Save Our Indian River Lagoon on 2026-03-20 8:30 AM - Mar 20, 2026

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Pledge allegiance.

Let's just sit down and then we'll do roll call.

Call. Donald Dice.

Here.

Mark Schroep.

Here.

Rick Nipper.

Here.

Bruce Larson.

Here.

Kimberly Newton.

She'll be here about nine or so.

Laura Lee Thompson. Here. Nicholas Sanzone.

Here.

Richard Bankhead. Here. Aaron Adams. Here. Kurt Smith. Fred Goldstein. Here. Barbara Wall Scanlon. Eric Maness.

Here.

John Windsor. And Charles Venuto. And we do have quorum.

Thank you.

I think you missed me. Deb Harmon.

Oh, really?

Deborah Harmon. I apologize.

No worries. Thank you. Okay.

All right. Has everybody reviewed the agenda? Any questions on that or any comments? Do I have a motion? I got that right this time.

I'll make a motion to accept the minutes.

There. I was second. Second. That was Deb and Dick.

Thank you.

All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? No. And then the minutes from the last meeting, everybody reviewed those? Any questions? Comments? Motion? You can do a motion. Yeah. Second.

Rick and Orlean.

Aye. All in favor? Aye. Aye.

Aye.

Sorry. Approved. All right. Now we have to go through an election process, and if anybody wants to nominate anybody for chair and vice chair, I mean, I'll certainly go through another year if you want, but if you want somebody else, go ahead and nominate them or whatever.

I think you're doing a fine job, Don.

Thank you.

I agree.

You agree? I'll nominate Don to be there. I'll second that. All in favor?

Aye.

Aye.

Did you make the nomination?

Deb made the nomination? I made the nomination. Rick? Nipper? And Deb seconded it? I think. Did you? Sure.

And unanimous.

Didn't you? As unanimous, yeah.

Thank you.

And then vice chair? I mean, does anybody? I'll stay with the same ponies, I'd say. All right. So, Dick? Dick?

Well, last time you caught me talking to you. When they did that to me. Yeah, that's right. Oh, we're talking again. There we go.

I'm sure not. Anybody second that? Second. All right.

All in favor?

Aye. Aye. All right. We got it. That was quick. Thank you. We have to get Virginia out on time.

So, yeah.

So, let's go through the monthly report.

All right. With your permission, I am going to do this a little backwards today. I'm going to start with page two. So, we've had a busy month of presentations. Lots of staff out at lots of events. And photo here is the February 25th East Central Florida Diamond Awards. The Save Our Lagoon program won the region's highest. And our chair, Commissioner Altman, was there with us. And so, it was a very, very nice event. And we're excited to be the award winners. There are lots of lagoon forums and public events because we're coming up on Earth Day. And so, this weekend, we have the Florida Friendly Landscaping Seminar. April 9th is the Shore Symposium up in Volusia. And then April 11th is just jammed with things, the Arbor Day Garden Festival, the Melbourne Beach Nature Day, where I believe Dawn is presenting. Thank you. And Botanical Fest will be at these events. And then also, in honor of Earth Day, there are cleanup events all over the place. So, whether your favorite flavor is Waterway Warriors or Keep Bavard Beautiful or Marine Resources Council, lots of opportunities to get out there and clean up a portion of the lagoon or shoreline. So, with that, I'll flip to page one. We have now completed 128 projects to date, over 2,400 homeowner projects. And we are just short of 1,000 connections to sewer. So, I was asked in the penalty box, unprepared, how many folks we had connected. And I said 700 or 800-ish. And Dawn sent me an email. You're not counting right. Here's a spreadsheet I put together for you. So, thank you very much for that. So, we're looking for that 1,000th connection to come up here pretty soon.

That's great.

So, those three new completed projects this month, two are in Titusville, the Coleman and Osprey Pond circulator projects. And then one additional clam aquaculture project was completed. On February 24th, the county commission voted again to continue with the intent to renew the half-cent sales tax in its current form. We connected one more person to sewer through a quick connect. 49 more septic upgrades, which I'm pretty sure is a record. And we may break that record next month, too, based on the number of applications I see flying through. But two more leaky lateral repairs. You'll hear more about the leaky lateral program on this agenda. Videos. We got Lucky Clover mobile home park sewer conversion video for you today. It's a really great project we're looking forward to sharing. On work underway this month, the West Melbourne.

I have a couple questions. Yeah. One on Quick Connects. That 569, is that the total number of contracts? And then this 532 is a subset of that? Is that...

Right. So, 532 have actually connected, provided proof of connection, abandonment of their septic, and they've been reimbursed or their contractor has been paid directly. 569 and all. So, 569 are people that have applied, and so they should... The difference between 569 and 532 are 30-something people that are in the process of permitting construction.

And how well funded is that program? Is it funded for a bunch more?

It is funded for a bunch more. We have done very well with state grant funding for that program as well, so we continue to have about 50% cost share from the state for that program, so we have funding for...

And this 569 will be about 50% of the total funds or somewhere in 40... I think that we have...

Is this the one that's 900 and... No, no, the total swirl funds for Quick Connects is enough for... Is that the 1,700 or 1,700 upgrades and 900 and something as Quick Connects? Somebody can check the plan. There are about 20 copies of the plan in here.

And the same questions on the septic tank upgrades, too. You know, the same question, that 1,133 is signed contracts, so to speak, and then 709 as a subset of that have been done. And then that program is well-funded, too, right?

It is well-funded with swirl funds, and the committee voted to include more swirl funds for that program now. We have had a gap in state funding for that program. We've burned through almost every grant dollar that we have. There are portions of the lagoon where we're out-of-state funding for match, but we have supplemented with additional swirl funds.

Yeah, and this Sykes Creek Dissolved Oxygen, what project is that?

So...

Sorry for the hard questions.

Wait, Sykes Creek Dissolved Oxygen?

Yeah.

Oh, oh. Austin's update? You want to give Austin's update? Yeah. Oh, so this is a... Dissolved Oxygen Monitoring.

Oh, okay.

Yeah, Dr. Fox has different sensors out at Sykes Creek at the bottom.

Water dissolved oxygen around the muck dredging area, so we can get post data for Phase 2. And he's continuing monitoring those sensors for Phase 1 of Sykes Creek, so we can see how the dissolved oxygen is improved the dredging.

Okay.

Yeah, sorry. We have another project in... We have several other projects in Sykes Creek.

Yeah. No, no, I understand it now. It just kind of sat there and no explanation, you know. Okay. Thank you. Yes.

So, I just... I wanted to beg and plead and put in another desperate plea to... When you're looking at the design for the MIMS rim ditch, muck dredging, is there any way that you can get up to Scottsmoor Landing and get the muck out of the boat ramp and the channel going into Scottsmoor Landing?

Yeah.

Because it's not that far away from the end of the MIMS rim ditch. It sure needs it.

It's unusable, right?

It is unusable.

Yeah.

Okay. We can look at that. Thank you very much.

Just general comments on this, because each month I take this and I look at the last month and try to see what changed or moved or didn't move. And sometimes new stuff shows up, like obviously the 987 conversion, I wonder what was that compared to last month. But if there's some way, and I know it's difficult to actually have this, or something that would say green, that's moved forward from last month. There's a bunch in here that I notice no change and things like that. And then some of them suddenly show up or something drops off. Does that mean it's done? Just, and I know it's a lot of work and we're going through a transition, but some way to make it easier to sort of follow through this thing instead of having to go, that one's there, oh, it's missing, that kind of an idea, and would help a lot. Fred, you could put together your own spreadsheet. Yeah, I could build a spreadsheet. Okay, I'll go do that next. I'm just kidding.

Okay.

I mean, the work completed this month is always fresh. The work underway this month, there are a few things on there that sometimes don't change. The big bullet there, the Brevard County septic to sewer, you know, that's all of the county's septic to sewer projects, and so sometimes those move from 30% design to 75% or 100%, but, you know, they're all listed there, and, you know, some months they may all still be in the same category.

Sure, you know, I mean, there's no change on some of these. This one, is the north one done, for example, where you moved to the south end construction on the Brevard County stormwater basin? Right, right. So I assume that's done.

One end is done and the other side is that order.

And it sounds like you have a place to put the muck that you've selected of one of those two bids that came in for the Sykes Creek?

Yes. We have two potential places to place the muck.

Oh, but you're still working on that. But you're moving forward with construction bids. You're still trying to finalize the contract for the muck. Where are you going to put it?

Sorry. I'm not good at this looking around. We are, we have done, so we are moving forward with Oak Galley because everything's in place for that. We're working on the pre-construction review of the pre-construction submittals. Most of those have been submitted to us now for the Cocoa Beach golf muck capping. That transfer from the city to the county is underway. In the meantime, we have done an RFQ to select a construction oversight consultant. We are in negotiations on rates for that. And once that's done, that project will be moving forward. For Grand Canal, we've completed the planting restoration of the dewatering site there along Pineda. Pineda, yeah, Sykes Creek, we're still moving forward with the construction bid. Now that we have the disposal options, right, we had to incorporate those disposal options into the bid documents.

And you just need to finalize that disposal option before you can actually do it, right? I would assume you know where I put it.

No, we've pre-qualified those disposal options, and we're leaving it up to the contractors to decide whether they want one or the other, or whether they find another site that is suitable or more cost-effective. So we're not requiring them to use either of those sites.

Okay, thanks.

If I can back up. Yes, please. So the West Melbourne Ray Bullard wastewater treatment plant, that is underway, and they're working on the electrical. For Sykes-T, and I know, you know, this was one where there was a glitch a month or so back, so the installation of vacuum pits is nearly complete. They have a few more vacuum pits to go on that. Sykes Creek Zone N, they're constructing the vacuum pump station. Construction of the vacuum pump station is complicated. You know, they've got to dig the hole, and then there's a whole bunch of plumbing and electrical that goes underneath the slab, so they've had multiple subcontractors out there doing work below ground that then the slab gets poured on top of. And meanwhile, the valve pits have been ordered for doing all the connections along the line. South Beaches O and P, right, this has been in the 2B bid, in the bid queue, whatever, for ages, but that has been awarded, and the contractor is purchasing materials and expected to break ground next month. Sykes Creek Zone A, this is currently advertised for bids, so that one's made a big leap forward. Then you have that clump of ones that are still, you know, working their way through design and bidding. West Melbourne Lake Ashley and Dundee Circle sewer projects, they have installed their lines and laterals, so that's great progress. The Cocoa Beach Ramp Road Park Stormwater Improvement Project is underway, under construction. Flamingo, I think this is the one we just talked about, so the north end is complete, the south end construction is to begin later this month, and the south Babcock Bioreactor, that construction is supposed to begin next week, and I think now we've made it through most of the things I wanted to highlight, except for the last thing, the nanobubble water treatment demonstration at Titusville Marina. We are measuring zooplankton response to those bubbles, and I want to yield the rest of my report to Aaliyah to share what we're doing out there.

Can I ask a quick question? Do you get a variety of contractors on the septic-to-sewer projects? Do you get several contractors? Okay. How many hookups will there be at the end of all of the ones that are in the plans right now?

Over 5,000. I think 5,426, it's around that number.

Yeah, and it changes as we get more grants, so it's an evolving...

More possible even beyond that, so that's 5,000 something or other, something or other plus. Yeah, good, good. Any problems doing the hookups? And who pays for the hookup from the line to the house?

So, currently, the way the program is run is that we have a certain amount of funding that is for the project, and it can include those hookups or not, depending on how much the actual construction of the project costs. So, you know, the first thing is to get the lines there for people to connect to, and then hopefully there's additional funds left over to help the homeowners connect. We've also applied for state grant funding to help with those homeowner connection costs. So far, all of our projects have had funding available for homeowner connection costs, and those connection costs have varied from 9,000 to 20, 25,000, depending on the situation for each home. What we're thinking about in the next plan update is to actually divide those so that the dollars for the septic-to-sewer construction would be separate, and all the connections would become a part of the Quick Connect program because that Quick Connect program, we've, you know, obviously got hundreds and hundreds of people that have gone through it. We've got that working really smoothly now, and some of the cities are struggling with getting the last of their connections done, and so, you know, Melbourne has a number of projects that have been constructed. They've had some people connect. The last ones are straggling. We're not counting those projects as done because the last people haven't connected yet, and so we're looking at ways that we can try to help move those connections forward and count the construction done when the construction is done.

Yeah, why would they not want to connect?

They may not want a sewer bill every month.

Oh, okay.

They may not want their yard torn up. Yeah, okay. To all sorts of reasons. Okay. Yeah. All right.

