impact is as they are, but I think there's potential to utilize them for some benefit. But you could use the same approach to look at that quantitatively, yeah? We could look at the nutrient concentrations inside and exchange of water, the volumes, yeah, and the hypoxia. It would be pretty simple. I've wondered about them as a source of cyanobacteria. I've seen cyanobacteria, you know, actually come from the mosquito impoundment areas. Go ahead. Thanks, that was great. As you've done this, and I don't know how old these data are from, has it required us to update our data that we're using to estimate muck flux? So these data were used in the 2025 updates. And so this data, it spans, right? We have a decade of data, and so we're continuously updating it. I didn't include it here, but we're always looking at new sites. And in the last year or so, we've found some of the highest fluxing muck that we've ever found. And that's, in fact, in Sykes Creek, in the areas that are planned to be dredged. So it was kind of unbelievable when we saw that. I believe it. Go ahead. Thanks. Great presentations. This is really good this morning. Austin, are marinas considered discrete? Ooh, that's a great question. So again, the discrete and continuous, the way we're defining it, is simply based on is it a unique area of deep water or is it part of a large expanse? And so there are certain marinas that have been dredged to make them deep. And at the base of all of the boats, there is this fairly significant amount of muck. I'll say that the marinas that I've identified that have a lot of muck of them are outside of this county. We haven't done too much probing in the muck. And I can't tell you too much about the marinas here. I'm not aware of the muck in those areas. What I can tell you is I haven't noticed in any of the LIDAR expansions, because we haven't done physical probing in many marinas, but the LIDAR models aren't picking up too much in marinas within this area. Thank you. Go ahead. Dr. Fox, great presentation. Thank you for taking that data and making it something that I understand in the context of muck. It's really, really nice. Looking at the larger scale and the dumpsters, as they've been described, do we know where the majority, if not all of them, are at this point based off of the mapping? So I would say we know where all of the major ones are. And it's just, I mean, as anybody that's spent time in the lagoon, you can find these little areas of mud. When you start to add those together, it can be pretty significant. But they're so small in a lot of cases that you're not going to probably focus on dredging or doing much with individual types. So we know where the big ones are. And based off of the work from the county, we know approximately how much it costs to remove the muck. Have we worked together to find out how much the total cost and timeline would be to put us on a maintenance schedule to take out the trash regularly so that we know that we can get all this out of the system at one point? Is that possible within our scope? I'm the scientist. I look at the fluxes. I'd have to defer that to the managers here. Is that part of the, I guess, overall goal of all the data is to be able to say, hey, we can take out the trash regularly and get rid of that flux every 10 years because it'll fill back in is what will eventually happen naturally. That's a great question. And I think the goal would be to have a lot of these places not fill back in by having, I mean, some of them right in the mouths of tributaries and things, those are places that are receiving a lot of material. But I think we can significantly slow the rate of accumulation. And then other places have filled up because we have to recognize the progress that has been made. In 1995, we quit putting in direct discharge of primary seeded, treated sewage. Obviously, there are storm events and challenges, but that was a routine practice until 1995. This stuff persists. The muck that is there is very likely a relict of that. It may not be sewage anymore, but nutrients have been cycled. And so when we talk about isotopes, basically nitrogen isotopes get enriched the longer they've been processed in a system. And so if you just have algae cycling over years and decades, you're going to see enriched delta M15 isotopes. And so it becomes indistinguishable. And so I think we've made significant progress towards reducing those inputs. And so when we say muck is legacy, the muck that is there has accumulated over the last 100 years. And so I think we've made significant progress at reducing. We can't stop those reductions, right? But I think it's not just immediately going to refill. That's great. But I think we have to plan on certain areas. So it sounds like that if we were to get all the legacy muck out in a grand scenario, that we could really see a system find balance before it got back to the situation that we're in, if we could manage it after we did get everything out, ideally speaking. Ideally, yes. Thank you. Yeah. Money and logistics. Logistics money. Yeah. Sure. Just to clarify back or answer, someone brought up, which is, you know, the sewage down south that was, you know, being brought up and dropped over. And that was, my understanding is, I don't know, they stopped that, what, six months ago or something. Are those things being looked at as from the government as separate? But we're hearing some of, you know, some of the same product, you know, nitrogen in it and phosphorus. One, we just stopped bringing it and then the Mormon Ranch, you know, stopped putting it on. So, you're talking about the land application of biosolids. So, we do not have any land application of biosolids in the Indian River Lagoon Basin. And the county adopted a moratorium back in 2018. So, the only grandfathered permits back then were in the St. John's Basin. So, I know you're also concerned about the St. John's Basin. That's a continuing concern in the St. John's Basin, but not in the Indian River Lagoon. Okay, so, they're separate then. So, we don't think that'll get, the muck will get stopped over on this basin. Is that what you're saying? It's all going west of the St. John's River. Okay. Thank you. Go ahead. So, as you look at these and you say, okay, Sykes Creek is loaded up. What's the broader impact of a muck deposit? So, would it make more sense, potentially, to remove one in an open area that might recreate a broader impact and perhaps removing it in a narrow area that doesn't have the flow? I think there, I don't think there's a good answer to that, right? Because both would have massive benefits. And I think you're asking about our next presentation. But where we're headed is, right? If you look at this graph right here, you're seeing that where we see hypoxic sediments, we see massive inputs. And when I say hypoxic sediments, I'm talking about what we think of as clean sand, right? And so, the muck is consuming the oxygen in the water above it, but also the water around it, right? And so, we're seeing impacts to the sand as a result of the muck being there. And so, for a long time, we've only looked at the deposit, right? The muck is bad, but we're starting to see that you have a pretty significant impact adjacent. And what Rebecca's going to say, and we didn't really put it in the slides, is there's another pie, or pie slice, right? Which is, again, it's that assimilation, right? We have this whole other pie that should be removing it. But what we're starting to see is the sand is starting to release nutrients because of the hypoxia, right, that is largely induced by the presence of muck. And so, we've done some calculations, and if we look at that additional flux from the sand that's resulting from the increased sediment oxygen demand, we can, it very nearly explains that increase in phosphorus that we saw, seen over the past decade. So, potentially, could we identify between the different deposits? Because, obviously, you can't do everything at once. We want it out. These will have a greater impact initially than those. I'm sorry, say that again? Could we identify, could we get to the point where we could say, if we remove muck in these types of areas or these deposits, we would have a greater impact initially, and then we could schedule these out similar to how we look at other things. Because, obviously, you want to get it out, but is there a way to prioritize that? I guess in terms of prioritization, that comes down to a lot of logistics and things. But what I will say is we're starting. So, we've been able to leverage funds monitoring some muck deposits to go get funds to expand our hypoxia monitoring network, and then we've levered those funds to expand that hypoxia monitoring network, which Rebecca's going to talk about. And so, now we're actually able to quantify the extent of hypoxia around the muck deposits. And so, we're starting to be able to quantify those broader impacts, and I think that's going to really help us to prioritize things. Because if we look at muck deposits, again, the way we're doing it now is just we dredge the muck, we've benefited that spot. But we're arguing that the area of benefit is five, six, seven times bigger than that in terms of reducing the phosphorus and nitrogen fluxes from the sand. Because the stuff that Rebecca's going to talk about is pretty well understood in places that experience seasonal hypoxia, where it's hypoxic for months at a time. Our lagoon is experiencing, and I don't want to steal Rebecca's thunder, but it's experiencing a different kind of hypoxia, right? It's just a few hours at a time, but very frequently. And all of the things that we're seeing is that chronic cumulative duration has some similar impacts that we would see in areas that have seasonal hypoxia. And so, like in the Black Sea, I know it's a completely different system, right? But their phosphorus concentrations are proportional to the aerial extent of hypoxia, right? And I think we're actually seeing that here. Great, thanks. And so, if we can decrease the extent of hypoxia, right, then I think we can decrease those phosphorus concentrations. And the best way to do that is decrease sediment oxygen demand, which removing the muck or doing something about the muck is going to be an extremely valuable step towards that. I feel like I'm going on and on. It's good. Yeah, Austin. Were those accumulation rate estimates that you had in the one slide? You had the one slide that had discrete versus continuous there. Were those estimates on accumulation rates? So, these are not estimates on accumulation rates. These are estimates on the – or these are measurements of fluxes. So, this is the rate that nitrogen and phosphorus are being released. So, you don't have an idea on how quickly these deposits generate? So, I could talk on this for hours, so kick me out if you're tired of hearing me. But that's something that is really hard to quantify, and I think it comes in pulses, right? And so, just – we – there's a study. So, John Treffrey in 1989 and 2007 did some revisiting of different sites. And so, we're in the process of revisiting those places to see how has the muck accumulation changed since 1989 to 2007 to now. And so, we're seeing that it's changed. One of the really interesting observations, right, is we talk about the muck and fines accumulating in low-energy environments. Seagrasses, right, are a low-energy environment. They – the grass blades themselves help to slow down the water. They collect the fines. And, in fact, we're seeing 50 percent higher organic contents within seagrass beds compared to the directly adjacent sediments where we've lost the grass. And so, that means we're losing the fines and the organic matter that was in the seagrass. Where's it going, right? It's going into these muck deposits. And when it's in the seagrasses, the seagrasses have radial oxygen loss, right? They're pumping oxygen into those sediments, helping to mitigate that negative geochemistry that we're seeing. And once the seagrasses die, we're seeing redistribution of those organics into things like muck deposits. Again, we don't have the data on the accumulation rates. It's incredibly difficult to directly measure in a well-mixed system like this. You can't use a typical sediment trap just because there's so much horizontal mixing, vertical mixing. But there's a ton of data that suggests that we should be seeing this massive increase. And so, that's kind of what we're working on now. And it's just interesting, right? So, there's kind of mechanisms that can explain increases in muck distribution and so accumulation in the seagrass beds. There's some misconceptions that organic matter is bad, right? We actually see increased biodiversity up to about 2 percent organic matter, right? Once you get above 2 percent, we start to see those negative impacts because the oxygen consumption starts to increase. We start to see more sulfide. And so, it's good if we're accumulating some of it because, again, some of this is natural, right, in those things like seagrass beds. But as we've lost seagrasses, we've had redistribution. So, it's just complicated, right? There's so many angles to this. And we could go on for hours discussing the intricacies of it. But in reality, we're looking back at what historical data there is to try to identify can we measure accumulation rates. But, again, if the trash can's full, that spot is going to stay the same because it's just overflowing going somewhere else. And it's very difficult to measure those trivial changes in other places where it's spread out over kilometers, right? And that's, again, that's what I said is my nightmare because it's easy to go suck it out when it's 20 percent organic. But once we get to 5 percent organic, right, that's above that threshold for biodiversity, we start to see a decrease. We do see increased fluxes. But that's never going to be cost effective to dredge, right? The fluxes are so low, it's not characterized as muck when it's 5 percent. But that's what we're dealing with. And flux is being measured in the lab, not in situ. So, we do it both ways. Okay. And so, we do, so the concentration gradients, we actually bring samples back to the lab, we extract that pore water, and we measure the nutrient concentrations as they go down, and then we calculate a flux. And then we also do deploy in situ chambers to measure it, and that's a better way that we measure uptake. So, in the sandy settings, we're seeing removal that works better using the in situ chambers. Thank you. This is fascinating, and I don't want to miss a second of it, but can we please take a 5 to 10 minutes break? Please? You want to vote on that? No, we'll go ahead. Take a 5-minute break. Yeah. Thank you. Sure. Thank you. For you. Austin gave you quite an introduction, so. All right. So, hi, everybody. I'm Rebecca English. I am a grad student at Florida Tech pursuing a PhD, and so you guys have heard a lot about muck and sediment in the lagoon, so I'm going to be talking about the relationship with the sediments with the dissolved oxygen and hypoxia in the lagoon. So, starting with the dissolved oxygen, oxygen in the water in the lagoon is held in equilibrium with the atmosphere, but it is also increased and decreased by both biological and bacterial processes. Dissolved oxygen is increased through processes with photosynthesis, either by seagrass, macroalgae, or phytoplankton in these algal blooms. It's also decreased by respiration, including that decomposing organic matter that you guys have heard about today. So, when dissolved oxygen concentrations... Can you guys hear me now? Do you guys need me to repeat any of that, or have you been able to hear me? No, just go ahead. Okay, sorry. So, when dissolved oxygen concentrations reach below 2 milligrams per liter, that's when you get these hypoxic events. The dissolved oxygen concentrations are not high enough to support the needs of the benthic life. It becomes stressful for fish and any crabs, worms, clams living on the bottom, and in severe or prolonged events, it can even become a mortality event, such as the fish kills that you see. So, in a eutrophic system, like the Indian River Lagoon, where there's excessive nutrient inputs, it can actually create this feedback loop, where excessive nutrients can destabilize these oxygen concentrations. When you have nutrients fueling these algal blooms, you have large productions of oxygen during the day, but at night, when there's no light for photosynthesis, when there's only the decomposing organic matter consuming oxygen, those oxygen levels can fall very low. And when you have a large algal bloom, lots of production, as that algal bloom dies off, you'll have lots of decomposition. Oxygen gets low, and you can even fall below those hypoxic thresholds. As that decomposing organic matter is releasing nutrients, as you've heard in some of the presentations earlier today, it can exacerbate the issue, fueling further algal blooms and just intensifying those higher highs, lower lows. And with those lower lows comes the more frequent hypoxia that we can see. So, at Florida Tech, we have been tracking dissolved oxygen for multiple years. At the moment, we currently have approximately 80 dissolved oxygen sensors throughout the Banana River Lagoon and adjacent canals. These sensors are deployed in the bottom of the water column near the sediment water interface. They record at hourly intervals so we can track that full day-night cycle throughout the month, throughout the year. And our sensors are protected in PVC housings that have copper anti-fouling paint, copper coils to prevent fouling on the sensor faces. We also do monthly cleanings, monthly calibrations to make sure our data is continuously good and valid. So, I mentioned we have our sensors on the bottom water because we do a lot of our research with the sediments. We want to make sure our oxygen monitoring is capturing what's happening at the bottom. And what happens on the bottom is not the same as what's happening throughout the entire water canal, water column. So, this sensor or this graph here is showing the difference between a sensor from St. John's that's deployed in the middle of the water column. That's what you see in blue compared to the dissolved oxygen sensors we have at the bottom of the water column in the pink. And you can notice that the blue sensor in the middle of the column does not capture all of the low-frequent or low-dissolved oxygen concentration events and hypoxic events that we are seeing. So, in order to fully capture what is happening at the bottom of the water column, it's important to have those sensors actually at the bottom. So, getting into what is happening at the bottom. The type of sediment has a large impact on what is actually happening. As you've heard a lot today, muck in muddy sediments has a much higher oxygen demand due to the organic matter decomposing, consuming oxygen. So, these are two sensors, one in sandy sediment, that's in the green. The dark line is a sensor that was deployed above muddy sediments. And the sensor in the muddy sediments shows much lower oxygen available in the water column above those sediments. It's showing much frequent, much more frequent occurrences of hypoxia at that location. And so, when we take this information and, sorry, this is another example of that, looking at two canals, these are vertical profiles that are showing how the dissolved oxygen is changing with the depth. In one canal where there's a dredge canal exposing the sandy bottom, you can see the dissolved oxygen is constant all the way through. But in a non-dredge canal where you still have that muck, still have that high sediment oxygen demand at the bottom, that oxygen is being consumed and goes down to almost 10%, almost zero, depending on the canal. So, taking this to our dissolved oxygen network and where we can expect to have, where we can expect to see more frequent hypoxia events, areas with high nutrient inputs, areas that will have those frequent algal blooms, areas with restricted circulation, like Ben talked about earlier, where you have those accumulation of fine-grained sediments, and areas with high sediment oxygen demand or muck deposits. So, when you look at this map that we have contouring, the cumulative percentage of time spent hypoxic, and