Thank you. Sorry, Leah. And there are still fees, right?

Well, we pay the connection fees as well as long as we have sufficient funds, which so far we have.

Yeah. Sorry. Go ahead.

No worries. All right. So I'm just going to talk quickly about what we're doing at the Ticeville Marina. We have obtained the zooplankton imager, which I brought today as well, so you can see it in real life. It's kind of like halfway set up, but the image here shows to kind of the idea where water is getting pulled in from one pipe. It's flowing through that gray box, the same box here. Inside that box is the camera that is taking pictures of the little critters, the zooplankton, inside the water, and then it's pumped out back into the lagoon. I'm sorry.

Can we back up a second? I meant to sort of explain why we were even doing this.

Is this Bill Arnold's?

Yes, this is Bill Arnold's gizmo.

Yeah.

So Laura Lee and several other private sector folks have invested in this pilot project to inject nanobubbles that are enriched with ozone into the Ticeville Marina to try to chew through the muck. We talked about it briefly last month. The city of Ticeville, I'm sorry, the city of Satellite Beach previously had several pilot projects for aeration and nanobubbles in Satellite Beach canals that were studied by Florida Tech, mostly Austin Fox and John Treffrey. And those prior studies, the aeration tended to just mix the water column. So instead of having oxygenated water at the surface and hypoxic water at the bottom, and at least the fish that were mobile could go to the surface and get air, the critters that are on the benthic on the bottom, you know, couldn't survive. Now, all that water from the bubbles was mixed, but the oxygen demand in the canals during the summer was so high that it made the entire canal hypoxic. And so that was not a net improvement by any means. The next iteration was nanobubbles with air. The bubbles were filled with just regular air. And so nanobubbles are small enough that they are neutrally buoyant and can sink to the bottom instead of floating to the top. And again, the oxygen demand in the canals was so high that it did not benefit the bottom. Third iteration was to fill those little nanobubbles with air enriched with oxygen. So like you go to the oxygen bar or you go to the hospital and you get an oxygen tank, right? Oxygen enriched air. The oxygen enriched air was actually capable of improving conditions during the winter months when the water could hold more oxygen and when the biological oxygen demand was less because the microbial processes breaking down the muck were slowed down during the cold time of the year. This project is trying to build on that by instead of enhancing the oxygen content of the bubbles with O2, it's enhancing it with ozone, O3. And ozone is a very powerful oxidizer, right? So the hope is that it will be able to oxidize the muck. But as a potent oxidizer, it can also have negative impacts on wildlife. So we wanted to monitor the zooplankton to make sure that we are not doing harm with this project. So there's other monitoring going on with Austin and Fox looking at the benefits and the changes in oxygen, the changes in dissolved oxygen and muck in the marina. But we wanted to look at the zooplankton community.

All right. Okay.

Okay.

So, yes. So that was the point is to make sure the ozone is not negatively impacting the zooplankton. And as I described, the water flows through the system, captures images, and then the software that comes with the system will also classify what's flowing through. So there's a library that is embedded in the software that then classifies these images. At the end, those still need to be validated by a person. But I have some examples of what kind of images and what's in the library for this system. So these are not images that we have captured yet. We have been troubleshooting a little bit as we're learning this technology. But these are images captured that are in the library that feeds the program to then classify what we will hopefully eventually get when we're running the imager at the marina. Um, we have been running it and getting lots of images, and it's a lot of detritus right now. And the reason why we think that might be is because zooplankton is very cyclical, depending on seasons. So, um, we were out there in January, February, um, into the beginning of March and, um, haven't really seen a whole lot yet. And we are thinking that it may be due to the fact that there's just nothing there to see right now. Um, we have a plan to, um, get some sea monkeys flowing through there to make sure that it's not a user error and that we're not messing something up. Uh, we are, they're currently in a little cup downstairs. Um, they're not quite all hatched yet. So hopefully next week or the next couple of weeks, we'll run those through the imager, um, and have some images that, again, just to validate that we're using everything correctly. Um, and it just really is that there's nothing there in the system yet. And then, um, we're also gonna probably take it to other locations in the lagoon where we know for, you know, perhaps the marina just doesn't really have a lot. Um, so in the central part of the lagoon, um, as the oysters start, uh, breeding, we know that we'll see something there as well. So we have plans to, you know, validate everything and make sure that, again, no user error. Um, but just very quickly, um, this is our sampling plan for the marina. So the, um, box down here, that's where the trailer is that, um, is pumping the ozone. So there's an inflow and an outflow, and currently every red dot is, this was our initial plan. Every red dot was gonna be, um, a sample point. We would run the imager for 30 seconds, um, and the idea was to kind of have a transect going into the outflow and, or into the inflow, sorry, and then a few transects from the outflow to see if there's also a radial effect. Um, Austin's samples there are in yellow, um, so we wanted to make sure we were collecting samples where Austin was and then, then some. Um, we did create this design before we ever ran the machine anywhere, um, and the processing on it does require a stronger computer, which we do have, um, which should, uh, allow us to take more samples quickly, but that was another part of our troubleshooting process that our original computer would take 30 to 45 minutes to process the images from a 30-second run. So we've been learning a lot as we go through this. Um, we kind of developed backup plans, so we eliminated some spots just in case. Again, we haven't gone through and done a full sampling just because we're still learning. Um, the peach dots are what spots that we would eliminate if we found out that we just don't have the time to sample all those spots. Not only the time in person to run the machine each time, but then on the back end, as I mentioned, all those images then have to be validated by somebody. Um, so we're just, like I said, still kind of learning as we go. But the biggest point is we need to capture the inflow and the outflow, what's going in and what's coming out. And the reason why this is important is because the zooplankton in the food web are eating the phytoplankton, and the phytoplankton are what we usually are attributing to our harmful algal blooms. So if this image, or if the ozone is negatively impacting the zooplankton, it might have impacts on the food web here that's ultimately not going to be good. for mitigating the problems that we have, and the feed fish, so.

Go ahead, Fred. Uh, are you looking for impacts within the machine, impacts out in the water? What's your outcome measure? Is it number counted through? Is it number that we see that are dead? Is there a pre-post? I mean, what is this?

So, um, right. So we want to see if the ozone itself is having any kind of impact. We, with the outflow, there's some issues with potentially getting right directly from the outflow because of the bubbles it produces. So any bubbles in the machine really messes up the images. Um, so whether we're getting direct put versus, like, just slightly away from it, um, that is a good question about, you know, if it's dead, we might still, it might still show up in the images, and being able to tell the difference between a live or a dead, you know, amphipod or copepod might, with this current imager, we're not sure, I don't, it might not be able to happen. I would imagine that if things are dying, they're not going to move far. So as we're moving the transect along and we're noticing that there's nothing along the way, then, um, that might be an indicator too.

And so do you do these all at the same time, the day, at each location, all that?

Right. The plan would be that we go out and in one day we get all of our sampling points and we would probably follow the same pathway and, um, get the inflow and outflow as, next to each other as possible, do those first, and then go back and do all of our points.

Great, thanks. Go ahead. Um, to follow up on that, um, this looks really, really cool project. Um, I haven't done some plankton work myself, that's why I can't see anymore. I would suggest adding a component to do some, uh, plankton net sampling at the outflow. Um, not long-term, but quick to see that you can get a proportion that are alive, um, because that's going to be important. Um, depending on the currents, you know, they could settle out if they're dead and closed or they could be spread around. Um, like, especially in the summer, you'll see some localized upwelling in spots around the river, um, and that's due to plankton blooms and then zooplankton, et cetera. Um, also this might be a good opportunity to look at, um, you know, because you can archive all this, to look at, uh, the types of larvae that, fish larvae that are in there, right, because they're important in zooplankton as well. Mm-hmm. Not just the oysters, but the fish larvae. Yeah. Because a big concern with some of the previous things about pulling out to harmful algal blooms is also removing all the fish larvae that we're trying to restore the population. Um, but one, and one other, just a comment, ozone is well demonstrated to remove pharmaceuticals and PIPAs. So, to the extent that you guys can find a little bit more money to take some water samples at the, at the outflow versus the inflow, um, that might be a secondary benefit, assuming everything else works. Um, uh, we know about that because in Sweden, Switzerland, Germany, they're treating all of their sewage effluent with ozone, and they're removing all of that stuff. Um, so this may be an in-water opportunity to do some localized as well, because we're finding pharmaceuticals in every fish we test. Sure.

Right.

Okay.

What about some reference areas outside of the marina itself, um, just because the marina itself is, is, got its problems with all the bottom paint and everything else that's within the, within that area.

Right. That had been suggested as like a control, um, but if we're really wanting to see what the ozone is doing, that inflow, outflow, I mean, we can always, for our own sake and knowledge, go out and find out what the community looks like outside of the marina. Um, but for the sake of this project and monitoring the impact of the ozone. Yeah.

It makes me wonder if not, if, if the marina is a dead area.

Right. And that's why we were talking as well, again, about going to other parts of the lagoon and running the machine just to kind of see like, um, is there something that maybe the marina just doesn't have a lot going on versus the equipment. So.

Yeah. Thanks. Great.

How often, how, how often do you do the testing and do you have a timeframe on when you may move it to a different location or is that still developing?

Um, still in development, like I said, we've been learning a lot, um, with the equipment, I would say, Abby is helping me. So maybe like a weekly or bi-weekly assessment was kind of our initial plan with it. Um, so we haven't quite gotten to that full blown out sampling day yet. Um, but given that it's been really cold and, you know, we weren't seeing much, we were kind of like, okay, this gives us a chance to really learn and make sure we're doing it right before, um, spending lots of days out there doing this. So, but I would think weekly or bi-weekly sampling. The duration right now, do you know how long that you'll have? Um, well, the project itself is for six months. Um, but each sampling point, we would run our imager for 30 seconds at each point. So, um, everybody else?

I just wanted to say, if, if it looks like we're getting positive results, then the project could be extended to a year. I'd like to see it run for a year so that we've gone through all of the seasons.

Just quick. Is there any sense that the ozone might just spread the whole area or is it small enough from your perspective that you would see a difference in that inflow and outflow?

Um, well, Abby and I were talking to Austin on one of the days that we were out there and he was saying that the ozone should be pretty reactive and like, as it's coming out of the outflow, it should be pretty much out of the, like, water itself. Um, but that's kind of the, what we're trying to figure out here is if that's actually the case, so.

Yeah, what Molier, excuse me, what Molier has told us is that they expect most of the ozone to be dissipated within that outflow pipe before it even hits the, the marina. Thanks. Yeah.

Thank you.

Okay.

This is ready for you.

Good morning, everyone.

Good morning. Good morning.

Um, we have received 4.7 million for our December collections and 4.3 million for the quarterly discretionary. So the total revenue from conception is 513 million and for the monthly financial statement for the anticipated 571 million in revenue by the end of the fiscal year, the actuals received so far are 12.7 million and expenditures this fiscal year, the total assigned to the project and programs is 96 million and the actual spent is 12.2 million. And do we have any questions? Okay.

Thank you.

All right. Thank you.

All right. We have for Wendy. Do you, please introduce yourself.