compare that to one of the muck maps we saw earlier, you can actually see that there is a correlation between where the muck deposits occur and the areas that experience more frequent time hypoxic. And even when we look at this map over a larger timescale, this map on the left is looking at almost a year of data, averaging the percentage of time spent hypoxic below that two milligrams per liter, the time spent where it is stressful for fish and mendic life, the areas that are experiencing more hypoxia are in those restricted areas, in those nearby the muck deposits. So, the extent of hypoxia is actually occurring in a greater area than just the muck deposits themselves. As Dr. Pax mentioned earlier, the sediment oxygen demand, it consumes the oxygen above the muck, but it also consumes the oxygen in the water surrounding the muck. So, what does this actually mean for the sand? If the oxygen is being consumed in the area around the muck, it's being consumed in the water above healthy sand. So, in this picture here, you can see the healthy, oxygenated, light-colored sand that's sitting on top of the darker, anaerobic, oxygen-free sand below it. Even healthy sand in depth will have an anoxic layer, just as depth oxygen from the water column can only penetrate so deep into the sand. And the thickness of the oxygenated layer is going to depend on multiple factors, including the sediment type, the porosity, how far the oxygen can penetrate, but also things like in fauna. So, in this picture, you can see the little worm bearing down. You can see the dip in that dark anaerobic layer as that in fauna is pushing oxygen further into the sediments. So, in sediments that are much more frequently hypoxic or all-the-time hypoxic are going to be very dark. So, as we've looked at muck throughout the day, it is very black and has a lot of buildup of those dark compounds. And what those dark compounds are is iron sulfide. So, in anaerobic sediments, when there is no oxygen, you get the production of hydrogen sulfide. That's that rotten egg smell, that bad smell that you get from anaerobic sediments. It's what creates the—when the sulfide binds with the iron particles in the sediments, that's what creates that dark color that you associate with anaerobic sediments. This hydrogen sulfide, it is toxic to benthic life, to the worms, to the seagrass, but what I'm personally focusing on today is the sulfide can cause an increase of nutrient flux, specifically phosphorus. So, how this works is in healthy, oxic sediments with plenty of oxygen available. Phosphorus, in the form of phosphate, can attach to iron-3 particles in the sediment. These sediment—or, these particles get buried over time, and oxic sediments act as a sink or a form of removal for phosphate from the system. However, in oxygen-free anaerobic conditions, the iron-3 gets reduced to iron-2. In doing so, it releases the phosphate particle. It's no longer able to hold that phosphate particle. So, in addition, the hydrogen sulfide that is produced in those anaerobic conditions, the sulfide sticks to the iron-2, creates a new particle that can get buried over time. And even when oxygen returns to these systems, the iron sulfide that is produced will not always immediately re-release that iron. It won't go right back to that iron-3. And so, the ability for that released phosphate to actually come back into the sediment is decreased. So, this is how we get that positive nutrient—or, positive phosphorus flux in anaerobic sediments. As Dr. Fox mentioned earlier, it varies depending on specific site factors. But for aerobic sandy sediments, sandy sediments with plenty of oxygen available, the average phosphate—phosphorus flux is approximately zero. But when these healthy sediments go anaerobic, we can see approximately a 20 micromole per meter squared per hour flux of nutrients. And when you look at the amount of the lagoon that we've been tracking through our dissolved oxygen network, approximately 5% of the lagoon is hypoxic at any given time. This varies depending on year. It's going to be greater in the summer, lower in the winters. But at any given point of time, there is parts of the lagoon that are hypoxic and parts of the lagoon that are going to be releasing phosphorus from their sediments. And so, these hypoxic sediments have become a source of phosphorus to the lagoon. So, this graph that you guys saw earlier from Dr. Fox is showing that there's a much larger quantity of phosphorus in the water column now than there was prior to 2010. And if you take the calculation of 5% to 10% of the lagoon going hypoxic, the flux from those sandy sediments could potentially explain that large increase with the hypoxic events during that time, releasing a large amount of phosphorus from those sediments and having that stay in the water column for a long time. Additionally, other changes that we've seen to nutrient concentrations, the bacteria required for nitrification and denitrification can be adversely affected by anaerobic conditions. So, in hypoxia, we'll see changes to the nitrogen speciation both in the sediments in the water column. So, what does all of this actually mean? As we've mentioned, the hypoxic areas from muck deposits have a much wider range of area than just those muck deposits themselves. They're impacting large areas of the lagoon even when the spatial extent of those discrete muck deposits are not as large as the hypoxic areas themselves. So, there's decreased light availability in the lagoon, both from algal blooms and the darkening of sediments at the bottom. When you look into the lagoon and you can't see the bottom, partially it's going to be from the water itself not being clear with the algal blooms. You can't see through the bottom. But even those darker sediments are going to be harder to see. So, while it's harder to see the bottom from the bottom being blocked through the algal blooms, it's also just a darker, lower contrast visibility that's more difficult for our eyes to make out through the water. In addition, the fish kills from the severe and prolonged hypoxic events when there's no oxygen over a wide area for a wide period of time and there's nowhere safe for the fish to swim, that's when you get those fish kills. But on localized or smaller timescales where there's hypoxia where the fish can't swim away, there's still going to be mortality events for the benthic, for the crabs, for the clams, for the worms. Not everything is able to swim away. So, there's a lot of mortality events that can occur because of hypoxia that don't actually get reported. And then, again, just mentioning that increased nutrient flux from the sediments as they go, anaerobic, the release of the phosphorus from the iron particles, you're going to have increased nutrient flux during hypoxic events. So, what can actually be done to help the lagoon achieve the balance between the sediments and the oxygen in the lagoon? What we've heard a lot about today is the dredging, removing those excess nutrients, removing that sediment oxygen demand. Additionally, dredging makes the water column deeper, effectively adding oxygen to the water column. Because the water column is held in equilibrium through the atmosphere, having a larger water column has more oxygen in it. Combining that with the effects of the decreased sediment oxygen demand by removing the muck, the area will become more resilient against future hypoxic events. As you guys have heard a lot today about emptying the dumpster, it's just going to make space for those finds to, hopefully they won't accumulate, but keep them from overflowing into the continuous muck deposits that you guys have heard about. Additionally, sediment capping, adding the layer of sand over the muck deposits, sort of mimicking and accelerating the natural processes that Ben talked about earlier today. You're going to actually be able to slow the nutrient fluxes. As Dr. Fox was talking about, the porosity has a large effect on the nutrient fluxes. That's due to the pathways between the actual sediment particles. Sand has a much lower porosity, much less space between the sediment particles for nutrients to travel. So by putting a sediment cap over a muck deposit, the muck, the nutrient fluxes have a much larger pathway to travel as they're trying to reach the water column. So you're effectively slowing that nutrient flux. Ultimately, any method of decreasing nutrient inputs into the lagoon is going to help by minimizing the frequency and severity of algal blooms. You're going to minimize the sort of boom and bust process of large algal blooms producing a lot of oxygen when they're growing. But as they're dying off, as they're senescing, as they're decomposing, they're going to consume a lot of oxygen and thus lead to more hypoxic events. So if we can control the algal blooms, hopefully control the hypoxic events and lead to less production of muck and the effects of it reaching to wider areas in the lagoon. Thank you. Is there any questions? I think it was like your fourth slide, the one that shows the iron three and the sulfide or was it sulfide or sulfates or? Sulfide. So in the left slide in the in the oxic condition, where is the sulfide naturally in that slide? So in this slide, it would be this is showing the light oxygen layer above the sediments. So there will still be sulfide production much lower below all of this. So it will be with depth, but with as the sulfide fluxes up to those lighter sediments, it can form those sulfates that are less harmful and not going to stick to the iron two because there are no there is significantly less iron two in these oxic conditions. It's all in the form of iron three that will hold the phosphate particles. Thank you. That's very helpful. I was wondering what what depth of cap is needed to to cap these muck deposits. I will let Dr. Fox answer that question. Yeah, well, you're you're a co-presenter on this one. So, yes. Well, so thank you. And thank you, Rebecca. So we did a little bit of work on this. Right. And it really depends what your goal is. And so if the goal is to simply increase or decrease the porosity. Right. And decrease fluxes through that physical process. It doesn't have to be very thick. Right. A few inches might be enough to actually slow that. The challenge with a few inches is is it stable against storm events and all that stuff. And so it comes down to a balance of basically the engineering versus the objective. But you don't need much right to actually slow that flux. But to add to that right phosphorus sticking to particles if you're adding a cap you're bringing in sand from somewhere and it's not saturated yet. And so the sand that you bring in is actually going to stick to a whole bunch of the phosphorus as it comes up. So you have effectively you can have a negative flux of phosphorus initially after applying a cap. So you're pulling phosphorus out of the water column when you apply a cap because it's this you're adding sediments that are not yet saturated with with with phosphorus and sulfur and all that stuff. And so if we want to maintain that benefit. Right. If we want this cap to act as a sink for phosphorus over time we can add amendments to it. So we can add things like iron. We can add things like zeolites. Things that are going to sort of to the phosphate. And we can we can adjust the thickness or the engineering of the design based on how long do we want this thing to retain phosphorus because eventually it's going to leach some but at a much lower rate because again we've changed that physical process. And so we see fluxes that would be 50 percent lower simply because of that that decreased porosity. So is there a best source for sand that would could be used for capping? It's something we'd love to look into more. We have some access to the different quarries. So just the different quarries are going to have different properties of sand. Right. And so just picking a sand from one quarry versus another may actually lead to additional phosphorus benefit. But then you can start to amend it. Right. Like by adding those different things. What about the sand that's left over say from the Bonita Dredge site? So there's we've thought about all of these things. Again, I think there's there's other requests for the sand. I think there's something that people don't recognize globally is that on Earth we're running out of sand. Right. And so that sounds like a crazy statement. But I mean, we're importing sand into Florida, not for dredging projects, but to build roads and things. We're actually importing sand because we're running out of sand. I mean, Louisiana, they're just dissolving away, washing away because of sand issues. So can I just jump in? So that sand that was just separated from the muck, right, it's been surrounded by a whole bunch of phosphorus, right? It's probably pretty saturated with phosphorus. But it is going to have the porosity benefits that. So we've also talked about, you know, can we layer it? Can we can we use the available sand that would have the porosity benefits and then also enhance with clean sand or amended sand to bind additional phosphorus? My mind goes in all those directions. Yes. And so we're working on some things that maybe we can come back in a year or so and talk about what we're working on now. But ways to increase the phosphorus retention in sediments and actually help to stabilize the caps using whatever sand is available. So do you have to remove some of the muck in order to make room to put the sand cap on? And when you start applying the sand, is it going to squish muck out around the edges when you're when you're applying it? Those are great questions. And so we did take advantage of a sand fill project that was carried out in, I believe it's Titusville area. So FPL added sand to a pit in order to bring it up to grade so that it might become seagrass habitat. And so this is a restoration or I guess it's a mitigation project. And we monitored the whole surrounding area and we didn't actually see any leakage of muck. And so that's just one example of we didn't see. And we really were paying attention to that because that's one of the big questions is are we just going to squish it other places? And we didn't see it there, right? When a larger, different type of capping project, you just have to keep in mind that that's a possibility. And so there's different ways of applying the cap. And so they actually use like a high speed conveyor belt that so it's kind of like raining down slowly and that can avoid squishing it out if that might happen if you just dumped it on. And so there's techniques that can be used to avoid the squishing out. Thank you. You touched on it a little bit, but given where you might cap in a depth that allows for seagrass growth, how deep does that need to be? Or how thick does that cap need to be versus your two inches? I guess it depends on where you're capping. So some of these muck deposits are three meters below the surface. And so to bring it to grade, you'd somehow need to raise it by a lot. But for those lower areas, if let's say it was within a sun, the rain, how thick would that cap need to be to support the seagrass versus your two inches? So that's a good question. It's going to be specific to each unique area depending on a bunch of the sediment characteristics of the surrounding area. But in theory, it doesn't necessarily have to be that thick because if it is brought up to grade, if it's in an area that's going to be suitable habitat for seagrass, that means you're going to help maintain an oxyc surface layer that's going to maintain nitrifying and denitrifying bacteria that are going to help take care of the nutrients that are fluxing up from the muck below it. And so that's kind of the ideal case. Right. But so that's a dream case. But a lot of the muck is in that deeper water. And so the question is, do you bring it to grade? That would require massive quantities of sand if you did it with sand. And so there's been ideas passed around about, can we dispose of muck, like subaqueous muck disposal? So can we fill a pit with old muck? I don't know what the status of those ideas is, but just there's a lot of different ideas, right? There's many things that you could do. Great. Thanks. And then... Yes. I want to thank all the presenters for your presentations today. I always brag about the science that's happening in this program. And I really appreciate understanding better what's happening in the Banana River where I live as a result of what you talked about today, because we do have muck removal issues to be dealt with there. My question maybe is for Virginia or the staff. With everything that we've heard today about muck removal and some of the new ideas that are coming out, is there anything in particular that you would draw to our attention as things that we ought to keep in mind about the current projects that are planned or any changes or decisions that need to be made about projects that might change that list and the allocation of funding to these projects? Is there anything there that we should know particularly, or is this really about the fire hose and understanding why we got to where we are? Wow. Yeah. So, yeah, this intent was the fire hose. But certainly, right, as we come into the November project selection and how do we rebalance the 2026 plan and what's beyond this, I think it's important to understand that the banana is not the same as central, and the muck deposits are across a spectrum, right? Some are more important than others. This idea that it's not just where the muck is, it's also the surrounding area. And so the question about, you know, which areas are going to have the greatest benefit to the lagoon? And so we're measuring not just what is the flux reduction benefit, but what is the surrounding community and how is that going to be enhanced? And if we are, we're looking to proceed toward capping projects, right, do we try to bring them to grade, do we, you know, do we tap them enough to sequester nutrients trapped below and then cover them with oysters or something that doesn't need to be up in the photic zone, right? Or do we have to get the elevation that we need for seagrasses? And so, you know, how do we combine this with all the other restoration elements that we're trying to achieve to do the best that we can? So there's some work to do in understanding what we might be able to work with. So we've talked about sand capping and mechanical dredging, but you didn't touch on any kind of like adding oxygen to the muck. Are you going to talk about that today or do you see any value in new technology like that? So we're happy to come back and give a whole presentation on that, but I was hoping someone would ask about that, right? Because when you hear us say hypoxia is a problem, right, let's just add oxygen. That's the simple solution. And I think the key thing there is you're treating a symptom through aeration, right? So the underlying problem is that we have this really high sediment oxygen demand of the sediments. And so, in fact, we tried. So in 2019, 2020, we went and we had, we worked with, there were aeration companies that were like, we will demonstrate our technology for free, and we set up a study to do a really intensive monitoring of was it effective or not. And what we learned was that, and there's many different versions of aeration, micro-bubble aeration is effectively like a giant fish tank bubbler, right? And so we did that in a canal laden with muck, and what we saw was, if I go back to Rebecca's graphs, I've got to find the right one. Am I going the right way, Rebecca? I think you're on the right way. There we go. So if we were to aerate using micro-bubble aeration, so that basically increases overturning circulation, we'd actually average out the vertical distribution of oxygen. So the whole canal would go to like 50% saturation. And so we may, in the summer months when solubility is six milligrams per liter, we may take the whole canal to three, right? And so that's not necessarily a good state. And what we learned in that study was that the sediment oxygen demand was so great that we couldn't add enough oxygen with micro-bubbles to overcome that sediment oxygen demand. The sediments never became oxy. And so we didn't address the problem. And so that led