Sure. Thanks for having me. Um, my name is Wendy Nook-Durton. I'm a research scientist with Hub Seaworld Research Institute. And today I was going to talk a little bit about Indian River Lagoon dolphins being sentinel, sentinels for lagoon health. And I apologize for the title in advance, um, which I know it says the impacts of dolphin seagrass loss on dolphins. There isn't a direct impact of seagrass loss on dolphins. They're not herbivores, but the seagrass loss itself and the ecosystem changes that led to that have directly impacted dolphin prey. And so I'm going to try and tie that together for you today. I'll do my best. So for those of you who may not know, Indian River Lagoon dolphins were established as residents to the Indian River Lagoon system in the 1970s. And since then, they've been managed as a separate population or stock of dolphins. And the initial abundance surveys that we conducted to figure out how many dolphins live in the lagoon were done by aerial survey. And that's because it's such an expansive system. And at the time, the water quality was really good and clear. And we could, we could count dolphins without having to miss them. And so from those initial aerial surveys that we conducted from 2002 to 2011, we found there were about a thousand dolphins that lived in the Indian River Lagoon. We did notice some seasonal changes and particularly within some of the sun-based sub-basins or removements. And so we really wanted to get a better handle on if these animals were moving around and what their linear range was. And so we did some telemetry studies and found they have a pretty small linear range of only about 17 miles. So if they're pretty, you know, if they're living in one small area and something happens in that area, they're not just going to leave. It's going to impact them. The most recent abundance surveys that we did were in 2007, and we did these by vessel. This was the first time we had, anyone had done a vessel-based abundance estimate for Indian River Lagoon dolphins. And that's because it was just so difficult. It was a large undertaking. We had 12 boats that had to work simultaneously together to cover the entire Indian River Lagoon and transect through it. We did over 100 surveys for an entire year. And again, we found an abundance of about 1,000 animals, so 1,032. So this suggested that the population is relatively stable. However, we do need, we're currently in need of new estimates. So NOAA Fisheries actually manages the population as a strategic stock, which means that it needs additional conservation and management under the Marine Mammal Protection Act. And that is because the level of anthropogenic mortality likely exceeds what is sustainable by the population. These animals also exhibit high mercury concentrations, higher than most places in the southeastern United States. And they're considered an immune-compromised population. So they have immunosystem issues, which cause them to be more susceptible both to disease and to mortality. So because of that, we have had multiple unusual mortality events that have occurred for bottlenose dolphins. Now, an unusual mortality event, or a UMI, simply means that we have a large number of dolphins dying. Usually that's in a short time frame in a small geographical area. And then usually they will have similar symptoms or findings. So in 2001 and 2008, we had about 40 dolphins that died in the Indian River Lagoon. And unfortunately, those events were never determined. The cause was never determined. In 2013, we had the largest event that has occurred so far on record. We had 77 dolphins die. This event was very different, as I'm sure you guys have an inkling. It was a multi-species event. So not only did we lose 77 dolphins, we lost over 100 manatees. There were hundreds of pelicans, and there were numerous fish kills. And this event was suspected to be related to ecological changes. So the cause of the event in general was that these animals were starving to death. So we really wanted to try and figure out what happened during this event. So we had a phytoplankton bloom that occurred. We lost a bunch of seagrass. And we wanted to know that this caused dietary changes for Indian River Lagoon dolphins. So we used stable isotopes to try and look at changes that may have occurred over time since the phytoplankton bloom. And we found that dolphins actually shifted prey, so they started eating less nourishing prey. They were eating more seabrin, less ladyfish after the bloom, which had destroyed key habitat for their prey. So because of this, they had to consume 15% more prey just to have equal energy to what they had had historically. And of course, the end result of that was 8% of the population had perished. Now, malnourishment that was seen in the remaining animals led us to believe that perhaps these animals not only are eating a lower quality prey, but also they're having difficulty catching prey of any type. So since that event, we've been monitoring the nutritional condition in these animals as really an impact of the ecological changes that we have seen. So in 2013, we went out and the animals that had not perished, that were still free swimming, 70% of them were underweight. And we found that to be startling in the years, you know, in the events prior, it was maybe about 30%. Fast forward to 2017, we expected things to be better. We hadn't had an unusual mortality event. The dolphins seemed to be hanging in there. 70% of them were underweight. In 2023, 10 years after the event, we haven't seen an increase in mortality. 93% of the animals are in poor condition. It's very scary to us. 68% of them are thin. 25% emaciated. The ones that are in really, really poor condition are more likely to be females that have a dependent calf, which makes sense because they're pumping all of their nutrients into their calves. So what we're seeing over time is that the population appears to be increasingly nutritionally stressed. So we're currently doing drone overflights because it's hard to evaluate the degree of emaciation in these animals. So we're using photogrammetry that's enabled by LIDAR to try and really get a handle on the nutritional state of these animals where we can actually estimate weights on these animals. In line with them being immunocompromised, we have seen what would normally be considered a UME. The past three winters, we've seen an increase in strandings in these animals. And we weren't really sure what was going on. And we had encephalitis or brain inflammation. And so we wanted to investigate different viruses or bacteria that might be causing this. And that's where we found that 10 of these animals had tested positive for the highly pathogenic avian influenza. This is actually only the second time in U.S. history that a dolphin has tested positive. Aside from these clusters that we've had in the lagoon, there's only been one dolphin in the entire United States that has acquired avian influenza, and that was in the panhandle. So all of these cases have been in Bavard County. They've been between Titusville and Melbourne Beach. And most of these animals are immature. We're seeing inflammation of both the brain and meninges are the covering of the brain. And we haven't seen a free-swimming dolphin that we know of that has had avian influenza yet. But we suspect that they would have neurological symptoms. So be swimming in circles, unable to upright themselves. We think that they're acquiring the virus by foraging in close proximity with birds that are infected and will be shedding the virus through their saliva and mucus and feces. Recently, we examined neurotoxins that are associated with harmful algal blooms. We'll call it DAB for short, and brain tissue. And we found that these levels of toxins were 3,000 times greater during the bloom season. And unfortunately, these animals had signs of neurogeneration, neurodegeneration. So we were seeing changes in protein, changes in gene expression that are hallmark indicators of Alzheimer's disease in humans. So we can't make a direct cause and effect. But we do believe that neurotoxin exposure in dolphins is correlated with brain health and could accelerate neurodegeneration in these animals. But we'll need additional studies to draw any kind of parallels for other wildlife or human populations. Again, it was a pretty small sample size of 20 animals. Over the long haul or the history of dolphin mortality patterns, we have looked at what the primary causes are. And those are, no doubt, inflammatory disease, which is primarily respiratory disease and pneumonia, and trauma. And most of the trauma that we see in these animals, unfortunately, is anthropogenic. So entanglement, ingestion of fishing gear, and vessel strikes. In the Banana River, in particular, is the leading cause of mortality for bottlenose dolphins. We've really seen an increase in entanglements. Historically, we would get one to two a year. In 2024, we had 16. Last year, we had 12 entanglements. This year, we have already had three entanglements that we are actively trying to rescue. We're not sure why this is happening, but it may be due to the ecosystem degradation. So if these animals are greatly nutritionally compromised, it may cause them to take risks that they normally wouldn't, foraging around fishing lines, stealing fish from that are already hooked and getting entangled. Alternatively, it could just be that the dolphins are foraging in habitats where there's a lot of recreational fishing, or the accumulation of derelict gear, because once the monofilament gets into the lagoon, it's going to be there for hundreds of years. So because it's such a mortality risk for these animals, we do put a lot of effort into rescue. Most of the animals can survive if we can get to them quickly enough. The majority of animals that get entangled are juveniles and calves, and most of the gear that they're getting entangled in, 86% of it, is monofilament or multifilament line. We found survival is going to be greatly influenced by the severity of the injury and how it's configured on the animal. So the quicker we know about these events and can respond to them, the greater chance of survival the animals will have. We've really tried to increase our capacity to try and mitigate some of this mortality. We're using drone evaluations to look at the configuration and to look at how severe the entanglement is, because a lot of times what we're seeing above might just be a simple piece of line around the animal, but what's going on below is near amputation of appendages. We've also started using remote disentanglement tools, and I'll see if this will play. We have long poles that have cutting or grappling tools on the end of them, and that allows us to respond to these animals right away. And we're also really hoping and trying to improve community engagement and outreach, because the quicker we know, the better off the animals are going to be, and the quicker we can get to them. So I thank you guys, and I can try and take any questions you may have.

It's you guys. It was really good.

We've got seagrass in Mosquito Lagoon and the Northern Indian River Lagoon, north of Titusville. Do you see a difference in the health of the animals in Mosquito Lagoon and Northern Indian River versus central and southern part of the lagoon?

I do, and I should have pointed that out. So when we started doing surveys to look at body condition, a lot of it was focused on the areas where the YUMIs occurred. And the areas where the YUMIs have always occurred is the Northern Indian River, so that, you know, Titusville galley in the Banana River, and the Banana River, and a little bit in Mosquito Lagoon. But Mosquito Lagoon, those animals have better health and nutritional health than those in the Banana River and the Northern Indian River.

A couple of comments on that. The amount of interaction between the recreational fishing community and dolphins has increased a thousandfold in the past six to eight years. So, yeah, I think it would be a good idea for you guys to, and I can help you with that, give some talks to the fishing clubs. Thank you. And there's nothing we can really do about it. The behavior of dolphins have changed. First, so places that we fish, you used to pull into a place, and you're pulling around for fish, and dolphins don't care that you're there. Now you pull in, and they follow the boat. And they'll sometimes wait until you let the fish go. Other times, they're not so patient, and that's when they get the entanglements. I think there's probably, it looks to me like there's some teaching older to younger. Yes. So which makes it more of a population-learned type of thing. So in a lot of places, we're getting more and more depredation from sharks. We're getting a lot of that here, too. But I think in Indian River Lagoon, the dolphins are a significant issue with interacting with the recreational fishing community. So, yeah, some more education. I mean, again, there's not much we can do about it. Thank you for that. But maybe setting up a reporting system so people do see it.

Do you know what areas of the lagoon you're seeing?

Everywhere. All over Canal's one, a big one, actually. Northern Indian River Lagoon's a big one. Sebastian Inlet is really bad. And that's, from what I can tell, that's the same dolphins. They'll actually wait, and they'll swim around, and then once they hear it, they'll actually move. Yeah, there's a list between me and others, but there's some hot spots. Snag Harbor is really bad. Because there's no trout there anymore. Thank you. I appreciate it.

But, yeah, we can talk later. We had done fisher surveys maybe, like, 20 years ago, and we asked, I think, over 500 fishermen, are the dolphins, you know, taking your line? Are they approaching you? And it wasn't as much, I'm like, maybe we need to be doing those again.

No, it's pretty much every day now. Yeah, Don. You're right on target. I mean, I fished Sykes Creek. They will sit there with my paddleboard, and I just have to stop. Yeah. Because the first time I saw it, the minute I released something, that thing, it just jetted. That dolphin jetted across. So it's definitely learned behavior, and it's probably across the lagoon now, I would guess.

Yeah. And we see that in dolphins. We'll have moms, and all three of their calves over the last 10 years have been untangled.

So far, I'm not hearing. It's a different conversation with fishermen than with, in the interaction with sharks. But fishermen with sharks, not here, to my knowledge, but in the Keys, some of the guys are killing the sharks. Obviously, they're not going to do that to dolphins, but even, there's not that antagonistic dolphin-angler interaction yet. So I think education now is really important. I mean, I had no idea that 93%, you know, starvation rate.

I didn't know that they were. We have select animals that I know are problematic that'll beg and come up to your boat with their mouth open. But those are very few. Yeah. You know, they've seen issues like that in Panama City a long time ago where many dolphins had that behavior. So I worry that's the route we're going down. Yeah. So thank you for that.

I know we have so many more people than we used to, but right now, in the Cocoa area, we have, you know, I've said before, we have two boats a day. That's all. And if there's no seagrass there or anything, there's no dolphins there. And very exaggerated, you know, in places. You know, from Cocoa, Cocoa South is one thing, and Cocoa North is, hell, there's nothing there. Last time I left at Cocoa and headed your way, you know, I didn't see a dolphin until I got to 528. And we didn't catch any damn fish either. Wherever they are, that's where the fish are. And then some of the fishermen have terrible habits. They get, excuse the language, but they get pissed off about the dolphins and, you know, those of us that fish all the time. I mean, we're sitting here throwing to shore, and the dolphins go around us, you know. They go behind the boat. They're a lot smarter than we are. But, you know, people get mad about that, and they do crazy things. But we're, basically, if there's no grass in there or in the Banana River, you're not going to see them. So, it's not like it was. Go ahead, Deb.

It's tough times to be a Banana River dolphin.

I'm sorry.

I said it's a tough time to be a Banana River dolphin, for sure.

Yeah.

Wendy, I'm a Banana River resident. Oh. And I have a question for you. I think I ran across in the notes from last meeting, which I unfortunately had to miss, someone had made the suggestion, maybe at one of the commission workshops, about some sort of fish restocking program to be considered. Would something like that help this situation if it's feasible? I'm not sure it's even feasible in the kind of waters we have here.

I mean, you guys would know better than me about fish restocking. But, yes, if there was more prey, that would certainly help the animals. Thank you.

Sure. You mentioned that they're eating different species of food, and you mentioned that they're not herbivores. But that direct correlation between the loss of seagrass and what is available for them to eat, I mean, that's there, right? It's just not presented in this. Yeah.

I mean, if the habitat for the fish is gone, and then we had fish kills, and the fish died, and they don't come back in the quantities that are needed, then that would cause a loss. And the FWC surveys that were done for fish trawls in that area, for those species correlated with that paper, also saw declines in the fish populations.

And then post-mortem, have you done testing on what chemical compounds are in there for glyphosate, for PFAS, and have you looked at other studies, human-related, to some of these same symptoms that are presenting in the malnutrition and the Alzheimer's?