to what about something like nano-bubbles, right? Can we use nano-bubbles of pure oxygen to overcome this? And so we, there was somebody else wanting to try nano-bubbles, so they donated the system, and we set up a study to really intensively monitor that and see if there was any benefit. And we did see in the area adjacent to the nano-bubble system a slight reduction in the phosphorus flux as we would expect, right? We saw no appreciable decrease in the volume of muck. And so the benefit was only while that was occurring. And nano-bubble systems, just the spatial scale is hard to expand. And so basically the benefits were very localized to where it was being put in, because even you can put in liters and gallons of treated water, but that mixes very rapidly to the giant scale of the lagoon. And so we were adding 400% oxygen, but by the time you go 10 meters away from the diffuser, right, you're back to pretty low concentrations. And so it's not going to be easy to scale something like aeration. And so when we look at the scale of hypoxia in the lagoon that is kilometers, right, it just seems like something that's going to be very difficult to scale to be effective, and it's not very effective in the really muck-laden canals from the experience that we have. And so it's a great thought, and it works very well in freshwater. And so there's a lot of good examples in freshwater systems of aeration working like that. A couple of things that you have different in freshwater. You don't have the sulfide, right? And so the iron remains available to bind the phosphorus. Also, one of the interesting things about muck that Ben talked about was it's mostly inorganic minerals. And so the organic matter, it is decomposing, but it's relatively refractory. It doesn't decompose readily. It's not like a leaf decomposing. It's dissolved organic material that's coating an inorganic particle. And when you look at carbon sequestration in the environment, right, this type of system is incredibly good at making carbon that doesn't decompose or doesn't decompose fast. And so it's just a type of carbon that's very difficult to decompose, even by adding oxygen. You just don't have the right ingredients there. And so the type of organic matter that we have here compared to a lake makes it difficult to decompose, but also the presence of sulfate, which is the saltwater, right, also makes the aeration have some challenges. And so there's a few reasons that it's not quite as effective here. Dr. Joppe, is that why when we talk about natural systems in the past, the ephemeral nature of the old system, as it was, was actually getting rid of a lot of the nutrients by having the tidal zones be exposed over time, and then the oxygen in the atmosphere would do a lot of that work. So those types of natural systems that existed 100-plus years ago were doing some of that work that we're talking about today. Is that kind of... Yes, yes. And so effectively, where you have those intertidal zones, you're removing the water. It's all becoming oxyc. You have bacteria that are doing that nitrification step. And so you hear about denitrification all the time. But for that to happen, you have to have nitrate. And the nitrate is only there when you have nitrification. And so I talk about it as coupled nitrification, denitrification. And so we're missing that nitrification step. In the lagoon, so Rebecca mentioned, and stop me if I'm going too long, in the lagoon, at the same time we saw the increase in phosphorus concentrations, there wasn't really an appreciable change in the nitrogen concentration, but we saw a change in speciation. And we saw a decrease in the availability of nitrate. And so that's going to make it more difficult to remove the nitrogen. And what causes a decrease in nitrate? A lack of oxygen. And so all of this is pointing back towards we're seeing a greater extent of hypoxia now than we very likely saw pre-2010. So, you know, we've had a catastrophic loss of sandy shoreline habitat, sloping beach habitat. So now we've got most of the lagoon is lined with rocks and vertical seawalls. So you've got waves with, you know, bits of seagrass and stuff smashing into rocks, and it's creating all these deposits next to the rocks. Would we be, would it be, would it help the situation if we had more sandy beaches where the litter would get deposited up on the sand and exposed to oxygen? Have we done this to ourselves by hard armoring so much of our shorelines? I mean, there's a lot of things that we've done that have contributed to this. And so, again, that 2011 to sudden shift, I'm saying that can very likely be explained by this hypoxia. But that was set up, right, by decades and a century of human activity just changing things. And so by getting rid of those sloping shorelines and putting in seawalls, that's contributing. By getting rid of the wetlands and turning them into upland dredge spoil, that's contributed to it. And so just all of that built up. We had the system kind of teetering on the edge. And then 2010, 2011 is when it kind of flipped. And so, yes, we've done this to ourselves. And more shallow sand would be incredible. And so it's interesting. Just another interesting is the sand that Rebecca showed here, that's exactly the same sand. The only difference is it's hypoxic, right, on the left. Way darker. And so when I think about the people who say when I was younger I could see the bottom, right? That would be me. It's not just the algae that are impacting light, right? It's this hypoxia has actually changed the color of the sediment. So it's not necessarily. Those have the same exact organic content, right? So the hypoxia, that iron sulfide, and other minerals have caused it to be darker. If we think about things like habitat in the shallow water, what is the one thing, the number one thing attributed to the loss of seagrasses? Light, right? Light sediments reflect light upwards. So we're actually seeing lower upward light in the lagoon than we did, but we don't have that data, right? But I can tell you that when it's hypoxic, which we have data for, right, there's less reflectivity, and that's going to make it harder for seagrasses to grow. It's going to make it harder to see the bottom. It's also going to get hotter. And so hypoxia just, we went after this thinking about nutrients, and all of a sudden it's like, okay, all of these problems we're talking about, this does in some way contribute. Charlie? Yeah, so a comment and a question, a comment about the bubbles and the limitation of how effective that is. Kind of reminds me of people suggesting opening more inlets, and we know that has some benefit, but how far up north and south did that go? The question I have for the team, which you guys did a great job on the presentation, thank you so much, and maybe it's just adding to the fire hose that Deb mentioned here. Can you talk a little bit about when we talk depth, you know, and you mentioned the two different depths, the discrete and the continuous, but what's that critical depth where there's enough flux that is causing issues? And I'm looking at it from, you know, how much do we need to get out to make sure that we're not, you know, when it's clean, it's clean, and there's still not that flux of the muck going on. There's so many elements to this answer. A lot to unpack there. So is your question, do we need to remove it all? Is that the question? Well, maybe what's that critical mass that says, okay, or the lack of mass in this case that might make it better or effective? So the critical depth is what we've seen is in general in the lagoon, so in the open areas, once you get below about 10 feet of depth, the sediments that are pokey have organic content that exceeds that 10% threshold, right? And so you can call it 10 feet, but like we showed in canals and places with really restricted circulation, you've allowed those fines to accumulate in shallower areas, and so, again, in kind of the broader open lagoon, I'd say 10 feet's a pretty good threshold for a depth. When you get into canals and really restricted areas, it can be much shallower, and so, again, that's why we have to kind of, why we're using different thresholds in different subbasins, et cetera. Yeah, I mean, it's all part of the process. As we go through and we learn how effective the muck removal projects are, and maybe you'd have to make adjustments, and I think it'll be helpful for the committee as we go through, you know, the next review of projects to give them a better understanding of, you know, how our, you know, which projects we want to continue to work on. Thank you. Let's move on because we've got some really important things to go yet, so we've got Abby to come up. And so, thank you, Austin. Thank you, and just a special thanks to all of the people who have supported these projects over the years. Hello. I'm Abby. I'm one of the mucketeers, and I spent a long time studying the impacts of muck on the lagoon, so I'm excited to be here and talk to you guys about some of the water quality benefits that we are seeing from these muck removal projects. I will try to keep it short and light because I'm sure your brains are overwhelmed with all the wonderful information you just received from Dr. Fox and his group. And so, to kick it off, this image is from the dredge material management area off of Pineda Causeway. This is water and muck entering the dredge material management area. Visibly, it's very dark in color, very turbid. You can imagine out in the lagoon, anything like wind, wave action, boats going by can resuspend this sediment. And what's that saying? A picture's worth a thousand words. So, this is taken the same day. This is the water that's leaving the DMMA after it's been processed at the site. It's, again, visibly much more clear, not very turbid, and I think this image speaks a lot as to what we've got going on. So, from murky muck to clear water, we're not only reducing the internal nitrogen and phosphorus loading, but we're also restoring oxygen, as we just heard, and improving overall water clarity. Diving in to the data a little bit, but not too bad, another benefit of muck removal is decreasing harmful algae blooms. And so, we just heard that when you have a bloom that's fueled by these nutrients like nitrogen and phosphorus, muck is a large internal source of these nutrients. The algae eventually die. They can sink to the bottom, decompose, potentially contribute to more muck accumulation, which could then fuel future blooms, and we can get stuck in this really vicious cycle. And so, this is something we definitely want to pay attention to. And as part of the research being conducted by Applied Ecology for the Harmful Algae Blooms, they are looking at bloom intensity and bloom duration throughout the Indian River Lagoon, and they combined these two things to come up with the Bloom Severity Index. And in the simplest of terms, this is just a number that we can use to show how intense and widespread an algae bloom is in a specific area. In this context, high numbers indicates worse blooms. And so, looking at the O'Galley River, which was dredged as part of a St. John's River Water Management District restoration project, we can use satellite data that's collected by the European Space Agency and processed by Applied Ecology to start to look at the benefits of muck removal. Before dredging, the bloom severity index, on average, is about 101. And if you take a look at the scale, in reality, we're talking on much smaller numbers, but just it's a little easier to comprehend this way. So, before dredging, the O'Galley River segment had significantly higher bloom severity index for 21 out of the 24 weeks that they're monitoring. What's really interesting is that during this time, the blooms were intense even when runoff was low. So, even when there was low discharge coming from the O'Galley River, suggesting that it was the nutrients from the muck itself that could have been potentially fueling these algae blooms. After dredging, you can see the drastic decrease in the bloom severity index down to 26. And what's also interesting is that after dredging, the lagoon did get hit with a super bloom in 2020. During this time, the bloom severity index in the mouth of the O'Galley River segment was about 57% lower than the other surrounding segments, which I think is a huge difference. But overall, it remained consistently low, and we saw a 74% decrease in bloom severity after dredging. So, diving into turbidity data a little bit, so we can see from that image on that first slide that visibly the water looks clear. But how can we confirm that turbidity remains low even long after these dredging projects are complete? Luckily for us, St. John's River Water Management District has a bunch of different water quality monitoring stations throughout the lagoon. One of them is just northeast of Rebard County's Turkey Creek dredging project, and one is directly east of the St. John's River Water Management District's O'Galley River and Elbow Creek dredging restoration project. We can use the data from these sensors to look at what the turbidity is doing before dredging, during dredging, and after dredging. So, on average, in Turkey Creek, the turbidity was about 4.1 NTUs, and after dredging, we've seen a consistent decrease in turbidity with an average of 2.9 NTUs. Looking at the O'Galley River, before dredging, the average turbidity was about 6.4 NTUs, and after dredging, the average turbidity is about 3.8. And what's really encouraging about this is that even six and five years after dredging, we are consistently seeing lower turbidity in both Turkey Creek and the O'Galley River compared to the measurements before dredging occurred. So, although our goal is to remove muck, there's definitely something that comes up in the process that can't be ignored, which is the quantity of trash hidden beneath the surface in the lagoon. So, these are just some of the images that we receive daily from our contractors of trash that clogs the dredge and is inevitably removed from the system then. There's a wide variety of different things that they find in the dredge. It catches everything from tires and plastics to metal wiring and other debris, like that owl decoy head, which definitely would have given me a jump scare if I pulled that one from the dredge. And, again, these are just some of the pictures. We receive these daily from our contractors, so it also kind of, you know, they have to stop the process, get all the stuff out of the dredge cutter head, and then start back up again. So, if you couldn't tell, there's a significant amount of trash and debris that doesn't belong in the lagoon that's removed daily, and it just keeps on going and going. And so, this is another huge impact that I think is kind of overlooked in these processes. It's not something we really focus on as much as the nitrogen and phosphorus, but, again, this trash is being removed every single day from the lagoon that doesn't belong there. Like I said, I'm keeping this short and sweet, but while I'm up here on my soapbox, I do want to scream, SOS, save our sediments, save our sand. The sediments are the foundation of the ecosystem. As you've just learned, there's a lot going on below the surface that we might not be able to see with our bare eye, but it has a huge impact on overall ecosystem health. And so, every effort that we can make to manage this muck moves our lagoon closer and closer to improved water quality and an overall healthier ecosystem. And so, just to reiterate and really hit home with these points, there's a lot of benefits to effective muck management, one being we're reducing that internal load of nitrogen and phosphorus that's fueling these harmful algae blooms. We can see, looking at data like the Bloom Severity Index, that we are improving these algae blooms. We are seeing less severe algae blooms after dredging. We're also reducing turbidity, so this is improving light penetration in the water column. As we just heard from Rebecca, we're also able to improve dissolved oxygen levels, and this is key. Muck has a really high sediment oxygen demand, and as you just learned, that has a whole bunch of different impacts on the lagoon. Even though it's not intentional, these dredge projects do remove a lot of debris and trash that make their way into the lagoon that don't belong. And we're getting to restore the natural bottom habitat and protect these benthic communities that are often overlooked. And so, again, one more time, SOS, save our sediments. They really are the foundation of the ecosystem, and so they might be little critters, but they're tiny and mighty, and they do a lot of work to help build back ecosystem resilience. So, with that being said, I just want to say thank you. And we're going to end this with a fun little video showcasing fish diversity in an area that was recently dredged, thanks to our other mucketeer, Alex. So, if Logan wants to pull that up, pretty cool. Yeah, Fred, go ahead. Yeah, that was great. Thank you. A couple of quick things. Do we have a sense of what the NTUs were years ago and how that might compare when you dropped that from, you know, when it got clear? Was it close, or were you getting anywhere close to what it used to be like with that? So, before dredging, those were the NTUs that were being said. But I mean, like, years ago, before the mess. Yeah, I don't think the data goes back to that. Yeah, and secondarily, you raised a really good point. I never thought of trash getting sucked up by one of those things. And I think one of the issues I mentioned a little bit is figuring out how we let our people we represent understand exactly what was presented today and in a simplified language so they can understand it and get the value of what it is that's being done. And that trash thing certainly needs to be listed. By the way, we're sucking this stuff out of here, and here's some amazing pictures. That was just nuts. Yeah. Yeah. I'm sure we give it to Brandon. He'll do it. Yeah, it's definitely a message that we're trying to put out there more, you know, as we get all of these pictures from our contractors every day. It's definitely something that shouldn't be overlooked. Yeah, and converting the equations we saw to plain language for individuals to understand what the value of pulling muck out is and how it's brought our impact. Thank you, Abby. All right, and next we have our video on our groundwater monitoring. So as we've presented to the committee before, information on this, you know, our groundwater monitoring was used to look at some of those neighborhoods where we had septic and reclaimed water and then sewer systems and compare and helped us to see that that reclaimed water was a larger pollution source to the groundwater than we first realized. The groundwater monitoring can also be used to look at the effectiveness of projects, so we've used it in neighborhoods where we've done septic to sewer conversions to see how that changes with the nitrogen levels coming out of the groundwater in that neighborhood. So it's a really important aspect of our plan and our projects, and here's a little bit about how they do it. We're here today collecting groundwater samples to measure the nutrient concentrations of pollution in the groundwater. This is one out of 45 sites countywide that we're monitoring, and all of that groundwater pollution is moving towards the Indian River Lagoon, carrying load. Just before the half-cent sales tax was passed, we discovered that the pollution in groundwater was responsible for more pollution to the lagoon than all of the stormwater combined. So when we started this project, we had to work with the community to install monitoring wells on their properties. We were fortunate to be able to recruit over 40 residents to allow us access to their property to install wells and monitor those wells every month. Florida Department of Environmental Protection has established standard operating procedures for groundwater sampling so that all of the samples are taken exactly the same way. Very important that we get a sample that's representative of the groundwater. So to do that, you'll see that our technicians will come out, and they'll pump the well first for a while until it stabilizes. We call that purging the well. So we get