That is a good idea. We have done some contaminants. We haven't done PFAS. We had talked with the National Institute Standards of Technology because they had good equipment to run it. It was a little bit complicated, and we were having difficulty finding funding for it. But there was PFAS studies that were done from, there were dolphin captures that were done from 2002 to 2019. And so, it's a lot of information, but they would take pieces of their skin and blubber. And so, they did run PFAS on there, and they weren't extraordinary. That's good to know.

And more with the glyphosate and the malnutrition factors. So, humans with high concentrations of glyphosate also have their nutrients that they are consuming aren't bioavailable to them. So, there could be some correlation if those contaminants were high, as well as the fish kill and the algal blooms and everything else combined with that. So, if there is any information or data that you've already done or maybe could incorporate into future conversations, that would be...

Yeah, I don't think there is any data on that at all, but I do think that would be a great avenue to pursue. We'd have to look into what types of samples would be needed for that.

Yeah, because even just looking at your slides, some of the information that you presented for them, it correlates so identically with human Alzheimer's and different concentrations. So, just the neurodegenerative aspect in and of itself, it would be very interesting to see that compared. Thank you. I'll have to look into that. Thank you. Great presentation, by the way. Horrible. But I think it's a... Horrible presentation. It is. You heard it. It is. Horrible, horrible information, absolutely. But I think that, you know, just to spin that, to look at it as a starting point where we can, you know, go to continue to advocate for best management practices and, you know, just in general knowledge, community education, not just about fishing and entanglements, but just health of the lagoon in general. You know, it's another talking point. Everyone is so adamant about talking about the manatees. But honestly, as I sat here listening to you, I thought this information, you know, it resonates with people and it makes a connection.

Wendy, you may want to mention that, you know, most of this information is out in papers that you guys will all produce, too.

Yeah.

Yeah, and you might want to mention, you know, some of those papers. Yeah, there's...

Almost all of that information has been published and are in publications. And we've done some press on them. But yeah, I don't think the general public understands how hard it is to be a dolphin and how difficult these animals fight just to be alive. I find it pretty inspiring. Like, they look terrible and they have terrible things happening to them and they're not dying in mass numbers. The things that I see these animals sustain is it's enough to keep you up all night long.

Oh, I'm sure. Go ahead. And even more than a scientific data approach to the community, just, you know, a dolphin, just that connection because people love dolphins. They love sitting and watching the dolphins. So, you know, just even for us as a committee to use the information to get people's attention. So thank you.

Whatever you guys need. I feel like a mother dolphin struggling with their calf is, you know...

Go ahead, Nick.

Thank you. A good selling point.

Our lagoon dolphin, you know, like you mentioned, are having a hard time. How does that compare to the more ocean-going dolphin? Because they do run in different pods and stuff. Is there any correlation with similar malnutrition with the ocean-faring dolphin?

We don't really see... So I'm going to give you all the information, which is that there's not a lot of information about ocean-side dolphins because most people don't choose to study them because it's hard. It's expensive. You have to go far offshore to study them. There isn't a lot of information. What we know about them is from strandings. And we don't see a lot of malnutrition in ocean-side animals, with the exception of they had a morbidly virus event from 2013 to 2015. We lost 1,600 animals along the eastern seaboard. And those animals were all very maced due to the virus. But in general, we don't see that. If we do, we get scared that we're going down that trek again. Again, five dead dolphins a day.

Well, thank you again for all your work. Yeah, of course. One more, and then we'll move on.

Do you test for lead? We have tested for lead before. We haven't published on it because we just picked out mercury and selenium and published on that, but it was in the lineup, and we didn't see it, you know. Initially, we thought maybe back in the day, if they were ingesting lead sinkers, that that could be an issue. But we haven't seen it in the animals yet.

Thank you. Thank you very much.

Thank you, guys. Thanks for having me.

Next up is one of the committee presentations by Fred. Yeah, thanks so much.

Actually, that was a nice lead-in because I'll sort of discuss some of something based on that a little later in mine. So this was the assignment we received from Professor Don. And I tell you what, I greatly appreciated it. It was good. It was a great opportunity to dig into something, do a little bit of research. And Kurt and I worked on this. We met a couple of times over the course of getting this done. And let me also say, as a disclaimer, neither of us are economists, and this is quite the economic report to review. You could probably take a day and a half or two days or three days to try to dig through this thing, but we are business people. And when you're investing your own money or somebody else's in something, you understand what ROI is, and it becomes a critical area to think about. I also will say that I spoke with numerous people, including Valerie Seidel, who's produced this report through the Balmoral Group, as well as Dr. Larry Page, who did a presentation last week, you may have seen, and some others. But any errors in this report or omissions are strictly mine. Okay? So let's go through this here. Oops, went too far. Here we go. We're going to talk about liquid assets, the economic ROI of the Indian River Lagoon. We think of liquid assets as something we can just turn it over. Hey, I got a buck. I can get rid of that. I got some property. I can sell it. But this is actual liquid. It's an asset. It's the lagoon. It's the water around the lagoon, and that's what we're going to talk about. And there were two things in this report that are critical to think about. You can't understand return on investment until you know what something's value is, what somebody's willing to pay for it. It's easy to say to yourself, I can put this money in the bank, and I'm going to get 4%. Or I can buy this car, and it allows me to drive to work, and I can use that to generate income, et cetera. But some of the things that we look at in terms of this ROI are well beyond that and are actual values. And at times, it's hard to even think there may be other values that I'll get to at the end of this report. But this report looked at two things. One, to determine the economic value of the lagoon, what it's worth. And we've all seen this big number out there. You've probably all seen it. I can imagine everyone on the committee has. And the other is, what is the return on investments for some projects that were done? And we can use those to then say, well, that is probably applicable to other projects. So just a little history. Back in 2016, there was an economic valuation report done. And this was a market-based approach, which I'll talk about. But there are different approaches and different things you can look at. So we sit here, and we look at the cost per pound of nutrient. That's our measure. How much did it cost us to pull this nutrient, whether we did it through muck removal, or we did it through a diversion of something, or we did some cleanup or some other project? But it's a little bit different than what is the return on that? What is the value we get from doing that? And this report, which is the new one that was done by RLNEP, is essentially a gold standard. It really looked very broadly at what's the value of the lagoon, and what are some of the ways we can look at ROI and determine that. It took market data, which is sort of the similar one to 2016, and it added natural capital. What's the value of this capital out there, this nature out there to us, and how can we measure that? And that can be very difficult to do, but there are standardized ways to do these measurements. So the 2016 report looked at it and said, we're going to determine the value of this lagoon at about $7.6 billion, plus $934 million in annualized real estate value added because homes or properties are near the lagoon. So they came in at about $8.5 billion in total. But this was just looking at the economics of it, jobs, purchases, things like that, plus homes. And that broke out this way. Defense and aerospace, and understand too, let me preface this with this, this is for the entire lagoon. And we in Broward County are a piece of that lagoon, but clearly the largest component of it, most space industry, 70% of the lagoon, et cetera. But this is how they broke out the value of those various components. Defense and aerospace were the largest at $5 billion. You can see that recreation and visitor related, another $1.5 billion, resource management at $101 million, et cetera. And I just want to point out too, it's important to understand where this came from and the people who helped get it done. So the IRL Council and the IRL NEP contracted for this report, but they got grants from NOAA and another grant from the federal Section 320 that was administered through US EPA to do the study. So we appreciate those funds coming in to allow us to get these kind of data that we can then use to show why it's so important, why this lagoon is so important. And obviously the Balmoral Group did the study. This, and I'm sorry this is blurry, for some reason when we moved it over here, it became blurry, it was fine on my computer. But this is just the model that they use. It's a standard model called IMPLAN. I just want to quickly mention what this is. And it essentially looks at the economic activity associated with the lagoon. This is sort of like the first study in 2016, and this is part of this study. But it looked at things like recreational spending, natural resource management. What's the payroll earned from that? What's the employment from that? What are the direct employee respending? And then it has impacts that are indirect and induced expenses. And these kinds of things are other expenses or revenue and earnings that come out of those first group of expenses. Excuse me, I went a little bit far here. So let me just make sure I get this back out to you. So the direct value is the immediate spending or the job that was created. The indirect value is the supply chain effect. I had to go buy steel or concrete or something like that to do the project. And the induced value is the consumption. The worker from the bridge project in the steel factory takes their paycheck and spends them on groceries, rent, et cetera. We all understand that's typically what we see when we look at economic valuation. But this report did something different. It used what's called the invest model. And the invest model is an integrated valuation of ecosystem services and tradeoffs. And they looked at four key areas. If we purify the water, if that part of the lagoon, that mangrove area or others, purifies the water, what's the avoided cost of not having to build a treatment plant to do that? It looked at coastal protection. If those mangroves and those wetlands keep houses from getting overrun by a hurricane or a storm or something and you avoid that property damage, what's the value of that? If we got rid of that or if that gets degraded over time, we'll see more property damage costs. It looks at carbon sequestration and the social cost of carbon and then habitat quality. And there are values for all of these things that are then brought into this valuation. So this is what they came up with out of that. So the space industry, $15.7 billion. And understand, in talking with Valerie Seidel, that's just for jobs and things here. If the space industry has people somewhere else that have to work on it, that doesn't count. It was just what's created here and relevant to this area. Recreation, $10.5 billion. Commercial fishing they looked at as well. And you can see it's small. It was obviously bigger in the past, something we'd love to see come back. Property value impacts on an annualized basis in boat dealers. And how that worked out was this. Recreation created 75,206 jobs in that industry, labor income, and then the value adds from the other things that occur with it. So for each of these areas, you can see these are the dollar values that they assess based on the labor and obviously the space industry, a big deal here. And then you can see at the bottom the property value impacts of homes on or near the waterways. That's how they came up with that total $28 billion. But beyond tourism, as we always think of, here are the hidden values. I talked about it. In Brevard County, proximity to the Indian River Lagoon adds $350,000 to a home's value. The ecosystem services, natural filtration of oysters or wetlands that clean the water for free, flood storage that keeps us from getting flooded, and the carbon sequestration all comes in at about $10 billion. So then the second part of this was a benefit cost analysis. They took select projects that were done by IRL NEP, these nine projects from the salt marsh down to the mangroves of these different areas, Karen Bay, Walton Scrub Preserve, et cetera, and they said, these are projects that are being done. We're spending money on them. What is the return on those dollars? What's the benefit we get for the cost we put into it? And you can see that some of these benefits include things like cleanup of pollutant loads, recreational benefits by user payments, public values for wildlife habitat, values for improved water quality, avoided costs, and reduced flood damage, and similar values over a 10-year period. And they compared that to what would be the value if we didn't do anything, if that project did not occur. So we spend on the project. What is the value of that over the next 10 years? And this is just one example. This is Karen Bay, the salt marsh project, and you can see they spent $236,000 in personnel, 9,000 equipment supplies, 118,000 contractual, and other costs. So total cost was $383,000. Fishery productivity was worth about $1.9 million, water quality improvement $600,000, and avoided costs another $223,000. So the total benefit was $2.79 million, or 7.3 to 1 return on investment. I think most of us would probably take that almost any day if we could get those kinds of returns. So this is the key point to think about here. We saw this number, the big number, $24 for every one, if you've looked at the study, and that's the number they're publishing. I like to be a little bit conservative about this stuff. And they had a couple of high performers. Habitat restoration was at 65 to 1, and these were the projects they did. Some of them ranged from just over 1.2, 1.5, up to 65 to 1. And two of those projects were huge return on investment. So they considered those transformational. So they said, if you took those two 65 to 1, and the other one that's really high out, what would be the return on investment for the projects overall? And in talking with Valerie, she said, you could take this return and apply it to any project you were doing on the lagoon that improved the lagoon. And so the question asked was, are dollars spent on the program effective and what sort of ROI is expected from this investment? Conservatively, the restoration pays for itself 10 or more times over. So taking those two transformational projects out, you still had over a 10 to 1 return on every other project they did on average. So as we do our projects, while they may not be identical to those, they fall within the category of restoration. And you could consider probably a 10 to 1 return on projects that we do. But there's more to this story. And this kind of goes back to the dolphins. I work in population health. That's how do you improve the health of communities? Just like this is built on data, population health is built on data. And we need more data, just like we need more data for the dolphins. If you attended the presentation last week by Dr. Larry Brand, and I've talked about this a bit, we know that these harmful algae brooms, particularly those cyanobacteria ones, cyanobacteria ones in the southern part of the lagoon, we have different ones in the north that also produce toxins, impact people. So microcystin is the chemical, the toxin that's reduced, released from this that causes animal deaths, human deaths, gastrointestinal disorders, long-term liver damage, tumor promoter, and is linked to liver and colorectal cancer. And just to point this out, we don't know a lot about all of these toxins that are being released. And obviously, they're brought up by a number of people around here. And those toxins cause things from a runny nose to hospitalizations. And we know about ingestion of most of these toxins, but we don't know about aerosolization of these toxins. And we do know they're aerosolized. We know they've been measured in people. The cyanobacteria have been measured in the individual's things. And some of the issues that are also raised are this. We know to look at the ones that cause immediate issues. But we don't necessarily know the ones that may cause colorectal cancer 20 years down the road. Now, these are all, in my mind, as a population health expert, preventable expenses. They're preventable conditions because they're based on algae blooms. And if we reduce algae blooms, we can go ahead and reduce these preventable health utilization issues that occur that would be added to that ROI. So we know that the aerosolization of toxic cyanobacteria and cyanotoxins is also a critical concern as an emerging exposure route for potential risk to environmental and human health. And I just put this up. This is something I found. It's called the One Health Harmful Algal Bloom System that's run by the CDC. It's voluntary. Only 15 states report these data. Florida does not. But you can see just an example. Here are health-seeking behaviors called the poison control centers, visits to health care providers, visits to EDs. You have direct expenses associated with health care issues, and those are things like your medical costs. And you have the cost and lost productivity of the parent who takes the child to the ER and can't work, or the person who shows up at work and is less productive because they're sniffling away or are sick or something. And those are also costs. As we remove those costs, we improve the ROI of this. This is going to take a lot more research to look at. I did put in a call to poison control. You know Ted. They also do, the AI company I introduced them to, they also do work for about seven poison control centers. And I've talked to public health. They don't have any data, but poison control might. And I'm going to see if I can dig into this some more. So just another thing to consider, it improves that ROI. We just don't know what it is. So in the end, a healthy lagoon isn't just an environmental goal. It's Brevard's greatest economic asset. And as we think about this, Kurt and I talked about this and said, what does it mean to us? So these are some pictures we put together. The upper left is four generations of Kurt's family out on the lagoon enjoying it. The lower left are three of my four grandkids who come down for Camp Goldstein every summer. It's actually Gen 2, as you can see, because this is what my mother did for all our kids. And the younger boy in the middle, that was his first time fishing. You know, whether it's looking at sunrises or sunsets or dolphins or wave riding or kayaking or watching rocket launches or watching dolphins, we understand ROI, but some things can't be measured. Any questions?

Good job. Thank you.

Okay. Yeah. I would just like to add, this was all him.

Very good, Fred. One thing that comes to mind is that phosphorescence, those organisms that do phosphorescence are typically toxin-producing, too. Let's go paddle through them. Yep. Yep. Exactly. And people love the phosphorescence. Josh. And I tell you, it would be hard to follow. Just one question.

Do you have a comment? Go ahead, Nick. On that note of being hard to follow, a little teaser for what we'll talk about, tourism and the impact of economics, you know, without the beautiful environment, it's going to change a lot of things for us, too.

So, great job. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much for really looking into that, both of you. Thank you.

Well, it's me again with these pesky, leaking sewer laterals. I'm Josh. I'm the contract administrator for Sorrel. And we're going to just do a refresher with this. I presented it not that long ago. But I do have some updates, and I have one at the end that I think you're going to really like or maybe love. Speaking of love, how much do you love those beautiful project plan books that you received today?

I was about ready to ask for one, but thank you very much. Yeah.

I made those.

Thank you.

You're welcome. Thank you. So, these leaking laterals, many of them were identified through a smoke testing around the county. This was a while back. So, many homes were tested. And so far, since last time, 38 more code enforcement cases have been resolved. 14 more voluntary repairs have been made, and that's funded through a grant that we have. So, we're still ongoing, and we're making progress. But the point of making these repairs is to reduce what's called INI, that stands for inflow and infiltration. And that affects the lift stations and ultimately the treatment plants, which the goal is hopefully to reduce overflows. Here's some different types of leaks that a sewer lateral can have. There's many different ways that they can have a problem. I'll show some pictures here to you. It could be a clean out that's missing a cap or has a crack. It's very common. Usually, that sort of thing happens with a lawnmower or something like that. Some people have some interesting ways to deal with their laundry, water, or whatever else they're draining out there in this case. I'm not sure what this was, but it's been fixed. So, that's the most important thing. The smoke testing also identified some manholes in sewer things throughout the county that were looking like that, which obviously, when you have a big, wide-open hole, a lot of water, and who knows what else can end up down there. Here's what a smoke test report looks like. So, it's fairly easy for the homeowner to understand what the problem is and how to fix it. These were sent through the mail to them. And as we saw earlier, there's a nearly 97% success in getting people to make the repairs in regards to the code enforcement part. So, having a little bit of teeth to it to encourage people to make the repairs has helped. As far as the grant program goes, which is ongoing, we do offer up to $10,000 in reimbursement to repair an entire lateral, and up to $2,000 if it's something just, like, to repair the clean-out. And they do not have to have code enforcement, though. So, like I mentioned, these are voluntary repairs, people that just happen to discover or assume that if their home is 50 or 60 years old, that it's probably going to need to have the cast iron replaced at this point. And here's our brochure that we mail out with those code enforcement letters to help people and inform them that there is assistance available. Okay. So, here's the big update. What you're looking at here are four graphs. Each one is a different lift station in a different location throughout the county. And the blue line is what the lift station experiences during a rainfall event, its runtime, how hard it's working. And that is before the smoke testing. So, you can see it's sort of elevated. It becomes more and more pressured as the rainfall amount increases. Stay with me. There it is. The orange line is after the smoke testing. You see how flat it is? It stays pretty consistent regardless of the amount of rain, which means the lift station isn't working as hard, which likely means that the potential for an overflow is much less than prior to the smoke testing and all the repairs that were made as a result of that. So, it looks like we are pretty successful. Smoke testing is a good thing. And I want to point out the bottom right graph. Now, the reason for that is because there has been development during the time between the smoke test and after, including one large senior living property. So, I think it's fair to assume that because of those developments, it offset the improvement that we have seen in the other three graphs. So, that's why that one doesn't show improvement, but otherwise it would have. So, are there any questions, compliments, comments?

Yeah. Yeah. So, this 787, is that the total number of cases that you have? Yeah. And then, so, they're coming in voluntarily also, you said. So, is that increasing the number overall that you're doing?

The code enforcement cases are going to stay the same. The ones that are still open are likely going to be headed to the special magistrate or maybe already have. The code enforcement part is worked on through the utility services department. As far as the voluntary repairs, yeah, those are, they come in gradually and it's ongoing. So, total number is beyond? The total number of repairs is over 1,200 now.

Okay. And then, and then there's still funding left in the program or is it a kind of a? Yeah, it's still well funded. Do you have any other neighborhoods that you're targeting for the new future? Sure.

So, we've been, Terry and I are in the process of meeting with every individual city and we are encouraging them if they have not already smoke tested their service area to, to apply for funding and do that.

Yeah, this is significant. Yeah. Very significant.

Is this just for the Indian River or is this all Bavarn County or?

So, this funding is for the Indian River. Okay. Part of the complication is that the, the service areas for, for sewer, you know, don't stop at the watershed boundary of the lagoon. And so, there's, there's a little bit of, of mixing there. But if the, um, leak would impact the watershed of the lagoon or if the overflow, right, if there are leaks that are outside the lagoon watershed that let too much water in and then the wastewater treatment plant or the lift station collection system would overflow to the lagoon, that would also be a lagoon concern. So, this program is a bit broader than the lagoon watershed because it, it doesn't follow the same boundaries.

Thank you. Go ahead, Fred. You mentioned, by the way, great presentation. Thank you. You mentioned the, um, the older homes and that may have issues, you know, I live in an older neighborhood. They smoke test. I remember when they came through and there was nothing there, but what, should they do something preemptively or wait for another smoke test or?

Uh, the voluntary repairs that come in, um, they're usually, uh, suspecting that there's leaks because of the age of the home and when they have a plumber come out, they just, they snake it with a camera and then that's how we determine, you know, it's obviously failing and there's roots and it's falling apart and then we move forward with the repair.

Can I just expound a little bit on what you said there too? I think overall, I'm helping the lagoon on that. When you reduce the flows of the wastewater plant, it's more efficient and you can reduce your nitrogen and phosphorus and you'll see a lot of the communities here are reclaimed water, which goes to the grass and if it's, you know, taken in and less impact. But are we offering, uh, funding to utilities to do smoke testing? Yes. I less agree with that, but I do agree with like helping the homeowners because the financial impact they have to fix it, that's typically a utility responsibility to do smoke testing. Um, I think there's a DEP rule on that to require them to do that when the flows go, go high and I'm, it's already in place, but I just say it's something that funding wise would be for me more prudent to take care of the customer to help them fix that rather than give the utilities, you know, money they should be using anyways.

So, um, the reports that the utilities were doing and submitting did not include the house specific documentation that we needed to be able to say the leak is right here. This is where you need to dig it up and fix it. For us to go through the, um, the special magistrate, you know, code enforcement process, we needed more information than what the utilities are required to collect for their permits.

So they don't, they're not required to collect what's on private property.

I don't, I don't remember what, okay.

But you do, you do notify the property owner that there's a leak and they need to fix it, right?

The county does. Our program does only if we have a severe leak and our utility folks go out and mine our laterals from the clean out to the main to collect all of those repair needs out in the public right of way. And then we work with the property owner. If you see a big problem, we can re-get you on the mic. Sorry. I'm not told you.

Hello.

Danny Straub, assistant city engineer, not a utility engineer. I'm going to clarify that. Um, the city of Melbourne has its own smoke testing process because we're required to do that as part of our permit. We also have our own lateral lining program that we line from the clean out out to the street to ensure that all of those, uh, laterals are in repair. Um, some of that's in the grassy area that's out there and some of those are out underneath the pavement. Um, property owners are responsible from the clean out to the house business responsibilities. If we go out and we smoke test and we see like someone jarred is blowing up, we will go knock on the door and say, you have a problem. You are going to want to fix this because your toilets probably aren't flushing very well, but we don't have a program to go out to require everyone to make those repairs at this point in time. We will be looking at that as part of our code changes in the next two or three years. But right now, funding wise, fixing their laterals in the right of way has more priority because we have funding for that versus the homeowners themselves.

So that's what this money would go towards? The homeowner. Giving that additional information to you so you could get with the homeowner to help them. Okay. I get that. All right.

Virginia, didn't we have an issue, um, with satellite beach with their laterals, getting them to conform, even though we were willing to pay, we were paying for it. And I want to mention that it hasn't been mentioned that one of the problems we have with these leaking laterals, particularly beach side is that when you have rain events, that rain fills up the system and causes the, the overloading. So fixing the laterals has a lot of benefits.

Right. So this program started with a pilot in the satellite beach area. And so that was the first, uh, area where we smoke tested and notified the owners that they had these leaks and that we had a grant program to help them repair the leaks and that we had pre-qualified plumbers that could do the work for them. Um, and we could pay those plumbers directly. There was still very little uptake by the citizens to make those repairs. And so, uh, we came to the county commission. Well, the committee recommended an enforcement vehicle. We brought that to the county commission who approved changes and addition of, um, code enforcement procedures for utilities to follow. And so, you know, now we have good compliance, right?

But that's, that's the point. That's what it takes. Even though we were making the money available, we couldn't get the people to do it. Yeah. So then we had to use the heavy hammer, get the, get it done. So dealing with the public isn't always pleasant. I know. I know. I know. Thank you, Josh.

Oh, one more compliment. Good job.

Next, we have our video. Yes. So next we have our video on the Lucky Clover mobile home park. Um, this is a quick connect for the mobile home park, connecting, uh, the mobile homes to sanitary sewer. So.

And they were on a package plant or?

They were all on septic.

All on septic.

We are at the Lucky Clover mobile home park in Indian Harbor Beach. And connecting the community from septic to sewer.

We are decommissioning 58 septic tanks and connecting 120, uh, manufactured housing units to public sewer. So what we're doing here is we come in and we remove the road and put brand new infrastructure down the middle of every road, connect every home to that new sewer infrastructure, and then decommission the old septic tanks.

Septic systems are one of the larger pollution sources in the lagoon because a traditional septic tank only removes 10 to 40 percent of the pollution that runs through it. This means the over 62,000 septic tanks in Brevard County's lagoon watershed actually put in the equivalent pollution of a 3.7 million gallon sewage spill every day. This is why the state of Florida is requiring that all traditional septic systems in the lagoon watershed actually upgrade or connect a sewer.