out, like, the stagnant water that's been sitting in there, and we get actual representative groundwater. Those samples will then be put into bottles, and then we send them off to a NELAC-certified laboratory to analyze for all kinds of pollution. And then all of those data are entered into a very huge database now, seven years' worth of monthly data from over 40 wells in Brevard County have established an incredible baseline. Nitrogen and phosphorus are the building blocks of life, and at the right amounts, they're good for the lagoon. But too much causes algae blooms, and those algae blooms, as they decay, eat up oxygen that the fish need to breathe, and they also block light that needs to penetrate down to the seagrasses. And so too much nutrients is bad for the lagoon. One of the interesting findings is that there's tremendous variation in where groundwater is more polluted in Brevard County. So we found, and we were kind of surprised because we were looking for background areas, like natural areas, like Turkey Creek Wildlife Sanctuary, where we could get a background. And one of the things we decided was maybe we should put wells in the seward areas to see if there's a background, if it's a background like a natural area. And it turns out that sewered areas are already polluted. So even though they're not septic tanks there, people can't just assume that the groundwater is clean. It's not. We're still polluting it. We have dogs. We have pets. We fertilize our lawns. We're applying different pesticides and things outdoors. We're using wash products outside. And then, of course, we have septic tanks. We are using reclaimed irrigation water. All of these are potential sources. Every time you cut down a tree in your yard, you are increasing the amount of stormwater that is hitting your landscape. Just as a human walking onto a property and putting your house and starting to live there, we start contaminating the groundwater there. We've found that there's tremendous variability from house to house and from month to month. But over that long time period, we can tease out trends. And so what we found is that homes that are on sewer, on average, the nitrogen level is four times what it is in natural areas. Homes that are on septic, the nitrogen levels are nine times the natural levels. And homes that are on reclaimed irrigation, on average, are 14 times the natural levels in groundwater. So with that information, we can then look at the costs of retrofits. What does it cost to upgrade the wastewater treatment plant, to improve the reclaimed water? What does it cost to convert people from septic to sewer? And we can look at the benefits versus the costs to come up with what are the most cost-effective ways to reduce pollution getting to the lagoon to use that Hapcent sales tax wisely. I really want to thank the homeowners. When we started this program, we thought we would be doing it for a year or two. We didn't realize how variable the data was going to be and how long we were going to need to be stepping into their backyards on a monthly basis. So just a really huge thank you to these folks who are helping us better understand the sources of pollution and what we need to do to help fix the lagoon. For decades, we've been talking about pollution that gets into stormwater and ways to reduce that. And more recently, with this groundwater monitoring, we've realized how important pollution getting into the groundwater itself is. And there's ways to reduce that pollution around your homes. Reducing or eliminating the use of fertilizer on your lawn, picking up after your pet, and if you're using reclaimed water, making sure that you aren't over-irrigating are all ways that we can reduce that groundwater pollution that gets into the lagoon. To learn more ways that you can join all of us in getting to a healthy lagoon faster, visit lagoonloyal.com. Thank you. How are you? Have you seen an improvement in the nutrients in the groundwater in the areas where we've already completed the wastewater treatment facility upgrades? Yes. Dramatic. Dramatic improvements. Yeah. Great. Thank you. Go ahead. You guys can fight over it. I was trying to get your list here. Gave some figures. You passed with this on the point. Septic, irrigation, what were the features? Sewer was five times higher nitrogen than background. Septic was nine times higher. And reclaimed was 14. Septic was nine. What was five? Seward. Sewer. Oh, sewer. And then 14. Sewer areas. So, you know, that's the fertilizer, the pet waste, everything else that, you know, removing the trees and the, you know, natural filtration systems like we do. Water and we put in our homes. That would be reuse irrigation. Thank you. So, how deep are the test wells and related to percolation rate of water and then also related to the depth of some of the aquifers that are feeding the springs that are going into the river? So, the wells are, the depth is based on how deep you have to go to get to the groundwater, which varies from home to home to home. But they're packed wells that penetrate several feet below the top of the water table. And that's what we're trying to get near the top of the water table because that's where the nutrients are filtering from septic and fertilizer. So, you can, I, you know, I was thinking about percolation rate, right? So, it takes more time to get deeper. And then, of course, the extent that that gets into the river versus not as far as depth. Is that something that will, in the future, be looked at? So, the modeling that we have done of septic impact loading to the lagoon does take that into account. Also, the areas that tend to be deeper sand to get down to the water table tend to be sandier. And so, that porous sand allows nutrients to filter quickly, right? So, you don't get a lot of sediment or soil attenuation in those sediments. So, it's a balance of distance and porosity and binding capacity of the sediments. Thanks. Go ahead. I'll be quick. Okay. Thank you. You mentioned the variety of the different sources and the types, pet waste and everything. When you collect the data, is there a way to see that difference in the isotope analysis of the different types and be like, oh, this is a percentage that came from pet waste. This is the percentage that came from fertilizer. And we can, like, track this fertilizer brand and its journey. Is that way too much money science? We have tested over 1,000 samples with isotopic, both nitrogen and oxygen isotopic work. And the problem is that those isotopes change over time, right? There are these constant biogeochemical processes going on that are changing those over time. And everything that you collect is a mixture of multiple sources. And so, we had hoped to be able to tease things apart. We can schedule a presentation in the future on what we've found, but it's very vexing. Yeah. We have an important vote to come up, so I'm going to ask for another half hour. And we can vote on that half hour first, because I'm sure there's going to be just some discussion around the vote that needs to come up. So, I propose that we add a half hour for the next few items here to our time, so that we have enough time for discussion. Do I have a first at all? Motion that we've had time. Okay. Second. Second. So, did you get the names? Yeah. Fred and Laura Lee. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Any have to go to the bathroom? So, we'll add a half hour. And the next thing is old business. And is there any old business? Aye. Thank you. Thank you. So, the new business is the West Melbourne Ray Ballard Water Reclamation Plant Upgrade Contingency Request. It's in your package. And are you going to explain it? I can do a quick introduction, and I believe Jacqueline is here from West Melbourne, if you want to ask the city any questions. So, this is for the West Melbourne Ray Ballard Water Reclamation Facility, adding treatment so that that reclaimed water is better quality. The project was approved back in 2020, so they've been working on the design. They went to bid the first time, and the cost came in over $8 million above the engineer's estimate. So, they went back to the design table, reworked the project, bid it again, and the bid came in at $10,725,750. The current swirl plan cost share is $6,505,916. They have been very proactive in pursuing grants. They have one from DEP for $1,510,000, and another one from St. John's River Water Management District of $1,343,250,000. That leaves them a little over $1.3 million short, $1,365,584,000. So, their request today is for the committee to consider increasing the Saver Lagoon cost share by up to $1.3 million. At your places, you should have the last page of what we refer to as the rainbow table from the plan. The gray section below the purple monitoring line, all of that is previous contingency approvals that have come through the committee and then gone to the county commission as needed. So, you see that the majority of those requests have been much smaller. The exception is out there in year 7, Sykes-M was approved for a little over $4 million. That was a very unique circumstance where we had applied for a grant. We had received notification that we had been awarded the grant, but we didn't have it under contract yet, and we were ready to go to bid. And so, we asked the committee if the committee would sort of temporarily approve this increased funding availability from contingency so that we could move forward with bidding and award of that project, knowing that the grant dollars would be arriving before the invoices came in. So, in the next iteration of the plan, we will revise that Sykes-M number down to remove the grant dollars that came in. The second to the last line in the table, starting at the far left, you see the total in contingency is $21.9 million, and that is allocated across the years. It's calculated as 5% of the total cost allocated for, you know, all of the projects in that year. So, we hold back 5% in each year to be available for circumstances like this. There is a process in the plan that allows people to come forward and ask for these contingency requests. If it is greater than 10% of what they