We're here on the barrier island in between the Atlantic Ocean and the Indian River Lagoon. The area here has really sandy soils and allows for water and nutrients to flow very easily through it, entering our groundwater and eventually the Indian River Lagoon. This project is funded through the Save Our Indian River Lagoon program and the Florida Department of Environmental Protection grants.

Manufactured housing communities are the largest source of unsubsidized affordable housing. And this grant and the investment in the community really keeps that source of housing both viable and affordable for the residents. There's a lot of families, a lot of seniors that live in this community, and it prevents them from being displaced. You know, one of the reasons that manufactured housing communities shut down a lot of times is because of infrastructure failure. So this really future-proofs the community and protects our residents at the same time.

The Save Our Lagoon program is working with several mobile home communities to get them connected from septic to sanitary sewer. This helps reduce excess nutrients going into the lagoon.

The Save Our Indian River Lagoon program is helping homeowners if you're not in an area like this that's being converted to a sewer system. There's grants available to help you either upgrade your septic tank to an advanced system or to connect to a sewer line if there's already one there. You can find more information on that grant program at our website at brevardfl.gov slash saveourlagoon. If you want to learn more ways you can help the lagoon, visit lagoonloyal.com for tips and tricks you can do around your home to join us all in getting to a healthier lagoon.

That was a very significant project.

Yeah.

It's a great project.

All right. We're on to old business. It's not new business anymore. It's old business.

Um, no. So we, uh, brought this on the agenda last month and it was agreed to table it. So we are bringing it back. This is to go over the funding application and guidelines for the projects that are, um, incorporated into the plan updates. So just to, I'm going to briefly go over the presentation I did last month and then I have a few other things to show the different questions that we ask and the data that's presented to you. Um, so, uh, the schedule, uh, in July, uh, the Citizen Oversight Committee will vote on the cost share eligibility and those applications, uh, or that's updated in our portal, um, for applications to typically start in August, um, and we collect them through December. So it's open for about two months. Staff review those applications, um, through the month of November or sorry, October. Um, we present those projects to you at the November meeting. What is approved from the COC is included in the plan update that's given to you in December to review. Uh, you vote on that plan update in January and then it goes to the County Commission to approve in February. Um, then to go into the contracting process, once the board approves the projects and the plan, the applicant will complete the statement of work and the cost share eligibility table. Um, these are two documents in the contract. The staff review that and then we draft the contract. It's submitted to the County review, for the review process. It goes through the purchasing department, risk department, and the County Attorney's Office. It's then submitted to the chair of, um, the commission to execute on behalf of the County. And then we send that to the applicant to, uh, fully execute the contract. And I wanted to include in here, um, part of the contract is the entity must include signage that the project is supported with, um, save our Lagoon half cent, uh, sales tax funds and that, um, there's contract language to help out with other Lagoon projects. And I'll go into more detail on those two. Um, and so once that contract is fully signed, the entity is required to submit quarterly reports until that project is completed. So going back into that funding availability language, so the entity agrees that any funds budgeted and saved by this project shall be reallocated towards projects benefiting the restoration of the Lagoon. And then in the statement of work, as I mentioned for the, um, signage, this project, they have to have a sign that says this project has been funded in part by the saver Indian River Lagoon half cent sales tax. So proposal considerations, um, partnerships are really important to achieving a healthy Lagoon. Um, the county manages this trust fund on behalf of the city and other county areas. Our application purpose is to estimate the cost effectiveness of that project being submitted. Very few, uh, municipalities or entities have grant writers or staff to submit these applications then manage the project, then submit the reports, then the reimbursement documents. So it's, it's a lot of work to do everything. Um, and our goal is to deliver projects quickly and efficiently and you be able to use these funds, secure these, uh, save our Lagoon funds and use these funds to leverage other funding sources and grant sources to help that project move along more quickly. So here's the application questions. I'm going to pull up, um, some of the other documents that I share with you in November.

And you do share the portal too. Yes. Where all this information is located. So what you get in the paper form is different from what's on the portal. And I would, I would encourage you all to not, not just look at the paper, but look, look into the portal if you have any questions at all.

Um, so this is the application project application table. This is a quick summary of, this is what was presented to you in November of all the projects that were, uh, applied for, for this cycle. We rank them based on cost, uh, eligible cost share dollar per pound eligibility. So they start with the lowest and then work their way down the list. Um, and so in this table, I include the project number, the name, who applied for it, the type of project it is, the eligible cost share rate, the total cost dollar per pound, the TN reduction, the actual total cost to complete the project, how much their cost share is, um, eligible for, uh, the actual, uh, the actual cost share eligibility request. And then this just is to give you a running total of what those projects costs for, for you to calculate what's available for that year of funding. And then I have here, if they've secured any grants or not, and then I have a notes section that's might be something that was in the project description, um, to help you just, oh, this is 500 feet of shoreline being, um, installed, or this is 500 square feet of oyster bar to be installed so that you have something to, a little more background on that project. And then also in that packet, you have the short forms, which goes into all this a little bit more, it also gives you the project description, the water quality benefits, how much reduction of total nitrogen and fossil, total phosphorus is, um, expected, the total cost of that project, cost per pound for, um, total nitrogen removed, cost per pound for total phosphorus removed, how much that project is eligible for, has that project been budgeted, um, if they have a local cost share, how much has contributed to it, and how much of other grant sources they have, um, secured. Um, and then they can also list other Indian River Lagoon benefits. So this is where you can go into if it's, um, increasing dissolved oxygen, reducing turbidity, or any other type of benefit like that. And then, um, again, the notes section, that's, this is what goes into the notes section on the table. So all that information is provided here for each project. And then I wanted to pull up this, this is the, what is the questions that are asked on the portal. So yellow is everything that is included in the short form on the project table. And then the green is like the notes section. So here we're on septic to sewer projects. How many septic tanks are going to be removed in that project area? So I add that in your notes section. This section is different for each, uh, project type on how we calculate the total nitrogen removal. So septic to sewer looks at the arc inlet model. Um, and so you, you do that and put your number in here and it'll give you your reduction. Make it bigger. Is that better? Where am I at? Okay. Um, scrolling down, looking at the different costs. I, it will include the total cost and then it will add the, also include the same thing I just mentioned on the table, estimated cost per pound of total nitrogen and total phosphorus removed and their eligible cost share. So these are the other questions that are on the portal that aren't presented directly to you that we could add or add other additional questions into the portal.

This is where we have proposals and motions and things like that.

So I have a question. Sure. So the portal, I must've missed that in the fall. Is that something that we have access to when we're reviewing the projects?

Yes.

Okay. I didn't realize that in the fall.

You wouldn't, you can enter projects in there. You, you don't have access to review it. It just sends me and it, a giant spreadsheet with everything that was included. And then I organize it and staff reviews it because I think that was part of some of the challenge

we had. There was more information. It sounds like to me, there was more information available than we were aware of, which it felt like that during the discussion of some of those projects. Is there a way that we can have that information? Yes. Be available when we're reviewing those projects. So we have a deeper understanding of what's there without making it too hard on you guys. Cause I know the spreadsheet downloads can be a bear. It is, but I can send it to you.

I guess my, my question is what is on here or not on here that you need to see? That's, that's, I can't read that.

So, um, one way is just to really bring up something and you can answer whether it's on there or not. And, and then, and then we can go from there.

So Fred. Yeah. As I recall, I think some of this came when we had, we had the, uh, the marina that we're doing, the private marina. And, and my question was, what do they do after it's done? What is that neighborhood required to do? And I know in here you talk about, you know, long-term project operations and maintenance, but we might want to have specifics like they're going to, I mean, I know it sounds simplistic, like the neighbors in that agree to follow the fertilizer ordinance. The, uh, individuals agree. We asked them, can you fish in there? Could people take their boats in there? And they said, yes, they agree to maintain that being open to the general public or some things like that, that just require them to continue on, you know, and, um, and ask, and those are probably questions, are they going to continue to ensure that they don't mow within 10 feet of that waterway or something like that? That just gets more specific. I'm less concerned with some of the bigger projects because the cities or counties or others kind of are stuck having to keep those going in a sense, although we need to monitor that. But I think some of the other ones that we're funding for individuals are things that we need to make sure they're going to continue to keep that up and ensure it doesn't happen again and those kinds of things that might make some sense.

A broader approach would be to, um, ask about stormwater improvements into that, into that lagoon.

Mm-hmm. Yeah. That'll occur. And the other thing on the signage, I think it's great while it's being done, but then everybody forgets and nobody else sees it. And we're trying to get people to understand around this county what's been done. And so perhaps requiring something for a longer period of time might make some sense. So other people can see it and recognize that, hey, this was done. I mean, we've nicely named bridges after people and things like that. We got sorrel projects out there that need to be recognized.

So in terms of what you want, it would be, um, do you want to make a proposal of some sort

or? I mean, I'm happy to make that signage thing into a, into a motion. And as well as, um, considering more information regarding how they particularly will continue to maintain that property or they've, they've agreed that they're going to understand this was paid for. We're going to go ahead and ensure we do our side of it too. Something. I don't know how to word that, but something along those lines. Yes. Go ahead. Go ahead.

Oh, in conjunction with that, I know that I've discussed this previously. Um, I definitely think that we need to take the opportunity to harvest more information in general for the lagoon. Um, I'm trying to keep this somewhat concise.

Please.

To us. Well, I'm here to give my input. Okay. I'm not here to just say hi. I can do that any other time. Um, we have a huge problem with pollution going in. Uh, and when we talk about stormwater, which is, um, usually the conversation flows, pun intended there to, uh, salinity, but there's also the runoffs, which we talk about the herbicides, the fertilizer, um, definitely, Fred, to include future fertilizer, uh, use to follow those mandates and to have that, uh, as a data point, not just, yes, we did it, but to actually have something. And even to this form, um, after our previous conversations, I just sketched out a basic form that, in my opinion, could be easily added because your staff has to do it and not me. Um, to this spreadsheet, what Monsanto products, what glyphosate products are you using? Um, what pollution are you putting in? So, I've originally, my conversation, uh, proposed to, you have to eliminate that. I understand that that's a process. There's vendors, there's contracts, there's timeframes, there's acquisitions of other equipment. Um, but at least initially, as we move forward, to ask on this questionnaire, even if it's not for consideration directly related to funding or not funding, what projects are you doing that include spraying herbicide? And not just directly into watershed or what's properly mapped as watershed, but any cities that are out of that watershed or direct connect, um, location, proximity to the lagoon, all the tributaries eventually get to the lagoon. So, with the exception of that Turkey Creek new thing that redirected. Um, so just to say, what projects are you using? For cities, what's your budget for herbicides, for fertilizers? These are not difficult things. And you mentioned that a lot of these entities don't have staff, um, or grant writers specifically suited for this, and it's a lot of work, but it's a lot of money. And so, if someone's coming in requesting $10,000, $25,000, $1 million, $2 million, it's comparable to the amount of work to just include basic information about what other projects are you doing. So, we're going to assist with funding to eliminate 1,000 pounds of nitrogen from your marina. How many pounds of fertilizer are you putting back into that? Does your Homeowners Association creed include that you cannot fertilize or you cannot use certain products? Um, you know, the, the OG of it, of course, is glyphosate, um, but all the other chemicals, which I've learned more about in the last two months during my presentation, you know, there's a whole list, um, so if we can quantify and just include what is your budget, what projects, it doesn't have to be a list, like for the city of Melbourne that has dozens of ditches and other, um, projects that they utilize sprays for, but if we can get a basic yardage, even just to quantify in a, in a fiscal number, so if this might even be something that's drawn to the attention of their, their, their organizations, their staff, their management, where they can see. And where I said concise, and then to add to that, um, costs of these chemicals just went up about tenfold in the past since we met. Um, prior to that happening, uh, there was a federal mandate that went into effect to secure access to these chemicals. They're not so much for maintenance and management as they are for direct fertilizers for food supply on this federal mandate, but the chemicals and the manufacturers are the same. So the costs on these are increasing significantly as we sit here. So a lot of the kickback we've gotten is the cost. It costs more to mechanical harvest. It costs more. And to break that cost down in between health, as we had an amazing presentation on today by Fred and Kurt, costs in financial aspect, of course, um, the well-being of the community in general, the understanding, um, those, those costs are being mitigated by access to these chemicals right now. So that cost, uh, financially is being mitigated by global circumstances right now. And I don't know how much anyone is following or cares or is interested in that global economy factor, but it is directly related to what we're doing here now in a much more significant and new way than it was even last month. Um, so a lot of that kickback over, Oh, the financial aspect that's going away. These chemicals are rising. Um, there is a global shortage right now. Fertilizer, we're talking famine. Um, you know, this is not unrelated. It's not out of the scope of what we're doing here again, because these are the same manufacturers. These are the same sources for these chemicals. So as difficult as it is to find a good side, silver lining in the shortage, some of the pollution aspects that are, we're, we're having locally here and across the country, um, they're going to be mitigated organically by the fact that the chemical is just not functional for that. Um, so I think it's a great opportunity again, to harvest information so that we can see if there's a correlation so that we have a data source for hubs, for Fred, for anyone else that wants

to go back and do, uh, comparable. Let's bring Deb in here too. She has something. Oh, yeah.

Well, I know that she's very passionate about, um, pesticides and herbicides, um, which I think is great. And I'd like to come back to the process and, um, I want to think, uh, kind of amend my question earlier about, can we have access to all the information on the, on the portal? Maybe the starting point for us is we want to be educated about what we are asking so that we can have a better conversation when we get to this point and maybe in between about the additional concerns, uh, Kimberly's raised concerns about, um, other types of pollution going into the, um, lagoon and what these grantees are, are, um, contributing to that, if at all. But some of those things may not be applicable to certain types of projects. So maybe our starting point is we just had a copy of all the, you know, there's, there are green and there are un, uh, highlighted things on this that give us a broader sense of what kinds of questions are asked by what kinds of projects. Perhaps that would be a good starting point for us to take a little deeper look and feel, uh, feel, uh, a lot more educated about what our starting points are, which you guys do a great job of trying to get us there. And I think those of us who went through the process the first time are smarter about the things to look at and ask the next time. But maybe that's like where we should start. And if, if there are projects that have concerns, there were concerns raised around herbicides, there were concerns raised around, um, package treatment plants and a number of other things that came out of that discussion that would help us come back and ask more intelligent questions about certain kinds of projects. So certainly these things don't apply to every category of project.

I agree. And that's what I was having trouble with your discussion is, is it doesn't apply to every type of project. And that's why we needed to really bring it back to, as Deb says, you know, project specific, um, you know, how, how can we improve our, our requests to people for these projects?

Well, if the entity, the city, the homeowners, the organization isn't utilizing any other projects, if they're not putting glyphosate or any other herbicides treatments into any other projects, then their answer in that box would be none. So that would be a super simple way. So are you using, uh, or, um, any kind of biocides? Yes. What is your budget? What is where? And if it's no, because it's not relevant, but I don't think it should be project specific because a baffle box isn't going to do the same exact work as mechanical harvesting. So I don't think that it's not connected. Um, I think that a basic question again, originally, and, and I, I saw that was not going to go here. Um, if you're using, if you're using sorrel money, you cannot be polluting the lagoon intentionally at

all. We bring it back. We've had several presentations and even brought in communities on, on this issue of glyphosate. Absolutely. And we've brought in individual communities and they say how they're really actively trying to, to get away from the use of it. So, you know, I think, I think, and, and also they, they are not buying as much as they, they had in the past. So I think we've really covered this

issue over time. Uh, and. Which is all the more reason that a simple box just to ask. And again.

Well, I don't want it to be, I really don't want it to be an issue in, in the release of monies to

these people. But it should be because if they're intentionally polluting the lagoon, you know, the, the conversation, anyone who's not up to date on the effects that these chemicals cause, I cannot help you understand that now. I would encourage you to go research an independent source or five on what these chemicals do. It's not up for debate. It's really a matter of, do you want to gaslight and believe that everything is fine? Or do you want to step into where we need to be to truly mitigate

pollution? So if there's one or the other. The approach we'll take here, I think is, is one of Debs, uh, where, you know, we'll pass out the form and, and I think we need to, we need to step back again. And, uh, I'm not hearing any specific proposals at all, uh, to, to the form itself.

Um, so, so. It's not a motion, but my specific proposal would be to add one or more questions that harvest data about biocide use from that entity. If it's none, it's none. If it's a city that has a half a million dollar budget specifically devoted just to spraying the tributaries, that needs to be addressed. And if we can just identify that and then next year or the next year. All

right. That's a, that's a motion of yours. And then let's have comments from the, from the

committee first. That wasn't a proper motion because I feel like you were alluding to maybe we'll revisit again, a little more knowledge for us as a conversation. Is that the approach you want to use or? Um, I think it's a great idea as Deb suggested and you as well, a little more time for each member to really study the portal. Um, I'm surprised Deb didn't know that was there because Deb knows every single thing and she's called me on stuff. So. Well, she's done very well at her knowledge when we've conversated out of, out of the committee meeting. So I'm surprised that Deb did not know that, but it is very telling that she wasn't aware. So I think, I think

the path forward now is to, is to distribute the form that you, you have up, you had up on the screen. It's actively on the website. Yeah. I know that too. Yeah. And so, you know,

to, um, I think it's still be helpful to send it out in an email with the link just for anyone that needs help finding and navigating. I mean, I know that website. Well, I'm sure my IP address is like one of the top five, but the, and then it's true, but I still know that on occasion I've, you know, get lost when I'm trying to find something specific. So it is a great website and information is very well housed there, but it's a lot. So I don't think that would

be too much. I think that link was in the email you sent before and then to have it's been

sent. Thank you for, and that was to the form or to the portal? I did not look at it. So

I don't know what it was to. It was to the portal. Oh, perfect. Okay, great. Okay. So

I think that's the path. I understand that as of right now, we have no motions. No motions,

no, no, only to move forward and, and look at the form in more detail and then come back

to this issue. Come back to this issue again. And just, just for clarification, we want to look at the form and the submission of data, not necessarily the contract and what we may require from individuals that may impact that form or, so for example, if we wanted to say, hey, we need, we want them to use signs for longer, obviously they'd have to say we, that would have to be part of what you sent them or they agreed to, as well as if we said you need to, you, the, the individuals within this neighborhood that we have now provided a project for need to be able to agree to do X, Y, and Z. Can you document that or something like that? Is that what you're looking for as well as possible answers to those

questions? Whatever the committee wants. I can send you the contract that we send out. I can send you the links to the portal. Yeah, gone through the portal. I'm not hearing

anything from anybody else, so. Well, I'll add some if you want. Yeah, okay. I like, I like,

I like your idea a lot about requirements after the fact, but I mean, what the consequences are is something that we got to figure that out too. Yeah. Because if you can say all day long, I'm going to keep my room clean and you don't, well, what happens? I know what happened to my mom, but I don't know what happens with the folks. If they say they're going to do these things or meet these compliance, like plants, and they don't, what happens? There is a section in the contract. You probably got

it covered. Yeah. Do we enforce it? Yeah. Okay. There's an issue. I talked to the county attorney about it. Yeah. She loves that. Yeah. Okay. So, um, and, and we don't

have to cover it all today. No, it won't take too much time, but, but from a, from a confidence, I've done a lot of project management work in my career. From a perspective of how does this, this committee rank and make decisions on these projects, I would like to see more information about, uh, the, the outcome that is desired. I want to do, and some of them are going to be, uh, very easily captured and because, uh, a sewer lateral for at a residence is going to be the same everywhere. There's, and we already have a lot of data, but when we get to the larger dollar, uh, projects that are more unique, I think we need to have an understanding of what do we want to get out of this? There's a total nitrogen reduction goal, but what's the, what are the, and some of these things, to Fred's point earlier, are going to be quantifiable and easy. Some of them could be qualified. Uh, uh, is this going to be continued recreational use and is it going to benefit those long-term ROIs that, uh, Fred and Kurt's, uh, presentation was all about. It's right here. Other Indian River Lagoon benefits. What's that? Other Indian

River Lagoon benefits is a question. Yeah, it's a, it's a question, but I think

it's, is it a required one though? And, and is it something that we then can make a decision on as, and prioritize as a group saying these are the types of benefits that are not just nutrient loading, uh, oriented, but these are the other benefits. So we can come up with a quantifiable scale of how do we score and rank our projects. I also believe that, uh, as part of the, uh, application process, there should be some prior experience for confidence. Are we confident that a bank makes this decision when they're lending you money? Are we confident that when we're awarding large grants that, that the, the recipient is going to be able to do this on time, on cost and have the desired outcome achieved because they've done it before? Uh, uh, uh, city of Melbourne on, uh, uh, sewage and, and wastewater or wastewater and stormwater projects. Lots of experience since they got a lot of data. Some smaller municipalities, maybe not as much experience. We need to take that into consideration to say maybe we break it up into phased projects. Uh, so really it's just from modern business, project management, all that comes, are we making good investments? And I, and I think that there's some work to be done on that. Lastly is, is on the application process. And I think that you spoke to this, uh, uh, quite eloquently, uh, in prior meetings and this one on the grant application cycle. We, the, the, many of the municipalities and, and organizations that are going to be applying don't have, uh, a lot of grant writing experience. Some have much more. And, and you're reaching out to each, each city. I think maybe, uh, uh, inversely have a workshop where the municipalities can come to and, and educate them on not only the soil funding that's available, but on the ways to leverage other grants and, and how to process this. But then really how to, how to help them do this. I was under the impression that you had to have a shovel ready project, uh, to, to come to, to this process. You don't. Uh, and, and municipalities need to know that. Uh, my municipality thought that was the case. Uh, and because it take, it might take a huge amount of investment, hundreds of thousands of dollars to get a large project to being shovel ready. They need to know that they can come here and get that earlier. And then, and lastly would be a mentoring project. It might behoove us, if we're, if we're managing this much money, uh, and this, this diverse set of, of, uh, investments, it might behoove us to have some workshops to help, uh, the, the grant beneficiaries to be able to manage their projects better. You know, that might be a great investment of time and it's easily replicable in, in a workshop or in a YouTube, uh, how to do this well. But anyway, so it's, it's, it's all about project

management is I guess my comment. Terry, you do work with the individual applicants, uh,

and, and try to get them along. We do. Um, especially, we also host a city meeting with all the cities in July to go over the potential cost shares and the process, the same thing, the schedule and everything. Um, with, uh, private entities, we work hand in hand with them to get everything submitted, get the documents they need, get the numbers correct. Um, so it's not.

Okay, good. This is my, my first year on, on, on, so as we're seeing this, when it comes This is part of your onboarding process is educating you about this. Yeah. Well, when it comes to making a decision on, on a large number of projects, it helps to then break it up into something that score, that we can score things on. So as a, as a, as a oversight committee, how do we, how do we rank these things to prioritize it? And then we can decide what are the, what are our highest priorities? Uh, and they may have shifted in the decade of this program as, as you were talking about, uh, three meetings ago. Go ahead, Dick. I, I just want to add,

add to what she said and what you, I, uh, fortunately or unfortunately wrote a grant that wasn't, uh, for a piece of property we own that, uh, and they took me all the way through it, helped me, uh, Mitch, the guy from, uh, the state, uh, uh, he sent me old grants. Uh, their representative took, took me through it exactly what you're saying down to the wording and how to cut, how to calculate phosphorus and help was amazing. And I've said, uh, Clemson turns out good engineers. They didn't teach us to read and write. So, uh, that help is there in their spades. It couldn't, couldn't have been anymore. So thank you before, before it ever got to there and got disapproved.

I'm sorry for interrupting. This is all really good conversation though, because, you know, it's part of your, your, your overall understanding the process too. Um, that's really important.

Go ahead, Deb. So Bruce mentioned prioritization and since we're on filling our blind spots or blank areas in our brain about the process, I think that's one of the things that I, I struggled with a little bit because we were given the sheet that ranked everything, um, by nitrogen removal. The question I still have is if we have projects that are already in the plan and some of these projects may provide more benefit, how is the prioritization of the new projects we're adding handled against the existing list? I, I think probably projects that are already funded and in progress are not displaced, but does it actually change the rest of the list when those projects get, um, brought into the plan and are things reprioritized? And is that something that we, if so, is that something that we should know about? Um, how do we, how do we understand that at a deeper level in our, like just some tips on how should we look at that as we're evaluating?