were previously approved for, then it has to go to the county commission. If it's more than the signature authority of the county manager, which is currently $200,000, it will have to go to the county commission. So, historically, and you have your two emeritus folks here as well, the committee has been very forthcoming with requests that were 5%, because that's actually held right there for this, and up to 10%, assuming, you know, a lot of projects will be completed without needing the contingency. There have not been approvals above 10% in the past, but it will, you know, the committee can recommend whatever you like, and we will take that recommendation to the county commission. Question. When it was approved last, what is the timing? Is, I don't know, is that something in the beginning when it was first approved or 20% complete or? So, you mean the cost share, the Saver Lagoon cost share of $6.5 million now? It was originally, I think, $4 point something. But the project, it hadn't been started then. Right. They designed it, and then they've redesigned it, right, and permitted it. All of that takes years. And so that was the approval after that, after the redesign. I'm asking, I'm not putting words in there. The funding amount is based on the nitrogen reduction that's anticipated from the project, so they're expecting a nitrogen reduction of 11,360 pounds. No, no, I'm talking about timing. Excuse me? I say 2020. Yeah, it was originally approved in 2020. It was originally approved in 2020. Is that what you're asking? I think what could answer his question is that the money was just for construction, and they've been going on with design and permitting independent of the amount that was set aside, because other projects have gone into design and construction using our funding. Yeah, the program funding can be used for design, permitting, construction, you know, any of those costs are eligible. But in this case, the city has so far absorbed all of the design costs, and if you just look at their construction costs, they are still a little over $1.3 million short of what is needed to move this project to construction, to award construction. Thank you. Any other questions? Or if you have questions for West Melbourne, maybe? Yeah. I thought that plant was, sorry, I'll wait for you to get up here. That plant, is it privately run for the West Melbourne, that reclamation facility, or is that a West Melbourne plant? It's a West Melbourne plant. Operated by West Melbourne employees? Yes. Okay. And that's for the wastewater plant. And this is an upgrade for AWT. Is that something DEP requires? Is it because we just want to do what's right for the river when we did this plant? I'm actually not sure if it was, I think it was initially because DEP requires the upgrades. And I would like to share some of the significant changes in the scope. We're repairing in the existing below ground air piping rather than replacing the new air piping and then converting the existing blowers to variable speed operation rather than purchasing entirely new blowers. So we were able to significantly reduce the cost of the project with those items along with a few others. Okay. Go ahead. I did a couple. One, does the repair of those pipes have a shorter lifespan than if you had replaced them? That I don't know the answer to. Okay. Also, so if the original bid was $8 million over and the original amount we did was $4 million total for the project, how did the engineers be that far off? So our original grant from Sorrel was like $4.6 million, I believe. And then we had two additional grants. We had a grant from FDEP and then also St. John's Water Management District. I think the original estimate was around $8 million. And it was $8 million under the estimate? It was almost double. Right. Yeah. It was around $20 million. Yeah. It was. Right. So was that typical? It was 2022. It was that time frame post-COVID when all the prices just went crazy. Skyrocketing. And the consultants trying to do the cost estimating, they had nothing to base their estimates on because, you know, all of their data of previous projects was in a different time scale, different price. Go ahead. I was going to say, I think it was pretty consistent with what we saw around Brevard County as far as costs. Okay. We were about $8 million short, so. And one other quick one. I don't know if this is feasible. Maybe it is. You're applying for other grants, right? Yes. So if we funded this and you got other stuff in, could we get it back? Yes. Okay. Just a general statement. It has nothing to do with you or that. It's just I'm not a big fan of Sorrells putting money into treatment plants as DEP requires. And spending that for, you know, say the north end, spending it for south end. It's not about West Melbourne, but I just, I'm not a fan of the Sorrells money going into wastewater plants. The DEP is requiring them to do it, and that's usually the customer that has to pay that and not Sorrells. It's just my opinion, and I just want to kind of throw that out there. When we're looking at budgets and projects, I think you're better off with this, what we just talked about, the muck. Removing the things that are a direct impact to the river. Some of the things, too, that I see when the reclaim, they over, not just, you know, West Melbourne, but oversaturated just to get rid of it, use it as a disposal thing, kind of get more of a handle on their operations. And this is not West Melbourne alone. I see it across the board. When it's wet, they still got to get rid of the water, and they just dump it. And that's part of the groundwater impact, in my mind, is that a lot of that nitrogen and phosphorus ends up in the groundwater because we're over-watering. Again, I'm just not a big fan of support and that kind of thing. But this is a project already started, and I wouldn't, I'm not going to stand it away. I think she's right. It was crazy from 20 to 2024. I mean, I remember inflation's over 9%, 10%. Electrical costs were triple to get a plant built. So, yeah, it's nothing your fault. But because this is already gone, I'm not going to stand it away of supporting it if the board. Richard, when this first started, it was not a requirement of DEP to go to AWT, and now it is. Thank you. If they were doing that, that's what my question was. Were they doing it ahead of the game, before a DEP required it? Okay, well, then that's yay. I mean, that's okay. But if people are required to do it by DEP, I'm less pro-supporting that kind of thing. It was done because of the notice of the difference between reuse, water, and... That's a good reason. Yes. Okay. One quick question for Regine. On this chart you gave us, so that $3.4 million down here, is the contingency fund we have sitting available? Or is it in year eight, when you're down on the end line? Yeah, so... The next to last line? That is what is... Yes, but the prior years that hasn't been spent is also available. Right, so they're both sitting there, and the prior year you had those projects that were there, and then this year you have no projects yet. Correct. Great, so that's... Okay, thanks. That's the 5% you had mentioned? Yes. Great. So the money is available? Correct. Yeah, that's the answer. And we might get it back. Great. We are actively seeking other grants as well. So do I have a motion at all? I move that we award, what is it, $1.3 million to the City of West Melbourne so that they can complete the Ray Bullard Water Reclamation Facility Upgrades. And we've been talking about this thing for a long, long time, so it'll be nice to see it done. Yes, and we're ready to get moving. I'll second that motion. So that was Laura Lee and Fred. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Public comments, right? Okay. Oh, okay. Before the vote. Yeah. Okay. Aye. Sorry. That's one you. Yeah. Well done. Yeah. Kimberly, we're going to go to public comments for a minute here. Anybody in the public have any comments on this particular item? Thank you. Now we can go. We already have the motion. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Aye. Kimberly? I think she's watching on YouTube and there's a delay. Okay. Aye. Thank you. Any opposed? Thank you. It passes. All right. Oh, yeah. Oh, public comments. Did we get any? Any cards? No cards? No cards? All right. Anybody in public want to have any comments? Oh, we're not going to use that whole half hour. It looks like. Good. Anybody? We're looking for final comments from the committee. Anybody? Yes. I have a couple. One is to remind everybody, those trash pictures, we can do something about that tomorrow. It's International Coastal Cleanup. Keeper Bar Beautiful and a lot of other organizations, Waterway Warriors, others, are doing things. You can go online and find out where you can show up to pick up some trash and keep it out of the lagoon and out of the ocean. The other thing is I wanted to mention that Virginia mentioned that she's speaking to the Melbourne Regional Chamber of Florida Space Coast on Tuesday morning. I will be there. It is for the business community to learn why they should continue to support this program. Very good. And especially the things that are going to happen next year to hopefully keep it going. And anyone is welcome to attend. It doesn't, you don't have to be a chamber member to come. So if you want to come and show support for Virginia and this program, you're more than welcome to come. There are details on the chamber's website where you can reach out to me and I'll make sure you get them. And you can register or you can just show up to the offices on NASA Boulevard and show some support for Virginia in this program. So look at my things. When is that? It's Tuesday morning. I think the meeting starts at 8 or 8.30. And it will be an update about this program that Virginia is going to provide. Thank you. Anybody else? Done. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. The issues need to be discussed. We serve over 10,000 people annually. Sounds like a lot of work to handle all these classes and events. Who does all this work? Volunteers. Mossman has no paid staff. Generous, hardworking people are drawn to.