Um, if you take a look at table six, nine in the plan, it has the cost effectiveness for the sorrel dollars and the total project cost. So you can look at that table and it will help you with that. And then to under, yeah, uh, not the rainbow table, the table right before

that. Yeah, I know. Yeah. You know, to take a look at the question. Hey, Terry, uh, is where

in here? What I see, uh, I noticed we have about 92 million of funded projects when they

were funded. That is in the project tables in section four. So if they were funded years

ago and they're just not moving forward, is there a process that we move on from that and put to the newer projects? Not yet. Okay. So for future ones, if we don't have it, you

know, because apparently we didn't do good. In the quarterly reports, those are those red

cells in the quarterly reports. Right. Those are the ones that aren't moving. So, you know, what do we do? Because it's just money, you know, sitting there that, um, it's not going to get used. I think we probably maybe should start a process for newer projects to give them a timeline that if you don't meet that, the money goes back to the pot. I will

add, um, in the July meet or sorry, the November meeting when I'm doing all the projects, I do reach out to anybody that hasn't contracted their project yet and ask why, if they plan to withdraw it or when they want to move forward. So you have a better idea of, uh, available

funding for other projects. Yeah. I know some, you know, some are withdrawn like Palm Bay, I think withdrew for one, but I mean, others are just one day, maybe someday we might, but

yeah. And this year we, we used funding of an abandoned project to, to bring in more money to, to do the projects that we selected. Yeah, I understand that. But I mean, also

understand that there's some of them are not abandoned, but they're sitting there forever and we got to, uh, I think, I think Terry, maybe I'm wrong. You, you stay on them. Yeah. Yeah. I don't, I don't disagree. You do a good job on that. It's just that I don't think we have an avenue or a tool to say it's open. We need to move on from your project if it's

not going to happen. Well, you can always ask that question from the tables, uh, that we get, you know, like the, uh, like the quarterly report, you can always ask that question. And when you review the report, you know, that would be a question that you would ask each

time. Okay. Every month. Right. Okay. Good. Can I add a suggestion maybe to make it easier on me too? I can't remember every year for every project, but that is something we could add on the performance table was the year it was added into the plan. That way it is in one table for you. Great. That way you're not asked every month. Right. The quarterly

reports do have gray cells for the years before that project was added to the plan. Those are grayed out so that you can see which ones have been sitting there on the money for eight or nine years versus which ones just got added a year or two ago. Yes, ma'am. That's what

caused my question. That's what made me ask that question because I see them and I see the red and I'm wondering why does it stay red and nothing's being done? Yeah. The, um, it's no reflection on you. It's a reflection on the people that have the, the table.

Money is mentioning is the financial table that has all the years in the court, uh, the fiscal years that the money spent. So it is there just not as a number. Okay. Is there currently

a mandatory timeframe within to start the project? And is that what you're suggesting?

That's what she actually told me there's not. And I think that as a advisory boarder with them, ask them to begin that at least any new projects, you give a timetable where people have to have an obligation, you know, a timetable and follow through with what, like you say, I'm going to remove this much nitrogen. I'm going to do this much to prevent the nitrogen from entering at least as quickly as it did before, fix my stormwater or whatever, but you know, keep, keep it going. So that way, you know, when you build something, you want to maintain it. If you don't maintain it, you're going to be right back in the same boat and asking for money again. So I think, uh, kind of a longer, more defined plan and obligations would probably help us keep the projects, you know, moving on. And the sign I love too, because here's what your money's from sorrel is doing. And you go out and see the sign is weeds your own everywhere, cutting grass, blowing into the canal. Now, you know, you can go back on that and, and, and recoup money. I don't know what, what that answer is, but I think we should maybe kind of start looking at that direction. Unless somebody disagrees, that's fine. I have no problem with that.

Do you have a significant, I don't know if you know this off the top of your head, amount of projects that haven't begun yet? Like what's the, is there a mean timeframe that generally once they're approved, they start within, or is there like just a few lagging behind or again, I don't know if that's something you know off the top of your head there.

I think you could, you could update us on every project and where it's at and, and why it's doing what it's doing.

Yeah, they, they, they do that with that sheet. Yes, exactly.

Just the times. Could I make a recommendation? Read the report. Please go through. I mean, it's a bear. It's gigantic, but go through it, read it, hit the website, look at these pages and do some of the stuff. It's just understand as well as we can. It's a lot. There's a bunch I don't get yet, but to understand what's going on, that's our job.

I agree. And if I see one, I think we should pull. Maybe that's the time to bring it up in a meeting.

Okay. I can tell you that, you know, my looking at the rainbow table, as you call it, you know, it, it has a lot of information on it and, and, you know, that helps you a lot of timing and it's got, it's got all 10 years of projects in it and, and where they're at right now, it's got a lot of information. So just that one table is, is really information, a lot of

information. All right. Where are we at? I'm going to send you the link to the application portal and the contract so everybody can see that. Good. Okay. And we'll visit again next

month and, and, and just, and we'll solve this one. We'll, we'll get it down. We will get it down. Well, thank you. Um, I do have one public comment from Dennis. Do we need a motion

to table that again? Or is it fine how it is? Um, so that it can be brought back? Heather,

we're fine with no action, right? Yeah. We can just let it go. Okay. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Yeah. I do have one public, um, comment. Uh, Dennis, I'm sorry, you're writing. Go

ahead. You can introduce yourself. Come on up. Morning or I should say afternoon by now. So my name is Dennis Waterworth. I'm here for two different reasons. One is I'm, uh, the chapter president of a, uh, fishing club. Um, it's, um, Salt Strong, the local chapter of Salt Strong. So we are fishermen who are out there and, uh, looking at the water and everything in that I decided that I need to do something about it. So we do cleanups all the time, but now I am the founder of spacecoastwatersweep.com. So what it is, is it's, we focus on community involvement, primarily to remove abandoned traps in the Indian River and Brevard County. So in doing that, I had to go through a complete process with Florida Fish and Wildlife. So you're completely, uh, legitimized and doing this the right way. Um, so what I'm actually doing out there is I built a platform to have people to be able to tell us where these traps are. If they find them very easily, they take a picture, submit it to me, it gets to a process that has to be validated that it is derelict, a time has to be set up. Anyway, I don't want to go too far into how it happens, but what I did is I did that platform. So in doing that, I'm able to make an impact on the environment and the, um, crab traps and bycatch, which is in regard to the dolphins out there. I had spoke to them in previous, and yes, they're entanglements, but a lot of them are older traps. I mean, active traps, not old. So I am doing my part in trying to remove that. So why obviously we have a large quantity of bycatch that's happening. Traps are affecting the boats that are navigating in the water and everything else. So to get them out, we have already in place that the 10 day closure Florida Fish and Wildlife has that gives them opportunity for organizations to go in there and remove traps. Uh, Neil from Oceanate 360 has been doing it for the last seven years. I am now partnered with him. We're going to be doing a large event in, uh, Bavard County because it's east coast of Florida this August. So I'm going to be encouraging people to come along and we should remove approximately 200 to 400 traps that day alone. So, but what I also have, and where I'm trying to lead with what I'm trying to do here in my salt strong spacecoastwaterstreet.com program is allowing the community to let us know what's going on. So with not only abandoned crab traps, but I also have reporting in there for wildlife that they see. The wildlife is literally now just a portal to go to Florida Fish and Wildlife, and the phone number will come up if it's immediate danger to that thing. I also have large boats, derelict boats. If they don't see a sticker, they can take the picture of the boat. That gets reported. I, and then turn and put it to the Bavard County Sheriff's Department and the Florida Fish and Wildlife that's in there. And what I really like the most, because I've been doing this for years, is if they come out in the water and they're going out fishing, anybody, anybody who's out in the water enjoying it and they see trash in the water, large quantities. I'm not talking about a few water bottles. They can pick that up themselves. But I'm talking about something that requires a group of people to get together. I have that in there. They take pictures, they tell me, and then I'm organizing events to get it out of the water. So that's what I'm trying to do. And a little bit, the future of my program is I'm trying to get as many people out there, as many eyes as I can in the water to see what's going on. And with that, I have the ability to utilize, I know we have algae blooms. I know that they're doing their part in tracking them. They use satellites for it. They use water samples. But I'm going to be introducing in the future the possibility if the people who do that want it as the local person who's out there saying, oh my God, I see by my house or I see in the water a algae bloom that's starting. It will give us firsthand knowledge of it before. And then it becomes a bigger problem. Then they can go out and they can test that water in that area and see what it's about. Same thing goes for, I have been researching dolphins and manatees. It's very easily take a picture of dolphin and manatee. And because of their scars or their dorsal fins, we can tell what that dolphin and manatee is. AI will actually be able to pull in and let us know the history of that dolphin on the database. It's not in there yet, but this is where I'm trying to go with my program. So I just want it to be one platform that organizations can use to find out things that are happening from the common person. So that is what's happening. And then really what it comes down to is, well, it comes down to basically is I'm out there trying to make the difference, cleaning up, going through it. I went through a big, huge process to get here and it's just to make things better. The lagoon is in horrible shape and everybody has the ability to change it. So thank you. Thank you. Any questions at all or comments?

Could I ask funding? Are you a nonprofit? Are you a 501c3? Yes, thank you. I do have a nonprofit.

I am currently, another one of the things I started a nonprofit not that long ago. I am currently in the whole big process for my 501c. So I am a nonprofit. I have an EIN number. I'm all legal with that. I just don't have that thing. So I do take my website and my app does have funding locations on there that people will privately fund. But I am in the process of doing that. I have been talking to some of the larger organizations, William & Mary College and also NOAA. But I need to be completely done before I can even apply. So that won't be until next year. I missed a deadline. All right? Anything else? Go ahead, Fred. What was the website again? It is spacecoastwatersweep.com. And it's on my own. And pass it around. I came prepared.

I just had, I met Dennis through Salt Strong because I go to their meetings and I'm a member of that fishing group. And when he announced this, they pulled a bunch of traps out, which has been great, obviously, whether entanglement or trash or stuff. I have a couple in Sykes Creek I'll probably get some pictures of. The app's pretty easy to use. So just something to be aware of and get out, obviously. We got a lot of groups doing a lot of stuff.

And I am actually hitting the water tomorrow. It's myself and one other person. We do, we are going, well, we've been doing monthly cleanups during open season. So to get to that point where this is going on, to get to that point to do a cleanup for one day, I actually am out on the water three to five times during the month just surveying. Find out where these things are because the process is to be able to tell Fish and Wildlife that you're removing a trap. So you have to know where it is before you go out there and do it. So we concentrate on the hotspots. Well, thank you very much. All right. Thank you. Yeah. Thanks for your time. Sure.

Comments from the... P.I. Gowery. What's that? P.I. Gowery. Yes, yes. From the committee. Yeah, that's where we're at right now.

Sea Turtle Preservation Society is having their 40-year anniversary gala tomorrow at the American Muscle Car Museum. There are still tickets left. I believe as of last night. I think the VIP tour is full, but if there are spaces, I would highly recommend it. It's going to be a great night. Definitely the founder will be there. He'll tell his story of finding turtles in the parking lot after his surf sessions and what motivated him to start the Preservation Society. And I recently learned that they're 100% volunteer. They have no paid staff. It is a completely volunteer organization. Which is very unique in the non-profit world, especially here locally with us to know about them. So I hope to see you guys over there.

Thank you.

We want to get on the docket for... Who do we see? July and August. July or August? Go ahead.

All right. Jumping off of events. There's the 123rd anniversary of the Pelican Island Wildlife Refuge this weekend. If you've ever been down there and know the history of it, it's great history. And part of the reason why we're doing what we're doing today is because of old Paul and all the work that he did out there on Pelican Island. Also, as Virginia mentioned, the Florida Family Landscaping Seminar tomorrow. I hope to see you all there. I'll be there in the morning giving some remarks. Also, not totally lagoon related, but I will be working on an Alzheimer's surf contest in June on the longest day, longest ride as part of my job at the Chamber and partnering with Banker's Life and the Alzheimer's Association. So if anybody wants to talk to me about that offline, please feel free to do so. Okay. Thank you.

You guys?

One more event. I just realized we won't be back before then. Enchanted Forest Sanctuaries having their Earth Day event. And now I'm not going to tell you the day because I'm afraid to say the third Saturday of April. And our famous Laura Lee will be a keynote speaker for us there on that day. Very family-friendly, kid-oriented, lots of fun crafts, story time, something you may want to look into reading your story at sometime, Nick. Yeah, so lots of Earth Day events coming up. I definitely have seen pretty much every wonderful organization we have here popped up, either hosting one or attending one. So I would encourage us all to get that. April 10th? April 18th. 18th. Yes, 18th. I knew it wasn't the 11th, so thank you for that date. Laura Lee, yes. And again, she'll be speaking. I believe Sorrel's going to be set up out there. Are you going to—it's you that—yeah. So we had our last planning meeting, and I thought that she dropped your name that you'd be coming out. So we'll be out there, and I hope to see a lot of people out and enjoying all of our fabulous weather coming up.

Virginia, we've got you out in plenty of time, so you're good to go. Thank you. Thank you, everybody.

Thank you.

And you've got the plan, so, you know, and all the tables and—

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